i wanna go home, but there’s nobody there. things that meant so much are gone. apparently, they were not mine to keep. all of the material possessions that we treasure and safeguard often mean nothing to anyone else, and it is a challenge to our insatiable hunger for control. my mother kept momentos, family treasures and historical artifacts, tightly under her control in her invincible domain. her best efforts to stave off interlopers to her rendition of the past resulted in nearly unimaginable loss when lake pontchartrain exhaled and surged over everything in its path after hurricane katrina. those memories were mine as well as hers, but she was the warden. even her sister could not convince her to store them on a sibling’s higher ground, and so everything was lost under 8 feet of water at the end of August 2005. i feel as though i have no past, although i see the pictures in my mind’s eye daily.

at this point, i am coming to terms with the mental disorder that would cause someone to make such ineffective decisions. i have forgive her for all of those edicts that caused so much harm, but continue to grieve what has been lost. of greater concern to me, however, is the preocccupation with how much of her dysfunction is replicated in me. i have never handled relationships sanely, and i am tired of it. the question, however, is whether that the result of learned helplessness and twisted thinking patterns, or have i simply inherited the same chemical imbalances? am i now just as nuts as they were?

the miniature P.A. who does medication management for me (replacing the seasoned psychiatrist who fulfilled that role for several years before she retired) says that we do no use terms like “nuts” any longer. my response is, “it’s my craziness, i can call it whatever i want.” well, that’s the mature adult response. regardless of what it is called, i feel…not right. i feel as though i have dissociated entirely when my heart is broken, or i am betrayed, or worse still when i am rejected wholesale. i am grateful for not being prone to physical violence, but i do indeed want to hurt the perpetrator. and so i do, with words and sometimes deeds (and my tongue should have been registered as a lethal weapon decades ago). it’s not pretty, it feels juvenile, and it brings me shame and guilt.

at my age, i am searching for reasons why any of it matters any longer. perhaps it never matter. but now, there is more and more than i just don’t care about any longer. i was feeling very desolate and hopeless a week or so ago, and had a “come to Jesus meeting” with myself. it was a serious reflection of what exactly i intend to do. am i going to sit and kick the ground, shake my fist at the sky, stay in bed all day and surf the internet, essentially giving up? or am i going to make the best of where i am right this moment and go with the flow? would everyone really be better off without me on this planet? am i really done here?

that soul searching went on for about a day, maybe a few hours longer, but i turned some kind of corner during the process. i decided that i am not going to check out. for me, that would be a choice and i am not willing to take it. it’s not the right thing for me, and there are still too many questions to be answered. i am simply unconvinced that pain and hopelessness disappear if i end this. it would seriously piss me off if i took that step and literally came into another consciousness with the same feelings of despair and worthlessness. what good would that do? however this afterlife thing works, if there is any, is a variable in an equation that i cannot solve. so, not willing to take the chance that checking out of the current reality improves anything at all.

so, this world is stuck with me for a bit longer. i really do figure it’s about another 20 years or so because my mother and her sister, along with most of the other women on that side of the family, have all died at around 82 years. “Bless my heart. Bless my mind. I got so much to do, I ain’t got much time.” (Alabama Shakes – “Hold On”) you can’t win if you don’t play, so bring it on. i am returning my seatback to its full upright position and stowing my tray table, with seatbelt securely fastened, and i’m waiting for the wheels to touchdown. we’ll see what comes next.

Sometimes I get confused. Sometimes I don’t know why I’m here or what I am supposed to be doing. Sometimes the simplest of things, stuff I have done for years, boggles my mind and seems new and daunting. It does not feel good, and when I say that I am often accused of self pity, perfectionism, egoism, not wanting to be human. Bleh. It doesn’t feel good, and it scares me. What other people think of me is none of my business, whether that feels good or not.

I’m job seeking again, and not only does that not feel good, it more or less sucks big rotting sausage links. People want credentials but are not willing to train you. I am determined to get a specific networking credential, not so much because I want it but because I have been led to believe I cannot attain it. I don’t believe they intended for me to feel stupid on this last job, but they did. That just shows their lack of compassion and understanding for someone who learns and works differently than the dominant paradigm in their corporate culture. Fuck ’em. But, again, it doesn’t feel good.

I suppose the point is that I am tired of not feeling good. I am sick and tired of feeling sick and tired, and not quite sure what exactly to do about that. Actually, I know WHAT to do about it, but am not quite sure how to get that done. This place is still a mess, despite having thrown out huge bags of junk, and I am finding that I just don’t have the energy to take on the rest of it. My strategy is to do little bits at a time, but that is going to take a long time and I don’t have the patience for that. I am going to call the 800-JUNK folks to haul out an old sofa and recliner and a couple of old kitchen appliances, and maybe some old clothes that can go to Goodwill or something. Maybe I should hire someone to come in and actually do some housekeeping. Oy vey. It seems to take such a monumental effort to live these days.

“So much trouble in the world, nigga
Can’t nobody feel your pain
The world’s changin’ everyday, time’s movin’ fast” (Tupac – “All Eyez On Me”)

That’s the thing. Can’t nobody feel your pain. But if they could, would that make a difference? It would still hurt. The world still changes, time still moves, and now your pain is multiplied if someone else can feel it. I want the pain to go away. I want the pain to go away from every body [sic]. Every single body. But of course, that’s unreasonable. Pain is a constant, a given, there is no negotiation. You can choose the form of the destructor, just don’t have thoughts of something that seems innocent (like Mr. Staypuft) because innocence is truly a fallacy once you are reality-based. A giant marshmallow can do as much damage as a microscopic virus in the wrong context.

