All my life I have sought Something I cannot name

I've been asked countless times what inspires me to write; is it authors who piece their sentences together prettier than I do? Is it my love for the language? Is it a drive? Is it a dream? Is it a hunger for an audience?
Most of the time my thought runs in under 140 characters, tailored to Twitter which I spend the majority of my day stalking for news and updates of my friends' lives.

I write to push myself beyond 140 words. To write until and beyond the pain. Write until I'm exhausting every emotion swirling in the depths of my black, black heart. Write until they come up straight into the air like smoke from a meth pipe, dissolving sneakily, fading into the air, the transition from white to transparency. To write until I am finished wallowing in self-loathing, to write until my chest unknots itself, to write until my fingers are tired, to write until my stick-on gel nails come loose from the click-clacking across my laptop's keyboard. To write like I'm playing a song on a piano, fingers darting from key to key, fingers gliding across black and white keys, it's like music to my ears, but the different sort. Not in basses and clefs and minors and majors and A sharps and low Bs.

It is in my natural default state to veer towards writing during a negative state of mind: even all the great artists and poets and painters battled with the darkness, bargained with the Prince of Darkness for these gifts of creativity. The greatest artworks in history crafted with congealed, bloodied fingers, written in disheveled quill pens, in scratchy ink, shaking hands, broken wooden panels, spilled with broken hearts and broken minds and broken souls. Each stroke of oil paint a painful shrill from their hearts, every sketch a birth of a writhing emotional beast, each sentence of poetry a piece of their sanity, lost forever on parchment.

Today I didn't miss anyone. Not him. Not him. Not her. Not my mother. Not my family. Not my friends. Not anybody. I just didn't miss anyone today. It's strange on somedays how I fought for a trickle of connection with someone with such desperation, and other days I'm just withdrawn into my safe cocoon of just me and me alone. A quote once goes, if you're lonely when you're alone, you're in bad company. Sometimes I feel lonely when I'm alone, but sometimes I feel better being alone. Like I can enjoy the silence. There is never real silence in this outside world, the city is a blaring monster that never sleeps, with street lamps for eyes that glow in the night, windows flickering as the television blares with another re-run of a overplayed movie, commercial music leaking out of someone's white Apple iPod headphones, the sound of someone clicking away on their Blackberry, the grumble and groan of the bus as it turns a corner, the dull whirr of the air conditioning that rattled like an old train, the flap sound paper makes when you turn a page in a book, even the sound of me typing now. There is no real silence, but when you're with yourself, you can easily shut all these superficial noise out. And listen to the voices in your head.

All those voices, they belong to you. They are not foreign invasions, but voices of yourself. I don't mean it in the schizophrenic way where they betroth holy instructions from God or Justin Bieber or some other superficial deity or idol, but discussions in your head, conflicts of your heart and mind shouting angry tirades at each other, blaming each other for your turmoil, the ache of your delicate bones, the itch of the rash on your skin, the sharp pain when you stubbed your toe, the mental notes you've left in the day to wash the dishes and throw out the ashtray, the need for a nicotine rush, the thirst of your parched throat. Things like that, don't you ever have voices in your head when you're thinking? Am I alone? Or is this an exclusive phenomena only people betrothed with the gift of depression is able to be conscious of, to be aware of this voices as we hover in the limbo between sanity and insanity?

I lit a cigarette. And tried to feel my brain jolt awake from the rush of nicotine. Sandwiching the cancer stick between my fingers slowed my typing, the smoke made my eyes water, but I welcomed its soothing presence. Sometimes it makes everything better. The little details in life that save you from going crazy. The little things in life. The blinking, red LED light on my phone. It makes me smile until I discover it's a pointless email from CozyCot or Reebonz. Running my fingers along the ridges of my scars, like a train running over tracks. The refreshing gulp of honey vinegar-water mix I always have ready on my working table. The relief of Robitussin, the psuedoephedrine hydrochloride and guaiphenesin cleaning out my throat. Finding the imprints of my own shoulder blades over his on my bed. Finding that his smell had been purged from my room. Even his t-shirts don't smell like him anymore, they're like mine, like I've won a contest, my scent now overpowers his presence, just like the other t-shirts in my drawers belonging to other boys, some are nearly 4 years old, others fresh, a few months old. The faded, fading memories of us in my room disappearing behind the new pictures I've tacked up and the older ones I've taken down. My little Taiwan flag flapping in the wind from the air conditioning. Another sepia-coloured memory of another man in my room crops up, and I smile a little smile like the ghost of a smile, reminiscing good old times. Thinking of our mingled breath and the shared cigarette, the mint of his kisses, the sight of his clothes on my white tiles, the memory of him propping his chin on my shoulder as we watched Youtube videos and surfed Facebook and talked about his girlfriend. How we tied our tongues in pretty little bows. How we fought after we talked about his girlfriend. It made me chuckle. His empty promises. But his attraction to me. How irresistible, how it caressed my ego and esteem.

Today felt strange. Like unreal, a little more peaceful than usual, home early from the green tea and calamari rings and familiar voices that made me laugh until my abs and my cheek muscles hurt. Today I tried to count the polka dots on my table cloth, from a selected angle, and amongst all the clutter, I could only reach 172. I counted the visible ones on my duvet, I could only see 36 today. Yesterday it was 79. I like how different perception and perspectives can change a single thing. A different angle to look at it from, caress it with a different sight, with or without prescription glasses, with or without alcoholic beverages, their importance level that fluctuates with the situation. Is this a very mind blowing essay that I am writing here? My observations of things in life. The little oddities I notice life dishes out in tiny tea cups.

There's always this touch of fascination in my revulsion. My mind running along several different topics, but I don't know which one to keep to in this post. I hop around, just going along, spilling my silly thoughts into words, putting them together with an imaginary tweezer to create an imaginary jigsaw puzzle with no real ending, an abstract painting with no real interpretation or story. I never really know how to end my posts, but today I want to end it with song lyrics.
And so I will. So here's to Ingrid Michaelson's A Bird's Song.

I always sing to forget / How fragile are the very strong / I'm sorry I can't steal you / I'm sorry I can't stay / So I put band aids on your knees / And watch you fly away / I'm sending you away tonight / I'm saving you the best way I know how / I hope again to one day hear you sing