I can’t sleep. Lying in bed, I feel like something’s crushing me. I feel like my skin’s too tight and I’m slowly feeling my breath squeezed out of me. I feel kind of like a failure. Too many things with me at the centre, none of which am I holding well. The centre, which is me, cannot hold. And I’m failing.
A friend went “off baseline” recently. He was hospitalized before he caused harm to himself or others.
Another friend’s gone crazy, but it shows in his iconography and rage. He’s gone full foaming Trump and he’s got God and he’s got hate. And I take it personally.
I was talking to another friend today about the failure feeling that comes from losing so much of our fanbase and frankly my friendbase and honestly my FAMILY this way. And I don’t want to have those conversations. I feel like it’s too late to have the conversations. I feel like they’d just regard me as another of Them. It’d firm me up as the Enemy.
Talking to yet ANOTHER friend (gosh, I still have friends?) – she’s part of the world of alphabet soup – or at least she was. She has reason to know what revolutions and civil wars and insurgencies are like. She’s got reasons to know what they leave behind. She was talking about how it’s not the physical damage – because in reality, many nations, as they rip apart at the seams, leave most of the buildings standing. The army never comes to town. The bullets never fly in most cities. The lines change AROUND the people and relatively few are caught in the meatgrinder of actual war. But she says that each person bears the scars. The lack of trust, the relationships and friendships and families ripped apart. The loss of faith.
And I feel that scar tissue building up in myself. Because perhaps I’m just projecting. As a failure of a community leader, as a failure of a community builder, it’s ME that’s seeing the Thems and the Enemies. And I’m not confronting it. I just want to retreat. I just want to curl into a ball and hide. I just want to play the song and be done and move on.
And so I feel betrayed by people I don’t understand in a war I can’t even really comprehend. I can’t fathom why they’ve chosen the spittle flecked rabid dog madness they’ve chosen. And I don’t want to talk to them about it. I just wish I didn’t know. I want it to go back to the way it was. Where we hung out and we played the songs, and we raged against the machine without realizing we both thought The Machine was a totally different thing. I didn’t realize he was part of it. I didn’t realize he meant me and mine and my godless blue state unamerica.
Maybe writing it out will help me sleep. It usually does. But writing it out means it’s real. It’s done.
The rain stopped at some point while we were in the Lair. We just have our low, glowing Baltimore sky. A Baltimore that I romanticize and that others want to escape. That others demonize and think of as too dangerous to go to.
God damn it. When did I lose?
I “finish” my Journal entry, cut and paste it into ilyAIMY.com and leave it as a draft. I’ll decide if unrelated pictures go into it later. Unthinkingly I pop another browser tab because maybe there’s something relaxing to read online and I realize there isn’t. I can’t open Facebook or Instagram without running across hatred. I can’t read the news. I can’t open my favourite tech sites because they’re wrapped in snide political commentary. I open Musiciansfriend.com because in a capitalist society the storefronts are the only place you can count on to be friendly and THAT is the stuff of nightmares.
Ha. I can’t stop myself and check my messages. Another friend has just identified possible breast cancer. I feel guilty for even THINKING I’ve got problems.
