A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left

This one always makes me think about... me.

I had a "nervous tic motion of the head" when I was a kid. It used to be pronounced. Not "to the left", but a forceful forward snap. It won me merciless and cruel attention. It never really went away. I just internalized it. Now I chomp and grind my teeth all day; now they’re cracked and chipped like the rest of me. I also have an assortment of other nervous twitches that don't fail to be noticed.

The "16 tons of hazmat” are the messes that I've left behind, and the way they've stained my present; limited my future by consequence. A life full of poison that any sane person would rightly want to avoid, pack in a truck while covered in a sealed suit, and bury in the desert. "What goes undelivered" is the part of me that was damaged as a result. Time I will never recover. Potential never developed. Options and paths, irreparably damaged by decisions, made for me by trauma and sickness. And yes, I would love to have my life back. Love to undo what's done. But was it ever really mine to begin with, or did the forces of nature conspire to make me a human disaster?

"Overprescribed...Under the Mister". This is fairly literal. Patient of the psychological machine, 30 years and running. The “mister” could be any assortment of doctors or institutions. Parents. Teachers. Bosses. Lovers lost. Anyone assuring me I MUST do this or that. All of which leaves me roughly where I began. And so here I lay, “stretched out on the tarmac”. I missed the plane. I wanted to fly away. Instead I'm just a few miles north of where I started, face down on the asphalt.

This leads eventually to being "splayed out on the bath mat". Possibly having "over-imbibed" something you might see a man in my condition, on the street, clutching in the poor disguise of a "paper knapsack".

Now I'm "barely alive" and I "cover the blisters" - from a seared life; scorched earth; fiery encounters - with a layer of whatever it is I can find to cover myself. "Flannel" is as good as anything else I suppose. It doesn't matter. Flannel's practical. It doesn't impress, but it doesn't have to. It just needs to be soft, and somewhat durable. The blisters hurt, you see.

I try to talk about my pain. My depression. My dysphoria. But when I say things to people, I fail to make an impression. My ramblings sound "banal" - the whines and complaints of a guy who just needs to 'get his sh!t together and quit b!tching'. But not "one of them's [the words] a lie". It's the truth. An awful truth. A truth they're glad they don't know, or can't see. They know nothing of the hidden blisters. Nothing I can spit out of this mouth and into their ears will ever make any difference.

It'll only just land me back into the hands of a "mister" - another "prescription" - or perhaps upon my “bath mat”, where someone will find me, a repellent mess, blocking the path between them and the toilet, the latter a higher priority, only slightly less disgusting than whatever they are about to excrete.

Why this? Why ANYthing. It just happens. "Substances collide". Galaxies — solar systems — planets — molecules — bacteria — spirochetes - fungi - plants - animals - complex arrangements of tissue. Egg and sperm — the bulk of the latter wasted. Ejaculated into the dark, swimming around lost, finding nothing, until death. One in a million, if lucky, leads to something new, but maybe meaningless.

You can "exercise yourself 'till you're bereft" - but it won't really matter.

tic