Toshi Station

It's been kind of a weird week. Not a horrible one -- but one where more often than not I couldn't find a way to shake this feeling where I wanted more to happen than actually did.

The bad aftertaste from the weekend probably had a lot to do with it -- but more than anything I think the problem is that I can sorta feel the holiday blues coming. There are places I would like to be, people I would like to be with, things I would like to be doing -- but whether it's the result of bad timing, poor finances, or just rotten luck, a lot of things seem out of my reach lately.
..And there's really not a lot I can do about it right now.
So you try make the most of what you've got. Fill the space, man up -- live your life. You try to find things that you can savor, look for distractions and replacements. It's just that sometimes when you're not expecting it, circumstances catch you off guard -- and you find yourself seeing things with the wrong eyes. Eyes that compare. Eyes that envy.
Eyes that doubt the person behind them.
But worst of all is the fact that you can feel yourself doing it. You can sense that shadow creeping up behind you, but it's like sometimes it's hard to get out of it's path. Perhaps that's what has made the whole thing snowball for me the way it sorta has this week.
Because as much as I hate feeling like I'm being taken for granted, the only thing that's worse
is the creeping suspicion that there's some reason things like this keep happening to you.
It's like a gravity well, slowly pulling everything around it into skewed lines that throw off your perspectives until all the bad things behind you somehow appear taller than all the ones around and ahead. You know it's bad for you, you know where it leads -- so you try to throw something in there. Fill the space. Overflow the cup.

I don't know, maybe it's just me. Sometimes I get in these weird lonely moods where I'm all bummed out for whatever reason, and without realistic access to the things that I think would help it seems like sometimes the only way I can think of to make myself feel better..
Is to buy myself something cool.
Retail therapy. Better living through stuff. Call it what you will -- but when the overwhelming urge to try and "spend myself happy" gets its teeth into me it's sometimes all I can do not to give into it.

I don't know -- it's like you reach a point where you get fed up feeling bad about all the things in your life that you feel you can't control, so you seek out something you think you can -- and then push the hell out of it.

It isn't like shutting yourself up in your bedroom and drinking a fifth of Bacardi while eating a whole bag of Doublestuff Oreos -- this is something entirely different. Those things are escapes. Those things numb the pain by burying it under something else.

Retail Therapy is different. It's more like cutting yourself. Choosing to ignore one problem by focusing on something else. Denying one demon by inviting another.

I mean, would buying a new iPod Touch, downloading iTunes, filling it up with music, and then listening to it conspicuously in public in the hopes that all the other non-iPod touch losers around me will feel bad about themselves make all the problems in my world go away, buy me a plane ticket to Maine, or get me on the guest list of the Nonpoint/Skindred show on the 25th?
Well, ..No.
But do you remember that one time you were in school, running around and playing in some new outfit that you talked your mom into buying -- the one with the shirt that actually said "Ocean Pacific" on it instead of "Pacific Sea" or whatever coolness crushing knock-off brand you normally ended up with on school-clothes shopping day? That day you thought you were totally hot shit, especially when you were playing on the swings and jumped higher than you'd ever jumped before, sailing through the air like Superman and Han Solo combined -- right at the very moment you were sure that Lisa Smitha and all her little friends were finally checking you out --
...Only to trip the landing on some tree root sticking out of the ground that you didn't see?
The one that sent you careening across the playground -- scraping up your elbow and utterly fucking up your shirt with grass stains and mud, leaving you sitting there by the tetherball pole crying like a little bitch while Lisa Smitha whispered something to her friends that made them all giggle and point in your direction?

Do you remember how that felt? How much that sucked? How you thought your life was over forever and you'd never be able to show your face on that playground or at school ever again?

Until your dad saw that look in your eyes, drove you to Dairy Queen, and bought you whatever kind of ice cream cone you wanted.
No matter what it was. No matter how bad, how life-ending the situation was..
My dad could make it all go away with a Happy Meal.
Seriously, How awesome was that? Those days where a fresh batch of cookies could outfox any bad grade you ever brought home from school? Those times when life handed you shit and your dad simply raised his had and forced it all away with a new HotWheels car that he would let you pick out yourself from the checkout aisle at Walgreens?
That's where it comes from. That's where it all started.
Of course, ice cream and happy meals don't really carry the same power they used to in my life (although I'm starting to suspect there was a lot more at work there than just cheeseburgers and fries), but that doesn't mean the concept hasn't stuck with me -- which is probably why I was at Target earlier this week standing over the glass case with the Apple on it running numbers in my mind, wanting desperately to figure out a way to make it work.
Because sometimes when things get crappy in my life I can't help but want to
go to Alderran, learn the ways of the Force, and become a Jedi like my father.

[Listening to:    Deftones"The Chauffeur" ]

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