One Million Years Later

I got close to building a life I wanted, but it’s been a long time since. A little longer. Most of that life is gone, which is hard for me to accept. Not the burned bridges or the severed relationships. Not the intentional absences.

But the genuine connections that weren’t single sided effort from my side or the other.

When you left, I desperately tried to find other reasons to embrace existence. Maybe I succeeded in some small ways. It wasn’t easy, and I made a lot of bad decisions, but I’m still here.

Rudy left much like you did, while my back was turned, annoyed, and taking things for granted. It’s a rotten feeling to turn around realizing nothing will ever be the same.

But Bailey.

I was painfully aware when she was leaving. That I couldn’t stop it. That I didn’t know any other way to help her but to be there.

Feeling entirely inadequate and worthless. Like a traitor for knowing what was coming.

Her card was addressed to the family. To our family. The family I built with you that’s almost gone with her. A family from a collection of lifetimes I’m no longer part of…

Because I’m still here.

Tom

Last night, I was hanging out with a guy on methadone and seroquil. He’s been in recovery since late summer.

He told me to check myself into Wakebrook…and I was sort of offended. I realized later, it’s because I think I’m better than him.

That’s pretty shitty.

Coming back into town this afternoon, there was a man standing on the corner of New Hope and New Bern. Usually, I don’t notice, but I liked this guy’s angle and crossed traffic to make contact.

His sign basically said…”I know I’m a piece of shit, but I want to be alive.” Paraphrasing. I could relate.

I gave him money. Money I “earned” avoiding balancing my boss’s business account all week, and then, because I was thrilled he didn’t bring up God, I asked him if he wanted to get something to eat and come home with me.

Not charity. It was more of a self-destructive mirror…and a desire to continue avoiding balancing that account.

He declined.

Questions

Am I ever going to feel okay?

Am I doing okay?

Am I okay?

What do I need to do for myself to feel okay?

What do I think needs to happen to feel okay?

Can I keep ignoring these feelings?

How long can I push them out of the way?

What do I want to happen?

Will I be okay with the things I can’t control?

Do I need control?

You made me aware of this nasty tenancy I have to invite people to treat me like shit…especially if someone seems to like me or respect me.

That’s just…ick. No good for anybody.

That’s my reaction. I can’t bear the thought of letting somebody who’s placed their confidence in me down. I devalue them and meet them with instantly distrust for investing anything in me whatsoever.

And then I just distance myself when they actually do treat me shitty because obviously that’s no good either…but I can at least play martyr to hold myself over with that.

I struggle with that more than I struggle with the sensation of a fraction of dependency from me…fucking feeling like I need somebody…that scares me shitless…

Sick fucking pain in the ass, aren’t I? Simple defense mechanism linked to self-esteem, I suppose, huh? Obvious to all but me?

I’m not afraid of loving my dog, and I feel bad when it happens, but I’m always letting her down. So neither of those things are my fucking problem.

No, my problem is even more common to the point if being trite.

My problem is that if I invest and then get let down or fuck up catastrophically and irrevocably…well…it turns out…it fucking hurts.

Big, bad, complicated, special snowflake me is afraid of getting hurt, and that’s it.

I hate this shit. Why do I have to struggle so fucking hard to gain insight on such simple things? It’s infuriating. I’m retarded.

I fucking hate it.

Also, I apologize. I think the rambling…rationalizing what the fuck I’m feeling…yeah, it’s helpful and cathartic in processing this fucking baggage

(Jesus, I’m sorry I’m that fucking girl that dumps on you; because who the fuck wants to burden anybody with their shit or has time to deal with anybody else’s?)

I don’t know. The rambling is also a stress reaction…because it’s comforting…just not to sit alone with all this shit I don’t want to deal with helps a lot. And you didn’t want to play this role. You told me from when I very first started asking you questions that you didn’t want to be a shoulder for me.

And I forced you into it anyway, because I can talk myself out of pretty much anything, but intuitively…I can’t help who I trust…and goddamn it.

That’s just…ick. No good for anybody.

Sigh…

Retarded.

Am I even going in the right fucking direction at this point? Because the shit I’m starting to understand just keeps getting simpler and simpler. It’s beyond humbling.

There. That’s a good unbalanced 2am, don’t fucking share this shit, nobody cares ramble.

I’m going to fucking get this shit under control. It’s just stress. There’s a more productive outlet than bothering you with it. I’m going to find it.

Spacial Dynamics

It helped that Tyler knew Tim, and…Tim liked him.  Tim used to talk about trying to help him, and I always found myself being the one pulling him back from investing too much.  He didn’t really talk about you.  He would just mention that you were occupied with something new, or that you were still carrying a torch for that girl who used to live next door.  He didn’t like Steve.

Tim knew that whole neighborhood, but there was some kind of balance…some sort of calm he gained over there at the shithole for a while with you guys.  Maybe it was because he was high all the fucking time.

I don’t know.  He kept that from me…even when blackout drunk…and I’ll never really know why.  I thought he felt comfortable telling me everything.  Anything.  I never doubted him or questioned him or pried.  I just trusted that he knew what he needed, and I tried to be there for him.  If he needed to play with his gun, who was I to stop him?  If he needed to kiss another girl, I must not have been good enough.  If he didn’t want to fuck me, I must be unfuckable.  If I’m unhappy, it’s my fault.

That’s the cycle.  It’s not consistent.  It’s not black and white.  Cut and dry.  Clear when you’re in it textbook shit.  It’s a slow creep with a lot of stops and starts.  Apologies and amends and promises and…feeding into shit wrong.  Making shit worse.

I was never going to leave him.  He threatened to leave me almost every weekend, and I never would have stopped him.  I wanted him to be okay…to feel okay with who he was, and I loved him.  I did love him, even when it was unhealthy because it meant I couldn’t maintain respect for myself.  I don’t know why he was with me.  It felt like everything about me just made things worse for him.

Tyler was as close as I could get to what I wanted after Tim died, because I knew what I really wanted wasn’t possible.  Laid out in plain terms, that’s the vulnerability.

I think Tyler did the best he could with an impossible task…that he volunteered for.  He just…stepped into that space…and I think he held it for as long as he could.  I couldn’t begrudge him for wanting to be himself and live his life, and however superficial and misinterpreted my acts of gratitude have been, if I saw a way that I could potentially make something a little easier for him…I offered what I could.

I’ve had friends, and family, and professionals tell me that Tyler’s bad news…but he never coerced me, and I was never unaware.  From the outside it looks bad, and I know that.  I’ve withdrawn, but Tyler was the only one on the inside for a while where things looked much worse, and he had this beautiful, idealized perspective on Tim.  The positive shit.  The fun stuff.  Confirmation that he did fucking love me…and I needed that.

Because all of those things are just as true.

I’m not stupid…and Tyler’s not evil.

 

There’s always some word that sticks.

This time, it’s “compatible”.

You know, sometimes, I think I catch you trying; and I don’t like it, because I don’t want some version of you that you think I want.  I don’t want that at all.  I don’t want you to be anything specific for me, and I don’t need compatibility beyond what I already know.

You’re already more interesting than any of my dreams could be, just as you are.  Because you’re not me.  How could I not be fascinated by someone I’ll never know completely?  The curiosity in itself is enough, but that you’re not cruel just feeds the desire for the impossible.  No matter how close, or how deep, or how strongly we connect, I’ll never know you entirely the way I know myself.

If you’re not cruel, and you’re not expending your energy on meaningless lies, you don’t have to try.  Show me who you are, and I’ll love you forever just for that alone–for not wasting my time with sleight of hand and empty aspirations.

I know it frustrates you.

That I don’t reward you for paying attention and fabricating something you think I’ll like.  What the fuck do I want, then?  Right?  We blame it all on my fear…and I am afraid.  I’m guilty of it, too.  I want to impress you.  I care what you think.  I have a deep-seated desire to please that goes well below the surface of things to the core of how I derive self-worth.  You better believe I guard that desire from mistreatment, but only after somebody gives reason.  I don’t enjoy exposing myself when I can’t have control…but I’ll never have control, and I can’t connect without sustaining a genuine, open vulnerability among those who don’t hurt me.

You don’t hurt me, but sometimes you do try to do or say something that seems slightly forced or false.  Like it wouldn’t happen if I wasn’t the intended audience.  That.  I don’t like.

When you try, you complicate things that are so simple and organic and beautiful.  And when I try…I crush everything with a profound lack of grace.  But I don’t think that’s incompatibility.  it’s just not the same.  We’re not the same, but I like that.  All I want is…

 

Authenticity.

 

 

Well

I haven’t been here in a very long time, but rather than narrate into a vacuum about it, I’m just going to go right back to using this platform for what I need from it…

I think about you constantly, but I can’t tell you…because you don’t want to hear it.  Even if you do, on some low level, want to hear it as a way to boost your ego; you really don’t want to hear it, because you don’t want me.

At least, these are the parameters set to adhere to, so I’m doing my best…even though it’s more embarrassing and guilt invoking for me than I imagine it would be for you.  In your situation, a rather awkward individual has taken an unwanted interest in you despite your best efforts to remain neutral.  In my situation…you’re my dead husband’s friend to whom I had no intentions of becoming attached.

It’s hard for me to even fucking write that down.  “Whom.”  I fucking hate that word, and it’s not that I intentionally became infatuated with you.  I tried to fight it for a long time.  I even told you,

Hey…

this is happening,

but I don’t want it to,

and I’m really sorry,

but you’re going to have to help me make it stop,

because I’m just not ready to address any sort of serious feelings for anyone.

And you know what?  That’s a really fucked up thing to ask someone to help with, but you were actually awesome about it and went cold, and told me what I thought I needed to hear…and instead of being a relief like it has been with everybody else I’ve pushed back to a safe distance…

Hearing it from you made me sad.

It made me really fucking sad that I’m still stuck on something I can’t change, but I don’t want to be stuck.  I want to embrace how I feel about you regardless of reciprocation.  I know you understand that I’m stuck and I’m scared.  I tell you all of the time, and I ask you what to do.  What can I do?  How do I move through this?  Am I doing okay?  Am I okay?

It’s buried under rambling, because I don’t know what I’m doing as I do it.  I’m not making the conscious decision, because that rational side of me is so constricted right now that if I don’t let things flow intuitively below the surface…I can’t move at all.  I just have to trust that my subconscious will lead me safely…and I keep coming back to you.

You.

Are.

Safe.

