Keep it in perspective

A friend's blog post got me to thinking about whether or not the things I had to complain about were really complaint-worthy. In the absence of that read, I would've just put a certain car dealership (who shall remain nameless) on blast for treating me like a red-headed step child (and being red-headed in a Latino family is certainly cause for pause)and for employing the stereotypical used car salesmen ...

But instead, I'm thinking about a poem I wrote when I was a freshman in college. It's probably the only one I'll ever post, mainly because it's the only one I've ever published, but also it's one that I think about often, even to this day.

In trying to put into the words how I perceived my life in the closet, I penned these words:

Trapped in a world where I have no choice,
As in a cave of polished brass,
Where all I hear is my echoing voice,
That brings me grief that no one knows,
That pains my ear and shatters my soul;
It makes me tear and drives me mad.

Trapped in a room where I hate to see,
As I gaze at it and wonder why.
A misshapen figure that can't relate,
That can't understand the pain inside;
That won't reach out to hold my hand;
It makes me tear and drives me mad

Trapped inside that mysterious man,
The one I see beyond the glass,
Who's trapped himself and can't reach out,
That needs my help as I need his;
His cries of sorrow pierce my heart;
It makes me tear. It's driven me mad.

I can still remember the hollow in my chest that caused me to feel detached from the world around me and from which stemmed the emotions that poured out through my pen when I wrote that. And, actually, as I sit here and remember it, my eyes well up. And you know, I can even somewhat feel the fringes of that hollow again. That's really why i never bring up the poetry I wrote in those days - while I think they were good literarily, I can't remove myself from the emotion they still evoke in me.

But the reality is that that simply isn't me anymore. I don't walk around with that hollow in my heart, feeling ingenuous to my own self and sacrificing the formal gelling of the real me on the inside with the me I allowed the world to see. At this point in my adult life, those two are fused together like a solid fillet weld and leave no room for hollow between them ... even if the words I penned in those days do help me remember what it felt like to have that empty space.

And so - I can at least find some solace in the fact that even though those nasty ass mother fuckers at the used car dealership pissed me the fuck off ... at least I'm not embodying an echoey, emotional space anymore.

Yeah - that makes me feel better.

But admittedly, it helps that I called them nasty ass mother fuckers at the car dealership.

Is that bad?