getting the point

timing is everything. and sometimes that means understanding that you can mean nothing. that's okay too. the metaphorical you exists, even when you don't feel up to it. the whole point of this journal is to try not to disappear, no matter how much i feel i do or want to, even when i try so hard and no one gives a shit. sometimes it's intentional because they don't want you to. gotta learn to accept it.

bless me and release

my memaw died last night. i've only let a few of y'all know; mostly to get work shifts covered or explain why i have to bow out of something this week. nearly everyone has had the exact same response about how they're sorry because they know it's hard, even when expected or anticipated. i have said the same thing and i believe it when y'all say it.

it's kinda bullshit in practice, unfortunately. 

i am struggling in a way far beyond what i expected. i don't want to ruminate too hard about how i knew it was a possibility that when this inevitably happened i would not be busy enough to be appropriately distracted and have to actually process it and finally accept that now i've lost dad and her and that string between us has unraveled into a different plane. also, damn if my nature toward adverbs isn't ridiculous. always qualifying/quantifying actions, i guess. 

i've spent most of the day staring at my ceiling acknowledging the imperfections in the paint and trying to make myself function like a normal human being as best as i can pretend i am even when i know i am not and never have been. i've had some moments of hope thinking i've met people who also feel different in this world that can relate to me, but it always seems to come to some point where my little community seems to either expect differently or better of me or put me on some weird pedestal or think i don't see them as they are and therefore will hurt me. all of that is overthought nonsense and is infinitely harder on me (not a criticism or fault, just how i intake it) more than just being here for me as best they can. if only the people i let myself be vulnerable to understood or saw how i see them. the number of you is far less than what people assume. nearly everyone thinks they know me better than they do.

my biological family keeps dying off, so its probably part of why i keep trying so hard  to build a chosen one; a small, cultivated network of people there by choice instead of blood. i want those i love to know that i don't have expectations of who they are or should be. i try to show empathy for everyone, but i don't let anyone in or become close to me with an idea that they'll be different or better someday. if you're already that far, you're wonderful to me just the way you are, and i see you more than you understand. we don't have to have similar outlook or emotional development to be there for each other. it's more so from a selfish viewpoint that i'm in that vaguely desperate place again and trying to hard to not feel alone. 

i'm hoping i've rounded and leveled enough strength to power forward and continue on as i do. it's just so overwhelming and so hard to catch my breath sometimes. i'm forever grateful for the handful of you who follow up with me here when y'all know i deflect and can't or won't say things out loud. i promise with all of my heart that i am grateful. 

sometimes i feel everything, and sometimes i feel nothing at all. they're equally as scary and difficult to manage. life is weird, but i have to actively remind myself it's worth it, even as a weird alien flat on her back in the grass in her nightgown in the backyard, desperately trying to pretend the airplanes are stars that might hear her little wishes. i'm not sure what i'm wishing for anymore. 

i really don't need much, but it would be super nice to have even a few minutes where i felt cared for and safe and relaxed enough to not have to worry for a bit and get some good rest. my bones and heart are exhausted. 

the danger of pufferfish

"the boundless nature of human desire is enough to make one shudder." -sumiki hikari, 'A Taste for Danger: The Hazardous History of Fugu'

it's hard not to compare my life to homer in that episode of the simpsons where he eats the possibly poisonous pufferfish because the sushi chef is hooking up with mrs. krabappel out back (to be fair, i get it). he is told he has 24--well at that point, 22 hours left to live and makes a plan to live them the best he can as death looms overhead.

naturally, nearly everything goes awry. he accidentally sleeps late. he gets some sweet things done for/with his loved ones, but then spends longer than he'd budgeted for trying to make amends with a difficult relationship and then manages to get arrested for speeding. one quick drink with the friend who bails him out dominos into missing dinner with his family. 

luckily, he makes it home and gets to soak up one last night appreciating the beauty of his simple little life. it's heartbreaking in a way. of course he wakes up the next morning, heart still beating. 

for me lately, most days feel like those 22 hours. i'm trying my best to accept the inevitability that i can make a plan, but i'm gonna keep fumbling through and fucking up and many things are always going to be out of my control. some of it is my fault, though. 

why do people even eat the fugu in the first place? in some ways, i know no food could be so good to be worth potential death. it's obviously not the taste alone; it has to in part be the thrill of the risk; a way to feel something new. i read that some in japan believed the only cure for fugu poisoning is to bury oneself up to the neck in sand. sometimes i feel like that too, even though it's superstition and futile. sometimes immobility feels safer than facing life head on. or at least warmer. but that doesn't help either. i'm not sure what to do. 

