hay dad, meet my girlfriend, Rage

 

I don't feel shame for doing what a Uxe1 does when a Uxe1 is left alone.

Partially because shame relates to vicariously wearing someone else's closeted desire, and party because i like being a Uxe1, be that alone or otherwise.

 If im going to be nakedly honest, i have to say i feel like ive lost a little bit of my ability to channel rage into a force in the world. As in the last few years following the loss of my father most of that precision rage has been replaced by an understanding and a feeling that isn't pity, but its pity adjacent. (like without the condescending undertone, its an understanding, mixed with  a sorrow and if i was more invested in his life, it could be cutting, but the distance of our lives severs to now distance me from “owning” any memories of him in a vicarious way… i don't know if that makes sense, for your sake, reader, i hope that all sounds a bit nebulous. 

I don't want to be telling stories outside of class, nor exposing secrets, (nor to actually expose the absolutely unscientific way i experience reality before i filter it down through the callus filter of my 5 senses and logic) but to adequate express what im feeling tonight its going to take a lot of nakedness. Don't worry, its only me who will be exposing myself, but in out puritan infected culture, another's nakedness can trigger your own shame. But take comfort, we both know you're not the one exposed, in fact its likely no one even knows you are reading this, and no one needs to know you did. 

So as im going to take guilty pleasure in knowing this might be our secret moment alone. You get the even dirtier pleasure in knowing that only you know you are here with me. I am alone (like i mentioned earlier) and simply listening to some music with a guitar that can bend a note to an emotion. So we are even. I don't know who you are, and you can't know the sounds that are framing myself in our shared moment . 

Anyways im trying to be better about including others in my understandings, but this isn't about you, its about me… well a part of me.

Throughout my life i've spent may moments alone with music just slightly louder than my ability to think, just being lost in the sound.

( dont get old and deaf because you reach a point where your thoughts will refuse to be out done. And at that point anytime you mange to calm your thoughts you'll be left with tinnitus.)

This isnt ADHD rambling… this is my ADHD rambling as a defence mechanism. I promise you'll be disappointed, because as naked as i feel, this is going t feel like stumbling on Quentin Tarantino's porn collection only to realise it just decades of the socks section of Sears catalogue.

Anyways, RAGE. 

Its been my magic. Rage can overcome any emotion, which makes it handy when your brain neglects to produce seritones or any of the other “ happy chemicals” so the hardware of your body starts to advocate for a simple self shut down. 

Rage wont let you do anything as clean as “opting out of life” rage wont  let you give into another who wants to control you. RAGE Wont Let anyone or anything do anything to you. Rage demands the entire universe stops and responds to you at this moment. 

So i love rage, shes kept me alive, shes driven me past moments where people or physics have wanted me dead. 

And yes over 80% of my existence has been devoted to learning how to appease her. But id of died well over 80% of my life ago had she not been there to override the rest of me.

Im not not have i ever been an angry person. 

Ask any one who knows me an im sure theyll be able to tell you about the one time they saw me mad, and somehow how that was an important moment. But ask a bit more and even those who decide to hate me, will admit that over 99.9% of the time they known of me its not that rage but probably either a “stupid” or “joyus” indifference to reality and only able to focus on finding humour in the moment. This of course requires that they are able to even remember times outside of when rage controlled me.

I don't want to sound like I'm violent, in fact I'm almost pathologically non-violent (another post someday may delve into that) . however I’ve been subjected to “reviews” and “in depth explorations” when rage has simply announced “No” from my mouth. Much more scrutiny that those who had landed kicks and punches on me before i was reduced to allowing Rage control of my mouth. She wanted control of my body too, but shes never yet needed that.

Ok enough back story 

Recently i was alone and sad, and he sad started to set in deep, and so Rage noticed her cue and started to try and refine my experiences through her lens… and nothing. 

Its not like i think i actually hated my dad, but him being gone, and i dont know i have the ability to actively hate anything. 

I dont know if i could sent Rage to even cause someone a headache anymore let alone sending her to “allow” a house fire at their home. 

I dont think shed be absent should someone try and jump me, but i know her just bathing amongst the yeasts isn't enough to prevent all others from even considering jumping me. 

