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violetsystems · 3 years

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#personal

There’s a point where you are pushing a boulder uphill where you actually think you’re pushing it over the top. You look up. You look down. There’s this exact even point between joy and dread where you don’t know which way it will go. Seeing as how it’s an exact middle point you expect it to pass. Like this whole process goes on for a year and you emerge mentally “over it.” You expect something to change outside of your skill at rolling the boulder. You say to yourself that you can keep doing this all day like some juiced up eighties American action hero. And then you look up and down again to observe your process. It’s still limbo. You might even become strong enough to maintain this mirage of an ascent while doing other things. Watching a movie or a television show. Play a game on your phone. But the boulder is always there. The positioning is different these days. It feels like I keep pushing the boulder and the hill keeps stretching. Like there’s a bulldozer dumping other people’s shit onto the incline. Which makes it seem I’m climbing up a relentless garbage pile of other people’s baggage, perceptions, and detritus. This is essentially true particularly in the city I live in. Which mind you living in a city is much closer to the edge than where I came from. I lived in the suburbs for half my life. It felt like the bottom. An Irish and Italian Catholic suburb plagued by hard drugs and abuse. I eventually found a job in the city through my friends at the time. And later I eventually found a place to live. And I have lived in this city long enough to know there isn’t really something wrong with me. The incline is easy enough but sinking in other people’s shit seems to be the norm. Around here whether it’s Chicago or America, people like to disarm you by making your priorities seem selfish. We’re all in this together after all. In times of crisis, we pull together and help our own. Which is a reminder that for about a year I’ve been isolated taking care of my own. I spent about as much time per day trying to engage people on LinkedIn without any real success. It is place where I feel I’m successful at showing the professional side of me. Sort of like Tumblr is a place I feel like I’m successful showing the human and empathic side of me. Which one feels like the boulder? After all the years I’ve spent writing to the void here, I’ve seen a connection. Expecting too much is what shatters hopes and dreams. But I have spent a really long time expecting the very least and being given less. In a twisted turn of fate, I have a lot more financially than I may have in my previous life. To have to label it previous is a sure sign I stopped pushing that boulder a long time ago. I was forced to. Left with a realization that the world is bigger than this and yet I can’t seem to escape it. I played a game of magic yesterday online. Sometimes lately the player names are a little too telling. I had just built a Tiamat deck so I tested it out in Standard Ranked. The username popped up as “Escapeurf8yt.” I quit Hearthstone for less. The last two games I played in that Blizzard game were so sus that the player names were meant to trigger me. That last match was against a player named “Imcomingforyou.” Nerds aren’t the most delicate when they have their chance to wield power. I won the Tiamat game without even having to play Tiamat. But it left me with a similar feeling. Why do I try to be part of things that don’t have any real modicum of respect for other people’s feelings and identity?

That example could be chalked up as being a little too sensitive I guess. Every time I walk around the neighborhood lately it’s like I have to tiptoe around people’s feelings. I’ve gotten mad at my situation more times than I can count the last year. Anybody would. I lost all my ground. I lost everything and yet gained something in the process. People whispered behind my back and watched. Looking for clues to pin the blame on my downfall on me. And yet for all the new things I tried and did to survive, I’m still pushing the same generic boulder to most people. I’m not even good enough to be recognized as a writer by the broad public. I’m some sneaky individual that everyone feels it’s their duty to check up on at the expense of my civil rights and general mood. The gaslighting is at the very center. That nobody wants to address the elephant in the room. They can’t really. And maybe it’s for the best. Because the way I see everything from the inside out is troubling. Nothing has returned to normal. People’s privilege has been laid bare and somehow everyone is looking for the scapegoat to deflect the blame. I’m sick of it. Everybody being so nosy and confrontational with nothing to offer expect a bad attitude and a jokey stare. This is why I no longer go out for anything other than groceries. Why I decide to have things delivered instead of having to participate in a clown show parade of well intended bullshit. Why everybody speaks for me when no one has spoken a kind word to me at all. Everybody expects me to reach out and fix the trust they broke with me. And it gets sadder and sadder that people don’t understand that I’m pretty much a boarded up house at this point. Living in a little shack enclosed by people’s expectations and barriers. Time just keeps passing. People do keep reading. But here is where I feel people have the most context at how horrible I feel after all of this. Some of it is for the best. The community people ask for in the real world without deserving it is non existent or coerced. I know this because I’ve been welcome down here in the bowels of the internet. You don’t expect the community here to cross the line. Even when it does, it is a more delicate and slow process how you let people into your life. In the real world, it’s abrasive, clumsy and inconsiderate. And I dance around it all just the same. But there’s a point when it just becomes macabre. People out there might say they know me. But I’m the one out here alone constantly. I have a full year to prove it. More than that to be honest. I just gave up on trying to figure out everything that happened before that. I’ve lost my own history in that regard. I will never reboot my dj career. I will never be accepted as a writer. I will never be good enough to be called an artist. I remember this intense discussion I had with an ex during a break up. We were living together at the time. We had been together for about a decade at that point. We lived in the eastern side of this neighborhood at the time. It was designated by the developer as an artist’s neighborhood. My girlfriend at the time was a photographer. I was mostly her assistant. I paid most of the rent. We were at a crossroads. She cheated on me in front of my face in front of our house. Even after telling her to go, she wouldn’t leave. She told me to my face that I didn’t belong there because I wasn’t an artist. I also gave up my car in that breakup. I’m realizing just recently the reason I never renewed my driver’s license was because I knew I would never afford a car again after I lost that one. Which is a great thing to remember when State officials yell at you asking why you haven’t renewed it.

