I’m actually not thinking of my own demise anymore; I had to put it aside and watch The Office. As deep as I ever get, and I have to resurface for pop culture.
Rather, I’m thinking of other people who have died. Not the usual suspects, either; former patients. People who changed the course of my life somehow even though they had no obligation to me whatsoever. People who believed in me, appreciated me, and, most importantly, got to me before Lady Cynicism had her brutal way.
I’ve written about them before, in the Great Lost Before (aka the Ghost of Servers Past). John Spearman begat Charles Mantooth begat… I don’t remember his name. That’s not good – you should have at least that particular information when you shed a tear over someone. It’s probably better that I don’t, anyway, because then I’d be in San Francisco, terrain-wise, by describing him: youngish, slightly mentally impaired, pancreatic ca. I remember him going from critical care to med-surg, but I don’t remember if it was a recovery-type move or a hospice-type one.
I don’t suppose it matters. It just hit a nerve, and right now that’s actually preferable to the other type of nerve pain I’m enjoying. He wasn’t an alcoholic. He wasn’t a smoker. He was just a guy in his forties who happened, through shitty luck, to get one of the least survivable types of cancer.
And clang, clang, clang went the ganglion, courtesy of the usual suspects. My childhood shame at having an alcoholic father, only to years later watch my peers become alcoholics themselves, or at least do their best to head in that direction. Constant bombardment by tools who think they’re indestructible and will die before they get old, so let’s do as much damage as possible in the here and now.
I knew that if I tried hard enough, I’d come up with something to take my mind off the fact that I’ve spent over a quarter-century wasting oxygen on this planet and bad decisions that have led me down this spiral.
The thing is, I’ve spent the last month pointedly not thinking of those choices and the intervening years, and where I would likely be and where I’ve wound up (a place where if I used my non-existent shotgun to ventilate my thinkin’ machine, it would probably be about three weeks before anyone realized it).
It’s bound to come to a head sometime. I’ll find myself backed into a corner; in a way, I can almost understand the people who can’t go five minutes without calling or texting someone – can’t rid themselves of the electronic leash for fear of being alone with their own thoughts.
(Of course, I really don’t have anyone to be so tightly tethered to, which is where the three-week calculation came from. Well, that and the fact that I haven’t paid the rent for March yet, which would give me an extra five.)
The human body is really a marvel. Think about this: how about unabashedly bawling your eyes out? It saps you; drains you dry. So imagine I were to really dissect my situation and just spend an afternoon wallowing in it. The logical conclusion of that would be that I’d cry like a stupid little bitch… hell, it doesn’t take hours of introspection to do that, just a cold morning and a stubborn lock. Then I’d have nowhere near enough energy to do any of the things I know I should just go ahead and do.
Self-preservation’s a bitch. I should’ve boarded the bus years ago. Shit, the first sign that I had nothing left to live for was the fact that I wanted to move the fuck to Arkansas.
I should be riding the bus. Instead, I wind up driving it.
Music: Ryan Adams – Mara Lisa
* It’s my birthday GMT. Suck it, isolationists.
** If I hear the phrase “boots with the fur” one more time, I will probably punch a baby. And yes, I’m aware Gwen Stefani did not write that song.
