I am a terrible person
I am such a terrible person
I never realized how truly terrible I am

The spirits of the past haunt our steps down the streets
The paths of time in the golden light
Is the golden light a reflection?
Cast from the mirrored globes on the edges of the curves
Or is it the real sun?
Everyone else is so real
Really themselves, being themselves in this world
And I am just infinitely removed
I try to be as much myself as possible
I value it more than almost anyone
I value being genuine more than almost anything
I never want to let the world try to make me be some way or be fake
I never want to conform and I am always trying not to in every way I can
I hate everything about the social world and fakeness and the way everyone is
So so many little things irritate me on a daily basis in so many ways about society and people and the way our culture is and how fake and shallow and ingenuine and vapid it all is and how everyone follows along in so many ways
I always try to be genuine and real with everyone and I am always consciously aware of it, I am always trying to be nice to everyone and make everybody feel better and feel valued, and I am always trying to have real interaction with people where I am myself and where I give off genuineness and spirit and positivity and deepness, and in the process encourage others to open up more and be more themselves and be more comfortable with being genuine, to show them that I am not going to limit things to social niceties and the prescribed expectations of being cool, and thus they don't have to either when they're talking to me. It's very subtle but it really works, and it comes really naturally to me. I always want to help the world and my literal first instinct with people is always getting along with them and trying to help them feel valued and feel good.
And I am really good at it, I'm better at all of that than almost anyone.

And yet despite that, and in fact it is connected to all of this, everyone else is still more real with each other and in how they live in the world than I am. Despite the fakeness of everyone, despite everyone trying so hard to be cool all the time, despite everyone being so uncomfortable with really being themselves with each other and with really accepting themselves and who they really are, everyone else is still just so much more real than I am. Everyone else is really there. There's an unconsciousness to people that I really see, and that a part of me wishes I had, and that I don't understand. I am very very self-conscious, but it's not just that. Everyone else just seems to accept living at face-value, and to just accept being a part of things in a way I never can. Even the people who are like me, who are naturally shy and interested in being genuine, even my family and close friends, all are so much more really there than I am.

It's always been like this, for as long as I can remember. It's always been normal to me, and I never really fully thought about it until pretty recently. Everyone just seems to be a part of life and to want to keep on living more than I could ever possibly hope to. Even the people I know who are depressed, and sad, and dejected, people who are way more depressed than me seem to accept just being a part of things in a way that I truly cannot do. Everyone else has this desire to live, to be a part of the world, with deep hopes and dreams and a pressing need to go on and explore and lean on each other and find their path, without even realizing it.

For as long as I can remember, I haven't really wanted to live. I know when I was a kid, I was less like this, I know I was happier and more unconscious and more free. But I barely remember my early childhood, I have a really weird memory. I have an extremely good memory in certain ways and an extremely bad memory in other ways. I can remember school stuff really well, academic stuff, I've always been able to and I've always been really good at it, better than almost anyone. And I can remember certain things from the past really well, certain flashes of memory that I remember like they were yesterday, usually little insignificant things or happenings, but for some reason randomly they stayed with me, and they're always with me, and even though I was five or seven or nine I remember how I was thinking at the time and it feels very very similar to me now, once my mind settled it has stayed very constant through time, I matured mentally really early. It has taken me longer to mature in other respects but my cognitive mind has always been mature much ahead of others.

I can remember conversations really well, I can remember exactly what I said to someone and I can remember exactly what they said to me, years and years later. Not every conversation obviously, but a lot of conversations, and especially things that were significant and meaningful, but also things that weren't as much.

I remember things that I read really well, and a lot of times I can remember exactly where it was on the page that I read it, I can see it in my head. This always helped me a lot in school, school was always really easy for me and always came really naturally, and it also helps with finding my place in a book where I left off. But I can't do it as well as I used to.

I remember the presidents and states and countries and capitals and everything like that, once I've learned those things like that they're in my head forever and they're always going to be. I'm definitely really good at remembering stuff like that.

I'm pretty good at remembering birthdays and dates, if a birthday or a date is meaningful to me I always remember it really easily.  But I forget others. I've always loved numbers so I remember a lot of things with numbers well, I've noticed that if something has a number connected to it it usually really increases the chance that I'll remember it.

I remember things with mental math really well, what 17 * 6 is and that 1/7 is .1428571428, I have so much math stuff stored in my head, I always loved math and I would always do math in my head for fun.

