welcome to caffeination station; it's pumpkin spice latte season

Overcaffeinated and ready to fight is the name of this chapter. As a naturally rageful person I enjoy any opportunity to throw fists (in a psychological/emotional/spiritual sense). It’s rarely in defense of myself, because everyone in the whole world (including perfect strangers) except me deserves to be defended with this extreme category of fervor. Debate is an extreme sport; casual manipulation is a combat activity. This level of aggressive nonchalance is achieved through a decade of studied social behavior and practiced body language from my perch—precarious—high on the wall, near the intricate crown molding. (Like a fly. Get it? Get it?)

The willingness to fight is a fun hobby. The overcaffeination is a sort of practiced religion, the daily reception of multiple doses of sweet sweet espresso in various embittered forms. This makes the brain scream and the body move. I do work and I internally scream and my heart tells me I’m gonna die. Then I crash and I inhale another dose. Then I go home and I try to reorganize the horrific jigsaw of my thoughts into words on paper, words on a screen, a blinking cursor, a blank page, an ink spill as my pen hovers over the empty page in a blank notebook. I’ve a cheap version of a calligraphy pen I purchased on Amazon. The ink often clogs and runs dry.

I am writing. Let me be clear: I’m writing. But it’s less of a casual activity than it is a fevered obsession. All the rituals add up into weirdness: candles burnt down to puddles, and that one fleece flung across my desk chair; the scattered sketches and strange internet research open in a dozen tabs across the top of the browser window. Fifteen-thousand playlists on my Spotify, all with silly names that only make sense to me and maybe one other person. My brain is full of words and people that have never been spoken and never existed, my tongue is tripping over itself to make something real—and by extension, my fingers cannot type fast enough, my thoughts vomit onto paper. They take the form of something that only makes sense to me and maybe one other person.

I am not lonely, but sometimes the aloneness is loud. I want to be by myself, but sometimes I want to prove I have feelings and sometimes the words only make sense in written form. I can pretend my personality is one fit for society, but it does get caught in the bottleneck. I wander home and spill my brain on a notebook page. I feel lighter after that. Sometimes the words don’t make sense (not to me, not to even to one other person) unless I write them down. Then they don’t have to make sense, because they’re gone. They’re someone else’s problem now. They’re fodder for a diagnosis I’ll realize five years down the road.

If I were a villain, this is how it would look: I’d wear black (obviously), I’d wear a lot more eyeliner (Batman-like), and I’d leave all my weapons and sharp little gadgets at home (in an ominous tower, maybe). They wouldn’t see me coming. There would just be a sense of wrongness in the air, a taste like a storm coming—charged, building. A distinctive lack of aloneness. And a whisper from someplace unseen:

“I’ll put you in a story.”

What the fuck?

“Yeah, it’ll happen like ten years from now and you won’t even realize it’s you, but I’ll know. And I’ll finally be over this. And I won’t think about you anymore after that.”

That’s the end of my thoughts on this matter. In conclusion, I am often angry but I don’t do anything about it unless someone else is being slightly inconvenienced; then I’ll throw fists. But mostly I let revenge go unpleasantly cold before it’s served, and it’s usually not on a serving dish; Tupperware is easier to store. And usually it’ll be a dish you didn’t even order so it’ll get sent back to the kitchen untasted and unhated. I’ll try again next year.

Thanks for reading my overcaffeinated ramble. Tell all your friends. I’m here all night.