There's always a million things going on in my head. My eldest sister said something recently that I keep coming back to, about how alcohol is like a warm blanket for people who think too much. It dumbs us down enough to feel understood, or to get along with people, when most of the time there is a concrete wall between the raw, unfiltered tornado of emotional turmoil that we call consciousness and everyone else.
I feel like I've gone from talking about drinking a lot to drinking a lot. It's not something I'm proud of, but it's not something I'm afraid of either. Alcohol almost feels like a distant, estranged relative, and that might sound weird or scary, but to me it's more of a familiar disappointment. I have to keep it at an arms length, and I know that, but I also always want to invite it back in. I like the way alcohol turns the world into a river. The way my body loosens into waves. The effortless flow I so rarely feel in my life anymore.
The truth is I'm way more tense than I've ever been in my life. And I'm starting to wonder if this is a symptom of aging. Tightening; like live wire wrapped around a finger, trapping all the blood until it goes numb. There is no more release. No more trespassing at 1am, running from the sound of shotguns, sprinting bare naked into January lakes, blowing out the speakers in the king soopers parking lot eating dollar fries and exchanging romantic horror stories. So many of the things that reminded me what 'alive' means are gone. They haunt me like ghosts, flitting in and out of my dreams. I see remnants of my life in reflections. I never thought I would be my own shadow. Actually, I never thought my shadow would outgrow me.
There was a time in my life when I would do almost anything. Stupid things, silly things, dangerous things –– but most importantly, things without reason. Driving six hours to arches, stealing my calc teachers ID, throwing my textbooks in the study lounge, slapping boys across the face; none of it mattered. That was the best part. That was the beauty of it. Meaningless, improbable, unpredictable, irrelevant, ridiculous and strange things filled my life. And for all that I was hurt, and confused, and broken, and lost, I was also happy. I was alive. I was whole. Not just one shade of myself but all of me. Strange, giggly, unsettling, soft, hopelessly yearning, occasionally violent, over-the-top, too much, me.
I miss that. Knowing myself. Feeling like a whole person rather than a shell. I miss feeling allowed to make mistakes. Not just allowed, but encouraged. I miss carelessly knowing something was wrong, and doing it anyway. Now I just simmer. I marinate in choices and potentials and hypotheticals and it all feels so lukewarm. I miss boiling over.
I've begun to suspect that's why I feel so unable to create art these days. Art requires passion, and a level of intensity I feel like my life has lost. Really good art, I mean, the kind of art that can catch you in a moment and hold you there –– I think that shit is made by the force of emotions themselves. There have been times where I feel like I am just a vessel for some natural phenomenon to materialize in a way other people can sense and feel. That is to say, I think artists are just a doorway between the tangible and the unspoken.
Art is walking a tightrope, being a bridge, balancing reality and possibility. I miss making art unconsciously. Now, when I create, I feel like I am thinking too much. About everything. Michelle Yeoh's oscars speech, tomorrows work shift, chores I haven't done and the soap I keep forgetting to buy and two million other mundane anecdotes that litter the highway of my brain, getting kicked up anytime something else goes flying by. It never fucking stops. Even in sleep, I have the most cluttered dreams. I guess perhaps the reason for all of my troubles at the moment is that I'm trying too hard to make sense of it all.
Ultimately, that's what I keep returning to. I think aging pushes us to seek out order, and meaning, and sense. But that's not how life works. It's random, unforgiving, and never what you try to make it be. I don't mean that it's meaningless; I think that's an easy mistake to make. But you have to find meaning in the senselessness. I want to figure out how to do that again. How to let myself exhale without being afraid the house will collapse.