Friday 7/31/20
And so wraps up another edition of the Week Game. There are many components to what feels like a burden of infinite weight, the weight of all of space. The large problems are the large problems, but the struggle is not helped by what often feels like a complete lack of belief from the people I do know. Very rarely does anyone say to me, "I believe you can do this, I believe you can impact the world to the good in a way that no one ever has, and you will." I knew someone named Sarah once, and all she'd talk about was that no one had ever been like me, and there was nothing like my work, nor would there ever be, and she couldn't fathom the monolithic forces I had to take on. But not once did she say, "You can do this, and you will."
My own sister doesn't say that to me. I notice she refuses to, and I wonder if she thinks I don't pick up on this. She'll qualify everything. I'll put things to her a certain way to see if she won't, but she does every single time. "The people who know you want to see you get what you deserve." That's rather different, isn't it? I had a friend once who, for a lot of years, would go on and on about how I was going to do this, have my unique impact, reap and reap and reap. But then he stopped. I don't know if was because it hadn't happened yet and he was like "Oh, shit, I shouldn't say that anymore." This takes a toll on me, because it feels like I need to prove every single last person wrong, there's no one in my corner in terms of belief in an outcome, when I think anyone who knows my work and who knows me should think, yes, you are that one person in history. If anyone was that, it's you, and it is. I think that's what people should fucking say to me. Instead there's this noncommittal passivity, and it hurts. It adds to everything else. It's like every single last bit of everything has to come from me, every last fucking thing.
I text people I know when I have a book out, and these fuckers won't even say a word. No one said anything about the WSJ op-ed yesterday. That's fucked up. That is royally fucking twisted. I know I do things like that all the time, but they don't say anything then either. I think what people want is to know I'm not dead, so they don't have to deal with that--not that they're going to care, or do anything right by my work, let alone what it would take to do right by my work, to truly make sure it gets out there, all of it--and then they view me as this paragon. They like knowing that the paragon exists. It gives them some kind of faith in humanity's potentiality. So long as they don't have to try and empathize with what I am dealing with and going through. They want the paragon to be out of sight and out of mind, to exist in theory and actuality, and to not be dead. I do what they could never do, that gives them the aforesaid greater faith in humanity, but better that I have to do it than they have to do it, and better yet if they don't have to really try to understand what this is like. While living very easy lives that they pretend aren't that easy, but they know are actually incredibly easy. There is concomitant guilt, too, that they don't work at all, or barely, and live as they do, and know what they know about me and how I live right now.
Which is all very selfish when you think about it. Most of them can't bother to offer any support, any expressed belief in the outcome I am seeking, and they won't even hit the motherfucking like button if I post something I wrote online or a cover of my new book on Instagram. Is that evil? Like, what the fuck is that? That's a conscious choice. Because every single person out there, when they do whatever, however shitty it is, but it's something they made, have the people in their life supporting that and pretending it's fucking wonderful. But you know what? If I post a photo of a drawing my kid's sister made, then people will hit the like button. Because it doesn't pertain to me, I just posted it. It's on my account. No one will show me jack shit worth of support. Aunts, uncles, cousins. They just won't. That's straight up how it is. I've accepted it. But it hurts unbelievably. I already have an industry that wants me dead, and has blacklisted me, put an embargo on coverage of my work, and loathes me all the more as I keep achieving, which, of course, I do, and I always fucking will until I get past these people, and then I'll achieve in larger ways.
As I've said, I have no friends, because friends don't act this way, and I don't really look at myself as having family, because I'm all alone. And as I've also said, I've never been liked. No one has ever liked me. If I was some idiotic load who knew nothing and wrote a shitty essay that someone's blog published once every ten months, then yeah, I'd have laurels coming out my ass from the people I know stuffing them there, because that shit is all "OMG!!!!!!!! SO BRILLIANT!!!!!!! So happy for you LOL" and people know that you can't post that with me. Not because I'm going to be like, "you're a fucking idiot," but because people want to impress me and measure up to something whereas with other people they just roll out that "OMG" crap.
People like people like themselves and are comfortable with people like themselves. I'm not going to be like you. I'm nice, I care, I help, and I help in ways that the other people someone knows does not, with my understanding, wisdom, and counsel, and I always do what I say, am a person of honor, my word, and principle, but we're not similar. They also usually find me terrifying and/or at the least, extremely intimidating, because of my mind. My focus, my work ethic, my productivity, my expertise. How much I fit into each day. That you can't do bullshit without me knowing it. I used to think those were good things to have, but they've left me so alone and so unloved. Despised. Maybe that will change, and those same qualities will bring about good things later, this is just something I have to find a way to endure right now so I can do what I believe I am here to do. That's what I try to figure out. Move towards. Bring about. The awful thing, too, is I get better and better and better every week, I feel my powers grow, and that removes me even more, creates more reasons for resentment, makes it harder yet to understand just what the hell I am. I keep expanding.
As for this week: there was that op-ed, there was the podcast, there was the radio interview, and I composed seven full short stories, which is the most I've ever composed in a week, or tied for the most, anyway. I did seven in I think it was the fall one week, and I may have at some other point as well, but I know did during this run of 230 stories or whatever the fuck it is now. I also, obviously, wrote all of these journal entries. And I covered fifty miles on foot and ran 2600 stairs. This coming week I must work much harder.
In the Common today I stopped to help a sausage vendor repair his pushcart. For a second I thought he was going to compensate me with a sausage, but instead he asked how I thought the Bruins would fare. We both had Dunkin' Donuts coffees. Such a Boston vignette. Kind of reminded me of that children's book, The Pushcart War.
