January 10, 2024

Truths of Escapism

I genuinely hate the horror genre. That is the one gay stereotype that seems to have skipped me. Got the rest though, so relax. I just don’t see it’s appeal. And it’s not because of the gore, I have watched a many action film with enough blood and guts to fill an oil tanker. I just don’t enjoy being stressed. The idea that people are fighting for their lives and at constant risk is not the escape I want. In fact it’s nothing like that. Films, books, comics, video games, are meant to be a break from the reality we are experiencing. Well, for most of my life it has been mostly anxiety and stress that jumping into a movie where the hero may or may not live is not something I want to indulge in.

All of this was brought about because I watched “The Fall of the House of Usher.” It was a fantastic show, but I had to hide behind my hands from some of the more graphic moments. There was only one that truly made me want to vomit, and that was in the second goddamn episode. I told myself, “this is the first one… I can’t imagine them getting tamer.” Surprisingly they did for the most part. I learned after seeing the episode that the first two were featured at some film festival and then it all clicked.

After that the gore was significantly toned down. The only one that genuinely made me uncomfortable (after the human soup) was not so much gory but psychologically unnerving. I saw far too many parallels between one of the bed bound characters and my husband. It made me feel for him moreso because of how vulnerable he is. Luckily he is in the hands of a self-proclaimed and wannabe “white knight.” (I wish I had the photo of me pretending to be Prince Phillip from Sleeping Beauty from when I was 2 to include.) The helplessness of the character just made me sick.

There’s a moment when the husband of this bed-bound character starts to shout “Where’s your wedding ring?” So I started doing that to my husband as a joke. He hasn’t worn his since he lost 150 lbs. It wouldn’t stay on his finger and so he took it off because he’d rather have it at home than lose it without noticing. Now only I know where the “one ring” lays hidden.

I think that’s why the river of my writing runs in the valley of adventure, only forking once to journey into the ravine of non-fiction and self-reflection. Life is scary enough, that horror just isn’t in my wheelhouse. To those that do, kudos, and good luck. I appreciate your talents, however I will not indulge because to do so only causes me anxiety.

January 9, 2024

Tonight on Breathline

I’m really worried that tonight is the night. I find myself just staring at my husband as he’s breathing. Or… struggling to breathe. The machine is doing its best pushing air into his lungs but it seems like sometimes they don’t want to accept what it has to give. His brow stitches together as though his sleeping thoughts are perplexed to this failure. My own breath catches in my chest and I wait in agony, my heartbeat thundering in my ears, until his body relents and he takes a big deep breath in. His expression and my body relaxes and we repeat the cycle.

It’s weird. I can’t stop staring at him. I’m questioning my own actions, wondering if I have overmedicated him. Although I quickly reassure myself that I gave him what he requested and what is prescribed. I tend to do that a lot… I make myself the cause of everything. The flaw. The mistake.

I hope I’m wrong in my assessment. My prediction. Mainly because I feel like today was wasted. That I didn’t get enough time with him or tell him that I love him enough.

Listen to me… I’m acting as though it’s come true. I’m going to sign off here before I say something I regret. As if I somehow spoke it into existence.

January 8, 2024

Religious ramblings

I can’t sleep. My mind is whirling with too many things that it’s like a car idling in the driveway. I keep thinking about this conversation I had with an old friend of mine. It covered the gamut but my primary focus was the absurdity of sin and religion in general. I tried to bring up points of contradiction but the thing about faith brain is it’s like a snake eating its tail. One thing justifies the other with no real rhyme or reason.

This friend in particular really triggers my antagonistic nature in regards to faith. This friend I had, at one time, been in love with. We were really close friends and during a trip on spring break I crossed a boundary with him. He responded like any straight guy having an identity crisis. He fled into faith. When we returned to school after the holiday session he passed me a note between classss that he could no longer be my friend because of Jesus.

I broke down balling right there in class. The teacher sent me immediately to the office because I could not stop crying.

Years later we made amends. He says he never said that in the note and I’m like… girl, I broke down crying in second period history. I remember what it fucking said.

