Page 19 of A Little Campfire Blues
Sometimes I wished I could completely give up playing, but then what?
I didn’t have the heart to join my brother and our old man in the repo business; I just didn’t. It seemed like such a shitty thing to do when people were already struggling. Yeah, I knew there were folks out there who abused the system and never intended to pay for whatever it was they’d put on credit, but it didn’t seem fair to lump in the people who worked their butts off. Sometimes life just kicked you in the ass, and you fell on hard times through no fault of your own. Banks didn’t want to hear that; they just focused on the bottom line, not the faces behind the numbers. It was the same way with my old man. I’d seen him in action when I was younger. No compassion at all. Just steely eyes and grim determination.
You wanna eat, kid? Then you’d better stop feeling sorry for those lowlifes and start looking for that license plate number. Let it be a lesson for you. If you ain’t got the cash in hand, you don’t need it. Work hard, save up, learn to go without until you can afford whatever the fuck you’re after, and for God’s sake, kid, never get a fuckin’ credit card.
After learning about interest rates, I’d seen why he was so adamant about that part. I’d eaten a lot of tuna and peanut butter while saving up for my Jeep. I’d been proud of being able to drive it off the lot without owing anything. She’d been a few years out of date but never owned, so I’d gotten a hell of a deal on her, but I’d spent a lot of time walking while I’d saved up, and not always in the best of weather.
A wide, flat rock jutted out over the surface of the lake, with plenty of room for me to sit and stare off across the water, guitar across my lap as disjoined words tumbled through my mind, refusing to piece themselves together. My fingers slid over the strings, caressing and listening to the water lap against the base of my rock. Trying to push past thoughts riddled with self-loathing had never gotten me anywhere. The key was always to stop trying, breathe, and just let it happen.
The problem with that was the pain that came when the emotions I wanted to express slammed full force, assembling the words like a storybook narrative of shattered dreams.
Who wants to be the boy born not of love but to serve a purpose?
Who wants to be the boy created to be spare parts?
My mind screamed the questions, as it often did, but those were lines I never wrote down because that meant running the risk of someone seeing them someday, and that was a secret I was willing to take to my grave.
I already felt like a worthless failure; I didn’t need the world to know that the only worth I’d ever had to the parents who’d raised me was that I was genetically compatible with my older brother, who they’d been desperate to save. Once that mission was accomplished, they’d been stuck with an irritating nuisance they hadn’t known what to do with, so they’d settled for ignoring my presence as best they could. Great for those times when I hadn’t wanted anyone to know what the fuck I was getting into, but kinda shitty when I’d always felt like a ghost in my own house.
Believe in me before I fade away.
Don’t know how long I can be
The ghost in the corner
The dirty secret you can’t fully
Sweep under the rug
And make go away.
I belong here too.
Even if you wish I didn’t
Even if sometimes I wish it too
Only I didn’t get a say, now did I?
You chose now I get to suffer for it.
I scribbled the words down, certain they weren’t in the right order yet, but purging them from my brain let new ones come, along with several chords I started fiddling with as I hummed along.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve to be seen.
Stupid me, always tryin’ ta shine a little brighter.
Electric sizzle, lightning in a bottle
For you, to be your star
Only I’m too numb to feel that I’ve burned out already.
Washed-up, wrung-out, dead thing
Shambling zombie
Too brain-dead to admit defeat.
