disconnect plays an incredibly large role in my life
when I was fourteen I started writing my novel
it was about a man who was addicted to nicorette but had never smoked a cigarette in his life
when I was fifteen I shortened my notion to a novella
now my main character spent time meeting eyes with each person in his city
certain he could change each and every one of them if they held his heart while the sun came up
when I was sixteen, it became a short story
still addled by nicorette
lacking in the enzyme cyp2a6
he'd tell his therapist of days when his mother would only take polaroids of times when things weren't going right in his life
when he would scrape his knee
or fail a test
her idea was that later on in life, why look back through photographs to remember times that were better
to instead remember nostalgia as a poignant miscarriage
when I was seventeen I dropped out of high school and wrote my first poem
proud like my mother of her godless son
and without a hand to hold or a shoulder to cry upon
I went a state away and learned what it was like to fall asleep in someones yard and wake up with
just the itchiest third eye you could ever imagine
relentlessly refusing to become a casualty of four walled apathy
when I was eighteen I learned how to disconnect consciously
so by nineteen swallowing sixty plus robitussin gelcaps at once wasn't really a big deal
not as if I had a friend or even an acquaintance that was doing this
but I was willing to experiment and share both my hypothesis and conclusion with myself alone
by twenty it didn't frighten me to walk barefoot into a grocery store, pick up two carlo rossi jugs of wine and exit with a smile on my face
one time I managed to get caught; hustled into the security office by two guards of a jewel-osco
stunned by my calm
I realized then how entirely willing i was to acknowledge the consequences of my actions
it frightened even me a little bit
it didn't teach me to stop
not as if I could justify what I was doing ethically or morally
and although I won't eat meat or eggs or drink milk and can't eat ice cream
because I cannot justify those things morally
disconnect plays an incredibly large role in my life
when I was younger, I couldn't understand how my parents managed to miss so many things that were happening around them
whether it be me jumping off of a diving board or riding by no handed for the first time
a person on the side of the road holding a ridiculous sign or lightening in the sky
my father, night after night after night looking through the refrigerator for the ketchup
when it was always directly in front of his fucking face
my mother looking for the remote or her purse, asking other people to help her because she is going to be late
this shit was always right out in the open
as if they were looking directly through them purposefully
I could never understand it
I remember I would blur my vision purposefully
I'd been doing this since I was very young
unfocusing my eyes
and I would look out the car window or in the refrigerator and unfocus my eyes a little bit and then a little bit more and then a whole lot
and wonder which one was like the ones my parents were seeing
wondering where this disconnect was between what they were seeing and what they were thinking
it wasn't as if their prescription glasses were failing
since I've turned 21, I continue to take my groceries without paying
my eyesight is embarrassingly poor
without insurance
not making rent
there's no way in hell I could reasonably afford a pair of glasses
lately I can feel it getting worse
I can't tell if the cute girl across the street that I'm trying to make eye contact with is actually a cute boy
and my eyesight is directly effected by my intoxication on a sliding scale
so when I decide I need another bottle of gin after I've polished off this and I make my way over to jewel
standing in between aisles before I put it in my bag and exit
there's always this moment where I'm using my periphery
to contemplate what is happening or what is about to happen down past the endcap on my left
and past the endcap on my right
and i realize that I can only very barely see anything at all
I catch a reflection of myself in the freezer aisle
and I think
this is what it must be like for my parents
the less they can see
the easier it is to get away with not paying attention
whether it be to their behaviour
their children
their coworkers
Their parents
whether it be conscious or subconscious
this is what it must be like
I should probably see a therapist
or at least get some god damn glasses
disconnect plays an incredibly large role in my life
