I can’t wait to go to sleep. I napped earlier I guess, I have no idea for how long. When I went to sleep at eleven I had trouble clearing my mind. I listened to some music, but it was still too close to home. I nodded off only to snap awake a half hour later from a terrible train visage. I gave up, and came downstairs to see what Tori was watching, hoping it would be distracting. Henry Rollins spoken word, entirely too real and visceral. Over the computer to try to work on a project, but I don’t have the heart to get one started. It’s not a lack of motivation, it’s like the depression of high school.
At one point on one of the videos Henry explains that he writes to vent when he’s emotional, reads aloud a note to an ex-girlfriend, and says “anyway, that’s what I was doing at 2:30 this morning”. Look, it’s 2:30am, and I’m still up. Funny.
Mother said “loss is hollowness that will be filled differently”. Last night turned out pretty awesome. After the company meeting I got out as soon as I could so I could let me emotions out. I wavered about where to go and what to do, meeting Tori at home being the plan. Instead, I stopped at Squid and let her know I was there. Jen was talking to her roommate who was using the computer when Jen said, “who do know that has a weed-whacker?” My hand shot up. Mom bought one the other day because her lawn mower was in the shop. I leant her my lawnmower though, so I still had the weed-whacker. A short trip home, fired it up for the first time, loaned it out and headed back to Squid.
I couldn’t eat much, my stomach wasn’t right yet from wanting to vomit earlier, but I had some mashed potato and we started drinking Squid out of beers. Turned out it was the first “Bingo Night” with a poster, so we stuck around for that which turned out awesome. Everyone from Squid was there (except Howie, where was Howie? I think I heard, but forget). Jason came by on his way from work, and a number of other kids from neighborhood houses were there. Granted, I was getting drunk, but it felt like community. Which was a wonderful way to deal with feeling so alone. I won cool prizes, like inflatable basketball hat party games. I think Jason won socks? Tori won slippers! It’s excellent being a part of this community.
After Squid closed, Tori, Jason and I went to the 9lb. After a game of pool, Jarrod and Cinder showed up. Tori and I joined them for a game of Sorry and Scattergories. Again, I felt really good about this. We’ve been being silly about wanting to hang out with them, and I’m glad it happened, even if I was actively getting plastered at the time.
Today brought the much anticipated hangover, more tough shit happening (like reading about Angel), too much thinking for my emotional state, etc. I got up when I could, and left the house on a couple errands, but my stomach wasn’t feeling it, and neither was my heart. After hearing about Angel, Mom drove up after work to give me a hug and be around. I thought about going out to see Adam and Jim, or going on the Point83 ride, hoping either would be distracting, but I just wasn’t physically or emotionally up to either and ended up spending the evening watching Star Trek and Star Wars.
I’m still going to try to go on the Ben Country (Point .83 camping trip) this weekend. I have very little available energy for tomfoolery, or rather, anything not going smoothly. But I need a couple days of not thinking about how I feel I think, for these things to settle.
How do I feel? Sad still. My mind is still full of too many reminders that make me sad. I can’t be upset with circumstances. I never really hold circumstances accountable I suppose. I live in the moment, easily, what is, simply is. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how we got there. Although so much of who I am was shared with L, it’s difficult do much at the moment without a relevent memory popping up.
I’m once again doubting the appropriateness of opening myself up that much. The track record is solidly that it’s overwhelming. I’m sure I’m oversimplfying this. Still though, I don’t feel like I’ve ever had the problem of burning out, but I’m definitely a handful. People struggle with how to express it, underscoring that it’s not nessacarily a bad thing. But it’s complicated. It brings up complications.
I don’t know where I’m going to focus this in the future. I can’t go back.
Shit. I just realized my birthday is Thursday, and that Star Trek opens Friday. And both of those things made me incredibly sad. This is what I’m talking about, these haphazard memories of things I was looking forward to having threads intertwined with my relationship. My birthday shouldn’t make me sad, but it does realizing it will be spent without her.
Which is all probably more evidence that I take all of this entirely too seriously. Or I mean it entirely too much. My heart does live viscerally. It is a fucking burden. It is a wonderful burden, if you’ll have it. It’s complicated. It always is.
