>Now Playing - King For a Day by Fuel
Did you feel it too? Maybe the lights flickered, maybe the wind blew wrong, maybe you heard something, something loud that sounded like war, like jets being scrambled overhead. Maybe the Earth Rumbled, maybe it was nothing, but you felt it didn't you? Your heart dropped, you could feel the hairs on your neck stand up, taste the wind changing. I can almost feel the rotation of the Earth slowly drifting away, away from me. Things are spiraling out of control at an astonishing rate, people are being locked up in camps, ICE operating like a secret police, dodging due process and arresting people without warrants, for no other reason than looking brown, looking like me. And I, am no different. I too spiral out of control wildly, doing stupid things that make little to no sense in search of something, anything to hold on to. To cut through this thick murky grey that has flooded my life. A sludge all too familiar to me. I used to just call it nothingness, or numbness. This time it goes beyond numbness. Its palpable. I can cut it like butter and it oozes and melts around the knife. I feel it stick in my throat and clog up my joints. It squeezes around my chest and pushes the air out of my lungs. Inescapable. Unnerving. Constant. Boredom would be one thing, but meaning. Purpose. Thats something else entirely. It feels as tho all I do is in futility. I will never not be who I am, and I cannot escape the guilt that fills my gut and drags me under this thick substance that surrounds me. Like a bowling ball it sits in my stomach and pushes on my lungs. Breathless, like I'm drowning in oxygen. Suffocating in air. Grasping at concepts of straws desperately searching for any distraction, something please, anything to pull me up to the surface again. An endless sisyphean struggle to stay afloat in a sea of boulders weighing me down.
They say you're to imagine sisyphus happy, as the monotony of doing the same thing over and over become numb to him, he finds ways to entertain himself, and maybe even fools himself into enjoying pushing his boulder. We are told to do this to make ourselves feel better about our own meaningless or mundane tasks. Your dead jobs, your never ending struggle with an unforgiving system. What if he isn't happy, not because of his situation, but because of what once was. He was once a king afterall, or some kind of ruler. Surely he misses that life? and his wife he left behind (even though he seems to be kind of a dick to her)? If we apply ourselves to sisyphus, and see ourselves as arbitrarily rolling a "giant boulder" be it work, school, or something as simple and common as laundry "up hill" whether it be the passage of time, the continuation of a cycle, or the continued need of clean clothes, we paint sisyphus as weak and we as strong! "Bah!" we say ever so full of hubris "Sisyphus is a pussy ass bitch, I could roll that damn boulder no problem!" but we often forget, he never completes his task. Imagine if everything you did at work were to be undone the next day, if you got to the end of your semester or quarter or what have you and found that none of your credits counted, that when you put your laundry in the washer they came out dirtier than before? Everything I do feels like that, maybe I'm exaggerating or its a long winded metaphor or something, but lately all I do is wait for things I work on to fall apart. Nothing I do seems like it means fuckall to anybody, and maybe it doesn't and that's okay if it meant something to me, but not even I care anymore. Honestly I thought I was better off dead 6 months ago and I'm just sticking around to what... Prove something? Like I'm holding on to hope that somehow I can change enough to make up for what I've done? And yet all I can do is bitch and moan, obsess over my past. I can already see my future taking form, I'll be one of those weirdos you find drunk face down at the bar who incoherently spews tales of the "glory days" back when they were Really Living. Stuck reminiscing like some kind of high school quarterback who never mentally matured passed 19. Forever living in the past, obsessed with it even. No really, the amount of time I spend thinking about what that band I was in is doing now can't be healthy. I hope they don't think of me as much as I obsess over them. I'm simply constantly reminded, everytime I drive home from work, when I go out for dinner in my hometown, when I drive into Seattle (which rarely happens anymore). I can't let go, why can't I just let it fucking go. Grasping to the last time I felt drive, had meaning, meant something, ANYTHING to me.
