Wake Me Up

Neitzsche once said “The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.”

What he failed to remember, in a bitterly ironic way, is that it goes the other way too. A bad memory causes you to remember over and over again something that hurts. And the pain doesn't fade or go away each time you remember, it hurts as bad as it did the first time. And the ache's deep in your stomach or your heart or your soul and you can't shake it off. What would Neitzsche say about that?

Well, probably nothing seeing as he's dead.

But that remembering, it's the same as that feeling you get in the morning. You know the one. You wake up and for a moment you forget. Or you forget to remember. This day can be anything at all, it's filled with so much potential as you slide out of that half-alive world of sleep. But then you remember to stop forgetting and it all crashes down on you in this huge big tsunami wave, so hard you can't breathe and you're choking on it all. Yeah, that feeling. And then your day is ruined because it's tainted.

I'm tainted. Blackened and scarred and dirty and marred by this fucking remembering. If I could take a screwdriver or a power saw to my brain I would.

Another Neitzsche quote that fits in more with the dark brooding philosopher type I pretend I am, well it makes me feel a whole lot better.

"“Whoever fights with monsters should see to it that he does not become a monster in the process. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.”

What do I see when I look into the abyss? I don't know because I never looked. I just closed my eyes and jumped right in and when I opened them again I was standing at a graveside with all these years stretching out in front of me and behind me and they weren't filled with anything except this void. And this void has claws and it scratches at my insides. It's the void that's the monster and it doesn't live under my bed or in my closet. It lives in my heart and it eats me up alive like I'm a fucking snack it's relishing because I taste so damn good.

Pain slides down the throat pretty easy.

But this was all about memory, wasn't it? Funny, because about halfway through I forgot what I was talking about so I might as well just leave the flowers at your grave and head on home because you can't hear me anymore and even if you could you wouldn't listen.

“There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth.”