A Rational Solution To An Irrational Problem

I figured I’d blog today as the time is in abundance. I am trying to figure out a way to do so in a way though that is constructive. I wonder how, at this moment in time, constructive anything I do or have done is. So let me instead just vomit me all over anyone who still reads this drivel.  No 'ha ha's', no memes, no lyrics, no reviews.  Just me.


The Podcast is over. I am sorry to those of you enjoyed it. Worse yet Dave and I are no longer friends/Friends or anything else. I am sorry to David that things happened the way that they did/do. Things just came to a logger head and it just fell apart. Life sometimes happens this way.

There is this strange dynamic I’ve found where in the end everything and everyone goes away. I might push them away, hell I might throw them off a building, or circumstance, or priorities, or time, or distance, etc. push us in different directions. The constant is at the end I am left feeling profoundly alone.

Maybe on some subconscious level that’s what I want or feel I’ve earned. I’ve used this place as a sounding board for how I think and feel about relationships and my own shortcomings since I started writing this blog. I usually try and process through what I’m thinking and sometimes feeling in the hopes that I’ll come to a better conclusion than the maelstrom that is in my head. Perhaps I’m looking to focus an unfocused mind, I don’t even know anymore.

I am constantly ‘aware’ of or trying desperately not to be my father. There were/are parts that I admire, miss, love(d), but I fear that raging illness that he had buried inside him. Those, however, are not meant to short change or hide my own shortcomings, they are many. I just think that the pre-disposition that is locked in my genes and my upbringing isn’t as ‘locked’ up as I’d like to pretend. The last 24 hours have been like looking in that mirror and seeing him staring back at me. That stare has exhausted me.

You win life.

I can’t keep swinging away at nothing but phantoms. I chase off, destroy, dismantle, over analyze, etc. so many things, people, and relationships in my life. It seems like I can’t help but see the puzzle in everything and in turn fail to escape the irresistible grasp of my mind’s need to pull it apart.

I am unsure why I feel this need to do this thing I do. Maybe I’m trying to stave off this ‘thing’ that I can’t name and so utterly loathe inside myself. There are huge chunks of time where I think I have my shit together, and I feel like I’m moving towards being someone or something better, but let’s be honest I’m not. I’m not when I make these types of errors in judgment. I’m not when these types of things happen.

The worst wounds we suffer are those we inflict on ourselves. My ability to do this is unparalleled. I should seriously win a medal for it. I am happy that I have the few folks in my life that I have yet to chase away. Operative word is ‘yet’. I am afraid of very few things in life, but I am truly terrified by the prospect of turning into my father and putting Cassandra in the role of my mother.

Let’s face it he and I look alike, we sound alike, our humor, etc. it is all the same. I watched in his life as he slowly and steadily dismantled ALL of his relationships in some sort of paranoid bi-polar spiral. Until he only had those left who struggled with him out of uncompromising love or obligation. I do not want this.

This is not a ‘woe is me’, this is not an ‘emo phase’, this just is. This is what I think about daily, this is me pulling back the curtain on the ‘Great & Secret Show’. I am unhappy and I am very unsure how to process it in any other way that doesn’t involve doing something unhealthy to excess. I do want to break things, I want to fight someone, I want to drink, I want to cut, and I want to do all these things that do nothing but feed the beast.

And that would be beyond counterproductive, it would be an admission that any success or progress I have made towards being something other than what I fear has utterly failed. The funniest part about that is I refuse to give the rest of the world the satisfaction of enjoying a public implosion. That might be the only reason I’m able to even write this right now.

How pathetic is that? I’m going to keep all that stuffed down and try to sort it out, not because it’s healthier that way, but out of spite. I don’t think that says anything flattering about that which I truly am. The nature of my personality, my feelings towards others, etc. apparently are a pretty and finely crafted veneer created to fool so many, myself included.

Underneath it all I’m still who and what I’ve always been, I’m still my father’s son. I guess we don’t get to escape our ‘default’ setting. I’m still petulant, still angry, still desiring approval, still hurt, still headstrong, still not as smart as I think I am, still honest, still loyal, still capable of “incredible mirth and terrible melancholies”, and still trying to figure this shit out. No matter how many times I Wiley E. Coyote out off a cliff I’ll keep in mind that tomorrow is another day to try and get it right. I will wake up, put my pants on one leg at a time, and make some new cluster-fuck out of my existence.

That might be my one and only saving grace. I try. In my own twisted way, I always try. On my tombstone it should say, “Dude tried.” Even when I’ve done so in the dumbest most self-destructive way possible, I’m always trying.

Quitting is not an option. Lord knows that at times I wish it was. But you don’t get to quit life without leaving a trail of horror in your wake. I am a lot of things, but I am not someone who wishes to leave that to others. So I trudge on, slowly and unrelentingly onwards.

I’ll never be the thing or person I aspire to be. That person can’t really exist in reality. I can only be me. The lesson I’ve learned today is I can never hope or try to make or want or expect someone else to be who I think they should be. It is profoundly unfair. I wouldn’t want someone else to begrudge me my ‘rough edges’ so for me to do the same is disingenuous. The worst part about that is I know I’m capable of it, have done it before, and will most likely do it again. All I can do is try not to.

As sad, as hurt, and as angry as I was last night and today I cannot concentrate on what is already done. And although I’d love to, I can’t control other people, their feelings, thoughts, decisions, emotions, lives, etc. All I can do is stare at that dark, familiar reflection, deal with what I’ve helped wrought, and move forward.

Always forward.

So today marks that first step into the next unknown. Tonight I’ll grieve or whatever it is I do, and tomorrow I’ll get up and start again. I’ll try and rebuild what I helped tear down. I’ll hopefully find some insight into how I can easily make a mess of things. And if I’m lucky I won’t make this particular and devastatingly costly error again.

I will most likely make some type of new spectacular error, thus is life.