[1212] Make A Wish

Superficially, I have a problem with a refund.

On July 4th, I pretended I had a nephew that made $436 worth of purchases on the game Last War to unlock a gorilla. It’s over a month later. None of the attempts to get the money refunded went through. There’s been some miscommunication between Google Play, the game developers, and maybe the credit card company. I’m now locked out of the game. They believe $125 was, in fact, refunded. It wasn’t, as confirmed by Google Play and my credit card company yesterday.

The last time I wrote about what I had done, ChatGPT told me that I was defiantly asserting my agency under a backdrop of circumstances that often feel overwhelming and out of control. I found it curious how quick it was to justify my behavior. I wasn’t looking for “real license” to make what I had done “feel better” or seem reasonable. But, like I’m sure the vast majority of what those algorithms have trained on, I found it.

Less superficially, I have a problem with the goals and purpose of my money.

I’m the kind of person who has spent years of his life proud to eat Ramen and hotdogs in service to saving. When I had a goal to buy land, I saved and sat on thousands until I could buy it, in cash, for $15,000. Before I began working with a debt consolodation company, I’d never missed a credit card payment. I never even owned credit cards until 8 years ago, meaning I lived by the idea that if I didn’t have the cash, it wasn’t “for me” or I couldn’t afford it.

I recall getting business advice from some older gentlemen who headed some business association in Bloomington. I’ve always been entrepreneurial. They said, “Get a loan.” It made sense to them, having started their businesses in the 70s or 80s, that you just get loans, pay them back over time, and it’s fairly simple and easy to get rich if you just keep at it. They had not updated their perception of the landscape. I graduated in the wake of the financial crash. Business loans for enthusiastic up-and-comers hadn’t been a thing for quite some time.

I also, once, got a loan to get a car. I found the entire process and prospect of paying it off so miserable, I’m almost positive I crashed the thing on purpose so insurance would pay it off. That, surprisingly, went exactly as subconsciously planned. I’ve been loaned $2,000 to pay off my shed-turned-house from an ex-girlfriend. I found the experience so torturous, I worked 20 hours a day for weeks to pay her back in 3. She didn’t need, want, or ask me to do so.

If you look at my entire life in terms of assests, I’m in the black. If you look at my day-to-day approach to money, you’d think I was a desperate poor person just trying to enjoy fleeting indulgences in a way that invites and deserves judgment from onlookers.

As I’ve gotten older, and acquired the things I wanted, my approach to money has gotten even looser. Thankfully, I’m generally in good health. I don’t have to keep my prescriptions flowing. I don’t have kids. I don’t have a mortgage. I don’t need premium gas for my car that cost less than my guitar. I have “first world poor” people problems in trying to find memorable experiences and tolerable people to engage in…whatever it is we do…kind of things.

I could pay another $125, get my access back to the game, reassure my alliance that it was just a hiccup, and kick myself for playing with fire. I could then spend another few months arguing with the world’s dumbest, slowest, and most intransigent “support,” I’ve encountered in years trying to get that money back. With each paycheck that comes in, it’s easier to swallow “stupid” and “wasteful” expenses, so 2 months from now when they’re still trapping me in some AI email loop, I’ll open my account, see 3 or 4 thousand dollars and think to myself there are better ways to spend my time.

But I will still have a deeper, ongoing, and predictable problem. That money will face the same circumstances the $1,000 I have now does.

Let’s provide even more financial context. I bought a $475 dollar My Chemical Romance ticket. I’m in the pit for Linkin Park in 2 days, and the pit for System of a down on the 31st. I’ve spent $6,000 on people I’ve tried to hire in service to getting past business ventures launched. It amounted to an expensive lesson about how to manage and what to expect from people, particularly working with them remotely. Every meal my friend and I go out to lands somewhere between $45 and $100 dollars. I’ve paid my electric bill for 6 months in advance. I’ve spent, approximately, $4,000 on band t-shirts over the last 3 years. I almost never donate to charity and would piss in most collection plates.

