So I’ve been meaning to write more. It’s something that I truly enjoy doing. I’ve been doing stuff about me, but that seems shallow and personal and just kind of weird for me. It’s weird to imagine that there are people out there, even my friends and family, that are actually interested in reading about what I consider my failure of a life. However, I keep getting positive responses which just bewilders me and I DO need to write, so here I am, bashing out another long winded ramble about what might be going through my head. The difference here is that I’m going to start writing once a day if I can help it. It’s a goal I’ve tried to hit before, but it’s hard. This time I’m going to start saving stuff up. I have no idea when anyone will read this, but, God willing, it will only be on my computer for a week before I post it. My goal is to have two stories, one from Joresch, one from Apokryphos, as they are my greatest passions. Eventually I might have a book written for each, even if it’s just short stories from each. I don’t know.
It’s a goal, anyway, and that seems to be the big thing in my therapy. It pisses me off sometimes. It’s like ‘What have you accomplished since we last spoke?’ Nothing, you bitch, quit asking! That’s my life! I don’t do anything! I’m depressed and agoraphobic, and I can’t leave the house, and I can hardly move when I’m home, and I can only fake happy at work and nothing has happened in my life and I’m turning 35 this year, thanks a lot for bringing me down lady!
But I keep going. I wish I could say I’m going for me. I go for Karen. She’s the biggest part of my life. Her and Tyler. I need to be there for them. I mean, I know I’m failing Tyler as a parent. I suck as a dad. I can only imagine that it’s slightly more bearable with me than with his mom who completely ignores him. Just another tick in my list of failures and things I suck at, just above being able to draw and just below being a decent human being.
I guess part of me goes to therapy for me, cause I just cannot live like I was. I’m better, to an extent, but only a little. I’m kind of sleeping, in random spurts, but it’s better than nothing, and I’m not stressing as bad as I have been, but it’s still there. The slightest thing can really set me to shaking or blacking out if I’m not ready for it, but again, those things are becoming rare. Now my biggest fight is against just total depression. For example, I came home last night and enjoyed a delicious taco salad, but I got tired quick as I’d only grabbed about 3 hours of sleep for work, so, after my big joyous food high, I crashed for a couple hours. When I woke up, realizing I’d need to sleep for work that night, I was miserable. Nothing brought me joy. Everything was just, well, awful. I couldn’t shake it. Not even my delicious taco salad could bring me joy anymore. I just didn’t want to exist and there was no reason for it. And that happens a fair amount. Oh, sure, no one sees it, but that’s because I fight so hard for people NOT to see it. I can’t stand making other people unhappy. And for those of you who read my Facebook posts, I like to point out stupidity, not make people unhappy. There’s a difference.
So, what seems to be recovery may just be me covering cause I don’t want to stress people; particularly Karen. I stress her out so much. She’s gonna be as bad as me if I don’t do something. I honestly don’t know why she stays. It might be body image, I guess. She found someone that loves her for her, which I do, but she could do about a billion times better than me easily. She could be married to some rich, loving doctor who could actually get her things, and a real house, and animals and into college and all the things she wants instead of having to worry about whether or not I’ve blacked out driving home cause a cop stressed me and now I’m dead in a ditch somewhere. I mean, that can’t be fun.
So, now it’s one in the afternoon. I’ve been up a couple hours after crashing again for a short time. I’m tired as hell, but I can’t sleep. I have to work in five hours and be out till one in the morning. I might try and trade, but probably not. I like closing, and I like Frankie cause she’s fun and, again, I hate putting people out. Hell, I’m working today cause someone was nice to me and I feel guilty as hell when I don’t pay people back for niceness. This is my own fault, and I think that sort of sums up my life. My entire life has been a series of really bad choices that have led me to become this strange sort of cult failure figure. All my friends love me, some cherish me, and I just can’t see it. They’re all doing well, with families and real houses, and real jobs and real lives, and I’m sitting here in a trailer my parents pay for and bought because I was an idiot six years ago and we can’t get out of and that just makes me want to kill myself cause I hate it so damned much. And yet they call, they write, they want to see me, they want to hear my stories, they want to roll play, they want me.
And I just do not understand.
Praise is something I don’t understand at all. All I see when I look in the mirror is this big fat, lazy, stupid, bastard of a failure. But my boss keeps telling me what I great job I do, and how all these people come up and ask for me, if not by name, then by “that big guy that is so cheerful”. I make people happy, even if I can’t be happy myself. Weird, right? But it’s so hard for me to say thank you to that, to people who compliment me. It’s weird. It doesn’t feel right. I can handle insults, but I can’t handle nice. I don’t know how to respond to it. “Hey, you fat fuck, what the hell is wrong with you?!” I can answer that. I can take that. That makes sense in my head. “You are so nice! You make it so fun to work here!” That doesn’t enter in my head. I just get all flustered and quiet and I don’t know how to respond so I just sort of nod and say “I do what I can” and move on without really taking the compliment. I mean, I’m glad that people like working with me and that I make them happy cause that’s good, but overall, I just, I don’t know, just kind of what to be left alone in a weird sort of way, but not be left alone. I don’t know what to do about it.
That’s sort of part of the problem, work, or at least, the way they see me at work. The way people see me in general. I know how I come off. I come off as this goofy, sort of loveable little guy who can deal with just about anything and still be smiling. I grunt and grumble the grumpy bits, and laugh and make jokes, but it’s all just fluff. I mean, I used to genuinely be like that. Shouting crap to make people laugh, to keep things lighthearted even during some of the worst stuff, cause I’ve had some shit jobs that you REALLY had to laugh through or you’d just kill yourself (Ames High the Gerry Peters regime for example SUCKED, and Gerry Peters, you know nothing and have no right to that job, you jackass, and I can’t wait for you to piss off the wrong person and get shitcanned you moronic fuck) but everything I do has no connection. There’s no emotion. There’s nothing behind the smile. I mean, I do have fun at work, but the face is just that, a face. It’s not me. Or maybe it is. I don’t know.
I am, and I am not at the same time.
It’s not as deep as it sounds, probably.
Hell, there are three women I work with that are incredibly beautiful, smoking hot, and they don’t register to me. Maybe it’s because they're younger, but even the few hot women that come through as customers when I’m working barely registers, even if they seem the right age. I can joke about it, play the part when I’m with the right person or people, but overall, nothing. I’m like a video game. Or an unobserved particle. That’s better. An unobserved particle. I don’t have function or purpose until viewed or acted upon by an outside force or observer. Then I put on the face that is appropriate and do my little dance, do my little dance on the catwalk. Then it’s back to being an empty nothing.
So that’s why this. I am literally forcing myself to do the things that I know I enjoy or enjoyed, and while I can’t seem to draw (though I do still try sometimes, and might just need practice or patience) I CAN write and I know that my stories are solid. There are few things I will say that I am good at, but I can write a damned good story, I can tell a damned fine tale. I know how to get people interested without pandering, I know how characters evolve and change, or don’t depending on who they are, I know how to twist and turn and bring you in and make you want to know these characters. I can fucking well do that even if I don’t claim to be able to do anything else. So, I will write. I will write till my fingers bleed if I have to. I have lost everything else in my life; my joy, my youth, me in general, but I will be God damned before I give up my stories.
They’re all I have left of who I was, and who I wanted to be.
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