This will likely consist of contradictory, disconnected yet redundant, accusatory, self-indulgent whiny blathering half-truths that only suffice to round out the immensity of the dread, stress, and sadness I’ve felt all day thinking about my life.
I failed another screening. For those counting, that’s 4. My blood pressure read 171/92. I’ve never come close to that number before. After relaxing for 15 minutes, I got it down to 154/78. I went online to learn how to keep your heart rate down. The thing that seemed to work was engaging the core and acting like you had to shit. Upon relaxing, low and behold, my heart rate slowed down. Tensing your body up as if you have to shit does you no other favors.
Studies are me cheating. I’ll be old and echoing how I don’t want to be taken advantage of at a minimum wage anything job again. I hate being recognized with faux-appreciation for working harder and smarter than those around me. I hate sacrificing time to someone else’s bottom line. So I cheat. Or, increasingly it looks like I used to.
Now that I got the land, it’s like there’s been a signal shift. Like I’m not doing enough to profit off of it, whatever’s controlling my body realizes that, and it refuses to let me walk in and out with a cool few thousand dollars anymore. So I’m taking my environment’s advice. I’m going to be out there hand-sheering 5 acres of weeds and digging up roots and digging a hole to burn it all. I’m going to make part of it look presentable and drag out salvaged wood and whatever else I can find to create “anything” in the meantime.
That must be where I belong. Dicking around in a field exhausting myself because I can’t afford the proper equipment. I have no other plan. There’s no other signal. Across all areas of my life, I keep getting told the same story. The best actors in my life get dealt the same kind of misery.
My dad and step mom take care of my grandma, could use $1000 for a couple months, my aunt who has $500,000 cash for a new house and car scolds him for daring to ask her. My uncles use the utilities and eat the food, don’t contribute, for 7 years. They steal my grandma’s house when she dies, live in it rent free, screw the rest of us who were supposed to divide up the sale of the house. Lesson, care for your dying mother, everyone in your life shits on you.
If I hadn’t looked out for people over the last few years, I’d be sitting on an extra 6-8 grand depending on how you want to slice it. Am I big rich baller who just throws money at things and people? Certainly not. So when time comes to make the big purchase and years go by and people can’t pay back debts, you can’t help but feel like your generosity is a recipe for disaster when you had 5 years security, and now it’s a struggle to get back to 6 months ahead.
I was with someone for 5 years and it ended abruptly with the sound of the last fart of a deflated balloon. I’ve watched nearly every one of my friends in long or longer term relationships fight as much every month as we might’ve every year. I’ve played marriage counselor for months if not years for some of these people. I’ve watched people STILL figure it out or fight it out or at the very least recognize and want to protect something good. But someone weasels their way into my goddamn head and makes me beg to give my time, money, and attention to, that’s the situation that’s the hopeless one. Makes sense.
Everything I’ve ever experimented with I’ve done under budget and never gone in debt. Does that bode any confidence in your surrounding family to help support you? Family that can spend thousands and thousands on clothes and weaponry that they literally use to hoard, but not even a small time loan to build a house? Your “family,” your motivated, intelligent, respectful, hard-working, hasn’t become an alcoholic or had a nervous breakdown yet nephews are as dismissable as the poor examples their older cousins have set. Again, makes sense. I’m entitled, after all, I lived with my parents...never, after school while one uncle stayed until his mother died.
You’d think I just wanted to take advantage of people. You’d think I just want money and opportunities so I could...I don’t know...sit around and watch TV all day and brag about how my bills are paid. You’d think I haven’t done everything in my power save literal begging to fund and create and fight back against the amazingly ignorant and depraved atmosphere I know we’re all suffering. You’d think I dropped out of school or worked out my insecurities by picking you apart in hateful ways. You’d think I woke up everyday and prayed to a real God to throw every possible fucking barrier that exists in front of my capacity to just be a functioning basically moral and helpful fucking individual.
