The Final Post

All things have a beginning and all things come to an end. This chapter of my life, of my existence, is coming to an end.

I lost him. I’d talked to him just the night before, heard the TV come on around midnight because the volume was too loud. He looked like he was sleeping when I found him the next day. He was just lying there like I had seem him do so many times before. All I was doing was passing through to get to the bathroom. I looked at him briefly intending to be on my way. And then I looked again.

We had a sort of ritual, me and him (fuck your grammar). Every once in a while we would nudge each other just to check. I don’t know why we did it, but we did. I touched his uncovered knee and I knew. I knew instantly. Everything fell apart. Everything vanished. I was along. Again. He had left me. I had lost him.

I think it was two or three days before I could even stop shaking. I’ve only been back to the apartment a few times. Once to pick up things I absolutely needed and then to begin packing. I’ve been staying with a friend in the mean time. She’s been amazing. Even came to pick me up at 3am from the ER after I had a really bad asthma attack that the doctor was worried might be covid. I don’t know if I can ever do enough to repay her.

And I probably won’t have the chance. I’m getting out of here. I’m moving hundreds of miles away to move in with an old friend that I haven’t seen since before I met Robert. I can’t stay here. There are too many memories. Too much sadness for me to deal with any longer. I’ve lived in this area my entire life. I often joke about taking people to the hospital I was born at, if it were still there it is. My family, my relationships, my entire history is right here and I need to not be around that any longer.

So I’m leaving. I’m leaving everything behind. And I mean everything. It’s going to be strange, even frightening, but I need to find a new me. This life is over. It’s come to a natural conclusion. Not one I necessarily wanted and certainly not under the existing circumstances but there’s not much that can be done about that now.

I guess that’s it. I can’t say it was a fun ride but I did enjoy some things about it and I’m sure Wayne is going to have a complete meltdown when I actually do leave but, well, I am leaving.

See yah ’round.

Daniel

Outside

I’ve never really felt connected to anything or anyone. I’ve always felt like I was watching the world from the sidelines. I could never quite manage to get inside or even feel like I could be, something most everyone else appears to have little to no issue with. I was always just me, just sort of there. Often people never even noticed me. I wonder though if they really didn’t notice or simply chose not to. I can understand it being a purposeful choice; it would be so much easier that way after all; but I have no such choice. No such standing.

Looking at the world and the people in it, I realize just how far apart I exist from everyone else. School sucked, not much surprising there, but I literally didn’t care about my grades in the slightest. Never. Not even when I was younger and still could attend regularly. Hell, I won a perfect attendance award at one point. Did any of it matter to me? Nope. So when my grades began slipping after… you know… it didn’t bother me either. Oh, I’m getting a C in algebra? Whatever. My English teacher told me he was being forced to fail me because of absenteeism even though he told me I was one of the best students he had ever had? No skin off my nose. Things simply happened to me and I never felt like I had any choice in them.

When my mother refused to let me take that tutoring job I was offered at the adult school after I graduated, I simply accepted it as well. I feel like I had no agency. That none of it matters. None of it at all. I’m dropped by my high school. Here, go to adult school and get your GED. I get my diploma. Time to go to college! I fail out of college (really, I lost my grants and simply couldn’t afford to pay for it myself). Here, this security guard job will be perfect for you. Everything always happened to me. I never made anything happen myself. Even when my mother ended up going to the hospital I really didn’t do anything. I simply handed her the phone and she did the rest. In actuality I had been keeping the phone from her so really all I did was stop doing what I was doing.

I have zero faith in myself. Absolutely no self-esteem. If it’s possible, I’d say that I have negative self-esteem. I’m always willing to help build other people up, but for me it’s the gulag. I don’t deserve any better. I deserve to be punished for… I’m not sure what but I know I need to be punished for it. It’s why I absolutely hate those questions you get asked about your strengths. I have none! Don’t you understand that? Nothing! But of course that is not an acceptable answer so I’ve learned to lie. After I get the whole “See! There are good things about you!” talk, which I assume is supposed to help me to feel better about myself. Does it work? Nope. I don’t function that way. Nothing about me is good. Trying to convince me otherwise is futile.

