A Social Ghost

And welcome back to the Million Dollar Question, starring MEEEE!  And just what is the Grand Showcase Prize for making it through another day? It Is.... You guessed it. Having to make it though another day! Lucky You! You've just won the trip of a lifetime! No drug or drink is necessary. Just take a walk in these boogie shoes and you'll be trippin' in no time! This is Rod Roddy with the Million Dollar Question and you, too, can win a room with a view! What is your location? Why, scattered across the universe, of course! Thanks for asking! Home was always so much more than a place. Yes it was then and is still now a place. But it was a place with people in it. And it turns out it was far more the people than the place. The memories do linger. Most of the time, the memories help. Sometimes they comfort me. There are quiet moments, however, that they can be the very limit of what I can bear. I look around at a house that I didn't build, yet it was (in part) built for me, seven year-old me. I walked out of these doors, a young man of 23, thinking I'd only come back for visits and family gatherings. Yet it would seem that I'm back. I am back like Arnold. Yet like Anakin Skywalker, I'm not the same. I am full of gratitude. They were the ones who built it. They were the ones who made it happen, many many days, months, years on scorching highways, day by day, working and paying, and struggling. All I'm doing is maintaining and holding things together. For it's only my turn, no less temporary than theirs. It looks almost exactly the same. I keep it looking almost exactly the same. But without the people who made it home, it's not exactly the same. Maybe I make it a home for my little ones who are no longer little ones, yet they're still my little ones. And even if it is technically my turn, I have found myself quite often gazing into a picture and asking him, "What would you do?" And believe me or not, sometimes I hear an answer in my memory. The wallpaper on this newfangled smartphone has five people, besides myself. My mother, my father, and my sisters. I see that picture every time I use this phone, the five of us, only two of us still around. The picture is 21 years old. This picture could buy me a beer. There's just fewer and fewer people left to drink one with. Another late lunch... Nobody wants anything until it's time for my food. I'm like that plant in "Little Shop of Horrors". FEED ME! A space cadet who gets to eat his lunch is the nicest sweetest space cadet you'll ever meet. A space cadet who does not get to eat his lunch is Darth Vader in a bad mood who thought he overheard you trash talking Padme. I would find my lack of lunch disturbing. I need my food, dude! Ah, the dog days of summer, that sweltering August heat. It was already as warm as a late spring day before the sun dared to rise this morning. By barely seven AM, hot enough to be reminiscent of the gates of perdition. This afternoon is gonna be a roast unless a nice cooling rain comes to rescue me. The weekend was over in a flash. I didn't feel so well. I'm not sure if it was the blood Quest drew from me Friday morning or the shock of the expensive bill of 173 dollars despite having insurance. Mark this, friends, Romans, robots, and strangers: This will be the very last time I go. The farther away you stay from the medical mafia extortion ring, the better off you are. They charge astronomical amounts and we still die anyway. And if I have to go anyway, why run up a bill for my kids to have to pay? Nope. I'd rather shuffle off this mortal coil for free. I know you can't take it with you, but my middle son is going to need whatever I am able to leave behind. He's a kind and thoughtful young man. He took care of my parents when I could not. He's been a big help to me around the house. But he needs a chance to live his own life for himself. I want to live to see that day when and where he's happy and realizing dreams and hopes. And if I unfortunately leave this world, I never want him to worry about a place to live. He has earned it and he shall have it. Clean cup move down. There was a meme circulating around that was oh so me. A ghost is trying to scare a guy that might as well have been me. Ooooooo! (nothing) BOO!!! (nothing) [I'LL SWALLOW YOUR SOUL!] (nothing) "Hey, I invited a few friends over, hope that's okay." AHHHHHH! (extreme fear and panic). You think this is a ghost? Now, THIS is a ghost! And I am the ghost with the most, babes. Except with dealing with people and relationships. Hey, the unknown is scary. Especially when it comes to people. And I am debating within myself the very worth of putting myself in such a situation. Now, I have said that my interest, that very specific interest, only extends to one person. Things can change, and things have changed. This is, however, where things stand right now. I have been through some heavy trauma in the past, and for the last several years, there