Tag: emotional

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My partners and therapists have been asking how I am feeling, post-election results. That’s the easy part: Disgust. Frustration. Rage. Determination and Resolve. Exhaustion. But out of all the emotions I can list, I can’t say I was surprised. A large part of me suspected the worst case scenario, and was proven right. And I hate it when my cynicism is justified.

My secondary feelings (the “emotions-to-the-emotions”) is an overwhelming… it’s not sadness. It’s resignation.

You’ve probably seen the images circulating around of the vote breakdown according to race. Most of the votes for Trump were overwhelmingly white– very similar to how 2016 shook out. And those numbers are damning. There have been various speculation as to why this happened. I keep tabbing out of this window and coming back, trying to sum up everything.

To be honest, I don’t want to.

I don’t see the point. Others have already said, and better. In a similar vein I permanently shelved a writing project debunking racist thought patterns that arrest potential dialogue because what’s the fucking point in adding another thinkpiece to the pile that is clearly getting dismissed?

I’m resigned because the vast majority of this country does not care to actually change things for the better. It would rather uphold Whiteness, and capitalism, and systematic oppression, and all the buzzwords the average Karen will tune out than grow and improve. Stacey said, if I may be glib, that there is no point in trusting white women, because performative pink pussy hats and blue bracelets are far more easier than turning the mirror on yourself and your culture.

I am resigned to the feeling that solidarity is so, so far out of reach. In my darkest thoughts, maybe it never was.

It would be so easy to isolate, shut down, don’t stick my neck out for nobody because fuck everybody else they don’t care about me. I am exhausted at defending my very existence, and for what? Those exit poll numbers? What was the fucking point?!

But I know that is wrong. My feelings are valid, yes, but me climbing into a hole of despair, disappointment, and bitterness won’t help anyone.

That’s what they want: to isolate myself.

So I will still not only exist, but be visible. I will help where I can, any way I can. I will still try to form community bonds and friendships and other ways of living in this world. I have family created and forged that I can rely on. I know who my people are.

And I will focus on that.

Outwardly, I am much more cautious and jaded.

I’m no longer extending the olive branch of my personhood and knowledge just so maybe I’ll be seen as human and treated as such. Perhaps every once in awhile I’ll get a bee in my bonnet and discuss this sort of thing, because that is just how I roll. But it won’t be in that outward, educating voice anymore.

I find myself exasperated as some are still insisting on “meeting in the middle,” trying to “change hearts and minds,” when that energy could be spent doing more productive things.

But.

It takes all kinds in a community, doesn’t it? If someone has more patience and energy than I in this endeavor, then I wish them the best. Maybe they’ll have more luck than I ever did.

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FUCK TRUMP

Fuck every one of you who voted for him.

Fuck the system for not being broken, but working just as intended.

To the Queers, the Black and Brown People, The Poor, The Disabled, The Marginalized, and anyone else terrified and angry and numb and everything else:

I know you’re scared right now. I am, too. And I’m feeling despair right along with you.

But remember. We will have each other. Remember mutual aid, community, helping one another.

It is long past to be trying to change people’s minds. The numbers have made it abundantly clear we can’t olive branch ourselves out of this one.

Use your energy to lift up those that will lift you up.

Don’t feel bad if you can’t fight. We need warriors. Healers. Tanks.
But most importantly, we need you to survive.

“Don’t panic. Organize!”

Even better, join those that have been organized.

But it’s okay if all you can do is keep living.

They want you to die, or they don’t care.

Don’t let them take you.

Every so often there is invoked a Blood of Eden mission protocol – we call it Protocol One. It is used in times of either terrible joy or the worst possible outcomes. Protocol One means there are no more formal orders… Now I give you Protocol One . . . and Protocol One is ‘Live.’ Nona the Ninth

For those applicable, enjoy your lil victory lap and be sure to get your stretches in. The lot of us are going to give you hell.

I’m going to do what I can. I am going to live for those that didn’t make it. I will live and fight my sorrow. I hope to see you beside me.

