Writing down my thoughts today is a small attempt to get back to some sort of normality of my personal being. We have created quite an oppressive world. One of which, and I am not alone, that I am perticularily subject to, if I'm not careful. I've never been one to be careful.
Oh yes, the greatest of pitfalls in being human is often being around humans. Lately, I have found my only escape to be one of sitting in my car, in traffic. If there's an errand, I'll do it. If there's a trip, I'll do it. Whatever I can do, that involves being in the car, incased in the car, with my music and cigarettes. Incased in metal and glass. But, I've let things run amuck so much, that I didn't even want to hear the music.....just the metal and glass, and the engine running. I thought about running. Where would I go? I am busy. And the masses with their needs and wants just keep coming...in droves of bodies and noise...they just keep coming. And my creativity, my sense of myself, those things that make me just me, and happy with me, have become secondary to the constent noise of the needs and wants of the masses.
This morning I tried to recall what event started is all. When I let it in. This time, the stacks are so high, I couldn't exactly pinpoint anything. And in trying to release the mountain of garbage I've been accumulating, I thought, if I moved one piece it would completely collapse on me. Then I thought about how I'm not much of a person to shirk away from a challenge.
I think when it really hit me, that I was out of control, when I had completely moved away from myself, is when my current boss, a high level executive said this:
"Do you realize how much you've grown? Do you realize how much you're beginning to think like a business person?"
There is was....the sentence that began to crumble the tower of crap that I had been collecting. Jesus, Sweet Jesus, could it be true. Had all of those trips to the mall, the carwash, the cellphone calls, and the watching of the national news really started to sink in? Oh God, what have I become? Oh God, what have I done?
You have to understand, I know that I could think like this, but it wasn't what I wanted. Never. I have purposely fought my entire life to have substandard jobs, with low pay, and crappy benefits, and lack of stimulation to be able to protect all that I hold sacred. Oh God.
I felt the loss, in my very core. But I didn't cry. I couldn't cry because I did it. I let it happen. I was responsible for the entire mess. And everyone and everything that I hold most dear was suffering.
And if I were to tell the truth, all of this nonsense didn't get me anything. I regained all of the weight I had lost, my house and car are a complete mess, I've lost touch with my dear friends, I sleep a lot, and I do nothing funny. AND, after all of the best, most professional behavior I could muster, I was rewarded with a shitty bonus, and watched the other jackasses, and I do mean very stupid people, get rewarded beyond my wildest dreams and still find the hot air to complain about it. Oh the money flowed; how it flowed...just not towards me. And wasn't that the main goal? The dollars? I could achieve something for my family? Something for me?
So, yesterday, I yelled. I did. It was a release. And could get me in a bad spot I suppose. But, I've been in very, very bad spots before...and this bad spot won't be that bad. Secondly, I scheduled a much needed surgury that I had been putting off, absorbing the pain for, due to project contraints. Oh yes, I'll be out of work and on a walker for a bit. And I scheduled it right when I was due to make a company appearance. Oops, what? I have to have it, doctor's orders and short term disability rules and all of that...said smiling. Oh, yes, the little things, coming back to knock down the wall of shit. I went and got my hair cut at a cheap salon. I like this cheap salon. The woman that cuts my hair is funny, she does a great job, and she has the longest getto nails that I've ever seen. She's fantastic. And we sit in the salon and chicken sqwak. It's loud and funny and chair to chair goodness. I told an officemate, who always puts me down, because I'm younger, and what could I possible know....well, I told him yesterday, that I wasn't going to talk to him anymore. He thought that I was kidding. But, I didn't talk to him. He backed off, at first, saying ok, tell my story. I told the other old officemate to go ahead and explain that I wasn't talking. They both said what a baby thing for me to do. Yes, I said, yes it is. Yes, it is a baby thing for me to do.
Somewhere inside of me is a small pool of warmth...a tiny glimmer of good. It's the hope...that completely wonderful, and mostly useless emotion contained in humans. Can I do it? Is it possible? Lance Armstrong has one ball and look how well he's doing. I don't have any balls at all, so there must be hope...Great Hope....The Great White Hope.
Fucking Awesome.