OH! I’m reminded that it’s often as well that when I do fuck up, PEOPLE REMEMBER THAT SHIT! Got too drunk? “I mean, I know there was a little heartache, but come on man.” A comment about a night I probably should have been in the hospital given my failure to cope at the time. Was my behavior fucked? Probably somewhat. Should I expect a deferential tone TO ANY FUCKING THING I’M EVER FUCKING GOING THROUGH ONCE! God fucking forbid.
Talking to these people is inviting the constant threat of being judged and gotten angry at for having any question or working through a bad example. The feeler and finger pointer garners all the necessary support and “wins.” I think of the different random other entrepreneurial things I’ve worked on for other people. The ones who extorted the project and paid for bullshit get to lead the way and if you opine on the terrible job they’re doing in private, you get the lecture and dismissed when they put it on blast. They’ll take all your time, all your good will, any extra effort and summarily throw it back at you the moment they feel the threat of their insecurities or poor planning.
I shake off or excuse soooooo many peoples’ shitty behavior or “quirks” or “that’s just thems.” But, somehow, when the time comes for an ounce of leeway, pick the worst fucking time about the worst fucking subject and wham bam thank you ma’am FUCK YOUR FUCKING FACE WITH IT NICK! I find more respect and connection with random hookups from OKCupid than I have with some of my “friends.” I don’t know if that’s a “people over time” thing, or a you thing.
I’M EVEN TRYING TO BE POOR. In an important sense, I’m trying to revel in and celebrate ingenuity and recycling and sustainability, AND I CAN’T DO THAT! I need half to a third of my well below poverty wages and income for the last 3 years to finally not have extortionary bills breathing down my neck. On the verge of this, I have the blood pressure of an over-inflated sex doll.
And then I try to learn. I try to read damn near fucking everything. I try to watch damn near fucking everything. I look for every connection. I get random certifications and credentials. I talk to all different kinds of people. I post across dozens of forums. I have a dizzying array of appeals across income and age levels. NOBODY’S THERE! Oh, they’re in the streets “protesting” and pretending they’re helping. They’re behind their desk “adulting” away waving me off as an eccentric. They’re lonely and sad as fuck at home or in the ghetto compromising. They’ve got their own mental health issues, lack of funds, or body part that didn’t used to ache until now.
I’m almost relearning how to be sad. Most shit pretty much rolls off or doesn’t matter. Now it’s all just sticking to me. It’s every insane stupid person. It’s every condescending or indignant look and comment. It’s every blown off lunch or drink date. It’s every non invitation because, I’m not on your mind, why am I letting you occupy so much of mine? Every dream that gets pushed back another few months, then a year, then maybe if I ever come across...whatever. Every hours long trek through traffic for the opportunity to sell my body for, if we’re talking hourly, about 12 bucks.
I don’t belong anywhere. I shouldn’t be at the bar, because I’m in no mood for fun and lately definitely don’t have the money. I’m not supposed to be hanging out with you, you’re too busy or, more simply, never thought of me. I don’t belong with the “working poor.” NO ONE DOES! GET THE FUCK OUT! I’m not the happy downsy kid at the checkout just happy to be involved. There’s no seat at the table for me. I’m not a couch surfer. I may literally throw my couch off my back porch as if it did something wrong. It doesn’t matter what I know. It didn’t matter what I want to create. It doesn’t matter if I see the future for the next 100 years.
So I’m going to go to a field. I’m going to cut, and freeze, and dig, and burn, and freeze, and cuss, and just try to exist doing those things. There’s nowhere else for me. I’ll pretend to know how I’m paying the bills past March. I’ll desperately cling to the idea that one day, maybe when I’m like 50 or 60 and enough people have died in my family to leave me some final pity, I’ll get to humbly and with no aplomb embark on what’s passed me by years ago.
Is a dark sense of humor really that hard to relate to? You think it’s an accident that the world feels indifferent and we obviously mean nothing? When you try, you are punished. When you know nothing, you also get to be so stupid you don’t even realize you know nothing. The selfish win. The ones who hate themselves the most get the most opportunities to piss away. Those who have too much are given more money and more access. There’s nothing in it to give a damn. There’s nothing in it to try. I get why you don’t.