Every time I think I have the pattern figured out, it seems that I didn’t have enough conclusive data. There’s trouble in the world. Out of control people are killing other people to seek control over someone, something, anything. It doesn’t work. It never works. It’s a temporary solution to a permanent problem. They want the pain to go away, too.

I was on a video call yesterday with a group of people, and the grandfather of a young woman killed by police here in NC was sharing the story of her tragic death. She was unarmed, but this was not a black man, or someone with a lengthy record of previous criminal transgressions. She had committed no crime. The police had been called to intervene on a mental health crisis; she had a history of mental health issues and was in a threatening situation with an ex-boyfriend. She was combative and loud with the police officers, and who knows how her brain interpreted that experience. When all was said and done, an officer shot her 17 times in the back and head, while she was handcuffed and prone in her driveway. After he shot her 4 times to “neutralize” her, he turned away and he saw her twitch so he shot her 13 more times. Who knows how his brain interpreted that experience. Regardless, she was a 30-something white woman, dead at the hands of law enforcement. Permanent solution to a temporary problem. Permanent solution to a temporary life.

This does not fit the pattern with which many of us had become comfortable, but only because there was not enough data. Law enforcement is called upon to intervene in mental health crises every day, but few of them are specifically trained for dealing with the mentally ill. This has happened numerous times in the past – M’Khia (sp?) Bryant comes to mind. She was a 17-year old Black girl in confrontation with other teenaged girls outside her home. She was enraged and in a panic; she called the police herself because she knew they were coming to do her harm. Knife in hand, she went out to confront them herself, and the responding officer shot her 4 times because she was apparently trying to stab another girl. He said she refused to drop the knife. It was a kitchen knife, and she was an enraged 17-year old in a blind panic, and for that she paid with her life. Permanent solution to a temporary problem. Permanent solution to a temporary life.

I suppose that is where I am having such difficulty. When I have contemplated permanent solutions as a way to make the pain stop, I am not convinced that gives me control over anything. Even temporarily. I’m also not convinced it actually eradicates the pain, but only transfers it to another destination. The lifeless body and the circumstances of its ending still generates pain for family members, for witnesses, for anyone involved, for the community in general. If this does not give credence to the reality of our interconnectedness I am not sure what else will.

For me, at this moment, I struggle with a desire to be interconnected. Actually, that may not be entirely true. What is probably more the heart of the matter is that I cannot be interconnected on my own terms. I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, and how I am most comfortable doing it. That doesn’t work. There are far too many competing interests in my reality, which may or may not be synonymous with the planet, for that to be a reasonable expectation. So now what?

Today, now what is to gather up another bag of useless clutter and dispose of it. Now what is to complete another bizarre one-way video interview and scour job boards for possible matches. Now what is to choose life, not because I want it to continue or feel that it really benefits me, but simply because I do not want to transfer my pain to others. I was reflecting on legacy the other day, and wondering if I had one to leave behind. Perhaps I don’t have anything to leave of any great consequence, but I sure as hell don’t want to leave one of pain, shame, blame, and pity. I would rather not be remembered at all than be remembered for that.

My mother died more than 5 years ago. I am her legacy. Her sister, my aunt, died earlier this year. My cousins and a scraggly little dog that humps everything are her legacy. I have no siblings, no progeny, and will likely outlive my psychotic canine companion, so what legacy do I contribute to the world that will persist after I go on to my next gig? As I age, this becomes a question that is like a dripping faucet in the middle of the night. Plink. Plink. Plink.

In my younger years, I am sure I wanted to be remembered for something magnanimous. Something grandiose that would be spoken of for years. For a time, that was just about notoriety – or at least infamy. Now, though, it’s more about some contribution that mattered in a positive sense. Still grandiose, but with the swirl of altruism.

In all honesty, if I was snatched from this plane of existence tomorrow, I would hope that nobody who has come to know me would not remember me in a few weeks of my transience. I would hope that reactions to my absence would be varied, from “What an asshole!” to “Weirdo.” or at least “She tried.” Any of those epithets would mean that I was not invisible, that I touched some people, perhaps even made a mark (hopefully not physical, but you get the point). Perhaps that is as good as it gets for most of us living under the highest points of the bell curve. Maybe the whole goal of my life’s work was to be unexceptional, to be part of the bigger parts of the whole. Maybe, but not if my ego has anything to say about it. That’s another story for another time, however.

Regardless of all that seemingly morose thought process, I am glad to have something that I wanted to say. For the past year and a few months I have been working at a job I enjoyed, but which truthfully returned me to some unbalanced state of being. As has been my pattern, all of my energy was devoted to people who really gave less than two shits or a damn about me as an individual. Polite, yes. Responsive, yes. In relationship? No. When my value to them ceased to outweigh their financial expenditure, there was no longer any reason for me to be there. It was a breakup like any other with a narcissitic and self-absorbed lover, leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth and little to show for my investment of time. Some things never change.

