Lonesome, miserable, fucked up blues

 

A day like this should be outlawed
A day like this should be banned
For all the trouble that's come my way
I will never understand

I sit alone in my dungeon
Wasting away in my chair
Sunsets of pink and blue outside
Only accent my despair

I told myself I'd be all right
I thought that I would have fun
But I sit at home and cry all night
Now that you're gone I have no one

I will forever be angry
Forever I will shout my curse
Me and my hard heart full of sadness
Against the fucking universe

The end
Never again

Just another day

Me and my scrunched up face, squeezing a tear or two out of my sour lemon head. I looked at Sharon's Facebook yesterday and read through all her notes. As if I needed another booster shot to keep my grieving fresh. I read the one about our 7th anniversary and saw all the emotion she put into it. She always put on a brave front for the world and for me. I can't fathom that a person with so much life is gone. I deserve to be gone, for I have all but given up on life.

These are the thoughts I am comfortable with, day in day out. By comfortable, I mean accustomed to. I don't know any different. I think I've convinced myself that I can't be anyone else but this sad wreck of a man who misses his deceased wife. I am the story, the story is me. All this BS about "who is aware" of the story or some such dissociative nonsense just makes me more frustrated.

I am still not sure which fate is worse, the annihilation of my story and all the bits which make up my physical and mental being, or some kind of continuation where all the faults and mental confusion continue on into some afterlife. At this point, just annihilate me already. Apparently, I've had all I'm allotted of happiness, and all that's left is the scraping of the last unsatisfying leftovers. I can order more sadness and suffering or not. Either way, it's all that's on the menu.

I guess Sharon wouldn't be so proud of me right now. What's it matter if she's truly gone? If I knew she was looking down on me from some heaven or existed somehow....if only. I would have some kind of reason to feel like it's not all waste of time. That it's OK to go through crap because it all comes out fine in the end. That the end of her suffering wasn't just the sad end to a sad story, but the beginning of a new (hopefully better) chapter.

But I read through her notes, and the hopeful tone diminished after a while. Then she just gave up on documenting what was a lost cause. My memory of those years is pretty clear, though. More and more negativity from me and less resistance from her. She did try to keep me from going negative, even by going negative herself at times. It would sort of stop me in my tracks, but she didn't have the strength to battle my demons for me.

I miss her so much. The stupid little things that I was able to do for her like downloading her TV shows or picking up her medicine. The simple life of routines that I could somehow manage to keep going. Now my routines are empty. I have no mission, no purpose. And please, nobody better tell me that my mission is to keep going, it's what she would have wanted. That I should enjoy life and have fun.

That is just not in the cards. Yeah, I'm programming my own destiny with this kind of self-talk. So what? I never noticed that lying to myself and trying to convince myself that I'm happy or a good person was ever too effective. I see her positive reinforcements in the Facebook notes, and it just rips my heart out. The little messages she would send to me like, "It's your weekend coming up. Let's make it the best one ever!"

I couldn't even give her one good weekend. And now there are no more chances. So do you think I'm going to have a good weekend here alone with these thoughts? Or over the holidays? Or in the new year? What would that even look like? According to popular theory, I must be enjoying the hell out of my life because this is the way I'm living it. If it bugged me that much, I'd change it. Like I'd change my emotions, just by pushing a button?

Give up on me already, I have.

Emptiness, Ego and the "Self"

Trying to grasp some concepts that I'm clearly not capable of understanding. I keep hearing words like "spacious awareness," "awake awareness," "formless invisible life force" and their contrasting concepts "ego," "false self," "persona" and the like. We are supposedly all interconnected and are One on some vast level and are not independent entities.




This space represents the fact that I haven't grasped it yet.



I can't even describe what I'm confused about, I'm so confused. I don't even know what I don't know, or if I'm capable of knowing even that much. I would like to "wake up" or become "enlightened" but I just keep waking up into another dream. Is a tree a tree? What kind of dumb question is this? "Form is emptiness and emptiness is form." What?! I'm pretty sure that's a paradox. So non-duality recognizes its inherent inability to describe absolute reality?

