Private thoughts (September).
September 1st
I miss her so much. I know you aren't supposed to live "for" other people, but the reality was she was the only thing holding me together after the rest of my life was destroyed last year. I just don't have any incentive to take care of myself, or do anything creative, or make money, or see new things, or wake up, or try anymore. This isn't a movie, so "winning her back" isn't possible, and as pathetic as it is, my truth is that getting her back would be the only motivation worth it to change anything about my current situation. I don't like myself all that much. I know I have very little of value to offer anyone. I feel changed in a profound, irreparable way. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to function like a normal, capable human being ever again. It's been three months and I don't feel any better. In fact, I for some reason feel a little worse recently. I just truly don't want to live this life anymore, especially if I have to do it without her and my other best friend. This is the worst I've ever felt in my entire life.
///
I'm taking my medication every day, I got one of my pills increased, I'm going to therapy every week, I've taken my trash out, I'm trying to drink less soda, I haven't looked at her social media in over two months, I'm usually putting forth the effort to respond to text messages, I can now get through a whole movie in one sitting, I've done so many annoying tasks and invested about $1,500 into getting this car fixed, and I've even gone out a handful of times. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to, I'm surviving. But the truth is, I don't feel like I've healed at all, not one bit.
I've had more days where I feel things, and they're never good feelings. Otherwise, I feel completely empty. Each time I leave the house or talk to someone, it just makes me anxious to rush back to this bed. My sleep pattern is completely erratic and nightmares are constant. She and everything she has done to me is my first and last thought each day and night. I try to avoid eye contact with the thoughts, because if I give into them, the pain and confusion of it all comes rushing back and I feel just as disoriented as the day after she left. I don't feel any more compelled to do anything I once loved doing. It is becoming harder and harder to give a shit about what the few people left in my life are saying or feeling. The past week of running around and spending every penny I had to get this car fixed has only exhausted me and left me feeling more content with the idea of giving up on ever escaping this city and just resigning myself to remaining in this basement every day like I'm on my deathbed. I feel relaxed at the idea of dying.
I've overcome so much since childhood. I always got back up. No matter how bad things have gotten, I've always managed this irrational resilience and tenacity. My passion and thirst for new experiences, my unwavering urge to connect with others, and my naive belief in love have always fueled me forward and never waned. But this is different--I am different. This is a new feeling. Something in me has changed profoundly. It feels like my soul has been sucked out of my body. I don't feel bored, or lonely, or heartbroken, or horny, or curious, or passionate about anything. I just feel tired, for the most part. I don't think I'm getting back up this time, and I am almost relieved knowing that. This is the worst my life has ever been, she has hurt me more than anyone ever has, I have never felt more insecure and worthless than this, and I have never had as little as I do now. I don't know how I'd rebuild even if I wanted to. I really just want to know that the next time I close my eyes it'll be the last time.
///
September 2nd
I wish I were whatever kind of person people wouldn't have treated the way I've been treated.
///
I don't want to think about all of it anymore, but it's just getting louder and louder each day. I wish someone were here with me to tell me I'm good and everything will be okay. I miss someone being around all the time, and I especially miss feeling like I exist in some meaningful capacity. It's been so long since I've felt someone be gentle, or touch me at all. I want to crack my skull open and pour out all of what's eating my brain alive. I wish there were anyone I could just have here with me, if only for a little bit. I am so fucking sick of missing her and so fucking sick of being alone. I want to cry out for help, but there is no one to hear my screams, and there never will be again. Time no longer exists and neither do I. I am no longer a person; just a gaseous ball of pain floating in the ether of nothingness, wishing to dissipate.
///
No mother. No father. No childhood home. No money. No partner. No best friend. No reputation. No place to be. No hobbies. No love. No touch. No sex. No sunlight. No time. No comfort. No pleasure. No future. No hope.
///
September 3rd
As if the general anxiety of being out in public wasn't bad enough, in this city I have to see people and with near certainty know that they think I'm a serial abuser and rapist even though I am not. I wish I were dead.
///
September 4th
There will always be a part of me that is completely infatuated with Tara. She texted me a band today and asked me to send her stuff I've been listening to. Obscure experimental music was always one of our connections. I can't help but feel a little giddy any time she gives me any attention, and it's weird to know she'll apparently always have a pull on me. I asked her if she'd like to get together sometime, which was scary for me to do, but she responded enthusiastically. I know it's safe because I know from years of experience now that we could never stay together no matter how many times we try dating--she's a winner and I'm a loser. It'd just be nice to be around her again. She's always really funny and knows so much about so much and can keep up with me no matter the topic. It's impossible to ever know when she's telling the truth or just being a chameleon, but she's at least good company either way. Her big insect eyes, freckles, beautiful hands, and uniquely intoxicating natural smell would likely fuck me up in the same ways it always has every time we've reconnect after years without talking, and honestly maybe that'd be nicer than thinking about my most recent ex. I'd gladly let her chew me up and spit me back out again just to pass the time. I miss feelings things sometimes.
///
September 6th
I know I'm over a decade late to the discourse I imagine has long-since come and went, but I'm blowing through the Twilight film series for the first time for fun and I'm actually especially astounded at how blatantly it romanticizes what is clearly an abusive relationship between Bella and Edward, to a demographic that was largely young girls.
///
A text I sent a few people a while ago that I'm really feeling today. I'm glad I don't have any friends anymore because it means there's no one I can negatively affect with my mental health and no one can hurt me by using it against me.
After much reflection, I have again just concluded that despite my sincere and best efforts I am just a toxic person and should be alone. I hope that conclusion won't be mocked or taken as anything other than a sincere proclamation. I mean it. I don't want to hurt people, not even by accident, and I honestly can't handle the fact that I do and have. I feel absolutely crazy and I just don't want to try to be a person anymore. I am irreparably damaged, and after all these years and so much conscious effort on my part to try and be a decent person and still clearly failing so miserably, I think I have to accept that there are parts of myself that are malignant and incurable. I know I am not abusive, but I am uncontrollably toxic and should be quarantined.
///
Some days, it's kinda sad to know I've given up and that my life is over.
///
I really do feel like I have a terminal illness and I'm laying in this bed every day, all day, waiting to drift away into a sleep that is finally permanent.
///
September 7th
It's been four months and, honestly, I don't feel any better. I don't think I heal.
///
I'm really grateful for my brother, even though I know he doesn't care about me as much as I care about him. He's really my only friend now. He's one of the best people I know and truly the only one who actually "gets me", because we've shared our upbringing and are so alike.
///
I am going to die alone, fat, in poverty, and with a reputation for doing terrible things I never actually did rather than all of the good things I did do, probably while talking to myself as I drift away into unconsciousness in a pop-up camper somewhere in Wyoming. This life has been so hard, and this world so cruel and unjust. I tried to figure it out, I tried to be someone, I tried to find love, I tried to do meaningful things, I tried to do good and show others kindness, but my life in a pie chart was mostly spent trying to find somewhere to sleep, being physically and mentally uncomfortable, wasting time being debilitatingly sad over some girl, and watching movies by myself. I would not do this over again. I should never have been born.
///
Sick of not knowing when, how well, or for how long I will be able to sleep, having some of the worst and most vivid nightmares of my entire life, and waking up at first not knowing where I am, if it's day or night, or where she is. I am not alive; I am somewhere else entirely. In therapy, we are trying to figure out how to reorient my life, but I literally don't have anything to hold onto anymore. I am lost at sea, floating in space, trapped in the woods, and I have no idea how to find my way back to wherever I'm supposed to be without her around anymore. For a long time, all I knew of what home was and where I "should be" was wherever she was. This despair is something completely different from hurts I've gone through before, and after four months now I still have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to do or how I'm supposed to do it.
///
Since everything fell apart, I've only really cried once. Otherwise, I haven't cried at all. I often feel like I'm going to; the pressure behind my eyes is there. But it just never happens. My therapist says I have a block, probably because I was never comforted as a child, and was actually yelled at or made fun of by my parents for crying. Lately, I've been having so many vivid and intense dreams where I cry, though; just absolutely frantic screaming and sobbing, and it feels so real. I wake up, with a hurt in my gut, but dry eyes. My therapist says crying is a crucial part of the grieving process, but again, I don't think I ever heal.
///
Three outrageous things I've already seen this morning on this website:
1. A banner being held that says, "Antifa means solidarity with Israel,"
2. the words, "There’s nothing more punk than voting,"
and 3. a rainbow flag with words saying you "can't have a pride flag without a thin blue line."
///
September 8th
I mustered the emotional and physical energy to try and go upstairs and cook myself a dinner for the first time in several months. I've been subsisting on Chinese delivery, microwaveable foods, and sandwiches since moving into this basement. It probably sounds stupid, but I don't really wanna cook a meal without her to prepare and share it with me. It was always one of my favorite parts of the days. Anyway, I made a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, and as soon as I scooped the first bite into my mouth I could tell the Newman's Own sauce I mixed it all in was extremely sour, so I've tainted a pound or two of food. Maybe I'm just especially emotional today, but it has made me so sad and feel so pathetic. I probably won't try again for a while.
///
September 9th
I guess I have to wake up now. I've been lying here for an hour with my eyes shut, hoping I'll fall back asleep, but it isn't going to happen. Every day my eyes reopen, I just want to sob and cry and plead to my own brain, 'Please, I beg of you, let me fall back to sleep, I don't want to do this today!' I wish I could put a bullet through my skull.
///
But also, most days I kinda hope everyone just kills each other. Fuck this world.
///
I am living in filth like the pile of garbage that I am.
///
September 10th
I just... don't know what to do. I have never felt this way before. I've never been this genuinely alone. So many times throughout my life, I thought I knew what hopelessness and loneliness were, but I see now I only had a taste of those things. I have nothing left, nowhere to go, no more energy. I just want someone to hold me as I drift away. My life is truly, truly over, and I do not know what to do with that realization. I just... don't know what to do.
