Nobody will give a fuck

The withdrawal symptoms have subsided. Here I am again, dabbing into old habits, and I’m not even fazed one bit. No, I don’t even miss it. My battle with blogging addiction has come to an end, and I have emerged victorious. I don’t have to type one word for the rest of my life if I don’t want to. Nobody will give a fuck. The pressure to get another fix ASAP is gone. It’s a great feeling, knowing that I don’t have to type another word. I can, but I don’t have to. Maybe I shouldn’t. Well, just this once, for old time’s sake. Oh, alright. Shit, there are those voices in my head again. I thought I had enough friends in there, but apparently they’ve all been developing multiple personalities…no wonder I’ve been getting exponentially more irresponsible lately (ie. Attention video store! I’m just gonna go head and drop 40 dollars on the ground while I’m looking for a movie and not even realize it! ie., Hey mom and dad – I’m just going to take your car keys on the plane back to LA with me and not even realize it! ie., Attention ATM machine! After I get my money, I’m just gonna spilt before you spit out my card, so anyone can come and sabotage my bank account).

Ah, off on a tangent again. Just like old times, back in trig. But there is a time for nostalgia, and that time is not now. Now is a projectile, hypotenuse moment, a declaration of renovated habits that may well relapse, only to reverse themselves and beg for mercy, regurgitate themselves on the floor in front of me. By the time I wake up hungover, find out I’m chasing that goddamn dragon once again, I’ll have to have that moment of shame when I turn around to wonder what the hell happened. But no, that will not happen to me, ye voices in head! Wait, what was I talking about again? This is a perfect example of why I don’t blog no more; I don’t make any sense, and living with a constantly worrying “what the fuck am I saying?” “why did I say that?” “what was I thinking!?” cloud over my head is a guaranteed to be a stormy mental-hospital-bound day, every day. From here on out, the extent of my writing will be work-related emails that go a little something like this: “Hi Bill: Per your request, attached please find the benefits form for Summer Day. Please have him sign, date, and initial, and send the originals back to our office. Thanks! [smiley face] Delia.” And if my blogging addiction comes back and I start taking my morning commute with a flask of whiskey riding shotgun, these nice little emails will turn into a monster like this: “Shit, man. I didn’t think I’d ever have to send you another one of these fuckin’ forms, but this flaming gay wannabe transvestite makeup artist named Summer Day needs his benefit contributions directed to his home plan, whatever the hell that means. Home plan? Does anyone have a home plan? When I get home, my plan is to keep from killing myself. Anyway, have Summer Bunny sign these forms, and maybe have him recommend his favorite show tunes next to the signature or do some other stereotypically gay thing to poke some harmless fun at himself, because you know we all love that in da industry. And please, please tell him to quit checking the ‘female’ box on his deal memos, at least until the big operation. This is a major motion picture studio, not an online dating service for freaks and wizards. Alright Bill, I don’t even need to tell ya, you’re the best. And no, that’s not a cheap compliment aimed at finagling myself an invite to the wrap party. I told you five times already, we’re just friends. You seem to think that just because we email forms back and forth, we’re guaranteed fuck buddies. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again. Your repeated virtual come-ons are incredibly flattering, but I don’t boogie on a one-way street, especially when your street is made of hungry bytes. Yours forever anyway, [smile wink face] Delia.”

Okay, so what the fuck? Am I going nuts, or what? Are all the pent-up frustrations of a non-writing existence coming back to slap me upside the head, rendering my playdough brain coils too pliable for sense? Is it that I don’t give a fuck anymore, or that nobody gives a fuck about what I have to say? Well, fuck them all, then. Ah, but even the outliers rocking the I-don’t-care scene can admit - we’re all hungry for an audience of some kind; some of us aren’t very appreciative of the audience we have, even if it’s just one (fortunate?) person. Finding forty bucks on the carpet of a video store is luck; but the forty bucks you actually earn may as well be forty days and nights you spend on an Ark with a bunch of animals that are constantly fucking and shitting so much that you start believing that the bowel movement is one with procreation. One almighty God kicks back in the clouds, watching all this with great amusement and chuckling to Himself how he sure is fucking with evolution - Noah’s great-to-the-nth-power grandson Chucky D can just go to hell. Anyway, you know what also can go to hell? This writing addiction. I’m over it. Whatever psychologist philosophized that outletting useless diary thoughts is somehow therapeutic never met me last September, when I realized this blog was simultaneously running and ruining my life, when I was hopelessly clinging to some strange delusion that was never meant to be and not worth mentioning anywhere but in the depths of my most intimate, shameful brainwaves. That is to say, simply but surely, I got hurt, I tripped over my own emotions and fell…and although social struggles like these make you stronger and help you from avoiding the same mistakes again and again, there is a part of you that becomes more independent, and these days, independent may as well be locked in front of a computer, fingers tapping at the keyboard to gain some sort of relief from what has become a restless, busy mind that can no longer stand the sound of the tapping keys and would rather be lost in a book, movie, the vicarious life of a friend, the next great social upheaval, or any maze but the present reality – a balance of perception: propaganda vs. free will. Faith has never been a distraction for me, but lately I’ve developed faith in distraction. It’s the only remedy to dwelling on the self, front and center, wondering how others see you, particularly, the others who you care about who couldn’t give a fuck about you. Pain in the form of rejection hurts; it’s nobody’s fault, but it’s still your burden. You’ve got to distract yourself, or allow yourself to be distracted. It’s the only way to see straight these days. Many have already figured this out, but it took me awhile. It took me trying to distract my hospitalized mom from her physical pain, thinking maybe if I just say something funny or read a book, I can sort of help psychologically manage the malignant hurt inside. And even if it doesn’t directly help, it may impact her recovery somehow and help her get through this rough period of side-affect ravaged cancer treatment with more than just overlong uncomfortable silence that I just want to break every time I encounter it. Hey, there’s something better than this, and here it is! It’s a distraction, and it may not work, it may be completely unnecessary, but who knows, it may be better than just sitting here and wallowing and marinating in a moment that sucks all the flavor out of life. I used to look down on others for taking cover in distractions, for hiding, for taking comfort in its escape. In that way, I was no better than the morally righteous I attacked so hypocritically from my dirty soapbox. What can I say, I’m the village idiot at London’s Speaker’s Corner, the former blogging addict who has yet to encounter the mortal reality of the needle, yet I probably won’t voodoo doll myself with opiates anytime in this life, given that Neil Young once sang about the damage done, and that tonight I read a story about a young refugee mother in New Orleans whose husband was shot and dealt with the pain by shooting herself with numbness so numb her son once found her passed out in the bathroom, a handkerchief tourniquet still paled the blood flow to her arm after four hours in the nod. Our society gives us so many reasons to look down on this woman; we all have loaded guns we don’t know how to use. But I’ll throw my gun back at the NRA. I don’t look down on the junkie refugee mother. The more I think about her, I realize a couple things. One, I don’t know her. Nobody does. Two, who are we to judge that woman? Most of us probably wouldn’t help her if we had the chance, if we found ourselves walking down the street, glancing over and feeling the guilt rise up, our own unwanted addictions haunting us as we walk on by, we would look forward to every step bringing us closer to our next distraction. And I say “we” because I believe that I speak for the moral majority, whose righteousness is a primary distraction. No, we’ll just leave her be, because we exist in the comfort zone between judging someone and helping them. We like to stand here and look ourselves in the mirror, see how we look, and know deep down that we ourselves are the ultimate distraction.