And all this leaves me feeling like i wish i could as my dad if rage ever demanded to be his girlfriend too, and if so, how he decided to live with her 

-this is one of those “ i had no idea it was going there” type of things. Im only posting because i feel like there is something here ill want to revisit some time tin the future 

also i feel like Rage got me talking about her rather than what i was going to say... strange

Some thoughts on ownership

 Well let's start with the easy ones. Ownership is it it's core the right to deny access to others. Our society is currently made up with the idea that the default is that everything is already owned. We never really consider that mabe ownership shouldn't be the natural state of the world. Yes we should have spheres and levels of what can be considered "owned". Like you should 100% own your body. Nobody should be allowed access without your permission. Then we have items that are for supporting and maintaining that body. We should have some basic right to exclude others (like your toothbrush, it seems inherent that I should be allowed to limit who can access and use that). But then we get a bit bigger and the idea of individual ownership seems absurd.

Like my home. Surely I should have the right to exclude strangers from entering into it. But should I be allowed to prevent my infant from coming inside? How about my partner? 

Like aside from situations of assult and safety, it seems absurd that I have ownership of my home above others who also use the space as their home. Our current laws start with ownership of the house and actually do very little to differentiate house from home. 

So it seems that one should have less ownership over their home than their body, and maybe even less than their toothbrush.

What about my garden, here's where a whole lot of other things come into play. My family garden to grow food to enter our bodies seems to have a lot of connection to toothbrush type things, but it's actual land and so has some resemblance to home type things. And that's before we get to the idea of what happens if that garden produces a surplus. Do I own that food that I can't or won't use? So that my right to exclude access includes letting it rot while others starve? 

Like maybe I shouldn't have to allow anyone to come into the garden and do as they please so that it'll prevent my crops from maturing and prevent me from collecting seeds to replant next season. But surely it's just plain wrong for me to let food rot rather than feeding someone starving on the other side of the fence. 

Also what if my gardening skills and system is grossly inadequate. Should I be allowed to deny my neighbor access to the soil when their growing techniques could produce enough for both families to eat and have surplus, and my techniques barley produce enough for my own families consumption. Surely my right to exclude others from that space should also incur some responsibility to all those others that I'm denying. 

If I own a large space if land. That simply means I have a right to exclude all others to that parcel of land. There are 8 billion other people who I'm saying can't use it. My personal wants is to make a golf course. For just me to use. But that land could provide food for some of those others who I am preventing from using it. Surely I have some basic obligations to those that have agreed to allow me exclusive control. 

Shouldn't my right to exclude some obligations as to what's done with it?

What I start to see is that the idea that ownership is part of an agreement starts to crumble. What starts to come through is that ownership is a result and function of force. I don't want to cede to Adam Smith here but, force does simplify the equation. 

Partly because we live in a world that has embraced many of Smith's ideas. But also because it means "agreement" is so much easier to reach when disagreements are settled with killing everyone who dissents until everyone alive agrees that staying alive is more personally important than continued disagreement. 

And that's the real burn for all Leftist ideas. As along as one person or group is willing to resort to force and killing, we will need to develop our own force to maintain any society. This is why "Communism within one nation" is flawed. We will need to use force as our ultimate decider with outsiders. And when that force exists, how do we possibly prevent its use on insiders as well? 

.... I noticed I'm off topic now... Sorry

solipsism taught me that I can chose whats in my world, and that time I exercised my bougie privilege to say if its not in my world its not my problem

 at the beginning of 2022 my fathers death forced me to confront what harboring anger had done to my life. and so the fist part of the year I wasn't allowing myself to carry any anger, without taking the time to evaluate if it was "worthy anger" or not. I simply didn't have the space for it at the moment. time has passed and I'm not running so close to empty. The last part of this year has also marked a decided upturn from the long descent I was in for the last few years. Correlation isn't Causation, But I'm going to keep putting effort into not carrying hate. The comfortable feeling of being right and righteous isn't worth it.

A little over a decade ago, I had made a choice to try and un-distance myself from everyone else. I thought  that if I tried I could stop feeling like an outsider. By simply becoming invested in my interactions I had hoped I could feel like I belonged in them. And its worked. So there is more than a little trepidation that my “cooling” could be the wrong plan. Not having time for the anger, not having space to carry it does seem to be quite closely linked with not having time or space for those that are causing it. I don't want to feel as alone as I did before. And the fact that that distance was probably a side effect of my misunderstood anger in my childhood also adds to the feeling that I'm wading into potentially unsafe water. I’m sure most others have learned the balance in grade school. But here I am. And I’m just now trying to find a way to balance the joy of being involved in the lives I interact with and the benefits of refusing to interact, or internalize with those who would sap my energy and make their deficiencies my focus. 

