These Pages Are Windows

I’m starting to journal again, obviously. The purpose was, ostensibly, to try to make sense of my own world, in a way that would somehow remove me from the immediacy of the goddamn endless swamp that my life seems like sometimes, post Death Race to the Emergency Room 2016. 

 

Then, the world started to lose its fucking mind.

 

Well, to be more specific – my country lost its mind, and started to shit itself all over the rest of the world.

I remember a time… is starting to be a phrase you see a lot on Twitter. Maybe on Facebook, too, but FUCK that place.  After the damage they helped to do to the election – again, FUCK that place. And word is that Zuckerberg has his sights set on 2020. You know what?  Fuck HIM too.  

 

Ok. Got that out of my system.

 

But I do remember a time – when Bush winning the election felt like an incomprehensible insult. When having him in office and telling us to go SHOPPING as a solution to 9/11 was –

 

Ok, I’m about to devolve into a Lewis-Black-esque spew of FUUUUUUUUCK again.

 

Where we are here? Now?

 

...

 

Years and years ago, pre-internet, I used to carry paper journals around all the time. Never without a book to read, and never without some place to record my thoughts or collect quotes or what have you. And there was some ok writing that came out of that, but in the main, page after page of those journals ended up devolving into a downward slant – “swirling” is what my friend Mannie called it – that tendency to focus on something negative and just follow it doggedly down and endless rabbit hole of FUUUUUUUUCK…

 

Yeah, I like that word a lot.

 

But the thing with those journals was, part of why they did that - dig themselves into depths of FUCK THIS SHIT - was the self-knowledge that no one would ever read them. Outside that one time when my ex – but that was a whole other thing…

 

It’s more likely than not that no one will read all this stuff either. Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s actually ‘out there’ in the sense that I’ll have an audience.

 

But there’s that possibility.

And it’s what helps keep me, in a weird way, accountable.

 

There’s the slim-to-none but still possible possibility that someone out there – might stumble across this.

 

And because of that, I feel like I have to be interesting. 
I have to try to make sense out of all this.

I have to have something to say, besides just endlessly howling into the void.

Because someone out there just might – maybe – hear.

That's all I was able to do yesterday. Last night
This last week.
The last ten days.

Howl. Shriek. Cry.
A lot.

The world I live in right now – my country – has stopped being accountable. Even though it has the ear of the entire fucking world – my country has gone totally tone deaf. Our sense of responsibility for and to others has disappeared faster than an old-school vampire in direct sunlight.  

 

Yes, I know, this has been years in the making.

 

But ten days –

 

TEN FUCKING DAYS, people –

 

In ten days –

 

I can’t right now.  I just can’t even go into it.  It’s both simple and complex, and overall overwhelming.

 

Whoever runs across this little time capsule in the electronic ocean - if someone ever does - if the USA and by extension large chunks of the world aren’t just smoking rubble and an EMP hasn’t wiped out colossal swaths of the Earth's collective knowledge – the Library of Alexandria writ large –

 

Look it up.

 

U.S. History, Friday, January 20 to Saturday, January 29, 2017.

 

Then again, depending on what happens in the coming weeks; months - who knows who’ll be writing the history books.  

 

All I can say right now is that in the last 10 days, I’ve lost my country. 

 

My mind?  I left that behind long ago.  

I just never expected to see the world around me devolve as well.

 

I was saying something about how journaling was supposed to keep me from ‘swirling’.

 

Maybe tomorrow.

 

Maybe.

 

Laters, internets.

 

Today was supposed to be an assessment/intake appointment for counseling, and it ended up being not the 1 hour session I expected with just a counselor, but a 4 hour 3-way with a counselor, then another counselor, and then a - I can't remember her title but it was a new variant of "case manager," the latter of which I have decided is one of the most awesome people, partly because of her personality (which says something as I don't get a long with most females), and partly because her job is to help a person search for resources, establish a baseline for pretty much all areas of your life in terms of both coping and daily living skills, and she is able to not just see people in an office, but also go anywhere at all in the city to meet with people as best suits them. In a city where there is FUCK ALL in the way of transportation if you don't have a car (seriously - the supposed 'transit system' here goes well beyond joke and way into insulting), this is a service that to me seems like an absolute godsend.  Currently I still have my car, but without a steady income coming in (see: fired CHRISTMAS FUCKING EVE, by a boss who takes the appellation of 'dickhead' to new and transcendent heights) - life is feeling not just precarious, but more like pre-fucking-inescapable-sinkhole.  It's amazing how people will listen to you when you tell them that you have a suicide plan in place, not because you necessarily *want* to die, but are about to be in a position where that seems like the best of all possible options (see also: if my healthcare goes away I only have months to live anyway, yadda yadda).

Anyway, not-case-manager Heather is coming to my house tomorrow morning to get an idea of the space I live in (and how the broom closet dimensions are one of the challenges that I'm having trouble with), and then we'll go to a cafe to continue working on figuring out what resources to pursue - one of which will be getting help applying for disability, something that I HATE the idea of doing, but have finally had to accept is a necessity.  Also, shorter term options, since getting denied - and denied - and denied - is not only common, but something that one should not only expect, but assume and plan contingencies for.  

These are the kinds of things that I find easier to help *other* people with, but when it comes to doing them on my own, for myself - I dunno.  It's like a frosted Lucite wall descends between me and the intended tasks, and I can vaguely make out the outlines, but can neither fully grasp nor connect with them.  Vapor lock or somesuch. This isn't something I have the luxury of not being able to not deal with, so - it's one of the areas I am in great need of assistance with, and is EXACTLY what Heather is all about. After today, again, I'm wiped out - but I feel more hopeful than I have in, oh, about 9 months or more. Basically, pre-hospital.  So.  We're also going to look at formulating a game plan to help me finish my incompletes for school, and maybe see if there's some way I can get funding for the A$$L0AD of expensive testing to get my teaching license. Although another thing I have to accept is that I'll never be able to teach full-time - I just don't have the physical constitution necessary for it anymore - if I can teach part-time, and do some other stuff for $$ part-time (theatre, getting the Etsy store up and running, etc.), in theory I should be able to get back to the usual things-are-tight-but-manageable space again. Poor, I'm used to.  On the  brink of homelessness - not so much.

So.  That was my day. I wanted to do the bargain movie thing tonight but I'm still feeling hung-over from that AWFUL medication last night, so I think I'm going to try to do a little cleaning - I think I may have 20-30 minutes in me before all the muscles in my lower/mid back trying to strangle my spine AND rip their way right out of my body - and then just - blargh. Watch reruns of Sherlock I think.

Seriously.  I am fucking DONE with today.

In a good way for a change.

Which is pretty damn cool.