And here I am again. I’ve decided to write. It seems like a nice thing to do. It usually is. I think it always is, actually. Come to think of it, I can’t think of any times in the past that I’ve sat down and written, and then stood up and thought, “that was a bad idea.”

But what will we write about? An annoying question. We’re way past it by now. It’s been almost two years of writing. I’m a seasoned veteran by now. I wonder what it’ll be like when I’ve been writing for a decade. Two decades. More. more. I tend to find it difficult to project myself that far into the future, simply because I can’t imagine making it that far. The world is too lethal. I’m in cars too often. Planes. Trains. Automobiles. Things that can kill me. The world is in too precarious a position for me to be able 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 we’re all in the same boat, and because death is going to be a really epic and insane experience. It’s gonna happen to me eventually. There’s too much involved in life, from what I’ve seen, for “me” to no longer exist after I’m dead. I mean… I won’t exist in the same way, that’s for sure. It’ll be an end to this formulation of me. Oh jeez. It’s a scary thought, isn’t it? I’m so attached to this current life. I don’t wanna have to fight it when the time comes.

never gets old Okay, we don’t need to think about death anymore. When the time comes, I think I’ll have found enough peace with death as a concept to accept that it’s happening to me. I don’t know. Wow. i’m scared. It actually makes me feel sort of jumpy. I wouldn’t want to die. Not right now. I’m too young! It’s too early. I have too many things to do with/in this life. I wanna actually do my acts that I am feeling called to do. I wanna make something of my life and stuff like that. So I will! There’s no time to waste!

It seems like there is, actually, time to waste. Right now, especially. It’s the 27th of December. The year is practically over. There’s basically nothing else I hope or plan to accomplish in 2024. I’ve done just about enough, I’d say. Starting over in 2025. But that’s not the right attitude to have, I know. I could make the world’s greatest something in these next four days. Why limit myself? Why not just throttle it and put my foot on the fucking gas?! I think I am doing that in some ways. Making my parents dinner last night. Opening up some new beauty in the universe as a result. Writing this now, whatever this ends up being.

It’s a good thing V▒▒ was in the hospital over Christmas, because it’s given me a whole new perspective on medicine. A new old perspective, I guess, which is that it sucks. They kept her in there on Christmas, and for two extra days on top of that, and another half-day after that. Right? Well, the details don’t matter. What matters is that the communication between her and the doctors was piss-poor. The infectious disease doctor spending only 30 seconds with her. Nobody explaining what’s going on with her. Her laying in that big room all alone for days on end during Christmastime. Nobody seems to really give a fuck about her going home, and it makes sense, because I’ve felt how it feels to be on the other side of that. Really wanting to go home, and then not being able to go home: it’s something I’ve seen in many patients, and something I’m now desensitized to as a provider. Oh, they wanna go home? Yeah, so does everybody else. Doesn’t matter. When you’re as overworked as the doctors and nurses, something in your brain prevents you from really feeling how it feels to be in a situation like that. They don’t know what it’s like to lay in a bed all day long, welcoming only the occasional visitor. Some people have no visitors, just the doctors who spend 30 seconds a day with them, and the nurses who don’t know what’s going on and can only provide vague reassurances, and who are often cunty to the patients. They hold patients like V▒▒ hostage with vague threats about insurance and dangling IV medication over their heads, telling them they “might” die if they don’t get it. It’s literally a hostage situation, and you’re stealing the hostages’ money in exchange for treatment that often leaves people sicker than they started, and at best extends their lives by some years. At what cost. That’s the question it keeps coming back to.

I can’t help but zoom out and think about how lucky V▒▒ is in the grand scheme of things. A very minor inconvenience when you think of the many psych patients who are created as a result of endless wars and genocide and torture by colonial forces. These people are suffering. They are experiencing the limits of human suffering, having vivid dreams about decay and persecution, and waking up to those same things. It’s inescapable. V▒▒ is lucky because she’s in a huge hospital room with people waiting on her and providing (shitty) food, and she has a TV to keep her entertained. But she has no freedom. In order to leave, she has to oppose the system that everyone has put on such a pedestal. She has to really choose resistance and risk to her own life if she wants to get out of there. That’s not freedom. Freedom is an option in the hospital, but it’s called AMA and will get you shunned by people like your judgmental and worried family members. It’s just a big mess. You’re better off staying in the hospital on Christmas watching TV until your eyes sink into their sockets.

It’s an extremely sad state of affairs. It’s very imperial boomerang. The empire is inflicting damage on us, its own citizens, little micro-traumas that keep us self-pitying enough to have no gas in the tank to pity people who are “actually” suffering. Some people have real problems… that’s a thing that is now not PC to say. Each person’s trauma is personal and very big and real to them. But if people were more aware of the kinds of consequences that capital T trauma sufferers like the kids in Palestine are experiencing… they might think differently.

Is there anyone out there helping those kids in Palestine? Any organizations dedicated to psychotherapy or things like that for traumatized kids of Gaza? Anyone attempting to tell their stories?

Frantz Fanon died at 36… damn! Maybe that’s part of why I have trouble projecting myself into the future. It seems like the good die young. I imagine myself as one of the good, so I imagine myself dying young. But who knows! I could make it far. But then there’s that thing Dostoevsky says in notes from underground: to live longer than 40 is gross. I forget exactly which words he uses to describe it, but my impression is that it’s sort of offensive to be older than 40. Like… what are you still doing here? You didn’t make enough enemies in your youth to get killed by now? You didn’t live fast, die young, bad girls do it well? Pussy. Coward. You’re gonna let dementia be the thing to kill you? What an undignified kind of death, and one that you deserve wholeheartedly. As in, everything about your heart indicates that you are deserving of an ugly kind of death like that. You should’ve done more. Sorry.

Would I consider suicide a more or less dignified death than “old age”? Is it better to call it quits yourself or let your brain do it for you? A good question. I suppose it’s at the foundation of the assisted suicide debate. I feel like I course-corrected so hard after “recovering” from suicidal ideation that I’ve sort of blanket suggested that suicide is always and everywhere “bad,” especially when compared to dying of “natural causes.” What’s the point of dying of natural causes anyway? Is it really that good?

@people I don’t know what my “point” in all this is. Why am I actually writing this damn notes from above ground, anyway?

Fanon wants writers to write for their people instead of the colonist.

I think I need to just fully lock in. No more distractions. No more hiding.

How many times can a man turn his head and pretend he just doesn’t see? Come on now. That’s such an obvious question. We love it, thank you, Bob. How many times, indeed? It makes you think, and it makes me want to answer for myself. A few times, but not so many. Not too many. It won’t be too many.