The life and times of Louis Hill

It’s all a game.  I’ve heard talk of the Tea Party, Libertarian and the like.  I recall when I was a teenager and swore that I was a conservative.  Then reality set in and as I watched the world around me, my view changed.  No longer was I in my “perfect world”.  I wasn’t a singular being that was the most important person in the world.  No, at some point I realized I was one of many.  People all around me with thoughts, dream and desires that weren’t my own.  When I hear someone getting all hot and bothered by some weakly constructed political idea put on T.V. by some pundit who has a pinch of talent, I shiver.  You are being told what to think, but don’t confuse that with actually doing the leg work of putting an actual thought together.

Do those I mentioned earlier not have a valid point?  I doubt that most that proclaim allegiance to this organization actually know but how they chant the chant of self righteousness.

This goes beyond politics, mind you.  Religion is full of it.  People proclaiming to have an inside understanding of the universe but only really scratch the surface.  Basically rehashing what some charismatic voice told them that may have hit the right notes for them.  Cult of personality, if you will.

My thoughts on this is that there are a lot of tourists that visit ideas but when the day is over, they go home to their own self importance and everything going on around them is not important, anymore.  It is easy when visiting to criticize what you don’t understand but I would argue to imagine you live there.  Live in the world where you don’t have the lush job that pays you tons of money, imagine living in a world where belief isn’t something explained by thousand year old text.  Imagine this before you lob a bomb that is not based on understanding but instead based in a small universe where your lack of knowledge, empathy and understanding  is okay.

I’m open to have a discussion with you on any subject, but know that I will ask you to go that extra step if I don’t understand why you are so angry that you may be taxed (or not taxed but your wealthy fantasy dream self could be taxed) or why you are so determined to have me see the universe dictated by your beliefs while you make no attempt to see it otherwise.

Just saying, don’t be a tourist.

In my constant chase of normalcy, I am starting to realize things are a little more complicated than I could have imagine.

For every new discovery in the last few years, a new surprise lays just underneath the surface.  After something like ten years of not even seeing what was in front of me, I learned that I was suffering a bit from a traumatic loss that I had buried underneath a quiet exterior and tons of fatty foods.

I knew the history of the moment and when I look back on it now, I see the line in the sand.  I was still surprised by this.  I buried this so far down that it was a surprise to me, even after only about 10 or so years.  I’ve heard arguments that the way I reacted to this bit of trouble is not so different from being hit with a tragic trauma, although I never saw it as such.  In my mind, I saw it as something that just happened.  Even as my life came crashing about me, but in such a way that it wasn’t immediately noticeable.

At this point, I’m not sure if I want to rehash the story of this particular thing.  I feel like I’ve talked about it a lot but apparently it was only in passing on a previous post.  A day doesn’t go by where I don’t think of what if…  The fact that I don’t know what happened to S. makes me a little sad.  It would be nice to talk to her and maybe reach the slightest level of closure, but that’s not going to happen.  Instead, I will just hold to a fantasy that I failed her and will bare this cross, as it were, for the rest of my days.

But that was just the first the first layer (that was recognized, not chronologically) of this onion.  As I try my best to start moving towards normal, I’m overwhelmed at how much of who I am was dictated by things beyond me and the long term effects of these in our society is frightening.  How odd I feel when I see other men doing what they do.  The fact that I can’t operate like that is a bit shameful in my eyes.  Unjustly, perhaps, but it is that nonetheless.  So I just keep circling around the event horizon.  Too afraid of what I’ll find inside and too emotional to leave into the blackness beyond.

The adventure here, is there a place in the normal for me?  That’s something I will struggle with for a while, I imagine.  Then again, it might be as simple as realizing I need to redefine what is normal.

This morning I woke up and made my way out the front door to have a cigarette.  I walked out and was met by a smell of smoke.  Of something burning.  I cocked my head to the side as I tried to ascertain the smell and see if there was a direction to the origin of the smell.  It must be a fire, I thought.  I then began looking around to see if I could spot the telltale red glow of a fire in the still dim early morning.  I saw nothing that could explain the evidence of the smell of smoke.

With the immediate worry that I’d have to save Raven put aside, I began my normal morning routine and made my way to the bus stop.  I was listening to KUT, the local NPR radio station.  They gave a news report that said that with the cold front that came in last night that the wind shifted and brought smoke from wildfire in West Texas. I cracked a slight smile because I got confirmation that I wasn’t losing my mind and that I did smell smoke, as did a lot of other people who called the fire department.