I don’t “need” any “thing.” I’m full, clothed, and entertained even when it just looks like preoccupied. I have an budding opportunity to open my own extension of my current job, a step-down sober-living house, that could gross $4,800 a month within the next few weeks. I could go make enough money to cover every “stupid” thing I’ve bought Door Dashing at peak times for a few hours each day. I’m in no way unable or unwilling to account for my worst instincts or decisions regarding cash-flow.

Not superficially, I have a problem with meaningful investment. 

For years, arguably, I’ve been “fine.” Not driven. Not motivated. Not “passionate” (a word I continue to hate). I just am. I’m just capable, therefore maybe I do. I get jobs when the aimlessness of not having to be anywhere starts to grind me down. I spend money I both have and don’t to introduce drama, perhaps, maybe, but probably not, worthy of “me” and the creative ways I might go about fixing the problem.

As a counselor, investigator, and general advocate working with people on their linguistic barriers, self-esteem issues, and terrible framing of their circumstances and capacity, it’s incredibly hard for me to spin a story about my life or behavior that isn’t true. That doesn’t mean I don’t have blindspots. That doesn’t mean you have to agree with or believe anything I say. It does mean I know when there’s a temptation or desire to be deceptive or downplay the extent of when my behavior feels pathological or like “some addict shit.”

I didn’t really want to talk about the gorilla spending. It felt particularly acutely stupid. It also felt like it nagged and highlighted that incoherent hole at the center of my “fine” that’s never as fine as it “could” be. I feel like I owe, at least one person in particular, money who, also, hasn’t asked, doesn’t need it, and wouldn’t have offered it if she didn’t recognize what it was paying for at the time. Part of me still feels hung up on getting fucked for $12-20K in the effort to flip a house to only my ex-friend and his parents’ benefit, and the $25K I was supposed to get as a result of my grandparent’s house getting sold. I’ve been fucked out of more money than I’ve lost in service to my actual goals or folly combined, for 20 years, 4 to 5 times over.

My experience with money feels reflective of my increased richness in time. Traditionally, I’ve found ways to give myself “too much” time. I spent most of my 20s learning how to depress myself reading about the world all day, getting good at guitar, and learning how to watch TV. My friends stopped wanting to hang out, or even leave the house. Then they started moving away, and have never found the nostalgia or romance button that bothers with meeting up again when they came back. I’ve been able to spend good portions of time with the last 2 people that will have me, my dad and friend who will both be at Linkin Park with me. What are we all going to do there? Drink expensive beer, buy expensive t-shirts, scream with Chester’s ghost over ambient feelings that one hopes don’t echo reasons for a new self-righteous suicide.

Music means something to me. I’m genuinely excited and anxious and don’t wish for anything to go wrong so that I can experience the shows coming up. I’ve been to 362 shows in the last 3 years. Most often, you see solid and talented people who put on a good show. There’s a handful of bands that really seep into my bones, and they’re all mega-famous and playing in Chicago the same month.

Once, I didn’t fight to stay at a concert I only saw half of because my friend got sick. I tried to maintain perspective and respect. I’ve seen 2 of the 3 bands we missed, one at least twice, in the past. I watched full recordings of the shows a few days later. My friend means more to me than seeing the shows live, nagging “completionist” itch notwithstanding. The game, I’d been playing for 380 days straight before I was locked out, at least an hour each day, tapping the screen hundreds, if not a thousand times. I’d made “friends” at least as superficial as any in “real life.” I’m probably in the top 20% of players in terms of team power and time invested.

But I don’t really care about the game. I care about letting my alliance know what happened to me. I care about getting treated “fairly” in one more arena that is designed to exploit and extract. I care about not feeling at the “mercy” of glitches and not falling prey to sunk-cost reasoning. I could spend the $125, start the new arguments, get right back into the “flow” of tap tap tapping to collect resources and upping my stats. Why? Had I not been invited to an alliance, I would have deleted it shortly after downloading it and finding out the advertised scroll game was only a mini portion of the whole thing.