Sorry, I'm listening to: "Shift into Freedom: The Science and Practice of Open-Hearted Awareness" and I'm having so many issues with the concepts being described. I'd like to experience whatever is the end result from this teaching on a visceral level. Peace, love, compassion, understanding are all held out as promised benefits. So far I am still having a hard time even accepting it intellectually, although the author is using pretty plain language. It's just that I'm not feeling any of what he's talking about.

Waiting for the "aha."

I'm trying the exercises, but I can't seem to unhook my local awareness and move it even one inch from my current physical location. I'm not feeling the spacious awareness, interconnectedness, pure awareness, or any other subtle aspects of my supposed totality. I have to pause the audiobook every couple of sentences or so and say, "Nope. Haven't gotten that far yet."

I'm just me. I'm stuck in "ego identification." Sure, there is an awareness of sorts. But it is very stuck in its locality. I can think about things outside of myself, but they are just thoughts, not any kind of accurate awareness of reality. Surfing the cosmos in a state of non-stuck awareness sounds great, but I can't get past the awareness of my ass, sitting in my chair, listening to mumbo-jumbo.

Maybe in another lifetime. Oh, wait, only NOW exists. No procrastinating or postponing to a future time. All future times exist NOW, allegedly. Kinda throws free will out the window, another paradox. If the future already exists then all decisions have been made, therefore I can't affect the outcome one whit. I can only go through the motions and watch as the illusion of a person making pretend choices plays out.

Or are there multiple futures? Which one is real? Do any of them exist, really?

In the present moment I can set all kinds of things in motion. Those things play out in an ever changing motion picture of present moments. I'd like to have stop, rewind, re-record, splice and erase features but apparently they aren't available in this year's model of reality.

No, I'm not on drugs. I probably need to be, though. This thinking shit is really for the birds. Better off watching mindless tv.

People have been thinking about this stuff for a long time, explaining it in terms that make sense to them. For example:

https://www.facebook.com/IAmSamLongSamIAm/posts/10215352352140176

 https://www.facebook.com/adyashanti.org/videos/249233965738440/UzpfSTExNzcyNDU4MDU6MTAyMTUzNjEyNzg4MDMzMzc/

Guess what's back?

 

My favorite emotion, anger. Or frustration to the point of screaming, what's the difference. It seems I have not been beaten down by life enough to make me completely docile and non-reactive.

Today, for the fuckteenth time, I accidentally sent out my "death notification email" while in the process of resetting the date on my automatic email program. It is completely my fault. Me, me, me. It's like when you hit the enter key while composing a message and, boom, it's sent before you can proofread it or even finish the sentence you were working on.

What frustrates me about this is that I have to then email my 2 contacts and explain/apologize for the false alarm and try to convince myself that it's even worth it to have an automatic email program. I keep telling myself, "it's not for me, it's for the pets." They don't deserve to die of starvation because I go months without anyone worrying enough about me to physically check up on me.

Having it in place is one less obstacle in my path should I choose to end my life deliberately. At least I know I won't be murdering my pets through abandonment. My 2 contacts have assured me that they will look after the animals in the event that I am deceased. If my contacts somehow die, and I am unaware of it, it is all for naught. Nobody checks on anybody that often. One of my contacts doesn't post on Facebook or call or email and is living in Oregon. Not sure who is going to come for the dogs, but she's the one who said she'd be taking care of it, even if by proxy.

Why is it that an emotion like anger can easily break into my self-pitying sadness routine, but happiness or joy or any other positive emotions never do? I honestly hate this life. I hate how it is set up and run and the storyline and the laws and physics of it. Fuck the universe. I've had enough of it or maybe it's had enough of me. I'd blame God, but I'm over that archaic human construct. Fuck whomever and whatever, and just fuck it all.

Merry Christmas!

Survey

 

If there is an external entity to whom we owe this wonderful existence, where is the survey asking us about how we enjoyed our experience and what they might do to improve it? Some suggested sample questions:

1. Regarding your stay here on earth, was it ______ ?
     a. completely satisfying
     b. somewhat satisfying
     c. neither satisfying or unsatisfying
     d. somewhat unsatisfying
     e. completely unsatisfying

2. Were the terms and conditions of your existence fully explained to you?
      yes ____
      no  ____

3. Did the Staff answer your questions regarding the nature of existence clearly and
     concisely?                    
     yes ____
     no  ____

4. Were you able to locate and utilize the help features provided by the Creator?
     yes ____
     no  ____

5. Would you choose life on earth again?
      yes ____
      no  ____

6. If you answered "no" to question 5, please explain briefly, why not? (500 characters
    or less)




Thank you for taking the time to return this survey. All responses will be tossed in the trash and disregarded. Management reserves the right to further torture and confuse all participants in this and all future existences.

