Death is so easy to ignore when it's not directly in front of you.

Sometime this afternoon, the world lost a good person. And in the worst kind of way, and all I can really think is how completely unreal it all seems.

I don't know. Shouldn't there be some mass of words? Society tells us that death should dictate some worldy revelation for us all - and yet, I have got hardly any words beyond expressions of utter disbelief left to spend. This topic is so painfully closed - there is nothing that can be undone or changed, no point to argue. Ashley DeWitte is dead. What more can I possibly say? Naturally, I'm shook up. Unhappy. Fuck, I'm miserable - I can hardly imagine a sweeter girl. And somehow she is gone.

Her ex-boyfriend shot her in the chest. Five times. And then himself. That's all I know. And why? No words on the dispute, they make no difference - what is done is done, and what is done is clearly the worst kind of wrong. No justice can be served, because the prick is dead, too. I can't find the will to cry. I want to, but - nothing.

And I suppose it doesn't matter. She will speed her way to heaven, or valhalla, what have you, and there is nothing anybody here can do or say about it other than state the obvious.

I went to the memorial outside her house. It didn't look like the house of a dead person, it looked like a house. And on the sidewalk there were candles, and pictures of a clearly living girl clearly smiling at the camera, clearly the epitome of beauty in the flickering light. There were normal cars parked on the street, and living people in small crowds in the street. There were police officers, clearly alive, and a news van with a camera man - definitely alive.

But Ashley was nowhere to be found. And she never will be again, and Goddamnit, that makes me miserable. It's not like I even knew her that well, but damnit, she was a wonderful person.

And now she is gone. God bless her. <3

Nothing ever changes.

I have nothing left to look forward to in life. NOTHING. In three weeks summer starts and I get to go job hunting daily, and whne I finally do find a job I am going to be working daily just trying to catch up with student loans, trying to pay for a car and a horn and a piano and goddamnit I almost think it would be better to just roll over and die than continue pushing and pushing at a wall that just won't move.

Nothing I do improves. I spend three hours a night, at least four days a week in a practice room but nothing seems to get better. I am always miles behind everybody I know, and it drives me so crazy I don't even know what to do with myself anymore.

And I spend countless hours struggling to comprehend why it is that every person I meet has got the same bullshit face. Nobody is different, nothing changes. Everywhere I look everybody is the same wasted goddamn space.

I still don't get why I can't feel accepted anywhere I go, no matter what I do. There is always fucking somebody, somebody just waiting to shit all over me.

I just, I don't know. Fuck this, there has got to be more to life than just trying to find meaning in life itself - because honestly, lately I can't tell. I need to know when this is going to change, because if I don't even have that to look forward to I just don't know how much more I can deal with.

Gee, I wonder what today is?

The Beatles - Birthday

You say it's your birthday
It's my birthday too, yeah
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you
Yes, we're going to a party, party
Yes, we're going to a party, party
Yes, we're going to a party, party
I would like you to dance (Birthday)
Take a cha-cha-cha-chance (Birthday)
I would like you to dance (Birthday)
Dance!
I would like you to dance (Birthday)
Take a cha-cha-cha-chance (Birthday)
I would like you to dance (Birthday)
Dance!
You say it's your birthday
It's my birthday too, yeah
They say it's your birthday
We're gonna have a good time
I'm glad it's your birthday
Happy birthday to you

I am going to die alone and when I do it will be fucking fantasatic, because at least I will have been right about something.

It seems strange to say, but one of my best friends is a dead man I never met.

There have been times in my life where I have felt completely alone. And then sometime during my junior year of high school, I heard Stephen Paul "Elliott" Smith's voice.

And it seems like ever since then I have never really been alone. Even in the darkest of times, when friends and family had gone to bed and I'd lay awake feeling terrible, his music was always there. I could put on Waltz #1 and bawl my eyes out, and he'd be there right next to me singing away the tears.

I wish I could meet him. I'd tell him that over and over again, he has saved me from pain I thought would last forever. When I need a friend, his records are there. His voice defies time, cheats death.

And somehow I feel like I have known him all my life. I am still chasing my dreams because of him. Every time I feel hopeless he is there to sing me to sleep, turn the lights out and make me remember why it is that life is worth living.

When I need inspiration, his albums are always only a hand's reach away.

Waltz #1

Every time the day

Darkens down and goes away

Pictures open in my head

Of me and you, silent and cliche

All the things we did and didn't say

Covered up by what we did and didn't do

Going through every out I used to cop

To make the repetition stop

What was I supposed to say?

Now I never leave my zone

We're both alone, I'm going home

I wish I'd never seen your face

Oh Well, Okay

Here's the silhouette, the face always turned away

The bleeding color gone to black, dying like the day

Couldn't figure out what made you so unhappy

Shook your head to say no, no, no

And stopped for a spell, and stayed that way

Oh well, okay

I got pictures, I just don't see it anymore

Climbing hour upon hour through a total bore

With the one I keep where it never fades

In the safety of a pitch black mind

An airless cell that blocks the day

Oh well, okay

If you get a feeling the next time you see me

Do me a favor and let me know

Because it's hard to tell, it's hard to say

Oh well, okay

Oh well, okay

Oh well, okay

God bless you, Elliott Smith.

A happy Valentine's Day to you.

(You should probably check out www.picturesforsadchildren.com, because it is awesome.)

Paging Dr. Jekyll...

I feel split in two.

I walk hand in hand with this chemical burning away in my brain, and when I do I am Captain Sunshine. The inevitable hero - victory at hand and underfoot. I am the eternal optimist, the unning man who knows no surrender. I am your sunken winter sun shedding just enough light over the plains to set the sky on fire. I am a mind open to all, absorbing information wherever it can be found. I am a learning machine. I am Dr. Jekyll woking tirelessly to fill the empty spaces in my mind, to fix the faults I carry with me.

And when this chemical leaves me I am the quintessential pessimist. I am Count Craptastic. I am the cynic nitpicking everycorner of my own existence. I am a mind turned inward, criticizing every empty space Dr. Jekyll has been working to fill. I am Mr. Hyde, working to dismantle hope. I am a monster breeding. I am your lurking lunar nightmare. Eclipse. Backwards. I am a complete lack of energy and hope - lonely, miserable, unhappy because I can't function. I can't take what the universe gives me and turn it into something positive because I don't know how.

I speak, of course, of Adderall. I have ADD, which you likely know if you know me. I have found that there is a definite line between who I am with this help and who I am without, and I feel it is imperative to stitch the tear between these two halves.

So, yeah - I have always had a little resentment towards the fact that I can't function like others can without medication. And today, I am Captain Sunshine again, and that tear doesn't seem to bother me because I'm riding on the side that I like, the side that lays open like a book waiting for the world to smear its ink across my pages.

There is, however, one regret that pesters me no matter who I seem to be.

I cannot seem to be inspired and create at the same time anymore - at least, not how I used to be. Perhaps a lack of a definite source of sorrow bars my creative side. The words are there, the notes, the brushstrokes, what have you - whether I am writing or playing, it seems that I can't interpret and create at the same time. I don't know if this even makes sense, but - it is a very rare occasion as of late for me to be able to take what I am seeing and stylize it into something better - I can't look out my window and turn what I see into words. I can't read music on a page and make it my own - or, to be honest, I can do these things, but they take an immense amount of energy and I am unsure as to why. Maybe I'm just readapting to this balance.

Perhaps it is a process of relearning. I don't know. Maybe I just have to learn how to stitch myself together again.