///
I've gotten both my pills increased. I don't feel any better, but I've noticed I can now concentrate long enough to watch movies and read books again, so I guess that's cool. I know psychology is bullshit, but I wish there were a miracle to cure this thing that lives inside me.
///
I never wanted to be another one of those corny misanthropic vegans, but after the last couple of years it's only gotten harder to remain interested in human beings. Still believing we all deserve a life of freedom regardless of anything, and understanding the socioeconomic and epigenetic reasons for why people behave the way they do, has offered me no solace. All I know is that I found more joy in sitting and watching a katydid for an hour the other night than I have had watching or interacting with any humans in months. I'd rather watch birds than a group of people. There's just an inherent innocence and elegance in the everyday existences of non-human animals that fascinates me and leaves in awe, while most I see of human beings disgusts me in a deep and genuinely nauseating way.
///
September 11th
I ate some of the best curry tofu of my life last night.
///
Trying to pull myself out of the rubble has been so fucking hard, and I'm still mostly buried. She fucked up my entire life. I wish I understood what I did to deserve her wrath, when all I did was worship her.
///
I watched the Ronnie McNutt suicide video. Reading about the circumstances leading up to that night made me really feel for him. It also reminded me that it's a good thing I don't own a gun, because having such an easy out would guarantee I'd be gone by tomorrow. I kinda like the idea of my head being obliterated and unrecognizable and people who hurt me regretting it.
///
I'm glad I'm alone all of the time so I don't ever have to feel embarrassed about what I've become.
///
She could set me free with just an apology.
///
September 12th
For years now, I sometimes wake up and automatically have "From This Moment On" by Shania Twain stuck in my head, even though I never hear it played anywhere.
///
No matter what, mental illness and poverty will always scare them away. They will always realize there's no comfortable future with me. I feel stupid for being convinced this would be any different. The fact that she left me for someone she'd normally hate, who has seemingly endless money and resources and social capital, is salt on the wound. I wish I'd just agreed when she first started saying she wanted to get an apartment, but I wasn't confident I'd be able to be an equal contributor and suggested the pop-up camper idea.
///
I wish something would suddenly happen to save me.
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September 13th
I wish there were anyone I could call and ask to come lay with me. This empty bed feels like a deserted island. Everything feels wrong.
///
I think a lot about robbing a convenience store, or mugging someone on the street. I cannot stand not having money and how long it's going to take for me to make the amount needed to get out of here. The world is ending and nothing matters anymore and I'm pretty sure if the right opportunity for the right price fell into my lap that I'd be willing to do just about anything. If I ever allow myself to rejoin the human race, I hope I have the guts to shut myself off and be another shitty, opportunistic predator who looks at everyone as utility.
///
After three months of basically never leaving my bed, my entire left leg is really starting to hurt.
///
I wish talking about my problems with others helped at all. Instead, hearing it stated out loud usually makes it hurt worse, and sharing bad feelings eventually exhausts people into no longer caring and leaving me. Nothing short of solutions will make me feel better, but there aren't solutions to what's wrong, and if there are I can't access them.
I want to face her and shake her while screaming, "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" I want to hit her new boyfriend upside the head with a baseball bat and then set his giant house on fire. I want to steal someone's car. I want to break into a church and steal what I fantasize is a large sum of money taken from their followers. I want to live in my camper with a dog and never talk to anyone ever again. I want to blow my head off like Ronnie McNutt, except I would ensure safe relocation of my dog beforehand.
It's clear at this point that I don't ever heal, so I'd be content with just being materially comfortable for a change and finally releasing my rage at the people who have destroyed me, but I will never get the former because I will die destitute and I can't do the latter because I will have the real cops and/or the anarchy police called on me.
///
While I think it's borderline psychotic that she was capable of leaving me and immediately moving in with a new boyfriend who she had never met in real life before, it must have been really fucking nice to instantly have a red carpet rolled out for her leading to a better life than I ever could have provided. I wish I had a plan b, or a rebound, or whatever it is that normal, attractive people do to fill the void while they're single, but I have nothing and no one anymore and I know there is absolutely nothing left about me that could ever interest anyone ever again, let alone make them want to fuck me or fall in love with me.
///
I am a dog waiting for their person to come home, not knowing they have died and will never be back.
///
My left leg hurts so fucking bad, like a sharp pain from midway down my calf up to the side of my thigh. I really think my sedentary life has damaged a nerve or muscle.
///
I wish I could calculate how many hours of my life have been spent sitting on curbs at night outside of some business like a homeless person. I feel so comfortable being a pile of shit on the ground.
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September 14th
I go days, sometimes weeks, without seeing my own reflection. I am ceasing to exist.
///
September 15th
I want so badly to be an evil nihilist and be capable of doing selfish, shitty things to benefit myself and myself only even when at the expense of others. I just sincerely don't think I'm capable of it. As practice, I stole $10 out of my roommate's wallet the other day. I feel incredibly guilty about it. I told my brother and he told me, "Don't let them win," by letting this world turn me into someone horrible, but I am so sick of living by this strict code of conduct all these years when not only does it seem like I am punished for being a decent human being while monsters are constantly rewarded, but I've also had my life destroyed by allegations of unforgivable things I haven't even done. Being a good person has not only never served me, I'm now living a life where I am suffering the consequences of being a bad person I never was. It's hard not to, at the least, want to just say fuck it and become the beast so many people have told me I am.
///
Every day I tell myself, 'Today is the day you start starving yourself,' but then I quickly remember that I have no reason to take care of myself or be thin because I no longer exist in the world and will never try to get close to anyone ever again. It doesn't matter what I look like all alone in this dark basement.
///
It is absolute torment to know exactly who and what you want and have to accept that you will never have any of it. With each year, I resign myself to having less and less, adapting to what I can't have or do and gradually convincing myself I don't need it anyway; yet no matter how much I whittle down my desires, I am constantly told by life that I have to accept even less. It is clear I am destined to have nothing and no one.
///
September 16th
This life doesn't feel real. I don't feel real. My perception of reality and myself is fractured. Nothing makes sense anymore. I am stuck in this unbearable purgatory.
///
I am experiencing what may be my first migraine and I don't know why it's happening, but it's making me feel like I'm gonna cry and puke. I never get headaches.
I have $69 left in the bank and $38 left on my food stamp card and it's only halfway through the month.
Therapy was very difficult today. Oftentimes, things get stirred up but I don't have enough time to calm back down, so I just go home with a buncha heightened shit going on inside of me and nothing to do with it.
I love my ex so much, but also hate her fucking guts, and I do not know how to reconcile those conflicting feelings, especially since I am not allowed to communicate with her.
///
September 17th
I realized tonight that I haven't had my own place since 2016. Since then, I've couchsurfed a whole lot, house-sat and babysat animal companions for a lot of people, stayed in a Christian woman's basement for almost a year, squatted an abandoned apartment building in the dead of winter and also at the hottest of summer, lived in the back of an SUV, did some tent camping, spent this past February to May in a pop-up camper, and slept at a lot of hotels. The only space I've paid rent to live in is this basement.
I am fairly certain I'll never actually have my own address or live in a stable environment. The pop-up camper is my best option, and I can't wait to be back in it. It sucks that no one my age is going to be all that interested in being homeless with me. The two partners I've tried it with were rich girls who had fun with it for a while, but eventually grew tired of it--and understandably so, because it is exhausting, and it's not really something you do long-term if you don't have to. So many of my peers own their own homes by now, or at least share an apartment with their significant other; worst case scenario, they've moved back into their childhood homes that their parents own. Even the crusties wind up going back to their suburban homes when they get bored with trains. I don't have parents. I can't work because I'm on disability, and don't want to work anyway, and that keeps me far below the poverty line and literally incapable of saving or being able to afford to live somewhere while also actually living. I'm not even entirely confident that I'd be able to afford living somewhere and having a car at the same time.
Sometimes the constant instability can feel like an adventure if you're keeping moving and have the right company beside you, and a lot of the time it has been that for me. It's at times felt truly empowering to not pay rent but still find shelter, like I was getting one over on capitalism, even though capitalism always wins. For the most part, it has been perpetual discomfort and loneliness. Ultimately, it's just one more aspect of me and my life that ensures I am doomed.
///
I wonder if anything exciting will ever happen again.
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September 19th
I guess the only thing that will truly never leave me, the only thing in my life I can ever actually rely on, is trauma and sadness.
///
This is definitely the beginning of the end of my life.
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September 20th
I miss her so much tonight. It's still incomprehensible to me that as I type this she is in a bed with another man, and that she went from spending nearly every day with me for two and a half years to moving into a house with a man she had never met in real life, literally overnight. She cuddled with me the night of May 9th, knowing the entire time she would abruptly leave me the next morning and take a flight to another state so she could move into a house and cuddle with another man.
///
I finally drove out of town to my brother's where my previous home, the pop-up camper, is still sitting, waiting for a car capable of towing its 1,500-pound frame. I figured since I can legally drive my car now, I should go to it, open it, and grab my hair clippers, turmeric, and USB wires. I was gonna try to grab some clothes since I have very little at home, but they were too deep. When I opened it and crawled inside, the stale air hit me hard, a fainter smell of the life we had built together inside of it. I feel like I can barely breathe, and I'm scared of one day living in it again. I wish she would come back and give me CPR so I could start breathing again. The last couple of months don't feel real; they replay in my head more like something I vaguely recall from TV than a memory from my actual life. Each day feels like I'm dreaming of being imprisoned, counting down the days toward my release, whether that be a death penalty or an appeal for a retrial.
///
It's day four of these excruciating headaches. I have to take at least 1,500 milligrams of ibuprofen for any hope of reducing them to something tolerable. I don't know what's going on. Maybe sinusitis from spending 24/7 in this basement with a box fan on, or maybe because I'm so stressed from going crazy. If it isn't gone by tomorrow, I guess I'll have to call a doctor, which I hate. I wish it were something that would burst while I'm fast asleep.
