Saturday, January 28, 2017

The Beginning, The End, The Beginning

This is the last post-mortem introspection for me.  It's time to rise.




I'm no good at living.  I always fuck it up.

I exist.  I'm great at that.  I survive, too.  I'll survive shit that will kill most people.

But living?  I'm not good at that.  I'd like to be, though.  I really do.  I want to live.  I want to experience things others experience and I want to stop feeling like some ghoul in a cave.

So this month, because I wanted to begin 2017 on the best footing possible, I tried living.  As the month winds down, I can say that I really made a huge mess of it all, and I'm left wondering just what in the hell is next.

I got a new job that started in the beginning of the month.

I've been eating better and doing some light exercise.  I mean, the best I can do, because I'm pretty far gone.  My knees are about shot after years of not exercising and carrying all of this weight.

I've been weening myself off various substances.  That's been the hardest part.  I'm sick all the time from it but if I went cold turkey, I'd be in worse shape.  The last time that happened I had seizures.

I made a connection with someone.  And I totally destroyed it.

This month has been rough.  And honestly with the changes I'm making it just feels like I'm no longer me.  It's like I'm somebody else.

Well, not really.  Not really a person.  Not in the sense that I'm somebody.  I feel more like a meat suit that is sentient enough to breathe and eat, but the rest is just beyond my reach.

This reminds me of a conversation I had about a dozen years ago.  A guy and myself were chatting about somebody we both knew.  I despised him for being a slimy, evil bastard.  But Tim didn't.

"Aw, he's okay," said Tim.  "Once you separate him from the arrogance."
"Yeah," I said.  "But Tim, you can't do that.  It's who he is.  If we separated you from the fuck-up there would be nothing left."  

That was a mean thing to say but accurate.  Tim really was a fuck-up.

But what am I?  And what's left of me as I make these changes in my life?

Tonight, I finished edits on my novella, Scruffles n' Me.  It's a special story for me and deeply personal.  It's a story about redemption.  I feel like I'm constantly scrambling for redemption.  I feel like I've done nothing right in over a decade.

To make things even more complicated, I am filled with a weird sense of optimism, because I know I'm on the right path.  I know if I keep doing what I'm doing, things will improve in my life.  Well, some things will improve.

What do I mean?

My health will improve.  I will be less likely to drop dead of a stroke or heart attack in the next few months.  My kidneys and liver will be less likely to shut down due to all the crap I've consumed.  Also, I will be able to walk for greater distances and do more things.

Plus, I will have a little more money to spend.

If I keep doing what I'm doing, I will have a successful Youtube channel with subscribers and followers.

If I keep doing what I'm doing, I will have people sharing the links to my videos, and people will find those videos helpful.

If I keep doing what I'm doing, I might actually get sponsors.

If I keep doing what I'm doing, I'll have more fiction published.

If I keep doing what I'm doing, I'll eventually get published in a pro-rated publication, and I'll get paid like a professional.

If I keep doing what I'm doing, all kinds of good things will happen for me.  But there is one thing not in that list and that's what bugs me the most.

Happiness is meaningless without having somebody to share it with.  And I fuck things up every goddamned time.  Two years ago, it was a friend.  I was comfortable with her and that was the worst thing that could have happened.  She knew how much of a train wreck I was and she shot me down right away.  It hurt like hell for a long time.

The problem, (as if there was just one) is that I don't feel comfortable very often.  Most women, to me, seem totally foreign and frightening.  Aggressive and carnivorous.  Mean-spirited, vicious, and angry.

So no, I don't feel comfortable with very many women.  Not beyond cursory chit-chat.  And very few get beyond that point with me.

But I'm done with the post-mortem on these failed moments.  I can't keep kicking myself and flogging myself and cutting myself because I fucked up something wonderful.  I have to let this all go no matter how much it bothers me.

I wish they made razor blades specially designed to cut out of defective parts of me.  All of those broken pieces and parts that cause malfunctions could then be removed in some bloody mass and put into a medical waste bucket to be incinerated.

If I keep doing what I'm doing it still won't fix whatever the fuck is broken inside of me.  And I don't even know where to start hacking with the blades anyways.  It'll be a bloody affair, but these things always are, and as long as nobody asks me too many questions I'll be fine.



Right now, at this moment of my life, I have a brighter future than at any other moment in my past.  It's all meaningless to me because the one thing I have constantly craved since as far back as I can remember is still denied to me.  It doesn't matter how many times I rise from my own ashes, I'm still by myself in the sky, so what's the point?

People forget--the phoenix doesn't mate.  It doesn't need to reproduce because it never dies.  Not really.  It burns up and rises back from the dead into life once again.  But it's alone.

It seems like I'm always close to death in some way or another.  It's as if he's a friend who comes around to have a beer with me once in a while.  We keep each other company.  It's all part of the cycle.

I used to say I was sick of this cycle of death and rebirth within the confines of my own life but truth be told, in recent years, I've been gaining ground.  I know this isn't a football game but I am slowly moving forward with each destruction.  And I'm getting better at the rebirth part.  I'm getting so much better at taking the hits and moving on to the next disaster.  Growth.

As I've said before, this life cycle for me is about figuring out who in the hell I am without having that identity connected to somebody else.  I am not somebody's this or that.  I am me.  I am me, standing on my own, without being attached somebody to another person's identity.

I am not one-half of anything.  I am a whole of something and I am somebody.  I just don't have a fucking clue who that somebody is right now.  But I'm working on it.

I'm 45 years old and I am just now figuring out who in the hell I am and what I'm about.  I'm just now finding strength I never thought possible and I'm just now learning I can really do things that are cool.  I had no idea I was capable of such things.

But is all of this self-discovery worth it?  Is any of this worth it?  Why bother building a house you'll never live in or cook a meal you'll never eat?  But that's short-game thinking and I'm not here for that.
I have to keep remembering that this lifetime isn't about what happens in this lifetime or even for this life.  This lifetime is simply another trip around the block so that the rewards reaped by my soul carry on into the next world and into the next lives.  And I have somebody waiting for me.  Somebody is counting on me to get it right so I can stop this bullshit and we can be together again.










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