I know it’s not fair.  I didn’t anticipate something like this happening, even though I’ve read about it being relatively common.

You gave me what I said I wanted, and I…don’t want it.

I want you.

And that scares the shit out of me.

missing

When I first moved to Milwaukee, I didn’t get any mail except for one missing children’s flyer each week. I hated living in the dorms and felt so disappointed with college from the onset that I saved them the entire time I went to school. Then I looked up all those fucking kids instead of working on my senior thesis and learned what happened to the recovered ones.

Tim’s the only person…I don’t even know how to put it into words…He made me feel like I had a home.

How’d you get to be so tough?

You ask me almost every week, and I just meet your confusion with my own.

I started writing this before my husband died.  I watched him die.  I feel like I killed him.

It will be two weeks tonight.

I don’t have anything poetic to say.  He used to always ask me how I got to be so tough, but I…don’t think I’m tough enough to keep going without him.

I hate life so much.

I keep seeing him die over and over again.  It comes out of nowhere.  I’ll be fine.  I’ll be numb. I’ll be going about the tasks set in front of me to get through each day, and it comes out of nowhere.

It came out of nowhere.

I’m so fucking stupid.  Fuck.

Paradigm Shift

I don’t feel alone anymore, and as trite as it is, it’s a really big deal to me.

A genuine sense of belonging and acceptance is essentially all I’ve ever wanted emotionally, and I’ve done a lot of fucked up things over the years in search of it. 

A lot of really fucked up things that I’m not going to dwell on.

As a kid, I thought it was a profound personal failing that I couldn’t attain the sense of wellbeing I sought.  I mean, what kind of shitty person doesn’t feel connected with their own family or friends? 

When I got older, it didn’t concern me much where I might stumble across acceptance.  I certainly wasted time doubting myself and attempting to make outward sacrifices in authenticity in order to feel closers to others.  

It only startled me a little that I honestly wanted something so commonly coveted by others.  If so many people wanted it, why couldn’t I find it?  I thought I came close a few times, but I was forcing myself or trying to force others.  

Being alone ultimately felt better.

I became much more concerned with being able to feel completely comfortable as myself than finding outside acceptance.  I spent years emotionally inaccessible, resigned to the idea of being alone as a form of compromise, because I’ve never fully fit in with anybody.  It felt like a complete waste of time to do a social song and dance I don’t value.

I know who I am predominately because I’ve spent years arguing with myself about who I should be.  I don’t have all my shit together, but I’m okay with being alone with my thoughts.  I’m okay.  I’m damaged, but complete, and it was only when I knew that I was okay with myself by myself that I found someone else to be myself around who accepts me.

It’s not perfect, but it really is all I’ve ever wanted.

I think the glib paraphrasing amounts to the horrendous cliche:  You have to love yourself before you can expect anybody else to love you, too.

You also have to field and process a shit load of fucking rejection, mutual or not.

Slum

I’ve been living in the epicenter of a college town for years now, but I’ve outgrown it.  It’s been a game for awhile; preying on the naivety of kids playing adults and dodging the crackheads who are peppered in with the old rooming houses that used to serve more as off campus dorms.  We used to go out and pick someone to bring home, but it’s not really worth the drama.  They’re not really worth the inconvenience.  It’s not entertaining anymore.

I like my commute to work (a two minute walk) but I don’t love my job.  I didn’t opt into this line of work at 16 because I love it.  I decided based on my aversion to customer service.

I made a very deliberated decision about two years ago to accept a free dog into the house, even though the lease doesn’t allow for such decision making and it made working with my former boss even more frustrating.  Well, after four years here, I won’t be eligible to renew the lease for 2017 because of that decision, and I thought I’d care more…

But fuck it.  I don’t.  I’ll always choose my dog over a slumlord, and college kids just don’t interest me anymore.

I’m ready.

It took me a long time to find you, and it says a lot about me that I still look from time to time.  That being implied rather than said, I’m glad I finally succeeded and that you’re happy.

I feel better knowing.  So, that’s it then.

Woohoo!

Definitions

I have identified and defined many features about myself in the past few years that I had previously, quite deliberately, left nebulous through my formative years:

1.  I am not an open minded individual.  I may be extremely tolerant of others retaining their own points of view, but I am not generally accepting of those differing vastly from my own.  I filter information through a personal bias and internally judge and dismiss the actions and diatribes of others based on my own thoughts and views.  That being said, I consider myself relatively respectful towards others…or at the very least, when intolerant, I make a genuine attempt to remain passive (apathetic).
2. I am an atheist.  I have made every good faith attempt possible for me to entertain the validity of a majority of the world’s monotheistic and polytheistic religious structures as well as many theories (not used in the scientific context of the word) pertaining to more generalized omnipotence, and I cannot make the leap.  I have stopped trying, although I do still read into many facets of spirituality that I find myself ignorant of beforehand.  For a long time, I knew that I lacked the capacity to make any sort of personal engagement but still considered my respect for others who can and have found faith as an indication of agnosticism, but it is not.  I am not.  I am an atheist.  I admit that I was wrong when claiming to be agnostic.
3. I am straight.  Even though I’ve had considerably more sexual encounters with women than with men, and find the female form much more sexually pleasing to look at than the male form, I don’t like women.  At all.  I’m actually extremely predatory towards women, do not retain female friendships, and have only sustained one relationship with a woman a long time ago…which was not overtly sexual, nor well defined as committed.  I only allow myself to be emotionally vulnerable with men, have only been in dedicated relationships with men, and even though I’m easily sexually aroused by women, only psychologically desperately crave cock.  Due to the creeping intensity of violence I display sexually towards women, and a general move towards a more stable relationship structure, my husband and I have agreed to close this chapter.  I am not bisexual, I am not polyamorous, and I have not been coerced in any fashion whatsoever into making this delineation.  I am a very common variety, comfortably reformed, monogamous straight girl with some dangerous anger issues.
4. I have no desire to procreate.  None.  Cum inside me?  Yes.  Love the sensation.  Brutalize my pussy?  Absolutely.  Couldn’t live happily without some pain.  Bear and raise offspring?  Not on your life.  People always told me I’d change my mind.  People still tell me I’ll change my mind.  No.  I won’t.  I gave myself a very comfortable duration of time to consider it.  If the desire surfaced, and I wasn’t in a suitable relationship, I went as far as to identify someone with an attractive genetic makeup and discussed with him my intentions to use him for the express purpose of creating a baby.  The desire didn’t and hasn’t surfaced, and I’ve passed on a few potentially healthy relationships because of my lack of interest.
5. I am not my job, and separating myself from my profession gets easier every day.

Bailey

She’s worth it.

Brugada

After wasting most of my paid vacation getting an updated diagnosis on my…genetic inferiority, I’ve been referred to a psychiatrist

to help me process the news.

Instead, I got into a really big fight about how I don’t need to be coddled that prompted me to drive 300 miles away to think.

Alone.

I once had a psychotherapist who told me I was in a toxic relationship that would only get worse, because our intellectual inequality would grow into resentment.

I ended up stiffing him $300 after he signed a piece of paper stating I was mentally fit…even though he was right.

The first time something came up in the hard science that wasn’t normal, I was participating in a case study for treatment resistant mental illness, and I was given some novel diagnoses upon being dropped from the study.  When I turned down the monetary compensation for my participation, the head psychiatrist offered to continue working with me pro bono.

I declined.

Sometimes, I like to bitch about my life…just to bitch.  Just so I don’t have to hold onto it.

3am

I don’t see this time of day much anymore with a traditional 9-5, which is actually a 7-6, but for all intents and purposes is a traditional 9-5.  Living with another being also infuses a little more regularity to my sleeping habits, rough as they still might be.

Tonight, I can’t sleep.

My bath water has gone cold, I need to pee, and my skin has long since puckered with the oversoak, but I refuse to vacate my inferior, old, half sized tub.

Also, my battery life is rapidly dwindling from 7%.

When the sun comes up, I get to pick through the yard for shards of broken glass before they have a chance to catch dog paws, because I lost my fucking temper earlier in what has become a long night.

Maybe someday, I’ll get the majority of my shit together, but right now, I’m just trying not to lose it.

I see we’ve changed the format again.

I’m a creature of habit.

I like things to stay the way I’ve had them established for quite some time.

This makes me old and close minded, so I struggle to adapt.

Fine.  I have begrudgingly accepted the automatic double spacing, but I don’t like this.

Fine.  I will work with the new layout.  Blogging is an antiquated medium anyway, especially considering I’m not touting any particular theme or gimmick.

I just like to have this little space set aside to…waste, mostly.  Now, it’s all fucked up, and I…well, I need time to adjust.

The Long Overdue Conversation

I’m going to do whatever the fuck I want
and you’re not going to successfully tell me any differently.

I eat a lot of shit
outside of my little domain
but even out there
I’m a boss

so fuck off.

I’m going to do what I want.

I’m going to fuck who I like.
I’m going to leave dirty dishes in the sink
and sleep during my time off.
I’m going to play fetch with the dog in the house
and I’m going to ignore when my family calls.

I’m going to eat ice cream for breakfast sometimes
and I may not work out at all this week.

I’m going to leave unfinished projects lying around
and I’m going to have plants growing under a light where
convention dictates a dining table should be.

I might not sweep up the dog hair each day
and maybe I won’t make the bed.

Cook your own dinner
and buy your own clothes
and shave your own hair
because I’m not shaving mine.

I don’t feel like doing the laundry right now
and I’m too tired to give you a massage.
I’ll read when I want.
I’ll eat when I want.
I’ll sleep when I want.
I’ll fuck when I want.

Surely this conversation was long overdue, but it’s done wonders for my overall mood.
Last time I checked, I’m not kept; and unless I am

fuck off.

Sadness Totem

I’m a realist.

Scratch that.  I’m a nihilist, but I tend to keep it to myself.  I don’t look down on the people closest to me who believe in God, and I don’t have any interest in expressing or defending my differing views.

I wholeheartedly don’t care.

Straying from spiritual beliefs, I’m not even a strong advocate for the soft sciences, but admitting such a stance renders a heavily inked stamp on the forehead that I’m ignorant.

Probably.  I don’t recall claiming to be a humanist.  At least I’m not the shade of ignorant that denies history; the arithmetic of social science.

Regardless, I still think about you.  My mind still turns to memories of you while I sleep, and my waking mind clings.

After all this fucking time, I still miss you and wish that I had done things differently to keep you in my life in whatever small roll you were willing to take. I suppose it’s a harbored regret of mine…the time I wasted. I’ve come to view you as my sadness totem.