I want to have a life full and meaningfully busy enough where I don’t find myself embroiled in problems like these. I ask people often if they’re attempting to “fix” something that has nothing to do with them or their real goals. I’m rich in plenty of ways, but still don’t “feel” rich or responsible in pissing away money to account for mild inconveniences or so I can double down on a game that’s designed to function like a slot-machine addiction. I can’t even take solace in the idea that I’m just suffering compulsion. I’m not. I’m meandering into things because I haven’t felt enough of or the right kind of pain that might lend itself to growth or stability. I’m sweeping up the mess of debts, disorientation, and disaffection.

[1060] Copying Mechanism

If I had to bet, I would put money on the vast majority of people falling into a camp described as, "I can't trust myself." It doesn't mean they haven't opted for a form of living that looks functional, feels stable-ish, or would pass as "adult" to a random onlooker. It doesn't mean they are racked with medical-grade doubts about every little thing they may choose to do. It doesn't mean that any given moment may be an opportunity to "lose it" or "break down," as the basic throughline or coherence one needs to exist gets erased.

It does mean most people aren't inviting the counter narrative into their personal story of experience. Only the morbid, or "mean," or socially disingenuous and disabled do things like that. You're not even going to let your subconscious whisper "divorce" on your wedding day. Your baby isn't going die before you. Every statistically likely consequence of your eating and driving habits aren't going to kill you like you're really part of that majority.

The horror. The horror. When we're introduced to this horror in the infinitely creative ways from early drug use, abuse, medical trauma, general neglect, or by virtue of our miserably encoded genes, we cope or die. What we've discovered as we iterate on the DSM is that pretty much everyone is getting their ass kicked in measurable and consistent ways. It's from things we can more or less approach methodically, therapeutically, and with an eye towards consistent accountability. Can approach. We don't really, but the option is there.

I have the precise opposite problem of the vast majority of people. I trust the fuck out of myself. I trust I can engage in unspeakable terror. I trust I can accomplish things people routinely regard as "dreams" or "exhausting" with a persistent "matter of fact" attitude and growing mountain of evidence. The shocks to myself are derived from compounded ignorances or unlucky and ill-timed grievances stacking too close together. Maybe I wake up sore with a headache, step in cat shit on the way to the bathroom, go to flush and water's not flowing, try to get it working and break a nob. My phone goes off with the dumbest of dumb work emails dragging a corpse of a conversation from a week ago…Stuff like that.

I can certainly imagine that, but it's a lot harder to cope with it in real time, especially if it's that slow creep that doesn't tip you off that you need to stop and breathe or redirect. That isn't so much horror though. That's not imagining people close to you dying. That's not watching your body tumble down the highway after a semi-truck oopsie.

The thought doesn't actually kill you or them. But we treat it like it does. We fluidly dip into language like "karma" and the power of "intention." As if we routinely watch those who we chant "burst into flames" towards spontaneously combust. Challenging, painful, or difficult thoughts are met with reflexively coping. Whether you find a chemical to grow physically and psychologically dependent on, or another person, or a hobby, the reflex to survive gets to work.

I want to make next week in my groups about "commitment." What are you committed to? How? Why? I have a good number, about a quarter, of my people with terrible attendance. You can chalk some of that up to "life" and kids, but the vast majority is people who, instead of being honest with themselves about what it takes to be of sober mind, still prefer to defer to their feelings. They wish to employ the usual methods, the familiar, the rehearsed, ways of feeling better.

You see, maybe they're "too tired" today, so they'll make up for it at a later group. "With everything gong on," it just slipped their mind. Maybe they have a particular grievance with me they're less than bold or honest in relaying. Either way, the story of their sobriety or sober thinking needs to conform to the coping patterns already in play. They're still going to get their medication. They don't even really connect with those people in group anyway. What's the big deal?