///
I woke up to texts from one of my only local friends who still speaks to me, a 48-year old woman. They included two pictures of cuts on her arm. These cuts were less severe than cat scratches, so I wasn't really worried about her doing anything permanent. Still, I found it a real struggle to care. If anything, I felt I was being manipulated. In fact, I ate hotdogs and watched an episode of the new Ted Bundy docuseries before I responded to her. My brother told me I'm going crazy and turning evil. I called and talked to her for a while, let her know I cared and wanted to do whatever would be most helpful to her. She eventually told me she was just going to eat and take a bath and to not come over. Honestly, I think I'm slowly running out of whatever good was left in me before everyone slowly destroyed it. I think the amount of ruthless cruelty and injustice I've experienced since last year has had a really profound and permanent effect on who I am, and I worry I'm finally becoming the hardened person I narrowly avoided becoming as a child of abuse and trauma.
///
September 21st
A friend of mine just mentioned a detail about my ex and her new boyfriend's life she found out and such an intense wave of anxiety and sadness came over me to the point that it felt like there was heat coming from underneath my skin. Now I feel sick. I'd forgotten to tell her to never mention them to me, like I've done with the other people I still communicate with via text. I haven't looked at their social media in at least two months, and it's helped in some ways even though her and the incredibly confusing and cruel things she has done are still my first thought waking up and my last thought before I fall asleep.
///
September 22nd
Why am I not feeling any better? Why has time and geography not gotten me far enough away from her? I am still falling, every day, and it appears this hole is fucking bottomless. I can't fucking stand this life.
///
My car finally passed inspection today. It was so hard waking up, and to put miles on the vehicle I had to drive to the next city over and back. But the thing finally passed. I keep waiting for each task being checked off to make me feel something, but it never does. I'm still so far from my goal of getting a new car so I can leave here, but even that goal isn't something I'm particularly excited about accomplishing. It's pathetic, but I wish I had her here to hold my hand and see how hard this all is for me, to tell me I'm doing a good job and that she's proud of me for doing everything "right" since she tore my entire world apart. I'm exerting so much effort toward a life I'm not even interested in living. I told myself I'd make chili for dinner today, and it's been an hour now of me feeling completely incapable of getting back out of this bed. Every day is so hard. I wish she would talk to me. At the end of the day, all I can expect out of all this is to one day be a little more comfortable in a different version of solitude.
///
She would always sit and watch me cut veggies for dinner. She said it was cute how meticulous and perfect I did it. She was an intimidatingly impressive person, so it meant a lot that she thought I did anything well. I miss those little moments so much.
///
Everyone will always reach a point where they don't want to deal with me anymore. Mental illness has ruined my life. I'm not a bad person, but I am an unlikable one.
///
September 23rd
I have lost absolutely everything I had left to live for in this life this year and it is harder each day to justify any effort I still put into survival. This world has nothing left to offer me and I have nothing left to offer it. Anyone who would have once cared if I died doesn't even care enough to ask me how I'm doing anymore. I am so sick of remembering what I remember, knowing what I know, missing who I miss, living where I live, and the nonstop visceral hurt and anxiety that I feel every single fucking day.
///
There is something happening inside of me and it feels like it's going to eventually claw its way out of my body. I wish this could kill me.
///
September 24th
Dropped my 'not guilty' ticket plea off and then told the Chinese delivery place I can start working for them again any time. With each step toward a future I honestly don't want any part in, I don't feel accomplishment or ease or satisfaction, but an overwhelming, aching fear. It's so expensive to be poor.
///
I hate my life and where I am in it, but I can see with full certainty that the best decisions I've made in this life have been:
1. Never going to college,
2. Never having kids,
3. Never getting a job/paying taxes,
4. Never taking out a credit card or loan,
5. Never drinking alcohol or trying any other recreational drugs.
Ultimately, these decisions didn't prevent my life from becoming the pathetic pile of shit it is today, but I often have to think about how much worse it could have been had I done all the stuff my peers did.
///
September 25th
Had another very vivid dream about sobbing uncontrollably.
///
Eating sushi all alone. All the tofu in my mini-fridge had gone bad and me trying to keep this headache at bay left me with a stomach full of various pills. I used to come here with her, and usually so many of our friends. Now everyone is gone and they probably never think about me.
///
September 26th
CGI has ruined film in so many ways, but nothing is more egregious than CGI blood. We've got practical gore, squibs, prosthetics... there's just no excuse for CGI blood.
///
I decided to spend way too much money on way too much food from the calzone place so I could fill my fat piece of shit body in a way that I can't fill the gaping existential void inside of me. I gave them a fake name and went in wearing a mask and sunglasses so no one would potentially recognize me. I thought the long drive would be good for me. In the end, it wasn't, and as I sit here and begin eating this food I realize that I don't even really like it. Nothing tastes good, nothing entertains, nothing looks beautiful, the thought of sex makes me queasy. I really don't wanna do this shit anymore.
///
I'm lying here, trying to mentally envision sucking dick for money or robbing a convenience store. Just the thoughts make me anxious, especially since I've never done either. I need to do something soon to make some fast money, because I've been doing everything I’m "supposed" to for the past two months and none of it has amounted to fucking anything.
///
No one is ever going to love a bum. The lyrics to "No Scrubs" ring true for everyone, even those who don't think of themselves as shallow or materialistic. I fully understand why she decided to leave me all alone in Florida so she could move in with a slick narcissist sugar daddy with a big house and seemingly endless resources. He can give her the life I always apologized to her for not being able to give her; the life she repeatedly told me she had no interest in. Had she actually loved or cared about me, she could have at least organized leaving me for someone else she met online in a way that didn't disrupt my entire life and leave me stranded with no real resources to pick myself back up; she knew exactly what my life would be once she demanded to get the car she told me to keep back. I can accept her no longer wanting to be with me; it's the total lack of compassion she showed me that hurts more than anything. It must be nice to be her. She gets to collect unemployment, save her Trump check, have hundreds of dollars sent to her by her mother and the dude she now lives with, all without having any bills to pay since she lives in his house for free on seven or so acres of land. She gets some small cash every now and then from her overpriced, failing Etsy shop. And if they ever break up, she can just move back in with her mom for free, unless she has already lined up a new guy. I didn't have a safety net when I took the risk of starting a precarious life with her living in a pop-up camper. I placed my full, unwavering trust into her and our relationship. She had multiple. I just wish if she was going to break my heart and leave me for some guy from the Internet that she at least went about it in a way where I could have begun preparing a back-up plan for myself. She knew for a month that she was going to leave me, but decided to put on a show and lie to my face the entire time, right up until the morning she woke me up and told me her Uber was on the way, completely pulling the rug out from under me. I can't blame it all on her, and I guess anyone can argue I just wasn't her responsibility, but it's what she has done that has created the waves that I am still being hit by, and I believe we do owe each other compassion and accountability.
///
September 27th
Our last week together, I kept noticing things in places they shouldn't be, or not immediately being able to find something because it was somewhere it usually wasn't. In the pop-up camper, I created a pretty organized setup using milk crates, separating personal care items from electronics, et cetera. There were two or three times I'd asked her, "What were you doing with this?" or "Why'd you move this here? I couldn't find it," or something, and she'd gotten really defensive, telling me she didn't touch it. I'd of course say, "Well, I haven't used it and I keep it here." But she'd insist, and acted upset I was insisting otherwise. I wasn't mad or anything, but it was frustrating knowing for a fact that I hadn't touched whatever had been moved.
After she left, I would eventually find out that the reason these things were misplaced was because she had done "practice runs", as she described them to the guy she was cheating on me with online, to see how quickly she could get all her things together, so by the time she woke me up to tell me she was taking a plane far away from me she would be ready to go. I also found out she had gone out and bought a new travel bag from someone on Facebook market while I thought she was out doing DoorDash to save up for a laptop. I had offered to work for her and get it so she could focus on music and art, but she told me it was important for her to do it herself. I would later find out the guy she was cheating on me with was offering to buy her a new laptop.
I'll never be able to fully digest or understand all of the lies she told me for that final month. Different ones take center stage at different times throughout my days and weeks. I'd never trusted someone the way I trusted her, and I have no clue how the fuck she sleeps at night knowing how hard it was for me to let her into my heart and just how severely she exploited that trust in the end. It's honestly humiliating thinking back to all the things I said and did, blissfully unaware of what was going to happen, talking about our future plans and reminding her every day how much I appreciated her.
///
After two straight months of working almost every day or night, doing long DoorDash shifts to make money for us, I took most of our last week at the RV park off to write, edit photos, and spruce up my personal blog before we set off on our next adventure. I also missed hanging out with her every night. One night, I wasn't feeling very secure, worried she didn't like me being around more often at night because it got in the way of her practicing music (she preferred to do that alone), and I asked her, "Do you like me being around more often?" In her cute, coy voice, she smiled and said, "Yeah." I knew her, and it was very convincing.
Later when I'd see their conversations together, I'd have to see her complain to him about me taking a night off of work, "Dave isn't working tonight! 😭" and, "I know, I was so annoyed when he told me."
I was covered in bug bites, and have more severe reactions to them than others, so I was physically uncomfortable for most of that month. Between that and working almost every night, we hadn't been having sex. I felt really bad about it, because she was a very sexual person. I'd noticed she'd stopped trying to initiate things with me, which was unusual. She was always all over me, saying dirty things, telling me she didn't care how dirty I was and to just fuck her. I asked her, "Hey, I've noticed you haven't been your slutty self lately. Is it because you don't think I want to? Because trust me, I fucking want to really bad, I'm just so physically uncomfortable." She reassured me it had nothing to do with me, and said, "Sometimes I have weeks where I'm not like that." That was good enough for me.
