Scattered Meaning

 

The problem with living in one's head just about all the time is that reality tends to intrude far too often. Because there is an outside world, you must tend to outside business. There's work and bills and a zillion other responsibilities, some you never even asked for. For a discouraged heart and an exhausted spirit, things are so much better on the inside. But you gotta come out sometime. Even if that ship of life is lost in the ocean, you've gotta get above deck and adjust your course ever so often. Why? I don't know, but the voyage continues. Sometimes I really seem to be adrift, moving yet standing still at the whim of inertia. I go through the motions. I do the things I am supposed to do. But my heart is not really in it. Do it. Get it done so I can retreat back into my mind's shell. Ironically where I don't have to think so much. Ever glitch out of a level in a game? You can go anywhere, but everywhere is nowhere. And as if this were not enough, there is no way of finishing the level or winning the game. That's how my life has felt like for a good while now. One big void glide. Purgatory with a heartbeat. Exile in a place that looks like my hometown but isn't. That place beyond all that once mattered. I have somehow glitched out of the game. I feel more an observer than a participant. I report my findings to no one, except maybe whoever might see these words. And I have to ask myself what really matters anyway. Happenstance and random chance?  It is my believe that is what this is, and what we are. The scattered and slowly cooling embers of a the biggest bonfire ever 13.7 billion years ago. 

My belief that we are all just random chance, probabilities and possibilities that emerged from a chaotic universe may seem a bit insane at first, but any idea that someone did all this on purpose is an even crazier idea. So here I am. For want of a nail, goes this living creature of flesh of blood, of bone. Bonus feature: Here is a sentient conscious mind to go along with it. And do you know?  A chaotic universe ain't so good at matching minds with bodies. Go figure go fish. But that's another story. What is fate really? It is true that what is gonna happen is simply gonna happen.. Except that it is about half random chance and half what we can do about it. Not only is there no grand design, but there's no design at all... Just entropy and the arrow of time. And however little we can intervene. Maybe there are places in this multiverse where we get dealt different hands or make different choices. If so, I wonder what they're like. I wonder who I might be there, and if that someone would even technically be, well, me. If we are the sum of our experiences, then maybe not. Either way I will never know. Such places, if they exist, are separated by barriers so impassable that they are invisible. It is just on the path of this one arrow in time that I will ever experience anything. We are glued to the rails on this crazy train. There are no sidetrack adventures. If direction and speed in the universe can mean distant vantage points can see a future that has already happened or a past yet to occur.. Well it seems to say that everything is already set to happen. And if so, neither action nor random chance is not going to change things. And therefore, fate rejoins the equation after a brief absence. There really is no escape after all. How did that song go? Whatever will be will be?

I have often said that sleep is really the great escape. And aside from the sometimes bad dreams, it really is. It seems I forget everything, or at least I remember very little directly. Although reality tends to filter into my dreams in this roundabout way... I was in yet another maze, an outdoor park of some kind when everything went black. I came to in this waiting room sort of place with a doctor's bill in my hand.. It read $41 for treatment of depression no less. I need that dream cash back because I don't think it worked. Or maybe I didn't pick up my dream meds from the dream pharmacy? But, yeah.. I'm not feeling so good, Friends, Romans, strangers, and acquaintances. Not so good. It's nobody's problem except my own. I understand that. Just doesn't make it go away. When your whole reality is seen through your own eyes and felt with your own heart... Well you can't really separate how you feel, can you? This is reality. And this is why I happen to love sleep so much. Though even then it sometimes filters down. I often ask myself just what would be my happy ending if I were writing my own script. And to tell you the truth I can't say I know anymore. There is no Joan Of Arc knight in shining armor that's gonna charge in and save me, is there? I might as well get used to that figurative dragon. He's a freaking monster, I tell ya. Loves to torture me, remind me of all the things I can never have, of all the beauty I can never touch, of open arms everywhere that will never hold me. Yes sir that dragon is a mean green scaley sadistic son of a bitch. Probably knows I have no hero, no champion, on the way. So I ask myself again, what happy ending am I looking for? What would it take? Is there some way I could help it along? Sometimes the exact question is even harder to find than the answer. I think that's why people invented religion. That way they can plug the gap with short unhelpful answers like 'Don't worry, God is in control'. Well anybody who happens to control this shitshow is certainly not my friend, and definitely does not love me. I would say sadistic bastard, but that may offend someone. Look at this grandly designed world. But that's a topic I'd better not go into. Let's just say I have some very strong feelings and leave it at that. I think my theory of there being a team of mad scientists in some lab is much more plausible. Yes, the evil lab where little do I know that my poor brain is hooked to computers and electrodes  and not actually in this skull. The crazed scientists have me hooked into a simulation that tests for mental breaking points. Every time I overcome or make it through, the simulation merely levels up. 2022 has been a bitch and a half. Let's just start taking away the most loved people in the subject's life. They'll be sure to go insane and we can take our lunch break. Muhahaha!