7. Bonus question: How often do you clean the lint trap on your dryer? ____
    a. before each use
    b. once per week
    c. occasionally, when I think about it
    d. what is a lint trap?

My Groundhog Life: The 5 stages of Grief, Learned Helplessness and Conversion Disorder

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness

I've fallen and I can't get up. The hole I'm in, psychologically speaking, is deep and convoluted. I must have hit a couple of bends along the way, because I can't even see daylight above me. Now I'm supposed to trust that it is there because other people tell me that "it gets better" or "life goes on." The worst is "what you're experiencing is normal." I guess the new normal is what I'm supposed to be accepting (the final stage of the grief process).

I think of Sharon often, and how much tenacity she had in clinging to life. And yet, in the end, it didn't matter. She had to accept that it couldn't go on. I'm sure she had to go through all the stages (denial, bargaining, anger, sadness) before arriving at the final acceptance stage. But what does that say about life? We are all helpless in the end, death wins. Whether we go down swinging or die with our boots on, we are going down.

I'm apparently not mentally OK, because I recognize this fact and am acting accordingly: depressed, shut down, resigned. It would be much better for my mental well being if I lived in denial, the place most humans spend their lives. I've tried my share of bargaining and anger. Sadness is where I currently spend most of my time. Acceptance equals death, so I'm not quite there yet. I'm not making a distinction between accepting the idea of one's mortality and the actual giving up on life itself. Sue me.

I've learned that no matter what I do, I will die. And in the meantime, while waiting for this inevitability, no matter what I do, I can only briefly hold back entropy, and this only with a herculean effort. If I sit back and go with the flow I will arrive in the ocean just as surely as if I swim with all my might against the current. There's no escaping the river, both sides are insurmountable cliffs reaching to the sky.

Someone gave me a crock pot. Actually an "Instant Pot" as a Christmas gift. I'll give you a hint: they stayed at my house recently and had a little trouble with my ancient crock pot. I know I'm the most difficult person in the world to deal with, maybe that's why they left it on the front porch without ringing the bell. They did call the night before, so I wasn't unprepared for them to show up. However, I was as relieved that I didn't have to answer the door as they probably were that I wasn't in the living room at the time.

I'm touched by fact that someone cared enough to give me a gift, even if they did feel obligated because of the whole fire evacuation housing thing. I tried a faint protest on the phone, but I wasn't able to be mean enough to say "no" to someone who just wanted to thank me for what they perceived as my hospitality. I'm really not so gracious, I'm just weak and unable to put up much of a fight anymore. I may have to ask them to take it back. It is way too expensive of a gift and I'm pretty sure I'd never use it. I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, though, so I dunno.

Many opportunities exist in this world for me to be a better person. To not be so pig-headed and think of others for a change. I just have a hard time with getting out of my own way. So I've developed a physical component to my mental disorder. I can't do this because "XYZ" condition is acting up. When it was my intestines, I was sidelined. Then my liver or kidneys, I don't know which. Now my low blood pressure and eye conditions keep me from actively doing much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_disorder
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_symptom_disorder


I have a routine, a daily ritual which keeps me locked in a vicious cycle of "I can't do this because..." It starts in the morning with my taking an hour to get out of bed. Then my little exercise routine, my Perry Mason, 45 min omelette cooking followed by 1 hour breakfast in front of the TV. Now it's noon or so and I haven't even showered yet. I do that, brush my teeth and get dressed and now it's close to 1 o'clock.

I need to go for a walk before it gets too late. I go for an hour walk, but occasionally two hours if I decide to make it interesting. I try to get back to watch "The Rifleman" at 3 o'clock. Why? Who knows. It's just a routine that I have, to get me from one hour to the next. Then at 4 pm I will start feeding the dogs and cleaning the cat box. This takes 15 mins and now I settle down to watch the rest of "Wagon Train," another old-timey western show that barely holds my interest.

