Journal 4/9/15

I wonder when I'll stop feeling invisible. I feel like today was wasted. I was at work and I just kept thinking how long it will take to get out of debt working there. All I could see was years and years of work and barely living paycheck to paycheck. No fun allowed. Then I had to come home and click on some foreign blog talking about how we are all sinners and how we are always annoyed by a guilty conscience. I guess it's a feature and not a bug. It might be hyperbole but the more I think about it the more I've always felt shame and guilt starting as a young child. Now all of my negative emotions are just balled together and I can't tell which is which. Maybe I feel bad because I don't love L like she loves me. It could be that or it could be I've always felt guilty just for being alive. Hard to say. 

So up to this point whether it's creation or evolution I thought about what it took just to make me alive today. The thousands or maybe even billions of years of genetic filtering and events it took to create me. I looked back and thought there must have been at least one badass in my lineage I could look up to. Maybe I felt guilty for thinking that my biological father looked like a goober in his navy induction photo. That's funny. The guy went to war, played semi-pro football, and was a cop for a good many years, then became a carpenter and that's what I think of him. But I didn't see any of that. I saw the guy later in life who on the inside was probably beaten down and ended up drinking most of his life. As long as I've started I may as well tell it all and look like a complete ungrateful asshole. Maybe it would be different if I didn't feel like leftovers to my parents. Not having clean clothes to wear and not being given enough money to eat lunch at school. Being told to make my own lunches. Now I can't even remember if there was anything to make. Maybe there was and I was just lazy. Or maybe it was the fact I never got a good night's sleep since I couldn't breathe out of my nose and it took my parents until I was in junior high or high school to notice something was wrong. Being made fun of at school and never having anyone who wanted to be my friend. Being skinny and awkward and scared. Wishing so much that I had been born to different parents and to have what the other kids had. Maybe a new bike every now and then. Hell a bike period. I'm sure it seems like I'm a spoiled brat who didn't appreciate anything. I can't tell anymore. All that comes back are the negative feelings whenever I think about where I came from. Resenting other people for having talent and money and looks. Wishing I could catch and break and not feeling the need to medicate myself with drugs and alcohol. Feeling like it was all a setup from the beginning. There's no way I couldn't be a bad person or a sinner. God, maybe someone will see this and feel the exact same way.

According to my calculations is will take until August 2017 to be completely free of unsecured debt. This includes credit cards, lawyer fees, taxes, and utilities. Almost two and a half years. By then I'll be 47 years old. You can say, the time's gonna pass anyway right? But what are those two years going to look like? Will I finally be able to get my head above water or will I get dragged down once again into the dark hole of depression? The world is not a sympathetic place. Even if it were I probably wouldn't want any help because I would always be wondering what do they want in return? And before you put in your two cents I'm aware that some people think that what you think of other people is actually what you think of yourself. Am I always thinking of what I can get from other people? I can't say I don't think about it. I wouldn't know what people would say if you asked them that question about me. It's probably not something they would say but in some cases they might. I know I have all kinds of secret thoughts about people. Envious of what they have. They're ugly. They're stupid. I wish I could turn it all off and not have any thoughts about them. Maybe if I could do that I wouldn't think I was such a bad person. 

But you don't know my life! I hear myself saying this to myself all the time. You don't know me, you don't know why I'm like this! I have these imaginary conversations in my head. The things I want to say to people. And then I imagine their response. Then I think of what I think when I hear people complaining about their life. Stop whining. So that's what I tell myself. You made your bed lay in it. But! But! I was neglected! I wasn't loved! Don't you see? How can you be so cruel and tell me to just get over it. You didn't have it that bad there are lots of others who've had it worse. I didn't choose this I say. Yeah, but you chose to drink and drug and waste your money. You decided to chase whores. Chase women who didn't love you. Once you got them if they wanted you you didn't want them. You chose to accept anything you could get whether in was in life or love. Take any job that would have you instead of actually finding something you enjoy. Never having anything you really wanted to do. Having it robbed by thoughts of what's the point I'll never succeed anyway.

