Sunday, February 14, 2016

Catching up on a fucked up 5 months...

Let's be upfront.  I'm not going to review any snack food in this post.  It's kind of a downer.



So, I'm living by myself now.

I'm living by myself in an apartment in Lincoln, NE with two cats. (So not really "alone")

I moved here on Halloween weekend.

I'm drinking rum (Kraken) mixed with Mt. Dew.  Don't ask me how that happened.  Probably because I had Kraken and Mt. Dew...  This is not a mixed drink for the weak of spirit.

Things have been weird.

Like, really weird, life changing weird, probably (hopefully) won't happen again weird.

I went to therapy for a while early last year, that actually went rather well.  I'm not going to therapy anymore.  Most of my "WTF is wrong with you?" is self-induced and, using learned techniques, is also now self-analyzed and thwarted.  That's probably not the best idea, but I find that I'm generally more stable now so I'm okay with it.  At least it saves me the $35 copay...

Tomorrow my parents are going to show up at my door and they want to take me to "the boats".  I want to spend time with my parents, but realistically I would probably get about the same amount of pleasure from wadding up 20 or 40 bucks and throwing it in a flaming waste-paper basket.

I don't get gambling, and yet I buy powerball tickets.  I am an enigma.  I am a mystery.

I apparently am good at typing out stream of consciousness random bullshit.

I have my thermostat set to 73 degrees.  Due to the ridiculously low cost of gas heat in this apartment complex, it is actually nearly 80 degrees in here.  I guess my neighbors are more interested in tropical heat than I am, and I have tropical plants...

I got a new couch.  It is a fucking awesome couch.  This fucker spreads most of the way across two walls of my apartment.  It naps well.  Like, really well.  I had vastly undervalued the ability to lay out at full length on a piece of furniture and lose consciousness.  Right now Clive and Schrodinger are playing "broke cat mountain" on it.  I'm. . . I'm okay with that.  I can't really judge two animals without testicles for having certain urges.  Also, at least they're not doing it at my feet under the computer desk like they usually do.  So, good on ya, boys!  Hope you get some satisfaction out of that.

Did I mention I'm drinking rum again?  That's probably a bad idea in the long run.  Empty calories, no real benefit, reduction in inhibitions, etc.  That being said, I'm losing weight.  (other than rum) I've been eliminating calorie groups from my diet.  No more soda (except this that I'm drinking because I was baby-sitting my sister's kids this weekend.  I'm Using It Up!), no sweet snacks, no candy, etc.  It's really working.  The plan is "20 by my 20", being pounds by my 20 year reunion on May.  The sit-ups suck, but hey, at least I feel weirdly invincible for an hour or two afterwards.  Now if I could only get my brain to remember how awesome you feel after you work out instead of how it focuses on how much it actually sucks to actually work out...  But I digress.

How many of you are actually still reading this shit?

I don't have to commute to work anymore.  This gives me approximately 8 hours more per week to do something, but I'm not sure what.  According to my queue in iTunes, that time is not being spent on listening to podcasts.  I have a ridiculous backlog right now.  I'm kinda weird in that I can't bring myself to listen to Welcome to Night Vale because I have the book and I know the next episode is after the book.  Continuity is a bitch.  At least I still have The Dollop, and there was a rare but welcome live Walking The Room.  I've also been slowly catching up on the Bleep Podcast.

I got some wicked awesome new in-ear headphones.  They have multiple drivers per ear, they sound amazing.  I've fallen asleep listening to ambient music 2 out of the last 3 nights...  Reminds me of when I was a kid and I listened to NPR while everybody else was in bed.  I would fall asleep to the sound of that weird guy who played rare classical music at 2 in the morning.  ...mourning.

My daughter is dead.

I have been running away from things too long.  I've been hiding and distracting myself from things.  I've been intentionally not applying my self-therapeutic methods the last 3 months.  I've been trying to fill this apartment with furniture and bookshelves and whatnot.  The excuse was that this was a project that needed my attention.  I needed seating so I could entertain guests.  Now I have a huge sectional couch.  I needed to clean up the apartment and get all the books off the floor.  Now I have bookshelves and everything is neat and shelved.  I need a coat-rack to hang coats.... got that.  I just keep making excuses to keep people from coming over as much as possible, but now I realize that the excuses are weak and I'm not really worried about the people coming over.  I'm avoiding letting people in.  I know I'll never have kids, and at this point I can't honestly say I'll ever get married or be anything other than alone.  I left I woman I loved because we couldn't be together.  I've been with nobody but her for the last 8 years and loved her more than I've ever loved anybody.  Yet, I know we're both better off for the choice to part.  At the same time I know we're both hurting.  Her youngest daughter died.  She fought the good fight, but she's still gone.  There is a hole in me.  Both from being alone, and from knowing that the closest thing I'm likely to have to a child of my own has passed.  I wish I had been there for her and her mother and her sister and her fiance; I am glad I wasn't there when it happened.  With very few exceptions, everybody I've ever known who gets cancer has died from that cancer.  Grandparents, other relatives, they all succumb.  I feel like such a heartless robotic motherfucker sometimes.  Every time I learn that a loved one has cancer it is like they are already dead.  I value the time they're still around, but it's like they're a ghost already or something.

If someone comes back from the brink, it's like they're back from the dead.  They lived and I celebrate their achievement by wiping the slate clean and revelling in their new existence.  But those people are few.  Mostly, I am mourning them while they are still alive, which is fucked.  Because when they do die, it's like all the processing in my brain is already done.  The last puzzle piece is in place, the flow-chart is at its terminal end.  I move on.  I watch others suffer.  I feel for them, I wish I could help them or somehow make them feel better.  But I don't let myself feel shitty.  I don't let myself feel what I know I should feel.

I just buy furniture....drink rum.