What then popped into my mind is how something happening miles away could be connected to my front door. That I could smell the fire, even though it was no where near me, made me think about how we are all in this together. While miles stretch between us all, we are still tied together. From a fire in West Texas to nuclear fallout in Japan. From polluted water from a factory on the East Coast to a styrofoam cup thrown from a pickup on IH35. We may not be immediately effected by any one of these, I thought that we are effected by it, regardless.

Then I read an article about a mother that drove her van into a river with her children with her.  She did this on purpose and only one child was able to escape.  The mother and three of her other children all drowned.  This put my mind on another course.  That this woman had hit such a realm of desperation and loneliness that she felt no other way to deal with this.  The news have bits of speculations, like a fight about cheating with a boyfriend, but I’m caught in the gravity well of the idea that this woman felt that this was the only way.

As someone that is in a constant fight with depression and loneliness, I feel at my wits end on a regular basis.  I find myself saying that I have no wife, no children and with a bit of exaggeration no one will be effected if I were just…  Gone.  I deal with this daily.  Some days are worse than others but it is always there.

I’m always still here.

Why?  Why am I still here?  Why do I try?

Because I see the face of my friend glow when she talks about her daughter.  I see my friend swell in pride when he talks about his son.  The idea of a new discovery in our understanding of the universe.  The passionate reading of a poem that blows my mind.  This is why, for me, I hang on.  The beauty in these moments trump any feelings I have in my inadequacy in life.

For all the trouble in this world, for all the hate and ugliness that run across our path, we have these glimpse into pure joy and goodness that should be enough for us to stand up and say, “This is why I try.”

This comes as no surprise to most, but I’m an asshole.  After some 8 days off, Smeagol has come back from the passing of his dog.  From what I gather from the story time at the office this morning, on his first day back, it took some 3 days to dig a grave.  The point at which I whisper to myself that I’m an asshole is the fact that I don’t care.

I’ve had family and pets pass away in my 37+ years on this rock and I fear that I have not done half as much to mourn them as he has for his dog.  You might think I would find this moment as the bridge in the gap I have held between me and the douche but…  No.  I just don’t feel it.  I’m not glad for his apparent melancholy  but I can’t, for the life of me, feel anything at all for the guy.  It all feels fake because so much of my experience with him has been superficial and self serving.

In other cases, when met with loss, I immediately do my best to help in any way I can.  Be you a close friend for someone I just met.  In this case, I can’t seem to muster any concern at all.  If anything, I feel bad that I’ve allowed this person to dictate this reaction in me.  That I’ve allowed it to get this far where I could care less.  If there’s anything good, for me, out of this it is that the number of people that promote this reaction from me is really small but it is a small respite when I consider if I got to know more people that I may find douche like folk more common place.

A shocking development yesterday, I may have been reminded that I am actually an extrovert, despite my best efforts to say otherwise.  To say I’m a little disappointed would be an understatement.  For 10+ years I’ve carried about as if I was some kind of introvert but in the end, I am not.  I am an extrovert with social anxiety.  That’s a bunch of hurt for another day but the fact that I have to admit that on some level I’m get refueled in large groups just boggles my mind.

For years, I allowed myself to believe that I’d rather be alone.  That being in groups of people just made me anxious and depleted.  I think at a certain point in my life, I was left alone with no answers and felt abandoned.  To justify that circumstance, that point in my life, I decided that I must be an introvert.  That in the quiet that surrounded me, that the only thing I was concerned about were my thoughts.  I can’t say that it helped me but it allowed me to spend those ugly years while still being able to sleep at night, awake the next morning with a sliver of hope.  It was my defense mechanism.  It allowed me to more or less function.

But in recent years, I have started to discover that my assumptions of who I am may have been wrong.  I didn’t stop fighting the idea that I may actually enjoy the company of people, even as I played den mother to so many.  It was easier for me to basically show up and try my best to be accommodating but in reality I think I was really trying my best to recharge myself in a social setting while acting like I was suffering.

‘Tis a slippery slope that I’ve played on.  I don’t know what this will mean in the near or far term.  Has the reason I’ve avoided relationships based on this possibly false notion of being an introvert?  A scary thought, but worse is that maybe I’ve been denying myself a semblance of happiness due to fear and this wanting to make sense of a bad situation I found myself in.  And shut it, to anyone that points out that it was all of my own making.  Now is not the time to assign blame, especially at me.

No reason, I just like this picture.

