Dear John

A letter that will never be sent.

        Have you ever sat back for a second and considered exactly how boring breathing is?  It’s like piecework.  I mean, it’s so dull that certain religions and philosophies have developed names for the nothing-brain you get when you think about breathing for too long.  They call it meditation.  Or a trance.  Or an out-of-body experience.  I guess it depends a lot on who you ask.  Or when you ask them.  Don’t get me wrong, nothing-brain happens at other times too.  Sometimes it hits you while you’re driving.  Or listening to a song you know like the back of your hand.  Whenever it is, you can be assured that it is birthed from utter and complete boredom.  A lack of focus and attention due to truly not giving a s**t about whatever it is that you’re doing at the moment.  Technically, I suppose that means we generally don’t give a s**t about breathing, but that opens up a totally new can of worms, one that probably should be left in the bag, but what the hell.  You’ve followed me this far, why not keep going and see where we end up.  At least it should make for an interesting ride.
        So how is Pascoag anyway?  Or was it Wakefield?  It’s been so long since we’ve talked that I even forget which corner of the state you’re stuck in.  Not that you stick anywhere for very long.  Sometimes I wish I could do that.  Just up and leave.  Set up camp somewhere else for a while.  Anywhere else.  Start over.  You wind up missing everything you know eventually anyway, so why not be the one who decides when to start, right?  The sooner you get started, the quicker it ends.  Even pain is like that.  
        Do you remember the time I fell off my skateboard?  I wasn’t even tricking or anything, just cruising along under the streetlights, heading to the crack house for a party, or a pot binge, or some alcohol fueled discussion or other.  The point is, it was dark.  I never even saw the piece of plastic in the road coming up in front of me.  Didn’t even see it when I hit it.  But it was enough to stop my wheel dead and send me careening off into the night.  And onto the pavement.  I’d gotten road rash before, but never on my face.  I picked myself up, brushed myself off, grabbed my board and walked the rest of the way.  I didn’t dare bring my hand to my face until I was in the light of the stairway.  I think I rubbed my upper lip, just under my nose, and found the blood.  It hurt like hell.  All of this happened before I got there, so all you probably remember of it is when I walked in bleeding.  I probably shrugged it off at the time, afraid to compromise my uber-cool exterior.  I’m pretty sure I sopped up the blood with toilet paper.  I doubt that there was anything better suited to the job in the apartment.  It was better than using junk mail though.  You might remember these details better than I do.  All the nights blur together so easily now.  They say that hindsight is 20/ 20, but only if you keep looking.  It reminds me of an article I was reading about how the brain doesn’t remember actual events for very long.  Eventually, it recalls the memories that you’ve had of the event, not the thing itself.  Which is the real reason behind the growing fish story you hear as a kid.
        Alcohol thins the blood, you know.  I still can’t figure out how my face managed to clot while I was busy getting bombed.  At any rate, by the next morning I was sporting a nice big scab right under my nose.  It would have been a great time for a moustache.  The Fred Durst spotty chin hair thing I was rocking at the time didn’t hide a goddamn thing.  No big deal.  I could always make up some bitching faceplant while kickflipping into a late 540 shove-it story.  Until a week later.  Is it a reason or an excuse that I keep telling myself that I was too fucked up to take care of it properly?  I mean, how sober do you really need to be to slap the Neosporin on?  An infection is always such a good time, ripping off body hair with every Band-Aid, squeezing the pus out like you’re popping a zit, trying not to get soap in it.  Fun stuff.  I never had one turn green before though.  Usually it would either get super day-glo red or stay kind of whitish.  Maybe even a little brown from the scab, but green?  I became the proud owner of a big, infected, pus-leaking, snot-looking scab.  Right under my nose.  Try explaining that one.  “Dude, you got some, uh, snot on your lip.”  “Nah, man, it’s cool.  I’m so badass that I let this thing get all green.”  I think it was like that for weeks.
        I got an infection that other time too.  The day Eric and me came home from the bar and I decided to have you pierce my n****e.  I wish you had the right stuff to do it.  The safety pin hurt like a son of a b***h.  It seemed like forever before it went all the way through.  Maybe we should have heated it up.  I think you wanted to, but I was too afraid that by the time it was hot, I would lose my nerve.  My stomach is getting queasy just thinking about it.  Sometimes when this happens, I just roll with it.  Keep dwelling on the thing making me want to puke.  Then my hands will start to shake just a little bit.  Then my face will change.  It will look like someone threw bleach on me.  And pretty soon after that, the sweats.  Not like regular sweat.  Cold.  Clammy.  The kind that tastes like rainwater.  Then I’ll want to pass out.  No, not pass out, die.  I’ll wish that I could just f*****g die. The funny thing is, when you feel so bad that you wish you would die, that’s when you know most certainly that you are alive.  Still breathing.  Nerves sending screaming signals of searing pain straight up your spine.  
        Pain response is a truly animal instinct.  So is fear.  It’s been proven that you can literally make yourself afraid.  Without even meaning to.  Certain chemical responses will trigger a surge of adrenalin so intense, so much like the surge caused by fear, that you will actually become afraid.  Panic.  I have to believe that pain is the same way.  How else could you explain the “phantom pain” experienced by amputees?  Pain invokes a chemical response in the body.  If this chemical response becomes set off by something else, you will feel pain.  Pain causes a bodily reaction.  A bodily reaction causes pain.

 
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.  
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.
Backward and forward.  Forward and backward.
       
Now sit back for a second.  Listen to yourself breathe.