When you start articulating your thoughts to share with an invisible audience, the narrator in your head begins unravelling the absurdity of your situation. It's the sort of revelation that nourishes the self-loathing cycle into interminable scenarios that only cease with sleep.
Before I make an effort to clarify yesterday's post, there's a handful of things I didn't write that I think should be noted. If I, or anyone else, one day wants to fill in some blanks about me, understanding that my heart was heavy and over-extended was only part of my year's dialogue. Maybe, still broke, still unhealthy was a broad enough swathe that I don't need to say more. Anyone that knows my past maybe can fill in some blanks. Truth is, a couple of people could piece together my 2024 and essentially have enough of the shards to facsimilate a reflection. The outside view, looking in, is to a 52-year-old, mentally unwell individual with autistic traits. This is the perception I believe others have of me, that I really struggle with. I'm aware of this whenever I send a message to someone; or whenever I speak out of turn; and what may be an oddity to my co-workers is surely something else entirely to those I choose as friends. Ron = an untethered fall into narcissism and self-loathing.
June was a particularly bad spell. I ridiculously anchored my joy onto a "promise" that it was going to be a birthday where I was celebrated in a way that I would feel. Mentally, with having no personal reference to build a foundation from, concocted some sort of film-esque day out with this person where we laughed, adventured, and perpetuated those imaginary concepts of good friends on a play date. Instead, I found myself three hours from home, lost, drug-sick, and scared to a point nearing paranoia. I didn't see my friend that day, and I felt like I was barely an after-thought to her plans. An oft-repeated cycle without reliance on a syringe or strangers. That is not to say, there haven't been surrogates.
More than once this year; my doctor positioned me into either addressing the cutting, or placing me into a circumstance where someone will correct it. An infection early in the year unfurled into a scavenger hunt for a clinic that would prescribe antibiotics without an obligatory reading of the charges. This is not a task that is easily deliminated in rural Appalachia. The tools come out when intrusive thoughts are unrelenting, usually as an avenue to train thoughts elsewhere and hopefully sleep. I hoped, now 2+ years alone, that the reliance on these activities would subjugate to other, more creative endeavours, but if anything, the more I invest of myself into the happiness of others, the less energy and interest I have in self-care and distraction.
I did start a junk journal this year, maybe my boldest creative effort. It includes novelties and photos from my New Orleans cemetery visits. It, however, sits in a box, incomplete, uninspiring, unfathomably taxing to pick up. Cities of the Dead is, at this moment, I feel, done. The effort to drag my body to an unknown to film something died on June 1 with the last of my self-preservation. Haloes Curios is also on life-support, more because the effort to craft something I am proud of takes so much time and patience; only to be flagged, copyright-stricken, and trolled by a hateful cretin. The passion needed to muster through that process is in very short supply; it's much easier to gift that energy to someone who needs it, or I believe needs it.
So... that's a lot. A worrying lot. How does one endure themselves when every day is a gloom-parade? It really isn't that. I am guilty of fixating on the cracks, but individuals like Ethan, Bre, Morgan, Pedro, Tucker, Bethy - they've provided bridges across dark chasms. I'm much too reliant on those trestles. My selfishness and narcissism are concerning. Having spent so much of my life on that bank of the river where your only value is what you provide to another, I am not ambivalent to the realization that I ask a lot more from the people in my life than I am providing in return. It's at these crossroads where I turn to gift-giving to show my love and respect, because a "thank you" feels inadequate.
Moving into a wider focus, somehow half of our country felt safe enough to elect a rapist, felon, and compulsive liar to protect our country and it's inhabitants. There is likely no greater reminder that half of the people you know are more angry about egg prices than the existential threat to the life and safety of gay people, non-conforming identities, immigrants, Americans that don't look like "Americans", free-thinking, journalism, justice, the planet. Half of America opted for hateful and terrifying imagery over a hopeful message of unity. If that doesn't make you scared, you should be concerned about who you are and what your values are. No, of course I don't feel confident that somehow the fractured remains of norms and the constitution can somehow survive another four years of constant effort to break them, and that somehow our country will return to it's regularly scheduled program afterwards. All of the machinations are in place to change the future of our democracy forever; complicity has been the rallying cry of the GOP for eight years, and they will absolutely lie down when the weight is at it's heaviest; and why anyone thinks otherwise seems delusional to me. What is the evidence that somehow justice or our democracy will prevail despite the efforts to dismantle them?
Concerts: I didn't see many. The Chameleons was the big one, an incredible night. But I also saw Steph Green with Duff Thompson, and Thala Zedek. I should have seen Mr. Gnome, but Hurricane Helene had other ideas.
I think that's everything I wanted to say. Well, no, it wasn't. It will likely be months before I return here; until then I suppose?
