Real life is pretty boring, most parts of it at least. Fiction is an artificial construction of things that seem a little bit like real life, but put together in much more interesting ways.

I didn’t get to participate much in real life; i became disabled pretty early on (age 21) and didn’t get to work much of a real job. I did get to finish my undergraduate degree, appropriately enough in English.

So i love the way that you can use language to create a world — an interesting world — fairly unconnected to reality. I don’t actually like real people much anymore; i prefer fiction.

And it turns out that i didn’t miss much, not working. I was never going to be well-off; i probably would have struggled like most people, no matter what i did — regardless of my aptitude. The American Dream seems officially dead, to me. So i’ll just spin out the next twenty-five or thirty years as peacefully as i can (and hopefully find things to enjoy, probably mostly fictional).

I read someone’s post on Sincerely about love, and it got me thinking.

If you’re lucky, you will meet someone who genuinely loves you — a combination of respect and caring and concern for how you’re feeling — and you’ll happen to respect them and want to care for their well-being too.

It’s a difficult and rare combination to find. And it doesn’t always last, either. Life changes people, including me and including you.

Realistically, even true love can falter. Please don’t have an over-idealized view of love, or you may be disappointed. But true love can also recover (sometimes) from major fights, problems, and serious disagreements. And people make mistakes, big and small, all the time; everyone has difficulties.

The test of love is whether or not it can survive real problems — medical, financial, personal, et cetera — because problems eventually come.

And even if you do find some perfect love, one of you will eventually sicken and/or die. And the survivor will have to go on without that love.

Everybody dies. All love ends at some point.

I was pretty happy being alone in the first place, so i was prepared.

Halloween, if you hadn’t noticed, was Sandi‘s favorite holiday.

Last Halloween, there was a large gathering of friends and ministers at our apartment to give Sandi a grand Samhain ritual as a kind of a going-away present. Singing & chanting, with everyone gathered around her bed. It was lovely.

She died almost exactly seven days later.

She held on as long as she could, fighting constant pain and discomfort. She didn’t complain, but just nodded when i asked her if it was time for more pain relief.

We both did our best; that’s what any marriage boils down to. It was enough.

If you ever help someone fight their final battle, right to their last breath, it may change your outlook on life.

Even though i’m ok with being alone, life is never going to be the same again.

Do not enter into a relationship with someone who can’t fully take care of themselves. It’s bad enough that inequalities may develop later on; relationships should not start with such inequalities.

You know how much work relationships take; don’t take on an unnecessary extra job! When you’re dating someone, try to notice how well they’re doing on their own; if they are struggling, it’s a bad sign.

Instead of becoming involved with them, have the patience to encourage them AS A FRIEND to get their shit together on their own. Once they’ve shown that they can get by on their own — say, for a whole year — then you can consider going out with them. 

And if you do decide on another relationship, try to keep it casual — you don’t want to spend your time taking care of someone who can’t take care of themselves.

Don’t get sucked into a relationship-trap. You’ll have enough work ahead of you with your own life without taking on someone else’s issues. Take it slow. Take it easy.

If it seems like someone needs you, back away slowly; they’re not ready.

Try to only be involved with people as equals.

What happens when you find the thing you’re looking for in life?

You enjoy it. And then you move on.

It’s no more complicated than that.

It is a little confusing when you get the thing in life that you’ve been searching for; because maybe you’re better at looking for it than getting it, and you have to keep going and find something else to look for — that’s all there is.

It’s why i always wanted to become a writer. You think shit up, you write it down, and you move on.

When you’re a writer, you write stuff down like you’re a fictional character in your own story; and when something sounds good, then you have the character say it or do it.

It’s like everyone is a writer, and they each choose what their character does & says and where they go, what they do, and who they do things with … and how they do it; whether they cheat, or if they obey the rules.

Don’t listen to what other people tell you — they’re idiots, most of them. Do what you know you have to do; fuck them.

When you have something to say, write it down; who cares if it offends someone — they can go to hell.

If you think of something, write it the fuck down, please. Otherwise you’ll forget it, and the world will be less one more original sarcastic idea.