Not you.

Remembering how I felt about you, and acknowledging that it still hurts me to openly love my memories. To still mistake it for loving you. I want to proclaim that I still love you, but I know it’s not true. I have no idea who you are now. I had very little real idea then. I know that I still wish the best for you; that real you who exists entirely separate from the encapsulation of my warped perceptions of you.

I can still say I miss your presence in my life, even if I can’t say I love you.

It used to disorient me; this deep, hopeless desire to do things differently…to change what’s already done and gone…to keep what I can’t have. Never had.

Never had.

I would wake up in the past, but my mind is wired to be so fucking practical that it would never let me stay. No. I have real obligations that drag me back to the present and my own reality, but in the beginning when the past wasn’t so distant…I spent hours awake in a time and place that wasn’t real.

I was very, very sick…but only in retrospect.

I used to have to fight with myself to reestablish reality. I don’t really know how to explain it. I would go to sleep and wake up reset to the wrong place and time or something would set me off…a smell or a series of sounds…or a specific temperature on the breeze. It was kind of like that moment we’ve all had when we’re so used to going to sleep in our own bed and then happen to wake up somewhere else like a friend’s house or a hotel and it takes a second or two to remember and reorient ourselves…but I would sit in that moment much longer, and I knew where I was because I’d been there before and still desperately wanted to be there.

Over and over.

It wasn’t always the same moment where my mind would reset, but it was always related to you. Even when my rational thoughts would set to work and bring me back…I had access to where my mind had just been, and I wanted to stay, but instead of feeling like I was living it, it was stale and stagnant and separate again like standard memories are.

A huge part of me wanted to be sick

and stay sick

and the process of coming out of it was so fucking immensely crushing every time. There were days I couldn’t work. I remember one day I called out, and my boss asked me if everything was all right. He thought someone in my family had died. There were days I cried through work. There were days I’d drive three hundred miles away and snap back into the present moment freezing cold sitting in the dark at a gravel pullout staring at a river I’d never seen before…and I’d just…find my way back to where ever I happened to be living at the time.

What else was I going to do? I accepted the moments my mind offered as reality, but they oscillated and conflicted.

I kept you. I kept you in my life for a long time, and you let me. Not the way I wanted, but you were there.

I have no idea what you saw from the clear side of me losing my fucking mind. I know I shared it. I know I did, because I bound you up on both sides and blurred that line…and you seemed so frustrated with me. You cut our interactions down to nothing.

You hung up on me.

That’s when I knew, the night I couldn’t even talk, but I called…and you were really there, and then just as quickly registered as upset, angry and…gone.

Letting you go has been the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. I don’t want to bother you. The real you. I don’t want to dwell in delusions that distort and replace you. I don’t want to forget the brief and simple memories I have from a long fucking time ago relating to a shared moment in the past with you.

I’m sorry.

When Dennis drunkenly said you seemed like a cool dude one night while we were all painting color fields in the painting studio, something sad and lost in me blipped from my mind and displaced onto you.

The Common Cold

I sleep a lot and want to be left alone, but I’m an adult with legitimate obligations both at work and at home.
I neglect what I can, so the dishes and the laundry pile up, and I live in a house without heat.

I still feed the dog, and the dragon, and the bird, and sometimes the boy
but most of the time, I just want to be left alone.

Maybe part of it is that I dropped the job where I could just put my head down and work alone all day
but if I’m honest with myself, I haven’t had that job for years
because training others doesn’t allow for that level of solitude
and I’ve been fucking training others to do shit I really don’t care much about for…

five years.

At least I’m being paid better for my managerial tasks now, and I don’t have to deal with my former boss anymore.

It’s not really any singular thing that’s causing me problems.
It’s not even the conglomeration of all my problems that’s fucking me up.

It would help to have better support, but honestly…I don’t know what to ask for in that regard.
Distractions are nice
until they’re not.

I moved to be alone.
I like being alone.

Happy Birthday, Mom. Sorry your day always hits on the lowest point in my brain disease cycle.

2016

In below freezing conditions, I hauled an old 50 gallon aquarium out onto my front stoop and started to apply a thick coat of paint stripper to the outside of the glass.  The dog stayed in my periphery, and when she wandered off a little too far, I gave a whistle.

I eavesdropped on the neighbors talking about the Carolina Panthers, and I couldn’t have cared less.  At least it wasn’t another drug transaction.  The hub for that burned to the ground a few weeks ago.  There’s no admitting it to my coworkers, but I’m fucking glad that hipster shit hole now sits vacant and condemned.

I took a break, because I couldn’t feel my toes, got myself off a few times and went back to work scraping paint.

Last year was probably one of the hardest years for me.

I felt like I made one of the biggest career mistakes ever, because I absolutely hated my new boss.  I still fucking hate her, but she’s gone now…and I’m the boss.  I make a significant amount more than I did, or still would, if I hadn’t made the change, and I was already doing the job before the bitch left anyway, so…not much of a change.  I can deal with being middle management.  It enabled me to finally quit my safety net job, which gives me much relished time to scrape paint off of fish tanks.

I’m not going to complain about how shitty a lot of mundane things are, because I finally don’t have to work two jobs that I hated with every fiber of my being…and I like having a dog.

Don’t fuck me over, 2016.

Fuck 2015

I know it’s not your fault that some fucking kid backed into you and filed a hit and run claim against you that took half the year and several grand to dismiss.  I’m the one who was rude to the cop who harassed me out of his jurisdiction.  I demanded the lawyer.  I made you go to court.  You wouldn’t have even been there if I hadn’t asked you to fix the P-trap on the sink.

I know it’s not your fault that a month later, you were run down on our street with five witnesses, none of which had the sense to get a plate number.  It cost $8000 with your insurance.  You lost a month of work, opted not to have surgery, and you’re still not even close to 100%.  I had to keep my second job for a year longer than I wanted to have to work it.  I’m still dealing with the hospital payment plans, and I fucking hate dealing with the bills.  I know you give me money, but I fucking hate it.

It’s not your fault I’m still paying on back taxes from the past two years and will have to pay the shared responsibility tax this year for making this a legal decision instead of a personal choice.  I proposed to you.  I don’t have insurance.  I don’t make as much as you.  I filled out the W-4s and 1040s.  I fucking hate paperwork and money.

It’s not your fault our house is being held together by black mold, or that the cockroaches from next door are trying to get a foothold here after the drug addled commune got evicted.  Neither of us wants to live here, and I don’t care if you want to drink that reality away.  Just fucking keep it at home.

It is your fault my crayfish is dead, so fuck you for that one.  That was undeniably, pointlessly, and completely your fucking fault.

I’ll only apologize for my parasomnias and the corresponding scar on your back, but I don’t know how to control that shit.

Promoted

My everyday life is a pain in the ass, but I’ve finally exceeded the pay rate I left behind when I moved.

This means I can quit my second job and piece together my neglected personal life.

I no longer have to eat shit every morning, because I’m the boss.  There is already significantly less anger and frustration to displace.  It has been a very long year spent waiting for this opportunity.

A very long year.

I find it irritating that you sneak back into my thoughts as I try to refocus. 

Burn in hell

Burn in hell.  I wish I believed in hell so I could hope for you to spend eternity burning.  Instead, I hope you die a slow, miserable, cancerous death.  Thanks, boss.  I have 12 more days eating your shit and I only work with you 5 too many.  Do your worst…provided you aren’t already.

Dog

“So, what are we going to do if we get evicted?”

Who the fuck cares?  At this point they’re lucky I don’t burn it down out of spite.

My body has started to object to how much physical labor I demand from it daily, and I wish you dead every day.  Just fucking die.

The nights would not be complete without sirens.  It’s such a prominent part of the neighborhood that I can easily tune it out along with the sound of shots fired, and the low musical rumble of car audio base.  At some point having bullet holes–both incoming and outgoing–pepper the walls just becomes part of the decor.

I exaggerate.  There are only four bullet holes, and I screamed when they dropped in.

Sometimes, nice people just need more specific directions to the drug den across the street, three houses to the east, or in the west corner lot next door…depending on demeanor.  That’s fine, but get the fuck off my stoop and be on your way.

Please, don’t loiter in my backyard.  Cut through, but keep moving.  Despite what the fast food fucks sharing the lot line want you to think, this isn’t part of their thoroughfare either.

If getting a dog gets us evicted, when the neighbors can ram their car into our wall without consequence, I’m fine with that.

Believe is or not, my student loan debt isn’t going to dictate my surroundings forever, and an eviction from this wouldn’t fuck up my permanent record enough for me to give a shit.

Now…you said something about a dog?

Well…

I’m sure most of you have given up on peering into my life via this portal by now, as I have been highly inconsistent and increasingly infrequent with posting anything whatsoever.

I have slowly shifted away from heavy reading and incessant writing. This is predominately due to the energy I’ve found necessary to devote to my daily turmoil; a turmoil which has drastically increased in its demand for various forms of fuel from me in order to run relatively smoothly.

I’m currently party to an extremely high maintenance relationship. As I’ve found the most casual relationships an arduous burden in the past, this long term commitment exudes an entirely novel level of dedication for me. The majority of my time has once again been swallowed by the wage wars of working 60+ hours per week in an attempt to survive an IRS audit, monthly bills, and my old constant companionship with my haunting student loans.

I am succeeding with these endeavors, so I can’t honestly apologize for my neglect and failure to maintain a balance with old interests. My behavior is fairly cyclical, so I’m likely to come back to old habits, but my life is boring right now. It is not warranting much reflection or analysis, and while I do still pay attention and take issue with the world around me, I honestly don’t give a shit about engaging in any social discussions.

I simply don’t care what you think about anything. Well, that sounds a little too dismissive…I care, but I’m not particularly interested? I’m interested but not intrigued? Bah…

I just want to look at pretty pictures on my phone while I should be working and pretend my life isn’t what I’ve made it.

Depression

Depression does a lot of damage.

I haven’t come here.  I haven’t felt a need to rely on a publicized internal dialog for a few years.  Well, I either haven’t felt the need or haven’t had the energy to acknowledge the need.  I’ve made a lot of changes but not nearly enough to make much difference.  They are all surface changes.

I’m not where I think I should be, and I want to blame my unstable mental state; but I’ve made the decision repeatedly not to treat it.  I don’t treat it.  I don’t do anything, so using it as a crutch shouldn’t be considered as a viable option either.  Having somebody close enough to see it and bring it to my attention makes me angry, and using that person as a distraction rather than really accepting him into my life is…the best I’ve been able to do.