I've been doing this job for 1 year and 3 months now. I've never missed a day that wasn't allotted to me. I've never missed a group that wasn't an obligation I planned for that coincided with extra work on my plate outside of work hours. Incidentally, I'm not "committed" to Groups. I'm looking for any route away from it that I can find. Importantly, I'm committed to myself. My needs, my desires, and my narrative is what is under threat through my obligation to Groups. (Or, capitalism when you want to get large and abstract.)

What is it, do you think, that separates me who can make it to 12-18 groups every week for 15 months and the person who can't make it to 1 every week for a month? Bear in mind, these are virtual groups. You don't need a car. You could be on any wifi. You can use anyone's phone, computer, or tablet. We offer a program that gets you a free phone.

Do you think I enjoy every single person and every single group every time? Do you think I'm wide awake and motivated every day? Do you think I don't have a dozen other things on my mind or things I'd like to accomplish? Why, it's a serious question, am I able to pull off this obligation in a way that garners consistent positive feedback from both client and leadership alike, but you might not ever meet me sometimes your attendance is so bad and you've hopped from make-up to make-up until I discharge you?

I'm there for me, not you. I'm there for money. I'm there because the schedule allows me to maintain my behavior towards attending shows, getting work done around my house, and facilitates me meeting and building rapport with what I hope is a huge number of clients I eventually steal. My sober mind is fundamentally rooted in a picture of what I need to maintain what I have, grow, challenge, indulge, and hopefully continue to honestly share. You not showing up isn't saying anything about me, it's the attitude you have to yourself. It's why you don't trust yourself. You can't even be trusted to run a program for an hour from your phone and keep it together long enough to hear ideas that are different from the ones you already have about yourself.

That defensive posture kicks in. You'd rather just not hear it at all, because to you, it's not an open exchange of new ideas. It's a damning indictment. It's an unfair judgment. It's an attack. It's a challenge when you're already too busy and too exhausted and never asked for it. It's work, and you're busy justifying working yourself to death at whatever it is you're already doing. Where do I get off telling you you shouldn't work 14 days in a row? Don't I understand you have bills and a family!? How dare you say I should put distance between me and my abusive mother! I love her!

The stories we tell ourselves matter immensely. I suspect it's the heart of why no matter what someone has accomplished or people they touch they still get suicidal. David Draiman, with his incredibly sad eyes, explained he almost killed himself in February were it not for his son and the Disturbed fans. I don't know all that he can or can't imagine about his life and place he holds in others', but I do know that level of sadness and isolation is available to us all. We drink from that poisoned well without acknowledging it as a series of suicidal acts.

Dipping in and out of this book on masochism (Thanks Brandy) has detailed for me what I've spoken to in the past, but this has elaborated it further. There's sheer joy and positive emotion we can generate from pain and self-destruction. I watched a video of suicide bombers picking which hand had a rock in it so they could get the honor of blowing themselves up. The, donkey-looking dude, was beaming. He was getting hugs and cheers from his brothers. He is (was) utterly convinced of where he is going, the righteousness of his action, and how to solve his problem with whomever the bomb was slated for.

Suicide is a commitment to a narrative about how you feel. There is no "disease" that pulls triggers. There is no infection that makes you crave too many pills. There is no pathogen that drags razors down your wrist, ties knots, or turns exhaust fumes into your favorite scented candle. You should be very careful about how and whether you subscribe to any narrative. You need to be actively participating in writing one. You should be deeply suspicious of the ones that make your sense of personal responsibility abstract. You know, like how "sin" is bad, and in the mind of the faithful, at least one on my caseload, that means equal parts butt-fucking children or being gay. Jesus doesn't obligate you to think critically or make distinctions.

If your sense of commitment looks like "extra" energy to get things done that matter to you, I can vibe with you. If your commitment makes you kinder and more patient, it makes a certain sense to me. If your commitment isn't pie-in-the-sky about what you can do or how you may feel, then I may start to trust you're grounded and genuine. If your commitment is time-bound, specific, open to being criticized, and accountable, then maybe we can agree it's real and worthwhile.

