Yes, and no

This is a weird place to be, in my head. Had an MRI on Monday, and the report came back in a flash…they must have read the scans while I was still walking to my truck. Nothing remarkable, it said. No active lesions. Nothing to see here. Alrighty then. The neurologist hasn’t called, or messaged, so I figure no news is good news. Still no prescription refill, though. Insurance companies are just previous, and bless their hearts. They are…special.

As I said, though, I’m in a really weird place in my head, and not because of any disease or medical issue, thank goodness…although I suppose one could point to depression as a disease, and then addiction, so I guess I do have disease, but not sure if any of that chronic stuff needs to be considered in this episodic occurrence, if that’s what it is…but, I digress. The point is, we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. Wait, that’s the Big Book. Wrong meeting, although this is not a meeting. But maybe it is. See? I don’t know what the hell is going on in my head right now.

I’m militant, combative, ready to rumble. I don’t even know why. Just want to fight, tell people to back the fuck off, even though they’re not really on me. I feel a little testy, irritable, restless, discontent (i just had to change the order of those words because they are Big Book as well and I can do that if I want to). More nervous than a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, as they say in these parts. I am taking issue with everything these days, though. I am just not in the mood for people bouncing all around me with deadlines and sense of urgency and we need to get this out and somebody else is doing what you are already doing. Say WHAT? who told y’all to go and ask people to do things I’m supposed to be doing? Oh, that’s right, I forgot…if I’m not doing it fast enough, you just go around me and get somebody else to do it. Somebody with credentials and stuff. I forgot. My bad. Always my bad. But, that’s OK, and did I mention…fuck all y’all? I just really don’t care at this point. Do what the fuck ever you want, since it has to be done right fucking now. Did I mention i don’t care? Good. You’re welcome.

I do kind of want to know exactly what’s underneath all this irritability, though. I’ve gained a few pounds, which is annoying and causing me to feel a trifle bloated. My self image right now is that of Jabba the Hut from Star Wars. Just kind of evil and blobby, slimy and lascivious, with a deep rumbling chortle. Yeah. He was a ruler of far off lands or some such thing, and had minions. I think I may just need minions. People to do my bidding, people who are loyal to me. I aspire to be Jabba-like, just maybe not quite so evil and sadistic. Maybe not quite so blobby. Maybe.

Many years ago, my therapist who went MIA and then dumped me without notice a couple of years ago, said that when I found the person who really loved me, what I look like and what is wrong with me wouldn’t matter. I think I half-believed her, but also believed that person just didn’t exist, at least not on this plane or on this planet. It is just not for me in this lifetime. I feel as though I’ve accepted that, although as I age I am getting a little antsy about what that will mean when I can’t be quite so autonomous. A lady I know from the Fellowship is moving into assited living, right down the street from me. She has a son, who lives in San Diego, and he came down to help out with her move, but she’s going there on her own. I think she’s in pretty good cognitive health, so that’s not an issue. But she’s fine. I don’t feel like I’m fine, and I’m not entirely sure why.

I will say that I know I’m tired of screwing up, tired of being denied the respect of controlling things I do well. This is a recurring pattern, where people want to control my “intellectual property” when I don’t have that “sense of urgency”. That is what did me in where I used to work, and thank goodness. I literally have PTSD when people are tapping on my shoulder asking me where is this, where is that, this has to be done before Friday and that has to be done before the end of the day. I’m a fucking volunteer, you dimwits, and this is a community of faith and not a Fortune 50 company. Before I know it, though, I’m just pushed to the side and people are taking what I’ve set up and running with it. Fuck all y’all. Again.

I’m just not sure if that’s the proverbial burr under my saddle, though. I guess I’m just a lot dissatisfied with where I am right now. I need to sell that fucking house, I need to deal with the confrontation that will ensue. The renter isn’t renting any longer, she’s squatting. She knows it, and I know it. When I go to sell, I’m afraid she might pull some crazy shit, like burn the house down or something. And right now, it’s uninsured. So…another fine mess I’ve gotten myself into. Loser. So, yeah, that’s making me a little…anxious. I need to go down there, but you could not pay me enough money to get on a plane and then stay in a hotel during this COVID mess. I won’t be on a list to get the vaccine any time soon, and I don’t necessarily trust that enough to lower my infection risk all that much. There are new variants popping up all over the place; it’s like epidemiological whack-a-mole.

