September 18th, 2023 - On the Agenda

Dear TNY,

***This is two days late because Monday I was still on the date that will be mentioned in this letter. I did write this up on Monday, but was occupied later such that I could not send it in. And why not do that yesterday? Well, I just didn’t fucking want to.***

What a wretched piece of shit “Ladies’ Lunch II”…wait, I mean “On the Agenda” is.

Seriously with this fuckshit?  I just did a quick search to see if I remembered that story’s title correctly. That being “Ladies’ Lunch”.  I sure did.  And I saw that it was written by the same author of “On the Agenda”.  So this is a fucking sequel to a story that you, TNY, should have never published in the first place?  Same characters?  Same fucking premise?  Except this time we see conversations and the agendas of such?  Who fucking cares, man.  Like, really.  Who the fuck is reading this and thinking that it’s literature?  This shit is intolerable.  Not only is there no conceivable narrative, the characters cannot be differentiated from each other (other than by name, which I don’t care about), the agenda items are banal, the conversations are stagnant, the dialog is stale, there’s no momentum to this piece, I’m not clear what the intention is (even if a story isn’t supposed to have one, it should at least be doing something and this is not), and the ending is a fuckpile of COVID dogshit that means absolutely nothing. 

But that’s what you guys are famous for these days, right?  Fucking dickshit garbage.

Cool.

I forget where we left off last week with my adventure.  Death-spiral brain-fuck mind-explosion?  Maybe that.  Let’s talk about some things.  I made it through the week.  Sold more shit.  Got on an airplane on Wednesday and flew to Tacoma to put 300 lbs of wood and woodworking tools into storage.  Spent a night playing pinball with my sister.  Got up the next day and flew to San Diego.  Met up with a boat school buddy and had a great evening bullshitting and laughing a whole bunch.  The next day we headed out for coffee, walked to the beach, and talked for hours on the shore about life and pain and relationships and getting older, all this while watching a man who was clearly mentally ill dig a giant hole in the sand only to pile the dislodged sand upon himself, like if a chinchilla and a sea turtle fucked and made a grungy looking human (I felt for this man and wondered aloud what his mental narrative was, like, what was going on in there?), then we packed up and found a cliff to jump off of into the sea, which produced an exhausting swim back to land, then he took me to his workplace and we ate tacos and had a really great fucking day, honestly.  Then I took a shower and went on a date.  And guys…Magic. Maybe I’ll get into this more later.  But it was something.  The next day more of said date occurred in which I visited my grandparents’ grave for the first time (beautiful location, my god).  Then yesterday I met with my cousins, whom I haven’t seen in 23 years, and it was fucking great too.  They are grown up and I am grown up (just kidding, we both know I’m not) and there was a ton of laughing and it was really great to see two brothers who have grown up together, and stayed close to each other, finish each other’s sentences and have so many shared stories, a fucking life that was robbed from me so long ago, and now I’m sitting here, needing to fly out tomorrow, and currently feeling a little alone, knowing I’m going back to HI to pack out everything in the next two weeks and leave Hawai’i, me, still having done everything right, having beat the system and pulled out of slavery for a time, having owned my life wholly, even though that meant being so isolated that it’s broken me down as a human and I’m suffering under a pile of weight, not unlike Giles Corey (I took my sons to his grave, bruh), just metaphorically instead of physically, and I don’t know what to do.  I did the things. I don’t want to quit. I should say that I’m a witch and they’ll take the rocks off. But each and every day I seem to keep saying , “More weight.”

Oh. As part of my date I offered the opportunity to remove me of my facial hair, guys. So, I’m a little cooler on this day.

