Category: Prose

sometimes words or phrases catch my eye. Today this one did : “Emma Thompson plays Nancy, retired and recently widowed, vividly unhappy, and at the limit of her ability to endure her own unhappiness.” written by Sheila O’Malley in her review of the movie Good Luck to you, Leo Grande.

“vividly unhappy and at the limit of her ability to endure her own unhappiness” I know this feeling! the adjective “vividly” is an excellent choice to modify unhappy in the way the v’s and d’ hit sound wise – in my head and out loud.

happy feelings generated just reading it.

When I was younger my sibs and I played Atari games together. Pong, of course. As games developed the balance between playing alone and together was pretty even because games were either meant to be played alone and that’s all you could do or they were meant to be played together. Then there was the expansion of single player consoles, the Gameboy most notably, and to a lesser extent little game handhelds that you passed between players or played alone.

We had several of The Mattel Electronics games: Football, Basketball and Baseball. We had the Atari Console, a Commodore 64 Game System, and a PC once I bought the Radio Shack IBM clone: the Tandy (not sure of the model anymore). I purchased from the Radio Shack in West End Mall on Radio Shack credit probably in 1988 or 1989.

I had a couple of the computerized chess games from Radio Shack. I still have one in a box somewhere. I’ve got Playstation 2, Nintendo Wii, and XBox. All of these I mostly play single player games on. I played Doom , Quake, and Ultima in multiplayer mode but not in the MMORPG way that modern games are played. These were games where a friend set up a server over the network (usually work friends) and we played after hours.

With the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox, I got single player games that had online multiplayer but no games I liked enough to play with others and frankly no gaming friends or community of encouragement. Like I enjoyed the Call of Duty games but quickly got that I wasn’t skilled enough for multiplayer online games. Being killed repeatedly 5 seconds after spawning was never ever fun and I didn’t have the patience or the time or the joy required to upskill in that arena. My nephew enjoyed it though and he had gaming friends with whom he played. some of which were met exclusively through gaming. I never developed connections enough to have that. And now I don’t really have the interest.

I guess this walk down memory lane is done. Was just thinking about buying Halo Infinite. Don’t know that I’ve decided anything yet. Maybe I’ll load up Halo 5 and see if anything sparks.

I feel alone. I’m struggling in a bubble of my own making. I mean I made it and I don’t know how to unmake it or how to make it transparent or make it visible enough for others to see and acknowledge. Too often I require an external to validate my reality. I know what I see and feel. Too often reality is denied in order to fit in, too reduce risk of attack, avoid disappointment and expectation. And all of it leaves me alone.

The truth is and has always been that I am not alone. No one is alone.

Sometimes it feels like treading water is all I am doing and I am tired. So I float until I can get my legs back under me to tread some more or devote the energy to moving in the direction I want to go. It is not special. This is how people get through life, I imagine. I wonder if it is how people are getting through life. It’s not just me; it’s not some special burden only I have to deal with. This is just life and sometimes you have to tread or float. Stop beating yourself up for it.

I think that maybe childhood itself is trauma. And since no one gets to adulthood without a childhood, PTSD is a natural state.

I keep hoping to see the same level of analysis and deconstruction of Chris Rock as we are seeing about the other guy (and to a lesser extent the guy’s wife) but it’s not happening where I can see it. There’s no reason that I should be invested in it except of course that it is in the world consciousness and one would be hard pressed to not express an opinion. Who doesn’t love validation?

So many people rush to the side of popular bullies, even when they are wrong. We rush to analyze, explain and ultimately excuse bullies we admire.

So I put this out there.

I stopped wearing dresses a long time ago. But there was a time when, since I felt I had to wear them, I liked a few; more precisely I liked two. One was a sort of casual dress. It was turquoise, which was and is a good color on me. It buttoned down the front, had one breast pocket and two side pockets, real ones, deep ones. Twirled when I spun. The second was my “dressy” dress. White lace collar, small flowers. black and white, made out of some lightweight fabric, couldn’t tell you what that was.

Anyway the point of this is that both dresses had pockets which were the number one consideration before everything else, even color and “dressiness”. Most of the time, it was clear to me that dresses were not my thing but that it was a thing I would have to manage until I could figure out something different.

Something different is cargo pants. pockets, pockets, pockets.

Was hired to a job in October. Five months of paychecks change a lot. having a job changed a lot. I didn’t change well not depressed as much. still anxious but different things make me anxious. looking at apartments. so it’s better.

I want to die. Everyday, a little bit; a lot a bit. I kill myself slowly; more quickly in my dreams. Violently. Silently creeping across the world on my knees trying to die without dying. Hope makes this possible.

Am I the light or the darkness? Am I the fine line that makes me know they both exist? An edge of an edge, blending, bleeding over into both; the shadow of each incarnation.

You thought you were god. Your petty little dreams proof of supremacy and yet what gods are knocked on their asses by a little death, disappointment, a little bad timing? You were never going to be a god with such tiny little hopes and fears to match.

Expose all of it: your ugly self, your indistinct from any, separate from none dull aches and pains, the crosses you built to bear? To bare? Both. Either. You think smallness is a curse. How blind.

All this beauty and you think death, your death could make it go away. Shame on you. Shame.

between last year’s another year post and this year’s post have been 6 posts. still depressed. still me. still here.