All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.

Anyway, different frustration. Since that's what I'm full of tonight.

You know what's pretty fucking goofy?

For all that's changed, nothing really has.

When I was a kid, I would sit alone in my room for hours, hiding from reality. Getting drunk and writing, and listening to music and staying up late. Consuming whatever was around me, wine, and vodka, and just utterly pointless knowledge, trying to just slow my brain the fuck down and bury myself in a warm layer of dissociation.

Now I'm just about thirty, and what am I doing? I'm sitting alone in my room, hiding from reality. Getting drunk and writing, listening to music and staying up late. Consuming whatever is around me, even if it's awful rum, and even more pointless knowledge, even though I know none of this actually fucking works. It's even pretty much the same fucking music.

But what else do I do, dear reader? I can't just go through "the motions", so I created my own movement, and I go through that instead.

This is the beginning, the build. I sit, and I sip, and I absorb. I chase the feeling, that wonderful feeling that tells me things I already know - everything, of course, will be ok, because it's not that bad. It's been 28 years of not that bad, and it will probably be another 28. And that's not that bad.

Soon, the second movement comes. It's not that feeling, because that isn't how this works anymore, and no matter what I consume, it simply never works like t

No, that's not true.

The happiest night in memory was when I found something stronger, and it did work. Disgustingly so.

But ignore that. It's a story for another time. This, this never works. But the feeling still builds, and the music flows through me. The world is poetry, soon enough. And comes a creshendo where I ask myself

Why can't I just do this all the time?

And you know, I still don't have an answer to that. There's worse ways to be.

My reality is simply that. I know it can be modified, and I work towards the modifications that will bring me fulfillment. But the simple truth of this, my simple, irrepressible truth, is that nothing will compare to this.

I have experienced so much. Things that I know most others will never dream of. Stars fighting on the shoulders of Orion, so to speak. I have done so much. I have lived.

But none of it compares. I'd rather spend every minute, of every day, of the rest of my time, be it finite and ending, or stretching beyond the realms of imagination and knowledge, doing exactly what I'm doing right now.

And as the poetry climaxes, as this crescendo falls around me, I know that this is how it should be. This is the ultimate. The magnum opus of my life is contained within this glass, and though it should be horrific, a waste, a sad reality rather than a thing of ecstasy, it simply isn't. That's the perception of others. That's the expectation of those around me. That is not the reality for me.

But then comes the

Well, the part where I get distracted and lose interest in writing. Some things really never do change.

But you know, I'm in this beautiful place. There is that.

I think I'm going to finish this rum, go down to the beach, and look at the stars.