When I was learning to involve myself, my life had gone through a real upswing, and now as I’m learning to distance myself it appears I'm going through another upswing.
I'm too far distanced to know if when I first developed my distancing behavior if I was going through an up swing or not. But I do know that for the first time I’m making conscious decisions about who and when to allow it, and to put the effort into refusing to accept the burden of anger when it's hoisted on me.
I mean my brain is essentially an electrified bag of meat, and the universe may be predetermined or random, or an unsatisfying mix of the two, so all of this naval gazing is probably emotional masturbation at best. But that's how the end of 2022 feels to me right now. I hope 2023 will continue my feeling of coming back to living my life rather than surviving my existence. And I hope the same for you…. If you're not one of the people I’m relegating  to NPC status as a method to make my interaction with this world work for me.  ;)

the term "idpol" is a slur!

 When you come across the term “idpol” see it for what it really means. 

It's a portmanteau of “Identity” and “Politics”. But its a very particular Identity and Politics the term is condemning. Namely “The Personal Is Political”. A statement by Carol Hanisch (1970), writing about second wave feminism, and often considered the defining trait of 3rd wave. 

Politics as a term means nothing more than “Social Power”.

The users of the term “idpol” are expressly saying that they dont want some peoples identities in power. Even though they won't say it in mixed company, the Identities they want excluded is explicitly clear. By using that term they are saying that allowing power to consider any outsider, its taken away from the “right” purpose of politics. Politics is for Rich White Cis Hetro Men of a Select heritage, bloodline, cast, and family. The longer they are allowed to go the more they would like to exclude from their permitted list.
In politics, we call that thinking “fascism”, although its usually not openly called that until violence and force are used to support the ideas. 

If someone starts using that term in any group you’re in, I advise: Quickly and clearly have them define exactly who, exactly what identities they are saying is muddying up their pure white politics. Don’t let them try and say “it means politics of personal identity”, because, All politics is of personal identity. Which exactly are the Identities they think are not valid enough to be part of the political discussion. Because these people want to try and get you to agree with their bigotry and hate, but they know if they say it outright, most people will not even entertain their ideas, so they want to sneak it in they want to get you to agree with all their hate in broad “Other People” before they can then try and slowly introduce the identities they include in that group.
I won't allow any other topic to continue until the offender will openly retract their hate words. The same way I respond when someone drops any other slur into conversation. We now live in a time where you need to be Anti-racist. Just being “non-racist” isn't enough anymore. When you allow bigotry to go unchallenged, you are supporting those who use that racism to further harm others. The Personal Is Political, and personal attacks are political moves. The term “idpol” is a bigoted and racist slur hidden in conversational tones. But just like calling “liquorice kids” “N***er babies” is racist, and you should call out anyone who tries to act like its ok. Because letting people say it is agreeing that you don't care about how it makes black people feel, you're agreeing  they don't matter.

things that didn't happen; a 2022 barely-fiction horror.

 I wrote a short story I call: Dave Checks Up. 

Just remember this started with things that didn't happen.  Namely this post:

Later that day the police showed up to question her for injecting something into someone without their consent, the victim had told the police that after the initial assault, She and her son  were scared of what else the violent criminal would do. So she ate the almond as told even though she feared the reaction. It would be better that harm happen to her than her son. As soon as she was able to get them both away, she dug out her Epi-pen and injected herself. Then had her son help get her to the emergency room. Once the doctors had her stabilized, she called the police. And now as she sits under observation, waiting for the doctors to say she can be discharged, she weeps… as she tries to figure out a way to find $1300.00 for a replacement Epi-pen, she remembered The $100 she used to bribe the assailant to let her go, was almost her entire budget for this week's groceries. At hte time it made sece to do anything to distract the crazed woman from also injecting and force feeding the deadly nuts to her son. But now, now she had to still keep life going for her and him.

…maybe if she lied about her name she could double up on giving blood. She thought about the cost for a return trip to take a bus the next county over, would she even get enough to make it worthwhile? What if they could tell she'd already given and refused her? how would she pay to get back home?

"A mother must feed her child" she thought, as the guilt she’d been raised by attacked her still recovering mind and body. "What kind of a mother doesn't have an Epi-pen for her child's allergies?"

Frantically, through her tears, her eyes darted around the room looking for something, anything she could steal and sell to fund a replacement shot. But obviously the clinic knew better than to leave anything of value not bolted down. she looked in to the cold mirror bolted to the wall, should she prostitute herself? "Could I even? ... Who would ever pay anything for my ugl..." the door opening cut off her self talk.