I may pick up the guitar during these TV show and fiddle with chords that I never seem to make into anything cohesive or definitive. Just experimenting with what might sound good. Anyway, no goal, no accomplishment.

By five I have to get up and do something, anything, to kill the next hour without the TV. "Charlies Angels" is on and I really don't want to watch it. If I have anything to do on the computer I will, or if I have any laundry to fold, or dishes to attend to I'll do that. Even a little target practice with the BB gun will be better than giving in to watching more mindless TV. Despite my pathetic choice of weaponry, my kill ratio is actually improving. I wouldn't want to be a tin can on my property thinking it's gonna get away with standing upright on a tree stump or a trash can lid.

By six I've exhausted my  limited chores. Sure, there are a multitude of things I've been avoiding and will continue to avoid. Like "de-cluttering" or whatever I'm supposed to be doing to "move on" or "get closure" or such. Even the most obvious tasks like fixing the leaky faucet in the guest bathroom are put off indefinitely, short-circuited by the mentality of futility that I've adopted. Keep to the daily routine, no varying it up. No extra expenditure of energy for tasks with unknown reward factors.

Which makes me wonder, why am I wasting this energy right now? I'm not getting much out of it. Time to make my same ol' dinner of chicken and salad and try to figure out what to watch on TV or the computer to pass the hours before I can go to sleep. If I get really lucky I will dream. Either way, I will wake up in this Groundhog Day scenario again tomorrow. Rinse, repeat.

Night of Rememberance and an adult art therapy class

I went to an event put on by the Sutter Hospice team called "A Night of Remembrance." We were asked to bring a framed picture and submit a digital photo for a slide presentation. I RSVP'd and it was my only scheduled event on the calendar for months. I went alone. It was my first social outing in a while. I have been having many nights of remembrance at home, but I wanted to see what the hospice nurses and staff would cook up.

Specifically, I hoped to see people who could remember Sharon with me, such as Gina and Susan, who were among her recent nurses. Susan showed up, Gina didn't. It didn't seem to be much of a night of remembering the people, actually, but a night of talking about the general subject of grief and loss. There were songs and snacks and a slide show. If there was remembering going on, it was done silently.

I have to say, without prejudice, that Sharon's picture was the most lovely one in the bunch.

I was approached by the grief support coordinator and somehow wound up agreeing to attend their adult art therapy class. I suppose it was due to my complete lack of any activities that I found myself without an excuse. I could have just said no, I suppose, but these days I don't have much fight in me.

I don't like driving at night. My vision is bad enough but 2 lane highways in the darkness are the worst. Oncoming headlights blind me to the point of near panic. I stay focused on the white line on the shoulder called the "fog line." I thought I would be late because of Marysville traffic, but I wound up being the first person there. Big deal. I survived the drive there, move on.

It was a mixed age group, I was neither oldest or youngest. It began with more discussing of grief and loss by the group coordinator. We moved on to making a "mask" that represented our outward projection to the world. People made either happy plaques or some kind of representation of the positivity they knew they were expected to portray, but with subtle clues about the fragility of this image.

My lump of clay looked like an unformed skull with hollow eyes and a fracture on the top of the dome. I wasn't going for subtle. When asked to share about the idea behind it I said that I'm not really wearing a mask, I'm wearing my grief on the outside. I suppose that could constitute a mask. The mask of a broken, grieving person. Not sure what would be under the mask, though, if anything.

The coordinator kept asking if I felt safe. It is such a catch word these days. I hate it. Safe from what? I am not safe. No one is. It is a fiction we keep telling ourselves in order to not freak out because reality is so harsh and uncertain. I had to assure her that I would "try my best" to make it to the next class and that I wasn't actively suicidal.

I guess my mask is pretty scary.

Anyway, since my schedule is clear for the foreseeable future, I guess I will try my best to make it to the next class. I'm not sure if I'm going to get anything out of it. The other grief group, which was mostly seniors didn't seem too effective. Most of those people had religious beliefs that gave them some kind of comfort. I felt out of place with my non-committal, non-dual, non-ideology. My skepticism and doubt wouldn't be helpful to this group of grannies who just missed their loved ones. Sure, we had that in common, but I can't relate to the God and heaven consolations. I wish I could.

