No-Thing #43

FROM The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You

all of this is magic against death

all of this ends with to be continued

I wave so long with a handkerchief to the horses on the range of my dreams

every scene is sculptured from wood with splintered fingers

---Frank Stanford

I know it has been a few months since I've written here. Shit has been hard and I've not been in a good way. Lots of things have happened and I always dream about writing about it, but, to be honest, I am exhausted in ways I don't even know how to express, let alone address and try to remedy.

A thing I do know: I appreciate y'all. I do.

******

I have been isolating for months. I owe so many people phone calls/text messages/emails. I wake up. I go to work and walk dogs, usually twelve to fifteen miles a day. I go home. I eat. I disassociate. I fight sleep. I have terrible nightmares and wake up every hour or so. I get up and do it again. This is my life. This is what I do, every day. It's killing me and I'm stuck in it. I know I'm not alone in this, we've all got this cycle of self-abuse that we're stuck with. I am lonely and feel unlovable and misperceived. I am not sure what to do, but I know I need to do something.

******

The man/priest/reverend who ran the cult thing I was involved with during the late 1990s told me that my natal chart revealed to him that I would always be "unlucky," in love and in finance and in relationships in general. He told me that even when I was honest and truthful, I would continue to be "unlucky," and this would be the albatross around my neck for this lifetime. He also told me to always live where the weather is warm, but I hate the heat and actually thrive in the cold. So, take all that as you will.

I don't know if what he told me is true or real or anything of the sort. What I do know, is that whenever a thing in my life has gone wonky and it feels like the ground underneath me has fallen away, I hear his voice, calling me "unlucky," over and over again. I can smell the stale cigarette clouds in his apartment and the way they mixed with the sweetened remainder of frankincense and myrrh, the gravel in his voice making "unlucky" sound like "on-low-key."

I've never been low-key about a thing in this life, let alone lucky.

******

A thing that rattles around in my head all the time is how many times I've had to learn the same things, and as a result of this seemingly neverending pattern, how much of my life has been spent pretending to be okay when I've not been okay.

Pretending to be okay isn't lying or being deceptive, at least not for me. Pretending to be okay is me trying to keep going and trying to keep myself safe, because if I admit to anyone that I'm not okay, that means I've removed some armor and a knife can get shoved into me.

******

My ability to perform regular person activities has left me. Sure, I can go to work and I can exchange banal nice-nice words with the guy at the bodega and I can give a head nod to someone on the street and I can be present when it's absolutely necessary for me to be present. But I don't have the patience or the desire to sort through conflicts that are an issue that someone else has to work through or their perception of me or a situation they think involves me in some way. I keep to myself and I work on myself every waking moment. I don't make excuses anymore and if someone communicates something to me that I've done or am currently doing that had caused them some kind of discomfort, I listen and take them at their word. I do my best to navigate these things with honor and compassion. I've got no time for pettiness and no time for gossip and no time for the rest of the negative feelings that have haunted so much of my life. I'm not here to be told who or what I am, but I'm always open to listening if someone feels some kind of way about their interaction with me.

Maybe this sounds cold, but I've dealt with myself and others enough to know that once someone has decided you are the villain, that's it. You're the fucking villain, and pleading your case is a waste of everyone's time.

******

The black hole has been getting louder and louder over these last few months. It's all I can hear. It hums and churns and hums and churns.

******

Mother's Day is coming, and I can feel my chest tightening and my eyes getting wet.

******

I have to make some moves. Again. To be really direct about it, I'm fucking tired and I don't know if I can do it anymore. I'm getting older by the minute and Survival Mode is too much for me. It dissipated for one day back in 2021, when I first moved to Scotland, but that first morning in that tiny flat in Finnieston, when I was standing in the doorway to the kitchen watching my then-wife make coffee and she turned around and saw me and shrieked and then her face twisted up all terrified, like she'd seen a demon, I knew. No sense in lying about that. I knew.

Right now I know no-thing.

******

I recently passed eighteen years of sobriety. Leading up to anniversaries like that are always weird. People like to celebrate these things, they like to be acknowledged and seen and it feels nice and gives a little boost to the self-esteem and self-worth. I don't really like attention, but I also know that if I don't talk about this stuff, I take it for granted and that's dangerous. I know what being taken for granted is like, and I'm sure my sobriety would rebel and act out if I didn't talk about it, whether in meetings or with friends.

I've no fucking clue how I've managed to stay sober, yet be so painfully suicidal, for so long. For the last few years I keep telling myself that if I were actually suicidal, I'd start drinking and drugging again. I don't think that's true. I could easily take myself out, sober as the day is long. I wrestle with that far more than I wrestle with anything. I don't walk around thinking about smoking crack or drinking. I walk around thinking about killing myself, every fucking day.

Not because of anything, because of everything.

******

I've started attributing human emotions to the dogs I walk every day. I walk them and I talk with them and I can feel them, their sad eyes looking back at me from the end of their leashes, wondering when and how I'm going to finally break, or if today is the day I'm going to let their leashes go and I run into traffic. They know everything about me. They can feel my depression through the leashes, they can sense my feelings of inadequacy/despondency and they know I just feel like an alien and I want to go home, back to whatever realm I came from. You ever had a dog look at you and you know they're disappointed in you? Hell of a thing. Makes it even worse when it's clear they love you and enjoy their time with you.

That's a knife.

******

People will up and walk out of your life without a word and there's not a thing you can do about it. One day all is well, the next it's like they were made out of sand.

As much as that hurts, it's also okay.

Ain't no-thing nobody owes anyone.

******

I don't even think I believe in luck. I've been alive long enough to see that some folks get more opportunities than others. I've been alive long enough to see that the way the world/society treats people would make someone want to believe in luck. Some folks get born into circumstances that are far more favorable than other folks. Some folks get born into circumstances that are far less favorable than other folks. America is a violent and terrible place, full of people born into prosperity who refuse to acknowledge that prosperity, and instead they lie and say it was hard work and if others only worked as hard as they have, their circumstances would change. America is a lie. It's a fucking travesty that people don't have enough to keep a roof over their heads or food in their bellies. The amount of houseless people I see every day kills my heart, and not just because I'm one paycheck away from being out there with them. It kills me because it never had to be this way, this cruel, this imbalanced.

And now, with my own circumstances changing rapidly, all of my own anxieties about being unhomed are back, swirling into the din of the black hole and making it hum louder and churn louder and my eyes just get wetter and wetter.

******

I know I say this all the time, but please stay kind. It matters more than you will ever know.