Wed Aug 23 19:48:43 UTC 2023

*Why do I bother? Why do I bother?*


I have real people who I can talk to. People with who I can share my heart and
soul, people who know  and trust me, who make me feel  like we share essential
humanity. And I am infinitely grateful for  that. But no man is an island, the
aging  and physically  unimposing  still  more so.  This  simple, basic  human
contact, this *caring*, has made me despair far less than I would have without
it. Maybe  that's enough  to compensate  for the  fact that  almost all  of my
current "communities" are about as welcoming as a slaughterhouse to a chicken.
That most  of the world, as  I noted in my  last post, has turned  into an Emo
Philips joke about religion. But it doesn't  ease the pain of those I've lost,
and  those with  whom my  relationship  has been  permanently and  irrevocably
tainted.

"I'd like to care, but I've been priced out of the market."

I'm  tired of  explaining. Tired  of being  put on  the defensive,  constantly
forced to  justify my every opinion  however subjective the subject.  Tired of
being treated like a  dangerous lunatic and a ticking bomb  by people who have
known me for  decades, even for my  entire life. Tired of  having my carefully
forumulated and  diplomatically phrased  concerns dismissed  as so  much petty
whinging and  hateful raving. Tired of  the childish games from  people my age
and older,  games that  are now  so much  more destructive  than when  we were
toddlers.  Tired of  being lectured  and commanded  and shrieked  at by  moral
midgets I wouldn't trust to clean a toilet, let alone preach to me about right
and wrong. And really  fucking tired of all these people  who thirty years ago
were chanting  NO BLOOD FOR OIL,  who after 9/11 couldn't  possibly scream any
louder about those fuckin' Republicans, but now  they live and die by the Holy
Creed of Bush:  You're either with us,  or you're with the  terrorists. No bad
tactics, only bad targets. Everything's a binary for them, except the constant
and unending stream of exceptions that are just too complex and nuanced for my
primitive binary caveman mind to comprehend.

Beyond the virtue of  self-control, the only reason to hold  my tongue with my
remaining family is to avoid ruining the precious little I have left. It could
be worse,  could be  the living  death of those  who implicitly  or explicitly
ghosted me, who referred  to me in vile terms, who  showed no apparent concern
or desire to  contact me during my  period of grief, choosing  instead to send
armed agents of  the state to my  door who thankfully were far  more sane than
the one who summoned  them. So there you are, SDF; my  confession that I'm one
of Those Bad  People, that I'm stupid and  evil, you may now all  gasp and boo
and throw rotten produce  at the designated two minute Hitler  as I set ablaze
the few rickety boards I'd put down that haven't even formed a single step let
alone a  bridge. Fun times.  If only we'd known  in the eighties  that someday
we'd yearn  for the  simplicity and  containment of  the bulletin  board flame
wars.

"Got no need to beat you. Just want to go my way."

Have fun with that.