Sometimes, my mind clears, but I would rather keep it dormant in the mud.  I’ve lost so much of myself.  I’ve shut it all down just to be able to get through the daily grind, and barely get through at that.

It’s not so bad…

Things could be, and have been, a lot worse.

Let’s go with that.

Yeah.  That.

Face Value

We are not friends, and having ever thought otherwise has cost me a lot of time and energy.
You can stop trying to throw that in my face any time now.
Your manipulative shit has no affect anymore, and I’m sorry if that pisses you off
or hurts your feelings.

You married your boss and hit your glass ceiling a long time ago.
A long, long time ago.
That’s not my problem and not my fault; and I didn’t consult you, because you’re not even my fucking boss.
You’re a supervisor, and again; I’m sorry if pointing that out to you hurt your feelings.
It’s not betrayal to discuss my decisions with your husband and his sister without acknowledging you

because let’s be honest

all you were going to do is exactly what you did after you found out anyway.
Being a manipulative bitch is all you can do. You can’t hire and fire. All you can do is make my job harder

Which I’m so shocked that you’re doing, by the way.

Because I really care about the shitty incentive I have to keep caring…which I oddly recall turning down
when your husband offered it to me in the first place.

I don’t give a shit what you do or what you think.

It really shouldn’t be personal at all, because if it was, I wouldn’t even give notice.
I sure as fuck wouldn’t care or keep doing a good job.
You are all petty, pathetic people and deserve to fail for the way you conduct yourselves, but who the fuck cares?
How I feel doesn’t matter.

All that matters is that I addressed what I find unacceptable about the job.
Your family offered no acceptable solutions, so I’m leaving.

That’s it. That’s all that’s applicable here.

Getting a raise at starting wage elsewhere with actual potential to progress,
access to benefits,
and a work environment where I have been and will be treated like a contributing adult

is just icing on the cake for me.

I’m attempting to conduct myself as a professional adult. I recommend you do the same
even though I’ve already lost all respect for you.

You can treat me however the fuck you want for these last…11 days, but I’m leaving.
I’m still leaving.
Don’t make it out like I betrayed you.
You can stop running your ugly mouth.
Don’t treat me like I’m worthless to your business.
Just suck it up and keep on driving that place into the ground without me.

chemical imbalance

Since early adolescence, I have been in and out of the care of many mental health professionals. I have seen counselors, psychotherapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists. I know the key variations delineating these titles. I have been hospitalized both inpatient and outpatient. I have had equally varied diagnoses and treatment regimens over the years both voluntary and involuntary.

When you tell me, “I have a chemical imbalance,” there’s no judgement here. I know that you’re familiar with the system. I recognize the language. I won’t look at you like you’re weak or sick or marred by an inferior genetic makeup.

I cope without treatment. It’s a personal choice that some doctors have supported and others have not. It’s not easy, and I’m certain it’s not always in my best interest. I wish you wouldn’t seek my advice on this, as if what I’ve done is a solution. I don’t know you. You say you don’t want to take your medication anymore and that your doctor advises against changing what has been sustaining your current state for over a decade…so you keep taking it.

I can’t tell you what’s best for you. Why do you want to stop taking your medication? Go back to when you started, and think about how and why you entered the system. Try to remember how your mind worked when it failed you. The things that are missing, the things that don’t work the same way on medication, don’t think about that. Think about the worst moments when your brain tripped every wrong wire. Wrong by your standards. Your mind left you where you didn’t want to be and didn’t leave you with the resources to change that. If you’re properly medicated, you won’t be able to simulate the intensity of those feelings. You might not even have those memories anymore, and the healthy mind wonders why you would want them.

If there’s something in you now that’s missing the worst of your worst…

I deal with my worst, because I don’t think the same way when in treatment. It’s a common gripe with mental health patients,but it bothers me. It bothers me more that, despite this construct trying to accommodate the proclivities of an individual, the whole point of treatment is change. It helps alter the links the mind makes. Even if it’s psychotherapy without any physical or chemical intervention at all, it’s meant to help adjust thought patterns.

I don’t want to do that.

I’m essentially an organic alcoholic: There’s not a problem. This is fine. Fuck you. Except, sure, I can see how you might see this as a problem. I don’t like it either, so it’s a problem. It’s not fine, but still. Fuck you. It’s my problem. You’re fine. Fine, I’m sick. Leave me the fuck alone. Fuck you.

Keep taking your meds. Balance your brain chemistry. There’s always going to be a little bit of dry drunk in there.
Always.

Didn’t they tell you?

It’s a disease.

Adulthood

You don’t deserve most of the things you have.
You didn’t really earn them.
In fact, you’ve forgiven yourself for forcing people like me to shoulder your bullshit
and have even attempted to push my resentment of this mandatory burden off as nothing other than a character flaw I possess.

Yes, I may be flawed, but I own my flaws.

You’re a blind, selfish little pig who continues to cause others to suffer while you wallow in a false sense of satiety.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve forgiven yourself, because the comfort it provides is only important to you.
You really don’t give a shit about anyone except yourself, so why expect the people you fuck over to fucking care about you?

Enjoy your stuff.

the overachievers

I am a typical underachiever, preferring to keep a large amount of my time void of responsibilities and inactive.

Free.

Contrary to this, I have a relatively strong work ethic and find myself climbing when I have no intention to climb.  Working is one thing.  Attempting to get subordinates to work the same way is entirely another.

I dislike people.  I loathe shouldering the responsibilities of and for other people.  In this regard, I am not a leader.

Unlike the grand majority of my peers, and those in the generation following mine, I do not fancy myself a leader.  I do not prize the leadership role.  I have no fucking interest in trying to prod others.  I would much rather paint the fence myself than trick others into doing it for me, because I want to know that the fence is painted to my specifications in the most efficient way possible.  I want the fence painted, painted well, painted fast, and once it is painted, I want everyone else on the other side of the fence.

Go the fuck away.

Promotions are dropped at my feet, because I am a hard worker.  I’m given a task, and I do it as thoroughly and efficiently as possible, and then I come back for another task or I leave.  So, here’s an idea.  Let me work.  I am a worker ant.  Worker ants work.  I like to work, get shit done, and leave.  I have no fucking interest in trying to get others to work instead. 

Work stays at work.  Any time I am not paid for is mine.  All mine.

I do not want to socialize.  I do not care if we like each other or not.  I do not care about who you are or what you do outside of the construct of our intertwined jobs.  This is not my career.  I am not emotionally invested in this.  This does not make me a good candidate to move up in your business.  I do not work for the satisfaction of a job well done.  I do not work for a sense of purpose.  I do not work to contribute to something bigger than me.

I work so that I can sustain my free time.

What I do with my time is my business.  With most of it, I choose to do absolutely nothing.  I don’t need a promotion in order to achieve this free time.  I’m not asking you for a raise.  This isn’t a power play.  I’m telling you I’m fucking leaving, because you don’t understand that your bullshit is eating into my time.  Mine.  My precious free time.

 

 

 

Welcome to the neighborhood.

Conversation I’m not sure I want to have later today:

“Hey coworker I’m on good terms with but don’t care for one way or the other. I know you’re eight months pregnant, but are you missing a pink and blue xanax/morphine cocktail? I only ask because I happened across one in my car, and…well…it’s not mine.”

example

At my heaviest, I weighted 100kg (220lbs).
That was a long time ago.
At my least healthy, I weighed 58kg (128lbs).
That wasn’t quite as long ago, but it was still a long time ago.
I didn’t even want to lose that weight.
It crashed from 81kg (180lbs) in a year and I could see upper ribs
lower ribs
hip bones
It was just as gross as any extra rolls ever were.

I just didn’t fucking care.

My body has been through a lot, and the most unhealthy images are what stick with me.
At either extreme.

It’s a struggle to give a shit.

some sort of subtle shift

I don’t enjoy paying my bills anymore. I would rather take a four mile walk just to avoid doing it. I have been very diligent for the past…lifetime. I’ve paid them promptly and without too much scorn when I was homeless, and I’m not even on the cusp of financial ruin right now. I just don’t want to fucking pay my bills.

I’m still going to pay them. I still do. It’s not like it was ever an enjoyable task. “Enjoy” is the wrong word, but it held a certain sort of gratification. At least, I could tell myself, I was doing something tangible.

Everything gets muddled when I admit I give a shit about things outside of myself. I’m not striving for the same self-centered, albeit self-destructive, things I was a year or two ago. I’m also not convinced I genuinely care about where my life is drifting in lieu of former pursuits, so I’m essentially passively self-destructive at this point.

I know there’s a problem, but I don’t want to fucking deal with it. I don’t want to identify it. I don’t want to put in the work to find a solution. I don’t want to give a shit…

but I give a shit.

What the fuck do you know?

I don’t know shit about shit.
I’m quick to admit it in this kind of confrontation.

Don’t make this about me.

In a pretty direct way, you’re right.
I wasn’t there.
I haven’t lived your life.
I’m not inside your head now.

I honestly don’t know shit about shit.

Is that enough of a reason to push me away?
Do you think you know everything there is to know about me?
Is it fucking necessary to know?

Why is this such a common issue with people?
Hey asshole, we’re all fucking damaged goods.
We’ve all had some kind of dark, ugly shit that pops up from time to time.

Talk about it or don’t.
Lose your shit once in a while, but don’t you fucking take it out on me
Expecting me to internalize it and spit out an airtight solution
to your fucking problems

because I don’t know shit about shit.

Yeah, okay.

There’s nothing quite like waking up at 6:30 to a phone call wondering if it’s morning light or evening glaring in the southern exposure.
Cover for me…without enough notice to wash the vomit out of my hair. Yes, this is the professional edge everybody needs.

On lunch, major transgressions from the night before surface, stare me down, and offer up a dull, empty lack of feeling.
I really thought I’d passed these past…what is this shit anyway?

I know what it is.
I know exactly what the fuck it is.

Fishing around in old wounds looking for a reason not to make an emotional commitment.

Yeah, I still drag the shit around with me that hurts the most, but I really did foolishly think I’d successfully quarantined certain thought patterns that trigger bad habits.

Turns out I don’t trust you, so I fold back into what I know; missteps in trust. Personally historic events illustrating why I shouldn’t invest in unknown variables.

