PART TWO:

i can't really explain it to you that well.

and i remembered earlier in the day when i was stuck in traffic on the highway and i looked around and felt trapped, surrounded by massive vehicles...yellow ribbons, american flags, bumper stickers reducing my country's ideals into a marketable slogan...the flag i saluted as a child...becoming a brand icon (which made me think of rubbing bbq sauce from my face all over napkins printed with american flags at last year's company picnic and laughing loudly about it). and i thought to myself "wait, i still live in the best country in the world, right?" but if that's true, and i do, why is everyone around me so completely fucked up? so completely sad and empty? i feel nothing these days. all my friends from college...they email me and tell me what they're doing and what they're buying and who they're listening to and what they're seeing...but occasionally i get a window into what really goes on inside them, and it's fucking scary. they don't know what they want. they hate their jobs. they're lonely. they grow bored of the stuff they buy. the novelty wears off so quickly to them. we - ugh..i can't even write this without distracting myself with a bunch of stupid internet bullshit every two seconds... i wish i still had an attention span - we are obsessed with these commodities...and we have to adorn ourselves with them. cover up the ugly skeletons inside. and those...the ones that have all the things they need and don't go hungry but are still sad and don't want to get out of bed in the morning...i am still one of these people.

i woke up and i hated what i saw in myself. i know i've been gone a long time. to everyone. i promise i'll tell you everything. i know i've said it before. but i'm a different person now, i swear. i think. people can change. my heart got broken, i got sick, i tried to get myself fired, then i returned to the gym and started exercising again - tried to do something positive for myself. i feel so much better, and everything's funny again. EVERYTHING is. i'll tell you so much more...