The next and final time I'd ever try to touch her would be while rubbing her body, caressing and massaging her back and legs like I always did almost every night. I asked her for permission to finger her and she told me, "No, I don't want that tonight." I said okay and took my hands off of her. Then she said, "That doesn't mean you have to stop rubbing me, though!" in her cute, playful voice. I'd later have to see her tell the guy she was cheating on me with how badly she didn't want me to touch her anymore, that she hated it; that for our entire relationship she had always wanted to fuck me, but not anymore. She told him we'd watched a movie with a hot sex scene and how all she could do was think of him during it while I held her in bed.
Again, just totally humiliating. Even worse, I feel like I probably showed her so many normal acts of physical affection without her wanting them. I always practice good consent, even with someone I've been with for two and a half years, and am always checking in, so I was always asking if she wanted a back rub or a foot massage or was comfortable with how we were laying. In retrospect, I wonder how many times she said yes to things she didn't really want. I'm so glad she didn't let me fuck her just to reinforce the act she was putting on. I would feel guilty forever about it.
///
I've read that the average person takes about seven minutes to fall asleep, but it pretty much always takes me almost an hour, no matter how tired I am. The time between putting on white noise, turning over, and hugging my pillow tightly, and the moment I actually fall asleep is a special hell that I must visit each night; one in which every bad thing that's ever happened to me flashes in my mind and I inevitably land at her and the most recently traumatic event in this shitty fucking life.
///
Today is my first day back to delivering fucking Chinese food because it's the only job off the books that I've ever consistently found. I've done this on and off over the last three or so years. I guess I'm supposed to feel good and proud that I got up and asked for a job and am going to start saving money for my escape outta here, but all I wanna do is cry. I feel anxious and sick to my stomach. Unlike last time, I don't have someone to come back home to; someone to excitedly shoot up out of bed to run and give me a hug; someone with whom this money I hopefully save will afford some grand future adventure or permanent living space far away from here. I know I'm supposed to live for myself, but all I'm realizing is that I am not enough for myself, and I'm not so sure I'm even supposed to be. The bigger picture this effort is part of isn't something I'm even excited about; it's just going to be me trying to be more comfortable and independent in my pathetic, impoverished solitude as I wait to see if I or civilization ends first. I wish so badly that this life and the people I allowed into it had been more gentle with me.
///
It's very strange, and a particular form of lonely, to not be able to text her while I'm out on deliveries, or to not be getting texts from her every hour or two sending me something neat (or annoying) she saw on Reddit, asking me how I'm doing, or boasting about some progress she was making with a drawing or a song. She was very clingy, and I loved it so much because I'd never been clung back to before. I also liked that she was always worrying I was going to get in accident, or be arrested, or somehow die. It was a nice reminder that someone cared if I didn't come home, and also mirrored my paranoid thoughts whenever she was out and doing something. I should really just save up for a gun so I can shoot myself. From experience now, I know that it would be weeks, perhaps upward of a month, before someone noticed I was gone, let alone decomposing in the basement.
///
Working today eventually stopped feeling so emotionally hard and faded into a repetitive blur of tedium. I came home with $133. I bought a box of dinosaur vegan nuggets, sandwich bread, a bag of Vegan Rob's cauliflower puffs, and a six-pack of sugar-free Virgil's root beer with what little food stamps I have left. Then I shoplifted a giant $20 pack of boxers. Overall, a very productive day. I still wish I were dead.
///
A friend of mine offered to pay me $15 to take care of myself in some way I've been putting off, so I guess I'm gonna shave my head and take a shower. This is the longest I've gone without doing either in many years.
///
September 28th
I started watching I Am a Killer on Netflix and it has reminded me that I am absolutely in favor of total prison abolition and 100%, unequivocally opposed to life sentences and capital punishment. It is unbelievable to me that these barbaric practices are still going on in this world. Retributive justice does not deter violence, nor does it undo violence already committed, and there is a reason or cause behind all aberrant behavior. Ultimately, it all just perpetuates the normalization of revenge and violence in our culture and society, while ignoring the root causes of violence and hence never in good faith actually trying to solve it.
Violence is a public health concern, not a crime, and it will never be solved by the state or any other institution that strives to hold a monopoly on violence and has incentive to never actually address the systemic issues that result in most of the violence we see within our communities--and then there's the whole other incentive of for-profit prisons. This world makes me sick.
Look up the work of Dr. James Gilligan.
///
September 29th
The Chinese place I work at, which is run by a young first-generation immigrant family and their friends, passed down to them from another immigrant family I also worked for a couple years ago, has a cheap little sign in their window, printed straight from a computer on 8.5x11, saying "All Lives Matter" above stick figures holding hands, all colored in rainbow.
It brought to mind an online controversy I was witness to a few months ago right at the start of the George Floyd murder's nationwide response. My ex partner's corny new boyfriend posted a screenshot of an Instagram post made by a company called Vegan Cuts, a subscription service that sends you a box of different vegan products every month or whatever. They had made a simple post saying, "All lives matter." This guy who posted about it wrote over the screenshot, "This is why I always say fuckwhiteveganism." At face value, I was already annoyed by the post, but out of curiosity, I decided to look up who the founders and owners were of Vegan Cuts. It turned out both the president and the CEO were an Indian-American couple, not white people. This asshole literally just assumed they were white because they did something he disagreed with, as if people of different colors can't also have different opinions from his.
By the time I went to their Instagram profile, the original post was down and they had already posted a desperate apology and plea for forgiveness, pandering to their audience to such an extreme degree that they basically said they were POC, but not as oppressed as other POC, downplaying the very real xenophobia and racism people like them face all over America, because according to the Oppression Olympics it isn't "as bad" as what other races are going though. I skimmed through the first hundred or so comments and most of them were pretty brutal. Many announcements by patrons that they were ending their subscriptions and unfollowing them, and many, many, many white people calling them a "racist company". They had officially been canceled, and there was of course no room for nuance; their immediate apology was certainly not good enough. It was a pretty remarkable situation: so many white people attacking two brown immigrants online on behalf of performative "anti-racist" outrage.
Something tells me these two vegans of color probably aren't racist, and probably weren't trying to declare their opposition to Black Lives Matter amidst nationwide protests against police brutality. Something tells me they aren't pro-Trump or "backing the blue" or trying to own SJWs. It is far more likely that they didn't know the phrase "all lives matter", which any decent person technically agrees with as a declaration without the added cultural context, was no longer allowed to be said under any circumstances, and that it no longer meant egalitarianism, but instead was a bad faith catchphrase used by closet racists to antagonize intersectionalists. I'm also assuming that the immigrants who own the place I work at are also clueless to this, rather than letting their customers know that they actually hate black people or whatever.
The internet and cancel culture seems to forget that not everyone is plugged into the bullshit culture that's been developed online across ideological cesspools like Tumblr and Twitter; that many people are genuinely unaware about whatever inane fringe issue they're championing or expressing performative outrage about, because their own lives just so happened to not guide them down those online rabbit holes. Benefit of the doubt is no longer offered to anyone, even members of the marginalized groups these people claim to be defending. Without a consciousness of or even openness to nuance, a clueless but well-intentioned "all lives matter" post is considered as vile as someone wearing a swastika t-shirt.
What does this accomplish besides alienating or even possibly repelling potential allies from your cause? Especially when they are scolded and called bad names without any chance of an actual dialog or learning experience? Is creating a subjective hierarchy of suffering and oppression the basis by which we measure injustice? Is it not actually disgusting, when you think about it, to compare suffering like a point system?
I've seen this happen with others terms and phrases. For example, I feel weary about openly labeling myself an "egalitarian", even though it is the most accurate and succinct descriptor of my beliefs, because that word has been co-opted in bad faith by Men's Rights Activists and their ilk to avoid calling themselves feminists. The same is true of atheism/anti-theism, too.
Anyway, we're doomed. Identity politics and cancel culture are a psyop job to ensure no significant unification of the working class ever takes place, and everyone's eaten it up because it's more instantly satisfying to "drag" or "cancel" someone than it is to patiently engage in discourse.
///
I wish I had her to come home to. Last year when we were living in a lady's basement, I loved coming home from work and exchanging annoying stories from our jobs, uniting in shit-talk, me telling her what nighttime critters I saw on the drive home, and cuddling with Sammy the cat together before falling asleep to Unsolved Mysteries. She was my best friend and confidante and teammate and I just miss her so much every single day.
///
I'm really into moniker graffiti and writers who have little characters they draw everywhere, particularly freight monikers, and I've been drawing a cutesy pigeon character and putting up stickers of him all over the country for a couple years now. My ex was always very supportive and telling me how much she loved him, and even developed her own moniker (a wasp), that we often drew next to each other. Publicly vandalizing private property in broad daylight was as fun as shoplifting, and I loved sharing that with her and seeing how much fun she thought it was to draw on everything.
After she left me, I eventually had to see messages between her and this dude from my city named Erik. She wanted to fuck him before we started seeing each other, and she wasted no time flirting with him on Instagram once leaving me, though he had already sent her suggestive DMs after a post she made showing off her butt while we were still together, which she responded to with a suggestive winky emoji. He also once, completely unprompted, asked her, "Do you like the taste of cum?" in the middle of a conversation about music, which she also enthusiastically answered. Men are disgusting, but if the other person wants to fuck them, certain behavior is acceptable.
Anyway, after he told her a completely fabricated story about me "snitching to the cops on my own brother and friends for doing graffiti" a long time ago (this literally never happened, but is one of many rumors about me in this small city), she went out of her way to ask him what he thought of my graffiti moniker, since he was also a graffiti writer. He just said, "I dunno, it's just a cartoon bird," or something neutral like that, and she then said, "I always thought it was cute as fuck, but sooooo fucking corny. It looked like a little girl drew it." It was the first time I'd ever seen her be mean or petty, about anyone. She was just always more fair, articulate, and mature, even when it came to shit-talk. It was really strange and disappointing.
Still, it absolutely crushed me, and I haven't drawn him anywhere since. I have hundreds of stickers I'll probably never put up anywhere. I also deleted the Instagram page I made for it to track where people found him around the country.
///
September 30th
The curse has been lifted by utter disgust.