I like knowing that I can still walk away from this and look at it as nothing more than a good time, but that’s not fair, is it?

Don’t write it down.

I promised myself I wouldn’t talk shit about the person who has been taking up almost all of my time and energy for the past year and a half. It’s a promise that has resulted in stilted conversation, long periods of silence, and near madness.

Sorry to disappoint.

Landmarks

I don’t remember the first time.
I think it was in the back seat of my childhood best friend’s car…after I knew she wasn’t my friend anymore.

A handful are buried in my parents’ backyard.

Once in the student union.

Today on my front stoop while listening to a deal go down next door.

Direct Misstep

It’s like looking back across a void where a schism in my mind fractured my thoughts.
I was completely this person I see the remnants of through scraps of paper and electronic blips.
I was wholeheartedly, genuinely this person, and I left this trail for myself.
I remember being there and the thoughts that left this residue, but even though I can identify quite clearly that it was me…

Somehow, it wasn’t.
Somehow, there’s a disconnect.
Somehow, they are more the memories of something read than something lived first hand.

I cannot crawl back into any particular past mindset.
I only see it from my current perspective as a neutral bystander.

That almost sounds normal
or so far from normal it’s dissociative properties are sociopathic.

I suppose it depends on which who-whom is asked.
As if anybody cares.

Even when people change, they know who they used to be from a first hand perspective.
Even people who distance themselves from some former way of being retain knowledge and skill sets from their past experiences.

Maybe I’ve merely forgotten a great many things.

Clearly I’ve been distracted
Preoccupied

Dealing with subzero temperatures without heat

Heavily medicated

Without words.

General Update

You’ve had someone holding your hand
through your entire life.

I don’t know anymore.

Plans are made to be broken
backs and promises.

Rabbits

You keep killing the rabbits
but everyone trusts you.

I don’t like that.

I don’t want to hurt you, but you leave me very few alternatives.
What would I be like if I didn’t express my road rage?

I paid most of the bills late this month.

I like ice cream.

I care about the rabbits, and that’s my downfall.
They don’t talk to me.
We’re not friends.

There simply is no trusting you.

At this rate…

I guess I’ll be looking forward to that 1% tax fee tacked onto 2014.

Huh

Thank you for the nod that you’re still alive.  Oddly enough, I still care quite a bit.

—

 

You were starting to look like my uncle

and act like him

and I didn’t want to be in a relationship with my uncle.

 

I’m sorry, but it just made shit weird for me.

You’ll find somebody, or you’ll go batshit crazy.

Just, please, don’t stalk me.

 

Please.

 

—

 

I do still love you.

I never want to see or hear from you again, but…yeah.

I want you to be okay.

I want you to find someone that will make you happy.

 

You chose your family.

I can’t begrudge you that.

I couldn’t live with that decision, because your family fucking hated me…

 

It had so little to do with anything else.

 

—

 

It’s funny, but I’ve almost completely extracted myself from that toxic environment I found myself mired in for eight years.

It’s been eight fucking years, and I’m still not okay.

I walk off my job swearing and not giving a shit whether I’ll have the job tomorrow.

I fight with inanimate objects and expect to win.

 

But I lose.

 

I’m still a loser.

 

It’s okay

 

—

 

You and your husband are the biggest fucking losers I’ve ever met.

That you get defensive about being called out on it just reaffirms how fucking miserably insecure you are.

You don’t have anything on me, and even if you did, why would I care?

 

You’re nobody.

 

Just like me.

 

I’m going to go make a cheesecake

and lasagna

and garlic bread

even though I’ve been living off of oatmeal and have no intention of eating any of what I make today

 

because

 

It’s not about me.

Don’t make it about me.

Boris…taking a nap.

shrug

I have no inclination to write lately.
As it turns out, I’m…happy?

Yes, happy.

Not just happy, morning sex happy.

sigh

Dave’s a great guy.

When it’s three in the morning, I don’t want to hear about how fucking amazing it is hanging out with Dave.
Fuck Dave.
If you’d rather expound upon Dave’s brilliance in the drunken hours of the morning than talk to me at a normal time, fucking hang out with Dave.
Hang out with him exclusively for the rest of the goddamned week, because I don’t fucking want to hear about you and Dave.
Dave
Dave
Davie what a crock of shit.

Fuck you.

Road Trip

Bus ticket one way:  $250.

Pass.

Plane ticket one way: $358 with a two day wait.

Pass.

Two days off to rescue your stranded ass…

$120 round trip.

Yeah, you fucking owe me.

I drove 16 hours straight, took a two hour nap, turned around and came back.  You.  Made.  Me.  Drive.  Through.  Fucking.  Indiana.

Twice.

when the feeling strikes

I’m going to go buy paint after midnight on a Friday morning. Sure. Why not? What you think is a national spectacle is a fucking joke.

Start Small

You said I could quit today.
Wait.
But if I really wanted to.

If this is what I need to do.

I won’t.
But I do want to.

I’m sick of humoring people
who genuinely think
“There really is something to that
whole
2012 thing.”

Even though it’s 2013.

I’m sick of explaining your taxes
and your insurance policies
when it’s all written out for you.

It’s all right there.

I’m reading the same papers you are.

I don’t want to manage people.
I don’t want to train.
I don’t like the high turnover.

I’ll stay, but I’ve pushed it to the back burner.

Welcome home.

Girls?

Going through some business related bullshit, it has occurred to me that I have absolutely not a single platonic, non-work related female acquaintance.

I guess it’s not really that surprising considering I only have 2.5 “friends” and they just happen to be male.

Hmm…I’ll have to be creative with this nonsense.

Sorry

Long distance “relationships” are a waste of time for me.

It would have been a lot easier.

The trinket on my light table is more than a month’s rent.
I’ve picked it up twice.
My boss is more interested in it than I am right now
and I researched it for over five years.

I”m not wearing my own underwear, and it’s one in the morning.
Women are considered an exception to the rule.
You shout at televised sporting events in your room
with girls I’m supposed to be jealous of

and all I keep thinking about is trying to find a new way not to think about anything.

Why don’t you want to fuck me?
Why don’t you want me to fuck anyone?
Why do you want me to think about you fucking other people?

Who the fuck have I become?

I hate my bank.

I hated my credit union, so I switched to a bank, and now I hate my bank.

This is one small thing I miss about the small town where I grew up; the little state bank still residing there.

something like productivity

I despise junk science
and the people who uphold it.

At 10:30 every night an alarm sounds.

I organized crayons today
separating off brand and naked crayons
from Crayola crayons.

I pronounce “crayon” as “cran”
because of the regional dialect of my youth
not ignorance.

During the routine maintenance on my car today
the $40 service charge ballooned tenfold
and I had to make small talk about a collegiate sports team
I don’t care about.

The shirt was free.

I’m obligated to prepare for your arrival tonight
even though I work early in the morning tomorrow
but I can hammer nails into the walls after midnight

because I don’t have to share them with people who sleep.

I was there, too.

Exactly what kind of fence have I erected in my life?
Tell me again with that ever scrutinizing, perfect perspective.

He wore the same suit everyday, even after we knew he was unemployed for over a month.
He would wander up to the gas station to buy a 40, and he chose you, because you had access to a car.

You know that now, right?

He told me in the end, “I just want you to know I’ve never done heroin in my life,” even though I repeatedly tried to cut off the conversation by telling him I didn’t care, wasn’t interested, it didn’t concern me, and it was none of my business what he did or did not do.

He really wanted me to know.
He hated that I gave my time and consideration to a fuck up like you with a stand up guy like him right there.

You.

I sought you out.
I stayed with you in the pile of cans you passed out in next to your rotting mattress and fetid takeout containers.

With the carpet of roaches.

You always drank yourself stupid with him and told him he was so much better than the degradation we were all experiencing, but what you failed to see was that he wanted to be there.
He wasn’t going through a rough time working his ass off to improve with his dress shoes tapping up an optimists tune.
He wasn’t beaten into submission like half the washed up dropouts crawling through the halls.

I don’t think I need to clarify how I felt about him
or you.

I don’t remember anything.

The photos from when you came out are tucked away on this hard drive
buried four times over under false headings and hidden files.

I thought I deleted them, but I went through the trouble of transferring them multiple times.
Four times.

It’s not true that I don’t remember. It’s not even true that I don’t want to remember.
I don’t want to admit to myself what I did to you, and I’ve never dealt with it.
Here I am instead, ruining someone else’s life.

We threw pennies into the river from the bridge on Capitol.

I went back alone over a year later searching for them, so I could hold something real…just to convince myself of something real.

simple perks of being alone in a singular space I can finally call my own

Yeah, I still have to work my ass off almost everyday to keep it, but

I get to sleep when I want, eat what I want, listen to what I want
as loud as I want.
I can dance the way I want, naked in the kitchen if I want.
I can put whatever I want on the walls.
I can fill the place with plants and books.
I can talk to my bird, and ignore all phone calls and knocks on the door.

This house is my world.

5 years and 4 months

I am five years and four months away from being completely debt free.
That’s three years behind schedule, because I couldn’t tolerate working 80 hours a week.

You think I’m more responsible than you, because I’ve enveloped my debt in good credit,
but I’m not.

A third of my debt is from one fuck up; one three month stretch of time
when I really should have changed my mind instead of hesitating.
Maybe I could have saved a lot more than money.
An additional several thousand dollars in interest and three years of my life are from a single move.

I’m impulsive and neurotic…and I don’t always take care of myself.

You work harder than me.
You make more money.
You care a hell of a lot more than I do.

I just pay my bills.

You actually have significantly fewer debts to default on than I do.
I’m trying to help you.

In seven years, creditors will lend you whatever you want, and in five years and four months…
I might consider myself a responsible adult.

Good as new.

I was prompted to fix your malfunctioning game console.
Fine.
“Fixing” this thing included dissecting the box, killing the roaches, cleaning up the bug shit, and reassembling.
…and, yes, I did scream like a girl when I opened the fucker up.

I just saved you a lot of money.
Invest in an exterminator.

morning sickness

I don’t know how to find you anymore, and that’s probably for the best.
Sometimes I still think about you, but it’s not consumptive anymore.

I confused Tolstoy with Dostoevsky last night and lost a bet

You work harder than I do, but you haven’t brushed your teeth in at least three days.

I used to knock on a stranger’s door every day
several times a day
until she didn’t feel like a stranger anymore
even though she never answered.

It was a compulsion.

There are still half naked pictures of you here from ten years ago
frozen in pixels.

