Haunted By My Own Words

Have you ever been haunted by the things that you write?

Haunted may not be the best word but it's the only one I can think of that fits the things that I am feeling.

In a poem I wrote, which can be found here, I repeatedly question whether it is time to "sunset this dream" of writing. I wrote it from the viewpoint of a mid-40s man trying to find his way in a world that continually gets more absurd. It subtly calls out the toxicity of the advice that is often used when someone is struggling with the way things are in their own life, specifically a male. The trope is to get pilled, go to the gym, focus on wealth, and reproduce. Not something I have ever even dreamed of wanting, yet you can find these ideas and gurus everywhere. I wouldn't want to be a teenage boy during this time.

It's that line though, "Maybe it's time to sunset this dream" that haunts me. Should I sunset this? The universe knows I am not making anywhere near enough money to take care of myself at the moment. If I did though what would I do? I have no degree, I went into the trades. I can landscape and build houses but I can't physically do the work anymore. My body is broken from decades of laboring. The only thing I can do comfortably anymore is sit, and even that has its limits. Do you know the pain that is caused by bone rubbing against bone?

I have to make this work or I will be homeless.

In another poem about depression, the simplicity of the poem highlights my battle with depression. It's not something one just builds a bridge over and gets the fuck over it. It is intrusive, painful, and sucks any shred of life from me or anyone that is affected by severe depression. There are days when I stand at the window, watching cars drive by, looking at the blue house with white shudders, and trying everything in my power, to open the door just to go check the mail. I know there isn't going to be anything in the box other than bills, but it's something I have to do for myself. I am not successful every day. If I can walk to the box, in a low state of hyper-vigilance, I just may be able to leave the house that day. More time than I care to admit, I scurry back into the apartment, hoping tomorrow will be better.

I haven't touched much on my battle with chronic PTSD. I am still a little disconnected (disassociated is probably the correct word) when it comes to that. The sound of a spoon falling to the floor is enough to quicken my pulse. I'll work that out eventually.

I am working on this project and you can read more about it here, but there was a paragraph that haunts me in that piece. Politics is my Achilles eel. When I was in college, these mental health issues were on the surface, but I didn't understand them, nor sought help for them. I would become obsessed with the way things ought to be. I could never wrap my head around people who claim to stand for freedom, yet do everything in their power to make sure that other people don't have freedom. How can you promote the sanctity of life and then in the next breath, call for the death penalty? Isn't that a contradiction? I can't start going down that path today, I am actually feeling pretty good, but something that I wrote, from a future version of myself, writing to the present form of myself just keeps circling in my head. It's starting to border on obsession.

At the end of the piece, Future me, tells present me, "It was too late once we realized that we had been playing a different game, with a different set of rules. The GOP of that era used Christian Nationalism to cloak Fascism in the robes of Lady Liberty, and they called it the Federal Republic."

That statement terrifies me.

There is no way, that I can tell, to make sense of any of this. Just this weekend, with the object that has been shot down, corners of the internet are saying that these are just false flag operations and that martial law is going to be declared because of an imminent threat from aliens. Mind you these are the same people that believe the earth is flat, 9/11 was a hoax, and the earthquake was caused by a high-intensity antenna array.

But how do you combat that amount of disinformation? How do you convince people that their entire worldview is wrong?

But then I begin to wonder and maybe it's because they are screaming it loud enough, and long enough, that maybe I am the one that has the wool pulled over my eyes. I don't think that is the case. I have faith in humanity. I can't or maybe won't believe that there is a global conspiracy to bring about a single global power.

Is it my worldview that's faulty?

I think what is happening is nothing more than the redefinition of humanity. The old way of doing things is no longer applicable. Someone no longer needs to wake up, punch a clock, work, punch a clock, go home, eat, and go to sleep. Maybe on some unconscious level, we have tapped into something far greater than ourselves and we are realizing that our strength comes, not from being the same, but by embracing the rights of the individual. We have gone from a species whose world consisted of where the horizon ended, to a species that can connect globally with people that share the very strengths and weaknesses that we individually possess.

I don't share the upbringing of most of the people around me, yet I find solace in the fact that they are happy doing what they believe they need to do, in order to make it in this world. It's that difference that allows me to attempt to walk in their shoes even if I stumble and fall, and try to understand life from their point-of-view. I often get it wrong, but when you have spent as much time as I have straddling the line between homelessness and stability, the one thing I am rich in, is empathy.

I feel.
I love.
I care.

It is the only way that I can make sense of this completely foreign world in which I find myself.

originally published on Medium under my name.