death by a million data points

Every so often the world conspires against me in subtle and pervasive ways to push me back into the shadows, to remain behind closed doors, to tuck myself under the sheets and sulk, sleep, and perseverate on things unfulfilled.

It's in her gesture, which is only skin deep and ultimately meaningless to her. It's in a door that gets slammed in your face, albeit out of ignorance that you had come up behind the person preceding you. It's in the countless quiet nights you return home, alone, and yet relieved to be so because you're so damn terrified of the possibility you'd have to 'perform' for a stranger you had just met. It's in knowing that you're getting her service face, her vast and growing script for pleasant interaction, which is, again, only skin deep. It's in the numerous mocking repetitions that a friend delivers to you after you've attempted interaction with others. It's in the nagging feeling that you're so damn uncomfortable away from home, so damn uncomfortable in this world, among others, and that you'll remain bottled up, fraught, and frightened until you're back behind your door, in your kennel, slammed shut imprisoned by self-security. It's in the two-day fatigue that sets in after you've spent more than 6 hours in close quarters with a couple of strangers. It's in knowing that she's too young, you're too old, she probably won't remember the little thing she did to raise your suspicion that maybe she's into you, but yeah, once you made her confront that notion she'd back off or worse yet, launch an insulting and defensive gesture at you. It's in that complete and utter indifference she shows you when she arrives late into the evening and you're too destroyed by the drink before you to carry on anything resembling respectable conversation, let alone behavior. It's in knowing that for all that you know you don't know how to speak to others in a way that invites them to respond or even to stick around. It's in all the ways that your body gestures and your para-language, in general, communicate a sense of unease.

It's in that tear in the fitted sheet on your bed that, with anxiety in the middle of the night, you rip open more with a kicking foot, angry at a feeling that invaded your dream shocking you back into the black solitude of night. It's in the sagging chair that has become utterly uncomfortable, leading you to sit in atrophied postures to maintain your seated composure. It's in a bed mattress, too long for wear, with sagging depressions where, once, responsive springs stood. It's in the numerous stained and dusty blinds that you grasp at when you open and close windows to look out onto a dusty and poorly maintained window frame, cracked glass, dead bugs, ripped screen. It's in that growing coffer of unspent money and the fear and complete lack of desire you show in putting it to a future-placed goal: a home of your own, a place inviting both you and others to be inside it. No, instead, you sit in your iron maiden of a thousand small abuses if only because you have no energy, no drive, no desire at all to move or confront the fact that it's all an attitude adjustment and sometimes a small bit of work away from being addressed.

It's in those ravines opening up on your face, the signs of age, those tiny flecks of gray in what remains of your hair, and all that goddamned time, so much time, spent staring at yourself, your walls, walled off, wailing, wondering, pacing, coaching yourself or denigrating it into a puddle of self-loathing, a fetal ball of self-comfort, a million tiny deaths in every breath, you're alone, you've been alone, you cannot envision another world with together in the title. You recall Friday mass at your Catholic grade school, and the words 'TOGETHER' get broken into three words: To Get Her. You repeat this over and over as the mass drags on and you go through the scripted, rituals of group worship, and you count the minutes until it fucking ends--this godless creation that you've become.

Why? Because of all the times, places, and people you'd like to be around the ones you long to be with the most are the ones that generate the most anxiety for you, leaving you essentially walled off from any real attempts at impressing them. You're a million data points from an ever retreating goal: desire's asymptote.