Call Me

Call me a masochist in my pain or a sadist in my pleasure. In truth, pain is pleasure. There is nothing in the world that is truly good. Everything pure and righteous has somehow been tainted. People have their secrets. They hide parts of themselves and keep others at a distance just so the perception the world has on them seems clean and polished. But to know more is to love less. People are always messy, but you will never see that side of life outside of your own. People would rather let their demons eat away at their own minds than open Pandora’s box and consider the start of an uncomfortable situation. Our wonderful, little world is not so wonderful. It is full of hate. Full of people judging, and telling you what to be or where to go. And it’s full of pawns who listen to the kings and queens, obeying their every word. And the kings and queens let them. They give into the hierarchical system because in return, it gives them power. So, step up to the circus and see the ringmaster direct each act. Watch as the clown juggles too many plates at once, as the trapeze artists swing a bit too dangerously with no net to fall back on, or as the tightrope walker stumbles and avoids every rush of wind coming to blow them off course. Prepare yourself to become something you’re not.

Call me a fool or consider it my greatest strength. Even when the world is filled with malintent, the people in it are not. All anyone really wants is to love and to be loved. But the world is loud and people work themselves to the bone just to keep up. But when the lights go out, people are just people. In the dark, the quiet emerges and true colors show. We fray from chaos and green-eyed greed turns to desperate yearning for connection. Some convince themselves that freedom is what they really want. But in this so-called freedom, lies the plague of loneliness. All anyone can do is try their best. But the world is nothing if not a society made of misfits. Each one a bit more flawed than the last. Each dreaming of the day their minds will finally decide to be nice to them, the day their hearts will no longer pine for an opinion outside of their own, the day when all the small things we don’t always notice start to make a difference. We dream of the day our flesh and blood finally come to life.

Call me vain or examine the facade of self. Often those with the most pain and the most regret are the first to come beckoning to a call. It is human in nature to please and provide. To adapt to the dark and learn to walk blindly. To keep our rooms and our lives tidy. To keep our grades and our chins up. We may fit in, but where? In your world? Yes, maybe yours, but not ours. In the dark, a single match can bring light to an entire room, but drop the match, and the room goes up in flames. We are what you tell us. We learn to hide in the shadows, fearful of what happens in the light. We hope and pray that we make it to the end of the tunnel before the unknown that lurks catches up to us. But then it catches up, and I can not be the match that leads the way. Not when everything I am expected to be, and everything good I see in others, are all the things that I can not force myself to become. Instead, I become the match that burns everything to the ground.
You call me a ghost but at least ghosts have souls. What are we but skin and bones? But empty minds chasing a dream we have been told to chase? In a world where all anyone really wants is acceptance, we carry burdens that are far too heavy. We learn that the scariest things in this world are not mystical; they are real, and they are here. We hide from so much, until we forget what we are in the first place. We hide from others, and from ourselves. We lose ourselves in our own identities and in the identities thrust upon us. After all, we’re nothing. We’re just what we are. But in everything that I am, I always seem to become what you call me.