Where is all this coming from, you ask? Well, I ask myself in lieu of you asking whether or not you actually do. I’m at another point where a decision will be made. Will it be made by me or will it once again be made by others? Do I even feel I have the right to make a decision myself? I’ve never had that right before. I’ve never felt the need. I just… wanna be. Let me collapse into my self-misery and fade away.

I’m in my 40s’, the world keeps turning, and I keep watching from the sidelines, though not as much as I used to. The show has gotten boring. The spectacle has warn off. So I watch from time to time but keep my distance. Nothing good has ever come from trying to “fit in”. At least nothing that I’ve seen in my pitiful and pointless existence.

I’m old and worn out. Always have been… Always have been. I wish I could understand, if only for a moment that I could know that which everyone else seems to know but me. They’re not alone. There are others. They can build connections. All I seem able to do is burn them down.

How can I fall when I never got up in the first place?

Is this the end?

I’m confused right now. Very afraid. Things have gone completely out of control. It might be best for me to just pack up my few meager possessions (well, the ones I care about anyway) and simply walk away. I’ve been here before. I don’t like it. I hate feeling powerless. Yet here I am once again.

Broken people attract broken people. It’s not a nice thing to say but the truth is the truth.

I’m planning to be here through the rest of the month since rent has already been paid. After that, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to know. I don’t do well with change. I don’t do well with much of anything really. I don’t know if I should even be here at all.

I just want a corner. I just want a corner I can hide in and be left alone. That’s all I really want out of life. Just leave me alone and let me be. I don’t need to bother you and you don’t need to bother me. I’ve lost this one, apparently. They always seem to be taken away from me for one reason or another.

Why does it always end up like this with me?

I need to clean. I need to clean and stop thinking about any of this. What’s coming is coming and there’s nothing I can do to stop it or change it. I’m just going to clean right now. Clean and try to relax. Try to forget that the life I’ve known for the past decade is now falling apart all around me.

Everything I’ve ever known has always been presented to me by circumstance, and now circumstance betrays me once again. You’d think I’d be used to it by now.

I need to take out the trash.

Ambivalent

That’s how I feel right now. I’m not really caring for anything. It all feels numb. It all feels so far away and impossible to grasp. I don’t want to anyway even if I could. I don’t want to. I don’t…

Went to get some adjustments done to my shoes today. I got my ankle brace a week ago but it was too big to fit in my shoe with the insole they had made for me. So they sent me home with a thinner one and told me to use it for a few days then come back in and it would show them how to build a new insole that would work with it. They literally made it there in the office while I was waiting today.

I was also having problems with the brace rubbing against the front and side of my leg. He recommended that I get taller socks. All my socks are currently ankle socks. I knew I was going to need taller socks though anyway. I went ahead and ordered a nice bunch of diabetes socks off Amazon… along with a few other things *ahem*. They’re supposed to be here Tuesday. We’ll see. But if that doesn’t fix it he told me to come back in and he’d reshape the top part of the brace so it won’t rub any more.

He also did a bit of reshaping on my shoes. Well, the left shoe anyway. Said the brace was pushing my foot up into a smaller part of the shoe and compressing my toes. I’m so used to shoes doing that kind of crap that I didn’t even really notice. He did though, just by looking at the shape of my shoe. So he took it, reshaped it a bit, and as soon as I put it back on I noticed a very large difference.He did a lot of work for me today and as long as the rubbing issue gets solved I shouldn’t need to go back for another six months.

Why six months? Because they needed to make me an insole from scratch and that’s how long my insurance will make me wait before I can get another one. I have another one for the right but I need to go back in to get another left insole made. I talked about it with him for a bit and he basically told me that I’ll need to get a new prescription from my podiatrist for it, but yes I will need to come back in in six months for them to make me a new one.

God this foot situation is just SO annoying.