Anyway, I spend most of my time alternately distracting myself and actively indulging my grief. I still find that tugging at my own heartstrings is the only rewarding activity I engage in. And the reward is that I feel something, rather than nothing. I've given up on the idea that a happy side to things exists for me. So, sad is my new happy.

I so wish that I could remember Sharon and not feel so sad and horrible. Part of me knows that she wouldn't want it this way. The rest of me knows I'm getting what I deserve and even she would agree with that. I can only hope such a thing as forgiveness exists in this or some afterlife. I don't forgive or accept myself. I'm having a hard time believing in unconditional love or forgiveness.

Maybe somewhere.

Someday.

Stuck in this room in my mind

 

Like Sharon was stuck in her bed, I have mentally made myself a recluse in my downstairs room. Sure, I can leave any time. I come up for food and to feed the dogs, go for my walk, etc. But on rainy days, or pretty much any day, I will spend most of my hours down here alone. I am mostly bored.

Sometimes I get lucky and something will trigger an emotional response from me (no surprise, it's usually sadness).

I read Facebook occasionally because, well, my life is so empty that I have to get my glimpse out at the world somehow. Usually, I will be forced to scroll through the muck of people's best and brightest copied, shared or otherwise unoriginal material. Memes, videos, outraged reactions to news stories, always impugning some group deemed to be "the problem." Mild irritation is usually all I get out of most of it. The judgey little voice that says, "Oh, please..."

Always, I get to a point where something will stir up a memory, a thought, a feeling about the sad story that I live in. The one that revolves around Sharon's illness, our rough time together and her death. And my subsequent empty life of aloneness. I can twist any little thing into a reason to cry. Even cute kitties or babies. A flower. A breeze. A sunny day. Nothing exists that I couldn't find a sentimental mournful side to.

Pure joy doesn't exist in my universe, it's all tainted with the curse of death. My non-dual philosophies have failed me. I don't find comfort in any consciousness, oneness or enlightenment teachings. It's all mind-fuckery. Say the right words, and you will sound like you have a grasp on the "is-ness" of reality.

But honestly, no one knows shit. We are all grasping at straws. Some of us seem to be more convinced that they have something. Others, like me, are the opposite. I am sure of nothing except that I will die. Given the track record of every other human being that has ever lived, it's a safe assumption. What that means for me, or who I perceive myself to be, is a mystery. Hell, I don't even know what or who "I" am.

So, I'm just passing the days watching TV. Just like Sharon did. And soon enough, I'll find out what's the big secret of what's behind door number 3. And this life of tedium that I've been wallowing in will be over. Who knows if I'll ever see Sharon, or Hannelore or Uncle Steve, Grandma and Grandpa, Gracie and Bill or anyone who I've ever known that died ever again.


Can't wait to find out.

My currency value isn't going up

Despite my withdrawing from the marketplace, perhaps because of it, my social stock is not more valued or in demand. I thought I could generate interest in me by making myself less available. Like the limited time offer of "McRibs" or Disney's vaulting of their classic recordings or printing less money. But this strategy isn't really working for me.

Absence doesn't make the heart grow fonder. It makes it forget. I keep hoping someone will notice that I'm not among the living, and am disappointed no one does. I guess I haven't fully disappeared yet. There are traces here and there that I'm still alive, but I'm not sure if they are being noticed, because I get no feedback. I want to scream "I'm still here, you bastards" like Papillon from his prison cell, but I don't have it in me.

I'm still here, but I don't really want to be.

I guess I just want to be missed, but I can't even have that. I want to be loved, but I'm just so damned unloveable.

And it is all my own fault.

I have been to the mountain top

...and it was overrated. Just a pile of rocks. I guess I should have waited for a sunny day, it was too hazy to see much. But had it been sunny, I might not have kept going. I tend to get overheated.

I followed the human trail, then a deer trail or twenty, but even the deer seemed to lose purpose as they neared to top. I made my own way, determined to get to the highest point on this particular mountain. It seemed that each summit was a mirage, and I kept going higher only to find another slightly higher spot just up ahead.

