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violetsystems · 3 years

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#personal

Sometimes it’s good to have a break in the narrative. I keep going back to that meme post that says something like “If being hard on yourself worked, it would have worked by now.” It’s an easy time to be hard on yourself. It’s been below freezing for days on end. I’ve shoveled endless amounts of snow having to balance the political nature of being seen. I have to be sensitive to fragile male egos who think I’m trying to outperform them. It’s not very hard when I observe little or no effort from people in terms of care everyday. People have been randomly observing it too. The episode the other day holding the door at the train station. The man who commented was both dumbfounded and distraught. “You are the only person who took the time to hold that door open the last hour.” I appreciate those moments because they are real. Nobody other than my parents acknowledged my birthday really. One contact on LinkedIn. Somebody I worked with that was also let go and found a new career. People I think mention birthdays in conversation at random in passing thinking I’ll bring mine up. But I never really do. I don’t drink alcohol anymore so there’s nothing for people to celebrate. Nobody baked me a cake. People follow me around enough but it’s always this feeling like they hope I’ll engage them in conversation. They hope I’ll reach out when I’m hoping the same. People aren’t there in capacity to care. If they were they would have been there back in July when all my personal belongings were thrown out into the trash from a job I worked twenty years. If I sound bitter I’m not. If anyone ever had to be sure I would drop everything to be with them that’s a great display of attachment. I lost so many books. So many items from childhood I collected. I lost access to all my contacts. I was locked out of accounts. And I was reminded two years prior nobody remembered my birthday there either. I was sent paperwork one year on my day off by my ex boss who I’d known for years. It was to write a full page document honoring one of my employees for their hard work. I wrote it and sent it off on my birthday. Nobody said anything. The next two years I decided to fly off to New York by myself. I wondered if anyone really would remember or care. My birthday always falls on Fashion Week out there. It’s a fun place to go and be seen but not be good enough to acknowledge. This year without a vaccine in sight I’m pretty much stuck here by all accounts. If you asked somebody the question if they thought a place was healthy for their future, this city would have a low score for me. It’s toxic as fuck. Everybody seems to know everything about you. Every little thing you do. They follow you around hoping you’ll play along with their suggestions. Maybe you’ll start the conversation. Maybe you’ll spill the beans. Maybe you’ll discover local tattoo artists following you around in the grocery store hoping you’ll get depressed enough to blow your birthday money on a tattoo. But since Monday, nobody has really acknowledged I’m another year older. If I did, they’d probably neg me about it. Use it to bully me into thinking I’m less important than I am. But being hard on yourself never works. And this isn’t me being hard on myself. This is absolute neglect.

Spoiler alert obviously is that I don’t really care. I write here for other reasons. Last week was a busy week for everybody with Lunar New Year, the seasons starting, and Hallmark holidays notwithstanding. I actually care more about V Day than anything. Mostly because it’s always the opposite. My birthday is always the day after. This year it was swallowed by president’s day, impeachment trials and Gamestop wannabes. To be loved and cared about is something I desire. I think that’s human. And largely I believe that I am. It’s very hard to ignore these days for the record. And so I like to keep my mind focused on that goal specifically. Which means out here I keep to myself, keep my liabilities lean, and stay accountable for my own actions. I am an only child so I’m used to being isolated, nerdy and alone. I’m also an extremely social and transparent being. I don’t believe in wasting time being fake about how I feel. And yet that’s all I ever see in public. People wasting my time being fake thinking they know what’s best for me. This is America at it’s heart. A complex paradox of well meaning bullshit wrapped up in the English language. Repeating sentences and sentiments is one thing. Action and communication is another. It’s pretty easy to remember somebody’s date of birth if you care. There’s people who act like they know you well enough to think somebody would have said something if they really cared. And they don’t. I’ve said this before on a stream. If I focused on all the people that literally don’t care when I was born or I live or die I’d be one depressed motherfucker. The reality is worse than anyone could imagine with me. But I’m tough enough to stand on my own two. This doesn’t change the reality that I am literally trapped in an abusive situation from all sides. There’s no vaccine in my arm. Covid-19 changed my life completely more than most people. Every opportunity out there is based on fear or intimidation. I’m supposed to guess when I shoot too high and I’m supposed to accept that I deserve less than I’m worth so someone else can hold onto more. I’m supposed to wait until America is back again and yet America has wronged me in ways I can’t even explain without being gaslighted by happy faces and hushed looks. I’ve also spent years travelling on my own with barely any network to rely on. So when it comes to the future, I expect I’d just prefer to do more of the same and leave it all behind. And yet there’s this dead space. A time of complete silence. A time where people want to believe that I’m making it worse than it is. That I shovel twelve inches of snow and people pretend it was taken away by the jungle. People are afraid of giving you credit because they’re afraid they’ll owe you something. And yet people get upset when I point out that there was money in a police budget years ago to shovel the sidewalks. I show my expired driver’s license and passport to prove my identity and I get commentary about how I should go renew my driver’s license in the middle of a pandemic when the facilities have been closed. I’d be walking around to do that. And I’ve walked by police stations out here where the sidewalk is covered in ice, snow and shit. I ride public transportation because I moved to this city for that reason alone. I owned and payed off a car that I have to see parked in the neighborhood at times. This is because that car was literally forfeited from my last relationship. There was no legal precedent in that. I just had to break free. That was ten years ago. Ten years later I’ve broken free from everything it seems. And yet I’m still stuck acting out a dark sitcom that feels like it ends with me dying alone.