Conversely, if your commitment is exhausting your capacity for truth, we might say you've been committed to the mental asylum of your situation. If your commitment has you offering dozens of excuses and attempts to make it sound better than it is, you're just at its mercy, of which I promise you it has none. If your commitment prompts you to be reflexively arguing for why you're continuing to persist, a good part of you knows you shouldn't stay, but the broader narrative you've concocted gives you ample, if not infinite, opportunities to keep the justification game running.

My narrative is constantly evolving. I want it to. I need it to. I've had incredibly small-minded ideas about what should constitute my commitments and why. I have incredibly damming suggestions regarding what the narrative of my behavior or perspective should mean about me. At bottom, because I show myself the ongoing story and work to develop an individual window and nurtured nature, I can continue to land on points I trust. Sorry not sorry, it's not all of you, my hoards of fans, nor would it ever be my theoretical children. If and when you all die, including my phantom offspring, what's left? If and when you all leave me or stop talking to me or stop giving any remote fuck about spending time together or sharing anything (Oh shit, 99% of everyone I've ever thought to call friend?) where do you think I'm gonna go? Hang out with Chester?

I'm committed to whomever I may be right now. What I do or don't know gets to show up here. I'm committing my time to this exploration. I'm entertaining the horror of being ignored and abandoned. I'm letting the depth of the isolation give me pause to find how to capture the void. I've murdered my non-existent children. I've parsed and separated what I'm doing for money or as a series of obligations, from what I feel needs said and done.

 
Every single concert I go to almost everyone is there with their partner, family member, friend, or half a dozen other people. I'm there for the music. After watching and overhearing, now 93 shows this year, I think they're after a story about what fun or healthy people do. I think they need eyes or someone's hand to hold or someone to be in a picture with. I don't trust that it has anything to do with whatever individual they're with. I think there's a reason the most populated non-festival shows I've gone to this year are "themed" drug use (Dead & Company) and depression/suicide (Disturbed).

It's a bother to know "too much" regarding yourself. It doesn't always make a "reason" and an "excuse" or "self-justification" perfectly clear. But this is why you work to keep talking. This is why you look for people who trust themselves enough to offer you fair observations of yourself. Because we're still all made of the same shit and plugged into the same environment. Getting some clarity on that I'm working to make it only cost $5 instead of $60 or $110.

If I'm not suicidal and I feel like one of the loneliest people on the planet in a way I'm tempted to call distinct, but wise enough to know is cliché, how? If I'm angrier than anyone you've ever met and keep nearly all of my conversations clam and civil, what's going on? If I think life is mysterious, but mostly a goddamn ridiculous joke, game, and you're perfectly reasonable to kill yourself in dozens of tiny joy-inducing ways a day, why do I opt for yard goals, business goals, show goals, and wish to refocus my attention on the 1% yet to flee?

I have a really good ongoing story. I'm not suffering that much in any accumulation of pointy parts of my day and I allow myself to slow down and taste the subtleties in my expensive coffee. I'm listening to the music, not turned towards the crowd drunkenly trying to get the attention of my party or passers-by. I'm open to hearing something new from a band I'm not that familiar with instead of screaming my dogma and treating what they're attempting to communicate as so much background noise. If I were a character in something I was reading, I'd be curious what I was going to say or do next. I'm committed to the character development. Are you?

[1047] Curses

It’s late at the tale end of July 4th. I have no real sentimentality or ideas to offer around patriotism or the status of this country beyond thinking we’re still on the decline and on the way out.

I wanted to write about how I think it’s been getting harder to write.

