I used to be so cautious.
I’d look both ways before doing almost anything, like the walls around me might as well be windows or have eyes and ears and mouths to tell me secrets.
I guess freshman year was where it really started to go downhill.
That’s where I began to find myself searching for safety in other people’s pillows.
Wherever I’d happen to fall asleep at night
Became my momentary home.
I remember being in the ocean at night, the saltwater almost brushing my hair.
I remember writing a lot about complacency and him, because I’d met a boy with an explosive soul and I was electric.
We liked it that way.
But the good times of the past tended to hurt more than the bad times of the present, it was frustrating.
Rock and roll was kind of sending us insane.
I was a sinner, I guess we all really were.
The Eagles and Childish Gambino and Lana seemed to tell my story better than I could.
I never really understood why my friends and I mostly just seemed so undeniably self-destructive.
I always figured it had to do with my lack of a set personality because I’d often find myself torn between being a good little brother and missing out on all of the adventures life could offer a boy as reckless as I seemed to be.
The people who understand that about you are ultimately going to be your rocks.
There’s no point in trying to explain yourself to someone who has never really been hurt, they don’t understand what it’s like to lose and fall down and lose something else and fall down some more until eventually we can’t remember how to pick ourselves back up so we just don’t.
My obsession with not being tied down had somehow been my greatest gift and my biggest fear simultaneously.
And I guess that’s why I’m never able to get close to people - I mean, not that many.
Especially the kids in my class who I saw every day for four years because I’m too in love with the complexity of freedom.
I couldn’t let myself compromise that entity with the side effects of losing people, so I never got close in the first place.
And then an unfortunate series of events.
Divorce, take a step back.
Loss of a friend, take another step back.
Close family members dying way too young, take a huge step back.
Even something as natural as human sexuality was twisted; how could I be in love with another boy?
Take a step back.
Until eventually you’ve taken so many steps back from all this life happening
You lose touch with yourself, that’s just the way it goes.
Walking down crowded halls, sitting in crowded bedrooms and crowded couches and still feeling so alone.
And the worst part is knowing its nobody’s fault but your own because you just live life in your headphones and leave scars on your arms that don’t actually mean anything.
And that’s when we need our rocks,
To remind us that there is one goal:
Creating an individual world for ourselves where we can experience both our darkest and brightest desires and start believing in them.
That’s what freedom really comes down to, not caring at all what anybody else thinks.
It’s like placement of power, determining where to direct good and bad energy.
It’s huge, probably the biggest thing that’s been taught to us, not by others but by ourselves.
If you ask me how I’m so comfortable bearing my soul, I really couldn’t tell you why except for the fact that it’s one of the soulful, sad symptoms of being an artist. I’m shedding all my armor and putting myself in a vulnerable state.
It’s what I’ve always wanted, to make my life into a work of art, a painting.
Pick up the paintbrush and let’s complete each other.