LOMP: Laugh Out of My Prison

This entry is intended for a special someone in my life who unfortunately suffers from GAD, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder, but it also applies to anyone who feels an intense fear at some point or another. That means it applies to everyone-- myself included. Constant anxiety is nothing to be ashamed of, as fear is an integral part of human nature. You're not strange, if anything you're even more human than others. Humanity is a species beset by weaknesses, but the act of overcoming them is what defines our race. Throughout the annals of time, other humans like yourself have faced the fears you faced-- rational or otherwise. They evolved and adapted to combat and grow past them... and you will too.

The worst fear a man can face is a fear without a face. Why? Because it's untouchable and unable to be proven or measured. The uncertainty adds to the danger, and you're always left feeling insecure. In that same sense, the hardest prison to escape is that of our own minds. For so many people, that prison is their fate and they feel like they'll never find parole. They live stagnant lives, frozen by their apprehension. Sure there's drugs like Xanex and the like, but for most people their side-effects only make things worse. If professional therapy doesn't even work, where can you turn?

"Hopeless. Everything is hopeless. I'll never get better. Things will never change. There is no cure." 

Anxiety is a beast that creates a never-ending cycle of terror-- because you get anxiety... about anxiety.

But that cycle can and will END. Here's some good news: matters of the mind can always be conquered. If you break your back and become paralyzed for life, there's not much you can do... but with fear? You're not physically paralyzed at all! Your boat is chained down by an imaginary anchor. You know that prison cell you're in? No walls. The only thing keeping you trapped inside is... well, nothing. Good news, you're free to go. Wait... why are you still standing there? I said you could go...

How To Never Read Past How To

I question Mark.

I've never read anything past the words, "How to." Goals, like band-aids, are just something I bleed through. Dreams, a read-through, the before the after. Happily ever after seems a bit like lazy falling action. Why does the action have to fall anyway? "You're a writer, why are you bothering with gravity?" I guess I just try to stay grounded-- I'm too old to have my mother do it. I don't like thinking about my mother doing it. That's why I'm doing it my way. Technically that's Sinatra's way, but hey, life can't always take place at Burger King.

Life is like a passing thought. It's like an unfinished metaphor in that. Does the thought ever occur to you? No, I occur to it. My thoughts are sporadic and Socratic. They're dispersed questions, like a series of mosquitoes protesting malaria injections. They suck, they're full of blood, and they don't always make sense. But how do you make sense anyway? What's a rhetorical question with an answer? A paradox.

The point of prose is to substantiate poetic critique. It rhymes perfectly with morose, flows and even rose(poet's love that one.) What is a rose anyway, by any other name? Doth it not smell as sweet? Sure, unless you call it shit. What is the word shit, if not but a symbol for language itself? Poop, excrement, feces, defecate-- all sound far to delicate, silly and sophisticated for the crap they describe. Shit is curse, but it has the same amount of letters as poop. What makes one silly? What makes one inappropriate? I'd argue that shit is the most appropriate tag for a turd, yet such is its curse.