Jellyfish Laundromat

Well, don’t blame me for the fact that we never see each other anymore. You ceased to be relevant to my life when you stopped needing things from me. It was never I who cut ties. I just let them fall away. See, you don’t burn bridges; you blow them up, like Switzerland during an invasion, and I’ll not be held responsible for the fact that you can’t manipulate me like you used to. Either get over yourself or understand yourself. For somebody so self-centered you display startlingly little self-awareness. For somebody so emotional, where matters of the heart are concerned you lack all sensitivity. For somebody so caustically confrontational, you fail at facing conflicts in any other way but passive-aggressive. 

“Can we please take at least one picture together? We’re like not friends anymore.”

“Excuse me?”

“I meant we never see each other anymore.”

Shut the fuck up.

I think I know why you asked, and I think I know why it makes me so mad. It’s because it’s the only thing I don’t want to do for you. It’s because I told you that, but I couldn’t tell you why. Here’s why, because I hate it. Because it kills me Because it perpetuates in you something I loathe, that I still cower at, because it encourages something you tortured me with until I was old enough to understand. You asked because you know I hate it and part of you wants to know why.

And the worst is that I have no rational reason to say, “Fuck, no.”

I just had a pretty serious epiphany about my life and my past, and, God, I got it while thinking about a Lady Gaga song. Now, this some doesn’t necessarily apply to me if I think about it technically. My broken, constantly ailing body is a product of near-death illness after my birth. My psyche, the constant fear of something that can’t and won’t hurt me anymore, is a result of something terrible that happened the day my worst fear was realized. My constant, sad sentiment that everyone I love is just going to die and be ripped away from me before I have a chance to prepare for their death comes from having had that happen over and over again. So no. This half-formed wreck chugging through life as optimistically as possible despite physical weakness, psychological terror, and the miserable outlook on the people he loves was not, in fact, born this way.

No, the line that gets me is the one that says, “God makes no mistakes.” Yeah, growing up at a Baptist school and having that concept finally click while singing Lady Gaga is a little pathetic. But there it is. Up until I really thought about it, puzzled over it, I hadn’t let myself get angry at God or ask why me. I always told myself that He gave me burdens to carry because He knew I could handle them, and in a way, with His help and the support of people who love me, that’s proven to be true. Except it’s more than that. 

These things weren’t just big cosmic fuck-ups in which God through up His hands and said, “Oh, shit, I can’t prevent this so I might as well let it happen to Jake because he’s got a pretty good head on his shoulders (that I gave him, might I add)!” Though I had never really considered it before, I just realized that instead, all of the suffering and the pain could, and probably is, for a good reason. God makes no mistakes. Albeit belatedly, I’ve realized this: God has been preparing me for something to come. And I know in my bones that something is going to be good.

That’s about it. I don’t usually post things like this anymore (maybe I should?). And yeah, I curse when I’m talking about God, and I’ll bet He curses too. I would if I had to run a universe and whatever.