Holy shit. I don’t want to write. I am so tired.
I’m listening to Lee Burridge’s new track 12cc. It’s awesome.
I’m waiting for the train home from work.
I invited the girl I was formerly obsessed with to the party on Governor’s Island where I’m going to take ecstasy.
She’s thinking about it.
Going to work I don’t feel like I can really make it. There’s nothing really wrong and that’s really the problem. When there’s nothing wrong something has to go wrong but when you don’t really know what it is you really can’t prepare.
Ran for the train. Caught the train.
Last night I went out drinking and drunk texted everyone, even the girl from Boston. Anyone will do when I get drunk. I feel so lonely at home. I never want to leave the bar. But I left around 2:30 and was all responsible and took a car and shit and got home safe and when I got there I was pissed and lonely.
Then I woke up this morning feeling so embarrassed about the dumbass texts I had sent.
Then I worked twelve hours and now I’m on the fuckin train home and it’s way before midnight.
People are making out like fuckin emus over here. All necks and awkwardness.
It’s going to be a fast and fucked up week. I’m working twelve hour days every day from now until Sunday. Then one day off and then another three days on and then I’m going to my other brother’s graduation and then I’m going to a Tool concert.
I stopped meditating about two or three weeks ago, whenever Morgan showed up, because it’s hard to meditate in a house with two bedrooms, four people, and three cats. I think I noticed a difference. In any case everything seems more awful than before.
I stopped working out, too, on May 7.
I’m at work looking all fucked up, just wanting a drink and shit. I been drinking a lot at work. The girl I’m obsessed with only works one day a week any more, so getting through the work day is fucking difficult. I’m not even obsessed with her any more because I don’t see her. Out of sight, out of my mind, and all of that, to an extent. I’ve a lot of experience cutting people out of my life. Just moving on. Usually physically moving. Why let anyone get close? Just someone else I’m going to have to hide from.
But you know, I talked to the girl about the whole thing and she made me realize that, while we were playing perhaps dangerously close to a cliff, neither of us had done anything actually wrong. Well, I suppose I had done something wrong by not talking to Molly about the fact that I was falling in love with another woman, but you know what, we don’t even have time to talk these days. She works sixty hours a week now and she works during the day and I work during the night. That’s why I need a new job, you know, so we can see each other.
But anyways like I was saying, here I was all beating myself up about shit, because I was in love with this girl, but I remembered you can’t control how you feel, you can control how you act. I was all thinking in my head that we’re in some kind of sexually charged dance, me and this girl, and that was some kind of sin. Probably because as a super Christian back in the day, the only relationships I could have with girls were exactly this. I would have called this girl my girlfriend back in the day because we smiled at each other a lot and were both into each other. That doesn’t constitute a fucking girlfriend, for fuck’s sake. But there it was, hanging around on the back shelves of my mind, this whole box of bullshit about what a girlfriend is. That’s fucking dumb. No wonder I don’t have a healthy relationship with my wife, I don’t even know what a wife is!
I’m like a fucking guilt factory. Churning out the guilt. Like a fucking goat produces shit. What does a goat need to produce shit? Any fucking thing. A shoe. A fucking heirloom tomato. A bag of dicks.
You know why I’m a fucking guilt factory? A fucking super high efficiency guilt machine? I would have told you it was my parents. I would have told you it was Jesus Christ and the motherfucking bible. But you know why it’s fucking lying that’s why. Weak character, brought on by having no stressors. Only one artificial stressor, maintaining the fucking lie, man, is what.
Say I was to fall in love with this woman. I tell Molly about it and what does she say? Who fucking knows. Maybe we have a long talk about how we don’t fucking talk any more or have enough sex, maybe we modify our relationship, maybe we decide fuck it, I like you as a partner in life, I don’t give a shit about your emotions. Maybe we decide not to act on anything for now, because we’re both busy being broke as fuck, and put that shit on ice for a year, and if nothing changes, then we got to make some decisions. Who knows what the fuck we could even decide because we would both be strong people who knew each other, instead of me being some kind of weak ass bitch fucking creeping around like a depressed little crab.