So, what have I actually followed up on? While at work today I started thinking that I need to focus on something to get me through the day. Something simple. Something enough to look forward to. You know what it was? I had to replace a burned out parking lamp on my car. That's it. The brake light had burned out on the driver's side and I found a replacement in the garage the other day. When I was replacing the brake light I removed the whole taillight assembly and saw that there was a spot for the marker light. I wasn't sure if the lens was just reflective but I saw the bulb and took it out. It was obviously not working as it had that cloudy look that happens when bulbs burn out. I looked in the glove box of my other car thinking I might have a spare. I did, so I replaced the marker bulb. I couldn't find one for the other side as it was out also so that's what I thought of today to look forward to. Changing a marker bulb on the rear of my car. Possibly one of the most insignificant events in life. But I needed to change it. Just to have something that I could look at and say, "that looks better now that I have the lights working." I will often do that with small things. Things that are in the span of eternity, meaningless. And I'll look back and just look at what I've done. I probably looked at the taillight for five minutes just to see the difference. I don't know if this means anything. It's minutiae. It's even less than minutiae. But it's something I do. Maybe just to have a sense of completion. Or making things whole. Making things work like they should. I carry a list of these things in my mind. Because I think maybe it I get all these little jobs done then I can be happy. There won't be anything left to do and I can finally relax. The thing is there is always something left undone. Some thing go undone for years. I tried to get a title for an abandoned car on my property. Filed papers with the court and everything. They stymied me. Said they didn't have jurisdiction. Dismissed the case. Said I should hire a lawyer and would probably have to file probate. Do I have the money to hire a lawyer? No. Especially for something that on the best day might be worth $5000. It might end up costing that to get a lawyer. So, what should I do? The car is still sitting there.

That's not the real me I tell myself. Those things I did in the past were just what I had to do to survive. Deep down I'm really a superhero. I just got a bad rap and if I could get people to see the real me underneath then things would change. I'm not the sum total of my actions. I'm not what I look like on paper. I had someone say that to me, "you know what you look like on paper." Maybe I do. Maybe despite all my ranting and raving and melancholy I'm just a small little man angry at the world. But maybe I can be something more. Maybe I can make changes and I won't be haunted constantly by the image I think people have of me. The big THEY that are out there. You know who they are. The mysterious THEY that we always compare ourselves to.

I had a dream tonight when I laid down after work to tape a nap. I'd run into my boyhood hero and was trying to get him to hang around so I could find his number and send him a text message so we could hang out later. He was getting more and more impatient as I tried to find the number in my phone and I was getting more and more desperate for him not to leave. I finally found it and sent him a message. He left and I had the impression that he might show up but he made every effort to show that he didn't want to be bothered. Then I was in the water at the beach and there was a ship next to me and some voice was telling me that it was time to let that ship go. It was filled with all the negative stuff. It reminded me of the Titanic. As I was sitting in the water I had a glass in my hand for some reason and was filling it up and pouring it out again and again. As I was doing this I saw another ship and remembered that I had booked a vacation and had forgotten about it. I swam over to the ship and saw people inside mingling at the bar. I went in and for some reason the bar was still part of the ocean and I was wading around. I wanted to get a diet coke but didn't want to stand up because I was only in my underwear. A pair of white boxers. As some point I just said to myself that nobody would care so I stood up and asked the bartender where I could get a diet coke. He pointed to a cooler with cans in it. There were plenty of cokes and there was some beer which when I looked at the label made me kind of laugh to myself but I can't remember what kind of beer it was. I finally found a diet coke and opened it up to drink it. I asked the bartender where the lobby was because I needed to check in for my trip. He started to tell me but said he could check me in right there. For some reason I said no that's ok I can do it in the lobby. Then I thought about it for a minute and said ok I'll just check in here. As I was standing at the bar I looked out the big picture windows and saw Loretta jogging past the bar. Now the water outside had turned to land because she was able to jog on it. As she is jogging past I notice that she was still in very good shape and may have even had a six pack. She was some sort of mix of Angelina Jolie and Loretta. I couldn't tell which was which. As she jogged by she started to stop like she sensed something. She may have seen me in her peripheral vision and the thought made her stop and think. As she peered back into the bar she squinted her eyes and it was a look of recognition. The kind of look you have when your vision can't quite see but you brain knows it's the person you're looking at. She walks over to the bar and now has on a sheer pink gown like some kind of roman. Before she had on jogging clothes. Spandex shorts and top. She says to me "So, your heart is broken?" I reply "So, that's where we're gonna start now?" I can't remember the immediate words after that but then she says something like "so we'll do this when you meet my daughter." I said to her "why would I meet your daughter?" and just looked at her. She had on bubble sunglasses now and we just looked at each other for a few seconds after I asked her that question. Kind of like it was obvious to both of us why I would meet her daughter and me asking her that question just put her on pause. Was it the question of if things were different that could have been my daughter. I think I woke up after that so there would be no meeting.