Now to survey what is left.

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It’s a rough month for me. I know I say this every year, but truly. It has every reason to be.

Some of the most harrowing events of my personal life occurred during this month. I try not to ruminate (weak emphasis on try) but I just end up stressing myself out by remembering. I also like to think that things just happen around this time, and I finally have a theory for it: SAD. It’s getting colder, and it’s becoming easier to just go home, curl up in bed, and shut off. Things hit harder. Everyone’s groove is off as we slide into the colder parts of the year.

And every four years, there’s the additional stressor of whether democracy (oligarchy) will continue limping along or this will be The One to finally… something. I don’t know. Something bad, most likely. And this year the dread is at a fever pitch.

I can admit that I am scared. I have to, to be realistic. But no amount of therapy is going to make the reality any easier. I can cope all day but what’d be the point if my rights are stripped away, if I am not safe? I’m grappling with the possibility that I won’t be safe any more. Or, I was just lucky all this time, and that luck is finally bleeding out.

What next, then?

We’ll still have each other.

I will keep going for those that can’t.

If it calls for it, I will despair.

I will feel.

But I’ll put the steel back in my spine.

I will cope the best I can.

Then I will begin.

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I’m now alone here

House empty and beige

Windows wide open

And the tiredness

Finally seeping in

A failed lynchpin

Staring out to the trees

Understanding, at last,

The cause for the distance

And realizing

That I can’t carry any more

Day 21 Week 21

I won’t talk about the during-move blues, other than note that it was one of the most stressful times I have had in a long time. I blew past my breaking point and burned out twice over. I wanted to cry, a lot, and I wanted to not deal with that shit anymore.

And then, it was done.

How am I doing now?

First off, I am relieved. I am also grateful for all the help we managed to get. I’m not even happy that the hard part is over.

I am sad. Still in mourning for the house-that-was in my apartment-that-is. My favorite ideal future of a giant house with our individual spaces, of all of our hobbies intertwining, and metas and friends visiting often will never happen. Relationships have transitioned and bonds sustained damage. There is, as I noted above, a distance I can never cross.

I did enjoy organizing and decorating with my remaining nesting partner. We made the place ours, and the vacuum left behind gradually filled. And it has been satisfactory as we settled into our slightly modified routines (the shortened commute certainly helped). Coming home feels, well, like coming home.

I am not happy, yet. There’s recovering from the physical, mental, and monetary stress. I may need another month.

But I have a bittersweet contentment.

That’ll do for awhile.

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But seriously, I’ve been riding that high since I saw her in concert.


…maybe I should write about that. Meanwhile, a poem.


floating, almost


I want to feel that again,
The wonderful ache in my heart
To mirror floating through water
Into a dream of not-home-anymore
But you are there
Loading the car, because
I’m just dreaming.
Fantasy and reality collide here:
The sky is a meteor shower.
The grass bends into waves.
The house, odd angles, and comes in threes.
We’re characters who loved each other and will again,
Once I write 100 words
For each of the myriad orbits
In flying, or string ensemble, or sinking.
So reach for me while you’re dreaming,
Remember the last time we fell together,
Kissing away nightmares
And content with this magic,
Almost floating like she does.

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This still counts if I post it on the very last day of October. Happy Halloween. I was hesitant to post this. Depression is a bitch.


Whether it’s pure coincidence, metaphysical weirdness, brain chemistry, or yet another example of my moral failings, the roughest time of the year is upon me again. I have a pretty good previous month to look back on, but that doesn’t matter. The veil is thinnest here, the one between my insecurities and happiness. I’m haunted by my mistakes, supposed and otherwise.


But, I wrote a poem. And it started off with


Between Deftones and an oat milk latte and still flying high from Janelle Monae

I stopped caring.

“I Wish I Could Float”


And maybe it will stick this time. The Not Caring (Too Much).