has only been one person I feel safe in such a pursuit. Even if that pursuit is futile in the reality such feelings are not mutual. Still, I find it odd that usually painfully shy me has no problem telling her exactly how I feel. The only exception to my extreme hesitation. Though I make it a point not to be a pest about it. I only make it known that I am here and can be easily found. Sadly it is not mutual. Probably never will be. That is the difference between someone merely liking you, or actually loving you. You know? Grief and unrequited love do have one thing in common: Love with nowhere to go. If love were a letter, this would be the dead letter office, where all letters that can not be delivered go to spend forever and ever amen. Yet there is this foolish part of me that wants to keep walling off the rest of the world. And I have been debating in my mind the worth and the need of coming out of my shell and actually considering other possibilities. The truth is, friends, Romans, robots, and strangers is that I am scared. Sometimes the choices are fuzzy, can be delayed, put off for some fictional time in the future. But on rare occasions the choice is stark and clear. The debate goes on in my head, but I guess I must choose and soon. Do I keep clinging to to the impossible dream that keeps me safe, Or do I get out of my comfort zone and find out just what and who is out there? You might think this a simple choice, but for someone like me, it is anything but simple. I wish I could find the words to make you understand. You'd have to be me. I am not sure I would wish it on you or anyone else. Maybe I am a wiser, better human being for all that I have gone through. That's the cruelty of life that we often have to learn these things the hard way, and long after that lesson does any good. Then there is this feeling that some aspects of life and living will be out of reach until my dying day. Certain things, certain moments of bliss and happiness going forward are just not meant for me to have. I only have my memories, tarnished memories of what happened later. I gave everything I had, everything I was, and it ended horribly. I trusted implicitly. I trusted completely. The wrong person, as things turned out. Did that one bad experience ruin my capacity to do so? I don't know. And friends, that's the scariest thing of all. Clean cup, move down, moving right along. Do you have an allergic reaction to jerkwads being jerky and unnecessarily rude? I know I do. Damn straight I do. It's something about myself I have been trying to work on. Why? Because the jerk only lives in the jerky moment. The one with the allergy keeps returning to the moment and lets that 30 seconds or so ruin their whole day. Does this punish the jerk? No. Does it amplify their jerkiness? Yes. Wouldn't they love that you're still stressing out hours later? Hell yeah! Don't feed the trolls, and never jerk the jerk. (Actually I'm having a good day today) (I was just thinking about something that happened 20 years ago) (Hence my very point) Clean cup move down. Unsolicited texts and politicians are two things that I hate. And lately I've been getting the 2 in 1 combo. All clowns and no burgers. I'm not loving it. One does grow weary of the dog and pony show. Quick question: How do you know someone in the vortex has been hacked? When they start shilling about shitcoin and other crypto bullshit. I'd sooner believe in the Easter Bunny, even an Easter Bunny with better abs than mine. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. Shouldn't the Easter Bunny be female? After all, she's carrying all those eggs around. In all this 21st century babel and confusion, geese and gander, AFLAC! Flock if I know. But the furries would have absolutely loved that one. And the furries are the ones I understand the least of all. I'm a squirrel! I'm a squirrel! No. You're just nuts. AI slop, politics, religion, algorithms, advertisements, and Easter bunnies with manly chests that put the OG Cosmic Wie to shame. Hell, he could put Ricardo Montalban to shame. And Khan Noonian Singh had the manliest chest ever to be seen on the silver screen! What did I use social media for again? As I said before, the robot apocalypse has happened and it's the vortex this time. The evil robots have saved me! Domo Arigato evil roboto. Wanna play a game of network Doom? Now I have no desire to bother anybody. Just let me keep my one tiny little corner of the universe and we'll all live and let live. But the problem is this. Despite having an extremely open mind about a lot of things, Despite having a deep and intimate understanding of many things most wouldn't realize or expect from such as me, this world is still making less and less sense the longer I live. Great God, I miss the 1980s! Now there was a decade I could mostly comprehend. And the eighties were a very long time ago. I remember when they were the here and now. I remember when everything was