I’ve never been able to write when I’m at an emotional balance. There has to be an askew variable to trigger the creative process for me. It’s sometimes unsettling. It allows me to be more aware of my fears though. The fear of good things fading. Even without a good justification I can feel it fading. I’m being melodramatic I know. There’s not reason enough to be that upset, I know. But I am, nonetheless. I reflect on things too much. If I didn’t then I wouldn’t come to all these conclusions that make me afraid. They make me afraid of the world, of my body, of germs, of foreign dictators, of global warming, of religion, of humanity. But the key to living is living without fear. Living knowing that if you died, you died on your feet, and hopefully died in a gun battle or in a fighter jet or skydiving. Knowing that if you died, you didn’t die old and sick in bed, reading the papers and thinking about what you’d wear to bingo tomorrow. I know that sounds like something an arrogant hard headed teenager would say. But it’s the only thing that prevents me from curling up in a little ball and starving myself to death, rather than at least getting up an taking a piss in the morning, knowing that today is going to be terrible and that I’m going to be completely bored today, and that my parents are going to yell at me for shit that I know’s my fault that I don’t want to own up to, because I’m hoping it’ll just fade. But that’s what I’m afraid of. This feeling, this communion, this connection fading. And I feel it fading. I feel the yarn I’ve spun over these past weeks unraveling on both ends. But just that alone can’t make me feel like this. It’s the things that come with it, the unwritten and unspoken repercussions that I’ve experienced so many times before, that are as debilitating as they are freeing. I can feel the onset of the loneliness starting to rust away at the metal I’ve forged. I don’t like the feeling of oxidation on steel. It’s not just the surface that rusts, over time; it’s the inside, once water sits for long enough. And then after too much pressure and too much atomic decay, it snaps. I know, I know, it’s too melodramatic for something small. But if it has to be, then it must be. Metal, like all things is biodegradable in the long run. Nothing lasts. All good things must come to an end.