I thought it funny to have my birthday party on the last day of September, technically Libra season, but I also declared that month my Birthday Month so y’all can’t be mad anyway. I suppose it’s my way of demanding space from a lifetime of feeling like I’m always someone’s backburner afterthought: whether it’s being dehumanized by society, de-prioritized by algorithms, simply ghosted, left on read for a month, or the consequences of setting myself up as the Low-Maintenance Person Thing.


Some of it I’ll just have to live with. We all have busy lives, some more busy than others, and as I keep saying: the years since COVID-19 hit the scene have been particularly tough. Answering texts isn’t exactly as important as trying to survive. I allow grace for that; to not would be hypocritical of me. And some folks just don’t think about me as much as I think about them; I can’t change that but I can adjust accordingly.


But I can be mad at say, Facebook, which only exacerbates my loneliness.


Because I’ve forgotten that we are alone by default.


Perhaps this is just me rationalizing my sometimes-crippling desire for closeness. But– hang on– wait– you can find a whole buncha quotes that have a more positive spin on that concept. A quick Ecosia search spits out a few by, like, important people or at least people with really recognizable names. I especially like Welles’ thought on the subject. I even reblogged it on my Tumblr once, with a graphic from Final Fantasy XIII. Trust me, that combination worked.


We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.

Orson Welles


I’m currently in the process of crystalizing my own “spin” on being alone and/or lonely. Put simply,


I’m open,

Show up

or

Don’t

“I Wish I Could Float”


That is definitely a work in progress. It’s just a touch too flippant. I need to convey something softer, too, and that not everyone gets such an invite– only the ones that give a shit about my existence.


I was an only kid for the first decade of my life, so I’ll be alright. And I’ll be okay in the end, because in the end we’re all alone anyway. But that doesn’t mean we all can’t keep each other company.


I’ll let you know where I am– especially when the “being alone” is revealed as “loneliness”. I’ll reach out when I can, from off-hand “I’ll be here, tag along?” to “We haven’t got lost in IKEA for awhile, now” to “date me, you walnut.” If you’d like to spend time with me, that’s awesome. If no one responds I guess that’d suck.


Keep me company. If you want to.

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CONTENT WARNING: death, death mention


This weekend, I saw someone die on the shore.


The asterisk: it was very likely they died on the shore. But I hope they didn’t.


I was distracted– trying not to lose the hat I borrowed– when my partner noted a crowd gathering not too far from where we were . When I saw someone laying on the sand, not moving, I stopped frolicking.


I stood there, unsure, not wanting to stare but concern grew in me. I checked it carefully for any hints of morbid curiosity. The waves crashed at my back, pushing me to return to land and I do so; the higher waves weren’t fun anymore. I look around self-consciously, and I was not the only one to leave. Maybe they thought the same that I did– that being in the water still having fun while someone was dying seemed… wrong.


I sat where the shore was dark-wet sand, a compromise between needing the comfort of nature and the Wrongness I felt if I stayed in deeper waters. Two women walked by, asking of anyone else knew CPR. I apologized for not knowing. People were taking turns. The crowd grew. This Someone still hadn’t stirred.


I focused on the sand-wave combination burying my feet.


I tried to fit the experience to my intrusive thoughts earlier in the day: don’t go too far, remember the riptides, don’t go too deep, I can’t lose you.


I thought, how would the world be like if everyone stopped what they were doing and acknowledged a life in peril or a life possibly lost. Overt, Obvious, Empathy.


I thought of that Buffy episode where she couldn’t call her deceased mom “The Body” and I also refused to call Someone “The Body” holding out for as long as I could while people were still doing CPR.


Someone started waving their arms; the medical team arrived with their direction. Minutes after, the police were on the scene as well. We decided to leave. Our beach bag was almost in the way of the med’s four-wheeler. I felt guilty, and promised I would not have been mad if they ran it over. I couldn’t help but say, “I hope they’re okay.” And there was an apology; because it was likely they really, really weren’t going to be.


But I was compelled to hope. Hope that Someone would pull through.


When we left, they were still doing CPR. I think. I saw a stretcher. I don’t remember much else.


