Featured Post

THIS BLOG IS RATED WWW-MA.

Update 2020-12-16: (True sticky posts banned; click to read.) So, owing to the evolution of the internet, or at least my own approach to it,...

Saturday, September 28, 2013

I Got Dem Ol' Isolation Blues Again, Mama

(Mom, for once, try to read past the fact that I mention you.)

For those who have never met me in person, I occasionally meow.

Just like a cat, yes. Sometimes I'll meow just quickly as a reaction to a minor, unexpected stimulus. Other times, I'll give a friendly *rowr!* to the family as a short way of saying "I'm awake, sort of; Hi!" Sometimes I'll hiss in moments of passing irritation. And, sometimes, I'll meow loudly and repeatedly from the other room as a reaction to a major, twenty-seven-year ongoing stimulus. A few minutes ago, before I started writing this thing, was one of these latter times. After a few vocalizations, my mother said from the other room, "Why are you behaving like a cat?"

I was in bed, for having nothing else to do and no place to go and just being depressed, and it took me a moment to think of an answer for that question. The one I came up with was this:

I guess I feel denied status as a member of the humans, so I'm trying something else.

I wasn't invited to my family's dinner out tonight. They went with their friend in the only car I could drive, not long after my mother had asked me "Why don't you go out tonight?". So I stayed here, fed the dogs, and went for a sleep as I marinated some more in the knowledge that I am completely goddamn fucking alone.

Cyberspace just ain't cuttin' it. I need people. Close friends. I have no siblings. My only direct cousin is a six-hour drive away in a car I don't own. No one's hiring me. Never had a really close friend growing up. Maybe three or four casual friends at best. The average 27-year-old seems to have a job, a spouse, their own place, and maybe even a kid or two. I've never even had a girlfriend. I did have a minor job twice and a fraction, but no more.

I haven't posted anything purely autobiographical in a while; I'm sure all my readers have missed that. Here's where we (my family and I) supposedly are now:

My folks are aiming to move to a retirement community in the greater Nashville metro. "The 615" was selected because it's where my cousin lives (albeit way on the other side of the metro from the retirement community). It would — will? — be my greatest pleasure to not live in Bumfuck, Illinois anymore and actually be within earshot of a major downtown. Here's the thing, though: it won't be until next spring at earliest — if it happens. For all I know, we may lose on the bidding on the lots, which happens this coming month. (Parts of the community have not yet been built.) Then there's my undecided aunt, who might move into the same house, get a separate house in the community, or possibly just stay in Chicago; this will affect finances. But, any way you slice it, barring actual help from my cybercommunity, I'm stuck right here in nowhere at least until probably April, with no place to go and no one to connect with when I get there.

Earlier this week, I did actually try stopping by my old university "sanctuary" across town — the disability "rehab" center, where I worked for two years until I could no longer actually work at the computer. It's a shame; the people there were, and by and large still are, friendly and great. But though we worked in the same room, we didn't really work together most of the time, and my will to work alone just tanked. Since I seem to lack a natural social life, I need a social job to balance myself. Anyway, there were and are good people there, to the point where there was frequently dessert available. This past Monday or Tuesday (I forget which) was no exception; a more recently hired employee whom I hadn't met yet had brought in cake. With fondant — but cake nonetheless. Further talks with everyone revealed the reason for the cake: That employee had just ....... gotten married.

Married. Another one removed from my partner-selection pool in a happy ceremony of which I wasn't a part. Everybody and their mother is either getting married or otherwise participating in a wedding. The pictures intersperse sponsored posts by Facebook, music "videos", and pictures of food from my "food group" in my 'Book feed. That food group is chock full of playful, loose-tongued females, and I'm willing to bet my lack of funds that, despite the suggestive banter, every last one of them is married. (
Edit: Yay, one isn't!) (Although, really, what single person is driven to cook a full meal for no one?) But, their marital status is moot anyway, because, guess what? None of them live anywhere near me. One's near St. Louis. That's as close as they come. This applies to everybody. They're either buried in the deep South or on one of the coasts. Why the hell do I keep cyber-befriending people on the coasts? When I see people going on about how beautiful and perfect it is by the bay in California, I feel a dull rage, thrashing somewhat like a distant kettle drum roll, or possibly like how I imagine ocean waves sounding as they wash on the shore below in a place that has "ocean", "shore", "above" and "below". And I want so badly to punch Brian Williams every time he gets sentimental about some New York institution that "SO MANY of us" have enjoyed, from the Sandy-ravaged Boardwalk to today's retirement of the Yankees' long-time closer. Why the fuck does the Yankees closer get to be on the national evening news? If it were the Cubs, would they grant him so much as a brief mention? Fuck the Yankees and all these self-righteous New York humpers. Save that shit for your local broadcasts. The rest of us don't need to see or hear you masturbating.

But I'm rambling now. At least in language. Maybe someday I'll get to "ramble" in a more physical sense. While I was discussing my situation — guitar in tow — with the friendly staff at the rehab center, a couple different people suggested that, when I get to Nashville, I just pick a spot on the downtown streets — Broadway ought to accommodate nicely — and pick at my guitar. I can't do that here, but I can most certainly do it there. See who salutes and how strongly. I also mentioned the possibility of trying that "Go Fund Me" site I've seen going around; my State contact was on board with that idea. If anyone takes that seriously, I can have at least *some* sort of income in this awkward time where, in the unlikely event that I do get hired here in the flatlands, I couldn't stay for long before moving to greener pastures, so to speak. Greater Nashville does seem to be rapidly growing. I don't know if it can match up to the coasts in terms of potential friends I can fully connect with, but, with luck, I can find out for sure.....


Couple other thoughts on the subject since I posted this almost two days ago:

After a couple months in the Nashville metro, the family plan is to put me in an apartment. Don't you love that word, "apartment"? I'm apart enough already. What I need is a "togetherment". But that's not a thing in this country, is it? It's not even a thing in our language.

It's that independence motif again — the undercurrent in Western thought and culture that other people suck and that there's no point in pursuing, nay, being, a counterexample. The likely mass self-projected belief that everybody is out to "get" us, which we use to justify primitively selfish behavior: hoarding all the goods we can in our spaces, and never allowing anyone else into those spaces because they will undoubtedly rob us blind and possibly lifeless, because that's what we apparently would do. So the shut-outs get more deprived and desperate, violent incidents spiral through the ionosphere, and nothing is gained but loss. Even now, in my tiny corner of the flatlands from which I type, I'm hearing more sirens from beyond the window than I've ever done.

And apparently I — we? — should just sit back, accept, and be one with, the vile chaos.

There was something else I wanted to say here, but it escapes me just now.

Love.

No comments: