You make all the right reasons to fuck it up, you're gonna fuck it up. (Day 181)

Today's song comes from Against Me! Sink Florida, Sink off of As the Eternal Cowboy.



Today's gonna be a little something different. Today's update will be a short story called My Long Goodbye that I wrote a few months ago. It's a little long, so...you know.

Hope ya hate it.

-Aaron Hale.

My Long Goodbye:
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Lay awake. It's 4:55am.

The sun and moon are fighting for the rights of the day. I crane my head to look out the window.
Fog is placing on the window, and I can tell neither sun nor night will be victorious: Today
belongs to purgatory. Today belongs to the fog.

I haven't been asleep for what feels like months. I miss the back of my eyelids like I miss a
hole in the back of my head, though. Sleep feels like the enemy, sleep feels like giving in.

Sleep feels like the end. Sleep means this is really, really it.

I look around my room. There's not much left outside of a bunch of empty bottles, a notebook, a
pillow and these sheets. Everything I owned is in the trunk of a car. It only took four suitcases
to pack up an entire life.

Torn pages litter the kitchen tile like shag carpet thats seen better days. Ashes of what once was
now collect at the bottom of the sink. Occasionally a breeze will stir them, will bring them back
to life, if only momentarily--the final act of this play repeating in a dance that's doomed to
end once again.

It was February, and she was kind of new.

"So are you unable to look at all the pretty girls, or am I just special?" She shoulders up to me
with her hands buried in her pockets. "Mysterious only gets you so far."

It was summer, and I was in love.

Laying naked under sheets watching bad movies and play fighting until the distance between
air and bodies was too much to bear any longer. She'd bare her soul; I'd dip into mine, but
sometimes come up empty. I never realized how vacant I'd felt until she filled some hole
I didn't even know existed.

Tunnel vision sat in, and friends became distant objects on a road I was flying down.
No one seemed to notice, no one seemed to care. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

It was Fall, and true to the season, we fell apart in the ugliest of ways.

It's Winter now, and I couldn't take it anymore.
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"Final boarding call, LaGuardia Flight 6170."

Hushed into a hallowed out aluminum tube. Six dollars for a glass of wine? Think of it as an investment
for the future. By God, it's already beginning to pay off huge dividends. Another glass, vicodin chaser
and here. we...go.

If it's bleeding you want, I've got blood. If it's broken bones you need to taste, let my marrow
cascade your forked tongue; I've been buried under the influence so long even David Blaine would've
pulled the plug at this point.

Now I'm speeding down a road in some strange new city, drowning to death under these god damned neon
lights. They say New York City is the Capital of the world. If thats true, then it's also the final
frontier for existence and depravity is the only sensibility keeping this city grounded.

I worked for six months in an office, buried under flourecent lights. Humanities glass coffin, come one
and come all.

I slowly lost my mind, starved to death for something true. Something real, something I could touch, feel,
fuck or face. But now the mirrors are playing tricks on me, my reflections on vacation.

It's summer again,and I just want to fade away. Nearly a year later, and now I notice this hole getting larger
and larger, soon it will consume everything within it's pull. Liquid-based liquor lubricaints now longer
salve the burn, the tickle of vicodin is disappointing every moment it begins to fade.

Sitting in my room thats barely big enough to hold my four suitcases, starring at a television unplugged.
Whats the point of turning it on? What stations are left? "ABC, NBC, CBS--bullshit!"

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I wrote her a letter the day I left home. I must have read it a thousand times since I've been here.
It's the one piece of plaster left keeping these walls standing straight. If theres ever a next time
I'll be sure to brick.

Staring at these words that poured from my fingertips, the last honest part of my being, I don't recognize
the hand writing anymore. The papers folded, the inks begun to smear and fade. It's another stiff shot
of Black Label. I guess when it's time to place your bets; you put it all on black.

"I don't know what I want anymore, Neil. I just know that I don't want you. At first it was cute, the way
you'd make light of every big fight. At first it was cute the way you didn't know where you were going
in life, but god damn it all if you weren't heading blindly down that road anyway. But...it's just not
cute anymore. I want a life. I wanted a life with you, but you're so stuck in the here and now. But whats
going to happen when you wake up and the here and now has turned into the 'there and then'? I want us to
be that couple...that couple you see in coffee shops reading books and drinking tea, or dancing slowly
at some show in an art gallery."

I've never liked the taste of coffee, and I can't dance.

"I'm so, so sorry. Whatever it is you're looking for I pray you find it, and you find it soon. The days
gonna come when you're out of road and out of time. I can't be your navigator anymore. I don't think I
ever was."

I clutched that ring. I clutched it in my palm for days afterwards, yet it always felt so cold. For weeks
it laid in my pockets, buried under lint and change.

There was a seven hour layover in Chicago. Midway between heaven and hell lays a thousdand broken hearts,
and a million broken dreams. This is midway--between the here and now, and the there and then.

I kissed that ring, closed my eyes and swung with every ounce of strength I could muster. Three months worth
of pay now glistens in the air as it heads towards the tarmac. I'd burn my whole billfold if it meant leaving
everything I was running from behind.
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My brother, the deceiver and his wife the believer called me several times a day. Each time I'd stare at
the phone, wishing that chiming would choke; that the voices through the wire would fade.

