[I debated whether or not to post this one for a while. I wrote this on the 10th but decided to post it on the 19th.]
If, for whatever reason, you've found this entry and feel inclined to read it, please know that what is written beyond this point is deeply personal and going to delve into heavy, possibly distressing topics that aren't intended for casual consumption or entertainment. This is more of a personal vent piece about tangentially related things that have bothered me for a long time, and that I wish to write about for myself. It's not really meant for anyone else, but it's here on the internet, regardless.
It's late, and I should probably go to bed. My eyes are exhausted from staring at screens all day.
My body feels like it could crash at any moment but my mind is overactive (again.)(as usual.)
Not to sound pretentious in my own blog/journal/whatever this is, but I've been thinking a lot about time lately.
(or, to be more honest, I think about it quite often)
Here are a couple tangentially related thoughts:
1.
I'm getting older. My parents are getting older. My friends are getting older.
The thought of my parents getting older is the thing that's really been eating at me the most, though.
I (love? hate? live in fear of? want to escape? want to rekindle my relationship with?) my parents.
I cannot broadly paint them as the villains of my life nor can I fully forgive them for the parts of me that they've damaged.
But they're getting older. And I feel this deep, despairing pit somewhere inside of me as I realize that my time to know them is limited.
My grandparents passed away over the last few years. I barely knew them, as my parents had rocky relationships with them.
My mom was inconsolable over her mother's passing and equally so when her father died.
But I also remember her expressing a deep relief over their deaths, too. And I think it will be similar for me, whenever that happens.
I hate the cyclical nature of these things, but it's something I'm fixated on, as well.
The way my grandfather treated my mother and how it mirrored the way my mother treated me.
I wanted to rip my skin off the day I got the nerve to confront my mother about her behavior.
Once she stopped crying she said that someday I'd have someone in my life that I'd treat that way, too.
2.
There was a long stretch of time that I wanted to kill myself. To this day it feels like I'm living on some kind of borrowed time.
Some facts:
I was born (unexpectedly, ironically enough) on April Fool's Day, 3 minutes to midnight of April 2nd.
My mom wanted to abort me, but changed her mind in the clinic parking lot.
She confessed that to me in the middle of a heated argument, and said she wished she could take it back.
(We were in the car driving down I-95 somewhere in Florida. The roads were flat and lined with those monotonous pine trees, Spanish Moss and palm fronds. She kept saying "please say something" as I spent a while staring out the window trying to figure out what I even COULD say to that. "Maybe you should have?" "That explains a lot?")
My entire family is heavily Catholic. (Though I identify as an atheist, now. Or "I was raised Catholic".)
My mom inherited an antique cabinet from a grandmother she hated.
She calls it the 'dirty bastard' cabinet. It's had a spot next to my parent's dining table for as long as I've been alive.
The name comes from how that grandmother used to her a "dirty bastard", as the time between her birthday and her parents' wedding didn't line up quite right.
My parents stopped attending the local church shortly after valentines day in 2014.
There was some sort of a game for the parents in the church where they were writing down the dates of certain sacrements and the birthdays of their children.
Supposedly some of the other church-members noticed some discrepencies between the dates. (Wedding. My birthday.)
They weren't kicked out, but my mom said things weren't quite the same once other people knew. Catholics are really weird about this sort of thing.
(As though they didn't know the skeletons in everyone else's closets.)
Needless to say, it's a bit of an in-joke that I'm going to inherit the 'dirty bastard' cabinet, as well. Specifically, out of spite. "I want you to have it just to keep pissing her off in the grave."
Around 2009 I started feeling like I wanted to die. I was just about 13 years old.
The circumstances of that are complicated, but deal with being heavily closeted in the deep south, having an overbearing and unstable family life, feeling like an outsider, feeling like I had no future and would never 'escape' and just a general sense of despair. Or at least as much despair as a teenager is capable of.
At some point in high school, I set a date and started drafting notes and decided there wasn't much point in living past 18.
I lived past 18 and graduated high school.
I'm 26 as of writing this. So far I've survived everything thrown at me and will likely continue to survive it for some time.
Despite that, to this day, it feels like I'm floundering in a place I wasn't supposed to make it to.
There were some darker, rockier patches in my 20's where I seriously started considering it again, and it's weird living with this thing that wants me dead in the back of my mind. It's not actively trying to kill me. More like a gentle reminder whenever things get unpleasant. "That's an option, right? Nah, not yet."
Some part of me that still occasionally thinks my existence was some kind of mistake or cosmic joke that wasn't supposed to live past some indistinct turning point in my life. "Are you even supposed to be here?"
Like I'm living long past my expiration date and at this point just have to keep improvising.
Things aren't bad now, and I find a lot of comfort in optimism and kindness. I think I'm happier with my life than I ever have been until now.
Life is falling together for the most part, and I've been making things work one way or another.
Now it feels like I'm trying to play catch-up for all the time I missed by being miserable and isolated.