I am looking for another job, merely to acquiesce to financial realities, but I would much rather make a full-time commitment to self reflection and social justice work if it would pay the rent and the pet food bill. We’ll see. I am trying to be open to whatever comes, although I am not willing to go into anybody’s office environment. Working from home is far more productive for me at this point, not to mention healthier. I have recently heard of a few people who have contracted COVID for the first time, and I am not willing to run that risk. My risk is high enough with just going out into public for groceries and drug store visits, let alone sitting in a cube farm with people who come to work carrying germs from their exponentially multiplied contacts.

To make sure I am exhausting all options, I finally sent a certified letter to the non-paying tenant in the house my mother left to me. All I told her was that I am ready to sell the house and will give her as much notice as possible. At one time, her father was interested in buying it so maybe they will consider that. Her family lives across the street, and they own the house next door as well, so we’ll see. At least I put it out there, and that’s all I can do.

Life goes on, at an alarming pace on some days. Since Wenesday, I have been a virtual attendee at the annual assembly for Unitarian Universalists. It’s still my chosen faith, even though my local congregation leaves much to be desired. I have been a voting delegate for the conference for many years, and this year there was really pithy stuff to be considered. It was surprising how much people bared their fangs when they did not get what they wanted, or felt they could not convince others to agree with them about issues. I often forget that people are people, all of us bringing our baggage with us wherever we go. Some of us have done work on lightening those loads, or at least understanding what’s packed, but others of us not so much. It never ceases to amaze me what people will resort to in order to get their way, the manipulation, intimidation, scare tactics, and the ever popular taking their ball and going home. Community – what a wonderful choice.

People been tellin’ me all my life it can’t be that bad. Well sometimes it is. They tellin’ me to just smile because it takes more muscles in your face to frown. My mouth just don’t naturally turn that way. They be tellin’ me I have to love myself before anybody else will love me, and that just sounds like a convenient cover for their not knowing why this is what it is.

I’m a big girl who I would think is too big to be not seen, but somehow I am not seen. Unless I do something wrong, or make people uncomfortable, or tell the truth. I hold a lot of truth for people around me. It would seem they are not capable of doing it themselves, making all manner of half-assed excuses for their mediocrity, failure to meet life head on, fragility. I believed I was fragile for a long time because I was easily brought into embarrassing tearful displays at the drop of a pin. Bleh.

I’m tired of people creating my context, my narrative, what I should understand and what I should be proud of. I’m not wrong. I always felt that I was inherently wrong – wrong body, wrong color, wrong face, wrong hair. Just wrong. They were telling me I was wrong for so long I believed them. I don’t believe I’m wrong now, but stilL feeling as though I’m in between worlds, in between places I only partially fit. Constantly hovering around the edges of various galaxies, a wanderer who doesn’t know how to do anything but wander.

I’ve learned things. I’ve learned some things I would gladly trade for every dime I have. I’ve learned how ugly and cruel and sadistic people can be, and I’ve seen the darkness behind some eyes that sends chills down my spine. I would almost rather see hatred than a great void of no form, no substance, and I have seen that. There is no changing that unless they want to change it, and sometimes I think the void is more comfortable for them. The darkness is seductive, addictive even.

What is to become of me, of any of us? Time will tell, I suppose. It’s so tempting to want to see into the future, although we suck at it. We equate bits of our reality with prophecy and triumphantly shout, “Look! It was foretold! We’re heading there now!” Wherever “there” is. Even if we are correct about progressing toward the end of days, could we change it? I don’t think we are powerful enough to shift the direction of time and space as we are working to do with near Earth asteroids.

Perhaps those of us who do not “belong” here would find ourselves belonging elsewhere in the cosmos. Maybe we really don’t fit here because we fit somewhere else. People be tellin’ me that’s crazy talk, but they don’t have anything better to offer.

Perhaps those of us who don’t belong here don’t want to belong in this place where our base instincts are celebrated and rewarded. Our lust for power is inexorable, and we are truly enslaved by it unless we fight. We’re a bit confused, though – we fight each other instead of the shadow that lurks within us. The reptile brain seems to get bolder with every generation, and we revel in the blood lust it generates in us.

It has always been such a challenge for me to articulate, or even conceptualize, what I want. There are certain immediate things I want, like right now I really want to have some work done on my truck, get the headlight lenses either cleaned or replaced, get my fog lights replaced, get a new audio system. That seems really short lived to me, just material baubles. Sometimes I believe the time for what I want is past. That doesn’t feel entirely good, but so be it.

Right now I have many things generating a sense of satisfaction, enjoyment, accomplishment even. Even that leave me a bit flat, though. I’m not sure I know what it is to feel right after having felt so wrong. Other people have created my frame and my context and I am not entirely sure how to take back that…power. Maybe it’s not power, but self-actualization. That feels a bit more palatable. Power is a deep, dark well and I don’t need to go down there.

A friend of mine was having a very hard time recently. She got cellulitis and was hospitalized to undergo surgery. When she got out of the hospital she had an eviction notice on the front door of the place she’s been living for several years. The story about her circumstances kept changing, though – her mother had been living with her, but she claimed her mother had been “abducted” by her sister and disappeared. She is not speaking to either of her adult daughters. Her ex-husband is a bastard who has stolen money from her. Her sister took money in her accounts when abducting her mother. She has a huge Malamute and that has narrowed the availability of affordable housing, which is an even smaller pool because she has no income.