I was told this morning that I have a self-worth issue.  And I’m sure that’s partly true.  But the thing I think I suffer from is a data issue.  If I’m so beautiful and skilled and I’m a wizard and I’m magic and all the things that people say I am, which I believe to be true in my heart of hearts (I was explaining to someone the other day that I think the reason Ben lost hope is that he didn’t have an ego big enough to save him and the person that I was explaining it to stated that he had self-worth issues from childhood and he believed that he was going nowhere no matter how hard he tried, therefore manifesting that destiny for himself, while I believe I am meant for greatness (to which I started crying on the other end of the text chain being both upset for being called out and embarrassed that, yes, in fact, I do believe that) so my response to that was “You’re goddamn right I am” so this friend pointed out that I’ll likely manifest that for myself, sooner or later), then why doesn’t the life data show that? Why does the life data show that I have those values in relation to others’ lives, but those values aren’t worth being in my life for?  Back to the same old argument (or me seeing it the same way and refusing to see it differently (which I suspect is at least 50% of the case).  People want me to be part of their lives, they don’t want to be part of mine.  Or, as it was pointed out today that people can’t be part of mine due to the American Slavery Machine (otherwise known as the illusion of freedom through the chains of commerce). 

So I did it all to win the game and by shooting out of the game I lost everything.  She pointed out other avenues to gain community back and I gave data to show how many times I have tried and also failed.  But she is right in that there are a million ways to do things and the ones that I have tried only represent a few. And I’m stubborn a lot of the time and feel I have done the work and maybe it’s everyone else’s turn to fucking do it now. Which is likely going to get me nowhere.

The she listened while I cried.  And she said, “I’m sorry it’s been so hard for you.”

And maybe that’s all we need sometimes.  Certainly it is for me.  I don’t want all the options to fix my life, which I know is a human compulsion for others to offer (myself included; big problem solver over here).  Maybe I just want validation that it has been really, really, really fucking hard for me (I know I live a privileged life and there are many others that have it worse).  And maybe I just need someone to hold my hand and say we’ll fix it together.  Whatever that looks like. No matter how slowly that is.

I took me 25 years to write about my brother’s death in a way that feels like I finished saying the big shit I needed to say about it.  Not that I’m done processing it.  Just that I’m done maybe analyzing the incident and I can finally deal with how it’s affected my life. It just takes time, sometimes.

You can’t fix me tomorrow or next Saturday, you know?  I know you know.  And I don’t want you to hold my face forever either.  I want to move forward. But maybe some more faceholding and I can do this. I can fucking do this.

I don’t know what I’m saying. 

Anyway, this worm-infested pile of disembodied animal rectums of a story is worth less than the shit I need to take but haven’t because traveling constipation.

And right now that’s kind of how this life I have built for myself feels too. Just blown out buttholes. A pile of loose, wet rings.  Not that it feels like I should stop, though.  Or I did the wrong things.  I did the right things.  I fought valiantly.  I beat the system.  I bought my life back.  And was severely punished for it with loneliness.

Way to go, America!  You did it!

Well, I’m going now.  My credit card got hacked and I have to get one that’s been shipped in the mail.  Then I’ll get back in the ring and figure out how to fucking survive today.  Tomorrow.  And all the days thereafter.  Until I die anyway, just hopefully somewhere much further down the trail at the top of a wave of joy instead of the bottom of a well of depression.

There’s always hope. 

Nick

Wednesday Morning P.S. I was in a “mood” when I wrote this on Monday. Somewhere between good and bad. Then Monday carried on and later, in the evening, all the words I ever wanted to hear came out of someone’s mouth and I was not alone anymore. It was like wandering around like a crazy person shouting about shit I knew to be true but few others understood, doing that for years, losing one’s mind because of a conviction to ideas that, at that point, seemed wholly made up & the work of the mentally ill, that being me, and then suddenly there was a person saying things that absolutely mirrored everything that I thought & said and presenting a convoluted surface to join to that was almost perfectly aligned to my own convoluted surface, such that I described my life in that moment being akin to Slumdog Millionaire and this was my gameshow. I say all that to say I’m crazy. You guys know it. I know it. We all know it. BUT…there are other crazy people too. And finding each other can be fucking astonishing.