I miss her so much. I know you aren't supposed to live "for" other people, but the reality was she was the only thing holding me together after the rest of my life was destroyed last year. I just don't have any incentive to take care of myself, or do anything creative, or make money, or see new things, or wake up, or try anymore. This isn't a movie, so "winning her back" isn't possible, and as pathetic as it is, my truth is that getting her back would be the only motivation worth it to change anything about my current situation. I don't like myself all that much. I know I have very little of value to offer anyone. I feel changed in a profound, irreparable way. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to function like a normal, capable human being ever again. It's been three months and I don't feel any better. In fact, I for some reason feel a little worse recently. I just truly don't want to live this life anymore, especially if I have to do it without her and my other best friend. This is the worst I've ever felt in my entire life.
///
I'm taking my medication every day, I got one of my pills increased, I'm going to therapy every week, I've taken my trash out, I'm trying to drink less soda, I haven't looked at her social media in over two months, I'm usually putting forth the effort to respond to text messages, I can now get through a whole movie in one sitting, I've done so many annoying tasks and invested about $1,500 into getting this car fixed, and I've even gone out a handful of times. I'm doing everything I'm supposed to, I'm surviving. But the truth is, I don't feel like I've healed at all, not one bit.
I've had more days where I feel things, and they're never good feelings. Otherwise, I feel completely empty. Each time I leave the house or talk to someone, it just makes me anxious to rush back to this bed. My sleep pattern is completely erratic and nightmares are constant. She and everything she has done to me is my first and last thought each day and night. I try to avoid eye contact with the thoughts, because if I give into them, the pain and confusion of it all comes rushing back and I feel just as disoriented as the day after she left. I don't feel any more compelled to do anything I once loved doing. It is becoming harder and harder to give a shit about what the few people left in my life are saying or feeling. The past week of running around and spending every penny I had to get this car fixed has only exhausted me and left me feeling more content with the idea of giving up on ever escaping this city and just resigning myself to remaining in this basement every day like I'm on my deathbed. I feel relaxed at the idea of dying.
I've overcome so much since childhood. I always got back up. No matter how bad things have gotten, I've always managed this irrational resilience and tenacity. My passion and thirst for new experiences, my unwavering urge to connect with others, and my naive belief in love have always fueled me forward and never waned. But this is different--I am different. This is a new feeling. Something in me has changed profoundly. It feels like my soul has been sucked out of my body. I don't feel bored, or lonely, or heartbroken, or horny, or curious, or passionate about anything. I just feel tired, for the most part. I don't think I'm getting back up this time, and I am almost relieved knowing that. This is the worst my life has ever been, she has hurt me more than anyone ever has, I have never felt more insecure and worthless than this, and I have never had as little as I do now. I don't know how I'd rebuild even if I wanted to. I really just want to know that the next time I close my eyes it'll be the last time.
///
September 2nd
I wish I were whatever kind of person people wouldn't have treated the way I've been treated.
///
I don't want to think about all of it anymore, but it's just getting louder and louder each day. I wish someone were here with me to tell me I'm good and everything will be okay. I miss someone being around all the time, and I especially miss feeling like I exist in some meaningful capacity. It's been so long since I've felt someone be gentle, or touch me at all. I want to crack my skull open and pour out all of what's eating my brain alive. I wish there were anyone I could just have here with me, if only for a little bit. I am so fucking sick of missing her and so fucking sick of being alone. I want to cry out for help, but there is no one to hear my screams, and there never will be again. Time no longer exists and neither do I. I am no longer a person; just a gaseous ball of pain floating in the ether of nothingness, wishing to dissipate.
///
No mother. No father. No childhood home. No money. No partner. No best friend. No reputation. No place to be. No hobbies. No love. No touch. No sex. No sunlight. No time. No comfort. No pleasure. No future. No hope.
///
September 3rd
As if the general anxiety of being out in public wasn't bad enough, in this city I have to see people and with near certainty know that they think I'm a serial abuser and rapist even though I am not. I wish I were dead.
///
September 4th
There will always be a part of me that is completely infatuated with Tara. She texted me a band today and asked me to send her stuff I've been listening to. Obscure experimental music was always one of our connections. I can't help but feel a little giddy any time she gives me any attention, and it's weird to know she'll apparently always have a pull on me. I asked her if she'd like to get together sometime, which was scary for me to do, but she responded enthusiastically. I know it's safe because I know from years of experience now that we could never stay together no matter how many times we try dating--she's a winner and I'm a loser. It'd just be nice to be around her again. She's always really funny and knows so much about so much and can keep up with me no matter the topic. It's impossible to ever know when she's telling the truth or just being a chameleon, but she's at least good company either way. Her big insect eyes, freckles, beautiful hands, and uniquely intoxicating natural smell would likely fuck me up in the same ways it always has every time we've reconnect after years without talking, and honestly maybe that'd be nicer than thinking about my most recent ex. I'd gladly let her chew me up and spit me back out again just to pass the time. I miss feelings things sometimes.
///
September 6th
I know I'm over a decade late to the discourse I imagine has long-since come and went, but I'm blowing through the Twilight film series for the first time for fun and I'm actually especially astounded at how blatantly it romanticizes what is clearly an abusive relationship between Bella and Edward, to a demographic that was largely young girls.
///
A text I sent a few people a while ago that I'm really feeling today. I'm glad I don't have any friends anymore because it means there's no one I can negatively affect with my mental health and no one can hurt me by using it against me.
After much reflection, I have again just concluded that despite my sincere and best efforts I am just a toxic person and should be alone. I hope that conclusion won't be mocked or taken as anything other than a sincere proclamation. I mean it. I don't want to hurt people, not even by accident, and I honestly can't handle the fact that I do and have. I feel absolutely crazy and I just don't want to try to be a person anymore. I am irreparably damaged, and after all these years and so much conscious effort on my part to try and be a decent person and still clearly failing so miserably, I think I have to accept that there are parts of myself that are malignant and incurable. I know I am not abusive, but I am uncontrollably toxic and should be quarantined.
///
Some days, it's kinda sad to know I've given up and that my life is over.
///
I really do feel like I have a terminal illness and I'm laying in this bed every day, all day, waiting to drift away into a sleep that is finally permanent.
///
September 7th
It's been four months and, honestly, I don't feel any better. I don't think I heal.
///
I'm really grateful for my brother, even though I know he doesn't care about me as much as I care about him. He's really my only friend now. He's one of the best people I know and truly the only one who actually "gets me", because we've shared our upbringing and are so alike.
///
I am going to die alone, fat, in poverty, and with a reputation for doing terrible things I never actually did rather than all of the good things I did do, probably while talking to myself as I drift away into unconsciousness in a pop-up camper somewhere in Wyoming. This life has been so hard, and this world so cruel and unjust. I tried to figure it out, I tried to be someone, I tried to find love, I tried to do meaningful things, I tried to do good and show others kindness, but my life in a pie chart was mostly spent trying to find somewhere to sleep, being physically and mentally uncomfortable, wasting time being debilitatingly sad over some girl, and watching movies by myself. I would not do this over again. I should never have been born.
///
Sick of not knowing when, how well, or for how long I will be able to sleep, having some of the worst and most vivid nightmares of my entire life, and waking up at first not knowing where I am, if it's day or night, or where she is. I am not alive; I am somewhere else entirely. In therapy, we are trying to figure out how to reorient my life, but I literally don't have anything to hold onto anymore. I am lost at sea, floating in space, trapped in the woods, and I have no idea how to find my way back to wherever I'm supposed to be without her around anymore. For a long time, all I knew of what home was and where I "should be" was wherever she was. This despair is something completely different from hurts I've gone through before, and after four months now I still have no fucking idea what I'm supposed to do or how I'm supposed to do it.
///
Since everything fell apart, I've only really cried once. Otherwise, I haven't cried at all. I often feel like I'm going to; the pressure behind my eyes is there. But it just never happens. My therapist says I have a block, probably because I was never comforted as a child, and was actually yelled at or made fun of by my parents for crying. Lately, I've been having so many vivid and intense dreams where I cry, though; just absolutely frantic screaming and sobbing, and it feels so real. I wake up, with a hurt in my gut, but dry eyes. My therapist says crying is a crucial part of the grieving process, but again, I don't think I ever heal.
///
Three outrageous things I've already seen this morning on this website:
1. A banner being held that says, "Antifa means solidarity with Israel,"
2. the words, "There’s nothing more punk than voting,"
and 3. a rainbow flag with words saying you "can't have a pride flag without a thin blue line."
///
September 8th
I mustered the emotional and physical energy to try and go upstairs and cook myself a dinner for the first time in several months. I've been subsisting on Chinese delivery, microwaveable foods, and sandwiches since moving into this basement. It probably sounds stupid, but I don't really wanna cook a meal without her to prepare and share it with me. It was always one of my favorite parts of the days. Anyway, I made a big bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, and as soon as I scooped the first bite into my mouth I could tell the Newman's Own sauce I mixed it all in was extremely sour, so I've tainted a pound or two of food. Maybe I'm just especially emotional today, but it has made me so sad and feel so pathetic. I probably won't try again for a while.
///
September 9th
I guess I have to wake up now. I've been lying here for an hour with my eyes shut, hoping I'll fall back asleep, but it isn't going to happen. Every day my eyes reopen, I just want to sob and cry and plead to my own brain, 'Please, I beg of you, let me fall back to sleep, I don't want to do this today!' I wish I could put a bullet through my skull.
///
But also, most days I kinda hope everyone just kills each other. Fuck this world.
///
I am living in filth like the pile of garbage that I am.
///
September 10th
I just... don't know what to do. I have never felt this way before. I've never been this genuinely alone. So many times throughout my life, I thought I knew what hopelessness and loneliness were, but I see now I only had a taste of those things. I have nothing left, nowhere to go, no more energy. I just want someone to hold me as I drift away. My life is truly, truly over, and I do not know what to do with that realization. I just... don't know what to do.
