Fucking cat woke me up and apparently whatever I was dreaming about is now keeping me up with my jaw clenched and mind racing.
While it's not to the degree when I was younger, I have obsessive and obtrusive thoughts. It's part of the reason my humor goes so immediately and persistently dark. Had I not learned a way to incorporate every ridiculous and hurtful thing that races through my head, to no end, I'd lose my mind. The fact that I'm writing now, at 2 in the morning, testifies to my inability to shut it off when it gets going without being more exhausting in writing until it reaches a dull rumble.
In these compulsive episodes, things I'd otherwise feel generally “resolved” about play on repeat. The fight or word choice around my recent break-up. Thoughts about what a pain in the fucking ass the cat is. The spending habits of my clearly traumatized aunt and uncles. The greed of my dead and dying other relatives. The pain of being taken for granted. The irony of my stated project and the pointless roadblocks along the way. My demonstrated effort and capacity constantly squandered and ignored.
Why now? Why all at once? Why is my most recently salient dream about being caught in a tunnel high above the ground with no retreat, no way across to the rest of it, and no way down?
I don't know how to make peace with the idea of fucking up the easy things. I just heard recently that my aunt has spent 60 to 70 thousand dollars to keep a functionally dead dog alive for many months past his due. This is an aunt who years ago withheld my grandma's piano intending to give it to step-kids who didn't want nor would appreciate it, who then rejected it, so it's spent years in her garage and her foyer until now she's ready for me to come take it off her hands. Not when I had the energy, space, and means of engaging with the piano, but now, when I've added a room addition, it's rotted in the garage, and I don't have the money or manpower to fuck with it. You think she'd drop the money to fix the thing and get it delivered? I bet the thought hasn't even crossed her mind.
We have an endless array of stories touting what it means to be virtuous or triumphant in the face of evil. I've watched 14 or so movies over the last few days. The hero kills the bad guys. The hero overcomes the miscommunication or grudge. The bad guys kill for fun. The bad guys are extremely greedy. The bad guys can even be good guys when faced with even badder guys! We're supposed to unite with or avenge our families and utilize our friends. We're supposed to connect with our true loves and fight for our passions. To the degree you can submit to the avaricious feelings, why, all the more compelling to watch and emulate.
So much of who I am is directed by how little I wish to be like other people. I don't want to be like most of my family. I don't want to be like the people I've worked with or companies I've worked for. I don't want to be like the “friends” I no longer talk to. I don't want to be “religious” or “spiritual.” I don't want to be rich just for the sake of it. I don't want to pretend I'm going to be all-consumed by "love" or a woman. My pet is not my child. The nature of my help for other people is the many hours I've spent working out what it means to be “the right kind of selfish,” not me being deluded about how much my heart bleeds or blind to what my responsibility can or should be in a given situation.
I need some new language or approach to what can be easy. “It” can. I'm certain it can, because the things that are easy for me, I keep letting be easy. I take my simple and small pleasures. I take my time. I hit the page when the things that can't be easy, like sleep, try to dictate the terms. It hasn't been easy for me to find an angle on how to deal with how other people prioritize things. I don't get why we don't throw ourselves on the gears and stop the stupid machine or focus on pain caused by the delusion that has made reckless indulgence a way of life.
Do you have any idea the amount of things I would do with $70,000 before torturing a functionally dead dog?
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