Not much else to talk about really. This sucks. That sucks. I sucks. Everything sucks, It’s all terrible or boring or… I just… I’m just not happy. I don’t feel much of anything any more other than sadness and regret. Regret that I exist at all. I take up space. I take up resources. And for what? I’m just a lump that lays there. Trash. Garbage. Useless. Just waiting for someone to come along and throw it away. Throw me away.

I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know why I exist. I can’t seem to find a purpose and all the ones I can wrap my head around are horrendous. Is my purpose simply to continue to exist as I do? Day in, day out, doing the same thing until eternity comes for me?

I’m falling asleep. My body doesn’t want to deal with this any longer. Time to escape for a respite in that world that exists in your dreams. That world that I know exists, I saw my REM sleep pattern from my sleep study, but I can never truly experience. It’s out there. I know it is. But I’m not allowed to remember it for some reason.

Tell me your dream. Tell me any dream. I don’t have any of my own. I’m not allowed to for some reason. I angered someone somewhere and they took them all from me. All my dreams. All of them. All gone.

All gone.

There’s a hole in me.

I just can’t seem to find a reason. A purpose. Everything I try to do, everything I try to be, none of it feels right. I can’t do it. I can’t be it. I just don’t know how.

I look out at the world and I see people walking by. People that are real. People that have something, anything, to hold on to. When I look at myself I don’t see a person. I see something playing at being a person. Something that knows just enough of the rules to squeak by without drawing too much attention but will never understand how anything really works. The system out there. It’s so foreign to me. I might as well be living in a small village in Tibet. My reaction would be the same. The outcome already decided.

My feet are hurting. I’ve been trying to get a good bit of walking in every day so I can adjust to these new shoes and insoles. They really are helping to change how I walk. I had to put my ankle brace back on after a few days though when I noticed that my left foot was turning outward again. It was worth a try and for a few days there I was able to walk like other people. I’m going to need a new brace soon though. The one I have right now is falling apart.

The walking though. I’m trying to stick with it daily. I have that Google Fit app on my phone and it keeps track of the number of steps I take. Well, now it does since a recent update. Anyway, the app recommends 10,000 steps a day so during the day I try to make sure I hit that number. I didn’t reach my goal yesterday and I don’t think I did anything the two days before that but what’s interesting is I’m still sticking with it. I’m not dropping it because I missed a day or didn’t reach my goal the day before. I simply come back and start again.

Got up this morning and already got my 10,000 steps in, along with 90+ something “activity” minutes, something the app also recommends. Says you should get 150 in a week. I get close to that daily. Either way it’s something to do and I don’t need any equipment to do it. Just my shoes and somewhere I can walk. I mostly just pace back and forth in the living room though. Hey, the app doesn’t care and it still counts.

Is this all there is though? Get up in the morning and pace around the apartment for an hour plus and then…? What?

I don’t know.

I just don’t know.

Shatter

I’m a slinky shadow.

I slink across the ground.

Don’t look ’cause you won’t see me.

I never will be found.

Disposable

I dunno. I was doing really good there for a while. I’ve actually been getting exercise and I was starting to lose weight. Got down to 268. Back up to 282 after a week. Everything just feels like pointless busy work to me. None of it seems to matter. None of it seems to…

There was a video I was watching recently, while I was busy comparing myself to everyone else and finding myself wanting, and one of the people in it said something that really stuck with me:

“People like us are disposable.”

It actually hurt me. It hurt because it was true. It hurt because it was me. I know I serve no purpose other than to take up space and resources. At best my current purpose is to be Robert’s babysitter as he continues to spiral down the rabbit hole of his own issues. Anyone can do that though. Most probably far better than I ever could. I guess being something is better than nothing. But sometimes… sometimes the idea of being nothing feels so much more right.

Don’t worry. I’m not talking about hurting myself. Well, actually I kind of am. I’m too much of a chicken to go down that specific road but I have other ways of, should I say, “punishing” myself. And boy do I deserve to be punished. Useless. Horrible. Pointless. As my mother once yelled at me when we were having an argument:

“AT LEAST I’M NOT A FAG!”

