At 4:35 AM I woke up on the verge of a heart attack. My dreams were killing me and someday I could very well die in the dark. All those things my conscious mind keeps propped up during the day come crashing down at night. It's like sleeping during a firefight on the battlefield - that's not time to sleep but you've got to do it sometime! Even now the pain is modulating within, festering desires pleading for hope that cannot be.
There are some - very pointedly - who've questioned the validity or even the existence of my pain. I write about it in allegorical terms but rarely in a way that can be directly connected back to me. You see, you are supposed to question my pain, to doubt it - and then go about your way. You may be many things, dear ones, but you are not to be trusted. I've seen what your ideas of a solution are and you are quite literally mad. So I'll take death on my own terms if you please.
The last point I remember of my dreams I was driving around DFW with a girl, but it was more like we were driving in a map. She was not a romantic interest - a cousin or a co-worker more like - but I still needed to impress her. I took a chance and blew smoke about how she must be lost being new to the big city and how vast the area was. She took the bait and duly noted my ability to navigate the crisscrossing highways and byways. I had to do something to score since I carried no real self-respect for myself.
So then I got the chance to "make it", the illusion was becoming real. I need only ride some old helicopter to gain full acceptance to the world. Only that chopper was in no condition to fly and I kept telling the guy in charge to stop putting gasoline in it, it was going to blow if he tried to go up in it. My words were not acknowledged and finally I got so upset I left, which was very difficult to do since the pull to stay and be accepted was very, very strong.
So that made the pilot and the co-pilot very angry with me as I ran away into the countryside, fearing them to come after me. I came up on a very nice estate, people with money, but here I was a fugitive. God, I'm so tired of always being on the outside of everything. My heart needs a place to rest - it's telling me so even now. Finally, I was branded a loser and put back in school in the loser class, trapped and bound to hell.
I recognized my fellow classmates, kids with no interest in "the system" whatsoever, all wearing the "Loser" branding from the "responsible" teachers. The teachers' mantra was simple: "Follow rules, good. Don't follow rules, bad." These kids didn't follow rules, they saw only their lives and where that led them and they were justly defiant in that. But I could see in their eyes the self-doubt from the constant branding as failures. I didn't see them that way at all.
I could play both sides of the fence. I had enough traditional smarts to play the game but I also knew the wisdom of living life. The price for walking in both worlds was I was committed to neither and had no possible life myself. And while those kids had no hope of ever making it in the folly world we've created, they had more of a life than me, making me feel the biggest loser.
Each day a teachermeister took us around to various places in the building and at the end was this weird sort of test. A number was secretly assigned to each of us and we had to "guess" who it was that day. I noticed right off the code could be cracked but I feared to do so since I was already in the world's dog house. But one of the girls with a very strong personality noticed the numbers were sequential and thereby we could determine who was going to be "it" next. She was very excited by her discovery and when the teacher came back in the room she proudly him told she figured out the answer for tomorrow and gave it to him. The teacher blew up with rage, assured by his own insecurities she had cheated. Always, always, always life was a no-win situation.
***
When I decided to suppress myself as a child, to die and become a loser, it had many repercussions. One of them was in 7th grade I tormented my English teacher all year long in class with my yelling out of smart remarks. By this point I had learned the fine art of walking the line, of never going too far to get in official trouble. By the end of the year, though, I had her so frustrated she took me down to get a swat for my cumulative effect. Next year I found myself ousted from accelerated English and in the lowest rung of classes.
It was weird and shameful to leave my usual crowd of accelerated classmates and do time in there. But though I felt smarter in one sense I felt dumber where it really counted: in life. These were party kids, living life of a Rod Stewart song. So what if they couldn't spell so great. I agreed with them. What did spelling ever do for me? What I really wanted was that girl sitting behind me. Guess I'm stuck living that moment forever, the dreams of tonight never letting me forget.
***
In my next Goupil installment, he's forced to put down roots and in doing so is forced to start facing himself. As he attempts to let go of his self-destructive ways and the insanity they bring he finds out something very scary and unexpected: more fear than he ever knew. His self-destruction had been his security blanket, imminent doom providing him with the out he needed before having to face reaping what he'd sown all his ill-gotten life. It's a madness consuming the world with its pretty propaganda of only speaking half of what it sees. It's so funny that people don't realize they are as much defined by what they don't say as what they do.
So as I struggle to do the "right thing" and take care of my health, I lose my acid reflux but gain heart attacks in the night. My decisions have been poor and I'm hanging by my fingernails as more and more of my past determines my future without me.
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