We’re getting so old now.

I don’t wake up wishing you were someone else.
After I drop you off, I want to go back to sleep,

but I can’t.

cocaine hammock

Sometimes, I look at the $550 painting on the wall by the front door, and I remember the night I bought it from a fidgety former classmate.
Last night, while pulling sequins off of fabric to make a clear passage for a line of thread, I briefly thought I might be something like happy.
Rudy, the new bird, came down to see what I was doing.
I adopted him, because I thought I could help him with his feather plucking habit.
He’s a few years younger than me.

You’re getting your shit together, and I should do the same.

I had to forcibly remove you from this house.
Every weekend.
Every little bit of money.
Every fucking chance you got…

I’m not wrong.

I’m sorry, and I feel like shit, but I’m not wrong.

“You ruined him.”

You tell me that I’m the most responsible person you have ever met in your entire life.
You tell me that I’m the best thing that has ever happened to you and that I’m out of your league.
You owe me everything.

I just want you to be quiet.
Shut up, and you can stay.

Yesterday, you told me that I ruined the man across the street.
And
Maybe I did.
That poor bastard thought…what you think.

That I’m something amazing.

He’s gained a lot of weight and given up on his appearance all together now, you told me.
You’re worried about his daughter.
You said it’s because he considered me his last chance.

For what?

You still feel like you won something.
He acts like he lost something.

I’m not even half here for you, and I never even gave the impression that I was there for him.
You’re both wrong.

I feel bad for the guy regardless of whether I had anything to do with his downfall, but I feel worse about what I’ve done to you…because I know you love me.
I know you love me, and as much as I want to, I can’t say the same shit to you that someone I really loved had to tell me.

I just need you be quiet right now.

General Update

I have a managerial position now
and a significant other.

I have a house
and a car title in my own name.

I have withdrawn from therapy
and feel more alone than ever.

The writing left a long time ago

with you.

Prison Colony

She has track marks running up and down both arms
and she’s proud of them.

You’re fucking a 50-year-old gutter whore
and think you’re King Shit.

Unfortunately, I know you’re thinking about me.
I might be the only one here she hasn’t slept with already.

He’s been stalking my every move
since the day I showed up.

You’re a shitty fucking drunk
and if you can’t learn to hold your liquor

I recommend you stick with beer.

I’m confident I’m the only cunt here
who hasn’t felt the burn of cheap drugs
or gonorrhea.

Yes, I’m fucking better than you.
Damn right I am.
Hell yeah, I’m fucking judging you.

You bring this shit into my house.
You threaten my safety.
You want to fuck away your life that’s fine, but you’re not fucking up mine.

Are you having a good time now that my room has become locked storage, and I sleep in the fucking woods?

Like I give a damn.
My lease is finally up this month.

I’m back to collect my things and get the fuck out.
That’s it.
That’s all.
Stay the fuck away from me.

conversations

He had already asked me the question before, but he stopped me after I unlocked the front door and before I could open it to slip in quietly. Maybe he forgot that we’d had the conversation about a month ago…or was it two?
Yes, what exactly is wrong with me, anyway?
That was not his question.
At least
Not in so many words.
In his subsequent, cheer-up, speech he let an odd sentence drop:

“I’ve tried being depressed,” and of course he carried on with whatever he was trying to say, although I didn’t hear much after that.
My mind got stuck on this phrase.
I think he meant that he’s been unhappy before.
I find it impossible to fathom anyone attempting to be depressed.
It’s not like it’s fun or anything.
It’s not an act or modifiable behavior.
It’s not an activity.

I’ve tried killing myself.
I’ve tried drowning out the malaise.
I’ve tried frozen yogurt at the strip mall up the road.

Okay.

But, “I’ve tried being depressed”?

Interesting.
I suppose it’s no different from saying, “Ive tried being happy.”
Although, happiness is not necessarily measured by duration, whereas depression does carry that qualifier.
Well, psychiatric major depression does, at any rate.

“I’ve tried being depressed.”

Instead of stating outright that this sentiment confused me, I hung back and let the conversation continue however he saw fit.
After all, he did initiate the exchange…or did I?
Shit.
I’m the one who said hello, but I also say hello to the heroin addict two doors down, and my stalker across the way.
I even say hello to the people I live with when in actuality, I would much rather sucker punch them for invading my space.

This particular man is different.
He says odd things like, “I’m not a creep or nothin’,” and “I’ve tried being depressed.”
He sits on my steps and smokes, drinks, gossips, and humors the neighborhood children with a benign fatherlike charm that’s incredibly rare.

But while he has tried being depressed and found it cumbersome, perhaps due to its chemical nature; I have tried being happy and found the whole ordeal fruitlessly exhausting, most likely because I’ve failed.

At this impasse, he offered a suggestion for a quiet, isolated spot for me to read that’s within walking distance.

I considered it a thoughtful gesture, canceling out any awkward statements, and making me happy to have said hello and waded through the uncomfortable question of why I look like I’m always having a really rough day.

Life is kicking my ass, but it sure is beautiful.

Empty

I’m afraid of disappointing anyone with a genuine interest in getting to know me.

I’m timid
inexperienced
and lack confidence.

I have nothing to offer.

Please…just let me be miserable alone.

I can’t be your girlfriend or your wife or your best friend or your casual friend with benefits.

I can be a whore.
I can fuck you without any feelings invested.

I don’t want to be a whore.

Fuck

What was actually said, and what was a creation of stress?
There is no way to verify without confrontation.

Several new memories have no basis in reality.
The whole conversation could have been fabricated.

I hate nights like this, balancing on the edge between coherent
and certifiably fucked.

It’s also begrudgingly evident that I still miss you entirely too much.

Go away, little girl.

Yeti’s Jersey girlfriend has some sort of cat fight complex. She seems to be convinced that I’m a sexual rival here to steal her boyfriend.

Kid, I promise, I have no interest in your fast food devouring, seven foot, hairy monster. By all means, have all the vanilla sex punctuated with, “Oh shit,” and hoard all that shitty lovey-dovey “music” he plays for yourself.

I just say hello to be civil where I live. I folded his underwear because he left it in the washing machine, and I didn’t notice until I took my clothes out of the dryer. What was I supposed to do with it? I have no use for boxer briefs. And yes…I’m openly curious as to what kind of creature doesn’t even poke his head out of his door if he’s home when the water heater explodes. What if he had been the only one home? Hey, mister I’m a genius computer science musician, I have a college degree, too. The difference between you and me is that I give a shit when the front door is left wide open or there’s an inch of water covering the entire hallway floor.

Keep him.

Leave me out of it.

I just live here, and by the way, I moved in first.

He was upset about the tree, and when I asked him why, he told me about benzene in the water
Exxon and Chevron and “The State.”
All non-sequitur ramblings with naught to do with paper.

Republican doctor.
Republican boss.
Republican plumber.
Republican stalker.

I shut the window and took a cold shower.

I have to unlock the door and turn on the light in the hall.

I must dig a tunnel out through the burning leaves.
What year is this?
The ground has been soaking for two days. It has been two days since you were coherent.
I’ve stopped counting.
It takes 30 seconds of fuzzy math to determine that you’re disturbingly ill-informed.
The cat attacked me and ran away.
I didn’t recognize the eyes.

It wasn’t Casper.

She was crying, but I don’t think it was because her tooth hurt.
I didn’t know what to do, and it felt terrible to watch her cry.

The wind will carry away the residue of bad dreams with gusts to knock me down.
The ground is cold and wet.
It sinks with a slosh with my weight.

I must tunnel out through the water.

…

…

Wait for the world to freeze.

what my brain is doing

It is giving me frequent, incapacitating headaches
heightened insomnia
anorgasmia
severely reduced physical stamina and chronic muscle fatigue
heart palpitations and nausea.

My short-term memory has improved, and my mood has leveled slightly.

My brain is mad at me and having difficulty adjusting to my recent decisions.
Be patient.
Inpatient ECT waits just around the corner.

sleep

I can hear you breathing through the floorboards
four years from where I rest
edging the water out as the cavities collapse
and the roof comes down on our heads.

Outpatient Circle Tapes

I’ve been avoiding all of the people where I live as if they all have an airborne contagion, and I’ve been successful.
Someone blindsided me with a handful of CDs at work, however. We refer to this antiquated storage medium as the circle tape.

Strange creatures.

check doublecheck

Giving Trainspotting another look for some reason…

I think I first watched it while still in high school.
All I could remember from the first viewing to the second was the bathroom suppository scene.
I’m fairly certain, my second viewing was as a freshman in college.
I was somewhat indifferent to it, or maybe I didn’t like it.
I read the book, decided I didn’t like it, and forgot everything but the dialect.
Late in college, someone I liked and respected recommended the title.
I couldn’t remember anything about it except that I’d decided somewhere along the way that I didn’t like it.
I picked up the book in the library about a year later while browsing.

I don’t know why I just rewatched the movie.
I’m not sure why I decided that I didn’t like it years ago.
Maybe I identified with the character, Tommy.
Maybe I lumped it in with shit like Requiem for a Dream and American Beauty.

Sigh…maybe, I still identify with the character, Tommy. I’m just a little further along in the storyline now.
I won’t remember later.

—

There was a dog at the bottom of the steps a few weeks ago, and I thought I was losing my mind.
I listened to the dog and the sound of someone breathing
thinking
at the bottom of my steps.
I didn’t go outside.
I didn’t want to know if they were really there.
I was afraid they wouldn’t be.
I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle opening my door and finding emptiness.

There was a man sitting at the bottom of my steps with a dog that wasn’t his.
He was concerned about the dog and contemplating what to do.
He sat out there with the dog for most of the night, and I sat listening.

A few nights ago, I woke up to pounding on the door.
Pounding followed by shouting.
Pounding followed by shouting followed by near silence
with a man sitting on the bottom of my steps
thinking
without a dog.

It wasn’t you.
I’ll never see or hear from you again.

Evidently, my mind is having an extremely hard time getting over that.
There was a dog, however, and there’s still a man

sitting at the bottom of my steps

thinking.

Aluminium

Americans do not call it aluminium, but the rest of the world does.

The crazy cat lady pronounced, “It’s illegal to take those cans!”
She should know better.
It is not.
“Contact your property manager,” was all the man offered in response.
He took my cans away.