i suppose the answer is the same as it ever was; keep trying. keep failing. keep experiencing human desire. try to learn from the falls and appreciate the whole journey until your heart stops. 

marluxia; both a cat and a metaphor

ten or so years ago, i got a cat. she was the runt of the litter; tiny, all eyes and tail. her mother and siblings refused to accept her. a work acquaintance took her in, but his dogs didn't accept her either and made her even more terrified to exist. as fate would have it, a really rough day at work later would lead to said coworker and i having a couple of andygators at the irish pub on the corner and by the time his bus came, i'd agreed to take her home.

i baby/kitten-proofed the whole apartment before he dropped her off. my partner at the time had worked at a fancy niche toy store and somehow acquired myriad silly bands and i tied up every loose cabinet and door. within an hour of bringing her inside, she disappeared. i lost my shit. it took another hour for me to find her--she'd gone under the armchair and latched herself to the webbing underneath. that became her safe space.

when i say i spent hours lying on the floor beside that chair, i'm under-exaggerating (for once in my life of hyperbole). hours and hours, for weeks. i tried everything. treats, silence, talking quietly, humming songs. it wasn't until one day i got home exhausted and hungry and ate some cheez-its while telling her about my day that she came out seeming interested. i crushed one up into little pieces and held my hand out as an offering; she slowly started eating from my palm. i cried a little bit, but kept talking. she licked it clean.

it's been a journey of a decade since. she's still skittish and scared most of the time. she still tests anyone she doesnt know/almost anyone who isn't me. if you are patient and don't push her, she will usually just rub up on your legs and hiss to tell you who's boss; any uncertain movements and she'll go straight into defense/attack mode. i warn everyone to just let her be; i understand. 

i let someone into my apartment the other day to help me bring some things in quickly. marlu did her normal hiss and hide, but kept her distance instead of defending herself. that's growth for her. yet this person started making jokes about how i'm so good at dealing with animals, but my cat is an asshole. which is true out of context, but also fucked up. you don't know what she's been through. i can't even fully understand what's she's been through. but we have an understanding that's taken a lot of work. 

she even snaps at me sometimes. i didn't take it as well as i could have at first, but she helped me learn to not take defensive measures as personal attacks and to take a second to process and exercise patience. those moments are very rare now. most of the time, she's following me around like a shadow and curling up next to me, especially when i'm not feeling well. i woke up in a panic at 4am last night as she was at my feet; instead of running under the bed at the jolt, she slowly crawled up my body and started making biscuits on my chest and head until she got her paw caught in my hair. i laughed until i cried a little, yet again.

then i talked to her as i do and thanked her for being her and reminded her that she's perfect the way she is and that i was thankful for her and that she doesn't have to love anyone else; i'm just grateful that she trusts me, even if the best she can do with anyone else is just tolerance. it's a start. she's been through enough and doesn't owe anyone anything; even me. 

i never anticipated her; it just happened, and i knew. i'm pretty good at trusting my feelings. she's probably going to give me shit until one of us is gone. probably after, somehow. i'm still going to love her for the rest of my life, and she gets no say in that, no matter how stubborn she is. 

swimming in a mirror

i'm a bit out of sorts and i haven't been able to unshake it. it's been a running joke for years that i don't run; i'm not built for it in any sense of the word. i'm trying to recenter. it's been raining all day. checks out. 

i put on my favorite songs playlist while trying to figure out what i could convince myself to eat. heat waves by glass animals came on my shuffle and i honestly don't know what came over me, but i hit repeat and went outside in the drizzle and my dress and ballet flats and just ran to the bayou and back without even watching where i was going or even taking my keys--luckily my neighbors didn't lock me out of the gate. 

now i'm home in my tiny apartment and wet and tired and enough. not much, but i'm enough. i have to believe it. 

so be it i'm your crowbar

i rarely tend to let myself want for much anymore. i used to want everything all of the time, and it's strange this is the one thing of which i practice temperance and patience. it's easier to have hope for more vague desires than particular ones. less chance of facing complete emotional destruction yet again. alas, it seems i can't help myself. let me just say, i'd been doing so well for so long, but lately i think i'm wishing so hard over some things i can't control to where i've literally (no bullshit; i know what literally means) dreamed about them every time i've tried to sleep for the last few nights. it's enough to make anyone feel a bit uneasy.

i kind of forgot about this place here i've used previously to ramble into the trauma void until it came up a couple times in the last week--varied instances. i laughed on my bartending shift talking about early 2000s LiveJournal with a customer. he mentioned spending too long deciding what to put for current mood and song to attach; i told him mine was usually "pensive" and the songs are still the same. there's humor to be found in low-level melodrama. especially when there's a sweet dalmatian celebrating her tenth birthday at the other end of the bar. i'll never not appreciate the lovely things too.