Stubborn as I am, I got well past the point of returning by the way I came. I just had to reach the top, but I also had to find another way back in order to get home before nightfall. I brought no snacks or water. I was reasonably certain of my general location in relation to my house, which I probably could have seen from there if not for the trees.

I was concerned that I might not find a suitable path down the mountain, and I would wind up trudging home in the dark through poison oak, which is not easily recognizable at this time of year. I was also concerned that I might trip and injure myself and lay around on the mountain for a long time.

As I neared the top, I came across a quad trail, which I followed to its apparent end at the very pinnacle of the mountain. I looked around, but there were trees, and fog was obscuring the view, making the accomplishment somewhat anti-climatic.

I started down the other side of the hill. Forward, in the direction of home and not on any path at first, I finally reconnected with the quad trail, which was very overgrown and barely visible at that point. I followed it until it took me to the path I started out on, bypassing a large portion of it with my lengthy detour. I knew I was going to make it home.

 


I was gone about 3-1/2 hours. It took me two and a half hours to get there and only an hour to get back. Downhill is quicker, but I was also more deliberate in my pace, not wanting to be stuck out there. I may decide that this is the hill I want to die on, but I wasn't planning on doing it right then.

When I got home, my legs and hips were sore. I couldn't sleep because of the pain. I took some Ibuprofen, put ice on my left hip and finally drifted off. As always, I woke up this morning with my eyes messed up from whatever it is that happens to me when I lie down. I have less pain in my hip, but it will be there to remind me for a while. I may have to take a break from mountains unless I take the quad. The quad would solve a lot of my logistics problems.

No moral to this or any of my stories. Just relating the experience to no one in in particular.

Overcoming inertia

To initiate motion of any kind from non-motion requires a tremendous expenditure of energy. Things don't just up and start moving on their own. When any kind of electric motor first gets the idea that it is going to have to turn there is an enormous sucking of current from the power source. So much so that you sometimes see a dimming of the lights or momentary blackout from the energy draw. Once it is started, it generally takes way less energy just to stay in motion.

When the battery state of charge is so low that it cannot provide the sufficient output to initiate the beginning of motion, the battery will often die, or fail, completely. You turn the key and the starter engages and attempts to turn once. It catches, but slogs down like a turntable with a brick placed on it. Subsequent turning of the key only yields fainter and fainter clicks. Then nothing.

You could keep turning the key forever at that point and nothing would ever happen again. Until the battery is recharged (or replaced) there will be no results.

That took longer to describe than it was worth. I just wanted to relate this analogy to my seemingly immobile state of late. Nothing seems to be charging my batteries these days. My weekly ritual does help, but it is a temporary little wind up that quickly unwinds as the effects of the initiating substances (caffeine, THC or alcohol) wear off. So no miracles there. And there are the obvious downsides or side effects such as becoming an addict, or just plain dumb, in the process.

This all sounded much wiser in my head, now that I see it fleshed out, it seems a bit weak. I thought of it while cleaning my dusty, cat-hair collectors, aka curtains. I was going about my minimum weekly vacuuming, while high on coffee and weed. The thought occurred to me that I "may as well take these filthy old rags out for a good shake." Not the monumental achievement of the decade, but something.

Inertia overcome, but at the price of a few brain cells. I suppose one could argue that it was the thought, followed by the decision to act on the thought that overcame the inertia. The problem with me and my thoughts is usually that I will discount and discard any ideas that have the slightest downside or unpleasantness to them. This effectively short circuits the process right at the start. Sometimes having fewer thoughts, or acting on the first thought that comes into one's head, is a good thing.

Other times not so much. After my brainstorm of drapery cleaning, I noticed my BB gun sitting forlorn and dusty, propped up against the wall. I dusted it off and promptly engaged an hour long shooting battle with a Pepsi can. You win some, you lose some. I did eventually win the battle with the aluminum can. I can't say whether or not it was worth the hour and the ammo expenditure. I feel a lot more like "The Rifleman" than I probably ought to, with my Daisy spring action single pump can killer.

I did eventually get back to the cleaning, after the threat of the beverage container was thoroughly eradicated.

The CB radio and the Magic 8 Ball...and farts

In the world of the spirit, farts may be as reliable an afterlife communication tool as anything. I'll explain later. To provide context, I'll go back to the beginning.