"Good News,” a cheery, young, 20 something, nurse whos hairstyle looked to have cost at least a couple hundred dollars, chimed into the room, “the doctor said you can leave now. She smiled as though she had done something great and was awaiting approval, or even applause.

"GOOD FUCKING NEWS? What's good about it? Whats GOOD about Any-fucking-thing?!" she almost screamed, wanting only for this child to see her as an actual person. A real human who had real problems, someone who didn't know how she was going to keep her son fed until next Fridays paycheck. ... But no, that would only cause her to see a "crazy lady", and maybe even lead to a call and social services looking into her parenting. So instead, she squeaked out a small "Oh thank you, sweetie" hoping her voice sounded endearing and not like the old forest witch she felt like. No, even an old forest witch would be better. At least then she wouldn't be desperately in need of $1300.00 for an Epi-pen, and she could feed her child with food foraged from around her house.

It was almost exactly at this time, 13 hours after that evil woman injected her, that Dave, a rookie police officer, only 7 months on the job, finished typing up the file and checking the box that said "not enough evidence or likelihood of conviction to warrant further investigation."

ADHD, Meds Time

 The adhd meds didnt change me, they simply allow me to conceptualize that the next moment will happen and the previous one did. They also gave me a bit of a buffer between any stimuli and response so I can make an executive choice on my response. 

It's funny to me now when I read all these hippy posts about trying to live in the moment. As someone who wasn't diagnosed and treated until my mid 30’s I can tell you that “living in the now” isn't a good idea for anyone who understands that humans need social interactions and society to survive. 

Living in the now is not conducive to healthy relationships. Someone briefly blocking your view of whatever, and you respond “I hope everything you love dies slowly screaming in your arms”, and then in the same breath, “oh could you pass me a drink?”. The other person not living in the now, is still trying to process your words, and figure out what they possibly could have done to elicit such a response, and carrying with them the emotions (that you very much wanted them to to feel a fraction of a second before); Well lets just say they aren't feeling very charitable to do you the favor of passing you a drink. And now you're upset at what an ass they are because you're still thirsty and, being unable to really conceptualize time, its been an eternity that your body has been screaming out in thirst. And all during the eons you've dehydrated and parched as sand fills your mouth and throat, your “friend” is droning on about “rude words” and how “insensitive” you are.  Insensitive? INSENSITIVE? IN-fuckin-SENSITIVE? I’m insensitive? While you're literally denying a dying man, life giving refreshment, because you’re so hung up on some feeling (that I very much wanted you to have decades ago now). I find a last drop in my cup, take a sip, and now that I've never been thirsty before, I can see that in your current mood, you'll not be a source of comfort for me. Your inability to get your emotions under control is not a problem I’m equipped to solve. I wonder if i should tell you this before I just leave and make space for someone who can help, Or just do the leaving part. I cant remember what i chose as im not there any more, i'm simply moving through a room wondering why its so hard to make friends.
It must be that i can't do small talk, I've read books trying to develop that skill, but they dont help. You see, because I don't really grasp the next moment will happen, the slightest bit of boredom small talk causes, is my forever existence while its happening. Galaxies are formed and die, all the while my brain is screaming for anything to break the monotony as a drowning mans body longs for air. 

And you've caused this. For that I hope you develop that flesh eating disease inside your butt-hole, and then one morning while you're wiping away your morning crap, the paper brakes through the last barrier and all your intestines start to unravel out of you into the turd and piss filled water, and you would scream, but some tissue is still attached to your diaphragm and so you are unable to actually breath, and silently you flail about, hitting the flusher and your insides are pulled down harder as they are sucked out into the sewers. Your body isn't found for months as the disease devours whats left of our flesh. After months your landlord that you pay half of the wages you labor for, finally notices your relatively insignificant input in to their life and has someone check on you, there is no obituary, or tombstone as your entire existence, was so meaningless to others that your name is forgotten and so the person in charge of cleaning your ashes out of the furnace, marks the box, Elinor Rigby. Thinking to himself that even fictional forgotten person Rigby is more memorable than you were. … “what? Oh sorry , my name is scott…”...(damn why do i never remember names)... “How are you enjoying the party, Elinor…sorry I suck ant names….” 

All of this happens as the cosmic dance of universes being born and falling to entropy happens again and again…. So No, Alanis Morissette, I did not think about my bills, my ex, my deadlines or when I think I'm going to die… I wish I could have distracted myself from this eternity with any of those pedestrian thoughts. 