I’ve been contemplating writing music. I listened to Ethan Hawk riff on poetry. I’ve written 1,046 things, not counting what I’ve deleted or designated “blog adjacent” with an “xx” in the title. Where I’m at is less in the analysis and trying to parse the players and response or responsibility. I want a riff. I want a phrase. I want a wall of sound that reverberates as good as any that I’ve put onto my playlists.

I went to a party tonight. I stopped being the person to invite and get to know everyone, but I’m still friends with Pat Patterson who has his eclectic group of creatives and weirdos. I belonged. It’s people who will look you in the eye. It’s people doing as unique a thing anyone could be doing that they’ll pass off as any ‘ole thing. I was told I could join the invite-only group to know about the semi-regular events.

Part of me has eschewed looking for fitting into a crowd like that. Sort of like with getting a girlfriend. There’s an inevitability that my weirdness or perspective is eventually going to turn someone off or against me. It’s not so much that I don’t enjoy them or don’t with to maintain a dynamic, but whatever it is that I perceive I’m getting from the relationship is heaps different from the artifice the other players were attuned to that I wasn’t.

We’re not in a play. We don’t have a set of lines and cues and lighting configurations to tell approximately the same story for however many weeks we’re popular. Each time you have your individuated stress or trauma or hopes and dream overlaying why you do or don’t engage the gathering one way or another. If you’re always “on” and looking to have your kind of fun or conversation, if you’re me, your confidence and comfort is going to navigate considerably less tactfully the conversation about whether or not Dave Chappelle is transphobic.

I think a big reason I don’t think too much about “expanding my network” is that I know I still have those connected people. I’m one text away from 25 people I haven’t met who are as close to “my people” as I’m going to get. But that’s not what I want to explore.

I feel like I’m running out of words. I need sounds and rhythms and noises modified to analogize a tight neck and wretched gut. My anger isn’t as honestly relayed in a thousand blogs as it might be channeled through Chester Bennington on stadium speakers. My previously-conceived-of angst or anxiety is deeper than that. Quieter. More encapsulating. I didn’t feel right trying to occupy “annoyed” or “angry” or “ungrateful” space walking a couple miles to return my umbrella to a car or staying extra late to a terrible baseball game. I still need to express and create though.

I texted my ex that the garden shed blew over. She sent back, “Ok.” I don’t want to assume she’s functionally abandoned the space, but I don’t really know what else to think. It’s like, of course she did though, right? Nothing I try to enable or support is actually felt or appreciated, so if I saw anything but overgrown bullshit with a blown over shed for all of the time and investment, joke’s on me.

I stopped myself from buying $500 worth of T-shirts last night. I had all the carts at check out. I did the math on time I’d need to spend at work with the extra groups I’ve taken on. I stopped when I considered all the the shirts I’ve already bought. I can go two weeks without doing laundry. I’m still going to shows this year with some of the bands I want merch from. I found it incredibly tempting to buy because of how many were sold out. There are thousands of small shirts many bands I enjoy can’t sell to their fat fans.

Spending money isn’t going to fill the hole. Pretending I need some kind of empathetic or affirmative response from my ex isn’t either. Getting enmeshed with the creatives has points of potential and light, but there’s often a reason those types find their collectives and version of the pageantry that I find reason to violate as quickly as any other.

It’s fucking Tuesday, man. I still have to work tomorrow. My concert schedule slows down considerably this back half of the year, so I have more time to either fight with projects on the land, or drink with creatives. The writer’s strike has helped me catch up on so much TV. I’ve tinkered on my piano and guitars. I even read a chapter in The Boys which I’ve been delaying until I felt I had the proper focus for the better part of a year. 

What do I really want? The insurance to impanel us. The ability to take off. To be out of debt because the debt is laughable, not inevitable, or a several months slog. I want to be able to host my own parties for parties of 1 or 2. I still want to go to bed when I please and wake up the same way.

Every day it feels closer, irrationally so or not. The sum total of my effort and perspective continues to compound and accumulate. I just need these last few pieces to fit.

[746] Hit By Pitch

I hope I can make this quick.