That was the first and only time the subject of my sexuality was broached between us. And my response was to simply turn and walk away. Christ. It’s all wrong. All of it. I’m wrong. Everything I do is wrong. Everything I am is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.

What the fuck am I? WHY the fuck am I? I don’t like this game. I don’t want to play any longer. The rules are so arbitrary. The winners are often picked before they even begin playing. I know I’m not going to win. The cards I was dealt suck. They suck so bad. Just put them down and walk away. The game will continue whether you take your turn or not.

Finally got my shoes yesterday. They feel really strange and are a bit hard to walk in. I’m trying not to use my brace so I don’t end up stretching them out like I did my other shoes. Plus I want to see just how corrective they are. My right foot seems to be doing much, much better. The left one? Not so much.

I’m seeing my podiatrist later today. He should be happy that I’ve finally got them. But, I’m sure he won’t be happy about the fact that my ulcer broke open again. It just happened the other day too. I noticed little red splotches all over the kitchen floor when I got up in the morning. Two guesses as to what they were and spaghetti sauce is definitely wrong. I don’t know what he’s going to want to do. This whole situation is so unbelievable stupid.

I need to make an appointment for my GP. I think she told me she wanted to talk to me again after two months. It’s been about one and a half. That should be good for scheduling since they can’t make appointments further than a month out for SOME REASON! I don’t even remember why it was that she wanted to talk to me so much sooner than usual. Maybe I’m dying. Wouldn’t that be a hoot!

Even typing right now feels like a chore. The weight of my failure is suffocating me. Need to get up and start getting ready for my appointment. I don’t even really have to do anything. I just have to show up.

Why is all of this so hard?

Lost along the way.

I think I fried a hard drive last night. I’m absolutely terrible with my own personal PC equipment, especially since I decided years ago that all of it was essentially disposable. I never keep anything that important digitally. If I’m afraid of loosing something I keep some sort of hard copy or learn to let it go. So, last night I watched a rather boring documentary on cult films with my friend Wayne, moved my laptop without looking where I was going, and spilled a glass of water on an external hard drive that wasn’t hooked up but still in a rather stupid location. Only time will tell if that 2 TB drive will survive. I’m going to let it sit for a week or so and then check it. And I literally just finished filling it about 3/4 of the way full. Ugh…

Health wise, physically anyway, things are interesting. Right now I’m just waiting on my diabetic shoes. The doctor I saw about them told me that I really needed some specialized insoles to correct the angle of my feet and that they may even help with my sciatica. They’re supposed to be in in a few weeks. My sleep study went well, but I do have sever sleep apnea. Very sever if my results are anything to go by. A score of 1-5 is considered normal. 5-15 is considered mild. 15-30 is considered moderate. Anything above 30 is considered sever. Guess what mine was… 72.6. And that number represents the number of apneas you experience per hour. So I experience more than 1 a MINUTE on average. They’re worse during REM than non-REM. I already have another appointment to have a week long home study done using a CPAP machine but because of the virus that won’t be happening until the end of July.

Emotionally and psychologically… I dunno. Most people are weirded out about not being able to go outside. I almost never used to go outside before so very little is different for me. I just… I can’t seem to find anything I want to do again. I try to muster up the interest but it’s never enough even to get started with anything. Everything feels completely and totally pointless. I feel completely and totally pointless. I’m back to just laying in bed all day watching bad shows online or wandering websites literally designed to waste your time.

When I was in my 20s’ I had a LiveJournal (a what, grandpa?) and I used to make semi regular updates to it. Far more frequently than I do on this damn thing. Anyway, I remember I posted something about the world just not understanding me. Someone responded to it by telling me that I was too old to still be acting like an angsty teenager. Well, I’ve grown up since then and not only do I still feel the same way, I now realize that I don’t understand myself. My existence is pretty much me just trying to find things to do so I don’t focus on that. Nothing’s been working lately though.

Do I want to start writing again? Yes! and no.

How about studying programming? I could totally… not do that either.