Well, I’ve been down so Goddamn long
That it looks like up to me
Well, I’ve been down so very damn long
That it looks like up to me
Yeah, why don’t one you people
C’mon and set me free
- The Doors

I really don’t have much going on, or much to talk about. It has been the norm for me for a while.  I have my moments where I get excited by an idea that usually float around space and time.  The complexity and the idea of the size of the universe.  I literally could spend days just wrapping my little mind around the concepts that theoretical physicists are throwing around.  In a lot of ways, it feels like the only thing I want to try to understand.  The only thing to understand.  The concerns of money, politics and love fall to the side when you can’t talk about the vastness of the universe.  Perhaps if I were the religious type, this is where I’d segue into finding buddhahood or God, but I’m not.  So instead I just strive to just understand what’s all around me.

Those are my moments where I feel alive.  At least nowadays.  What’s funny is that in trying to understand time and space, the big bang theory, entropy, dark matter and dark energy is easier than understanding other people.  Even as uneducated as I am, putting the idea of physics into my mind is something I can grasp.  There are papers and formulas.  While they may change as we discover more, they are based on proof, the scientific method.  People, on the other hand, are more difficult.  There are variables that can’t be written down.  Can’t be proven.  There is not rhyme or reason for some of the things we do.  We wake up one morning and the sourest mood and the next we wake up in the most darlin’ mood.

I think the barb in this is that in science, it just is.  If I run into a roadblock, that just means I need to research more.  The answers are there just waiting for the math and the ingenuity.  People, not so much.  There is always a mystery variable that I can’t see to save my life.  I’m sure on some level, that’s the point.  To be constantly surprised.  I can see that but the other end of that is being crushed for no reason.  Being broken and not ever really knowing why.  There’s no formula for that.

But what are the chances of that happening?  I’m not sure and my personal fear has been is that it is more prevalent than not.  So instead of taking the risk, I sit idly by waiting for the next scientific breakthrough or punk rock girl to beat me about my head.  Either way…  I win?

I love you… I have loved you all my life… Goodbye.

Those were the words that flowed through my mind, this morning, as I say at the bus stop.  They weren’t directed at anyone or any particular thing.  Those were just the word that formed in my mind as a cool breeze tossed my hair and washed over my face.  I asked myself if I had but one message to send out, what would it be.

The instance those words formed in my mind tens maybe hundreds of thoughts flashed.  Faces, smiles, kind words, a hand on my shoulder that comforted me.  While I denied myself of so much, I have been fortunate to have moments in time where I was allowed to be connected.  I was allowed to be there for someone in their trials and in return they have been there for my tests in this life.  I can’t account for every minute of my life, there have been some moments that fulfilled me.  Reminding me that the world is not a lonely journey.

I imagine it is easy to lose sight of the little things.  I do it all the time.  So wrapped up in my malaise, my suit of armor.  Fear of being hurt, fear of being marginalized again has given me the excuse I needed to always be separate  from the world around me.  I simply marginalize myself before I can get invested in the thought that I am loved.  I punch me before you have a chance to punch me.

It makes no sense, but in a world absent of safety nets that could have caught me when I fell, it seemed the only proper thing to do.  My other option at the time, at least in my distraught mind, was to shift into an asshole.  To not give a shit of others, just me.  I was close to that end of the spectrum, it would have been easy to wash my failures in the foam of small and transitory happiness.  To marginalize and beat down anyone that got too close to me.  To be in control.  This would have been easy to do.  I think people around me would understand me and my plight more if that were the case.

Instead, I traveled down the road of constantly falling on my sword instead of being a broad sword swinging down anything that didn’t immediately make me happy.  The idea was that since I was already suffering, why not continue that for others.  Be their safety net where I had none.

It should have surprised me, but didn’t, people were more than happy to have me talk to them, make them laugh or give them the courage to tackle whatever it was they were debating.  And because I tend to be small, it was a perfect fit.  They got to get things out in the open but in the end I was gone, back into my little box.  They weren’t required to be there for me.  I neither asked or ever expected anything.  This path has suited me, I think, more than any other path.

This is my feelings, today. I’m feeling cornered. As if there is not rhyme or reason for anything. I think a couple of weeks of rumors of jobs being cut, talking with people directly effect by this, projects that are at best fired from the hip and a personal longing for something more for myself have taken a toll on my already fragile mind.  Couple that with a lot of background noise, Smeagol talking very loudly on the phone doing personal business for example and I feel like I’m inching closer to the edge.

