Nothing nice

This is one of those days when I don’t want to help anybody, don’t want to be a nice person. One of those days when I want to curse and beat at my own body for being what it is, when I want to give up on people who disappoint me, who cast me aside like the dried and crusty remains of yesterday’s crawfish on the lakefront. It was good while it was fresh. Now, the spicy succulence has long since evaporated, leaving only newspaper stained with the memory of a good time and long dead crustaceans.

I don’t want to be nice today. My nice has taken flight. I don’t want to bring good news to anyone, don’t want to spark activism, definitely don’t care if you walk the Camino after you’ve been so mean to me. I most certainly don’t have any fucks to give for seeking justice, or helping anybody figure out their racist complicity or anti-racist identity. It’s my day off.

I’m sure this mood will pass, but right now I’m not sure I want that. Here I am, one more time, when my phone doesn’t ring, there are no text messages, nobody is thinking about me and wondering how I am. Everyone is tending their own families, their own lives, wrapped up in the insular blankets of their own. That’s how people are, I suppose, but the ones I’ve been on the fringes of have been chanting songs about new ways and beloved community and one big family. Their hypocrisy may be worse than any others, as they shout that all are welcome here while locking their doors to make sure they alone assign value and worthiness to all who enter. Being approved for entry into my own house is galling.

I think I’m done. That could change, but right now I’m not willing to figure out whether this mood is due to medication deficit or some other chemical aberration. Right now, I am truly believing that people should do much better than they are doing. In the past couple of weeks, I have taken shots from my so-called chosen community of faith that I did not deserve, and do not have to tolerate. So, I won’t.

Stupid me volunteered to do something new, and write up a script for the worship service (such as it is) on Sunday. I did that, in spite of my laptop suddenly losing use of its power supply (I am attributing that to the solar storm a few days ago) and trying to get used to the committee “process” for completing the task. I finished it yesterday, but have heard not one word about it – not “got it”, or “we’ll take a look”, or “we’ll get back to you”. I guess it was done correctly, but have no idea. This is making me crazy.

I still have not heard from the dentist, and I have given up. They will have stolen thousands of dollars from me and I will still be in the same position I was in before I sold the house, with nothing. This is where I end up frequently – maximum effort to please other people, and winding up with nothing for myself. This is not acceptable.

It occurs to me that I have no friends, yet again. When things like this happen, as they have in the past, I suddenly look up and realize that I’m angry because all of the people to whom I have devoted so much energy are happily enjoying themselves while I am left with nothing. Whose fault is that? I suppose I still choose badly, but I have not found a way to restrain myself from giving my all to people who do not return the favor. Who’s the asshole?

Maybe some of this is a medication issue, since I have not been taking any at all. That’s not entirely new, and it’s been fine for several weeks, or so it seemed. Perhaps I was just in some kind of quasi-manic phase and was just giddy. Right this minute I don’t really give a hoot. I’ll begin taking the stupid meds again, but I will never be free of the resentment that I have to do so and I just want to be mad about it.

I don’t treat my close friends like afterthoughts, like things I deal with after I’m done doing the more important things in my life. For all practical purposes, they are the more important things in my life, although I am the first to admit that perspective has not served me well. But that’s fine. Nobody owes me a damned thing, and the older I get the less I expect from anyone.

Maybe, in the general and greater scheme of things, my anger is that I never got treated like I was worth stopping the world, or moving a mountain. My mother would make a way for me in various endeavors, but I was never allowed to forget that. And when it came to the bitter end, she took care of herself first. My father decided, finally, that he deserved better than her and that was not an unreasonable decision. But he left me behind, because it was too much trouble to deal with her and fight for me. It had always been too much trouble or too difficult to do that, so we had no relationship. And I had nothing. And I still have nothing in so many places.

Don’t tell me that you love me to make yourself feel better. Don’t tell me that you understand, that we’re like sisters, that you can relate when you think nothing of abandoning me when something you value more calls. It’s not that I think you should abandon them instead, but you could do both. Unfortunately, when it comes to blood family, people shut their doors to the outside world, to friends, to everything else. I suppose that’s human nature, or at least human culture, but I don’t know if that’s how it’s supposed to be. I don’t play like that.

Love has no hierarchy. It doesn’t value one heart above another, or at least it shouldn’t. Hormones possibly do that with parents and children, but the rest of it is human detritus and imagination. I love only a few people, and right now I’m not sure what that means. I like a great many more people, and those are the ones I have no trouble maintaining boundaries and even barriers when necessary. But I suppose my concept of love has been fucked up from the very beginning. I worshipped at the feet of the masters of incompetence in that arena.

There is a place in the soul of an artist where it hurts too much to emote, it’s far too painful to share the vision It’s a dark place, a shuttered place with blackout curtains and soundproofing. No light and no color. Nothing in or out, not even the usual garbage. There’s no dumpster fire, no volcano, and you don’t give a damn about your birdwatching or kids’ scout badges or your donation to yet another ineffective charity. Right now, life has to be on my terms, and those terms are…leave me alone. That might last an hour or a day or the rest of my time on this planet, I don’t know. I know that you have no trouble doing that when it suits you, so for now it suits me. Don’t ask me how I’m doing, don’t inquire about my health, don’t wonder about my dog. Don’t ask me if Mother’s Day was particularly brutal this year or if I’m homesick. Nothing I can tell you about who I am will cause you to change one damned thing about how you walk through this world, or do anything to make me more comfortable in it, so let it be. I’ll come out when I’m ready, or not. Until then, Leave. Me. Alone.