Tommy: the traveling soldier and the light under the bullshit (er, bushel)

I'm not feeling like anyone is reading this blog, with the exception of maybe my dad and the occasional Russian bot. According to my pageview monitor, even they have been absent for a while. All for the best, I suppose. I tend to cramp up and guard my thoughts when I feel the invisible scrutiny of a possible reader. So, here's a bunch of random, stream of consciousness bullshit, with which I will bore my non-readership.

I think I don't know who I am anymore because of a lack of predefined purpose in my life. The old me, the one people remember is a facade. What's going on inside of me is a bunch of nothing. I follow a routine which pretty much insures that nothing new or exciting will ever happen to me. I stay inside the box, because that's where I'm most comfortable. Even though the creature comforts are pretty luxurious, I'm still in some kind of prison. Technically, I can walk out at any time, but I'm like a dog that has been zapped by an invisible fence too many times. Why bother? It's not worth it.

I guess I am like Tommy. You know, the deaf, dumb and blind boy, who really was just suffering from some manifestation of PTSD brought on by childhood trauma. He'd withdrawn, Pink Floyd-like, behind a wall. He wasn't faking it, he was really crippled, just not in the sense where it could be detected with the usual medical diagnostics. Whatever mechanism fucked his brain up, he really was blind, deaf and dumb to the world. And the spiritual cure for his disease was pinball. Whatever. It could have been anything. It was his connection between his inner self and the world outside of himself. His buddha "aha" moment of zen that brought him back into equilibrium.

So, I guess I could stand to have one of those epiphanies. Except that I don't even play pinball or do much of anything besides watch TV or look at Facebook obsessively. So, when is this enlightenment going to strike me? In between cooking my omelet and shooting tin cans off the front porch? When I'm out on my walk, talking to cows or befriending stray praying mantises?

Does it even need to come at all? I'm a functional cripple, kinda. I don't contribute much anymore, in the way of work. If that's what it's all about, go ahead and shoot me, for that reason alone. I'm a waste of taxpayer money. I'm sure someone in accounting will decide when to pull the trigger, after it has been determined that my net contributions have been exceeded by my subsidies. I'm just waiting on the decision from upstairs.

So, the fact that I'm not contributing, even intellectually, could be considered a criminal act. This little light of mine, well, fuck you, it's mine and I'm gonna keep it right here with me inside the box, under a bushel. It's getting pretty dim, due to the lack of oxygen, but hey, it's windy outside and no place for my little light to be stickin' its little neck out. I used up my personal identity and ability to function when I spent ten years as a caregiver. I played to an audience of one and became more and more molded into a character that even I didn't like. So, whatever talents or skills I'd convinced myself I possessed but was just too busy to pursue--well, they've all dried up and migrated back into the cosmos, to be utilized by more deserving hosts.

I feel like the traveling soldier in the Dixie Chicks song, who had no one to write a letter to. He picked some young girl in a diner and made her his star-crossed pen pal. Of course, in the song he dies in Vietnam and the little high school piccolo player is left crying under the bleachers. So I have my thoughts, my long ago dashed hopes and what's left of my life to live but no one to share it with. No one to tell my troubles to other than the faceless ether of the internet. I'm dead already, but no one is crying about it but me.

Summer is done and over, and I can't blame my springtime hormones anymore for whatever life is trying to spring out between the chinks in my bricked up heart. Blame it on the Beach Boys. Blame it on neuro-chemical reactions triggered by random memory associations. I'm a walking, breathing bundle of inappropriate responses waiting for the poor unfortunate who crosses my path. Woe to that person, indeed.

There, I hit all the points in the title. Whoop dee dee. Points taken away for not utilizing better paragraph structure and for the overall poverty of the subject matter. But who cares? Until my critics speak up, they can just suck it. I'm writing letters to the wind. From the wind to the wind. Nothing more.