I am strongly considering going completely incognito for a few hours, of turning off that damned phone and disappearing for a little while. Call it a practice run. And I think I will be going to visit my baby sister... Though she really isn't there. I should know. I spent over an hour once holding a little white box with a neatly printed label that was supposed to contain everything she was. I really did not believe it possible. She was always so much more. Anyway, I would imagine that if she were truly there, she would have found a way to let me know. Maybe it should be a comfort to know she's not in a box, not in a grave. Still, I miss her terribly. She was a kindred spirit and a best friend, as much as a sister. I feel so damned lonely and so empty inside. I can't call her so she can talk me out of these terrible feelings. Funny how we used to be each other's crisis line. I would talk her down. She would talk me down... I really wish she were here right now. But she's gone. So, I'm gonna do the next best thing. I'm going to turn off my phone, cut off all contact with the world of the living, and spend a while by my sister's side. And there by her grave I'm going to sit and I'm going to think and I'm gonna decide what I should do with whatever's left of my life. I'm not sure if it will help, but I can't really think of anything else. She was one of the few people on this earth who truly cared for me, truly loved me. I know she's not really there, but still. I feel at a loss as where else to go. I feel tired and old and lonely. I feel isolated, exiled from a meaningful world. Somebody once called me a 'drama queen' for writing as I do, but I just don't know how else to say this. Am I really being dramatic by speaking the truth about how I feel? How else can I express these feelings? Should I sugar coat, whitewash, or outright lie? Should my words read like a 1950s US Government film? Should I truly hide my heart from the world because it makes me appear to be overly dramatic? Maybe this scares people away. Who wants to be around some gloomy buzz kill? No they've gotta be bright and chipper and fun. Believe it or not, I can be sometimes. Just not today. I do have an awesome sense of humor if I say so myself.. It's just been a long time since I've felt like laughing. Kinda hard to when tragedy seems to be the rule rather than the exception. Hard to be bright in a darkened room. I have also been told I'm too honest. But why lie? What would be the point? If I'm to be loved, hated, known, forgotten or ignored, It might as well be for and as the person I truly am. And even as for that, I have not been 100% forthcoming about absolutely everything because some things can't be spelled out right now. Why? Firstly, my situation does not allow me very much flexibility. Secondly, there are simply some things I intend to share only with someone very close to me, and there has been no such person. And lastly, some things are my own personal business. I share a lot of things, but not absolutely everything.

Well I went to the cemetery to see my sister's grave as I said I would. It is at a certain church, a usually quiet place. Not this time, though. I only stayed a few minutes because there was some sort of work crew at the church. I really didn't get that quiet reflection I was hoping for.. And of course, she was not really there. I guess I logically knew this, but there was this irrational bit of myself that kind of hoped I'd feel some sort of presence. But that's not where she would be. She would be present in all the things she put her heart into, all the things she believed in. She would be at the places and with the people she loved so much. But she wasn't in that little white box all those months ago and she's not in that grave now. I hope wherever she is, it is a happy place. I hate religion. There are just too many damn things wrong with it. But this is a vast multiverse beyond imagination. She has a place in it. I know she does. I didn't really get all of that thinking done I had planned on doing. The construction crew kind of ruined the feeling of solitude I was hoping for. As to why I wanted to do all of this thinking there, well my sister and I used to be the ones we'd talk to when we needed a bit of advice. I kind of need some direction. Our similar mental wiring gave each a bit of extra insight into the thinking of the other. Not everything needed to be said or spelled out. We couldn't exactly read each other's minds, but we could assume correctly about a lot of things. There was nobody else on this earth who could understand me the way she could. And that's why I was more comfortable talking to her. I didn't have to explain the context. I thought maybe a bit of quiet contemplation in that place might help me get past these heavy thoughts I have been battling of late. But the construction workers were there and my sister wasn't. So I went home. There really was nowhere else to go. 

This fatigue I've been feeling of late is really something else. I feel tired even when I think I shouldn't. And that's just the physical. Mentally I'm exhausted and I know exactly why. Spiritually I'm probably hibernating or flat out dead. Hopefully the former. Ever just ask yourself just why in the hell are we doing this for in the first place? Beats the streets I guess. I was about to say nuthouse, but I dunno... 3 square meals, your own room, coloring, drawing, medication... Maybe make some friends because crazy is the new normal in a place like that... Strolling around the grounds until I feel at home. Maybe it's time I looked for a good Napoleon Bonaparte cosplay outfit. I am za Emperor. I demand you let me in!  I tell ya, with all the things that have happened in my life, it's a wonder I haven't been committed. While I understand well that this world wasn't made for me, I am beginning to feel that I wasn't made for it either. I would be happier somewhere a lot slower placed and with a lot more love. I don't wish to rule, I just want my happy little corner. My own pocket universe where pain and time, loss and loneliness never existed. That sounds wonderful.. It would be all I ever wanted. Peace, just peace.