brand new. I remember a bright future and endless possibilities. I remember a feeling I can never get back again. I miss a time when not everything had to be done online. Paper forms could be a pain sometimes, but there was a simplicity to submitting them you simply don't get on those janky websites. Fill it out and hand it in. That's all you had to do. No bullshit. Sign it, date it, and turn it in. Now even burger joints expect you to have a smartphone up your ass. Insanity! I wish we had a way to opt out. I wonder what an alternate universe where the internet didn't quite catch on with most people? Paper forms, portable players, Blockbuster and Movie Gallery. No streaming. No vortex. Paper checks. Now, I did love the internet of old. It was a wonderful wild west of personal sites of people passionate about any subject you wanted to know more about. Be it a movie, a game, a rock and roll band, or a TV show.... Geocites, Tripod, Angelfire, AOL Hometown.... People built whole worlds in those places... Now, they're gone. It's like they took away the best and amplified the worst. The modern-day internet may be faster, but it sucks. Whoever decided Cloudflare was a good idea deserves a boot in the ass. The internet may be faster, but it seems a lot smaller these days. I can count the places worth going to on just one hand. And even they aren't all that great anymore. I need to go back and look at what I saved from back in the day. And in Bender Bending Rodriguez style, I'll build my own internet with blackjack and hookers. I actually linked together a bunch of saved websites once. But it got to be too many gigabytes.... We're gonna need a bigger drive. I have also rebuilt my D-Fend exports of my favorite old DOS games. There were just too many old versions floating around from before I added improved demos, saves, or whatever. Now, everything includes my work over these many years. Just in case somebody like-minded ever finds them. And like-minded people (On a nearly infinite variety of subjects) are very difficult to find. You know? The mind is a mixed drink. Every experience good or bad has been poured into it. Hopes and fears, past traumas, people who made it better, and last and not least, in general and in specific details, the people we love. And what a mix it is. Happiness, nostalgia, anxiety, sorrow, loneliness, with a dash of misanthropy... If Baskin-Robbins decided to sell alcohol, they'd have nothing on us. The English language is wonderful, don't you think? Still, I have had so many emotions running through me that I just can't find a word for. Nothing seems to fit. It's just that mixed drink. Bitter and sweet, dissolved in tears and laughter. As The Who once sang, what I feel inside, I can't explain. And for someone who uses writing as a way to vent? Oh boy, that's distressing! I guess you'd have to be me to understand. But you're you and not me, are you? Perhaps you should be glad. Though I also happen to know that I am not the only one on this earth who has problems. I mean. who doesn't? Well, I guess I didn't make much of an impression. Then again, I can't say I was helping matters either. Don't get me wrong: She was pretty, attractive, all those things, yadda yadda Yoda, but not in a desert queen of mixed signals sort of way. Not in a Gypsy sort of way. You might say I am too picky. Only one woman fits the bill. Only one. My Angel. My Gypsy. My desert queen. Forever out of reach... The only one who makes me laugh. The only one who makes me smile. The only one who makes me hopeless. Such is the way of the force. With anybody else, starting a conversation seems impossible, an invisible wall. With this one, however, conversation flows, smiles happen, and I rediscover again and again why I feel this way, despite all the inevitable impossibility and the forever alone future it ensures. Maybe I'm just too different. Maybe I have always been, Maybe my wavelength is so far out of the spectrum that there is absolutely zero chance of any resonating with anyone ever. Maybe this is something I just have to accept. Maybe, despite what I have been saying, I have accepted it a long time ago. By fixating on impossibilities, I have built a wall that does not seem like a wall at all. But it is, you see. It's like that line from Desperado about only wanting what you can never have. And a man can never truly be happy until he learns to want and appreciate what he already has. I guess, with the material things, I am happy with what I have. Really, materially, I need nothing more. I merely wish that at 50-something, I didn't have to run so damn hard to keep it. Young dudes and gals, do not be under any illusion that they ease up on you for getting older. They don't. And also remember what I have repeated time and again. Home is so much more than a place. It's who you come home to that matters the most. Without this, you have only silence, and silence, and silence. May this day find you well.