Oh yay, it’s time to do this one again.
I don’t want to but I don’t feel like I have a choice.
So here goes : oh no, I just realized that I have gone back to feeling like there is something I am supposed to be doing!
When we all know my life is completely without purpose or meaning!
Wow, what a relief. Surely I will never have to realize this again!
Seventh time’s the charm, am I right?
Once again, I am back at this same stupid crossroads where I “free” myself by telling myself that there is nothing I am supposed to be doing and therefore my life is entirely my own to use for my own enjoyment and I don’t need to flee this constant sense of failure by retreating into video games etc. etc. and so on.
After all, you can’t fail if nobody ever expected anything of you in the first place!
Honestly, I just want a more pleasant and satisfying life. One where I have a job that pays my bills so I am not a burden on people any more. One where I have meaningful things to do with my time instead of just burning down the days staying distracted but not engaged in life.
One where I have love, and the respect of my peers, and life outside the home. One where I am connected to a wider community. One where I can truly shine as I use my gifts to make things that make people happy.
One where there is some kind of point to my being alive.
One where I actually enjoy life instead of merely enduring it. One where I have lots of things to look forward to instead of seeing my future as a featureless grey cloud – and that’s the positive interpretation.
The negative one does not bear thinking on.
Let’s just say it involves tubes. And death.
One where life seems like a good thing to me, overall.
Yeah. That’s what I want.
And I know it is possible. I can feel the possibility within my soul, yearning and striving to get out from all the toxins and debris and live free and clear and clean at last.
But there’s a lot of shit I got to burn first. Fire cleanses all, after all.
Wait, I think I was… talking… about something, right?
I vaguely recall a…. topic….
Oh right. That old “supposed to be doing” trope.
What I am getting at is that there is clearly no point in telling myself that I will now be free of this sense of constant failure because it’s just going to come back again until I actually replace it with something better.
Mental health cannot be achieved via fiat.
Ya kinda gotta do the work, too.
And it serves its purpose as a kind of catch-all replacement for an actual sense of purpose and direction in my life.
I might not know what it is I am supposed to be doing, but I know there’s something, by gum, and that means my life isn’t as meaningless as it seems.
Meaningless. Pointless. Superfluous. Unnecessary. Unneeded. Unwanted. Unwelcome.
I think I better go lay down now.
More after the break.
I remember Larry
Probably should have done this Sunday, which was Father’s Day, but whatever.
This was my first Father’s Day without a father. My father, the late Larry Donald Bertrand, died last year, and I miss him.
Even though he was a short-tempered prick of whom I was mostly afraid as a child and whose raging abuse attacks at the dinner table scarred my childhood and whose selfish and cowardly decision to take early retirement rather than stand up to his boss Ian absolutely wrecked my life by denying me the second half of my college education AND the only good friend group I’d ever had.
Despite all that, and a lot more, I miss him.
Because warts and all, he was my Dad. The only one I will ever have. He might not have been a very good one – I’d give him a C+ at most – he was still that man in my life and I miss him because I loved him despite himself.
Besides, loving and missing a parent is not about their qualifications. It’s not a judgment call. Saying you miss them and loved them doesn’t mean you are saying you approve of them, think they were good people, take back anything you ever said to them, or even that you forgive them for a single god damned thing.
All it means is that you recognize that, like it or not, this person is a big part of who you are right now, and now that they have passed on, that part of you has died as well, and the pain that brings is called grief, and the process of dealing with it is called mourning.
And I mourn my dear old Dad.
Plus, as he would quite eagerly tell you himself if he were still around, we could have done a lot worse. Yeah, I had a lousy childhood and my adult life has been a wreck because of him, but compared to his father, who was SATAN, he was Ward Cleaver.
He didn’t beat us, or molest us, or spend all the grocery money chasing women and getting drunk, or get in trouble with the law so frequently that they rarely lived in the same place two years in a row.
Plus I have read, as have we all, stories of OPP (Other People’s Parents) who are nightmare garbage people who make any of our parents look like saints.
So again, could have done worse.
And regardless of all that, he was still my Dad. I loved him and I miss him and I wish he was still around so I could watch the news with him and argue with him and listen to him tell stories of his youth.
He might not have been a great Dad, but he was my Dad, and I wish he was still here.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.