After a month of constant calls, I was finally drunk enough to gather enough courage to face those voices.

"Neil, we need to talk."

And talk we did. Updates from home, from friends and faces I wanted so desperately to forget.

"You need to move forward", advised my sister in law "you can't keep running. What are you going to do
when you run out of places to hide in?"

"She's getting married, Neil."

Its times like these I miss the salvation of phone cards. When the minutes run out, thats the end of the line.
When the minutes run out, someone else has the common decency to pull the plug, rather than let this disease
ridden body continue to rot out while the heart and soul beg for a release. Life support is only comfort food
for those too greedy to let go. Please, just pull this plug.

God damn technology.

"Dad has cancer." Damn the Deceiver. Damn him.

"Please just come home." Begs the believer.

With the simple shut of a phone, this is ended.

Her words flooded through my ears one last time.

"What is it that you want?"
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My last night in New York City, I stumbled blindly forth repeating the walk of shame, long gone was the
dance of dignity. To be honest, I don't miss it all that much.

What do I want?

I want to not wake up alone, or go through each day aching to not feel like every moment is wasted because
I'm stuck in this catch 22 of health vs. moving forward to the next chapter. Irony has a sense of humor.
One blacker than any Medieval period plague, one of gallows where your legs would never hit the ground.

I want for once to call the shots, do things on my own terms. Theres two types of people in this world: Those
who won't budge on things that are important vs. Those that refuse to rub anyone the wrong way. To go it
alone, on your own terms.

But if you're ever wondering if doing things that way is for you...it probably isn't worth it.
You lose sleep, strength, and your will is gonna weaken. If you come across to the other side of the page
though, then God bless you. I don't know if I ever will. I don't know if I have.

I just know I'm still moving straight ahead.

It's raining outside. It's absolutely beautiful, and completely, wretchedly numbing. The way the moon reflects
off the tarmac, and the smell of fresh fallen rain drown the sensory; perception is skewed in this dreamers hindsight.

Somewhere out there is adventure.


And I wonder, "Can anyone hear me? Am I completely alone?". So often, so often.


But right when I wondered it, I watched steam rising from the sewers. I watched it rise and dissipate into
the dizzying neon sarcophagus of Time Square, and a million lights racing. Theres no need for stars here; ours
flicker and flame, shimmer and fade. Every scar, every broken bone radiates in your veins. Every crack on that
broken heart is highlighted, and you feel it so fresh again. It begins in your chest, and then burns in a
sickeningly resonate, and strangely welcome warmth in your stomach.

And you thank fate, you thank destiny, you thank everything that you got to experience every thorn on this rose
you call your life. The pedals are there somewhere, and someday you may touch them. Breathe them, see them, be them.
But until then you welcome that lonely paradise.

Are you alone?

"Am I alone?"

And I stood in the middle of it all, and closed my eyes and held my breath. It felt like a lifetime.
But when I couldn't take it anymore, forcing myself to just listen; I found it. The answer, at least for me, to life.

Why I'm here.

It could be any day, any month, any year, any person and any goddamn reason. Everything can swirl and swish and sink you.
Theres nothing that can be done about that. But no matter what, I have no doubt in my heart that somewhere in
New York City, there's a cloudy bar filled with 20-somethings, all wishing to blossom out of the cracks they've
become wedged in.

And it's pressing 10pm. They aren't ready to leave; not by a long shot.

Let the mother fucker burn.

And the faith is found. There's going to be a band burning through a cover of the Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop.
Everyone may not know everyone, but the one thing they have in common outside of blood, veins, bones, hearts, lungs
and life in general, is that when that "Hey Ho, Lets Go" hits, it hits really fucking hard. You can't help but raise
a hand, and just go with it. Receive that gospel from people, not Gods--the ones you know existed, and feel every
moment life gets too much, and you've lost the words to express your time spent here in Midway--between Heaven and Hell
lays a lonely planet.

But it's that moment you realize you're all alone in this world, and no ones listening that the entire world is
watching, and it hears every word you've got to say.

Burn motherfucker.

As long as there's a small room in New York City with cheap beer, and a chorus of one resonating to words
first written over 30 years ago, being sung now with a passion most religions wish they could tap with
their hymnals, life will be okay. It's something simple as that.

Burn.
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I woke in a release. Back at the starting point of it all. It's the day of a wedding--a new lifes journey
begins, the final nail is driven sarcastically into a coffin. My overkill.

I read that letter one more time before it burned in a sink. It read:

"I watched the tides of time flow through my life. But by the time I'd seen the one crest
breaking these shores it'd already retreated back to the sea. While I never like to linger
on regrets, I've always wished that on day it'd return. I always knew...it should've been me.
While I've never really lingered long on my regrets, I know now that everything
will eventually end, and sometimes you're so concentrated on the bleak foot prints on the
shore, you don't realize it could all wash away if you'd just take a chance and move.
This is the final chapter; this is my long goodbye."

I slept so well that night.







If you made it this far, God bless ya. Patience of a saint. Let me know what you think, pass it on if you want. Thanks for reading it (if you did).

-Until tomorrow.