xxxvi
prev.cont.I like to see what people do when they think nobody’s watching. It’s easier to remember that someone is a real person when I catch a glimpse of their underground setup. I’ve noticed that they tend to fill the space with the same neuroses they bring to the above ground. They direct their neuroses at screens, insisting that the new Taylor Swift album is derivative, demanding that football players make better plays. In my mind I ask them questions (why are you comfortable living such a measly life, why do you allow things to be this way, don’t you know how dire everything is), but I never say them out loud.
I’m the same as everyone else. I bring my neuroses underground with me and let them use up all my energy. I don’t know why I’m comfortable living my own measly life or why I allow things to be this way. I don’t know the thing that separates me from action. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing.
I’m no longer looking for major solutions to my problems, and I’m done trying to change how other people live. It’s simple physics: I can’t force someone into a different equilibrium than they’re in. I can try to push them somewhere else, but I shouldn’t expect them to stay there.
The weird year is ending, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. I’ve moved out of the house next to the hospital parking lot. It took a day to tear all the pictures off my bedroom walls, shove all my clothes into suitcases, and pack all my worldly possessions into my car. My last night of sleep was restless. It was like the house was rejecting me. Then I left. Then I caught a cold.
I wonder what things will be like a decade from now. Two decades. More. More. It’s hard to project myself that far into the future because I can’t imagine making it that far. The world is too lethal. I’m in cars too often. Planes. Trains. Things that can kill me with their speed. The world moves too fast and is in too precarious a position for me to confidently imagine myself at age 80. And I’m fine with that! I don’t resent the fact that I could die at any moment, because I know that’s how it is for all of us, and because death is probably going to be a cool experience.
In terms of what happens after, I obviously have no answer to that. My suspicion based on what I’ve seen so far is that “I” will no longer exist after I’m dead. I won’t exist in the same way. It’ll be an end to this formulation of me, an end to the ability of my cells to work in tandem. It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? Despite everything, I’m pretty attached to my cells and the “me” that they make up.
Thinking about death makes me feel sort of jumpy. I don’t want to die. I’m too young! It’s too soon!
It’s the 27th of December. The year is practically over. There’s nothing else I plan to accomplish before it ends. I think I’ve done enough. I’ll start again next year.
My aunt has been in the hospital with a UTI for a few days. She really wants to go home, but the doctors and nurses don’t seem to care. They’re holding her hostage with vague threats about insurance and IV medication. She could go home, of course, but that would mean leaving “against medical advice” and wearing those scarlet letters: AMA. She would have to oppose the system, up on its tall and ornate pedestal, risking judgment from her family and society and the people taking care of her. She decided she was better off spending Christmas in the hospital watching TV until her eyes sunk into their sockets.
Doctors and nurses don’t understand. Their brains are rotted from all the time they've spent around suffering. They can no longer feel how it feels to be the one who’s suffering. The suffering has lost its edge. They don’t know what it’s like to lay in bed all day, mostly alone, having the occasional conversation with the people who control whether you live or die. And even if they knew, they’d be too busy to care.
It’s striking me right now, for the first time, that I shouldn’t have done this. I try to live my life without regret, but here it is, that unmistakable feeling.