Rhapsody in The Stuff That's Not Interesting But Is The Most Interesting Stuff I'll Write

I know, it has been a long time. One of the longest breaks I’ve ever taken. To be quite honest, the only reason I’m writing right now is because I was watching Call Me By Your Name and started getting very emotional.

I’ve spent the entire year so far trying to get better, and part of that process is understanding exactly how “not well” I am. It goes further than just the little problems that I’m having with my health because I’m understanding that these symptoms stretch back many, many years. It has become such a point that I don’t even really know who I am when I’m not ill. I’m trying to find that moment in my life that splinters the timeline.

The reason that movie brings it up in me is because I recognize those feelings, I recognize that joy and that innocence. That freedom of choice. Seeing it reflected in a film and feeling it in tandem means that I begin to find some long-buried part of myself that was once the core of who I was.

To that extent I’ve begun pulling back from most social media. The problem with it for me is that it has become a substitute for actual relationships. So I eliminated my Snapchat, my Instagram, I reserve Twitter for mostly jokes, and Facebook to offend as many people as possible. But I’ve resorted to using my phone to text and call people. Finding relationships.

I haven’t had them in so long that I’m not sure I even know what they mean anymore. What does one do when one is speaking only to one person as opposed to a plural crowd of possible recipients? Does what I say even matter if only one person hears it? Maybe it matters more because it was spoken for that one person only.

I wish I knew how to explain what all of this does to me, but very little has changed except for the fact that my determination to get better is a bit like using a rubber duck as a floatation device to stop the Titanic from sinking. Still, hope is better used than unspent.

It’s begun to get hot here already and I’m partially furious at myself for not being well-enough to leave. I barely survived my trip to San Francisco last weekend, however, I’m okay with that because it looks like I’m not going to have to go back, maybe ever, since Richard is moving back to Sacramento. His reasons for doing so have me reserving judgment on whether or not it’s a good idea or a bad one, but I guess we’ll wait and see.

I’ve made a new friend, her name is Kara. I met her while I was out job-hunting. She’s in her early-40s and having two affairs with her co-workers while she is in the process of getting a divorce. I very much like having a friend with whom I have very little in common because the reality is we have more in common than most of my friends because our commonality is our shared values as opposed to supposedly intersecting at some community.

There’s only so much I can do right now, but I’m trying my best and improvising like a piece of music. And the news that they have developed a supposed-cure to my disease means that I no longer have just a few years left, but I will actually live a long life. That means, for the first time in a long while, I have to think in the long-term, which is part of what has prompted this perspective of trying to comprehend the breadth of how far gone I truly am.

No more dissonance, only harmony.