 

Suicide is in the news again. Chester, Robin Williams documentary, and not-quite-the-same I just sat through a presentation talking about LGBTQ youth and their rates of suicide and particular problems related to inclusion. In the set of presentations they also included a story of a baby born with cancer who died a little over the age of 2, and a sentiment that “God puts people in our lives for a reason.” Also, wholly unrelated but for it happened to me in close proximity, I went out to see someone away, and they were less than excited at my presence.

 

How do we unpack this and mash it all up? Let's start with the idea that people are in your life for a reason, or you in theirs. The second half I can at least speculate some divine role I was “supposed” to play. I've talked about it before. Being something of a “destroyer” or “anti-particle.” Things collide with me and never seem to come out like they imagined on the other side. In a world of tight-lipped and tight-assed people, I would serve a palpable function. If you're squeezing on to your conception for dear life, I'm the devil. Isn’t it properly avoidant and convenient of God though? Without him, how could you humble yourself in the presence of your dead child? Good thing you’re so important for him to focus on you so specifically; just what you needed. 

 

In talking about the dead gay kids, the point was stressed that the difference between life and death can be a feeling of inclusion and support. It can be having just one person who accepts them for who they are. It can be opening their eyes to a timeline for if and whether they want to come out so that they're safe and supported. We're in southern Indiana after all, that point needed stressed. Included. Part of the greater pack in which you depend on for survival. No finer point could be put on it than a suicidal child whose identity is being denied.

 

To make that “unfair” and “terrible” and “what the fuck man?” analogy, every time you strip someone of their identity, you're playing the suicide game. I consider myself lucky to no longer be a child. I like that I don't lay my well-being on the hinges of how people decide to think of me or whether or not that want to engage or talk. One must wonder how many people are truly teetering on that ledge though when you consider the music of Linkin Park. “Somewhere I Belong” has been on repeat in my head for a few hours. I'm not the only big fan. I've never connected so strongly with millions and millions of people to still fall under the weight of my demons.

 

Is that a choice of mine? Am I just better at constructing a story that externalizes? I was thinking about my proposition to try and stay “generally happy” for a week. I mean, I'm pretending like me shitting on things doesn't make me happy. I don't hate my jokes. I don't pretend I'm at the mercy of my mistakes. I don't glom on to people but for the remnants of neural connections I can't untangle. Why is the darkness my playground when it's just the damning destroyer of worlds for everyone else?

 

I suppose I feel I'm ramping up a bit. I've beaten my head into submission, and now our awkward hug or song and dance about friendship leaves me as empty as I always wished as an anxious child. A memory hit me early of a time when my mom took us to The Taste of Chicago, I had no desire to go, she had complained of having little money earlier, and in my angry pouting she said, “Crucify me!” and I replied, “Gladly.” The look on her face left me as dead inside as I've ever felt. Not dead embarrassed or filled with regret. But in that moment, it clicked how useless and nothing you were going to mean to me as a person if my words were going to get you so crazily worked up or break your face to look like an African war mask. Bitch, you threw the pitch and are shocked by the home-run? You're playing my game.

 

I don't seek redemption or forgiveness. I'm proud that I've the constitution or manner that keeps focus. I drive all over this godforsaken state and see thousands of people just living their lives, voting for Trump, spending money they don't have, coming up with excuse after excuse for why their lives do or don't look the way they do. All of it boiling down to modes of being that have nothing to do with me. The only people who are my people do the shit I do. They risk. They're screaming the truth. They take the beatings for their behavior. And they know they are nothing without the ongoing conversation. Maybe if someone got to the work of telling these gay kids they will always and forever be the exception they'll swallow their fate and stop hurting themselves in service to shitty rules. Maybe if we stopped romanticizing and perpetrating depressing environments we'd get to listen to the ongoing creations from our artist heroes. Maybe it's my embrace of the darkness that makes me feel entitled to the world and my conception of myself well in spite of you.

 

Try not to die, I guess.