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Erit of Eastcris
Low-Rent Poet
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2014
- Location
- Elsweyr (California)
One's diction and cadence is, at many levels, influenced by their mentality and mood in the given moment. For most this effect isn't often prevalent or altogether obvious, but someone like me who changes states seemingly at the drop of a hat can make for... observable results.
Case in point, whenever the wind picks up and splays my hair out like a demented octopus, my usual response is grumbling and swearing. This afternoon it was variations of "stop picking on me," because I had—and just hours later am shaking off—a victimized mindset; I felt weary and put-upon and not altogether in control of much of anything, even where I was going ultimately despite moving under nothing but my own power and desire to go to one particular place instead of one of the alternatives. I had that mindset because dealing with bureaucracy has a habit of making one feel that way, like you don't have any control or choice in the matter, that trying to act of your own volition will be met with failure and reprisal. I don't know if that's intentional, it probably is, but I don't... honestly care, because that isn't the point of this entry.
... Honestly, I don't know what the point of this entry really is. It had one, hours ago when the notion to write it came into my head, but that faded like a dream within minutes and left only a directionless desire to write something, to put my thoughts down somewhere so that I can stop carrying them, even though I know my mind doesn't work like that. Perhaps it's simply that my current stream of consciousness is something I'm... "scared," of experiencing entirely alone. That itself isn't very unusual, not if I account for my entire lifespan rather than just recent months, but having the motivation to do something about it is new. I guess that's as good a way of putting it as any other, since this is an instance where the definite nature of language breaks down.
I've been internally considering on manners and consequences of suicide, the past few weeks. Not in the sense that I wish to end my own life—not anymore and simultaneously not yet, at any rate—but more in a demented sort of thought experiment. Wondering what the last sensation I experienced would be, whether it would succeed or fail, what I would have to deal withif when the attempt failed. I keep coming back to this imagined scene of myself waking up strapped to a gurney, and my "dear" sister standing at the bedside, where she proceeds to berate me for being selfish and inconsiderate for just wanting this decades-long trainwreck to finally stop doing what it does to me. Harping on and on about what she has to deal with and what she needs and her problems, because an empathy deficit runs in our family. The difference is that I can accept that I'm a bit of a monster, rather than desperately trying to make it all look virtuous.
Inevitably, the me in this imagined scenario snaps and finally begins to scream all the things I've wanted to tell her for a very long time, now. All of it boils down to our mother's death and my sister's subsequent litany of failings not being my fault. Ultimately just repeating, at the top of my lungs, until I'm turning blue in the face, "You are not my fucking fault!"
She doesn't understand, in the dream. She wouldn't understand in person, either; it's a conversation I've had with her in more civil terms and polite settings, absent the anger and frustration and raging grief clouding the words that would give her the excuse to dismiss it all. She's older than me, so clearly she knows better, and anything I say is just the rantings of a child ignorant of the ways of the world. Somewhere in that train of logic she gets it in her head that I'm her child.
I'm a bit too willing to lay most of my life's woes at the feet of that solitary bramble patch, but that would only be cathartic, not correct. Most of my life's woes stem from my being too slow and too stupid to hold down a job—or, over this past year, indeed even get one. People who knew me in school will tell you I'm intelligent and talented and can do great things; they're wrong, of course, because they've succeeded in life and have most likely graduated college or some trade school by now, most of them are in long-lasting and fulfilling relationships and work jobs that, if not perfect, are adequate.
Not me. Not this me, whose one real relationship broke down under the weight of my ex's insecurities and my inability to address them, who scrapes by on the charity of others and government aid programs, not me who couldn't even figure out how to navigate the community college website to arrange a good curriculum. Most of that lot did better than me, who can only hope for the pity of those more competent at the things in life that mean anything. The only thing I can claim from all this is insight to the depths of human pettiness, and that won't help me with anything. Not unless the next Reich wants advisers.
Whoever ends up reading this will probably interpret it as a cry for help, or as a spoiled child's demand for pity and attention. Maybe it is, I don't know anymore. Honestly, of late I've spent my days too tired to care; I'm more preoccupied trying to get enough to eat and trying to get in as little trouble as possible. Trying to find the hope and will to keep looking for a way out of this mess I've spent the better part of three years in. Trying to get enough sleep when the weather invites all the mosquitoes out to play and I can't sleep anywhere free of them.
At least I can still try all those things. If I ever can't... I guess I'm scared of what that would mean.