But most things I have a really bad memory for, it is always so cloudy. I can't remember most of my childhood. Everyone else in my family has always been able to remember so much more from our childhoods, there are those certain things that I remember but then everything else is completely blank or almost blank. It is always amazing to me how much they can remember, there will always be so so many things that they cannot believe I can't remember and I am literally just amazed that it's possible to remember all of that. It completely changes your worldview, I have always just been used to almost completely not remembering my childhood, but for my brothers and sister that's not a default. It's actually much more there for them.

I am bad at remembering things from the recent past too, I'm bad at remembering when things happened a few days or a few weeks or a few months before. My mom and my younger brother are especially good at that, they'll remember that something happened on the Thursday three weeks before and I literally just cannot fathom how they remember that. It all quickly becomes so hazy for me.

And the intermediate past I am bad at remembering too, my past in between my childhood and the recent present. Just like with my childhood, there are certain things that I remember really well and that are always there, but most of it is lost. And it is lost a lot more than it is for other people, I have always been used to not remembering the past and other people remembering it a lot more.

I have an especially bad memory for directions, it is truly an impairment. I've lived my whole life in Harrisonburg and traveled around the whole city infinite times, and until recently I literally could not get around by myself. It helped some when I started running, particularly beginning in high school, especially when I would  run by myself, I noticed that when I ran places around the city, for the first time I could remember some things with how to get from place to place. But before that it was literally all a gray area, I knew each part of the city, each part of Harrisonburg had a place in my mind, but I literally could not understand how they went together. It was kind of like there were the different parts but between them was just a haze. If you put me somewhere and asked me how to get to somewhere, along a pathway I'd been thousands of times, I literally could not do it.

It started helping some when I started driving too, I started learning it a little more. But up until the last year I still really struggled with it. Now as a pizza delivery driver the past year and a half I've really learned it and I know how to get around the whole city, which is part of why I thought it would be cool to get the job in the first place, I thought it might help me with directions.

But even now, still, there will be sometimes when I get momentarily confused. Everything will just be a gray area in my head thinking about directions and I cannot for the life of me for a few minutes straighten anything out.

Especially the last few years, after I knew some directions in Harrisonburg but before I started delivering, a lot of times it would happen where I would get confused and start second-guessing myself about what was the right way to go or where was the right way to turn, and I could not find any guidance from my mental intuition. With most things, I will have an instinctual sense of something, and if I'm trying to figure it out I can piece out what my gut instinct is and know that going with it is usually right. But with directions, I'll second guess myself, and then I'll second guess my second-guessing, and it all swirls around in my head and I literally cannot find any solid ground to go from. My memory of places is just not concrete enough to remember how to get from place to place unless I've consciously directed myself along the path thousands and thousands of times. Places often look a lot different than how I remember it in my head, and that is a big part of the problem. My conception of spatial reality is always filtered through my particular personal lens. And it always ends up being cloudy and confused, with some things I remember quite well because they're meaningful to me but most places around it look different in real life or don't exist at all in my mind. It all goes back to how I am, I'm always just in my head thinking about things and don't have a good grasp of spatial reality or my surroundings. And it has always especially made directions difficult for me. I truly never thought I could really learn how to get around Harrisonburg, I never imagined that I could possibly have the capability with it that I have now. It was all just always so cloudy, it was like someone trying to get around New York City for the first time, every single time. So I've really improved with directions when it comes to Harrisonburg.

But anywhere else and it all comes back again. I've improved just a little bit with my general directional ability, from getting better with Harrisonburg, but not much at all. You put me anywhere else, and it is as hopeless as ever.

I have a bad memory with responsibilities and deadlines too. If there's something that I have to do, I'll remember that I have to do it, and then I'll forget about it for two hours or twenty four hours or a week and it'll usually take me a while to sort everything out. I have so many cycles with responsibilities and things that I still have to do that I haven't done yet. I forget deadlines and future dates and times really easily too, it really has trouble sticking. For Ciro's I have a fixed schedule, but for Domino's the dates and times were all over the place, it could be literally any time starting or ending at 0, 15, 30, or 45 after the hour, from 9:30 in the morning to 4 AM at night, on any day of the week, and I actually really liked the variability and fluidity, but I always had trouble remembering when I was working. And I could look at when I was working on a certain day, see that it was 11:15 am to 6:00 pm, look away, and literally the next second forget exactly what the times were. All the 15s and 30s and 45s really messed with me, I have a good memory with numbers but not when they're imperfect, in a non-mathematical format. It's why I have a bad memory with telephone numbers. So that especially made it difficult, but I have a bad memory with stuff like that in general. I just really have trouble remembering things like that. And then I know people who not only know their own schedule by heart, but the schedule of everyone else that works with them for the coming weeks. It's really impressive.