I bring the cans home from work once a week, and I put them in the recycling bins where I live.
I fill the bins to the brim.
I would collect them and take them in for the deposit myself, but I have nowhere to store them without the roaches finding out.
I bring the cans home, because no one else where I work is willing to shoulder the minor inconvenience.
Only cardboard is recycled there.

I do not mind the can collectors.
Aluminum is very easily recycled, and very difficult to mine.
That is why a deposit is still offered for its safe return to the recycling facilities.

I wonder what made the crazy cat lady so territorial.
She does not collect the cans.
If she did, I would simply hand them to her every week.

Take a Hint

You are a stalker.
When I don’t want to come home from work, because I dread the thought that you’ll be at the bottom of my steps…
When I consider parking somewhere other than our designated parking lot so that you can’t so easily monitor my days off…
When I sit in the dark, because I don’t want to turn on my lights and advertise that I’m here…
When I have to lock the door to my room, because my shitty housemate invites you into the common area…
When you physically block the bottom of the stairs so that I’m unable to leave my dwelling without acknowledging you…
When you make me late for work, because you won’t get the fuck out of my way…
When you call me while I’m at work…
When you comment about me to your testosterone saturated buddies outside my place as if you know a damned thing about me…
You are a fucking stalker, and it is not okay.

Leave me the fuck alone.

I’m not now, and never will be, interested in you.
I have given you no indication beyond an initial “date” that I’m even remotely interested, and that outing was coerced.
That outing was a mid-day disaster with no physical contact whatsoever.
You have never touched me, even in the most casual sense.
You will never touch me without me breaking bones in response.
I don’t want anything to do with you.
I have made that abundantly clear.

You’re outrageously judgmental.
You raised red flags for being controlling in the hour we spent in a public fucking area doing nothing but making small talk.
You’re clingy.
You’re obsessive.
You’re self-centered.
You’re fucking weird.

Stay the fuck away from me.
If you’re conveniently friends with my new housemate, I don’t care.
It’s not okay to bother me in my own goddamned kitchen.
That goes for the new housemate as well.
I fucking can’t stand him just as much.
You’re both creepy fucking weirdos who make me uncomfortable where I live.
Fuck each other.

Stay the fuck away from me.

failing tests

I have an abnormally long QT interval…which essentially means my heart is slow with electrically recharging and prone to arrhythmia.
I’ve been ignoring this freshly gleaned information for the past few days and lack the motivation to start dealing with it now.

You were with me last night for the first time in over a year.
I know better.
I know it wasn’t you waiting at the bottom of my steps, and I know.

I know better.

This morning, I traded my car for a rental that flashes “eco” at me whenever I go over 5 miles per hour.

Tomorrow morning, I will be taking this odd little car to a 3.5 hour evaluation to determine, legitimately, if I might be
bipolar
or schizophrenic.
This will be the fourth and longest evaluation in a recent series.
They’re like hurdles I must jump in order to acquire free, privately funded, medical treatment
complete with blood work, counseling, and (possibly) medication.

Such things are not offered to the uninsured very often.

and so…

I will be relinquishing my car in a few hours.
I didn’t clean it.
I’m beyond caring what anybody thinks.
For all anybody knows by the contents, I do keep a large python in my car
read novels while driving
and sleep in the back under an umbrella.

What difference would it make if it were all true?

I’m still angry about my car.
Even if I could easily afford to pay the insurance deductible
I would still be angry about my car.

To distract myself, I’ve decided that I need visible abs.
I can’t afford to eat, and I certainly can’t afford to drink
so I’ll live on fucking oatmeal for as long as I can tolerate it
and I’ll exercise to receive my allotment of comforting endorphins.

I’m sure it won’t work out very well, although it is improving my atrocious posture.

If you can think of a better way to deal with yet another large financial burden, please, let me know.
The only concession I haven’t made is with this accursed internet access
and aside from becoming a drug mule, I do believe I’ve exhausted most of my options for quick extra sources of income.

I’d prefer not to spend all of my time thinking about the reallocation of money I don’t have
and despite necessity
still fail to desire attaining for its own sake.

No. My aspirations in life have proven exponentially dysfunctional, so what the hell?
Exercise is a free, mind-numbing, time-consuming distraction.

It fits half the criteria for survival anyway.

I don’t want to leave my car with strange people who are going to tear it apart to smooth and paste it back together.
I don’t want to rely on a strange rental car.

I don’t want to pay for this major inconvenience due to some self-centered fuck who was not only shitty enough to run into a parked car in a parking lot in the middle of the fucking day, but so shitty as to take zero responsibility.

Typical.

How is that I’m still angry when I know better than to expect anyone to do the right thing? It’s just not to be expected. It’s not really cynicism generalized towards humanity, or even bitterness over this isolated insignificance. Expectation is just not something to be applied outside of oneself.

It’s insidious…like judgment and hope. Absolutely unavoidable, but untrustworthy, illegitimate and a disdainful harbinger of disappointment and scorn.

I am gaining little to no ground in my efforts to realize my aforementioned dysfunctional aspirations.
Perhaps, it is time for another reassessment of these means to an end. I’m currently afloat in a sea of negativity until I get my mended car back and pay off the corresponding bills, and so…
oatmeal and shuffle pushups (which will kill me) between work and ten cent Mishima novels it will have to be.

This bruise is bigger than I thought it would be.

I guess I should have realized, since I watched my arm bleed
in slow motion
and knew that it wasn’t clotting instantaneously.

The bruise is still bigger than I thought it would be.

—

Your brother once wrote me a citation even though he wasn’t
a police officer.
He was convinced that I stole your pack of cigarettes.
So were you.

It wasn’t that you smoked.
It wasn’t that I didn’t.

It was that you lied to me.

I thought it was funny that your bother would play cop
with a make believe offense
because I had no need or want or motivation to take your cigarettes.
I thought it was funny that he would write out that citation
as if I’d give a shit
but also much more profoundly indicative of how we grew up:

He’s the one that bought them for you…which
uneventful as it was
actually constituted a real crime.

I kept that slip of paper for years.
Years after we stopped speaking.

Eventually, I threw it away, because I don’t like to think about you anymore.
I never enjoyed thinking about you
even when we were close.

I spent a long time hating myself for caring about you,
and sadly,
I did not take that contested pack of Marlboro Lights
even though you both “saw me” do it.

I think about that whenever I’m handed a real slip of paper
from a real police officer.

—

I had a bad day.
It happens.
What made it different than most bad days that I have was that I couldn’t regain my composure.

It slipped.
I had it, and then it was gone.

I’m still pretty sick.
I mean…I still think I care.
I still want to care.

I still want to acknowledge invalid sentiments.
I’m still delusional.

When I’m upset, the same shit surfaces.
It’s comforting, and I cling.

Even though I know there’s nothing.
I know there’s nothing.
I know you’re not there.

I know.

It’s just…It’s so unpleasant.
Can’t I just be sick?
Why won’t my mind just enervate?

Why can’t I just be sick?

Why do I prefer to struggle with a reality that never ceases to upset me?
A reality that provides no satiety.

Reciprocity.

oh yeah?

You don’t have a choice.
You have to.

That’s very comforting.
Thanks.

No one feeds me the, “It will get better,” line.
I wasn’t born with that option.

I keep trying to make it happen for myself

but I’m a miserable fucking failure.

way too much stress

My first impulse is to throw things, break stuff, and ruminate on killing something.
My second is to become uncharacteristically social and sleep with anyone within close range.
Third, eating…eating until throwing up.
Fourth; sedatives, liquor and complete abstention from food, socialization and sex.
Fifth, suicide.

These are my stages of coping that I count out on my hand.

Number five has obviously never been realized. I’ve been told it’s not a solution.
It sure is fucking tempting sometimes.

My eye has been twitching for four days.

Blackouts

My newest housemate bothers me.
I feel like I need to carry mace and my cell phone into my own kitchen.
I lock my door while I’m in my room.

I come home to windows shut
doors unlocked
lights on
and no one home.

He has been here less than a week, and I can’t stand him.

—

I hear the door open
shut
open
shut.

Open.
Shut.

Open.
Shut.

I can’t sleep when I hear the doors opening and closing.
Constantly.
At all hours.

I know he doesn’t lock the door.

I already have two that hang out at the bottom of my steps.
There’s one that wanders over from the next door down
whenever I come out.

“What are you up to?”
“Where are you off to?”

It’s none of your goddamned business, and if you fucking follow me; I will put you in county lockup.

Don’t leave notes on my car.
Don’t knock on my door.
Don’t ask the neighbors about me.
Don’t fucking follow me.

Stop fucking following me.

It’s different when it’s inside.
Where I live.

I don’t want to bump into you every time I leave my room.
I don’t want to fucking talk to you.
I don’t want to see you.
I don’t want to smile and laugh at your inane prattling jokes.
I don’t want to invite you into my room.
I don’t want to suck your cock, and I am not sending mixed signals.

Yes, I live here.
No, I don’t live with you.

Take your “How you doin’?” hungry head to toe to chest assessment of me and shove it up your ass.

I’m so stressed out that I black out.
I’m missing chunks of time.

My dishes were done and there was a single dirty butter knife in the sink.
It took me two hours to realize that I did my dishes and I used that knife, and I only figured it out, because there was peanut butter on the knife and I could recall making toast. I could only recall making toast, because I hate having to use my toaster oven, and I hate having to use my toaster oven, because I hate having a toaster oven. I hate having a toaster oven, because I know I lost my toaster to a fucking asshole who forced me to move out of a reasonably good living situation two years ago. A living situation that has nosedived into this bullshit.

Fuck if I wouldn’t rather be homeless right now.
Stay away from me.
I don’t want to spend my lucid time accounting for gaps in my memory.

I won’t.

Just stay the fuck away from me.

Why you’re an asshole.

It’s 73 degrees outside, so I opened the windows and turned off the air…which we keep at 72.
You not only shut all the windows and turned the air back on, but you moved my shit without asking.

Fuck you.

You just moved in. I cleaned that kitchen and made it functional. I keep it clean. That’s my shit in there. If you think for one second that I’m going to tolerate smoke billowing up from the stove every time I try to boil water and cockroaches everywhere because you’re a fucking slovenly asshole, you’ve got another thing coming, buddy.

Fuck you.

I live here, and I’m stuck here for five more months. Don’t be an asshole your second day in. Don’t fucking do it.

Sure.

Apparently, by the nuthouse music piping through my phone receiver at the moment, most people do not call their creditors inquiring about mysterious $20 credits on their accounts.

