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March 12, 2025

These Things Four to Save My “Soul”

Last night… I did something unexpected and hopeful. I made a list of goals for myself. They’re temporary but they are 4 things that I wanted to do to give my life purpose. Which, as of late, has had none. When I look around at the world, burning around me, I find it increasingly difficult to make long-term plans. Whose to say that I will even bring them to fruition. I say that without a trace of irony and nothing but fearful sincerity.

My hope is that this list will give me something to focus on, other than the chaos. Which I have discovered is all-consuming. I had an intent to not look at social media while I was at work, however after having scrolled for a good 30 mins it occurred to me that I had already failed. This realization came entirely too late because I was already locked in the clutches of “panic.”

Yesterday I likened my obsessive scrolling to being trapped on a highway congested from a brutal, fatal car crash. You can’t look away as you slowly creep by, but you just have to know.

A secondary wish for this list is that it will cease the descent into cruelty. I find myself becoming increasingly apathetic to the pain of other people. In fact, I relish it. That makes me no better than those causing the harm. I don’t want to be that person. It is absolutely not who I am. However it’s difficult to not feel that way. They hurt me by putting him there, so I want them to hurt too. Most of what is happening is harming the people who allowed this to happen at all. They used their vote to spit in the face of “pussy liberal cucks” as some protest vote. Or as my mother loved to say, “cut off their nose to spite their face.”

I hesitate to admit it but I find, what most of the internet is referring to FAFO (fuck around and find out), joyous. Elated even. It brings me immense joy that I should not feel towards my fellow countrymen. Ultimately I am responding similarly to how they took the opportunity to vote this asshole into office, to spite their “enemies.”

What these people fail to realize is that we’re all in this boat together. So drilling holes in it to hurt the ones you don’t like will absolutely end up hurting you. Yet, I have heard that the reason they drilled the holes in the first place is because they felt betrayed to begin with. Which basically circles back to the one irrefutable truth: we have failed to listen and understand. We have failed at having basic human empathy.

Or maybe I am just too much of a “Pollyanna.”

To avoid the destruction of my soul, I will focus on these things:

  1. Finish my professional education.
  2. Learn to speak Spanish.
  3. Become more competitive in Lorcana TCG.
  4. Lose weight.

These are genuinely silly ambitions. Yet I see them as ways to soothe the roiling magma within me. With any luck, these will lead me to a place for myself in whatever unpredictable future lies ahead of all of us.

February 12, 2025

Notes From the “Other Side”

Well… Yesterday was sure “fun!”

I ended up leaving work early for a mental health break. I cloistered myself on my BF’s couch, pillow over my head, and listened to the muffled dialogue of Golden Girls while trying to sleep. As time wore on I started to feel better and was at least able to have a normal conversation that wasn’t laced with conspiracy theory or paranoia. It’s weird being an observer within my own mind. Sometimes the crazy person gets control and I just have to watch as all of this plays out, completely out of my control. (Sound vaguely familiar? Oh, the irony.)

At least I have my self-awareness to keep me humble. That was a gift my husband gave me. He asked me so many questions about my feelings and thoughts that it triggered this process in my brain. The only downside is that I question everything I do. Which is fine… as long as it doesn’t keep me from living life. This level of self-awareness can be crippling.

But… so can mania.

Luckily I have two people in my life that can act like Charlie. The BF even told me he started talking to him yesterday morning asking him what to do. That was really touching. Even if it was regarding my “episode.”

What stood out to me were two things that happened before and after this manic episode.

After I had already gone to the bank to get out money (Y’know… for when banking collapses because the government coup has already happened) I woke up my brother and told him how I thought I was having a psychotic episode. Right then, the Woody doll I have propped up next to my husband’s urn (and is a representation of him) talked of it’s own volition. In my mania I thought it was Charlie agreeing with me but I think it was him saying “calm down, dear.”

Then last night I dreamed of him, which hasn’t happened since he passed away. Tony has had more than a fair share, but his tend to be Charlie without his wheelchair and mine was him in it. So, I wonder if he doesn’t visit me because I put him in it… Anyway! In my dream, he and Tony were returning from a long road trip and I was so excited to see him that I ran to him and covered his face in kisses to annoy him.

It was wonderful… even if some parts of it were also stressful and totally unrelated to Charlie. I enjoyed having him back for a little bit. However brief it was.

Today is 10 months since he left. I thought it was 9 but I did my math wrong… as usual. In both instances, it feels like it was just yesterday and at the same time like it happened ages ago. Regardless my want of him has not diminished. In fact, it has just grown.

November 8, 2024

Were I With You…

Today my phone actually connected to my car without me having to take any extra steps. It turned on my ipod and put all my entire library on shuffle. For the most part the songs were skippable with clips of stand-up comedy sprinkled in between. But when this song came on I stopped and started to ugly cry.

My husband loved Chris Stapleton in the last few years of his life. When his newest album at the time came out, he sent me this song as a “message” from him to me. It was the best way he could express his emotions because he was not someone who could say what he felt. Instead, he did it through songs. Which is why, when he would forget the songs he “dedicated” to me it broke my heart a little. I know he meant nothing by it, it was just his bad memory. Plus, I have a tendency to remember the most innocuous bullshit.

