That Strange and Almost Endless Dream

It's been a few days. I'm not quite sure why.

It's like the fire just went out, you know? It's like a switch flipped, a gear slipped its track and the whole enterprise just fell out of synchronization with the rest of my life. Suddenly, it became hard to know what to say, even to myself, hell, it's still is hard, I'm only talking right now for the sake of talking without really knowing what I'm saying, or to who.

It feels like I don't really have control of the situation.

Which is weird, because this really isn't a feeling that's based in reality. I'm a little bit of a control freak, which I think that I've admitted to before, or if I haven't admitted it, it's probably obvious to everybody except for me. I've had the sense of being out of control, having so much entropy in my life, so much disorder that it was sickening, like being caught on a elevator in free fall.

So much melodrama in that analogy. You can almost taste it, can't you?

I can.

It's weird, you know? I like to think that I'm this chaotic individual, this free-form creative spirit that bends not to rules but to the whims of my imagination. I do what I want, when I want. As close to freedom as I'll ever come in my lifetime, here, now, in this balanced moment in time between having the resources to do what I wish and no real responsibility to hold me back.

You know what this creative, independent, free form chaotic mind does? The same thing. Every day. Go to class. Go to work. Go home. Eat at the same places. I'm not particularly punctual and I frequently go to bed too late, and I do it with clockwork regularity. Every day. My life is played by my rules, but they're still rules, you know? I wouldn't jump in my car tonight and drive to California, just because I technically could.

I tell myself that it's because I choose not to, that I choose not to upset the life I've constructed, that, hell, I could be chaotic any time I wanted to be. Just like addicts tell themselves they can quit any fucking time, that they're not addicted. Addiction is something that happens to other people. Not us. Not me.

So I tell myself that I'm this creative, chaotic thing, this artistic soul. The whirlwind of inspiration is my playground, brilliance and madness only a coin flip away. The absolutely glorious, beautiful cliche of the creative mind. I am the page and the page is me, and all of that shit. That's what I tell myself.

And then I have moments like these, where I allow myself just a little bit of honesty, where I take a good, long look in an actual mirror. Mirrors aren't kind; that's why I chose that title, because mirrors are honest, and they're honest in a way that we mortals, we humans cannot begin to manage. Because even honest men (and women, let's be fair here) do a wonderful job of deceiving ourselves, and even if we never lie outright, we lie to ourselves, somewhere, somehow.

So I'm taking a good, long look at myself, and you know what I see? I see somebody who likes the idea of a chaotic environment, who likes to pretend that the unpredictable is good, welcome even. I see somebody who tells himself he likes the disorder and the entropy of life, just as long as it's disorder that he can control. As long as it stays on the leash, does what it's told, it's a welcome thing, especially if you want to consider a real dark and manipulative mind that might even relish the fact that disorder is good when it happens to everybody except you, because then you feel like you're even more in control of the situation.

And that's the truth, the reality I see looking back at me in the mirror. The truth is that it's an order I crave, but it's what I define as order, it's a life governed by the rules that I choose. Because if I played by somebody else's definition of what an orderly life should be, I'd just be ceding my control, wouldn't I?

On and on it goes, layer by layer, mental strands woven more intricately than the most elegant spider's web. I can't imagine every untangling it all, sorting it all out and determining what's really me, and what's just what I want to be me.

Honestly, I'm not sure that I'd want to know, even if I could.