I just passed my 6 month mark in therapy. It has been half a year, and I honestly don't feel like I'm making progress. My therapist assures me I am. They say I'm communicating better, great! All the good it fucking does me now. Is this how it's always going to feel? Arbitrarily pushing my conscience up a hill only to turn around at the 6 month mark and feel barely even 2 inches off the ground? Am I going to be 30, 45, even 50 continuing to feel this way? Fuck that. Fuck. That. Overwhelming hopelessness keeps me down. I feel like no matter how many times I wash my hands, they will always come out stained. No matter where I go or what I do, my past will follow like a curse, and if I don't confess upfront and shoot any possible friendship in the foot by labeling myself as dangerous, I'll be waiting around for it to all topple down to the ground when inevitably it is revealed again. I don't know. I feel like I'm running out of things to try. My mind races a million miles a minute lately and I can barely keep up. Jumping from anxiety to regret, nostalgia to pain, regret to anger, pain to sadness, round and round they run in my mind like to idiot dogs chasing each other, trying to kill each other. This isn't play, it's war. Internal war on my own damn psyche while the rest of the world around me collapses in the most ridiculous ways. The Untied States is a goddamn joke and the punchline is all of our suffering. I'm experiencing the rise of fucking fascism in real time and having a constant relapse of moral crisis overlapping on itself like ego death upon ego death in the shittiest acid trip of all time. I can't take this anymore. Fuck my stupid chungus life I fucking hate this bullshit! It wasn't supposed to be this way! Nothing was supposed to go like this! I was supposed to be HAPPY. I was supposed to break the goddamn despair cycle. The godforsaken curse upon my name. I was supposed to find meaning and joy and friendship and camaraderie and community. No. I threw all of that in the garbage for what. Some twisted desire? A stupid impulse, an unwise selfish want. More and more I realize why I really deserve all of this. 6 Months and we're round the bend back to self loathing and suicidal thoughts. Fan fucking tastic. I can't tell if I'm really not getting better or I just feel this way because Mine and my exes' anniversary was around this time. I can't remember the exact date we had agreed upon because I deleted it from my calendar after we broke up. I just know our first dates were during the summer and we became "official" I guess in September. I remember how it all went down. Even that went wrong, maybe it was doomed from the start? I was greedy, selfish, hurting. Like a wounded animal lashing out and refusing to talk about it. I respect anyone who can make polyamory or I guess we call it "Ethical Non-Monogamy" now work, but I don't think I can be trusted. I'm too much of a stupid hungry slut for that kind of thing and I'll just go around hurting people. Though in my feeble and weak defense, it wasn't my idea, I wanted commitment first. I was ready to give myself up to him. I doubt it would have changed anything in the long run, I think we truly were doomed from the start. So many foolish mistakes I made. What Happened to me? Did the miniscule amount of minor "fame" really go to my head that fast? Did I get such a big ego for being in a band that had what, a thousand followers on instagram MAX at the time? Maybe I'm not meant for fame, no. Clearly I'm not meant for it.
Maybe I'm just being too hard on myself. I was a stupid kid, I still am kind of, except they let me in bars now which is probably a bad idea. I feel like I've said "it's no excuse" enough times that you know by now I'm not trying to explain away my actions. It's simply true. I was a stupid fucking kid who did stupid shit and now I pay for it every goddamn day of my life. I saw someone recently. Someone who I recognized as someone I hurt a long long time ago. His name was different, I honestly am not even sure if it was the same person, but they looked far too similar for it to be a coincidence. My mind flooded with memories of how I wronged him, some sick joke this was. I was in a pathetic state, exhausted from work, hungry, in a piss poor mood, buying cough medicine for my mother in a safeway self checkout lane. I guess they need to check your ID for that kind of thing, I had left mine in the car. They let me go without checking, which means I don't think they recognized me, or if they did maybe they pitied me. Again, I can't be sure it was even the same person, but in my gut, I feel it, I felt it then too. That bowling ball got heavy, like it spontaneously was made of lead. All I could muster was a pathetic thanks, I croaked it out like a dying frog and scurried out faster than a rat realizing it's among a den of hungry wildcats. I suppose that's just pure karma though. I wanted to say I'm sorry. I wanted to grovel for forgiveness in the middle of a Safeway. I doubt they wanted that. Yet again I fear I think about that event far more than they do.
My paranoia is getting worse, if you couldn't tell. Last Tuesday I went to see a live band, like a real one, for the first time in about 5 months and the entire time I was so paranoid about running into someone who could recognize me. It's a foolish thought, I have surely fallen to obscurity in the mind of anyone who knew me as I don't know.... what you would call a public figure??? Anyone from my past. I was constantly watching the line grow behind me as I waited, looking for any familiar faces. Same thing with the crowd, and in the pit. Thankfully I was not recognized. I probably look a tad different post haircut, and I was wearing a mask too. I didn't see anyone I recognized either. Still that feeling of being watched in public, fearing recognition, fearing being chased out of the venue. It sucked. You'd think not being recognized would quell the paranoia but all I can think is that I got lucky, nobody listens to fuckin ska bands like that, not enough to actually go to shows. It was the Less Than Jake tour if you're curious, with Fishbone, The Suicide Machines, and Catbite on the lineup. Man I missed it. Real good live music. Moshing with people. I did get knocked on my ass several times but I have to assume that's because The Suicide Machines are punky as fuck. I had fun, but I was paranoid the entire beginning of the concert till I realized nobody I knew would ever attend that show. I did end up losing my hat thought. My military surplus hat that had become so crucial to my feminine identity knocked off the top of my head and gone in an instant. Never to be seen again. I guess that's how it goes. I miss that hat a lot, I want it back. I'll probably order another one because it really made me feel like such a girly girl for some reason, I had begun associating it with my feminine Identity hardcore. Now I don't feel as girly, even with a face full of makeup, feels like something is missing... damn... I need that hat back.
My mom floated the idea of going to Costa Rica again, more permanently but I don't have a passport so it'll be a while for that.
Still trying to move out, now also trying to find a new job because I'm tired of being treated like shit at flower world and they do not pay me enough.
I guess I'll keep trying to prove something to myself, and keep looking over my shoulder, and I'll be honest about who I am and what I've done. If that ends with me by myself, then I guess I should like myself a little more if she's the only one who's gonna stick around.
Remember that it isn't in the lights flickering, it's not that the wind changed, not the sound you heard or the plane you saw, it's the fact that if you're like me, your heart sank every time. It's in the acceptance that this could be it, even just for a moment, and it's in me not saying what it is, but you know in your heart what I'm talking about. It probably doesn't mean the same thing to you as it does to me, but you can clearly picture it now can't you? Maybe I'm crazy.
I'm probably crazy.
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