I like to pretend that this isn’t just some random happenstance, but that its my husband speaking to me from the beyond. Most who have lost someone do this. It’s so hard to let go to the people who were so impactful on your existence. Even when you had 4 years to get used to the idea.

After the election I could really, really use my husband’s voice to talk me through it and let me know that everything will be okay. I wish I could snuggle up next to him, rest my head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat. He’d put an arm around my back and hook it onto my shoulder. He wasn’t one for physical intimacy, so I had to grab it when and where I could.

His heart was so loud in my ear. I liked to think it was because he had a larger than normal one, in the cutesy way and not in the “this is a medical condition” kind. It would be slightly tarnished because after he passed, that was how I knew he was gone. I placed my ear to his chest and I couldn’t hear it anymore. He was gone. He had left after I began to panic that he was in pain and rushed to the kitchen, with Tony, to get the medication to keep him relaxed.

I was so worried during the first Trump disaster than gay marriage would be repealed and I would lose our marriage. Luckily it didn’t happen. Instead he was diagnosed with a terminal illness and he was physically taken from me. Maybe having our marriage nullified would have been better… But he would have been diagnosed regardless. So I guess I should take the “win.”

It’s weird, how this song absolutely applies to me now. I’m entering into my 40th year of life. And there isn’t any pot of gold. Just a lake of shit and death.

The night of the election I genuinely thought about taking an entire bottle of pills. It was quickly dismissed by two things. One, was the promise I made to my husband before he died. He wanted me to keep living and have lots of adventures. With my word given… I would be more devastated by breaking it than dying. Two, I won’t give these fuckers the satisfaction. I’d rather stick around and annoy them. Kick them in the nuts if I get the chance. Maybe punch a couple of the nazis if I get the chance.

Only time will tell.

I just wish I had my best friend with me. The “Josh Whisperer.” He knew what to say and do to soothe the unruly beast that lives within my thoughts.

November 7, 2024

Death and Destruction Await

My life has never been wonderful. On that same note it hasn’t been terrible either. I would call it balance. Any trials I have endured have only made me stronger. However… I am waiting for the moment that my only trials are “am I going to have enough time off for my vacation” as opposed to “are they going to round me up into a camp because I’m a degenerate?”

There was a brief moment at the beginning of 2019 where everything was looking up. I had finally passed my exam to get my license (after a 6 year journey) and I graduated with my AA from the community college Summa Cum Laude. Everything seemed so achievable. Then in July the world took a nasty fucking turn and all of it slipped through my fingers.

It began with the chaotic path my mother led us down. Her “kookiness” became more severe and we took her back to the neurologist who had previously claimed she was just “stressed.” The second effort produced her alzheimer’s diagnosis. The friday after my father fell, hit his head on the bathroom counter, and died. I had to figure out what to do with my mother who could very clearly not live on her own, and who INSISTED she would not live with me and my husband because we weren’t “christians” as she put it.

That august when my husband returned to teaching he was starting to show signs of his ALS. It would take an entire year, during a fucking pandemic, that would reveal his terminal diagnosis. So I was left to care for my dying husband and my mentally incapacitated mother, all during a fucking pandemic that could have been avoided if Trump hadn’t been such a giant piece of shit.

And here we are… in the face of all of this people voted for the convicted felon over the prosecutor. Voted for the man who has said repeatedly he would weaponize our government to suit his needs. For his own benefit. Yet… “when he was president things were affordable!” Jesus, people are fucking stupid.

Because of his win I have entered, what I lovingly refer to as, my villain era. I have gone through emotional hell, all on my own, only to watch my friends and family betray me for their own self interest. I genuinely hope he does everything, EVERYTHING he said he would. I want him to burn this fucking country to the ground. Make everyone suffer. Don’t hold back trumpy. Do it. Fuck them. I no longer care about my own self preservation. I eagerly await the christian nationalist hellscape he WILL create. Because at the end, I’m fucked regardless. Might as well enjoy some popcorn before the entire theater burns to the ground.

I will have zero, ZERO empathy for anyone. And the moment one fucking person says “I didn’t know” I’m going to shove them to the fucking ground and say, “yes, you goddamn did. Because I fucking tried to tell you. Everyone did. But you were just too fucking selfish to think of the bigger picture.”

In the face of all of this turmoil and sadness throughout the last 5 years of my life, I have found the peace to accept and welcome death. My expiration may or may not be dictated in the stars, but I like to think that it is. Through all my soul searching to comprehend all of this chaos has brought me to the belief of reincarnation and that everything is genuinely happening all at once. There is no such thing as time, just the prism in our mind that refracts and reflects it into a single finite moment. So, as I am typing this I believe I have been born and have passed. And ultimately, the world will go on without me. I was such an insignificant part of the overall tapestry of existence, but knowing that means I can be and do whatever I want. Whatever brings me joy.

My final thought on life is that, we are here to find understanding to the human condition. To comprehend life and it’s static fragility.

Everything I have loved has been taken from me (apart from the BF) and I’m still here. Life goes on…