Never used to envy old people

Tuesday 6/2/26

Never used to envy old people, but I bet a state of advanced years is comforting if you aren’t dependent on anyone and able to live on your own terms. Sound enough of body and mind. Get the names of your grandkids right every time. Meet a friend for “a nice little lunch.” When frugality feels smart and fun instead of life and death. Good gut health and isolated cases of heartburn.

Life itself as a nice little lunch. With that special tea whose name you should make a note of so you can have it at home and crisp cloth napkins. The forty-four-year-old waiter who’d been an extra in a few films and knew how to make you feel young again. A compliment for your eyes. Yes, come to think of it, the eyes may still have it at that. If anything does, bound to be the eyes. Never to leave you until you do. Believable enough. That’s the real king: what you’re able to believe. Isn’t for nothing that they say tea tastes different depending on the cup it’s served in.

And so what if you’ve called your grandson Jackson by your son’s name of Jonathan often enough that he just rolls with it or you can barely remember how human touch feels and the loneliness is like some insect with its terrifying mandible of death and the pincer-as-dagger atop it that looks as if it’s been magnified a hundred times over in every photo eating its way out of your rib cage, at least you’re nearly done. Take your chances afterwards. After all, you did what you could, the best that you could. Should be fine, right?

Is it faith that restores and calms you? What’s that like? Faith in what? Is faith hope? Or is having hope an act of faith? Can there be one without the other? Which is stronger? Or is it which is crazier?

Or can you just be that miserable that you’ll try to believe anything that makes you hurt the smallest amount less?

Delusions. Lies. The more general the better. Then you’re able to beat your chest and clap your back as if that was the real reason why you had two hands. “I’m in there as part of the group! I’m covered!” you declare to yourself in order to feel less left out. Irrelevant. Gross. Worthless. Unloveable. Unimportant. Unheard. Unseen. Nonexistent. Undeserving. Worse.

It’s easier to project than to find or be found, so you go with the better odds. The bird you force into your hand instead of needing it to land. You squeeze it, feel its beak dig into your skin as the blood runs towards your wrist and you take the blood and paint whatever the fuck you want to paint on the whiteboard and say, “This is true! So says me! I drew that and you can’t deny its existence and the validity of mine! I count just as much as anyone! Look! There it is! There we are!”

I hate when I get like this. And how much longer it seems to last each time. The extending stages of a dreary hostile takeover until a state of permanence is achieved and I can’t go back to being a person who isn’t there anymore. It’s like those before and after photos of an outdoor location where a movie was shot. You’re skeptical the spot is the same. Even if there’s a mountain in the background. It isn’t as sharp or defined. Too rounded. And that’s a mountain and it was only fifty years.

I’d love to see someone else manage, though. Good luck to them. Good luck, lady. Fella. The village my sister says it takes to raise a kid “now more than ever” as she trundles off without them for another adult girls’ weekend at someone’s parents’ lake house upstate.

Hate it hate it hate it. Hate is not a word we use in this house, young lady. Hate it. Hate, hate, hate.

Who the hell am I at this point? Am I this? Some frazzled bitch who only shows her real face to herself. Sometimes. Doesn’t dare let it be seen by anyone. Maybe I’ve lost the ability to be anything else and now I’m just something out there. An uncountable number. Or maybe that ability doesn’t exist anymore as this thing that humans might have and instead it’s a matter of whether you know it and it’s far easier if you don’t.

It would be so much worse if the world is the problem instead of you. The ultimate nightmare. Because you could just end. You could go away. You could change. You could sacrifice yourself. The world can’t. You can’t banish the world. Compel it. Force it. Reason with it. Make as though you’re at the gym helping it with a spot on the bench press as you take turns inspiring each other to new personal bests. Come on. One more. You got this. The world can’t volunteer to give itself up for a greater good. And if it did, it’d be taking you with it anyway.

That's from "You're Probably Just Tired." It's what I've been working on today. Just unbelievable writing. Same as it's unbelievable that there's nothing you can do with it. I mean, would you look at that. Good God.

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