That’s not how I’m writing this pilot at all. That is if my life were a reality show. My life is a mess because of other people. And it has compounded into such an utterly sick display of lack of care and attention, I almost feel like people want me to die in obscurity to prove the point for them. I’m not going to do that. I have a lot to live for. Though I’m not completely sure one hundred percent if the dream I’m chasing is even true. Which is an exhausting thing to balance in life. That in six months if whatever I was waiting for to happen just disappeared like an urban legend. That all this was just some deep prank people pulled on me collectively on the internet. Then I have to start making some serious decisions on where I want to be after all of this. I’m damaged by other people’s expectations on something I’ve never shared with anyone. People assume they know everything about me. And in some ways, if you read my journals here you do. The problem is that my narrative is buried for better or for worse. I can excel in anything. It’s like there’s some preordained path out there for me but the road isn’t built yet. People think I’m going to settle down and realize the deep fucking value of my place in this city. A police state that is so blatantly obvious and oppressive that I feel China might be a better option for my future than New York City. These are all normal emotions to balance when you realize you have been fucking abandoned and tormented at the same time. Easy enough conclusion to come to when you spend your birthday for the third year alone. Society always wants to make you think you are the problem. You’ll neuter yourself and play the good dog. Accept a lower salary. Accept working for a boss that’s a placeholder for your spot in their accounting books. A mark to market shit show where productivity means shit and your presence is simply a write off. A consumer to bully to maximize shareholder value. And if you don’t submit, you are on your own kid. I’m not a kid anymore. I’m pretty old. And yet adults younger than me treat me like I’m some sort of fuckup. People saddled with debt, unfulfilling personal relationships and greed. I’m none of those. A dying breed quite literally. I have no real hope for the future at this point out here. I hold on to a dream that might not even be real. That I might find some place that treats me like I matter. That I might have a normal relationship with someone who I can share my dreams with. Someone who wants to grow with me and vice versa. That’s not here. It has never been here. It has never been more apparent that here is a dangerous, fucked up and evil place. It’s haughty and proud for no fucking reason. It can’t even remember to ask your name. It can’t bother to celebrate the fact that you were born. It acts like you need to come down to it’s piece of shit level. A level that has been at odds with every basic civil right I’ve had in this country known to man. And when it’s all said and done, I could write forever about how jaded, hurt and alienated I feel. And really it doesn’t fucking matter. I put the baggage in the past to focus on the future. And the future is very pink and warm somewhere out past July. Until then I’m suffering in ways nobody really could comprehend. And it’s probably best to ignore it and leave it alone if you don’t care. Because the people who do know exactly how to show to me with a click. I don’t beg to be understood by people incapable of treating me right. I’m also not going to sugarcoat this shit anymore. My life here has been systematically destroyed for a reason. I’m just man enough to piece it back together like nothing ever happened. <3 Tim

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