I'm old. I don't give a fuck that there are older people. To me, I'm old. 35 was the quintessential "fucking old dude" in my head for most of my growing up. You don't just shake that concept away. If I was shocked as a child if you said 30-anything at how old you were, that's where I'm anchored, and I'm dead ass in the center of my 30s. Double my age, I'm 70.
All it means for me practically is that I'm less inclined to want to accidentally hurt myself. I don't want to lift dozens of concrete bags by myself. I don't want to swing nail-ridden oddly shaped pieces of large wood around. I don't want to catch myself tired or unfocused and have a mishap with a power tool. I still don't have health insurance, as if it would matter, but for all of my talk about debt, I'd much prefer to stay in the category of "for fun" than "fucked by medical bills."
That's some of that underlying psychological baggage that comes with moving out here and trying to do things differently or better. Instinctively, you don't want to do a hundredth of the work I've invited into my life to make this remotely tenable. I can't tell you how many fucking times I've been told, "But you live sooooo far" as the primary reason someone wouldn't set up shop next door. They'll then proceed to drive an hour or more to work throughout the week. They'll ignore the posts on my budget and spending as though a "normal" household with children or car payments wouldn't benefit from an "extra" $10 to $15 thousand I've spent on "stuff" and "fun" in a single year.
I've been resisting the urge to be shameless. Once I decide I want it, I'm not the same kind of person. The goal must be achieved. I change in perhaps not primarily healthy ways. I've been slacking on getting the counseling going after the major insurance ass pain. It's not that I'm not creative, persuasive, or capable of thinking of any other way to get the word out, but I will change. I will be a perfect manipulative psychopath. There's no other way to do it. I promise. The legitimate way doesn't exist. The patient by-the-rules behave as though anyone gives a fuck about anyone manner is a downright fucking lie. I just don't know if I'm prepared to devolve back into that.
For one thing, it's a drug. I will compulsively wear that skin like it's the only hug I will ever need the rest of my life. I'll spend hours and days on the phone or driving around. I'll schedule every waking minute of my life with someone or something that feels adjacent to moving me where I want to go. I will turn months of pussyfooting and questions and excuses about distractions or strength of will or desire into absolute results. And I'll be left alone to deal with the costs by myself.
Do you have any idea what that's like? It's one of the few things I'm legitimately scared of. I need limits. I need rules. I need feedback, ever fleetingly, that I'm not hopping on some megalomaniacal "fuck everything around me" train like your favorite billionaires. I don't want to be them. I don't want exacting fear-based playing on people's idiocy and sympathy and desperation power. And I can get it, immediately, whenever I want. I'm a pretty girl surrounded by an infinite sea of dicks with a violently screaming slut deep inside her who's been fairly well contented by shows and house duties. The screams are haunting me.
A lot of my decrease in drive comes out of my distance with people. I used to give a fuck what people thought. I used to give way too many fucks. But, thankfully, I'm old. It's now impossible to respect poor insecure judgement from a deliberate lack of awareness or effort. It's impossible for me to give a fuck. I know how ridiculous people are. I know how dumb and poorly run the world is. I know the games and low or non-existent expectations. I know how to so deliberately place my words I can make you feel better on the anniversary of your child's death mere moments after shutting down your unfunny race-based joke that wasn't appropriate for a group setting. The tragedy isn't any one death. It's that we subscribe to death in so much of what we do.
Being inundated with so much death makes you wonder why you're bothering. The amount of people talking through concerts feels like so many deadly layers. The people who have half a dozen others they could reach out to for help, but use meth anyway, are compulsively killing themselves. Why not? Stay alive to keep going to your job that doesn't pay you enough? To surround yourself with dumb or afraid coworkers who, if they do their job, won't stand for anything because they're as trapped and miserable as you? To be around family who are often incredibly terrible for you? To keep trying to connect with friends who take advantage or don't bother to include you? To open your bloodshot eyes at the end of day 10 of chronic pain?
There are few things I feel I understand as deeply as why people commit suicide. It's everywhere. We kill our language. We make abject mockeries of hope. We punish those who achieve and try hardest and then learn how to punish ourselves for thinking as though we should ever gain more than what's in front of us. We got fucking germs wrong. We have like 30 real reporters left. You can't even begin to get a handle on pockets of the world, and the second you start to believe you have, some algorithmically personalized bait will come in to bankrupt you morally and financially.
It's been a struggle to give a fuck. I thought the land would represent something. It's just a giant expensive perpetual hobby. It was a thing that when I worked hard and spent and tried to enable was thrown in my face. It's the thing a friend will mention is their 7th or 8th plan to fuck with one day when all of their other bad plans fall through. Who cares how much I work? Who cares if the fence is up or pool is swimmable or wood shop is up and running? You post a video with your face as a cat filter you'll sometimes get thousands of likes. I post a years-in-the-making work in progress or hours of sweat and effort or experimentation and I'm pretty sure my dad notices, but no one gives a fuck. No one's asking questions about what's next or what I'm thinking. No one's offering to help. No one's got their own thing they want to try and work out.