At the back of the resort, we rinsed off our feet. Someone at the gate asked questions.


And then I hear it: “She was my friend.”


I can’t say what hasn’t been said before, already. About death, I mean. But my experience is still uniquely my own, at least through only my eyes and the thoughts attached to what I saw– my personalized reminders of our morality.


A morbid, juxtaposed footnote for a wonderful beach trip celebrating our birthdays.


It isn’t as haunting as I thought it would be. But maybe “haunting” is just too strong a word for the effect.


The day after, I checked online for any news of the incident. And two days later it did float into my mind as I was rinsing my grapes. And it is the sole subject of this post.


I suspect it will come up again, the next time I visit the beach. Or I’ll give into the urge to resume my news search.


I’m wondering if I am the “right amount” of haunted.

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Like a lot of people, I’ve been in what’s been called “Survivor Mode.” You do enough to get through the day, most times by any means available to you.


I feel like I have been doing that since I graduated college.


Now, this happened over a decade and change ago. I graduated at the tail end of a nasty recession and the job market was hit hard. Furthermore, I had a ton of student loan debt– and due to predatory practices of this particular degree mill and student loan company collaboration, it was a lot. This combination forced me to still live at home a little longer and grab any job I could (and being a mailroom clerk, conveniently, did count toward the school’s lofty “over 90% employment rate” upon graduation). There was freelancing done here and there, and sometimes I managed to land the fabled Job in my Field, and I even started a media company with some college friends.


To put it gently, I have been burnt out from “the industry” and have PTSD symptoms when I think about going back. But my college degree, while not worth the paper it was printed on, is proverbially collecting dust. But in being able to survive business implosions, “relieved of my duties,” cheapskate clients, scams, and eviction, I had to settle for the classic 9-to-5.


I think about the “How I Got Here”s quite a lot: like a lot of folks, we were instilled with the “earning a college degree will get you employment” thing– and disappointed when it wasn’t that simple, or even possible. The aforementioned for-profit school and predatory loan distributors. My weaknesses in interviewing in an over-saturated market. My portfolio, which won awards but not jobs. I dwell on the negatives and the “What If”s along with the steps I have taken.


It’s a little harder to remember why I wanted to go into Web Design in the first place– but not as hard as I always think it will be.


Way (way) back in high school, I took all the computer courses available to me. I enjoyed them all, but the ones I liked the most were when we dealt with… Frontpage. Further back– in middle school– I was enamored with all the information other people put on the World Wide Web… how each individual put together images and text to convey what they wanted to. And I thought, “I can do that. I can build sites for people who are unable to. I can put information out there that is more accessible.” And the more I learned, the more I saw how I can create something like that.


With the advent of Content Management Systems, Web designers feel obsolete. But it still takes a person with the know-how and a good eye for color and execution– or at least, someone willing to get their hands dirty being elbow-deep in tweaking code. Accessibility is more important than ever, and I’m not just talking about readability. We have to make sure images are described accurately and accessibility tools are accounted for.


I am content, even happy, with where I am now. I’m still here, after all. There is a roof over my head, gas in the tank, and food in the fridge, despite my cravings for Taco Bell. I’m even blessed to have a job I actually like and enjoy! I am indeed surviving.


I may need to balance an old passion with the… practicality of keeping myself clothed and fed.

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On the shores of roped-off swimming spots
I remember you from all the pens I never collected
the contrast from the blue houses
Complimenting the white trim
I write in red tint
Now more honorable, more informed


I could have been
On those still nights
Beautiful with you


I never healed from that October
Always cold, not quite frozen
Melting from your pink hair


I ran ahead
Into the shadow unknowing
Loneliness becoming
Written sensual unseen by you


I found out who I was
But you’ll never know
you left the lost roads
Stapling images to trees
From backpacks full
Addresses broken
Someone else has your name
I left mine alone
She kept driving
We left our bathing suits at home


Morning still, this
Filling in blanks
No closure, unresolved, this.