Why do I curse so much? People asked me sometimes. Probably because I’m fucking angry all the time way down where I can’t even hear myself any more because I built this huge guilt machine to manufacture fucking lies all day to keep me from ever having to experience anything real.
Yeah, so anyway. Me and this girl are just chilling now. It’s not even a big fucking deal. I build it up like its a fucking world changing event, me liking this girl, and really it’s just that she’s super awesome and super hot and she’s attracted to me. Why does that have to be a big deal? Because I’m scared of myself because I don’t even know who I am, that’s why! Is that Molly’s fault? Is that Christianity’s fault? Is that Society’s mother fuckin fault? Is that my parents fault? Nah mother fuckers that’s my fault for lying my ass of for no reason all my life.
Oh shit now I’m going to feel guilty about that!
Haha nah I mean I could, but guilt doesn’t come from taking responsibility for your actions. Guilt, at least the kind I feel, the destructive kind, comes from a kind of self-censorship who’s aim is to keep you down, crammed down inside of a fucking shell so that people will accept you without any effort on their part or your part.
Unlike dumbass indulgent guilt that comes from overthinking and lying to yourself, taking responsibility for your actions empowers you.
Yeah so anyway I meditated and worked out today.
I used to think that if Molly got mad at me I had to fix it right away. Stop everything, find the source of the problem, make it right. Sometimes I would do all that and she still wouldn’t be happy and then I would get frustrated. Especially if we were on vacation or something. It felt like the vacation was being ruined, that we would remember only that time when she was mad over some insignificant thing.
Today she got mad because her plan didn’t really work out and we wasted two hours driving around. Instead of trying to fix it with words or touching, I just drove around acting normal. I didn’t try to pretend that it didn’t suck that we were wasting time. I didn’t try to make it into a joke to make her see how trivial it was to worry about such things. I just let her be mad about it as if that were a reasonable response, which it is, really.
I guess I used to think that you could die at any second so you might as well not worry about dumb shit like the fact that you’re wasting time because shit didn’t turn out like you had planned. I also used to believe that nothing really mattered, so I couldn’t see the point in getting worked up about anything really. I said I believed in that kind of shit, but I would get worked up about shit, too, just much different shit.
So now that I am allowing for the fact that things have value, I can see that being all mad about some dumb shit has its place, and maybe the reason Molly used to be mad for so long was that I was just quietly acting like she was an idiot for even bothering to be angry.
This time I let her be mad and I didn’t pretend it wasn’t frustrating and she got over it quickly and I didn’t get all stressed out that she didn’t like me or something.
I think a big part of why I built up so much resentment towards her over the years is because any time she would get mad I would blame myself and then slowly I would get mad at how unfair it was for her to think that it was my fault when I hadn’t done anything. So all this dumb shit was going on inside my head that didn’t have any basis in reality and should have been handled externally.
Any time I start to say something passive aggressive, I’m now trying to stop and instead say something more direct and constructive. And if Molly says something passive aggressive to me, I try to swat that shit down aggressively so we can fight about it instead of internalizing some made up bullshit. It’s not always easy and I don’t succeed every time but it’s not as hard as I thought it would be.
I used to have these revenge fantasies, not against Molly but against other people, strangers mostly. So someone would do something I didn’t like and then I would fantasize about beating the shit out of them, some disproportionate type shit. But in reality I wouldn’t do anything, probably be even nicer to them the more I hated them because then slowly I would start to feel bad because I hated them so much and they hadn’t really done all that much shit to me.
So I have this darkness inside but I try to lock it up and pretend it doesn’t exist and it comes out in fantasies and in a growing resentment towards humanity. Instead it would be better to integrate the darkness into my personality and react to things I don’t like by making sure people know that I don’t like those things. Even get mad sometimes. I used to think that even getting angry was a sin. And then after I stopped believing in God, I thought getting angry was a sign of weakness. But I think now that getting angry is necessary for having a healthy relationship with the outside world. People should know when they’ve made me angry. I don’t have to hurt them with words or actions, but if I don’t indicate the fact that I’m unhappy how arethey supposed to know to change their behavior? And besides it becomes so much worse when I just resent someone quietly. Instead of just snapping at someone and apologizing for it later maybe, I end up smiling at them and wishing they would die.
