codeine

i never know what to write in these things.

not because i have nothing to say about myself. quite the opposite — i just have no idea where, out of all of it, i'm supposed to begin.

there's something strange about being asked to “tell me about yourself.” as if there's a proper order to it: start with whatever matters most about me, move on to what matters a little less, and neatly leave everything else outside the boundaries of a few paragraphs. the problem is, i don't know who gets to decide what's important. and i certainly don't know why i'm supposed to know.

suppose i tell you what i do. would that explain anything? i could list the things i love, but then i'd have to decide why one of them deserves a place here and another doesn't. i could tell you what I'm afraid of, what i think about before i fall asleep, what music i play too loud, and which photographs i never show anyone. all of it would be true. and every piece of it, on its own, would lie.

maybe people just don't fit very well into their own descriptions. somewhere in the process of deciding what to keep, you quietly turn yourself into a character — a little more consistent, a little easier to understand, a little more convenient than the real thing.

so I'm not going to choose.