November 7, 2024

Thought Extraction

It’s so wonderful being alive for the end of the United States. Genuinely. It’s been quite the treat. I always was curious how Germany could go from a republic into a fascist regime that killed people… yet here we are! It was for the price of eggs! Even after he has said the most horrific shit, ON TAPE, people still chose the felon over the prosecutor. Heard ya America. Heard. Ya.

My original plan was to immediately list the house for sale and get the fuck out of here. But my brother has killed that because I cannot leave the people I love behind. I know charlie would want me to take care of him so… I’m bound by some ridiculous sense of duty. Fuck!

I genuinely cannot wait for him to implement everything they want. That’s not sarcasm. I want them to make everyone’s lives fucking miserable. I cannot wait for it. It’s going to be fucking epic. And if they get to a point where they criminalize me or put me in a camp… I am very prepared to die. That isn’t hyperbole. Last night I thought about taking an entire bottle of pills but stopped myself for a few reasons. One being that I would not want to traumatize my brother. It’s just not in me to lay that level of emotional burden on someone else. The other being that I know my husband would be angry with me if I did. He explicitly told me he wanted me to keep living. Have a wonderful life. And in doing so I would be breaking his only request.

So here I am, accepting the things I cannot change and willing the courage in me to change the things I can. I don’t know what tomorrow will look like but I am enthusiastic that it will be something that will hurt everyone. And I get to sit there with my mock shock and go “who could have predicted this?” Or my favorite: “Schucks. That sucks. Bummer.”

Everything that will transpire will not touch me. Everything detailed in project 2025 doesn’t affect me. So let it all fucking burn. Take away the epa, the department of education, take away every bit of women’s rights. Do it all. And if I wind up dead… just know I accepted my death with open arms. Once again I get to be with my husband, wherever that may be. And I will truly be at peace.

October 21, 2024

No title required for a lack of content

My heart is aching this morning and I don’t know why. I’ve described it on twitter as having “big feelings” as if I was a child throwing a tantrum. As ridiculous as it sounds I feel like one. I want to throw myself on the ground and scream and cry, flail my limbs for maximum exposure. The only reason I can conclude is that I’m just so confused from where these emotions flow. More than likely, it’s probably grief but there is something else mixed in there. A hint of aged barrel…

The only person I can think of to talk to, to work out these feelings, is my husband and that doesn’t seem likely. Unless I bought myself a Ouija board and was able to get in to contact with him specifically. In my experiences with one it’s always a spiritual “Russian Roulette.” You get who you get, y’know? And I’m not really in the mood to potentially scare up my mother. Even in death I’d prefer not to speak to her. Even if she’s regained her “thoughts.”

If I work backwards, I started to panic when I was overthinking about weekly Star Wars Unlimited league play. The “regulars” haven’t shown up the last few weekends since the time I wore my “Harris/Walz” hat to a game. Now I’m paranoid that I offended them or scared them off with my “liberal agenda.” (The one that runs through every Star Wars film, but whatever. Semantics.) This is a good example of why I’m only partially antagonistic. I genuinely don’t like making people feel uncomfortable, even if I think they deserve it because of their shitty opinions. Another fantastic example was when I was homophobia’ed at work and I apologized to him! To my own detriment, I’m unfortunately accommodating because I would want that in return. The lesson “treat others how you want to be treated” sunk in a little too deep for me. I cannot unlearn it even though I want to be the most petty person on the planet.

I told Josh and he said that I’m probably reading way too much into their “disappearance.” Which, to his credit, is something Charlie would have said. He also would have laughed at me. Because how dare I think the world revolves around me? And it is true, I do think that. Not in the sense that I am the center of attention. Oh no. It is based in the belief that wherever I may roam, I cause havoc and chaos in my wake. It’s silly but in the few instances where I was correct on my “hunch” has only fed this paranoia.

I took a little break and visited with my sorta-kinda-cousin one more time before she heads home to North Carolina. Since then I have felt better. I cannot even remember what it was I was bothered by. Which is weird because it was truly all consuming. My brain is such a hoot.

October 20, 2024

20 Year High School Reunion

Last night I had my 20 year high school reunion. Initially I had zero interest in going. Since the last time I saw anyone from high school I have accomplished nothing. At least, nothing of note worth attending my 20 year reunion. The only reason I did attend was because my sorta-kinda-cousin “bullied” me into it. If she asks, I’m there. Plus, they needed (at minimum) 40 people to attend and they were having a hard time selling the minimum tickets required for the venue. (Out of a class of 200 I should add.) So, I’m very aware that I am not alone when it comes to wanting to skip it.

There were quite a few things I realized while I was there. The primary one being “I’m really an unfriendly person.” I recognized so many faces, even though they had dramatically changed from the last time I had seen them, I just didn’t remember names. It also became very clear that even during high school I didn’t talk to anyone. I knew these people for 4 years and never once took the time to get to know them. Which is really kind of shitty. I had people come up to me and say lovely things to me, but I approached no one but my cousin. In high school, she was the social butterfly. She really had a foot in a bunch of different groups. As Josh and I sat in a corner by ourselves, watching everyone chat, I started to wish I had been like her.

Another thing I realized was how much I have forgotten from my time in high school. What really concerns me up is not knowing if it’s from the grief slowly chipping away at them, or if I was so self absorbed as a kid that I never took the time to see or hear other people’s experiences. Yet that takes me back to the first point that I was just really an unfriendly person. Which is weird because I’m not. I’m just insanely, cripplingly shy. Which most people find strange since I am a huge attention whore.