My point in bringing my friend into musings on my self actualization and so on is simply this – the friend has immeasurable amounts of drama and conflict in her life, but she never once doubts herself. I doubt myself at every turn, around every corner, and cannot forgive myself for past mistakes. Friend has made a number of moves in her life that have not served her well, but she doesn’t lapse into self-doubt. In many ways, it’s everybody else that’s at fault for her difficulties. Not her. I don’t quite know if that’s a sign of mental illness or a hearty tinge of health.

Ah, well. None of this will be resolved in my corner of the world tonight. I am probably over-thinking all things at the moment, so that must mean I need to go to sleep. I hope I continue to remind myself that what people be tellin’ me ain’t always the truth. I need to listen to the small, still voice within…but I am apparently a bit hard of hearing so it should speak up.

Notorious B.I.G. – Biggie Smalls. Christopher Wallace was his name. He said incredible things, things one might not expect from such a man. “Even when I was wrong, I got my point across.” “Never get high on your own supply.” Make a difference, is what I hear. Don’t waste profit on your own pleasure.

Biggie Smalls is dead, victim of a ridiculous war between rival rap producers. Ultimately killed by a dollar, because we all know…it’s the Benjamins, baby. It’s definitely not the unity, or the goals, or the message. Let my people go, but first tell me – what the HELL is wrong with my people? Why are we carrying out someone else’s agenda? I suppose that what Audre Lorde noted a while back, is true – “some of us were never meant to survive..”

The NC NAACP and the Historic Thousands on Jones Street group (HKonJ) are African-American civil rights organizations here in NC. HKonJ has been holding a march in February of each year since the civil rights movement and the sit-ins, to memorialize the movement, sacrifices, and accomplishments of those times. It is a rally of those who still engage in the movement, raising energy for what is left to achieve. The NAACP, of course, is a legacy effort that fights for the association and advancement of “colored people”. Somehow, thee venerable warriors are somehow in conflict with each other now, and I am told there may not be an HKonJ march and rally this coming February. WTF? I tried to look this up online, but could not find any information – the HKonJ People’s Coalition website page was unavailable, seemingly inactive. I repeat – WTF?

Perhaps I am overly critical. As the figure-head leader of my UU Fellowship’s social justice committee, I understand how annoying it can be for people who lurk in the shadows and offer criticism but no work effort. It’s the standard method of operations for non-profits and issue-based groups. Those who step up and do the work are uniformly criticized for wrong direction, wrong decisions, wrong action by those who remain arm-chair quarterbacks (for a variety of reasons). We defer martyr status on past leaders who did not have the same circumstances or challenges, and question how hard it could be to do that once again. Silly people. You’ll never know how many licks it will take to get to the center of a tootsie pop, and you’ll never know how to stop be critics of volunteers.

I just cannot understand how non-dominant cultures become their own worst enemies. That phenomenon is not relegated to racial identities, either. This past year, my community held its annual GLBTQ celebration in June. For the past several years it has been held in October, but COVID cancelled the entire celebration last year so they decided to go back to the historical June celebration. That’s fine. Except they scheduled it on the same day as Juneteenth celebrations in the area. Pick your freedom, but I suppose you can’t have both at the same time?

The defeat of Roe v. Wade has thrust many women into the spotlight of reproductive rights – women who find themselves in the horrific position of pregnancy in the shadow of fetal non-viability, or unwanted pregnancy due to rape or incest. The Supreme Court, with immeasurable pressure of the voting public, said a woman’s right of agency over her body do not outweigh those of the fetus she carries, however she finds herself in that circumstance. Had the support of many, many women – most notably a politically motivated and recent addition to the highest court in the land – not given momentum to this long-standing effort to overturn the landmark decision it would still be the law of the land. This is not in the best interest of ALL women, but the majority of women appear to have supported this> Yes, they did that, many based on what they believed were sound religious values. Protec the lives of the unborn, but once they are here, don’t support them if they are poor and don’t give them quality education if they are the wrong color and criticize them for need governmental subsidy to survive later in life. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

I have said many times that if I found myself pregnant, regardless of circumstance, I would not be likely to choose abortion. That would be my choice. I just don’t believe that it is morally conscionable to tell another woman that she has to match my decision. Are there women who choose abortion to reverse errors in judgement? Of course. Are there women who feel they have no choice but abortion when there is a known birth defect that will result in a lifetime of pain and suffering for mother and baby> Of course. As with so many other pivotal points in a democracy, whose rights take prevalence? There is added contention that an unborn fetus does not constitute an entity imbues with rights, so who gets to decide? Apparently humans in black robes with eloquent opinions and claims of impartiality get to make that decision. That does not seem to conform to any scale of morality that I know.

Morality. RIght from wrong. Good from evil. Morality is entirely subjective, as it should be. Judgement is a human construct, as is race and time and absolutism. We are making this up as we go along, as it suits our needs, as it enhances our comfort level. Race was constructed to rationalize and justify the horrific and inhumane treatment of some people by other people. Now it’s a social order, basically a caste system, and we don’t seem to be able to come out of it. This is really the pandemic – we have been infected by a way of thinking that does not suit our needs as a species, doesn’t move us along a moral continuum, and doesn’t allow us to stand in any kind of integrity. We continue to contribute to maintenance of the status-quo – all of us – and that is the amoral insidiousness of a system of arbitrary superiority. We are contributing to our own demise, while simultaneously fighting and promulgating the system that brings about our decline.