So, right now, I suppose I am feeling a bit trapped. Also feeling a lot useless. I need to be productive, I need to be working and having my efforts valued, and not just by people who like me or figure I’m the best they can do because they can’t fire a volunteer. I feel like I’m too old to get started on anything new. i feel like my life is all but over because I’ll only be here for another 20-25 years, so should I even bother? I suppose I’ll have to bother on some level because I need the money. I don’t like that equation, not at all. I don’t really want to HAVE to do anything. Right now, I am being fed on some level by this writing every day, but it would be nice to have an income without having to do the rat-race routine again. I am not sure I feel respected in the world, I suppose, and I don’t want to go into another situation where I am respected even less. Less than not at all. That’s pretty bad, and I don’t want pretty bad ever again. I don’t think I’m headed off for living under the bridge any time soon, but my fear is that I’ll have to start going into deprivation to live more frugally. That ain’t gonna work.

I have no idea what I want. No idea what I want to do, what I want to have, what I want to achieve or acquire or even what I want to dismiss and be done with. Well, that last part may not be true; I know I want to be done with being in situations where people use the fuck out of me and then kick me to the curb when they’ve gotten what they want. I know I want to be done with trying to figure out, when that kicking to the curb part happens, whether or not that’s about race or about class or about gender or about fat or about me just being an asshole. I never know. I compulsively compare myself to what I think I’m seeing in everyone else in the system…if my work is basically reassigned to someone else, I typically see the someone else as more favorable, occupying a higher status in the system, more favored. I feel little, small, inconsequential, disrespected entirely. I’m pretty tired of that dance, because what I usually see in the other person is skills no better than mine, if that. So why are they chosen? Whenever I’ve tried to sort that out with the people involved, I’m just looking at it all wrong, or how do I want to handle that? How do I want to handle that is, I want you to not do that shit anymore. How’s that? I want to handle that by not being forced to handle YOUR anxiety, and your vision of how you want our shared project handled. If you want to do it your way, do it your fucking self. How’s that?

I am thinking I want to give up my committee chair position at the Fellowship. I’m just too tired of all this control nonsense. I’m just too tired. This is not how I thought my 60th year was going to go. This is not how I thought my life was going to go. Back when there was “promise” and hope and everything seemed wide open, a lot of possibilities. Now, I am feeling like I’m just biding my time until the inevitable decline, when my choices are virtually nonexistent. I suppose underneath all of that is fear, fear that I have worked all this time and have literally nothing to show for it, no retirement security, no legacy, no comforts. No. Nothing. I figure I’ll get what I need, but I’m tired of not getting what I want. Strike that, because I don’t know what I want. But, I’m tired of not getting more than what I need so that I have the choice of doing something more than just surviving. I know the cage door is open, but I don’t know if I can make it out there in the great wide open. What will I do with my one wild and precious life? Fuck if I know.

While I’m thinking about what I want, I’m trying to think about what I enjoy, what gives me joy, what is beyond survival, what I do for no good reason. I do enjoy playing my guitar, truthfully. I have gone through some fairly long periods without playing, but if I thought I could never play again because of injury or disease, I would be extremely unhappy. I’m not sure if I would really want to live. Music has been a part of me for really long time, and I don’t want to lose that. I also enjoy doing this, writing and kvetching here, about nothing and everything and making no sense just because I don’t have to make sense. Making sense is highly overrated, and I think I enjoy not making sense on a regular basis. I also enjoy discussing, debating, opining on things…politics, current events, people, my history. That does nobody any good, except me. What I have written here tonight is chaotic and haphazard and makes only a bare minimum of sense, but there is catharsis here. There is healing on some incomprehensible level, that level you feel in your soul as a layer of scar tissue is lifted, that level you feel in your cells as they vibrate at an imperceptibly higher frequency. When the colors are just a tink brighter, the air just a droplet more clear. Clarity. What a concept. It seems to come and go for a time, but I believe it will remain constant after a time. I hope it’s a short time.

Having one’s head be full to the brim is exhausting. It’s a heavy load to carry, and I do wish that I could just lean over and let some of the content spill out. I suppose it doesn’t work like that, but there has to be some way to disburse what I don’t really need for the journey. Recovery work tells me to inventory all my resentments (!) and figure out the associated feelings, and what in me is threatened by the situations that birthed the resentment. That’s good. I’ll get right on that. Right now, though, I’m feeling a lot like I just want silliness and no worries and respite. I don’t know if I can really have respite for my own life, but maybe I’ll work toward it by doing what I said I wanted to do a while bacck, which is reclaim my space (i.e. purge unused crap, clear out space, de-clutter and clean up). My mother used to look at my slobbish habits and say that was how my mind was set up. I can see that. I can really see that. She was saying the right thing, but for all the wrong reasons. That happens.