Lent

For Lent I am giving up Facebook. I'm giving up Facebook and television and all those hours wasted sifting through other peoples lives pretending that it makes me feel any less isolated. I'm giving up things that make me lonely and I'm giving up the hollow sadness and the nameless, pointless anxiety that makes me crumple like a crushed soda can.

I'm giving up locking myself in my apartment for days on end debating whether to call someone while I look out the window at the concrete and asphalt and brick town homes and the cars covered in snow and people in wool coats whose voices drift up into my open window and thinking, why is it that I haven't talked to anyone in two days and still haven't written a word? I'm giving up feeling ridiculous and guilty about nothing.

I'm embracing my cheesy, joyful side that makes me write semi-inspirational blog posts and doesn't care what you literary types think, because there's too much beauty and love and joy out there not to say something. I'm accepting my fatalistic, angry, brooding side and letting it say whatever it needs to say because this life is confusing as hell and one day we're all going to end up in the dust of death.

So I'm really getting serious about all the things I've been meaning to get serious about. Really. Seriously. Maybe I'll become a vegetarian and start asking people to call me Jeremiah. Maybe I'll start praying regularly and walking more.

I'm going to make this big, icy, brutal city my home for now. I'm going to buy some boots.

You, my distant internet friends, are my witnesses.