The library's closing now, and I've a long walk before I can lay down and rest for the night. I'll wake up tomorrow and work on stuff more, expecting a call for another interview from the government machine regarding my social benefits. Hopefully if they go through my food budget can renew the next day—I messed up and don't have anything to eat until it does.
Maybe, between all of that, something will start changing things.
I guess I can hope a little, after all.
Case in point, whenever the wind picks up and splays my hair out like a demented octopus, my usual response is grumbling and swearing. This afternoon it was variations of "stop picking on me," because I had—and just hours later am shaking off—a victimized mindset; I felt weary and put-upon and not altogether in control of much of anything, even where I was going ultimately despite moving under nothing but my own power and desire to go to one particular place instead of one of the alternatives. I had that mindset because dealing with bureaucracy has a habit of making one feel that way, like you don't have any control or choice in the matter, that trying to act of your own volition will be met with failure and reprisal. I don't know if that's intentional, it probably is, but I don't... honestly care, because that isn't the point of this entry.
... Honestly, I don't know what the point of this entry really is. It had one, hours ago when the notion to write it came into my head, but that faded like a dream within minutes and left only a directionless desire to write something, to put my thoughts down somewhere so that I can stop carrying them, even though I know my mind doesn't work like that. Perhaps it's simply that my current stream of consciousness is something I'm... "scared," of experiencing entirely alone. That itself isn't very unusual, not if I account for my entire lifespan rather than just recent months, but having the motivation to do something about it is new. I guess that's as good a way of putting it as any other, since this is an instance where the definite nature of language breaks down.
I've been internally considering on manners and consequences of suicide, the past few weeks. Not in the sense that I wish to end my own life—not anymore and simultaneously not yet, at any rate—but more in a demented sort of thought experiment. Wondering what the last sensation I experienced would be, whether it would succeed or fail, what I would have to deal with
Inevitably, the me in this imagined scenario snaps and finally begins to scream all the things I've wanted to tell her for a very long time, now. All of it boils down to our mother's death and my sister's subsequent litany of failings not being my fault. Ultimately just repeating, at the top of my lungs, until I'm turning blue in the face, "You are not my fucking fault!"
She doesn't understand, in the dream. She wouldn't understand in person, either; it's a conversation I've had with her in more civil terms and polite settings, absent the anger and frustration and raging grief clouding the words that would give her the excuse to dismiss it all. She's older than me, so clearly she knows better, and anything I say is just the rantings of a child ignorant of the ways of the world. Somewhere in that train of logic she gets it in her head that I'm her child.
I'm a bit too willing to lay most of my life's woes at the feet of that solitary bramble patch, but that would only be cathartic, not correct. Most of my life's woes stem from my being too slow and too stupid to hold down a job—or, over this past year, indeed even get one. People who knew me in school will tell you I'm intelligent and talented and can do great things; they're wrong, of course, because they've succeeded in life and have most likely graduated college or some trade school by now, most of them are in long-lasting and fulfilling relationships and work jobs that, if not perfect, are adequate.
Not me. Not this me, whose one real relationship broke down under the weight of my ex's insecurities and my inability to address them, who scrapes by on the charity of others and government aid programs, not me who couldn't even figure out how to navigate the community college website to arrange a good curriculum. Most of that lot did better than me, who can only hope for the pity of those more competent at the things in life that mean anything. The only thing I can claim from all this is insight to the depths of human pettiness, and that won't help me with anything. Not unless the next Reich wants advisers.
Whoever ends up reading this will probably interpret it as a cry for help, or as a spoiled child's demand for pity and attention. Maybe it is, I don't know anymore. Honestly, of late I've spent my days too tired to care; I'm more preoccupied trying to get enough to eat and trying to get in as little trouble as possible. Trying to find the hope and will to keep looking for a way out of this mess I've spent the better part of three years in. Trying to get enough sleep when the weather invites all the mosquitoes out to play and I can't sleep anywhere free of them.
At least I can still try all those things. If I ever can't... I guess I'm scared of what that would mean.
The library's closing now, and I've a long walk before I can lay down and rest for the night. I'll wake up tomorrow and work on stuff more, expecting a call for another interview from the government machine regarding my social benefits. Hopefully if they go through my food budget can renew the next day—I messed up and don't have anything to eat until it does.
Maybe, between all of that, something will start changing things.
I guess I can hope a little, after all.