Instead, I’ll just watch this show on Hulu that I’ve watched something like a dozen times before. I can recite each episode line by line and yet is seems to be the only think keeping my interest right now, how little and fleeting that may be. I’ve even got a couple of new games which I have yet to even boot up let alone play. I just can’t get myself to deal with anything outside of repeats and sleeping.

This is not a good, comfortable, or healthy place for me to be in. Can’t seem to break out of it though. Can’t seem to fight it. Something will flicker but that’s it, just a flicker, before it’s gone again. It’s so far away. Everything. Everything that I care about. Everything that I could care about.

Feeling tired again.

Guess I’ll just sleep some more.

Why not?

There’s nothing else to do…

Its Ugly Head

I’m not sure what I’m doing. I’m beginning to feel depressed again. Well, I’ve always felt depressed but I’m starting to slip into a deeper depression than I usually experience. I feel pointless. I feel useless. Why am I here? Why do I exist? I’m just a burden on everyone. All that I am, all that I do. None of it matters.

I feel so lost and tired. I’ve been looking back at my past and seeing all the missed chances. Sometimes it feels like I purposefully sabotaged my own life. As if I was trying to keep myself trapped here on purpose. Why? I don’t know. I just know that I don’t want to be here and yet I can’t seem to escape no matter what I do. I’m wrapped in a cocoon of failure and regret that tightens and tightens whenever I try to break free of it. It won’t let me go. Or is it that I won’t let me go? I don’t know, and I don’t have the faintest clue what to do about that.

After my high school dropped me due to absenteeism I ended up going to an adult school in order to get my diploma. That, combined with taking the GED, led to me finishing high school only a semester later than I would have had I not been dropped. My teacher at the adult school really liked me. She liked me so much in fact that she told me that she had a job for me if I wanted it. She was going to hire me as a tutor. I was so excited. I was graduating high school and I already had a job offer! I took my graduation forms and went home ready to come back and accept her offer.

My mother said no. Instead I would start college the following year. It didn’t matter that that was still half a year away and that I could have worked at the school until then. She had decreed that I was to go to college and nothing else was going to get in the way of that.

And I acquiesced. What else could I do? I didn’t have the foggiest idea of how the world worked. I had been sequestered in my room for so long that I had very little experience with anything. I had no idea that I had let her steal one of my chances away from me. I simply gave it to her because I didn’t know any better. Instead, I ended up working nights for a crappy private security company.

Things like that have happened to me so many times in my life. An opportunity presents itself and I either don’t recognize it, run and hide from it because it scares me, or I let someone else (usually it was my mother) interfere or steal it from me.

Now I’m middle age sharing a one bedroom apartment with someone who’s even crazier than me. Don’t get me wrong, I love Robert, I just feel trapped sometimes. And there’s this overwhelming feeling of failure always hanging over me and everything that I do. Nothing goes right. Ever. Even when things aren’t a complete failure they come out twisted or distorted. Like my life is being reflected in a fun house mirror.

The music is inside of me. Other people look and they laugh. I look and I cry. I don’t see what they see. I can’t be what they are. Bury it. Bury it all. Smile for the people. Everyone loves a clown.

Everyone loves a clown.

Reset…ish?

I had to look up when my last post was it’s been so long. I don’t even recognize the site any more! No, I really mean that. They did some sort of interface upgrade (sidegrade?) and I don’t know where anything is any longer. Took me a while just to get here. Then finding my site (so I could re-familiarize myself with my own damn posts) took a while longer. Haven’t posted since mid December it seems. Looks like I had a plan at that point. Had. Things change though, as they are wont to do.

The last few months have been my own kind of strange outside of everything else going on in the world. I don’t leave the house much so the whole “social distancing” thing is par for the course for me. One thing that it has changed in my life is the huge (and I mean HUGE) drop in fast food in my diet. Haven’t had any in weeks. Strange that I don’t seem to be suffering any ill effects such as withdrawal symptoms or the like. Guess I wasn’t as addicted to french fries as I though I was.

