Mistaken Warrior

I’m a worrier, that’s what I am.  If there’s something to worry about, I’ll find it and worry the shit out of it.  It will nearly incapacitate me.  At least for a while. 

I’m a liver in the past.  I’m not talking about an internal organ living in the Dark Ages in Hungary.  I’m saying I live in the past.  I’m one of those folks who provide that service so others may listen to reggae and have dogs even though they seem to live out of a van.  It's my niche. 

I live in the past; I remember things and I write them down.  If I don’t, they’ll be lost forever.  So many things are lost, partly because people lose them.  I just decided to collect a few memories here and there.  Memories - for lack of a better word.  There must be a better one.  Chunks of time.  Vignettes of reality.  Traumas of existence. 

I’ve been maligned for living in the past.  Mind you, I support myself; I’m a fully functional person, apparently; I put food on the table.  I’m here, mostly.  But I have come to a point where I believe it’s time to empty out what I’ve been carrying around.  With time and reason, it doesn’t seem so bad anymore; it seems like a really bad dramedy.  Or perhaps it would be a riveting reality show - gritty, intense and GLORIOUS!

Now everyone will want a gritty, intense and glorious dysfunctional family.  Sounds so fun!

Then you’ve got your people saying, “Well we all grew up in dysfunctional families.  BFD.  Get over yourself!”  And to them I say touché!   Yes I am being a whiney bitch, but that’s kinda my shtick.  Get it?  I understand I could be living high in the Andean mountains carding llama wool all day and eating yucca.  Or taro.  Or whatever they eat there.  I know I’m totally complaining.  But I’m complaining with style.  So go with me brother.  Also there is the option of not reading it at all and going back to whatever it is that gives you pleasure and not the compulsion to ridicule.  Which is kinda what I’m doing too.  See?  We’re the same, you and me.

It is not easy doing what I do.  I weigh 140 pounds; what I carry is weightless, but is  not without weight.  Having to maintain this separate reel running all the time is exhausting.  I don’t feel I belong back there - I don’t feel I belong here.  I’m perpetually stuck between now and what happened.  Makes life a little cloudy.  Muddled.  Underwater.

It’s somewhere along the lines of “The Dude abides,” but in reverse.

I feel suffering.  I feel anguish and regret.   And a great loneliness (say that like Troi from TNG.)   So let me do my thing so there can be reggae and frisbees and post office boxes.  You should actually thank me.

You’re welcome.