Apparently I've got 4 posts I started but didn't finish. Let's see how this one goes.
It's happening; I can feel it. No gold loop earring, new car that's too fast for me, new girlfriend that's too young for me. Mortality creeps up on me, prowling in the background while I try to push through each day, the only goal to get through it.
Guilt is a sonofabitch. Guilt for wasted potential, guilt for not being the father I want to be or think I'm supposed to be. Feeling like I'm failing my children every day being a cog in the capitalist machine I willingly thrust myself into. I'm reflecting a lot, but that means my thoughts are all over the place, like ripples in a pond, or pebbles on the beach.
I work 5 days a week making someone else rich. Most of us do just that. For what? We spend 40-ish years of drudgery, hoping to have maybe 10-20 years of frugal freedom? Hold onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, if I work hard enough, what? I get to be that person who exploits the labor of other people, made rich on the backs of the working class? What are my options here? Spin in a tiny cage, hoping to trade up for a bigger cage, until the cells and atoms we've called Austin become something else in the cosmos. I remember hearing the older you get, the more conservative you'll get. When is that supposed to happen? I don't want to protect my money and way of life: I want a revolution. But one I can sit back and watch I guess. Being disabled has a few benefits, like a ready excuse to avoid actually doing anything.
I struggle with suicidal ideation and behavior. That should be no surprise to people who know me or have read more than a couple posts on this blog. It feels like the only logical decision. To escape the machine, prevent my life force and time to be gobbled up by a bottomless pit of a monster that's never satisfied, never full. But, I've been in therapy long enough to know those thoughts, that seem real, are most likely nothing of the sort. A reality I construct to cope with the world as I interpret it.
I don't want you to worry about my safety. I'm fine. Just trying to get feelings out that have been stuck inside for too long as I've been too preoccupied with toil and the day-to-day and finding anything to numb my mind from the disappointment to myself I am. That didn't help, did it. Too cheery?
I look at my kids and see myself at their age, and worse (sorry mom and dad) see myself at my parents age. The stories they told me about growing up were akin to myths and legends: things that happened before my birth that seem exciting and improbable, and things I can never experience. And now my memories are similar. The rollicking times with cousins and pillow forts, imaginations, "marbles and piracies" are "tears in the rain." Experiences are so fleeting, memories so subjective. I feel like I fail my children every day as I struggle to provide a life I don't want and don't deserve. I'm not explaining it well.
I'm transitioning. In transition. I feel it. Like my brain is defragmenting. Like it's rearranging and reassessing all the memories, all the experiences that make up myself and my worldview. From a naïve dreamer to a broken-winged sparrow. I'm just pushing each day to get closer to death. We all are. Some of us just have the hope that there's something after. Worth pushing for.
Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't have left religion. Saying that wrong. I wonder if I'm not the kind of person, or my psyche is one that would have thrived better with a belief in a supreme administrator and a pie in the sky. I'm sure I sound condescending AF to those who do believe in those things, and I apologize. But it's my blog and my dime we're on, so #dealwithit
I believe in no god, no afterlife. So this life should mean more. I often feel that way; I really do. "We all have two lives, and the second one begins when we realize we only have one." I feel like I need to read Proust. Or maybe just watch this video again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mLdo4uMJUU
I struggle for meaning in life. I love my family. My wife, my children. The 2-3 of you reading this. I agree with Proust that love isn't the meaning of life. It can't be. It's something to fill your time and your mind/heart, one of the better ones, but there's more. Or at least something different. Proust says it's art. Not like looking at painting and sculpture and Tracey Emin's bed. Or like creating paintings or sculpture or literature or a shark in formaldehyde. Proust encourages art and artists because they help us see the world differently. It shakes us out of the day-to-day drudgery and appreciate the small and big things we're often too busy or focused to see. I do feel like this is the answer. Not seeking fame or a "fancied life an another's breath" (Pope, not Proust). Not in seeking love, that provides many of life's greatest highs but also deepest depths. But in seeking and creating "Proustian Moments."
I think that's the answer, but don't expect to see me visiting the new galleries of the Louvre or making a trip to India anytime soon. And not just because of COVID. But I do want to enjoy my life. I want to encourage others to do the same. Everything is so fucking overwhelming. I don't have time to slow down and smell the roses, even tho I know from experience those roses will likely be better than whatever is too damn important to keep me from the life I wish I could live.
