Personal Journal

Two or three machines

I can’t care.
About anything right now.
About Darryl McTier, the boy who drowned a few weeks ago.
About Annie, the stray kitten I found a month ago.
About Jean.
About the project I’m working on.
I can’t even work up the anxiety to get worried about flying again.
I don’t know if something has rotted, or if it died.
Of course it will only be temporary. At some point, I feel something again. Some voice says that it’ll probably be something bad.
Which is pessimistic, because I did laugh pretty hard earlier tonight watching television.
I need a lot of laughter right now.
I don’t know what this is, this absence. This abscess…

Bored, apathetic, tired and tired and tired again.
Pretty snow fell today. Very pretty, not like Colorado snow. This stuff was wet and heavy and perfect for snowballs. I wish I had someone to play in the snow with. I thought about getting a bottle of wine tonight and drinking it all. But at the end of the day, I was too tired even for that. I actually don’t think I slept when I got “home” tonight, usually I do. I did feel lighter for a while, just to be away from work again.

Jean wore my last nerve, I think. Just kvetching about how upsetting the management is at her job, and I don’t fault her for that. She’s got a right to kvetch, and she’s in a situation with management that I know is upsetting. It’s not even that I think I have something to bitch about in comparison or even in contrast. There’s no point saying what I have to say. I’m tired. This project is a waste of fucking money and fucking time and it’s absurd and I can’t believe the goddamn world WORKS like this! I should have stayed in the fucking Army. I should be in Baghdad right now… I’m tired.
People asking me what I’m going to do and see on this trip. Dude, I have two days off in 19 days. If I don’t see a fucking thing but the television, I think I can be satisfied with that in the short term. In the long term, I’d be disappointed (good thing for that other voice to point out). But shit, did I mention I am tired?
I think it’s that much more tiring to have the two new guys out on this trip. They don’t understand it. They aren’t bothered. They didn’t see the preceeding 38 days (and frankly, they don’t seem like the brightest folks, nice though they are). And without the preceeding 38 days, you can’t understand why it is that I’m rotten in some human place that normally I think it is pretty damn essential, but now, I just find it mildly amusing. To recognize the mechanical portion of life, which is what my life has been reduced to at this point.
That’s what it is about Jean (I’m changing subjects here).
The mechanics of it. She talks, complains, whatever. I keep my mouth shut. No, that’s just the tired. This is about the next fight. The next fight that I’m going to try as hard as I can to avoid, but that I really don’t think can be avoided. My role in it, when it comes to pass, is to practice the lessons I have learned from her. To maintain my self control and respectfulness as hard as I can. Because she’s going to go off about something. Like a machine. And all I can do is learn how to keep from pressing the ugly red buttons of that machine and making the process more difficult. If I fail, if I do something to make the situation worse, well, it doesn’t change anything really. It just means I’m more at fault than I wish to be, but I could accept that. It doesn’t matter who is at fault, only that the machine can’t be stopped. Our machine, I don’t mean to make it out to be her machine alone (thought I do think it’s more hers than mine, or at least I’m beguiled enough by egocentrism to hope it is so).
Because I’m dead inside, I ccan’t say whether I hope the fight does or doesn’t come. I can’t say either way without knowing that it’s just a contrived answer to suit the need of the moment (that my anonymous reader, me, would like to have it answered).
I don’t care.
I just have this prediction, and I should hope it is wrong, and I doubt it will be. All I can do is rise to the occasion and pass a very difficult test that I have set for myself. Control my actions, treat her as she has asked me to treat her.
I’m tired. I take tylenol PM every night to go to sleep “on command” at the appointed time. Last night I took the tylenol, then took benedryl, and briefly I startled myself wondering if I might actually have overdosed on two “downer” type drugs. Was worried for a moment, but then figured it’s probably okay, and anyway, dying in your sleep isn’t a bad way to go, right?
I’ll try to plan for a mall trip tomorrow after work. See if the new game I want is in. And Sunday, maybe the Baltimore Aquarium, that’s my hope.
After a long damn night’s sleep!




It is never too late to be what you might have been. -- George Eliot
Courage to start and willingness to keep everlasting at it are the requisites for success. -- Alonzo Newton Benn