Perhaps I really should remember that some of us were truly never meant to survive. That suffering is a constant in this world, and it’s basically a crap shoot as to where it descends. Maybe we just do the next right thing, and understand that we can only do that – no more and no less. Maybe we get hung up in grandiosity, in efforts to change the world in its entirety, right now. Perhaps it is just bringing a smile to someone’s face for a minute in a very bad day, letting them know they were seen and heard. Maybe. I don’t know. I do know that it’s not really my place to know, specifically to know why. Knowing why is apparently very far above my pay scale.

So. I am still dancing alone in my head about dental care and this coming change in … circumstance. When I saw the dentist, they had a somewhat canned speech about whether I was at the end of the journey with my teeth. I wanted to chuckle, because it was never a journey, it was a fucking war.

I don’t remember very many times being told that I had to brush my teeth, either in the morning or at night. I do remember once when I was going to school, the van driver turned around and pointedly asked me if I brushed my teeth every day. It must have been obvious that I did not. She stared at me for a few seconds, the turned back to our ride to school.

I started going to the dentist before I was 10. I remember my first cavity – I was eating a bowl of Captain Crunch cereal, and I bit down as usual, and the pain was excruciating. Cavity, and a deep one. I had to got to see the scary man in the white coat who lunged at me with a needle the size of a Coke bottle it seemed. Then some horrid whirring and vibration and grunting (his) and scraping. Ugh. I ejected from the chair as though I had been shot out of a cannon.

Over the many years after that followed fillings, crowns, root canals and now…this. My mother always warned me that I had better brush my teeth, but in my mind it was more to look presentable so people would not think I was … ignorant trash from the housing projects on the other side of town. As usual, I don’t remember my father saying anything.

Both my parents had partial dentures, bridges as some call them. Neither had a full set of natural teeth, so in some ways I may have figured that was the way it was supposed to go. After a while, it became something I never really thought about. I always found it somewhat annoying that some girls at slumber parties woke up and had to go and brush their teeth before eating breakfast. That mad no sense to me.

In high school, I had a big molar that abscessed. As I have told people most of my life, pain is an incredible motivator. It motivated me to seek relief in the form of some old medication that my grandmother was using for pain before she died. I have no dea what it was, a peach-colored triangular tablet. It did not totally eliminate the pain, but launched me into my first narcotic euphoria. Nothing seemed real, I was walking but couldn’t feel my feet touching the ground. The pain seemed far removed, but there was a kind of hazy, foggy, floating sensation that I rather liked.

The scary man in the white coat was joined by another equally scary man in his own white coat, and they leaned toward each other at the counter of the exam room and spoke in hushed tones that I couldn’t make out. That crashed my euphoria and I started to cry because they were whispering in somewhat solemn tones and it scared me. I don’t remember too much of what happened next, but apparently they pulled that tooth and I went home with a mouth full of cotton and gauze pads. Case closed.

Obviously, that was not the last tooth I lost. None of the dental procedures I hae gone through have ever penetrated that hazy, foggy, not-quite-real feeling. It was almost as thought it was happening to someone else. By the time nitrous oxide (still not sure why the called it laughing gas) was available, I almost looked forward to whatever they were going to do. Give me the gas. I was free of my body with the gas, and felt as though my consciousness could go anywhere. I was not just free of my body, I was free. But that’s another story.

Regardless of all that, I did whatever the dentist of the moment told me to do. Root canal? No problem. Extraction? Ok, tell me when to be there and make sure the gas is working. I was entirely impervious to the progressive nature of any of that. I don’t quite know why, maybe it seemed normal. Maybe it seemed as though it was someone else. Maybe it seemed inevitable. I don’t know.

Now that I am “ending the journey with my teeth”, I am really confused by why that is so emotional for me. I’ve never cared about my teeth before, only the impression people would have based on my appearance. In many ways, that was given to me, but I was certainly old enough to put 2 and 2 together and realize that not taking care of my teeth would take me this point in 2022. Truth be told, I don’t know what I’m supposed to get out of this experience.

I know that some of it, at least so far, is about how I handle shame. My first thought was that I needed to hide and not show myself to anyone, it was too hideous, I had been too stupid, I knew better. I could hear my mother’s voice in my head shouting, “Oh NOW you want to cry, NOW you want to listen, NOW you know what you were supposed to have been doing all this time. All kinds of people tried to tell you, but would you listen? NO!” Hmm. She used to accuse me of purposely trying to make myself ugly. Maybe there is something to that.

So anyhow, I suppose I am on this journey, whether I want to be or not. Since I cannot go back in time or sprint into the future, I have to deal with this in the here and now. This is my reality for the next chunk of time. It’s not a dream, I am not going to wake up and it all disappears. The Universe is not going to say this is a joke, and a 2-minute warning – just wanted to see if you were awake. No, this is the real deal.

I still have a choice – I could decide to do nothing, hide my head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening, but not sure I can do that. I know there will be some further crisis of pain, physical and emotional, that will force me to deal with it anyway, so I suppose the time is now. Dammit.