We met in the year 1997. It wasn't in person, but over the CB radio, that we first got acquainted with one another. No faces, just two voices and much imagining. In real life I was a self-employed screenprinter who had more time on his hands than brains to know what to do with it. She was a much more energetic cowgirl with a cb radio in her ex-boyfriend's pickup truck. I was Dogbone(r) and she was Cowgirl.

She was a popular person on the radio, due to being one of the rare females in that already shrinking sub-culture. I was popular in a different way. I annoyed the locals by pretending to be a DJ and giving long soliloquies aimed at the voices in my head and elsewhere in the ether. It was a whirlwind courtship of "breaker breakers" and "10-4s" which migrated to AOL instant messenger chats in short order.

The long story of my family CB history I will save for another time, but it has been a tool for lonely, bored or otherwise depressed people in my family for generations.

But back to the Magic 8 Ball. It was a gift from Sharon a few years back. At the same time she bought a ouija board, some crystal balls and Tarot cards, to kind of cover the gamut of spirit communications. I've used the 8 Ball for general and specific questions on a variety of topics, even attempting to directly ask Sharon questions since her passing.

Mostly I get "outlook is not good" or "my sources say no."

So, my CB radio has an intermittent problem where I will key the mic up and no audio will go through it. I will wind up spending about an hour cussing and fiddling with various things from the cord to the mic battery and such and, for no reason that I can discern, it will start working again. So, I asked the Magic 8 Ball if it was Sharon who was fucking with my CB.

The reply was, "As I see it, Yes."

Well, now to go even further down the road of cuckoo, the farts. Sharon was a big proponent. "Farts are funny" was her adamant defense. She would always laugh or make some smart-ass remark if and when the subject was ever broached.

So, now, it comes about at certain times that I will have a sudden, deliberate amount of gas that needs to be passed. It will occur just at the moment when I should be making up my mind to do something different than whatever it is that I am doing at the moment. Like a confirmation that I should hurry up and get a move on. A real conversation ender, the final "Thus saith the Lord," to which no argument can be made.

If I'm being irreverent, at least I know Sharon would approve.

I'm scouting out a hill

People speak of being certain of "the hill you want to die on" as a figure of speech, referring to a cause that may or may not be worthy of going all in on. I've been thinking about it a lot lately and it is taking shape as a definite plan for my eventual demise, in a literal sense.

Sharon's wish was to die at home. Given her options at the time, it wasn't too unreasonable of a request. She also didn't want to be assisted or willfully end her own life. She was willing to let life take it's course, as slow and torturous as it may have been.

My wish is to die on a hill. One with a nice view, but one that is sufficiently isolated so that my body will not be discovered until the vultures have had their chance to feed on my remains. I am having trouble with the idea that I will still have to be relatively healthy in order to ascend the hill. If I am that healthy, should I really be initiating my immediate end?

I will have to assist my termination with a cocktail of pills and alcohol. If I start with the alcohol, I may find I am in a pleasant state of mind and might lose my resolve to complete my mission. If I start with the pills, then once I start drinking it will be too late to change my mind unless I vomit the pills before they take effect.

I want to be certain that this is the hill that I want to die on. So for now, I'm just scouting out nice locations. In the process, I am getting sun, fresh air and exercise--kind of counter-productive to my gloom and doom task at hand. In the process of deciding on my place of death, I may wind up finding that I still have things that make me want to live.

I'll try not to get sidetracked. I need to say goodbye sometime. I want to go out on my terms. Life has dictated quite a few things that I wouldn't have put in the program. If I have any say about it, I will make it as pleasant and peaceful as possible and at the time of my choosing.

Your Bits

I look at this picture and it brings back so much. I know it is just a representation of you in the form of a few bits of electronic information. But those bits mean so much to me. How can you be gone? How can all you ever were just be the leftover pieces of memories and images stored on my computer and in my mind’s computer?

I will never forget, so please don’t ever disappear from my reality. I don’t see you anymore, just these pictures. I don’t hear you anymore except for the rare recording of your voice. I still go through old emails and Facebook messages, reading through the good, the bad and the ugly. Your essence still lingers, but only in these little scraps, which I treasure.