///
I've gotten both my pills increased. I don't feel any better, but I've noticed I can now concentrate long enough to watch movies and read books again, so I guess that's cool. I know psychology is bullshit, but I wish there were a miracle to cure this thing that lives inside me.
///
I never wanted to be another one of those corny misanthropic vegans, but after the last couple of years it's only gotten harder to remain interested in human beings. Still believing we all deserve a life of freedom regardless of anything, and understanding the socioeconomic and epigenetic reasons for why people behave the way they do, has offered me no solace. All I know is that I found more joy in sitting and watching a katydid for an hour the other night than I have had watching or interacting with any humans in months. I'd rather watch birds than a group of people. There's just an inherent innocence and elegance in the everyday existences of non-human animals that fascinates me and leaves in awe, while most I see of human beings disgusts me in a deep and genuinely nauseating way.
///
September 11th
I ate some of the best curry tofu of my life last night.
///
Trying to pull myself out of the rubble has been so fucking hard, and I'm still mostly buried. She fucked up my entire life. I wish I understood what I did to deserve her wrath, when all I did was worship her.
///
I watched the Ronnie McNutt suicide video. Reading about the circumstances leading up to that night made me really feel for him. It also reminded me that it's a good thing I don't own a gun, because having such an easy out would guarantee I'd be gone by tomorrow. I kinda like the idea of my head being obliterated and unrecognizable and people who hurt me regretting it.
///
I'm glad I'm alone all of the time so I don't ever have to feel embarrassed about what I've become.
///
She could set me free with just an apology.
///
September 12th
For years now, I sometimes wake up and automatically have "From This Moment On" by Shania Twain stuck in my head, even though I never hear it played anywhere.
///
No matter what, mental illness and poverty will always scare them away. They will always realize there's no comfortable future with me. I feel stupid for being convinced this would be any different. The fact that she left me for someone she'd normally hate, who has seemingly endless money and resources and social capital, is salt on the wound. I wish I'd just agreed when she first started saying she wanted to get an apartment, but I wasn't confident I'd be able to be an equal contributor and suggested the pop-up camper idea.
///
I wish something would suddenly happen to save me.
///
September 13th
I wish there were anyone I could call and ask to come lay with me. This empty bed feels like a deserted island. Everything feels wrong.
///
I think a lot about robbing a convenience store, or mugging someone on the street. I cannot stand not having money and how long it's going to take for me to make the amount needed to get out of here. The world is ending and nothing matters anymore and I'm pretty sure if the right opportunity for the right price fell into my lap that I'd be willing to do just about anything. If I ever allow myself to rejoin the human race, I hope I have the guts to shut myself off and be another shitty, opportunistic predator who looks at everyone as utility.
///
After three months of basically never leaving my bed, my entire left leg is really starting to hurt.
///
I wish talking about my problems with others helped at all. Instead, hearing it stated out loud usually makes it hurt worse, and sharing bad feelings eventually exhausts people into no longer caring and leaving me. Nothing short of solutions will make me feel better, but there aren't solutions to what's wrong, and if there are I can't access them.
I want to face her and shake her while screaming, "What the fuck is wrong with you?!" I want to hit her new boyfriend upside the head with a baseball bat and then set his giant house on fire. I want to steal someone's car. I want to break into a church and steal what I fantasize is a large sum of money taken from their followers. I want to live in my camper with a dog and never talk to anyone ever again. I want to blow my head off like Ronnie McNutt, except I would ensure safe relocation of my dog beforehand.
It's clear at this point that I don't ever heal, so I'd be content with just being materially comfortable for a change and finally releasing my rage at the people who have destroyed me, but I will never get the former because I will die destitute and I can't do the latter because I will have the real cops and/or the anarchy police called on me.
///
While I think it's borderline psychotic that she was capable of leaving me and immediately moving in with a new boyfriend who she had never met in real life before, it must have been really fucking nice to instantly have a red carpet rolled out for her leading to a better life than I ever could have provided. I wish I had a plan b, or a rebound, or whatever it is that normal, attractive people do to fill the void while they're single, but I have nothing and no one anymore and I know there is absolutely nothing left about me that could ever interest anyone ever again, let alone make them want to fuck me or fall in love with me.
///
I am a dog waiting for their person to come home, not knowing they have died and will never be back.
///
My left leg hurts so fucking bad, like a sharp pain from midway down my calf up to the side of my thigh. I really think my sedentary life has damaged a nerve or muscle.
///
I wish I could calculate how many hours of my life have been spent sitting on curbs at night outside of some business like a homeless person. I feel so comfortable being a pile of shit on the ground.
///
September 14th
I go days, sometimes weeks, without seeing my own reflection. I am ceasing to exist.
///
September 15th
I want so badly to be an evil nihilist and be capable of doing selfish, shitty things to benefit myself and myself only even when at the expense of others. I just sincerely don't think I'm capable of it. As practice, I stole $10 out of my roommate's wallet the other day. I feel incredibly guilty about it. I told my brother and he told me, "Don't let them win," by letting this world turn me into someone horrible, but I am so sick of living by this strict code of conduct all these years when not only does it seem like I am punished for being a decent human being while monsters are constantly rewarded, but I've also had my life destroyed by allegations of unforgivable things I haven't even done. Being a good person has not only never served me, I'm now living a life where I am suffering the consequences of being a bad person I never was. It's hard not to, at the least, want to just say fuck it and become the beast so many people have told me I am.
///
Every day I tell myself, 'Today is the day you start starving yourself,' but then I quickly remember that I have no reason to take care of myself or be thin because I no longer exist in the world and will never try to get close to anyone ever again. It doesn't matter what I look like all alone in this dark basement.
///
It is absolute torment to know exactly who and what you want and have to accept that you will never have any of it. With each year, I resign myself to having less and less, adapting to what I can't have or do and gradually convincing myself I don't need it anyway; yet no matter how much I whittle down my desires, I am constantly told by life that I have to accept even less. It is clear I am destined to have nothing and no one.
///
September 16th
This life doesn't feel real. I don't feel real. My perception of reality and myself is fractured. Nothing makes sense anymore. I am stuck in this unbearable purgatory.
///
I am experiencing what may be my first migraine and I don't know why it's happening, but it's making me feel like I'm gonna cry and puke. I never get headaches.
I have $69 left in the bank and $38 left on my food stamp card and it's only halfway through the month.
Therapy was very difficult today. Oftentimes, things get stirred up but I don't have enough time to calm back down, so I just go home with a buncha heightened shit going on inside of me and nothing to do with it.
I love my ex so much, but also hate her fucking guts, and I do not know how to reconcile those conflicting feelings, especially since I am not allowed to communicate with her.
///
September 17th
I realized tonight that I haven't had my own place since 2016. Since then, I've couchsurfed a whole lot, house-sat and babysat animal companions for a lot of people, stayed in a Christian woman's basement for almost a year, squatted an abandoned apartment building in the dead of winter and also at the hottest of summer, lived in the back of an SUV, did some tent camping, spent this past February to May in a pop-up camper, and slept at a lot of hotels. The only space I've paid rent to live in is this basement.
I am fairly certain I'll never actually have my own address or live in a stable environment. The pop-up camper is my best option, and I can't wait to be back in it. It sucks that no one my age is going to be all that interested in being homeless with me. The two partners I've tried it with were rich girls who had fun with it for a while, but eventually grew tired of it--and understandably so, because it is exhausting, and it's not really something you do long-term if you don't have to. So many of my peers own their own homes by now, or at least share an apartment with their significant other; worst case scenario, they've moved back into their childhood homes that their parents own. Even the crusties wind up going back to their suburban homes when they get bored with trains. I don't have parents. I can't work because I'm on disability, and don't want to work anyway, and that keeps me far below the poverty line and literally incapable of saving or being able to afford to live somewhere while also actually living. I'm not even entirely confident that I'd be able to afford living somewhere and having a car at the same time.
Sometimes the constant instability can feel like an adventure if you're keeping moving and have the right company beside you, and a lot of the time it has been that for me. It's at times felt truly empowering to not pay rent but still find shelter, like I was getting one over on capitalism, even though capitalism always wins. For the most part, it has been perpetual discomfort and loneliness. Ultimately, it's just one more aspect of me and my life that ensures I am doomed.
///
I wonder if anything exciting will ever happen again.
///
September 19th
I guess the only thing that will truly never leave me, the only thing in my life I can ever actually rely on, is trauma and sadness.
///
This is definitely the beginning of the end of my life.
///
September 20th
I miss her so much tonight. It's still incomprehensible to me that as I type this she is in a bed with another man, and that she went from spending nearly every day with me for two and a half years to moving into a house with a man she had never met in real life, literally overnight. She cuddled with me the night of May 9th, knowing the entire time she would abruptly leave me the next morning and take a flight to another state so she could move into a house and cuddle with another man.
///
I finally drove out of town to my brother's where my previous home, the pop-up camper, is still sitting, waiting for a car capable of towing its 1,500-pound frame. I figured since I can legally drive my car now, I should go to it, open it, and grab my hair clippers, turmeric, and USB wires. I was gonna try to grab some clothes since I have very little at home, but they were too deep. When I opened it and crawled inside, the stale air hit me hard, a fainter smell of the life we had built together inside of it. I feel like I can barely breathe, and I'm scared of one day living in it again. I wish she would come back and give me CPR so I could start breathing again. The last couple of months don't feel real; they replay in my head more like something I vaguely recall from TV than a memory from my actual life. Each day feels like I'm dreaming of being imprisoned, counting down the days toward my release, whether that be a death penalty or an appeal for a retrial.
///
It's day four of these excruciating headaches. I have to take at least 1,500 milligrams of ibuprofen for any hope of reducing them to something tolerable. I don't know what's going on. Maybe sinusitis from spending 24/7 in this basement with a box fan on, or maybe because I'm so stressed from going crazy. If it isn't gone by tomorrow, I guess I'll have to call a doctor, which I hate. I wish it were something that would burst while I'm fast asleep.