That part of my mind and my memory is especially pronounced and highlighted when I'm hearing a deadline or some kind of official, formal communication. It would happen literally all the time in class, I would hear everything the teacher said really well, but the instant they started talking about when something was due or when a test was or something like that, my mind would tune out, and then it would start hearing again when they started talking about something else. And it wasn't on purpose, it wasn't like I wasn't listening on purpose or was even aware that I was zoning out, it would just happen the minute somebody started talking about deadlines. The same thing still happens now, when I'm watching sports on TV or something and they start showing when the next games are going to be, I immediately tune out and then I realize after the image is gone from the screen that I completely didn't hear what they said. It happens in other ways too, when someone's talking on TV or on a video or something and they start telling you something that's in that same vein, a formal communication about something you need to know, I often tune that out too. Something about that type of communication tells my mind that it's time to rest and tune out for a minute, it's really ingrained.

So I have a bad memory with a lot of things. But anyway, all of this is to say that I don't remember my childhood very well, but I know that when I was younger I was happier and more unconscious. But as far back as I can remember, I can remember having a part of me that didn't really want to live. And not in a dark way either, I've never wanted to die, and I've only been close to that a few periods in my life. But not wanting to die is different from wanting to live. And I just really don't exactly. Every single day, at some point it comes into my mind. I'm content to go on in life, and to go along with things, to be a part of things, to float along like a bottle on a river and try to be happy and have a good life while it lasts. But I'm always waiting for it to end. I look forward to when I can finally rest. I look forward to it more than anything else. For me, life is so long. It's incredible how long humans live. There is so much depth in a single day, a single week, a single month, and most people get so many years of it. It's really incredible, and I really do enjoy it and appreciate it, but I can't ever get rid of the deep feeling that I want to go away and not exist anymore. I'm enjoying it while it lasts, and trying to be grateful for everything and have as good of a life as possible, but I'm always waiting for it to end.

And this is part of what I mean, that everyone else is just so much more real than me. Everyone else just seems to accept living as the default, and just seems to want to be a part of things, and to just be a part of things, in a way I never have been. Everyone else seems to have things they're really, actually interested in doing in the future. I don't have that energy. I'm really interested in a lot of things, but I would be completely content for it all to just go away right now. I don't have the feeling that my path is incomplete. I'm content to just go along and enjoy things, but I really just want to be here for the people I care about. And I'm just waiting until I can rest.

I feel removed from a lot of things. I am truly, infinitely removed from being my true, uninhibited self around other people. I don't even know what that is. Everything for me is controlled, I plan so many things in my mind and I don't do anything without thinking about it first. It's just how I naturally am, I'm always trying to perfect how I am towards the world. So me being really myself is in being not-uninhibited, not free, not uncalculated. I am completely myself, and I really am inside of me, but I never fully, truly present that to other people. I'm always trying to perfect my interactions with people and I'm always trying to accommodate everyone as much as possible. I can only truly be myself inside of me, where I always am completely, genuinely me.

I don't really care about most people. It's a complete contradiction, I care really deeply about everyone and I am really sensitive. I can instantly find myself caring deeply about a complete stranger I just met, it happens all the time. Their problems become my problems; I want to make them feel better, I want to make them feel validated, because that's what makes me feel good. I have a deep desire to make everyone feel validated when I come in contact with them, to make them feel valued and listened to and cared about. It's one of my strongest instincts, I cannot not do that with people. It is very very hard for me to be unfriendly. The hardest thing in the world for me is hearing somebody say something and not giving them some recognition or response that I heard them, not giving them something that validates them.

But at the same time, I still do not care about most people. I realized years ago, that there's only very few people that I would actually care if they died. There's my immediate family, and there's a couple close friends. If any of them died, it would be very very difficult for me. But anybody else, and I truly genuinely could not care less. Intellectually I care, but it doesn't really affect me emotionally at all. Even people that I'm close to or that I care about a lot, I can think about if they died and how I would feel, and I really cannot see myself actually being affected inside. I would just keep on going and be just as happy as before. If they're within that very small circle for me, then I can see myself being very affected. But anybody outside of that, and I know that I would really feel nothing. I've had people in my extended family die, and some I felt more for than others, but in the end I'm always feeling quite peaceful and happy inside while everyone else around me is crying and sad and upset.

