Your wake up call (A.N. Long, but hopefully worthwhile)

Truth. What is it? How do you come by it? What happens once you've lost it, can you ever get it back? I wonder...I wonder how it is that someone born so innocent can grow into something so ugly, so deceitful. How did it begin? Perhaps...the first time you said no when you should've said yes, the first time you purposely omitted or distorted. Lies. How do we become so attached, so bound by something we know to be harmful? Why can we not escape it? Its mean to be so easy, its meant to be repaired by a simple act or a few choice words...and yet we remain, almost always by choice, imprisoned by it. Entangled in its web, unable to escape and find the freedom and relief wich could so easily give us the life we desperately seek. We carry on with our daily lives as if it were nothing, as if it meant nothing. All we are is praises, compliments, shattered images of what we want to be, even if it isn't what we really are. How do we lose ourselves like that, so easily? What for? There is no purpose. At least none that is meaningful. All our purpose is shallow, selfish and empty of any value. We are what we are because we live in a world that constantly seeks and demands perfection, a world that holds no place for those who are not willing to meet that perfection. A world we've created. And yet here we are, suffering, suffocating by the hands of our own creation. We are the disease, we are the patient and yes, we are the cure. A cure hidden so deep within our brains, hearts and souls, we've given up on trying to find it. Instead we conform, we submit to our own tragic faith. We carry on, gasping for breath, hearts barely beating, while attempting to merely ease the pain until our final moment arrives. A few doses of the one thing that numbs us with false pleasure and relief, the one thing our very own disease feeds on, is almost always enough. Almost. It always is, and always will be "almost enough". Praises, compliments, one less pound, one more promotion, a new pair of shoes, a medal around our necks, perhaps a few rounds of applause...Nothing feels better that making a group of complete strangers believe that you're worth something. Even if you don't believe it yourself.

So what do you live for? Why are you alive? Who do you live for? Is it yourself, your mother, your father, your teacher, your boyfriend, your favorite band, the judges, the public, the united states of fucking materialism? Who are you?! Why are you here? Were we all put on this earth so we could lie our way through life until we're buried in nothing but an empty shell, completely void of all that we were meant to be? Too many questions, so many of them unanswered, all of them ignored. The frail "perfection" of our system is protected by blissful ignorance. Why ask questions when its so much easier to pretend? Why fight when instead we can hold hands with the very evil wich consumes us? Why not just...lie?

I'm afraid for you, for all of you. Afraid of what you've become, of what you're slowly turning yourselves into. Though i don't separate myself from you, i find it easier to fear for others then to admit my fear of my own mistakes. Much like everybody else. We're all hiding, none of wants to be the first to reveal ourselves. We are all suffering from the same disease.

I'm setting a challenge here for anyone and everyone who reads this. Ask yourself every question i've asked in this journal. Know the answer, don't plan it out, don't practice, don't go back and change it. Don't pre-judge. Don't force yourself to love something because the girl on the tv said it's great, don't reject something because "that" lead singer rejects it. Look at yourself in the mirror and love what you see, not what you think people will say about what they see. Listen to what you want to listen to, read what you want to read, smile when you want to smile and not when a smile's expected of you. Cry because you feel like crying and let everybody see that you've been hurt. Admit your true nature and don't change unless its what you want. Dress up to please yourself, laugh histerically, dance in the rain, sing at the top of your lungs, say "i love you" at least once every day, LIVE. Everything you know, everything you have, everything you are, can be taken away from you in a split second. The only thing you can ever be completely sure of is here and now. Don't waste that away trying to be someone else, lying to meet expectations. Know yourself, be yourself and be happy with whomever that may be. Live.

So this is where i leave you, with all these confusing thoughts swimming in your head and all these unanswered questions making you doubt the very nature of your existence. Every one of them lurking in the back of your mind, waiting patiently for you to answer the greatest and most important question of all: Are you ready to wake up?