Wonderful Nonsense

i. Everything But The

i. Everything But The

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   There he is again, sitting under the same tree, on the same beach, an hour before midnight, just like every night before. Every once and a while he'll jerk or twitch for a second, but for the most part he remains still and seemingly unaware of my presence. The first time I saw him here I was running from family problems, and, come to think of it, that's been my only reason to ever come to the beach this late. I suppose that's why whenever I find myself here watching him, I get an overwhelming and strange feeling that brings me back to the times I ran away from home when I was little. Not the anger at my parents but the naive sense of freedom brought up by my ten year old mind. 

If it weren't for my family this wouldn't be happening. If it weren't for them I wouldn't be experiencing all of these unusual feelings. I would've seen that man as nothing more than a regular Joe who likes to watch the tide at night. Unfortunately, I can't do that anymore; not with my family turning me into an emotional cocktail every chance they get. I'm the odd one out. The black sheep. The ingredient in Everything-But-The--. . . Well, I'm the kitchen sink. And now whenever I walk alone on the beach I make up imaginary scenarios in my head in which regular Joe is either a nut with OCD or some criminal contemplating something suspicious.

My family problems, after all, are a paradox. My parents tell me to stop making every little instance into some fantastical scenario and every news broadcast into a government conspiracy. It's that frequent breaking of trust that they draw up leaving me just looking for any reason that someone might be out to get me. They instilled in me the very paranoia that they hate. Am I the only fucking person on this planet that doesn't see overthinking as a bad thing?! It just means you're paying attention, staying sharp; that way nobody can harm you. If everyone just understood that people don't change, trust wouldn't be broken half as often and nobody would be telling me how to think.

I don't expect my family to change and I wish they didn't expect it of me. I know what is good for me and after 23 years of letting them have their way I'm at my wits end. I can tell that I'm beginning to crack. I used to never lose track of time, but now I've wasted an hour out here just wallowing in my own problems, and by now even regular Joe has left without me noticing. The only thing making me turn around to go home is the concrete knowledge that my parents are still manic enough to start thinking that I've gone missing and call the police on account of a grown ass man not coming home on time.

I wonder what that says about me. Most of my friends from college -- hell, even my roommate -- had gone on anthropological expeditions and traveled all over, yet my definition of "getting away from everything" is walking out the front door and half a mile down the road to the beach.

I'm not sure if I'd call that weak or just void of adventurous nature.

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[a/n] - So I hear reincarnation is making a comeback. . . .