Always alone

Thursday 9/24/26

I know that I will always be alone. I can't conceive of how I possibly couldn't be. When I say alone, I mean in every sense. I have loved only one person romantically in my life. Truly loved. That was the person I was married to. I often wish I was the person I am now earlier in my life. I will wonder what difference that might have made in this regard. It's a bad way--or a good way, I suppose, depending on how you look at it--to torture myself. Would things have been different?

But I also know what that person did. What they showed themselves to be capable of. I didn't know them in any other part of their life. I only knew them in the context of us, for as long as I did. Rationally I know that a person who does what that person did is what they are. And what that is isn't good. To say the least. But then I also think about how there are things in people that never come out, true things, things that are fundamental to them, as much a part of them as anything, because of how everything else is going, proceeding. And then those people are seen as something they're not, but which appears to be what they are, including by those, or the one, sharing a life with them.

In the romantic capacity, this was the lone person I've known in that regard who had an intelligence I'd need, if little to say and no real knowledge of anything, and who I found beautiful beyond anyone else. It's something I can't ever see myself getting over for many reasons. I don't see how one even gets over that being done to you anyway. That part of it.

One of the very worst aspects of my life that is worse than being in hell, which is a qualifier I make because it's something I've thought about a lot, and because I know what this is, is that no one who has ever professed to care about me a great deal has ever faced the reality of my situation with me. They have just said it would all work out wonderfully. Riches, fame, glory, etc. etc.

And there was no way. I wanted to be seen. This to be seen for what it is. You can have the best work a human has ever created. You can have the best anything there has ever been. It can be what the world needs most. What would do the most good in the world. And it doesn't matter. That's not how the world works.

There's no "breaking through" with publishing. That's not a real thing. You have two systems. You have a publishing system, and you have a world system. The most one can be is touted, all that bullshit, in the publishing system, by being a bad person and a bad writer. By being one of them. What they deem as one of them. There's nothing good about your or your work if you're one of them. Then, you live this lie. That you're important, that you matter, that your work matters. Your work isn't even read by the people in the system praising it/you. None of that is real.

But these are simple and bad people, insecure people, shallow people, delusional people. They aren't pursuers of truth. They will make of what they have, what they've been given, how they're talked about by people exactly the same as they are, this thing, all these things, that it isn't. But it has no more bearing on anything, no more resonance, no more readers, than that thing that never got written by that person who'd never read so much as a set of words longer than a social media post.

Then you have the world. And the world doesn't read. It can't read. People are incapable of it. They won't do it. If they had to--like they were forced--they wouldn't understand what they just read. There isn't anything they'd rather do less of than read. There's no reaching the world. There isn't a world to reach, really.

I have always known these things. I have lived these things. So why did I keep trying like I did? Why do I? For a miracle. And also because I know that what I do isn't close to what any human being has ever been able to do or will ever do. That it's more than human in real ways. Fully human, and more than human. It's not writing. It's not art. It's beyond that. And maybe, somehow, because that was true, these other things, true as they are, would be miraculously gotten around, because that someone could do this work, create these things, was already a miracle at the most miraculous level. And I didn't want to live in a world where I had to act--that is, not try and see this through--where that miracle of miracles wouldn't mean a single damn thing. Couldn't do a single damn thing. But it's hard to say that's not the truth. It may be incredibly stupid to say it. And selfish, like being in denial.

That's how the person I was married to handled it. And someone else I knew for some thirty years. It was easier to tell me how awesome it'd all be and how awesome everything would be for me. What I wanted more than anything from them, what I needed, or from anyone, was someone to face this with me. Not a single person ever has. To be seen, to be heard, and then we could go from there. "Okay, this is the situation, this is real. Now what?" Even my mother. "I believe." But it's not about believing in me. The work. That has nothing to do with it.

Moving on. I spent Tuesday night working on "Fitty." The first section again. It is seven-years-in-the-making, really, at this point, this story. The amount of work that goes into every single word. You can't give a single word away. Every word has to be contributing to the maximum degree. You think about people's ideas of writing, all of these millions of people lying and calling themselves writers because why the fuck not, having no clue what it means, what writing can be. People with their AI.

And here I am, doing what I'm doing, on a story that seven years ago was already something no one could come anywhere close to. Anyone or anything. And with what I just said above. There are I am. Deep into another night, or in the earliest moments of the morning, times of the day that people would never consider a time to be starting your day, working on this story or another. Until it's done. Until no person, no otherworldly being, could make it any better.

Arrived yesterday at the Bunker Hill Monument and took in what a beautiful first full day of autumn it was. You couldn't ask for anything better, weather-wise. I had thought about doing another week of significant stair volume, but decided instead that trying to improve my pace would be better. It's almost like there's distance running in the Monument, and speed running, and I'd like to improve at doing both at the same time.

A friendly ranger greeted me by asking if I'd be setting the record again, to whom I replied saying that we'd let that sit for a while. I had no lingering effects from all these stairs just walking around, but I did feel it a bit in my calves while going up and down the Monument yesterday. As if there was a kind of muscle-based hangover. I also got this cramp in my back on the left side at the lung level, which made it somewhat harder to breathe. I did okay, though, running five circuits in roughly twenty-seven minutes, trying to push that pace. As I departed, the same ranger said, "Quick one today." Ranger raillery.

I like the feel of the cool air. The end of the humidity. The sound of the trees and the leaves now. The leaves on the branches have a different sound than a couple weeks before. They may still be green, but they know the time that has come. There's more knowledge in autumn. More knowledge to be had. For a leaf, for a person. Wiser variants. I know that I must try not to give in. Try to do better. Much better. With my work, my commitment and focus, the person I want to be, even if being that person means you will have no one in this world.

They don't tell you that. You're a kid, you're in school, and the teachers say, be the best person you can be, and learn everything you can learn. But the price you end up paying...it's just total pain and aloneness. No hope. I am what happens when you take those instructions to their furthest point. It's only going to get worse. I think about riding around in the car up in Rockport with Molly, as she's telling me that very soon things will be so amazing, and I'll have this and that and that and this.

And I always knew. I shared that knowledge. That evidence. And no one would ever face it with me. The last of those car rides was in 2012. I was not wrong. I knew exactly what I was saying, and how things are, the entire time. It wasn't that I wasn't clear. It wasn't that the truth wasn't plain to see. It was that no one would accept that and face it with me. Because it was easier for them not to. Or that's how they always viewed it. To have me pay more of a price because they wouldn't say, "Okay, that's how it is, what now? How do we see you through?"