///
I woke up to texts from one of my only local friends who still speaks to me, a 48-year old woman. They included two pictures of cuts on her arm. These cuts were less severe than cat scratches, so I wasn't really worried about her doing anything permanent. Still, I found it a real struggle to care. If anything, I felt I was being manipulated. In fact, I ate hotdogs and watched an episode of the new Ted Bundy docuseries before I responded to her. My brother told me I'm going crazy and turning evil. I called and talked to her for a while, let her know I cared and wanted to do whatever would be most helpful to her. She eventually told me she was just going to eat and take a bath and to not come over. Honestly, I think I'm slowly running out of whatever good was left in me before everyone slowly destroyed it. I think the amount of ruthless cruelty and injustice I've experienced since last year has had a really profound and permanent effect on who I am, and I worry I'm finally becoming the hardened person I narrowly avoided becoming as a child of abuse and trauma.
///
September 21st
A friend of mine just mentioned a detail about my ex and her new boyfriend's life she found out and such an intense wave of anxiety and sadness came over me to the point that it felt like there was heat coming from underneath my skin. Now I feel sick. I'd forgotten to tell her to never mention them to me, like I've done with the other people I still communicate with via text. I haven't looked at their social media in at least two months, and it's helped in some ways even though her and the incredibly confusing and cruel things she has done are still my first thought waking up and my last thought before I fall asleep.
///
September 22nd
Why am I not feeling any better? Why has time and geography not gotten me far enough away from her? I am still falling, every day, and it appears this hole is fucking bottomless. I can't fucking stand this life.
///
My car finally passed inspection today. It was so hard waking up, and to put miles on the vehicle I had to drive to the next city over and back. But the thing finally passed. I keep waiting for each task being checked off to make me feel something, but it never does. I'm still so far from my goal of getting a new car so I can leave here, but even that goal isn't something I'm particularly excited about accomplishing. It's pathetic, but I wish I had her here to hold my hand and see how hard this all is for me, to tell me I'm doing a good job and that she's proud of me for doing everything "right" since she tore my entire world apart. I'm exerting so much effort toward a life I'm not even interested in living. I told myself I'd make chili for dinner today, and it's been an hour now of me feeling completely incapable of getting back out of this bed. Every day is so hard. I wish she would talk to me. At the end of the day, all I can expect out of all this is to one day be a little more comfortable in a different version of solitude.
///
She would always sit and watch me cut veggies for dinner. She said it was cute how meticulous and perfect I did it. She was an intimidatingly impressive person, so it meant a lot that she thought I did anything well. I miss those little moments so much.
///
Everyone will always reach a point where they don't want to deal with me anymore. Mental illness has ruined my life. I'm not a bad person, but I am an unlikable one.
///
September 23rd
I have lost absolutely everything I had left to live for in this life this year and it is harder each day to justify any effort I still put into survival. This world has nothing left to offer me and I have nothing left to offer it. Anyone who would have once cared if I died doesn't even care enough to ask me how I'm doing anymore. I am so sick of remembering what I remember, knowing what I know, missing who I miss, living where I live, and the nonstop visceral hurt and anxiety that I feel every single fucking day.
///
There is something happening inside of me and it feels like it's going to eventually claw its way out of my body. I wish this could kill me.
///
September 24th
Dropped my 'not guilty' ticket plea off and then told the Chinese delivery place I can start working for them again any time. With each step toward a future I honestly don't want any part in, I don't feel accomplishment or ease or satisfaction, but an overwhelming, aching fear. It's so expensive to be poor.
///
I hate my life and where I am in it, but I can see with full certainty that the best decisions I've made in this life have been:
1. Never going to college,
2. Never having kids,
3. Never getting a job/paying taxes,
4. Never taking out a credit card or loan,
5. Never drinking alcohol or trying any other recreational drugs.
Ultimately, these decisions didn't prevent my life from becoming the pathetic pile of shit it is today, but I often have to think about how much worse it could have been had I done all the stuff my peers did.
///
September 25th
Had another very vivid dream about sobbing uncontrollably.
///
Eating sushi all alone. All the tofu in my mini-fridge had gone bad and me trying to keep this headache at bay left me with a stomach full of various pills. I used to come here with her, and usually so many of our friends. Now everyone is gone and they probably never think about me.
///
September 26th
CGI has ruined film in so many ways, but nothing is more egregious than CGI blood. We've got practical gore, squibs, prosthetics... there's just no excuse for CGI blood.
///
I decided to spend way too much money on way too much food from the calzone place so I could fill my fat piece of shit body in a way that I can't fill the gaping existential void inside of me. I gave them a fake name and went in wearing a mask and sunglasses so no one would potentially recognize me. I thought the long drive would be good for me. In the end, it wasn't, and as I sit here and begin eating this food I realize that I don't even really like it. Nothing tastes good, nothing entertains, nothing looks beautiful, the thought of sex makes me queasy. I really don't wanna do this shit anymore.
///
I'm lying here, trying to mentally envision sucking dick for money or robbing a convenience store. Just the thoughts make me anxious, especially since I've never done either. I need to do something soon to make some fast money, because I've been doing everything I’m "supposed" to for the past two months and none of it has amounted to fucking anything.
///
No one is ever going to love a bum. The lyrics to "No Scrubs" ring true for everyone, even those who don't think of themselves as shallow or materialistic. I fully understand why she decided to leave me all alone in Florida so she could move in with a slick narcissist sugar daddy with a big house and seemingly endless resources. He can give her the life I always apologized to her for not being able to give her; the life she repeatedly told me she had no interest in. Had she actually loved or cared about me, she could have at least organized leaving me for someone else she met online in a way that didn't disrupt my entire life and leave me stranded with no real resources to pick myself back up; she knew exactly what my life would be once she demanded to get the car she told me to keep back. I can accept her no longer wanting to be with me; it's the total lack of compassion she showed me that hurts more than anything. It must be nice to be her. She gets to collect unemployment, save her Trump check, have hundreds of dollars sent to her by her mother and the dude she now lives with, all without having any bills to pay since she lives in his house for free on seven or so acres of land. She gets some small cash every now and then from her overpriced, failing Etsy shop. And if they ever break up, she can just move back in with her mom for free, unless she has already lined up a new guy. I didn't have a safety net when I took the risk of starting a precarious life with her living in a pop-up camper. I placed my full, unwavering trust into her and our relationship. She had multiple. I just wish if she was going to break my heart and leave me for some guy from the Internet that she at least went about it in a way where I could have begun preparing a back-up plan for myself. She knew for a month that she was going to leave me, but decided to put on a show and lie to my face the entire time, right up until the morning she woke me up and told me her Uber was on the way, completely pulling the rug out from under me. I can't blame it all on her, and I guess anyone can argue I just wasn't her responsibility, but it's what she has done that has created the waves that I am still being hit by, and I believe we do owe each other compassion and accountability.
///
September 27th
Our last week together, I kept noticing things in places they shouldn't be, or not immediately being able to find something because it was somewhere it usually wasn't. In the pop-up camper, I created a pretty organized setup using milk crates, separating personal care items from electronics, et cetera. There were two or three times I'd asked her, "What were you doing with this?" or "Why'd you move this here? I couldn't find it," or something, and she'd gotten really defensive, telling me she didn't touch it. I'd of course say, "Well, I haven't used it and I keep it here." But she'd insist, and acted upset I was insisting otherwise. I wasn't mad or anything, but it was frustrating knowing for a fact that I hadn't touched whatever had been moved.
After she left, I would eventually find out that the reason these things were misplaced was because she had done "practice runs", as she described them to the guy she was cheating on me with online, to see how quickly she could get all her things together, so by the time she woke me up to tell me she was taking a plane far away from me she would be ready to go. I also found out she had gone out and bought a new travel bag from someone on Facebook market while I thought she was out doing DoorDash to save up for a laptop. I had offered to work for her and get it so she could focus on music and art, but she told me it was important for her to do it herself. I would later find out the guy she was cheating on me with was offering to buy her a new laptop.
I'll never be able to fully digest or understand all of the lies she told me for that final month. Different ones take center stage at different times throughout my days and weeks. I'd never trusted someone the way I trusted her, and I have no clue how the fuck she sleeps at night knowing how hard it was for me to let her into my heart and just how severely she exploited that trust in the end. It's honestly humiliating thinking back to all the things I said and did, blissfully unaware of what was going to happen, talking about our future plans and reminding her every day how much I appreciated her.
///
After two straight months of working almost every day or night, doing long DoorDash shifts to make money for us, I took most of our last week at the RV park off to write, edit photos, and spruce up my personal blog before we set off on our next adventure. I also missed hanging out with her every night. One night, I wasn't feeling very secure, worried she didn't like me being around more often at night because it got in the way of her practicing music (she preferred to do that alone), and I asked her, "Do you like me being around more often?" In her cute, coy voice, she smiled and said, "Yeah." I knew her, and it was very convincing.
Later when I'd see their conversations together, I'd have to see her complain to him about me taking a night off of work, "Dave isn't working tonight! 😭" and, "I know, I was so annoyed when he told me."
I was covered in bug bites, and have more severe reactions to them than others, so I was physically uncomfortable for most of that month. Between that and working almost every night, we hadn't been having sex. I felt really bad about it, because she was a very sexual person. I'd noticed she'd stopped trying to initiate things with me, which was unusual. She was always all over me, saying dirty things, telling me she didn't care how dirty I was and to just fuck her. I asked her, "Hey, I've noticed you haven't been your slutty self lately. Is it because you don't think I want to? Because trust me, I fucking want to really bad, I'm just so physically uncomfortable." She reassured me it had nothing to do with me, and said, "Sometimes I have weeks where I'm not like that." That was good enough for me.