This feels a bit like saying goodbye to my uterus. It felt like an amputation, and I wondered if I was throwing in the towel on a part of myself that deserved to go further, to the end. To what end, or whose end, I have no idea but that was the feeling at the time. It is somewhat the feeling now. When I saw the X-rays of my full head showing the teeth and bones in the mouth, I felt such incredible … I don’t know, compassion? As though I was looking at the real me, the one that’s under all the masks and the trauma and the illusion. This is who I am, just this little creature without armor or weaponry. Just a little creature. Ain’t that a kick in the ass?

*sigh* So on I go, and this becomes another part of my story. A few more pieces to add to a pile of medical waste. I wish I could skip to the next chapter though, ’cause this one is not a whole lotta fun.

As if I don’t have enough of my life changing and contorting into something of which I have no concept, now I have to deal with my teeth. My teeth have always been bad. Since childhood. They were bad partly because I didn’t take care of them properly, partly because it is part of my genetics. Neglect was normal for me, so why should I take care of what nobody else was caring for? Yadda yadda and yadda.

So I have teeth breaking, and the dentist has more or less fired me. He sent me to a dentures and implants place. Lovely. I went there yesterday, and this guy – who is very nice but is obvious not a non-profit business entity – basically said that I’m done. I have already lost several teeth over the years, and he said the rest of them need to go now, because they will be going soon regardless. I did not count on that. There were tears, mainly because I have such shame concerning my teeth. Always have.

This guy’s ultimate plan will cost $17k, which even if I had that money I’m not sure I buy the whole sales pitch. I don’t have $17k, nor am I interested in having $17k for this purpose. Titanium implants that will allow me to snap the prosthetic teeth into place. Extraction of the remaining teeth. Parts and labor. Damn. This is like buying a car. It will take several months, possibly up to a year, to get all of this in place. It sounds like suffering to me, and I am not OK with that.

So, this is the latest crisis in my perpetuation of my childhood dysfunction. I could have done better, but I didn’t, so here I am. Bad teeth, morbidly obese, sloppy to the point of slob, underachiever to the max. My first instinct is to ask myself why. Why have you let things get so out of hand? Why have you squandered the investment of nearly four decades of dental work, only to wind up here? Why are you such a fuck-up?

I don’t know why, and that has always disturbed me. The model I’ve had all these years is that if I know why, I can change it. I am no longer sure that’s true, if it was ever true. Whatever caused me to make those thousands of small decisions that got me to here cannot be reconstructed. I cannot go back in time, which is a blessing in a way. So I don’t know why, and I’m not entirely sure I’m clear on how. And how important is that?

Knowing why and how doesn’t change the present reality. I always want to know why, as though even a bad reason would be helpful in my acceptance of reality. When people are murdered, their surviving loved ones often want to know why, why them, why did they have to be killed. Those surviving the loss of a soldier are much the same. In some cases, murder victims’ survivors meet the murderer, and ask that question of the perpetrator but does that help? The reality has not changed – someone important to you has left this existence, and that is painful. There is really nothing that can rectify those circumstances.

Perhaps, at least in my case, knowing why gives me a feeling of vengeance, gives me a target of blame, something to do with my shame and embarrassment. Perhaps that is what I have been doing all along, blaming myself for myself, for the underachievement, for the obesity, for the bad teeth, for the bad skin I had in my adolescence. For my anti-authority passion, for my neuroses, for my anxiety and depression. For my imperfection.

Imperfection is reality, and so I suppose I have not been willing to fully live into reality. Maybe this is the turning point, maybe – like Pinoccio – I have been trying to become real while not quite accepting that I wasn’t real? I dunno, but something has got to give. The part of me that is overly dramatic says this is the Beginning of the End, that I don’t have any more time to get this right, to do any of the things I want to do. It’s over, and you have thrown away the chance you had to be…to be what? Happy? Notorious? Successful?

A while back, in 2011, I asked someone who studied the Mayan calendar what happened when the calendar ended in 2012. She looked at me as though I had asked her to explain quantum physics, and her answer was, “Something else.” Perhaps that is where I am headed, to something else, whatever that may be. The why of it all really doesn’t change one thing about that. I can decide whatever I want to decide about teeth, about emotions, about making money, about obesity but knowing why any of that exists may be well beyond my pay grade. For whatever I do with my freedom of will and the choices I make will lead me to something else, and why it has all happened is irrelevant.

Knowing why simply makes me a little more comfortable in accepting the unacceptable. If I want to believe that I have shitty teeth because I am supposed to teach someone else something about it makes me feel a little better, a little more in control of my circumstances. It doesn’t change the reality. I still have to accept it, and go on. Or not. My choice. I know that I CAN do this, but I shrieked inwardly WHY? What am I doing this for?

While I am waiting for the answer to that question of why, my teeth will not get any better and I will not lose any weight or have a less cluttered living space. I am not willing to wait. for perfection that will never come. Then I really will have lost, and that is neither a requisite nor a desirable outcome of this lifetime. Instead, I am putting on the big girl panties so that I can get on with the business of something else.

This morning, there was fog. 72F and fog. Seems fitting – I have been in fog for a couple of years now. Clouds at my knees, it would seem. Things not appearing quite real, hazy, not allowing my eyes to discern their dimensions, or stability. Dare I lean against this structure, can it support me or does the mist hide its flaws and degradation? Even in the fog, I can discern the necessary details if I will take the time and get close enough.