Saw the dentist because I was having a toothache. Took some x-rays and told me that the one next to that impacted wisdom tooth absolutely had to come out now. There was a cavity running almost halfway under the tooth leaving the nerve exposed. Surprisingly they got me into an oral surgeon really quickly who, in a very strange procedure (at least I thought so) pulled said tooth as well as the impacted wisdom tooth within minutes. I was much more surprised by the speed then I was by any actual pain I felt. Not much, which again if you knew me would be surprising enough on it’s own. They lied though. Said it would hurt the worst just after the sedative wore off. Mine didn’t actually start hurting for about a week. It’s been a while now and I can eat and brush regularly again. Now I just need to get my other two wisdom teeth pulled.

Finally got in to see the podiatrist specialist I’ve been waiting to see for, what… more than a year at this point? He looked at my foot, asked me why I was there, and then told me that no, he wasn’t going to be breaking my toe. Instead he was going to ensure the ulcer healed up and then get me some specially made diabetic shoes. We had an “interesting” talk. And by talk I mean he threatened my life. Well, sub-textually at any rate. He had some sticky foam attached to the bottom of my foot. Told me it was a “test” and that if I got it wet or it came off in any way I would “fail” the “test” and that we would then have to have (in a rather threatening tone) a “heart-to-heart” the next time I saw him. He scares me so I’ve been showering with a garbage bag tied around my leg since then. I see him again tomorrow. With any hope I won’t be sacrificed to the gods of Lamisil.

Not much more beyond those two things. I’m actually getting my dental work done and I might be able to walk completely normally within a few weeks. That’s going to be amazing. I’m just waiting for them to call and make an appointment. I see my dentist again later this month as well. After a really long period of waiting it feels like things are finally moving for once. Is this a pretense to a new me? A me in a world where things actually get done and I actually get done the things that I need to? Dunno. We’ll see I guess.

Robert is… Robert. He’s been having more paranoia episodes as of late. He’s convinced the neighbors are out to get him and wants to move. I keep telling him that moving won’t help as his paranoia will simply follow him there and then he’ll want to move again. It’s been really hard for him not being able to go to his groups or get out of the house when he wants to. I’m not sure how to help other than keep an eye on him and keep his psych people abreast of the situation. I’m worried. Not that much just yet but if things continue this way he might end up in the hospital.

He literally just got out of one as well. Was having all sorts of problems with moving and breathing and even getting into his clothes. He saw his GP and he told him to go to the emergency room immediately. I couldn’t believe how quickly they got him in. Turns out his body was withholding 60 pounds of fluid. No one could believe it. Over the week he spent in the hospital he urinated out more than 1/6th of his body weight. When he went in he was 309 pounds. When they released him he was 252. He’s been feeling a lot better and wanting to do things now. But he really needs to keep and eye on his weight. Any severe gain or loss and he’s going to end up right back in the emergency room. I’ve tried to tell him that but he really doesn’t like to listen to me so…

He’s being weird today though. I went and got my blood drawn and when I got home I found a soda on the foot of my bed and a stack of Orios on my computer, him nowhere to be found. I hope he can work through this without needing any sort of major intervention.

Wayne is more annoying than ever. He’s become extremely political and I just can’t deal with it. I suppose he’s been looking for something to focus his energy on after Trish left him but politics? We can’t have a discussion or watch any film or program without him bringing it up. It’s fine that he’s found something to be interested in, I just wish he wouldn’t shove it down my throat all the time. He’s been becoming less polite and more aggressive as well. His entire personality seems to be changing, and not in a good way. Where things go from here, I don’t know. He needs to get his act together though. And it’s not like I haven’t asked him to stop. I’ve even had to forbid political talk when he comes over. Not that it helps but he at least knows that I’m not happy about it.

Anything else? I’m currently unhealthily addicted to Animal Crossing I suppose you could say. But hey, I got all the Bunny Day and Cherry Blossom recipes so bite me. Just pulled four coelacanths while fishing today as well as a tuna. I’m on my way baby! Just gotta finish paying off my mortgage and…

Ahem…

Yes, yes.

I’m going to go now.

…

BYE!