Now that I’m medicated I'm able to understand the next moment will probably happen, so as my mind experiences the heat death of several universes, I’m able to make the decision to simply ask you to pass a drink, and not even acknowledge that you blocked my sight for a brief second. Now I save the Flesh-eating-disease-wish, for people who do much more than say “umm” a couple of times while initiating small talk. You know, for people who say shit like “ADHD is just because you lack discipline” or “Jordan Peterson makes some valid points”. I save it for people that truly deserve to feel such things! lol 

Eons still pass when I have nothing to entice my mind, it's just during those eons, I can now imagine a next second, and so I can choose to respond in a manner that will make that next moment suck a little less, rather than simply living in this moment. I still suck at names though, it's been forever since the other person said it. It's been decades for me and the only interaction we've had so far was you saying your name, so maybe it's understandable I don't remember it. We should tell each other our names at the end of the interactions, so we can tie it to something we've actually experienced, when I have some idea of how important or meaningless our interaction was, and can give your name some heft. 

… what was I trying to say with this post again?

I love you Dad

 Ray is dead

I waited a long time for him to reach out to me, even though I was aware that I could reach out to him. I told myself that “he's the parent, it's his responsibility to initiate”. I know it was largely an excuse, so I wouldn't need to make the effort to start an awkward situation. But maybe I was also right, I don't know. I don't know if it matters figuring out who was right. I do know that figuring out if it matters, doesn't matter right now. 

My dad wasn't very good at being a dad to me. He tried to build a relationship when I was teenager and young adult. At that time I was a little too full of hate and it was hard for him. THe hate wasn't for or about him, it was at the whole world at the time. I don’t know if he ever knew that. By the time I was old enough to have a handle on my hate, we were strangers. 

I feel like I need to clear up some of the feelings around the phrase “good at being a dad”. 

Ray had some demons. They lashed at him a lot during life. I feel like a lot of his effort was used up just trying to keep those at bay. He’d miss birthdays and appointments, but you had to just know, that wasn't about you, it was about him. He had a humongous heart. That was undeniable, and if you were ever witness to him in a situation where he could show you, it was undeniable. If you ever saw him with his pets, where he could just be open, he’d relish in times where he could just dump his affections. I remember one day when he was at our house, where our grouchy old cat jumped on his lap. The absolute joy on dad's face while he pet her trying to prove he could last longer giving pets, than she could last taking them. I don't know who won, as teenage me got bored and left the room. 

When his demons were quiet that's who he was. Just someone who wanted to love. 

I remember one time while hanging in the bar, a fight broke out between people he knew. Quickly and with an ease that should have been impossible for anyone as far into the bottle as we were that night. It was like he just appeared right beside them. I don't know what he said, but in what seemed like no time, he was back at our table explaining to me how it was just a squabble, and no need to think anything important about either person involved. I remember feeling some of that teen arrogance, as i thought “duh ,dad, I'm like 19 I don't know why you think I need to hear this”. But it seemed it was important to him to tell me. 

We spent hours upon hours together in Shawnessy. I don't know that we ever talked much, but I remember it almost always felt effortless, as if nothing in the world mattered and the things that did, couldn't find us there.

It didn't take too much of my adult life, and I quickly understood that missed appointments, birthdays, and such were not out of malice to me. In fact I’m now pretty convinced he didn't have any malice in him. The few times I saw anger, it was always out of trying to hide having his feelings hurt. 

When I understood his acts weren’t  out of malice, but usually due to him losing one or more battles with one or more of his demons, I also saw something else. He had an amazing ability to make people love him. 

He wasn't good at a lot of things in life. The things he was good at and the things he was bad at seemed to be uniquely complimentary. He could sus-out a business opportunity and turn having absolutely nothing into a thriving company in a matter of months. He could also crash and burn, and be without anything within a week. But even at his lowest, he had that ability to make you love him, and he had friends that went way above and beyond to go help put him back together. 

I think some of his demons are related to how others perceive him. But when I grew some of his same demons, I knew from watching him, that real friends know your demons and still love you, so I never had to fight them as hard. So when I finally came out to myself, I never had the burden of trying to hide it. My dad had slain that particular demon for me. 

I remember one day as a teenager for some reason dad and I were standing in my dining room. Dad said to me “ I don't know if this will do anything or if this is what you need, but I love you kid” I remember staring at the stupid braided rope pattern on his stupid cowboy shirt, thinking “I don't know why he always has to make things awkward" as he hugged me. 

But he did know, he knew that's something a dad needs to do. Something a son needs to hear. That someday I would need to know that particular moment, happened. Today. 

So that after all these years of putting things off, now that we're out of time, I Do Know, Dad, and I love you too!