There are people in my life who cannot support me, but the fog clouded my judgment. I did not take enough time to see who they really were. I suppose that’s my fault, but there are a lot of them out there, usually narcissists and sociopaths who aren’t capable of solidity. They will remain in the fog, soggy and miserable.

I have to say, though, I am in a less dense fog than ever before. These days, I am still prone to be trusting of those who are not worthy of my faith and loyalty but I would like to believe it doesn’t take quite as long to gain clarity these days. Some of my strategy is to just stay the eff out of most places where I might attract them. That works reasonably well for me – best defense, no be there. Those are words to live by.

I missed a meeting on Tuesday night, one that I knew was coming up, one that I regularly attend on Tuesday nights. I remembered it earlier on Tuesday, but after I finished work it went totally out of my mind. I woke up after it was over, very embarrassed because I was the Zoom host. It’s my account, and I feel that I have a lot of the responsibility there.

The Earth did not stop its rotation because I missed the meeting, nobody died, and the city was not in ruins. But I was ashamed, and frightened, telling myself that forgetting that commitment was a sure sign of cognitive decline and early onset dementia.

I have continued to process this, which is a good thing and a bad thing. It’s a good thing because I can really observe my thoughts and reactions to this occurrence rather than indulging in some distraction to hide from it. The bad thing is I can really observe my thoughts and reactions to this occurrence. A lot of mental energy has been expended on this, but I suppose that is just how I roll. Or don’t roll. Whatever.

Anyhow, I did pick out a couple of waypoints in this most recent journey into the heart of me. One is the shame. That is always to be expected when I have made a mistake. I appreciate that perfection is a myth and everyone makes mistakes and yadda yadda yadda, but it feels like crap, and it feels as though I am a fuck-up. The old tapes begin to play (and yes, they have now been digitized and reside securely within the confines of my cerebellum) and I am back in childhood and being told that I will never amount to anything, that I could have done better, that I just didn’t try, that I should not be trusted with important things. That since this has happened before people should know better than to expect anything more from me. Rewind, and repeat.

Wherever those patterns came from, my reaction is to immediately agree – yes, I am a fuck-up. Yes, I will never amount to anything. Yes, I could have – and should have – done better. My therapist says these are thoughts, not facts. That I can reframe thoughts by articulating them more positively and not indulging in negative – and abusive – self-talk. So, yeah, I get that intellectually, but the bias is incredibly strong and then…there’s the fog. That’s where it arises because I suppose I don’t really want to see clearly at that point. I am deep into it before I realize that I have a choice about entering.

The other unfortunate part about a shame spiral like this, at least for me, is that it comes down to waiting for the blow, waiting for punishment, waiting for retaliation, waiting for withdrawal of … love, respect, affection, trust. Withdrawal of safety and a sense of well-being. This is big. This is close to my core. Is this not what makes me who I am? What will I be without it? Who will I be without it?

So. It is time for more coffee, I think. And time for my medications. I promised that I would do better with regular doses. Some days, I eat the bear; some days the bear eats me. Some days I call myself names and wonder why I am doing any of this. Some days I write about it all and chuckle affectionately at my errant typing skills. And some days, I wait for the night as though tears in the sunlight are somehow not valid.

I forgot two meetings this evening. They were on my calendar. They were on my mind this morning. And somehow…I sat there and had not a thought about them past noon. They were important to me. I fucked up.

I’m tired of fucking up, tired of not being able to remember things that are important. Is this how it started with my mother, is this the trail head of that long, horrific descent into dementia? I can’t do it. I won’t do it. I don’t want it, and I’m not going to have it.

If I go the same route she went, the same route my great-aunts went, it will not be pretty. I will throw in the towel long before it got as bad as it was for them. One of my great-aunts was calling the sheriff’s office nearly every night to complain about people fornicating on her roof. The other one started wearing tube socks and high heels and drinking sour milk from the fridge. My mother refused to eat anything but vanilla wafers and bananas until she weighed less than 100 pounds.

Not me. I’m not going gently into that good night, or the fog, or however it looks. I am not delusional. I just cannot remember things. I have CRS – Can’t Remember Shit. That is really truth, but it’s really not funny any longer. I am not having any of the family business – not this kid.

It’s as though I cannot balance myself any longer (physically or brain function-wise). I have been off balance for quite a while, but I know what that’s about, and I compensate. That’s annoying, but I really have no need of walking a tight rope anytime soon. The brain function is another story. I am nearly obsessed with my job, and I do remember a lot of necessary things…but everything else is in another world. I don’t know if the two sides of my brain are even communicating at this point.

It is utterly devastating to be having these unsettling visions of the future. Perhaps I should buy a few shares in Depends now, kill two birds with one stone – have a supply for when the time comes and make a few dollars to keep myself up in the nursing home. A few years ago, the only fear I had about getting old was that I wouldn’t be able to walk under my own power. Since my mother’s death, a wheelchair is the least of my worries.

Someone gave me a book, titled something like “Aging Is Not for Cissies”. It’s definitely not for the faint hearted, but after what I’ve seen of my progenitors, it’s definitely not for me. I don’t consider myself all that faint-hearted, but I get to decide what I’m willing to survive. Or not.

