Lamentations of a Sick Day

I called in sick today. I can’t be sure why, but it must be a combination of my limits of usefulness on a daily basis compared to my mental problems of wondering what it is I’m doing in and for this world…and maybe a twirling feeling in my stomach that things aren’t quite right.

I hope someday I can get away from writing about my fathers___

How many days have I felt worthless?

How many days have I loved her?

How do I know what tomorrow looks like?

What is this sinking, curling feeling I tend to get when I don’t write?

What am I, and why can’t I just go to work like everyone else and deal with it? What is it that is terrorizing me?

I search the housing listings sometimes, just to have some mild and invective taste of what it might be like to have a washer and dryer INSIDE my living quarters -

without coin slots

without harassing roomates

with HOA fees

& an endless repair strategy

which never quite fixes them…

And I don’t even care about using the word “invective” correctly, because it’s really just about the feel and tone of what you’re getting across anyway, right?

Feels just right to me. Words are a construct.

I’ve had some friends come and go.

I always wonder how they’re doing, even if I don’t particularly miss all that much about them.

I’ve come to a point where my father’s neglect, and his absence, don’t completely define the inside of my gut - just shy of being scraped to the outside…

The last time I saw you, you handed me a particularly ordinary looking version of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. You mentioned that an uncle, or maybe a great uncle - I can’t really remember - had it on his bedside for most of his life, and would refer back to it continuously.

You asked if I had ever read it.

I could only muster that I had, and that I write poetry sometimes.

The confusingly accurate yet devoid connection is staggering in its consistency in our relationship.

I guess life always keeps you guessing.

Journal entry:

Dad -

Last I heard you had prostate cancer.

I hear that’s fairly treatable.

I think often about what it means to be a man,

what it means to be in relationship,

what it means to be shattered,

because you never knew who or what you were,

and always felt that was about you when it came to me.

How you treated me,

and especially Kyra.

But I’m finding that all of us have scars,

all of us have blindness,

in the full understanding of what we truly are

to others

and how we act

in response

to what happened to us

a long time ago.

I don’t really believe in fate,

but I do believe in making choices.

I do believe in the impact of our collective way of being

with each other.

We are our own biosphere.

I want you to have a peaceful and contented life,

even if I can’t or am not able to be there.

Each of us have divine worth,

even if our actions are hard to make sense of or justify.

You did do some good things.

I find some aspects in myself I no longer want to resist 100% because they remind me of you.

A love of the outdoors

Small adventures

solitude

road trips and the Doors

Irish drinking songs

not caring about temporal things

an intangible earthiness

and a mercurial connection to an otherworldly artistic sensibility

bordering on arrogant nonsense…

You are remembered in what you gave me,

and the time you gave me when you weren’t being abusive,

intentional or not

doesn’t matter to me as much anymore.

It was more about what your presence of who you were

taught me

both what is authentic and worth emulating or nurturing

and what not to do.

Becoming who you really are is a lifelong journey.

It’s not done alone.

We have responsibilities to each other.

The task of being human is not to break those responsibilities.

The world depends on it.

And we are all being tested…

- Your Lost Son

Scott -

What is a stepfather? The ambiguity must be so so difficult.

(To be continued)…