I, however, would like to know why anyone
at all
ever
would give me $20 increments
for nothing
even if it is just a series of unauthorized electronic blips on the screen.

This from the girl currently restructuring her budget to live on little more than oatmeal for the next six months
to pay for a hit and run car dent.

Life is fascinating, isn’t it?

Erotica

You’re not a good writer.
Your fantasies are mundane, and your expression of them is not getting me off.

You should be ashamed of yourself; not for writing smut, but for failing to do it well.

Hit and Run

The new hit and run dent in my car
the THIRD since buying the fucking thing
which I still do not outright own entirely
will cost more that a fucking hysterectomy to fix.

Thanks for denting my car
my parked fucking car in a goddamned parking lot
where I work and will have to dedicate two months full time wages to fixing this bullshit.

I have zero tolerance for irresponsible people.

Zero.

Finally

Making plans to move to a decently sized city that isn’t fucking Chicago…not that I ever lived in Chicago long enough for it to count.
Just long enough to know I have no desire to live there.

Excited.

on the topic of fears

1. Burrowing parasitic insects, like bot flies.
2. Strong water currents such as rip tides and undertows.
3. Babies.
4. Large groups of people who are strange to me but not strangers to each other.
5. Bedbugs.

the flawed rationale

Why I prefer not to drink or get high, and why it has stemmed down into avoiding fast food and caffeine:

I also strive to live off medications that I should very reasonably be expected to take.
Want to take, sometimes personally find myself wanting to take, in fact.
People make very persuasive arguments at times, but in the end the motivation is just not mine.

It’s not in me.

I don’t have a “good” reason, although I do get sick of being asked.

I prefer to live a heavily divided life, because I don’t like people.
I don’t like them close to me.
People are fine so long as they are not an integral part of my life.
I don’t like them showing much interest
or asking a lot of questions.

I find very little comfort in hazing out my sharper thoughts in an attempt to connect with others.
Sometimes, I feel like I need to for the sake of my health, but I enjoy witnessing the caustic things my mind does.
It’s simply who I am.
I’ve never had much desire to fuck up my brain chemistry.
It has always been rather fucked up without outside assistance; although it’s predominately considered fucked up
by outside standards.

I merely tell people now that I’ve done a great many things they inquire about
and simply didn’t like the experiences.

Why?

I don’t know. I have correlating horror stories for most things I avoid, but those aren’t the reasons I avoid doing a lot of things.
They are memories of events that reaffirm that I don’t like people very much.
My aversion to trusting others can be linked to shit that’s happened…but the things that I do and don’t do…

The desire to get a little buzzed just isn’t there.

I don’t look down on people who have that drive.
What grates on my nerves is the insistence that I should do certain things, because they bring the person who’s recommending them pleasure or comfort or relief.
Why? Why? Why do I have to constantly answer your stupid questions about why I’m not like you?
Why do I have to be like you for you to understand me?
Who the fuck asked you to undertake getting to know me anyway?

I can name the day I made the decision not to let other people persuade me anymore, but even before that day, the drive just wasn’t there.

I avoid the things that I’m inclined to abuse, because I have severe problems with the gentlest rebound.
I don’t like to come down.
Maybe no one does, but I can’t even handle a naturally obtained reasonably good day, because the backlash from it is almost unbearable. Do you have any idea how prone to abuse and psychological addiction I am? Because I do.
Even with fundamental shit like food.
The high is never worth what I go through afterward. It has never been worth it. I know it’s not like this for some people. I don’t care if you get shitfaced every single day if that’s what you want to do. I don’t think less of you for it, but I won’t join you.

I can’t.

Even when you mean well for me; even if you’ve seen me functioning and happy because I’ve been doing something, taking something, drinking something…and you just want me to be happy and approachable like that more often, you don’t see what I go through later.

I don’t want you to know.

I don’t want to go through it.
It’s fucking hard.
It’s really fucking hard, so I omit the false highs to curb the real lows.

Self-medicating is not a viable option for someone like me. I can’t just take the Klonopin when I’m actively anxious. I can’t just take one hit. I can’t just have a few beers. I can’t just eat one order of small fries.

I can’t even maintain a normal, loving, healthy relationship
sexual or non.

Understanding why won’t change it.
The desire to start isn’t really there, but when I let you lead…

All it is, is a basic, pathetic fear of the imminent descent.
Please believe me when I say that my aversion isn’t baseless.

What does it take to be beautiful?

Something lodged under the thick skin on the heel of my hand, and I started to pick at it until the flesh sloughed off.
Maybe the debris isn’t even there anymore.

I can’t tell.

Where I work at the moment, the men rate women by numbers.
They make obscene comments about strangers amongst themselves.
I have, yet again, been deemed a non-entity around these boys.

This is how I function best.

I have been termed “smart” and “cultured” as opposed to “beautiful.”

Sometimes, I peek my head out into the soup of happy lives to glance at the beautiful objects of their vulgarity.
I quietly wonder what it takes.
It’s not a desire to emulate the pretty, decorous exterior.
I know those rules.
It’s not envy, although I may sometimes harbor empty aesthetic admiration
or awe.
It’s not even a curiosity about her personality.
I don’t care who she thinks she is.

I go back to working quietly, without comment to my obnoxious coworkers, and I wonder what it takes.

What does it take to seek
desire
accept
demand
objectification
only to go through the motions of rejecting it for a perpetual show and dance?

What sort of mindset does it take to deal with being beautiful with any sense of grace?

If I were to stop lying to myself…

life would look different.

I might stop apologizing into a vacuum.

The chair I’m sitting in is broken.
I accidentally broke it.
It was cheaply made and old.
I bought it when we were together.
This one is mine, but I still have the one I bought for you, too.

I still move with the light blue glass from the night everything shifted.
Why won’t I just let go?

The other night, I let familiar words slip into the dark…but I had to recoil with them.
They had no destination, so I had to take them back.
It hurt a little to do that.

I don’t know how to relate to the world around me.
It’s that much harder when I’m not lying to myself.

patrick

I don’t know how to get rid of Patrick, but I don’t want him around
stealing glances down my shirt
and trying to set something up two months in advance.

I feign niceness.

I do everything advice columnists tell me not to do
and dig my hole deeper.

It’s okay. I can still hit him with the shovel and use his body to climb out.

Patrick has brought about something despite himself.

Resignation; the concession that I was, indeed, delusional the entire time I wanted you to care about me.

The
whole
time.

and nearly three years after…

It appears in retrospect, that I have been very sick for a very long time.
It doesn’t change everything.
It actually doesn’t change anything outside of how I reinterpret the past.

I’m starting to get it now, but I’ve got this new
very real
problem now
and his name is Patrick.

Make him go away.

Alpha beta

I want you to tie me up and take out all of your frustrations on me. Can you tell when you’re talking to me? Can you see that while you’re making conversation my mind has stopped short and veered off?
Your temper is your most attractive feature, or maybe it’s your seething control over it.
I want to see it. I want to see you lose it.

You probably pretend to be a well balanced person. In fact, I know you’re a relatively nice guy. Maybe you’re a caring, almost selfless, lover with that monogamous best friend/soul mate mentality, and that’s all fine if true, but that’s not what I see or want from you.

I want a rage filled, violent fuck, no strings attached, and then we can go back to this bullshit fluffy back and forth banter if you prefer.

I think it would make our day to day interactions…better

—

I wanted to touch you, which wasn’t that odd to me, but I wanted to kiss you, which isn’t something I’d genuinely experienced before. I wasn’t afraid of becoming emotionally attached; of being vulnerable of getting hurt. I wanted to spend time with you, and get to know you, and be with you, and stay with you, and sleep with you, and love you, and…have children with you, and live that life, with those struggles and commitments and aspirations and truly fulfilling moments shared with you.

I had honestly never felt that before, and I haven’t since.

I didn’t think you were perfect, and I had nothing about you confidently figured out. I couldn’t even expect you to love me back. I just…I found things that I wanted to live for through loving you.

Those things are a part of me now even though you’re not in my life, because you didn’t want me in yours. That’s what makes it so hard to let go.

I can leave you alone, but I don’t know how to stop loving you. I want the very best for you. Only selfishness makes me wish I had mattered; a desire to have been able to offer anything to balance the perpetual reflexivity of…reciprocity.
I guess I just wanted to be happy. You made me want to be happy when I wasn’t…and I wanted you to be happy. I still want you to be happy.
I don’t need to matter anymore.

—

Every time I move, I find out that people think I’m attractive for some unknown reason. My personality, however, is not particularly smooth, and I’m not that nice to people…because…well, it turns out, I don’t want to be hit on constantly. I grew up fat and undesirable, and I’m accustomed to that level of invisibility. I don’t dress for attention. I don’t flirt. I’m an extremely simple, straight forward sort of creature, so it’s only the initial move that offers up the information that…oh, the opposite sex deems me fuckable. Then I become extremely avoidant and the knowledge recedes, because dealing with sexual advances is fucking exhausting. I’m not good at it. As quiet and socially aloof as I am, I definitely prefer to be the aggressor. I’ll tell you when I’m interested, I promise; and if that’s not something you like in a girl, we’re not going to get along anyway.

I’m not used to being asked out by nice guys who I have to see on a daily basis. I’m not used to it, and I don’t know what to do when it happens.
Shit, man. I’m not that nice, normal girl next door. I’m not going to cook dinner for you, and give you a massage afterward. I don’t own any perfume or mascara and when I shave hair off, it’s a good indication that I’m going through some major mental garbage that makes a stable relationship impossible. I’m violent and bitter and swing from two extremes in the bedroom that I really just don’t think you can handle…or want to experience. Hell, I can only fake normal for short intervals, and I don’t need the whole neighborhood hearing about which kinks I’ve got where.
I don’t know how to flatly turn you down, because I have to see you every fucking day…but this is not going anywhere, and I will not fuck or be fucked under these circumstance, and I know you don’t want to be “friends” so…tell me how to be the nice girl with this bullshit.

It’s for your own damned good.

—

I overreacted, and that’s an understatement. I’ve only used my new appendage twice, and both times were…pretty fucking disappointing. Yet, I can get myself off just thinking about using it on you.

Terrible disservice to humanity, my misdirected temper.

I hope you’ve found someone to fuck you.

superfluous

Is it odd that I started making my own bow ties to compliment my underwear and then started making my own underwear to match my bow ties?
Or maybe it’s just strange that I go to all the trouble when I rarely wear either?

These are the vapid thoughts that pop up sometimes…