Crooked and Slanted
2026-10-29
The world's got me feeling like a dollar in her hand, but too bad I don't make any sense.
What if, perhaps one day, I closed my eyes and didn't care to wake up the next day? All the busyness, all the work—maybe it'll finally come to a close. That's assuming I'm the one who makes myself wake up, and that assumption is more than likely wrong, like many of my assumptions tend to be. The weakest spot I have as an essayist is my tendency to generalize and make authoritative statements without any further provocations to back it up. In more arrogant moments, I tell myself it's a strength—that the rigor is unnecessary if the lines have rhythm and the sentiments are strong. But strong sentiments are a tough gambit; they don't tend to last beyond a few short moments. That's the difficulty found in emotive prose; to confront the ephemerality of the emotion itself is a tragic thing, particularly when I give my published pieces a second or third pass sometime after the fact. It makes me realize that I commit a grievous sin in the work of the personal essay: that I say a whole lot without saying much at all. It's something I see in professionally published pieces all the time, and even though it pisses me off when I read them, I find myself right there with those ivory-towered idiots.
Sometimes I comfort myself with the notion of my work's genuine nature, but I have to remind myself of its lack of authoritative bite. No, I am a pedant—a lost soul tangled in a web of hypertext like every other cretin with a laptop and an internet connection. To say that this work is anything beyond a simple act of masturbation would be letting haughtiness and vainglory set up shop in my mind and my heart, and when I come to the page to let these thoughts out, I am simply doing so as a means to quiet myself for a while. That's quite alright with me, and I prefer it that way. I have no concern with the means of discourse, and most certainly no concern with the effect this work has on others. Quite frankly, I have learned that it's out of my hands, and that's okay with me. It helps me sit here and actually just fucking write; it helps me feel better about things for a little while.
More than any intellectual pursuit, I try to let mundanity lead me to an understanding of this life I've been given. While trite, it's a simple thing to perceive beauty; all it requires is making the choice to do so. I was thinking, yet again, about how it could all be taken away, and how even if I get down in the dumps because of my Brain Pain, I can't let that make me forget the essence of these breaths. For instance, I was crying in my car again yesterday. But there's no reason to be sad in order to cry; the best fits of tears are those that come for no reason at all. When I feel my whole body tingle during those fits, I feel my entire nervous system resetting in a way that nothing else can give me. To me, that's why certain drug addictions can be so harmful. To let those chemicals repress one's emotions is a dangerous thing. I've seen it in enough people to know that I can't let that happen to myself.
Ironically, I have to take a lot of prescription drugs to keep myself okay, and I am blessed to still have the gift of tears in spite of the cocktails I have to consume every day. To know that I can let the meds actually help me is a wonderful thing; the stigma and ignorance in discourse on psychiatric medications has been the toughest thing for me to navigate. Yeah, sometimes the meds stop working, but there are enough of them to keep trying in spite of that. I don't have faith in the system, but I do feel more confident in my resilience navigating it. I try my best to be patient with providers and insurance, and to know that even if there's corruption in those things, they are mostly made up of people who want to contribute something and help. For that, I can have no resentment in my heart. Feeling frustrated at times is normal and okay, but I maintain a resolute attitude in the face of a crooked and slanted world.
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