Unfortunately, we recorded our fights so as to have a “referee” in the event that someone needed to think they won or the other committed a foul. I haven’t had the stomach to listen to many of those, because of how painful I remember them to have been at the time. But what I do hear in those recordings is your voice, strong and clear, full of intensity and anger with me.

I watched GHW Bush’s funeral today. I must be pretty damaged, because I cried despite my politics and views in general about his place in history. I cried because of the humanity of loss, which affects us all. Sentimental old fool is what I am. I cried because I would have been watching this tv event with you and we’d have had that moment together, like we had all those moments which are now just memories.

We are all just memories. A moment’s sunlight, fading in the grass.

My disability story (that I didn't send)

I want you to know that I understand that I’m not living in reality, but in some story in my head. I wish I could change the story. I wish so much that I could flip a switch and I could be a different person. You know, a happy person or at least someone who isn’t so damned negative. But it isn’t that easy. Believe me, if I could “just snap out of it,” I would.

For 10 years, as my wife’s disability left her increasingly debilitated, I had to carry on, keep up a façade and not crumble. I did it as long as I could. I needed to mourn her loss at each step of the way. Each lost ability was a tragedy that I wasn’t allowed to grieve. I had to suck it up and just do what was needed to care for her. This became an exercise in futility, as she declined and there was nothing I could do to make anything better.

I had to watch her die. I had to witness her go from a horse riding, outdoor loving, saucy farm girl to being trapped into a role we both despised – that of a bedridden MS patient. And I was her reluctant caregiver. I grew frustrated and angry, though she developed a remarkably even tempered attitude toward her plight. She would try to reason with me, comfort me, talk me down – and I was supposed to be the one making her feel better.

So many times I just didn’t rise to the occasion. I sulked. I longed for release, relief, anything to not have to witness what I was witnessing. I made the commitment to never leave her or send her away and I kept to it, but the cost was more than I knew.

I began to get health issues in 2016 that resulted in me taking time off work. First I took family leave. Then when that ran out I returned to work only to become incapacitated by some kind of mystery abdominal ailment. I spent the majority of 2016 (and thousands of dollars) attempting to get answers from the medical profession. I underwent a whole slew of tests and changed my routines and diet around. Although I never got an answer to what it was that had caused me such pain, I did eventually begin to recover, somewhat.

I had been off work for close to 3 months and had even enlisted the help of a live-in surrogate to do the caregiving while I was incapacitated. Once I recovered enough to go back to work, the help also left and I was again in the dual role of caregiver and breadwinner. All the while my wife, Sharon, was steadily declining.

It hit the fan in 2017 when I was mentally and physically unable to do both jobs. My decision was made for me when, after requesting family leave for the second consecutive year, I was terminated from my employment. While I was relieved on the one hand, to have less responsibility, I was cast, full-time, into a role which was increasingly hard to bear.

Watching my wife dying was the hardest thing I have ever had to endure. It has been almost 9 months since she passed away. I still cry more times a day than I can count. Every reminder of my wife twists my heart into a sour knot of pain. Guilt and regret make my life unlivable. I have difficulty engaging with everyday tasks and contemplating the future is impossible. All I see is my own death, creeping up on me in every ache or new symptom of my unknown condition.

I just want to feel good, but it isn’t on the menu. I don’t speak to people or go places. I don’t engage in the activities that I would have thought I’d be enjoying, now that my days are mostly free. Freedom is my new hell. I can’t conceive of anything in this world that I would enjoy. I just want to check out.

I don’t know if I will eventually make it happen or not, but I welcome it if it happens on its own. I long for it. To just go to sleep and not wake up as me is my one wish. But I keep on waking up in this lousy body, with this messed up brain. I need rest, but even at night I am plagued with insomnia. I am tired. Too tired to tell my story.

More notes:

I wanted to try again and attempt to redo my remarks, make them less nasty and negative, but my eyes are killing me already. And when I contemplate the actual writing of it, I can’t imagine it coming out any better or making me any more likeable. Maybe if I got into some program to help me with my mental issues and got somewhat better I could begin thinking about training for a different career. I can’t really visualize that right now, though. I just try to get through a day at this point.

I was waiting for Medicare to kick in before pursuing any more therapy for my psychological issues. I haven’t been helped much by the Sutter-Yuba mental health facility in the past but they were all I could afford without health insurance.