Probably doesn’t help that I have no money as I have given it all way to every charity that would ask, something I’m going to have to change in the coming months.

I’m just feeling heavy and somewhat alone.  I know I have a few friends that will listen to me but I still feel alone.  Probably due some faulty wiring in my brain that just can’t find satisfaction in my friends’ helping hand.  I can voice what I’m feeling but in a way it feels unreal and theoretical.  I can say what I’m feeling but it feels somehow removed from me.

So I find myself, as I’m typing this, wonder if there is an end game.  I wonder if there is a plan that is the best in all the probable plans out there.  I find myself hoping there is.  That if I just stop, breath and see it, it will all make sense.  I can stop being afraid and self-loathing and just live my life, chasing my silly dreams.  I spend far too much time dreading tomorrow and the potential bad news that comes with it.  I’ll tell you this, this is an ugly way to live.

The douche in me says, “quit yer cryin’ and just do something.”

But the dominant part of my personality, the one that has taken over in the last couple of decades, simply shakes it head and says, “no!”

The dominant part has, for too long, accepted that it is a victim.  I’ve allowed myself to live with the idea that the best laid plans, my wants and most needs, are destined to fail.  It’s so easy to just follow that path, even if I don’t have any empirical evidence that it is destine to fail.  It is just so easy to assume that I won’t get that job, what I write is crap and she will find me ugly and not worth her time.  I just accept this and move on.  Smile on my face and just be whatever my few friends need me to be.

A funny thing happened this week.  It was Valentine’s Day, Monday, and it was more of a blip on the radar prior to Monday.  This whole job reduction business at the office totally distracted me from another year of being a member of the Lonely Hearts band.  I guess I should be thankful for that, at least.

It’s not that I didn’t feel it.  No, it was that it felt less important to the general feeling of impending doom that permeated the air for the week.   Due to that, on one level, it also put into perspective what my heart yearns for and whether or not that’s actually yearning or just me guaranteeing failure  to keep the super sad love story alive.

She will always make my heart skip a beat.  She will always be an example of beauty, in my eyes.  She will also be an example of what’s wrong with me.  No matter how good I clean up, I will never be good enough, exciting enough, smart enough for her.  I don’t blame her.  Good for her that she has whatever standards that she does.  I just have to feel good that even if she finds whatever it is she’s looking for, they will not be as good as me.

They will not see her as I do.  They will never spend the night mystified at her presence in this complex universe and be forever thankful that probability worked out this perfectly to bring these two lives together.  They will just smile at the convenience.  They will be glad to have someone that will stoke their fire, so to speak, and more than likely they will be glad that she’s low maintenance since she’ll be lonely too.  All the while, I would have eventually forgotten her name, easily (or not) replaced by someone else that finds me appalling but at least…  ”Brother-like.”

Fuck you.

The last two week have been exhausting.  The talk at the office is about a budget crunch, which led to the rumors of who was going to be let go.  Last Friday, a RIF (Reduction in Force) list was put out and the speculation began in earnest.  The list (currently) didn’t have my position but that was of little.  As the days progressed, it started being apparent who was on that list and they were good people.  Some friends and some I adore to no end.

All you hear around the office right now, other than meetings on products that we’re over extending, is the low rumbling whispers of folk trying their best to understand what’s going on.  Trying to figure out the formula that was used to judge someone’s worth to the job, assuming a formula was actually used.  Some, that are on the list, come at it with a brave face while those not on the list do our best to be their rock.

It’s a mess and by no means do I think that this is the worse thing that can happen but under the circumstances it just feels heavy.

On one end of this, Smeagol is rumored to be one of the ones let go.  On the other end, V is also on the list.  There is no winning here.  Even with Smeagol potentially gone, I would suffer what I had to suffer to keep V.  V and others that I’ve become friends with who may not be here in a few months.

I find myself exhausted.  Every day for the last week have been weighing me down.  People talk about how unfair this whole business is.  Some talk about even if they aren’t on any list, they can’t be here anymore.  There is a sense that the air is pushing you down, I feel like I’m trying to see through a fog and sloshing through a bog.

This is all just frustrating.  I’m tired of this feeling of not knowing the future for myself and other.  I’m tired of being a rock to lean on.  I’m tired of being a gentle smile to others that I fear wouldn’t do the same for me but it is what I do.

In the end, keep your f’n property taxes so you can buy a better stereo while we fire people that try their best to educate the children around here.  Not all, but some and they shouldn’t be used as poker chips.