February 13th & 20th, 2023 - My Sad Dead

Dear TNY,

This pivotal Monday arrives with “My Sad Dead”.

And I don’t hate it.  But it’s not great either.

While I found the sentences to be more concise, interesting, and less overwrought than most of your pieces, the overall need for compression here is maximum.  On my page 15 of 23 is when the turn happens, when we start talking about the boy who won’t be soothed.  This is the first step toward the end.  Why so many goddamn words in? 

But I do want to emphasize that I read the whole thing and I felt, at times, compelled to keep going.  The end is a dickshit, though. Absolutely no payoff whatsoever.  Which is fine.  If that’s the way you want to live, sobeit. See: Writing the lives we live from last week’s post.

Again, I’m not mad about it.  Just not too much to say.  It’s weird how the pieces that you publish that are glorious and the ones that are pure shit both evoke torrents of words, but these middle stories are just meh and get a similarly meh write up.

In other news, today is my last day on the mainland.  I have folded up shop once again, as I have many times in my adult life.  The totes are full of wood for carving and the tools to do so.  I even packed some shirts with buttons.  Boy howdy!  Chuck is cleaned up and parked in the garage, which is also cleaned up.  And I sat in him today after it was all done.  And I thought back on all these years in him.  The miles we have covered. Fixes we have done. The love we have built.  And the things we have seen.  It’s a lot. More than most get in a lifetime.

Was I sad for a lot of that time?  Fuck yes.  I was ruminating on that in the back seat.  Why was I sad to be saying goodbye to Chuck if I was so sad while I was in him?  But I wasn’t sad to be in him. I never was.  That’s the conclusion I came to.  He’s what I wanted and I worked so hard to get to. Those summers with my kids were fucking exceptional.  Boat school was a goddamn privilege.  The Trinity Site and all the other things like it were bucket list items.  And working all over The West, building things for people, things they loved and love to this day, that’s the most gratifying work. And hanging out in their lives was also awkward and beautiful and interesting and pretty fucking great most of the time.  So I wasn’t sad about our time.  I was sad that, for the most part, nobody joined me.  I poured my time into friends and family, physically moving my body all over (and yes, because I don’t want to be alone, I had to do the moving) and, mostly, what I got back was a lot of texting and phone calls, not physical presence.  Which, I am thankful for those things. The friendships and messages and pictures and calls.  All of it. Truly.  But, I was sad in the back seat today because it was like saying goodbye to a dream.  I.  Did.  It.  Although the world threw me a bunch of curveballs, I made the time and funding to do what I always wanted to do.  I fucking made it happen.  And it was boof alone.  That’s what makes me sad.  I had so much time to share with someone. So much love to give.  So much adventure.  And so much of it was spent in bed drinking alone feeling sorry for myself.

But that, my friends, is my fault.  That’s how I chose to deal with it.  That’s on me.  You can’t make anyone do anything.  But you do have agency.  I’m glad I remembered that I did.

So it didn’t work out.  Meh. I don’t regret it.  At all.  It’s just time to do something new. And now I’m armed with the knowledge that if I want someone to be a part of my life…1) don’t be homeless and mobile, trust me on this one (hearing, “but I don’t know where you’ll be and where you are going,” is fucking exhausting; like, it’s me, isn’t that enough? I came for you) and 2) compromise.  And maybe 3) while I might show up like some kind of fucking crazy person, not everyone will.  Most won’t, in fact.  They are sane and balanced and have jobs and obligations and all manner of shit that I cut out of my life.  And that shit isn’t their fault.  It’s just life. We all see it differently. So, cut them some fucking slack. 

Mainly, the van, alone, doesn’t work.  For me.  That’s the realization.  So it’s time to try living alone in a tropical paradise and taking care of myself.  Cutting myself some slack.  Doing some deferred maintenance on myself and letting Chuck rest.  He’s more than fucking earned it. I love him so goddamn much for being there with me every day on this journey. Only he and I know what really happened. And even when it was sad and hard and a gnarled mess, it was fucking beautiful. Here’s to sunny days with a perfectly purring engine, the window rolled down and the day pouring in, tunes on the radio and tears in my eyes, buddy. You really did pull about a million gifts out of the bag for me. Thanks, big guy.

Well, there it is. I’m a big baby and I cry all the time while living an extremely privileged life. Which, reminded me of this quote from American Beauty:

Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst... And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...

Happy Monday.

Nick