In addiction, you have to constantly remind people to put themselves first. If you're overwhelmed, I promise you you're being a shit parent to your kid, a shit partner to your spouse, and probably a shitty coworker. You have to stay sober and balanced for you so that when you volunteer to engage with others or their stress, you can remain confident you'll not set yourself up with the tired excuse to use that "they made me feel" whatever it was.
The land and everything about it is for me. I may be less inclined to get outside when I've simultaneously put every fucking show on the planet on my calendar, but I do enjoy getting the heartrate up, playing with tools, and building/organizing things. It's not dead, but pretty stagnant for probably more forgivable than not reasons both related to weather and being genuinely otherwise occupied. I've watched Hussain do at least 3 insane, expensive, nearly-killed-him projects in the time since we first began trying to do the business. I don't want to operate like him about house stuff. It's sheer anxiety and desperate feelings driving that.
I'm still pissed about being left out to dry with the kid gun waving scenario. It really felt like a last-straw kind of thing. There's not really an appropriate level of apology that doesn't manifest in some very deliberate and long term behavior and conversation change I don't think Byron is prepared to do.
I left the house today, quasi-intending to see a comedy show when I got the email free tickets were being offered. They run out, so if you don't secure them pretty quickly after the initial email, back to full price. I invited two people. One never responded. The other said it would depend on when she left work. By the time she confirmed, they were gone. She kicked herself for not just saying yes. She said she did not even have a particular reason for not saying yes beyond a vague impression or question about whether or not she wished to make the drive.
It's never a question for me. I'm like a fucking puppy.
Fuck the comedy show, it's about being around someone you, hopefully, enjoy. I get we're all old adults with responsibilities, except, I also kind of don't. Somehow, I find the time, money, intention, will, and decent hopeful spirit to pretty much always be the first to reach out, try to fly out, invite, buy the extra ticket, respond in a timely manner, or just generally be "friendly." You think the friend I sent $100 bucks to even remembers and thinks to grab lunch? You think Byron remotely gives a fuck the anxiety and annoyance I experience waiting for the money I lend him for smoking or nice meals and tickets for his dipshit kid?
I left my house just to drive to town and eat, peruse a pawn shop and drive right back home. There's nothing out there for me without dipping into the grander design and project schema. All I'm going to find myself doing is spending money and feeling empty and confused or bored. I have 160 people on my caseload, some of which I've talked to individually at length who I'm professionally obligated not to become friends with, who I'd probably enjoy doing an array of things with that no one in my life, distance-wise, gives a fuck about engaging in.
One of the belligerent psychopath things I would do is corral those people into my business's programs either in a self-care vein or "elite" class of people who should probably be more focused on tapering than anything else. I'd convert them into word-of-mouth advertising and discount their sessions for each person they referred who sticks with it. Build a financial and social feedback loop. From the amount of compliments I regularly get you wanna believe that kind of thing would just happen if you keep your head down and do the work or right thing and you'd be a fucking moron and wrong.
I can already feel that tomorrow is going to be when I want to do more yard-work house stuff. I have a Matchbox 20 concert in Noblesville to get to, so naturally when I had all day free today, tomorrow I'll feel pressed for time and do quick haphazard shit right until It's time to hurry up and leave.
I find it incredible how much I seem to want the exact opposite of what anyone else does. I want accountability, they want excuses. I want exchange, they want to take. I want financial freedom, they want wage slavery. I want creativity, they want prescriptions. Prescribed narratives, paths, and drugs. I want to be in orbits, they want little to nothing to do with me until I might be useful. I want as many words as it takes, they want silence. I want options, they want to tell me "it is what it is." I want to breathe, and they've got so many different flavors of smoke to blow in my fucking face.
I'm right there. I can take all of it, swallow it, and switch. I can cut through every noisy decibel. The dozens of goals for each day are crystal clear. I can do what I know is the absolute wrong thing and I can do it in an invigorating way that puts to shame the versions you put on display for me. It's too bad I don't believe in a god, right? I could just wash my hands of all responsibility and call my behavior part of his plan. I'm fucking up not diving into that bullshit.
Whatever it says about me, I need recognition and solidarity. I need to see the smiles in group when I'm making jokes. I need to hear the tone of voice change when ideas are sinking in and the example has been set. I need to know I'm not literally insane and that all of the things I do are tantamount to magic in the minds of the otherwise exploited and exhausted piddling middle. I need to believe it's not my obligation or destiny to tear through the infinite points of vulnerability until I've cut out more than I could ever digest. I don't feel seen. I don't feel appreciated. I don't think people recognize a single fucking word I say. I'm a bit player in a thousand self-destructive dramas that are preferable to the too much energy I must demand.
I've always got the counter-narrative ready. There's always someone or something that turns all of the drama on its head. It's not enough. I can't, yet, fly to fucking Florida or Seattle every time I need to hang out. My dad in his already busy as fuck life is making it to shows. They're the exceptions to the rules. The rules are what's fucked up. We fail to establish them altogether and then violently defend the dumbest ones possible.
This might be the first time I've typed myself into a headache.
No comments:
Post a Comment