actually useful blog posts will happen again someday. but for now you’ll have to deal with me ventposting and oversharing, since my therapist and i had to reschedule because i had a poor internet connection in my car which was the only private place i could video call him because of the stupid manic chaos that lately characterizes my life.
i’m embarrassed about my embarrassingly spiteful and antisocial previous blog post, so i feel as though i should post something a little more productive, even if just for me. can’t really think of anything though, on account of being caught in the middle of a bunch of previously suggested life changes, so maybe that’s what i’ll talk about here. where to begin?
most important one is that i just ended a relationship i was in for 11 years, since high school. i was 17 then, 29 now. people change a lot between those years, and both of us certainly did. it’s sad but it’s happy. we are on good terms. this breakup demarcates the following unwritten volumes of both our lives. everything else i will write about here stems from it.
we broke up because, after losing a bunch of weight this year (220 → 180lbs and counting), i gave myself a cheat meal as my family were visiting town, which landed me in the hospital with a small bowel obstruction nobody has given me an explanation for. i was in there for 3 days then they got it out of me. i think it’s because i eat too fast and i don’t chew enough. i dunno. anyway after this happened and i got back i think some of my brain turned to cotton candy and i became obsessed with camping and Ween. i don’t know why Ween. i asked myself for weeks, why can i only fucking listen to Ween? sure they are good, but it made me feel so out of touch, like a 50 year old dead-head.
continuing this obsessive streak, i bought two grand worth of camping gear and spent a few nights out in the Willamette national forest by myself, sitting around next to a creek and playing Ween out my bluetooth speaker. well they have this terribly sad song about a breakup that remorsefully described a future i already knew i needed. finally i was able to consciously address it. just having the perspective of another human that was so close to mine, even in a song that could be pure fiction, freed the latent will to action (and in fact this has happened to me in the negative sense in negative ways, like how i justified not brushing my teeth as a child because Bleeding Gums Murphy didn’t—the traumatized autistic mind is capable of things you cannot conceive). this perspective gave me the agency i didn’t have to finally make a decision to improve both our lives. i gained the ability to exercise my free will.
when i got back to the house from camping, that was pretty much it. over the next few days we had some conversations, surprisingly short ones. she and i had tried to break up over and over again in the past, but we were too weak to stay apart. i had to break the cycle. we couldn’t keep doing this to each other. i exercised my free will.
that was July. i’m moving to the city now. from Eugene, where i lived for twenty years or so, back to Portland, where i was born. i’m living right in the center of it all, too—or, i will be, when i’m done moving. the new apartment is great but there’s nothing in it yet save for a bunch of boxes and a disassembled bedframe. i’m currently staying in the apartment i got in Hillsboro that i share with an old friend. yes, i have been back in forth between two homes in Eugene and Hillsboro the last year. really i should have known the end was coming when i signed the lease to the place. unconsciously i knew this was my escape from a relationship that was clearly not working. renting from two places is not normal. i’m sleeping on the floor here in Hillsboro the last couple months. it’s on the third floor by stairs only and i never had the motivation to bring in any furniture. my roommate and i are both moving out of this one too. that is my fault. kind of another breakup, except lower stakes. i just can’t share a space with other people anymore. it’s too complicated. i’ll be living alone for the first time in my life.
i’m getting back into risky behavior. maybe best my midlife crisis happens at 29 and not 45? i should just buy a cool car or something. probably going to do a lot more drugs for a bit. loosen up with some mescaline. i’ve been hitting the bar more too, but also hitting the weights. i gotta look good in a shirt now that i’m single. i never looked good in a shirt before. which reminds me that i’ve already got two tattoos since the breakup. never got any of those before either. pathetically transparent right? she never liked them; her worry was skin cancer. i’m finding that i really like getting tattoos, so i will probably get more. also, today i bought a pack of cigarettes after bumming them here and there for years. it feels stupid as fuck to smoke by myself. will not be doing this again.
what’s there left to say? at this point i am well beyond oversharing. i’m getting sterilized on the 21st. another years-long point of contention with my ex. i know it’s the right choice for me and i’m moving ahead with it. maybe someday it will be the wrong choice; i’ve accepted that grief is a possibility. i must exercise my free will.
unless you care about me as a person, and not just about my artistic output, i doubt you will get anything from reading all this. but you still read it, didn’t you? i win again