Night comes swiftly. There's such a small
window between the full sun at high noon and pitch black. The shadows fall fast and harsh, damning what natural warmth that could be gleaned. And regardless of my feelings, the dark and the cold and the winter are a threat which must be respected. So
I light the fire.
These spaces, these seasons, these evenings. They're occupied by my thoughts much more than by my actions or my emotions. At times they're a necessary distraction from the things I'm actively ignoring, yet they tend to unearth other problems. Much like alcohol. I'm 2 drinks in, but that amounts to a mosquito bite these days.
I really can't send off that letter. I'll have to look it over in the morning, do a rewrite. Why am I so angry? I mean, I know why. But why? I think back to my friend from my writing workshop in college. She told me "I can see you're wanting sympathy for (the piece I wrote), but I don't want to give it to you. Because you're so mean."
I just feel so much pressure. Even alone, even out here in the wilderness with nothing on my plate, I still feel so much pressure. Pressure to feel connection, to find and develop an intimate relationships. And yeah. The pressure of the hunger for sex. There's part of me that's terrified of sex. Or the consequences of it, that is. There's a part of me that's terrified of my sex drive. The lengths at which I'm willing to go, the depths at which I'm willing to stoop. There's a part of me that's terrified of myself.
I really need to get a vasectomy when I go back home. I can imagine it'll be such a relief to seal myself off in that way. But of course there are still dangers to sex. Emotional responsibility, and the danger of infection and disease. But at least I won't be so torn between my need for release and my fear of procreation.
Of course it's primal, evolutionary, to want to reproduce. I'm resisting my nature by resisting it. But I just want to rest. I believe in the notion that Suicide is punishable by resurrection. There will be no exceptions. I believe that to reproduce, to pass along my genetic information and to create new life is a way of continuing the soul. And by proxy, a way towards immortality.
I don't want to continue. I want to find peace in the afterlife. I want to rest. I want to seal off my soul and truly die, and I can't do that if I sire a child. I deny myself true death by chosing true life. It's ok for people to think I'm irrational. But I don't care. This is what I believe, it's what I've come to know about life. Nobody can tell me anything that my soul tells me isn't true.
But again, to resist procreation is to resist human nature. It is to resist love itself. To resist birth, and rebirth. To resist social paradigms and constructs. To resist what humans have come to expect from one another--the want to connect. It is to keep myself to myself. To stay here, out in this cabin of the soul where there is no true light, only reflections. I want to bow out gracefully. There is no one to apologize to.
Maybe she wasn't a friend. Maybe she was just a peer. We certainly didn't keep in touch, didn't really try. I don't know. I like to think of her, remember her, as a friend. Maybe that's not entirely up to me. Maybe it takes two to tango. But I think about what she said all the time. "I don't want to give it to you. Because you're so mean." She was right. It's hard to reconcile. It's hard to be graceful in the face of defeat, to take the high road. To take it in stride instead of taking it out on people. Why am I such an asshole? I really need to fix up that letter. But not tonight, obviously. I've already had a lot to drink, just sitting here. The fire is rolling. Things seem funny, kind of sideways. Things are starting to slip.