I know that I have underestimated the level of trauma I experienced watching my mother go down that path. The sun definitely went down on her. She no longer shared the same reality as the rest of us. I remember when she started telling me that she was concerned about her memory. She was still working then, and the doors were covered with Post-It notes to help her remember things. That was her compensating. And then after a while, there was no way to compensate for the huge deficit in her cognitive function. But she lingered in that state for more than a few years, and that’s where I draw the line.

My therapist suggested I ask my neurologist to set me up with for a cognitive study with a neuropsych practice. I know that is what I should do, but of course I am scared to death to do it. Should I just let the inevitable take it’s course? Should I just assume that if I do that, sooner or later I won’t know the difference, let alone my own name? From what I understand, early medication just buys time, it ultimately changes nothing. I don’t want this, any of it.

This must be what people with dread diseases go through, feeling that your body is out of your control entirely, doing things you neither want nor understand. Doing things that do not seem to be in your best interest, but it’s your own body doing it, but it’s trying to kill you? WTF? Control is highly overrated in the first place, but I suppose I did think one would have control of their own physicality. Apparently not.

I can’t do this. I choose not to do this. It won’t happen tomorrow, or perhaps not for quite some time, but I hope I know when I’ve gone past the point of no return. When I’m no longer me, when I can’t restore myself. I’ve seen the worst of what this journey has to offer, and I don’t need to go there. I know how the story ends, with suffering and loss of dignity, loss of whatever makes me who I am. Loss of everything.

I refuse. I just say no. There is no point. I do not think we were put here to suffer, but we do. I have generally rejected predeterminism, but what do I know. Maybe the struggle has always been the futile attempt to buck the tide of the inevitable. Perhaps I should call a halt to struggling and just wait for the bell to toll, the night to fall. Perhaps Death lied. Perhaps Death is proud, and laughs behind its dark hood at the incessant fear it raises.

I don’t have to do this, but I will do it until I don’t, until I am too weary to continue. It’s a choice, but a shitty one.

How much longer, how much more, how much farther,? Carry me home, carry me home no matter how long it takes, no matter how big I am, no matter how long the journey. Did you forget me, did you neglect me, the debt has yet to be paid. I still cry, I still need, I remain unfulfilled, unsated. Barely conscious but yet somehow sentient, knowingly unknowing. Unknowing. Unsure, unsteady, not fully formed. Parts of me are soft and gelatinous, the parts that feel deeply, the parts that do not comprehend wanton cruelty or unprovoked sadism, or the even more incomprehensible pure evil.

If there is evil, can it be redeemed? What does redemption look like for random amorality? Perhaps the price is too great for us to comprehend, perhaps it takes lifetimes for the debt to be paid. And what price for a life, what price for misery, what price for pain? What does righting the wrong even begin to measure?

Perhaps the biggest fear is that some wrongs can never be righted, some debts never paid. Is the final analysis ever fair and equitable, or can we simply not see the obscenely large scale of the measuring apparatus. I would like to believe there is justice, but mortal eyes cannot see it, cannot envision it. The only just vision I can describe is the one of fantastic dreams where caterpillars talk and rabbits are obsessed with time. Are dreams the only fodder of justice?

IN the background 60 Minutes is telling the story of how Saudi Arabian royalty assasinated journalists who painted them in less than flattering colors. Perhaps this is as far as justice every goes in our incredibly finite lifetimes – you wrong me, I kill you. In my vision, you have only robbed someone of their physical reality, but I would like to believe there is more to our lives than that. If that is true, why am I afraid to die?

I have to believe the space we take up is infinitesimal compared to the breadth and depth of the Universe. The absurdity of believing that homo sapiens are the proverbial crown of creation always makes me giggle…right before it stimulates frightening thoughts of what that would mean. Does it mean the literal War of the Worlds? Would it mean live enactment of the pinnacle of the Star Wars series, where there are infinite numbers of fantastic and unbelievable life forms that far outreach my own. Like a typical human, my imagination goes directly to “what does this mean for ME?”

Is my only responsibility to grow, or is it to dream? If it is to dream, I’m underdeveloped. Somewhere along the line I got the message that impractical dreams are of no value. Dream of your success, dream of your earnings, dream of wanting for nothing. Rarely did we hear the advice of dreaming of a peaceful world, or a world where money matter little, or a world where people did not die of hunger in the middle of fields of plenty. We dreamed of being exceptional, of having opulent wealth in comparison to the average bloke.

What do I owe to this world? Perhaps it is not to dream of a better world, or even a better me, but to be a better world, to be a better me. Fake it until you make it. Live as if the goal has already been realized. Make the future catch up to the past. Or something bizarre like that. That causes me to wonder if I wouldn’t be simply fooling myself. Maybe, or maybe I would be attracting the reality I seek. Hmmmm.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. And those with evil hearts know. Those who fall victim to the evil-hearted may never know the utter void of good that exists there. Evil is a complete mystery to me, as is cruelty. In my day, I have wanted to say the most hurtful thing possible to hurt someone I believed had wronged me, but that was an experience limited to that context. My identity is not linked to acquiring power over others by any means necessary. Perhaps I would be better off if that was the case, but in my experience it only means that you live in a pyramid scheme of affectation and burgeoning debt service. Power is a false god, with short-lived benefit.

Indebtedness never yields a zero-sum balance. We are never in absolute control. I am thinking the best we can do is unflinching acceptance of that reality.