It’s important to have a healthy relationship with anger instead of just trying to avoid it in myself and others.
I am drunk. Molly is asleep. It is 10:30 PM. Dinner was $200. Thank you Capital One Venture Rewards Visa Card.
Today many things happened, and my hand was wrapped in a bandage. Dr. B did it. I spoke with my mother-in-law about diabetes. It is very dark in Long Island, away from weirdos on bicycles singing songs in loud voices.
I feel like I will go to sleep. I went to sleep after the last post. It was great. Yesterday, I was sitting in the park on my break and I went to sleep there. It was fitful, but at least it was sleep I guess. This morning, Molly woke me up at 7 AM to say she had been awake since 5 AM. I fell asleep again until 7:30, when she woke me up for good. I am very sleepy now and have to be up at 7:30 tomorrow to go to a basketball game with Morgan and some people from work. To play basketball, that is, and then after that to go to work for twelve hours. I have Sunday off, though, and Morgan will be moved out by tomorrow afternoon, so I don’t know what I’ll do about that. Try to go back to regular life, I suppose, unless I get drunk on Saturday night and have to sleep most of Sunday away.
I guess by the time you’ll be reading this though, by the time you do read this, it will be Saturday already, since I’m scheduling posts now because I’m worried that I’m going to miss a day or something or just not feel like it, or really because I was in the mood to write such a long post a few days ago that I wanted to break it up for you, but it turned out not to be that long at all and I already wanted to start writing again by today. I probably won’t have time tomorrow, though, so that will be good.
Anyway I guess I would just delete this whole thing, but I’m trying not to care still.
I guess I’ll take a nap, fuck it. Twenty minutes and then get up and do the dishes. Get the hell out of here. Hit the fucking road, jack.
Last night, the bar manager wasn’t working and life was so stress free. I should do something about it, I guess, tell her off and stop listening to her. Cut her out of my life. Deal with her. I don’t know. Live in the moment. Or just quit my job, I guess, I don’t know. It’s also stressful that a lot of people are leaving my job so I don’t know who is going to cover the shifts that I need off coming up in the summer. But I give people the advice all the time: the less people they have to cover your shift, the less they can afford to fire you if you don’t show up for it. But then I end up feeling to guilty about the whole thing.
I want to get back into my honesty routine and all of that, but this last week helping my little brother out I guess has been fulfilling enough to my inner critic that I’ve let myself just sit around on balconies eating Cadbury eggs and shit like that.
It was the strangest thing, after I got done writing that last post I read three articles about hating on white people and stuff like that, and then I went inside and started washing dishes. Then I did that cleaning project I wanted to do: take shit from under my bed and dust it off and sweep under there and shit like that. I told…what was my wife’s name again? Molly. I told Molly I would do it sometime soon yesterday. So I did it today. Why not?
Anyway I had no intention of doing that shit when I was sitting out there on the balcony. I figured, fuck it, I’ll just write a bunch of shit down. Fuck this day. Waste it.
It was either the coffee or the writing that gave me the energy to start cleaning shit up. Or it was because I went into the living room and Morgan was there talking on the phone and I was going to say something to him but I figured I might as well do the dishes first while he was on the phone and once I started actually moving my life from disorder to order in that way, I had the strength to move forward onto bigger projects.
After I cleaned under my bed and shit, the apartment felt pretty good, less dusty anwyay. I heated up some quiche and I went back out to the balcony. Morgan and I sat there just staring out into the day. It is really nice outside right now. It’s too much too fast though. I miss the spring. It was spring yesterday, but today it will be summer. Who knows if we’ll ever go back to spring because last week it was pretty much late winter.
But we’re always romanticizing something that probably isn’t real. Like the idyllic part of our childhood before we became self-conscious, and other shit like that.
Now I’m laying on the bed, typing more shit. It’s about time to go to work. I guess I have to get dressed and set up the feeders for the cats. What else? I guess that’s really it, although I should start work on Molly’s website, or else apply for a job, and I really should get back on my exercise program before I lose all the gains I was seeing, at least I should do the sit-ups.