--- actually, i'm cutting out a few hundred words from here as i don't want them to lose the authenticity that comes from talking to those you love outright. just imagine some floundering, then me yapping about how i'm struggling and still not ready to talk about what's happened in my work life etc, but i'm so indebted to a few people who have been more than i deserve lately. it's close enough ---

but for now, i wait. i turn on the air conditioning i can barely afford so i can bury myself in a blanket nest and tell my thoughts to fuck off. i stretch myself and take at least one hot salt bath a day to try to coax my stubborn body into giving me some respite; that's kind of working, at least. i finally joined the library and have been renting miyazaki films and reading books about Being Better and seeing the Bright Side of Things. i'm trying really hard; i'm okay. nature is blooming. no matter how dark the night, morning always comes. my resolve is relentless. dog birthday party. 

for the love of community

 it's been a strange year, i suppose. 

i've never lived alone before all this. i moved into a dorm in high school. then college, shitty punk house (nicolas cage against the machine will forever be the best and worst band i was ever in, love y'all), then finishing college.  

then i moved to brooklyn and spent nearly a decade and a half with an incredible man who is and will always be great--but we are proof that you can love someone so thoroughly, but we just never quite spoke the same language. and that's okay in the end. we have lunch most wednesdays before my bar shift.  i'm so lucky for that. i pray regularly that we can both find our happiness. he was before and is still my best friend. 

it's a little tough but what keeps me trying and moving forward is community. i feel like this world is so different than the one i was born in; the little rural town with unpaved gravel roads that gave me permanent calluses. trees and berry bushes and grandparents down the road with chickens and rabbits; neighbors who all knew everyone and traded off caring for each other. 

now I live in New Orleans and people seem so astonished that i know most of my neighbors and that we take care of each other as well. we have holidays together when we can't get to our ancestral homes. we make homes together as friends. people move from the area and still commune together and check on each other because we put the effort into community. even during covid lockdown, we made zoom groups and put in the work to remind each other that even isolated, we were never truly alone.

i'm a person who loves people and their stories and getting to experience this overwhelmingly expansive, beautiful world through others. 

when i got overly lost and felt isolated and confused about where my life was going during lockdown, i was so restless and struggled with sleep and accidentally found another community of people where we all just watched a stream of final fantasy games and commiserated and laughed and made the best of it together with a lovely combination of laughter and bad jokes and escapism. it's like we were all watching a long series of stories and sharing our own interpretations of each journey while also talking about our day to day lives et al--okay we mostly talked about food (marmite can go to hell), but it was all kind of beautiful.

that community will always be just as important to me. i've made friendships and met people i value as valid relationships as much as anyone i love and am blessed to see regularly. they were there for me when i was lost and struggling; the night my dad died, i called my friend erin that i'd met there, because i knew she knew the ununderstandable pain of losing a parent, and i didn't want to talk to anyone here who could show up in person as i needed to process on my own. 

then so many people from that community--seriously, people i'd never really interacted much with but showed me kindness, friends i've now even met and had drinks with, friends i've sent presents to their newborn babies, man, all the way to the dude who made/makes the whole thing happen who somehow makes time to give me thoughtful advice and keeps me in line when i'm getting too cocky.  i'm endlessly grateful for all y'all.

i'm also now so grateful for my work community. being in the veterinary field can be so incredibly fulfilling and brutally sad at the same time. my coworkers are both community and family. the things we go through day to day are so hard to try and share with others. we support others and each other and cry and make jokes the best we can when confronted with the worst and celebrate together when good things happen. my coworkers have taught me how to be strong and helpful and focused and capable, no matter what the day brings. also, we remind each other that even when we have to go through heartbreaking shit yet stay strong and comforting (i'm weirdly good at that part)--we also get to hold new puppies and celebrate the circle of life beginning again.

i have so much more to say, but i ramble too much as it is. i write a lot but usually just end up deleting it and sending it into the aether before anyone can find it. i'm just going to post this without editing because i have so much gratitude and i doubt anyone will see this anyway.

if you do and take anything from this, please let it be that opening up and letting people in and building a small community for yourself can truly help you to experience how wonderful this mess of a world is--and if you need a hand to help you feel it, i'm here and i see you and I'm listening. plus i'm an inimitable hype man who has your back.