Having this conversation with him is really triggering, and not just because of that instance. It has been years of bullshit from the people are church and in the Christian schools I attended. I never saw more hatred and cruelty than I had in church. Once you remove faith from people they’re truly kind. I would say that I am much more caring than I was when I was religious.

I go in this roundabout arguments in my head debunking faith and how absurd it is. I attempted to do that in the conversation with this friend but I am not good under pressure. My husband on the other hand is who made me work through the bullshit to see it for what it was. He should be doing this kind of stuff… not me.

Like… I look at all of the shitty things that have happened to me and all I can think is either I’m being punished by god or it’s the devil. And if it’s the devil, I’ve already forsaken god, just let up. Kicking me lower isn’t going to make me hate god more than I already do. Then if it is god doing these things he’s a sociopath.

They go end over end for me. The thing that truly, truly killed it for me was watching my mother go through all she did. She was the most devout person I had ever, EVER seen. She walked the walk and talked the talk as the church likes to say. But she was met with nothing but heartache and struggles. A faith man would say that was just the devil trying to make her rescind her faith. Okay. Then why didn’t god stop it? If he’s all fucking powerful, why sit there and watch her struggle? As I love to say, cause god can’t cum unless you’re suffering.

Anyway… it’s funny, even now my thoughts are convoluted. I have a clear line of thought it’s just that I am so emotional about all of this that I get flustered and can’t think. And it’s because I was sold lies. I built my childhood on falsehoods printed in a book. Claims that make the assertion that they are “god breathed.” Well god spoke to me and said you’re a bunch of cunts.

I hope to one day find the peace from my religious past but I don’t think I ever will. I can never move past it because it is around me all the time.

January 4, 2024

Welcome to my Josh Talk

Today I am going to breakdown in the most simplistic way I can why I am pro-Palestine and anti-Israel. And when I say I am “anti-Israel” I am referring to the government/governing forces of Israel. I am in NO WAY anti-Semitic or referring to the Jewish people in any shape or form. The actions of a governing body do not speak for the entirety of a single culture. That is absurd. And if you think that, you don’t understand how the world works.

In my town, like most American cities, there are 4 Starbucks on the same street. Let’s imagine that one day a couple of robbers go into it and hold everyone there at gunpoint, demanding that they give them all the money in the register. Somehow, someway, the authorities are alerted and they show up in seconds. Instead of reasoning with these 2 people they just decide to bomb the Starbucks because it’s easier for them than investigating. Time is of the essence, and the local police are an overfunded military force. Y’know, for safety.

As the bomb sends pieces of building and dust miles into the sky, the 2 robbers and hostages in the other Starbucks down the street look out the window and wonder what the hell just happened.

The police, realizing that they have the wrong Starbucks, go to the other one and do the same thing. Turns out it wasn’t that one either.

FINALLY they show up to the right one and do the same thing, because they haven’t learned their lesson from the other two situations. So they have destroyed 3 Starbucks with all of the innocent people inside in the process. All of this destruction and death to get 2 people who tried to rob a single coffee shop.

And this doesn’t even touch on the subsequent deserved public outrage, the inevitable police cover up claiming it was a coordinated effort with multiple assailants, or that these were cops from a town over.

Lets pretend for a moment that everything we’re being told by the Israeli government is 100% true and that there is this intricate network of tunnels connecting all of the buildings that Hamas uses to carry out their terrorist attacks.

Now let’s say that about 75-80% of Gaza is not related to Hamas in any fashion at all, they’re just people trying to live their lives in this “country” smaller than the City of Los Angeles. If you’re a highly militarized nation (Israel) if their goal, as they have informed us, is to root out Hamas, one does not just willynilly bomb everything above this sprawling network of tunnels. They would send in a highly trained task force to root them out. You are supposed to be sophisticated and smarter than them, right?

This government is acting like the incompetent police force. With their lack of regard for human life all because their “goal” is to stop crime and to “keep people safe” by any means necessary.

Thank you for coming to my “Josh Talk.”