I don’t know if I’ll do any of that. I might just lay here and fall asleep. Fuck it. I have a weird life. Morgan asked me if I would ever get a tattoo. I said I didn’t know. When I was 16, I wanted flames going up my arms from my wrists like the lead singer of Linkin Park. He said that would have been ok. I said yeah but everyone would know that I had gotten that tattoo in the 90’s.
I thought about it and I probably wouldn’t get a tattoo because who has the time or the money to do something like that. It would be cool to have a tattoo, but the way I live I probably wouldn’t get around to planning something like that. According to my value system it’s frivolous. I try to only do things that aren’t frivolous, at least that’s what I tell myself. And then I sit around on balconies staring off into nothing.
But some people just go around doing things that they want to do. They go to work and they work and then they come home and just do things. But I can’t even think of things that I want to do when I really think about it. Like Molly asked me yesterday, what do you want to do? And I tried to think of an honest answer because most of the time I would never assert myself about some shit like that because I just go along with whatever she wants to do and I couldn’t think of an answer. Besides have sex. Sex and eating, that’s all I do. I like drinking, too, but I like that less and less as it hurts more the next day or the night of, even, when I drink just enough to feel good but not enough to knock me out. I know there are things I want to do, I think, I never thought it was just going somewhere and eating, but maybe it is.
I mean sure I want to go hang out with the girl I was formerly obsessed with, but I don’t even know what I want to do with her, just go dancing I guess or sit on a bed talking, basically anything that seems like it’s leading to sex. Or eating.
But I also like just sitting and talking with people. I like talking with people, especially the girl I was formerly obsessed with. I like playing basketball, too, and writing down dumb shit. I like learning shit, I think I do. Sometimes I even like cleaning, but I don’t know if it’s just because I feel like if I’m cleaning, I’m safe from my inner critic, the one that tells me whatever I’m doing isn’t right, that it would be better if I did something else entirely. And then I do that and it’s the same thing. It’s always something I can’t even do, really, or won’t do, because I’m scared. I should just go around doing things I’m scared of, I guess, is the lesson. I don’t know.
Fuck it, I think I’ll go to sleep.
Today it’s going to be hot in New York. It’s going to be almost 90 degrees Farenheit. Underneath my balcony right now, kids are walking. They’re holding long cables connected to adults. They just stopped when someone said, “About face!” Then they all turned around like little soldiers. Now they are all walking back under the balcony, back to the school or daycare or whatever.
I bought some patio furniture yesterday. Now I set up my iPad on my new seven dollar plastic made in America stool and I’ve got my bluetooth keyboard on my lap and I’ve got my coffee and Morgan is asleep inside and it’s just me out here. My wife, we’ll call her Molly from now on, is at work. She had to go early because she’s the boss this month. It’s turning her into a little neutron star of stress. I work today at 3. It’s 10 AM now. I don’t have shit to do. I have a lot of things to do, but since I know I won’t do them, I’ll just pretend I don’t have shit to do.
To be honest I’m scared to be honest. Some days it seems very simple. Some days it seems unnecessary. And on days like today it seems difficult and possibly not worth it. It’s hard for me to even be honest with you any more, now that you know me so well. I think about what you’ll think of me now. I think about what I’ll think of me when I’m you, sometime in the future, re-reading old bullshit.
I’ve got a lot I want to talk about, but I’d like it to seem well-written. Self-censorship is good when you’re writing for an audience. Only an egomaniac would go on about whatever he wanted to for three thousand words and then hit publish. Well, if I’m a fucking egomaniac, I’d better just shut the fuck up about it. I don’t even know if egomaniac is a word. I usually prefer the term narcissist. I don’t really know how the two are different, but narcissist sounds more classy.
I know what I could do, to make this easier for you and pretty much, though not exactly, the same for me. I could break this up into pieces and schedule them to be posted in the future. Since I feel like writing an epic rant about whatever the fuck, I might as well set myself up for the next few days and then I won’t have to actually write things on days that I don’t want to write things. Man I am good at doing exactly what I want.
Anyone's Ghost 