The next and final time I'd ever try to touch her would be while rubbing her body, caressing and massaging her back and legs like I always did almost every night. I asked her for permission to finger her and she told me, "No, I don't want that tonight." I said okay and took my hands off of her. Then she said, "That doesn't mean you have to stop rubbing me, though!" in her cute, playful voice. I'd later have to see her tell the guy she was cheating on me with how badly she didn't want me to touch her anymore, that she hated it; that for our entire relationship she had always wanted to fuck me, but not anymore. She told him we'd watched a movie with a hot sex scene and how all she could do was think of him during it while I held her in bed.
Again, just totally humiliating. Even worse, I feel like I probably showed her so many normal acts of physical affection without her wanting them. I always practice good consent, even with someone I've been with for two and a half years, and am always checking in, so I was always asking if she wanted a back rub or a foot massage or was comfortable with how we were laying. In retrospect, I wonder how many times she said yes to things she didn't really want. I'm so glad she didn't let me fuck her just to reinforce the act she was putting on. I would feel guilty forever about it.
///
I've read that the average person takes about seven minutes to fall asleep, but it pretty much always takes me almost an hour, no matter how tired I am. The time between putting on white noise, turning over, and hugging my pillow tightly, and the moment I actually fall asleep is a special hell that I must visit each night; one in which every bad thing that's ever happened to me flashes in my mind and I inevitably land at her and the most recently traumatic event in this shitty fucking life.
///
Today is my first day back to delivering fucking Chinese food because it's the only job off the books that I've ever consistently found. I've done this on and off over the last three or so years. I guess I'm supposed to feel good and proud that I got up and asked for a job and am going to start saving money for my escape outta here, but all I wanna do is cry. I feel anxious and sick to my stomach. Unlike last time, I don't have someone to come back home to; someone to excitedly shoot up out of bed to run and give me a hug; someone with whom this money I hopefully save will afford some grand future adventure or permanent living space far away from here. I know I'm supposed to live for myself, but all I'm realizing is that I am not enough for myself, and I'm not so sure I'm even supposed to be. The bigger picture this effort is part of isn't something I'm even excited about; it's just going to be me trying to be more comfortable and independent in my pathetic, impoverished solitude as I wait to see if I or civilization ends first. I wish so badly that this life and the people I allowed into it had been more gentle with me.
///
It's very strange, and a particular form of lonely, to not be able to text her while I'm out on deliveries, or to not be getting texts from her every hour or two sending me something neat (or annoying) she saw on Reddit, asking me how I'm doing, or boasting about some progress she was making with a drawing or a song. She was very clingy, and I loved it so much because I'd never been clung back to before. I also liked that she was always worrying I was going to get in accident, or be arrested, or somehow die. It was a nice reminder that someone cared if I didn't come home, and also mirrored my paranoid thoughts whenever she was out and doing something. I should really just save up for a gun so I can shoot myself. From experience now, I know that it would be weeks, perhaps upward of a month, before someone noticed I was gone, let alone decomposing in the basement.
///
Working today eventually stopped feeling so emotionally hard and faded into a repetitive blur of tedium. I came home with $133. I bought a box of dinosaur vegan nuggets, sandwich bread, a bag of Vegan Rob's cauliflower puffs, and a six-pack of sugar-free Virgil's root beer with what little food stamps I have left. Then I shoplifted a giant $20 pack of boxers. Overall, a very productive day. I still wish I were dead.
///
A friend of mine offered to pay me $15 to take care of myself in some way I've been putting off, so I guess I'm gonna shave my head and take a shower. This is the longest I've gone without doing either in many years.
///
September 28th
I started watching I Am a Killer on Netflix and it has reminded me that I am absolutely in favor of total prison abolition and 100%, unequivocally opposed to life sentences and capital punishment. It is unbelievable to me that these barbaric practices are still going on in this world. Retributive justice does not deter violence, nor does it undo violence already committed, and there is a reason or cause behind all aberrant behavior. Ultimately, it all just perpetuates the normalization of revenge and violence in our culture and society, while ignoring the root causes of violence and hence never in good faith actually trying to solve it.
Violence is a public health concern, not a crime, and it will never be solved by the state or any other institution that strives to hold a monopoly on violence and has incentive to never actually address the systemic issues that result in most of the violence we see within our communities--and then there's the whole other incentive of for-profit prisons. This world makes me sick.
Look up the work of Dr. James Gilligan.
///
September 29th
The Chinese place I work at, which is run by a young first-generation immigrant family and their friends, passed down to them from another immigrant family I also worked for a couple years ago, has a cheap little sign in their window, printed straight from a computer on 8.5x11, saying "All Lives Matter" above stick figures holding hands, all colored in rainbow.
It brought to mind an online controversy I was witness to a few months ago right at the start of the George Floyd murder's nationwide response. My ex partner's corny new boyfriend posted a screenshot of an Instagram post made by a company called Vegan Cuts, a subscription service that sends you a box of different vegan products every month or whatever. They had made a simple post saying, "All lives matter." This guy who posted about it wrote over the screenshot, "This is why I always say fuckwhiteveganism." At face value, I was already annoyed by the post, but out of curiosity, I decided to look up who the founders and owners were of Vegan Cuts. It turned out both the president and the CEO were an Indian-American couple, not white people. This asshole literally just assumed they were white because they did something he disagreed with, as if people of different colors can't also have different opinions from his.
By the time I went to their Instagram profile, the original post was down and they had already posted a desperate apology and plea for forgiveness, pandering to their audience to such an extreme degree that they basically said they were POC, but not as oppressed as other POC, downplaying the very real xenophobia and racism people like them face all over America, because according to the Oppression Olympics it isn't "as bad" as what other races are going though. I skimmed through the first hundred or so comments and most of them were pretty brutal. Many announcements by patrons that they were ending their subscriptions and unfollowing them, and many, many, many white people calling them a "racist company". They had officially been canceled, and there was of course no room for nuance; their immediate apology was certainly not good enough. It was a pretty remarkable situation: so many white people attacking two brown immigrants online on behalf of performative "anti-racist" outrage.
Something tells me these two vegans of color probably aren't racist, and probably weren't trying to declare their opposition to Black Lives Matter amidst nationwide protests against police brutality. Something tells me they aren't pro-Trump or "backing the blue" or trying to own SJWs. It is far more likely that they didn't know the phrase "all lives matter", which any decent person technically agrees with as a declaration without the added cultural context, was no longer allowed to be said under any circumstances, and that it no longer meant egalitarianism, but instead was a bad faith catchphrase used by closet racists to antagonize intersectionalists. I'm also assuming that the immigrants who own the place I work at are also clueless to this, rather than letting their customers know that they actually hate black people or whatever.
The internet and cancel culture seems to forget that not everyone is plugged into the bullshit culture that's been developed online across ideological cesspools like Tumblr and Twitter; that many people are genuinely unaware about whatever inane fringe issue they're championing or expressing performative outrage about, because their own lives just so happened to not guide them down those online rabbit holes. Benefit of the doubt is no longer offered to anyone, even members of the marginalized groups these people claim to be defending. Without a consciousness of or even openness to nuance, a clueless but well-intentioned "all lives matter" post is considered as vile as someone wearing a swastika t-shirt.
What does this accomplish besides alienating or even possibly repelling potential allies from your cause? Especially when they are scolded and called bad names without any chance of an actual dialog or learning experience? Is creating a subjective hierarchy of suffering and oppression the basis by which we measure injustice? Is it not actually disgusting, when you think about it, to compare suffering like a point system?
I've seen this happen with others terms and phrases. For example, I feel weary about openly labeling myself an "egalitarian", even though it is the most accurate and succinct descriptor of my beliefs, because that word has been co-opted in bad faith by Men's Rights Activists and their ilk to avoid calling themselves feminists. The same is true of atheism/anti-theism, too.
Anyway, we're doomed. Identity politics and cancel culture are a psyop job to ensure no significant unification of the working class ever takes place, and everyone's eaten it up because it's more instantly satisfying to "drag" or "cancel" someone than it is to patiently engage in discourse.
///
I wish I had her to come home to. Last year when we were living in a lady's basement, I loved coming home from work and exchanging annoying stories from our jobs, uniting in shit-talk, me telling her what nighttime critters I saw on the drive home, and cuddling with Sammy the cat together before falling asleep to Unsolved Mysteries. She was my best friend and confidante and teammate and I just miss her so much every single day.
///
I'm really into moniker graffiti and writers who have little characters they draw everywhere, particularly freight monikers, and I've been drawing a cutesy pigeon character and putting up stickers of him all over the country for a couple years now. My ex was always very supportive and telling me how much she loved him, and even developed her own moniker (a wasp), that we often drew next to each other. Publicly vandalizing private property in broad daylight was as fun as shoplifting, and I loved sharing that with her and seeing how much fun she thought it was to draw on everything.
After she left me, I eventually had to see messages between her and this dude from my city named Erik. She wanted to fuck him before we started seeing each other, and she wasted no time flirting with him on Instagram once leaving me, though he had already sent her suggestive DMs after a post she made showing off her butt while we were still together, which she responded to with a suggestive winky emoji. He also once, completely unprompted, asked her, "Do you like the taste of cum?" in the middle of a conversation about music, which she also enthusiastically answered. Men are disgusting, but if the other person wants to fuck them, certain behavior is acceptable.
Anyway, after he told her a completely fabricated story about me "snitching to the cops on my own brother and friends for doing graffiti" a long time ago (this literally never happened, but is one of many rumors about me in this small city), she went out of her way to ask him what he thought of my graffiti moniker, since he was also a graffiti writer. He just said, "I dunno, it's just a cartoon bird," or something neutral like that, and she then said, "I always thought it was cute as fuck, but sooooo fucking corny. It looked like a little girl drew it." It was the first time I'd ever seen her be mean or petty, about anyone. She was just always more fair, articulate, and mature, even when it came to shit-talk. It was really strange and disappointing.
Still, it absolutely crushed me, and I haven't drawn him anywhere since. I have hundreds of stickers I'll probably never put up anywhere. I also deleted the Instagram page I made for it to track where people found him around the country.
///
September 30th
The curse has been lifted by utter disgust.