The world says it gives a fuck. It doesn’t show it. It doesn’t act. If it did we would never be in this situation. I know this because I was born to survive. I have pushed many boulders up many hills. So much so that I’m grey and over the hill. And apparently completely fucking meaningless to most people. Only good enough to speak through T-shirts and guerilla marketing. There’s a level beyond that I know. There are people that actually care but the situation is impossible at best. I’m supposed to see this and accept this out of love, care and attention. And for a few people I barely know, I do. The person I care about the most probably knows this too. But I don’t know anything. It’s blind faith. Which is saying a lot for spending two paragraphs saying I have faith in nothing around me. I don’t, That’s the curse. Seeing it how it really is. Knowing you’ve spent half your life pushing up a boulder for other people that wasn’t worth the slough. I gained some muscle mass. Some context to my backstory. But my life is dead in the fucking water aside from having actual net income. Kanye and Trump are cash poor. This is just a fact. I’m not. And yet nothing has changed. There’s no end in sight to where I need to be a year later. Just the same disrespectful shit. How I’m supposed to sacrifice my humanity for some rich people’s game with my emotions. The world uses you, eats you up and spits you out. If you are lucky to survive this you’d be me. Has anyone out there really thought about how I feel after all of this? How dark it must be to know the real truth and keep pushing that boulder just the same? How tiring and exhausting it feels to be able to write it so delicately but still be so fucking misunderstood just the same? Is my life just to be joked about backstage as some quirky subplot to steal ideas from? You cannot be me after all of this. I will remind you on my very last breath. And every day that passes is a reminder that you’ve tried. People have tried to say they know me. People have tried to say they speak for me. Understand my pain. And yet I’m never good enough to acknowledge. I’m invisible and supposedly this is my thing. In that case it is. From this day forward. Let’s not beat around the fucking bush. I got here on my own. I bled, I cried, I screamed and I retreated into the inevitable. How does anyone expect me to feel if I’m supposed to accept what I accept and know what I know. I don’t really know. I feel awful. I feel broken. And I feel like everyone who cares about me knows this by now. And the stakes are higher than my personal feelings about it all. But my words are meant for people who read them to understand me better for the love of it. Not to get a jump on me. Not to subvert me. Not to teach me a lesson or use me as a stereotype. Not to be a punching bag or scapegoat for communities who would rather burn me at the stake than hear what I have to say. In that you will forever fail. I love the culture that swirls down here. I love how hardcore it is without pinging the radar for the vultures and the marketing teams. And yet we have this power that still goes ignored. Gets laughed at. Joked about. Talked over because people are vapid, bored and only succeed by watching other’s fail. I dropped that boulder a long time ago. It apparently has not smashed the opposition yet. It is a long way down as it’s been a long way up. Tough at the top for sure. But there’s only room enough up here for two. And that seat is taken. <3 Tim

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