Sheesh this is all over the place. But it's important to me to get it out of my head. I have a good life. I have an amazing partner and wonderful children. I have a challenging yet rewarding job, an actual home, lots of things to be grateful for. But I find myself saying the words David Byrne new I would say "this is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful wife." Meaning it's not the life I thought I'd have, the life I wanted, the life I expected. (fyi Tracie you are everything I wanted in a partner. I hope you see it as the metaphor it's intended to be, not a verbalization of not wanting you in my life. I do. I so do. I'm just trying to express my feelings of growth, change, and confusion and disappointment.)
I see every moment I fail my children as something that will shape their personalities and memories forever. That the one time I get angry will shape them more than the 100 times I try to do something nice. I feel such an obligation to them to make them functional healthy people. But then I take a step back and ask - do I want to raise them to be part of the machine I wish I wasn't in? And what's the alternative? Grow up to be homeless? To be drifters? Communist Revolutionaries? Actually, that one doesn't sound so bad. ;)
I feel so trapped living in a world that has been set up so carefully and cleverly to keep the ruling class ruling and the working class working. To have the realization that the people you read about in history books, the people on the big screen, you'll never be them. Despite the wonderful advances of society that I have luxuries many people in history couldn't imagine, I'm still part of the peasantry. And I don't want to be in the upper class. That's Proust's first realization. (According to the video, he said in a sophomoric way only a man on the internet can say). The ruling class isn't better, isn't a goal to strive towards. But to see people hoard wealth and resources so billionaires can go to space or buy yachts the size of cities or whatever else they do, when they could solve so many problems is depressing and infuriating. It's also depressing and infuriating to see so many bootlickers eager to maintain the status quo. Claiming Communism doesn't work, while we toil in a crumbling society of Capitalism that's not working either.
I don't mean to make a manifesto. I don't know what I mean, what I want. That's kind of the point. I'm journaling, not announcing, proclaiming, or even suggesting anything. I'm hanging on to the familiarity of 10-20 ish years ago when we did this more often, before social media killed blogs as we knew them. I'm growing up, pushing 40, and feeling depressed and disappointed in the person I am, the father and husband and friend I want to be vs the reality.
One of the constant phrases of my life is "not good enough." And I hates it, precious. It ensures a steady source of nourishment for my BPD and depression. Because it's so poorly defined, it's a moving target and I can make sure I can never hit it. Because there's never a "If I do/achieve/am x, then I'll be "good enough." Good enough for anything. I'm in therapy which believe it or not is helping tremendously, and I'm trying to let go. Trying to say goodbye to and outgrow the coping mechanisms that kept me safe, but also kept my development stunted. Trying to leave unhealthy thoughts and habits that no longer help. You know. Growing up.
Over the last year I've lost 3 grandparents. One of the posts I started that I alluded to at the beginning was trying to deal with the loss of just one of them. I'm trying to focus on how fortunate I've been, to have 4 living grandparents. Who aren't just living, but loving and accepting and an active part of my life. With their loss, I think part of my transition and brain reorganization has been influenced if not activated by that. The memories of myself and my grandparents and our relationship is now my children and my parents, if I'm making sense. It's so hard to explain, but I hope I'm saying enough to get it through to anyone. Grandparents seemed older when I was 6 than when my daughter is 6. Parents seemed older when they were 39 than when I am.
And I know this is part of life. This realization is not new, not unique. I know that. But it's still hard. It's work to rearrange your brain, and see experiences through new eyes. Which was kind of Proust's point or goal: (boom, didn't even mean to make a callback. Nice.)
"The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but having new eyes."
I'm on one hand excited to have new eyes. Even if it means closer to death. Closer to what I believe is oblivion. Which, by the way, I'll be really pissed if it turns out we get the afterlife we believe in. I'd like to be proven wrong. The part of me that hopes for an afterlife and benevolent dictator is afraid that I'll die and won't know it, while the party in heaven goes on forever. Maximum FOMO. Except I won't have it obviously. I do hope that, if there is any sort of afterlife, that it's as close to the ending of "The Good Place" as possible. (WATCH THE SHOW if you haven't.) Ramble ramble rambo ram's blood ramrod.
So yeah. That's about it. tl;dr life is fleeting, and Austin is aging. Stay tuned for more. When I get the mood to write, I wanna keep at it.
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