The future? I can’t imagine the future. I don’t try. I never have. I have empty hopes that try to help me cope in the short term, but aren’t set in reality and need to be set aside for the long term. This will take some getting used to, and some thought. It’s difficult focusing so acutely on thinking about the things I want, finding an absurd number of them present in someone shortly thereafter, and feeling like it won’t work out due to logistics. I know that’s not true, but it is a matter of timing. So it’s partly true. Folks seem to think when I say something like that, I mean it in the grimest way possible. But I’m not really that grim of a person. I don’t think the world is out to get me. I just try to live honestly based how I feel, the best way I can tell how I feel. I try really hard at this. Times like this, I feel like it only serves to hurt me. But I like being this person, I believe it’s the right way to be.
Everyone seems to have to deal with their parents giving them a hard time, like about settling down and finding the right person. My mom just gives me a hug, says “I wish I could tell you something to make it better” and sighs. This is reality. I’ve spent my entire life in it. Welcome.
What I value in life is not tangible, really. A product of growing up repeatedly being told about the different between the things I want and the things that I need? Maybe. I think my heart drives value. You can see it in nature, or even in complex systems, but you know, honestly, it’s value is derived in what it does for people. Something incredibly valuable to me is missing, and it’ll slowly fill in like when you shovel some dirt out of a stream. You did this right, played in the mud in the woods (backyard) growing up? I don’t know. Not everyone’s backyard was a thousand acres of forest and lake I suppose. That’s too bad. The swirling of the water and silt, both natural and calm, but a distrubance all the same, into the hole. I know I can’t replace that person, and for now, I’m sort of coping with that I suppose. As I said, I don’t know about the future. There was a time in my life that’d I’d be reluctant to write about this, hoping that I could take two steps back and everything would be right again, but it would actually be forward. I’d be afraid of saying how I felt and alienating people from me more. I’m past that now, mostly. These days I spend more time worrying about how I need to apply different filters to my personality around different people, and across different mediums. Can I talk to the lady in accounting about my fears of being a burden on other people? Should I talk to ex-girlfriends about how I feel today? Does the internet really still need to know this? I struggle with these questions whenever turmoil develops in my heart and I have to find a place to express it, because nobody wants to sit and listen to me talk for hours about whatever’s on my mind, interspersed with many apologies for forgetting what my point was. A date once told me my stories were better than television; at least television has a schedule.
I remind myself I need to get up and do what needs to be done. That’s dangerous close to an echo of my father’s misguided mantra about paying the bills. I got a refund check from Harborview for an overpayment recently, and cynically laughed at the irony of paying me back $72 when I still owe them thousands. I’ll put this behind me some day, I hope it’s in the next few years though.
The problem with this hole, is how much what was in it meant to me. I know this probably sounds foolish, but I challange that is a fucking stupid and unreal implication that should be burned in effigy of how we all really feel. It seems so rare that people want to admit to these feelings, they’re scared of them and deal with them by running away from them or in bizarre ways like with anger. Half the reason I started writing my journal online, what, a decade ago now, was there to be one more voice saying out loud how I feel and not being ashamed of it. It’s not a space in my heart that can be filled with more time writing open source code, that has its own place and the activity of doing such is likely mostly distraction. I suppose boundaries with friends are likely going to be pushed in the future. The last couple of weeks have seen some of that, realizing that this stoic cover is a farce, and pushing down cardboard walls with conversation and hugs.
That’s the big part of community, the amazing part, is opening up. I’m tired of slogans about accepting people for who they are as much as I’ve grown weary of people trying to be convincing about not being racist or sexist, while being just as judgmental as the rest of us. A man isn’t is own castle. This independance that we formed out of the necessity of our youth doesn’t have to remain that way. I’ve tested the waters, and there is warmth out there. Perhaps that will work better for me, spreading my heart out wider in thinner slices so it doesn’t feel like an assault to be protected against.
There’s little available time right now for the bulk of this. That’s sort of a copout though. There’s many opportunities that are passed up out of habit and fear that can probably be shapped into something different.