I care much more about animals dying than people, animals dying really affects me, I don't have to know the animal at all. Especially dogs. I don't know why, it's just how I am.

I care much more about fictional characters usually too than most people.

Am I just a shell
Floating on the wind
A shell of myself
Of I don't know what
A shell of the sky
A shell of the sea
A shell of the stars
A shell of 5 year old me, running with my jacket
Is there a lamp
That will light the way
That will bring the ships into the bay
That will light the path cause there's no stars
That will fill the days and heal the scars
Is there a key
That will open the lock
That will free the clouds and open the clocks
For time to slide into the sky
And take you away on a timeless ride
I want to keep going
But it's also pretty hard
The icicles are beautiful but the glassy shards
Are sharp to step on
When the world turns upside down
When the earth flies into the sky
It's hard to keep both feet on the ground

There's a person, who is more genuine than anyone I've ever known, more really herself, than I ever thought possible. She reminded me what it's like to actually feel the goodness and deepness of the world and not feel embarrassed about it, to actually seek out the colors, to actually be myself.

And I used this person, I used her, so deeply, without even realizing it. Without fully realizing what I was doing, and I might have ruined everything. If I could do that, what am I capable of doing? What harm am I capable of causing? If I could do that, to the only truly good thing that's ever come across my path. I am not meant for good things. The truth is I am way too selfish. I think of myself as good, but I really am pretty terrible. I've never fully realized it until now. This is something that this has taught me. At the end of the day, I am always, always going to think of myself above everything else, and that is bad for this world. I am nicer to others than anyone I know, but there are people I know who actually care about other people. Who would actually sacrifice themselves for other people, who would actually put others above themselves, who would sacrifice themselves for me. Who have sacrificed themselves for me. I do not sacrifice myself for anything. I avoid sacrifice like the plague. And I only do it, if it presents itself as the best option for me, to get what I want from things. Sure I accommodate other people, I'm really really good at that, but at the end of the day it's only cause I like doing that. To get me to actually do something that I don't want to do, willingly and of my own volition, to volunteer my sacrifice for somebody else, is so foreign to me. I cannot actually think of when I have ever done that. And there are people I know, who would do that in a heartbeat, who do that all the time, who have done that for me.

And I just take it for granted, I so naturally take it for granted. I expect that that's how things are going to be. And I am always calculating, trying to arrange things, trying to get everything how I want it to maximize my pleasure and my comfort and my ease. Sure I include the people I care about in that, and try to arrange things for everyone to get along as much as possible and be as happy as possible too, but that's only at the end of the day because that makes me feel good. In the end, what I'm after is helping myself feel good. I thought that I could have both, but ultimately goodness does not really come from selfishness. I am not selfish in the natural or traditional sense, I'm always paying attention to everyone's feelings and trying not to hurt others, and I very rarely just go for what I want or indulge in what I want, I am a master of endlessly delaying gratification and I am a master of patience, but in the end I will always put myself above everything else.

Am I just a shell
Of the ghosts of my past
Which will come out to hurt
The good things in my path
I've stored up all this sadness inside
And I thought I could bottle it up
And it would all go away
And I thought I could turn it into goodness for the world
But it turns out
That sadness is just sadness
And hurt is just hurt
And I am broken
A broken thing
That doesn't work right
And that is going to hurt those that come near it

When have I actually ever done anything good? I do good for the people I care about, but outside of that I have done close to nothing. I am too selfish, too comfortable, to ever step outside of my world and try to help the world outside.

I could travel to the moon
And I would still be alone
Because you wouldn't be there
I could travel to the sea
I could jump into the breeze
I could fall into the stars
I could fall asleep at the park
I could take a candle to the pool
And let it float out gliding smooth
I could go to London Greece and Rome
I could go to sleep and go back home
I could hear the footsteps down the hall
I could eat a foreign candy bar
I could whistle to the swimming whales
I could open up all the world's mail
I could skate across a frozen lake
I could sleep and dream while I'm awake
I could sleep beneath the sprinkling rain
I could sleep on a quiet moving train
I could swim beneath the soothing breeze
I could climb a hundred thousand trees
I could find the best tree in the world
I could see a whirlpool as it swirled
I could go the caves and go to the sea
I could let the quiet come to me
I could see the sunrise from the hill
I could eat some ice cream as it spills
But you wouldn't be there
And you wouldn't be there