Is there more I could have said

I am finding myself at a crossroads in life that I've never been to before, which is namely, not being sure what to do next.  I do know that following my heart is not good advice, whether in love or professional matters.  The heart lies to you, well, mine seems to anyway.  At the very least it doesn't know what it's talking about with matters of love.

In my professional career, leaving Kentucky for Portland was absolutely the right thing to do.  And leaving Portland for Dallas, even after just a year, was also the right thing.  Leaving Dallas to go to DC was not, because I felt I had failed in romantic matters, but also needed to get away from Voldemort.  I should have just ignored him and let that relationship whither on the vine.  

Coming back to Dallas was the right thing to do... leaving it yet again was definitely not, because it did not make my professional or personal life better.

Now I am at a junction where I will shortly be relieved of all debt and be able to be independent again from anywhere.  Honest?  I'd love for my company to find room for me in their city, I do not know how feasible that is in the short term.  Perhaps I should just pack my shit up and move back to Dallas.  There are enough people I still know there, and it is a fun place to live.  And cheap.  And their apartments KNOW how to make Central Air work, which is important.

Anyway, I am lucky to have such problems now considering the past few years.

**********

An online tussle with somebody who used to be a dear friend revealed something to me that I didn't really want to admit--I'm not a fan of the gay community, despite being an estranged part of it.

The honest truth is a few years ago, when I was too scared to seek medical treatment for depression, I kept an open journal online.  Anybody could read it, as it was a cry for help.  I didn't understand these thoughts I would have, often bordering on absurd anger towards the smallest slight by friends, often just rude observations and the like about my life.

Getting these thoughts out of my head helped me tame them, and often I would go back and read them and actually post, "Why am I like this?  Why did I think this way about somebody I am supposed to care about as a friend?  It makes no sense and the person who wrote this is an alien to me, but I know he is still here with me now, inside." 

It seems obvious to me that I was hoping one of my friends would stumble across this, see how much I was hurting myself, and just... you know, try to help, like friends do.  But no, instead, my beloved dead-in-the-bed-fuck stalker found the journal, weaponized it, and suddenly everybody in my life (who at that point practically never talked to me anymore anyway since I'd moved again) had their hissies absolutely fit, and were chewing adamantium nails about what a horrible person I was to say such things, completely ignoring the posts where I admitted to not understanding what was wrong with my brain.

They could read it all.  I know quite a few did read it all, and somehow missed the bits about me knowing I was sick and not understanding where these thoughts came from inside of me.  

And then they had the gall to act like I had betrayed them.

Really.  I'd make a comment on somebody's talent (while also praising them) but I was the absolute bastard for daring to criticize.

In the end, I didn't so much as apologize to a few of these people as call them and let them know that I clearly stated this journal was for crazy thoughts, and we all agreed we knew the sick person who leaked it... but you know?  What does it matter who leaked it?

The reason I avoid the gay community is because most of them seem to be just like my crazy journal when you are not there.  Every one of them, at one time or another, has talked smack about our other friendships behind those peoples' collective backs.  Vicious little acidic jabs, clucking at the laughable machinations of others' lives, all the while not knowing the people who they were talking smack about were doing the exact same thing to them.

You know, I am pretty sure none of these people, whom I used to call friends, have ever owned up to their true feelings.  They smile in your presence, waiting for you to turn your back so the dagger can be so gently inserted in your back when you don't expect it.

So I just assume the whole gay community is still like this, like an ongoing season of RuPaul's Drag Race.  Why would I want to still be part of that?  They don't miss me, I no longer miss them, and should I move back to Dallas and see them at TBRU, I will just politely just nod and say hi, and then when they go for a drink Mean Tweet about them.

Anyway.  Time to work.

Whoops

That last post got away from me.  It was actually supposed to be, "Dad's been dead seven years now and nobody really misses him," which is sad but true.  But when you spend your life deceiving your family over such petty shit, that's to be expected.

Today I am producing another urban legend.  Yesterday it was about the Wendigo, and there was not a single act off cannibalism in it.  Boo!  Tonight is "The Fatal Hairdo."  As long as it doesn't include the beehive of one of the B-52's girls being full of Africanized killer bees, it should be good.

Tomorrow I should get news about my next trip.

Seven years past

It was on this morning in 2012 that I found out all my fears were there for a good reason.  The friends and family were, in fact, avoiding me.  A bartender does not take off a random Saturday night for no reason (if he truly lives on tips, which was the story), and there were plenty of chances to meet family during visits, but no invites.  Not a one.  My fear was that I would not be welcomed, and I wasn't, because to maintain a living meant I had to go where the job was, and it wasn't there, and I was shunned.  I blamed myself and fell into drinking again, which at that point I had never really given up, but fell far harder than I had before.  This day was the proof, and it all went downhill from here.

(It wasn't even the job thing or not living there that they disapproved of, I believe, but that is the less hurtful thing to believe so let's stick with it.)

It was never going to succeed.  Perhaps if my life was like it is now, it would have, but remote working was not yet a thing.  And now here I am, about to make enough to live on my own again, anywhere I want, and work from home to boot.  It is a weird thing to make your living in your underpants half the time, and weirder to be paid well for it, yet I do now.

But seven years ago, I got the news.  And the reaction showed no empathy, no emotion.  It didn't matter what I thought of him, he was my father, and this morning in 2012, he'd died.

The reaction was, I believe I am quoting it correctly, "That sucks."

I've never pretended that I wasn't at fault for what happened afterwards... if that was his reaction to the life-changing event of losing my father, maybe we shouldn't be together after all.  He was kind to not move out while I recovered in the hospital from my stroke.  Heck, he was kind to trek across the country to live with me in a dopey town like Dayton.  But all the puzzle pieces I'd ignored coalesced in that moment:  his friends, his family, never wanted to give me a chance, and maybe even hated me from the beginning.  His younger sister said maybe five words to me, his older one wouldn't let her kid meet me, which for some reason he thought he should tell me.  They didn't approve and I saw it all clearly when he said those two words... "That sucks."

It "sucks" that my father was dead.  And I knew then the clock was just ticking on him walking out, regardless of what I did, so I slid into the hole deeper to help numb the pain (hint:  that never works).  

Seven years past.  Sometimes I wonder if he even knows I am still alive.  Or, to be honest, cares.