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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  2163 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 25, 2018

Because reasons I tracked this down yesterday and turns out this post is exactly one year old today:

I just spent too much effort on a weird garden path rant after learning what incel is. Anyway. I should have posted about this first.

I maybe am more open with you strangers than most would be given my problems. I was gone last week. My step dad sent me to the crisis unit because I showed up drunk to his house. He lost his shit when I came back after discharge to get my car and said some very hurtful things I'd rather not think about right now.

That link is to a telling of my life up to that point when I was very hopeful. It's a half hour long. And long story short, everything that was giving my hope at that time fell apart spectacularly in a way that I didn't think I could recover from or survive.

But here I am. Technically but not legally homeless because the definition is ridiculous here. Grinding it. Selling free used books. Writing. Avoiding trespassing charges by buying things I can't afford or parking where it's unlikely a cop will find me asleep at 2AM. Accepting charity from my mother and ignoring the guilt. Being frighteningly energetic after 29 hours being awake out of necessity, fear and bipolar mania. Motivating myself for a time to spite people by succeeding but knowing that isn't sustainable. And not really complaining because I was raised not to. And maintaining my political progressive optimism that people are good, government can work, wanting to make a career of that and not being bitter despite all the justifiable reasons I could be. A little bitter about some things. Fuck certain people for good reasons.

As soon as today I will have an apartment through the local mental health agency that's been helping me. I got kicked out of sober living a month ago but that means I can be friends with the owner who is younger than me and a great guy and I'm slowly meeting other sober people who are good people.

I'm pretty OK.

_____

Little aside: people younger than I, don't follow your heart. I think people still say that but the world has changed in only 20 years and young people are maybe a little more pragmatic today. I was always somewhat aware of the underlying, unspoken unhappiness in my family. I was the oldest. I was the test case and I remember more of an early, unhealthy marriage with inexperienced parents.

After high school I semi consciously decided I wanted to be happy, that money was unimportant despite living towards the lower and of middle class when I was a kid. I majored in art, dropped out of school for a girl in another state who dumped me right away. I lost a full scholarship and a great internship. I re enrolled in college and chose an even less practical art major.

That's just 17-20 year old decision making of a person who wanted to be happy but had no idea how to do it. I've been arrested four times. I've tried to sleep on the grass in February. I have never had anything close to a career. A lot of that is entirely my fault. Some is unfortunate circumstance and the hand I was dealt. Some of my role is being naive which I suppose is excusable.

The median age of hubski is pretty high. I don't know who I'm directing this at. But if you follow your heart and try to do what you love, love what you do and get paid or whatever platitude I bought into at one point. It's going to be hard, risky, you might fail, you might end up with the opposite of what you want and you might end up places you didn't expect and maybe weren't supposed to go.

I suppose at the moment I am content with a suitcase in an airbnb, a computer that's too old for what I will end up paying for it and almost everything I own jammed in a closet for a while. I have some people who seem to care about me who I didn't know eight months ago. Contentment is a goal perfectly attuned to reality and happiness is just something you get occasionally when you're lucky.