Go ahead, be sarcastic. 

People will likely not notice, because most of them aren’t listening … not to you, at least. 

If you have to say something, give it some fucking spice; don’t just exchange bland pleasantries like a lobotomized corporate stooge. 

Subvert the dominant paradigm. 

Go ahead, i know you really want to.

Don’t hold back.  

– – –

Birthdays suck. 

People suck. 

Life sucks, and it’s only getting worse. 

Jobs suck.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Pay no attention to any of it and just let it slide by like a crash scene on the highway when someone else is driving — it doesn’t mean shit. 

Have a sarcastic day.

It’s fair use if i find inspiration from the miscellaneous posts people put up on Sincerely, and more than worth the yearly fee.

Maybe the best companions for single folks in their 50s are dogs and/or cats; certainly they’re lower maintenance than humans, and you probably won’t fight with them as much.

In The Goldfinch, Donna Tartt gets to be honest about romantic relationships, and how they’re not all that they’re cracked up to be; and that a lot of people are just getting by with behaving appropriately enough that it passes for a marriage … that spousal love is going to change with time. Social inertia and expediency. Survival.

Inspiration from a House, MD episode: yesterday i saw the show where the previously-genius patient is basically giving himself a chemical lobotomy so he doesn’t have to suffer because he’s too smart. Am i better off because i lost a bunch of IQ points? Was part of my perpetual misery because i was smart? I am better off, but i seriously doubt that’s the reason. But it was still a good episode.

By this point in our lives, maybe we thought we’d have some great job and a great spouse, but it didn’t always work out that way. Jobs come and go, as do spouses sometimes. We don’t end up controlling as much as we wanted to in our lives, a lot of the time.

Sometimes i get overwhelmed easily.

Or overly frustrated.

Some of it is the TBI; some of it is just life.

I have to not take on too many things at once. If i stick to small tasks, then i can get through the day.

Bicycle across town to pick up a prescription and get the flu shot & COVID-19 booster? Yes, but then i’m done for the day. Maybe a walk later on, or take trash & recycling to the dumpster.

Every day does not have to be a meaningful journey, but there are still peaceful moments to be experienced and beauty to be in awe of.

Relax. Enjoy yourself.

You cannot, in the end, accurately assume much about anyone.

Sexuality.

Intelligence.

Love.

Discipline.

Joy.

Grief.

So you play this game where you assume people’s reactions are basically the same, even though they’re so not. Most people, we really don’t have any idea who they are, or what they’re going to do. Some people, yes; but most people, no.

Stories are about people, but people are too complex to pin down to mere words. So all stories are inherently at least somewhat fiction, even the ones that we intend to be non-fiction.

Nuance is everything.

Be skeptical.

I wonder if anyone has pushed the thesis that Christianity is really just an abstract version of Judaism and the Judaic beliefs.

I mean Judaism to me seems more founded in plain reality. Jews don’t have to wonder whether they’re the chosen people they know they’re the chosen people; but Christians have to earn their way into heaven, a sort of quid pro quo with God.

Big Catholic guilt, my brother would say.

Judaism was supposedly waiting for a messiah, but what it got instead was an abstraction of one. Judaism was fine by itself; it doesn’t need anything.

For whatever reasons, Christians resurrected this ancient tradition of blood sacrifice as a way of making some sin OK with God; but instead of killing an animal and offering its blood to God, Christians drink a glass of wine and pretend that it’s the blood or they eat the piece of bread and pretend that it’s the body of the martyr Jesus.

This is a substitute for the blood sacrifice. Christians still do it, just in a more abstract way. I don’t think Jews worry about sins in the same way the Christians do. Maybe the Jews just look at sins as part of life … stuff you should say sorry for, but don’t sweat it too much. Christianity seems to have a long history of guilt associated with sin.

I’m glad that i’ve gotten to have the range of religious experiences, from evangelical Protestant Christianity with lots of Jewish friends, atheism, Tibetan Buddhism, and finally ending up with Unitarians. Nothing to lose as keep over.