Issue #26 Sunday, Funday
Last night I dreamt I went back to my last library job and begged for forgiveness and thus for my job. In my dream, I found myself wandering around, up and down the slight hills, in the snow looking for a way to get back into the good graces of everyone. When I was not wandering around in the snow, I went up and down stairs in the campus'
pre-1920 houses to various departments looking for absolution and then I woke to find I had none.
So much desire and yes, some regret of a period when my life was indeed pretty charmed and now I feel the charm is not so much.
I remind myself it has almost been as long we've been away from Throbbing Manor, often now referred to as the Morris St. house, as we lived in it and I was working full time. So much to see now that if I had caught my mania earlier I would not, more than likely, found myself my current situation. There is not a time every day I am finding a few minutes to feel the emotional pain I have caused everyone, and the regret paralyzing with fear, anxiety, and dread that I will never be in as good of situation, emotionally or financially as I was all those years ago nor in a place where I was proud, despite my reluctance, of the work I was doing.
I struggle a lot with envying people who are living their best lives, as social media leads us to believe, and comparing it to my own. The consistency is doing me in but I find I cannot stop myself from those trailing thoughts or stalking those various people. Why am I not published best selling author / living in England / have an Ivy degree / have a kid and so on and so forth. I zone out on Twitter, Facebook, checking email, something rather than directly address these issues. I think to myself, "Okay. I am in a good place. I am with someone I love and who loves me back. I'm clothed, fed, and I have a home. I am better than most people and I need to not take this all for granted."
I should be grateful, and I feel that I'm grateful, but I remain haunted by these thoughts.
I frame success on whatever else is doing and not what I have done. If I am not a published best selling author / living in England / have an Ivy degree / have a kid and so on and so forth, I have made bad decisions that I cannot undo. I dwell on the reality my life is truly half over and why should I bother with the second half? Kate's man, K., was telling me over brunch a few weeks ago he may be 50 but fuck it, he's having fun. I wondered, "Why can't I be like this? Why is everything on some kind of timetable that will never pan out (except for death)."
(I do not have any ideation or desire to kill myself tho' I sound like I'm going to throw myself into the Ohio River at any moment.)
I think every day that passes is a day I can never get back. I am inching closer to death and what do I have as a legacy into the world? The entirety of my online journal is archived at https://archive.org/ and I fantasize I will be discovered in 100 years as a proto-grandmother of all things online blogging and my celebrity will be met then, which, I'm not going to lie, helps me relax. At least someone is paying attention.
TEH tells me to stop obsessing over the famous writer / friend from college / random person I have met online and just be. Just live. Just do. (I sound like a Nike ad.) I swallow his words and I try ever so hard to not feel obsessed or envy or depressed my life is not the way I want it to be but I cannot move forward to create a life of meaning and break these tight chains.
Lately, these thoughts have been front and center and I don't know why. My envious stalking of all of those I deem living perfect lives has inched up a notch and I get physically sick as I'm scurring around the interent looking up their websites/interviews/social media. Sometimes it's not even about my top 10 rather it is about someone randomly famous whose popped up on my radar because I read an interview / saw a movie / gazed at their picture and thought, "I wonder what is known about this person" and I spend hours down a rabbit hole and find now I know about their childhood dreams of being a ventriloquist and their favorite food is spaghetti. In the end, none of this matters. The information goes in, stays a few days, and then leaves. (TEH gets frustrated with me when we watch a movie and by the half-way point, I know the full story and the back story of the main actors.)
I think being envious of someone, to a degree, is normal. I don't think any of us can honestly admit at some point we didn't covet someone's thing/life /whatever but I'm ratcheting it up to a new level even more and I'm scared to death you will find me in five years sitting in a Lazy-boy and trashy magazines as my fortress while I eat dingdongs, weigh 600 pounds, and watch my stories. (The other me, the one TEH predicted 20 years ago, would be sitting at the end of the bar, voice raspy from all of the cigarettes and booze I've consumed, my hair dyed an unnatural color red, and wearing all of my jewels. My coat will be faux fur with moth holes hinder and yonder and I will be hitting on young men 40 years my junior. The funny thing? I inherited my mother's faux fur jacket when she died. It's at the cabin.)
Each day that passes feels like a day that is wasted. I shirk at the thought me from twenty years ago would be aghast at what I have become. Is this a drug issue? A mental issue? Something in-between? I don't even know how to personally diagnose this and get some kind of guide together to move the fuck on. Nowhere to begin. (Tho', the instant answer that formed was to cut off my access to the internet.) . This is not a "phase" happening, this has become very real and if something doesn't change soon, I will be sitting on my Lazy-boy, eating dingdongs, and watching my stories as people live out their lives, even fictional ones, while I gaze hungrily on.
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