Today I stopped in at the toy store for the first time since I quit.
It depressed me. All of my favorite people had quit and vanished off the face of the earth, the few really hard workers who had stayed are down to minimal hours and they’re purposely scheduled shifts that don’t allow them to work with people they’re friends with. A couple of very friendly, loving coworkers who started working during season have apparently become arrogant and rude. This is what the place has become.
I walked around electronics with Benji, he talked about moving plans and I talked about moving plans. He’s transferring to a location in Visalia. He talked about how miserable the job had become.
“I guess I jumped ship just in time.” I said. He pretended to straighten merchandise.
“Yeah you did.” He said. “It’s a sad ship now.”
I felt like I had just finished the end of a really good book series. I felt a loss. Like while I worked there I had been witnessing some epic adventure without realizing it. They all really had been the best coworkers I’ve ever had. And that perfect group had dissipated and dispersed to better and worse things.
And I felt something that I knew was coming for a while.
The feeling that an experience, a period in my life is no longer current, but a story. The year I’ve spent in California, rebuilding and repairing and creating. It has become a story. It’s a thing now. In about a month this whole shindig will be “When I lived in Cali…”
And I feel the loss of an active existence in one place. I’m becoming a thing that floats on the surface again and waits to settle.
I’ve been dissociating here and there again. I haven’t dissociated frequently for a long time. The days to the big move are inching closer and closer.
And I feel a sadness that I wasn’t expecting.
The first time I moved out of my parent’s home I was angry and bursting with a thirst for independence and success and shouting ‘I’ll show you what I can do on my own!’
But then life did its thing and beat me into submission, and I was handed things better than I deserved but didn’t realize it yet and I grew up quickly.
Sometimes I think about a genie appearing and if I would go back and do it all over again.
Sometimes I say yes. Most of the time I say yes. But after I fixed it all I’d want to forget what I did so horribly wrong the first time around. I would want the second time around to be the only time as far as I knew. If I remembered everything from the first time, then I could never really feel free. Because to me, it would have all still happened.
I feel sad this time, about leaving. Deeply sad. It’s like when I think about it a black hole shaped like a twister forms in my ribcage and swirls about and sucks at energy and light and makes me feel a little emptier.
I feel so darn guilty about the things I do to people by simply existing. There’s no way to dance this whole thing through without causing anxiety and sadness and frustration.
Yes, yes. It’s life.
People change so much, and it frustrates me to no end. Some of them grow to be so selfish and bitter and they pity themselves so much. They seem to take pride in not having joy, they think that whining openly about the depths of their despair makes them special and deep and admirable.
I’ve lost so much patience for self-pitying behavior, specifically when people seek out reasons to exhibit this behavior.
It’s the world’s fault that everyone isn’t in love with you, it’s the world’s fault you aren’t a grand success, it’s the world’s fault that you don’t love yourself.
The amount of entitlement in young people is so ridiculous.The brats.
I feel so angry at these whiny little children at the community college. They’re complaining about the fact that they get to have an education. I want to poke them with forks and make them listen to me. There are people who would do anything to be as you are. Young with the world ahead of you, with a shot at setting yourself up for a great life, for a better tomorrow by just memorizing some stuff for a little while and learning amazing things. YOU GET TO LISTEN TO EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT PEOPLE TEACH YOU THINGS EVERY WEEK. APPRECIATE THEIR EFFORTS.
After stopping at the toy store I started driving home, when I saw a sign at a favorite bookstore in Old Town, it said ‘OPEN MIC FRI. 6:30’ I looked at my phone, 6:44. So I turned the car around and stepped into the bookstore, up some stairs to where I heard a voice reciting a poem.
“Even the silk swallows it whole…”
I tip-toed to the back of the space to listen as one older gentleman replaced the other at a wooden podium with a mic attached to it. This second gentleman gave a rundown of some characters in his novel before diving immediately into a story that made me blush before I could start to tip-toe away. “Oh, Jerry.” The older man raised his voice for the part of the woman, “Whenever we fight we end up making love.” I almost burst out laughing from surprise at how…well, unusual the experience was for me. It was shocking.
And so ended my first experience with an open mic night at a bookstore.
And once again I have no smooth way to end these posts…
Goodnight.
I Think I Like You People 