I had one of these gentleman come up to me and say I looked very familiar but he couldn’t remember why. I said “I did all of the school plays?” He shook his head and replied that that wasn’t it. The only reason I went there first is because I was a huge theatre nerd and participated in this one theatre class that would perform 1 act plays for the English classes at my school each school period, once a month, for 3 years. I was genuinely voted (twice I might add) most likely to be famous. Both times with two different women. One being another theatre friend of mine and the other with this one girl, to this day, I have no idea how she wound up with the win. She had a cute personality but… she never did anything “big” that would have warranted that. She didn’t “perform.” At least not outside of the one math class where she was my table mate. There she mocked our middle eastern teacher’s accent. Which, at the time, I found fucking hilarious. Now it’s super insensitive and ignorant. I feel so much guilt for how ruthless this girl was to this teacher, and I wonder if she continued to teach after or if this racist little girl scared her away.

Another thought I had was how immature I am. Instead of mingling and saying hello to these familiar faces, I hid behind my boyfriend and played pokemon go on my phone. Instead of asking these people how things have been and, I don’t know, getting to know them now. That is one character flaw from high school I still have. I’m not an “adult” by any other means than in my age. I am still cripplingly shy and think that my presence isn’t wanted. Or that I am some sort of burden who needs to shut up.

The final epiphany, one in which I am certain I am not alone in, was how little I’ve accomplished since then. Everyone else seemed corporate or successful in some way. All I’ve done is get married, take care of my dying mother and husband, and finish editing a book. That’s it. I haven’t left this shitty little town or done anything I said I would achieve. I had such big dreams of becoming an actor or a published writer. Instead all I was able to “achieve” wAs perform in some insignificant community theatre and write a blog on the internet. That maybe gets 10 views a month.

I am a firm believer that life isn’t measured in perceived “successes” but in life lived. It is in the relationships we make or in the lives we touch. A “good life” to me is one in which, upon my death, I can look back and go “I’d do it again.”

All-in-all I had fun. Ate entirely too many pretzel bites at the snack buffet, realize how little my life is, and how this is probably the last time I’ll see any of these folks again. (Apart from my sorta-kinda-cousin.)

_____________________

If you’re curious as to why I say “sorta-kinda” is because when we went to high school we had zero familial relationship. We just happened to enjoy theatre class. The sorta part comes in when I started dating my husband in my senior year. He saw her name in one of my school play programs and asked me if she was related to so-and-so. At the time I had no idea, but she is in fact related to my husband’s step-mom’s sister’s husband. It’s weird how small this community is and how there are threads that weirdly connect us to people in our community in this roundabout way. My in-laws being a very prominent thread. If you’ve ever heard of the podcast “Notorious Bakersfield” that’s my cousin.

October 13, 2024

Six Months

I failed. I had wanted to write this post on the actual day of, instead I got distracted with other things to where I eventually found myself drunk and just couldn’t bring myself to write. How the greats could drink and clack out some narrative is astounding to me. It takes an act of god for me to put “pen to paper” when I’m under the influence.

Yesterday, the 12th, marked six months since Charlie passed. Tony, the brother husband who I now repeatedly refer to as my brother, asked me why I wanted to commemorate the occasion when I had never been one to do that sort of stuff before. It’s true. I’m not one for half anniversaries or similar milestones. I told him that I wanted to, in this instance, because I had to remind myself. Most of the time, it doesn’t feel real.

All in one moment it does and doesn’t feel like that much time has passed. My brain is under the impression that it happened just last week or, worst of all, that Charlie is just on a trip somewhere. He’ll be back any moment. Why are you worried? Yet in these very moments, it feels like it’s been years. As if things have always been this way.

That feeling I truly despise. I hate how it could feel “easy” for him to not be here, to not be a huge part of my life like he had been.

The further I drift away the more it hurts. My crying episodes used to be small fits of tears, and now the waves come like the growing hurricanes. More than once this past week I’ve had to pull my car over because I was losing my mind. (I can and only cry alone in my car.) In whatever corner I can tuck myself away, I sob until the storm passes. and then continue on as though I hadn’t just broken down because of some song. I wish I could remember which ones struck the most sensitive nerve but, even if you held a gun to my head, I can’t. Maybe I don’t want to remember. I do have a sick tendency to lean into these songs, hard, forcing the extraction of these emotions.

One of the things I do, that borders on psychosis, is that I turn and talk to him. In my mind he’s still sitting in the passenger seat, judging me with his sarcastic observations. I can hear them loud and clear in my mind. Sometimes they even feel like he is genuinely speaking to me, and it’s not my mind creating them. And maybe he is… it’s in that possibility that brings me a strange peace. If our existence carries on after our mortal demise, Charlie would absolutely be the kind to stick around to make sure everyone was “okay” before he moved on to the next life. If such choice exists.

What I am certain of is that as we head into the coming months things are going to become increasingly difficult. Here is where I meet the biggest “firsts.” My first wedding anniversary without him, my first birthday (in 20 years) without him, the first time we don’t celebrate his birthday, the first Christmas, the first new year… all of the fucking holidays.

I’m sure you’ll all get a chance to read all about them. I would like to lean more into my writing, like I had, instead of just experiencing these thoughts quietly, alone. What stops me is sometimes I feel like people think I’m making up all of this, as a way to chase “clout” (as the kids say.)