Life is never as easy as it looks on TV or you read in a novel. Life is always a pain in the ass. You just have to keep going, and it kind of sucks — but everybody else has to do it, so I guess it’s kind of a group immunity; people put up with it because everybody else puts up with it, and you don’t really have much of a choice.

Why do we not notice that life in fiction is so easy? (Or if not easy, so much simpler than real life.) And how are we able to still enjoy the fiction, despite its being so simple? Why doesn’t it seem so glaringly and obnoxiously different than real life that we can’t enjoy it?

Because we wish life was simple and meaningful.

We want to romanticize life … we want to see it as worthwhile and fulfilling and all that kind of after-school-TV-special kind of crap. I guess the same reason that religion is popular — it’s an idealization. We can never really be like that, but it’s pretty to think so sometimes. Something to wish for.

Some we watch or read fiction to escape from the crappy reality that we’re stuck living in. And some people like a particular fiction so much that they reread it or rewatch it over and over and over again, if it’s long enough to forget the details of what it’s about — maybe it’s 7 seasons, each with 25 episodes per season; or it’s 7 books long, and it can be a comfortable substitute for real life.

Is it healthy to depend on fiction? I guess it doesn’t really matter — that’s what human brains are good at doing: imagining and making up stories; putting ourselves implicitly in those stories, even if they’re completely unrealistic; good guys vs. bad guys, happy endings, sad endings, all that crap. And we share those stories; it gives us something to do.

We do the mundane things of life (make enough money to buy groceries and enough for gas in the car or electricity in the car as the case may be) because we have to. We do all those boring things so that we can divert ourselves with fiction — with TV shows, with books, with video games, whatever floats your boat … with fun. You do work so that you can have fun.

No, i’m not great at writing entertaining stories, because it’s a pretty grim process; but sometimes i can stand it. Other times i can write a fluff piece like this.

Or sometimes i can let it go. I have to sometimes, because the whole thing has gotten to be a little bit depressing.

You’d like to think that good fiction helps you appreciate real life more, and i suppose that’s true occasionally.

But mostly i think it’s about survival. We dwell on fiction because we have to, just to make it through the day.

It’s a living.

What do I want now that Ojo is gone?

And Sandi.

Maybe I don’t want another cat, just like maybe I don’t want another romantic relationship. Maybe I’m done with those now.

Sometimes, it’s difficult for me to decide … anything. Right now i’m still in the process of grieving, of course; and i don’t have to decide anything for a while.

I think that sometimes people jump right back into another relationship — whether romantic, or with a pet — just because it keeps them busy — it keeps them from thinking about things a lot. Most people seem to want to do and not to think about it.

I have had trouble making decisions for a long time, for various reasons. It feels like i have the traumatic-brain-injury version of multiple personalities.

It feels like my brain, because of the injuries, has been split into a few different parts. Whichever part is in control at a particular time determines what course of action i take. So if i have a long-term plan, i just have to keep repeating it to myself in my head and hope that the right part of my brain hears it and manages to make it happen (or at least to remember it for later). Because it seems like different parts of my brain want me to do different things.

I guess i’ll just see what happens.

I never wanted a .COM — and i can’t even end that sentence with a period, because “.COM.” looks stupid, so i added an emdash and just kept going.

No, seriously.

The previous URL for DSM32 was http://dsm32.blogspot.com/ (and i did not like it). The blogspot domain was created by Google in 2003 to house Blogger (founded in 1999 and acquired by Google in 2003). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogger_(service)

.COM at the end of a web address means commerce, and i never had any interest in commerce. Commerce is buying and selling and making money. No thanks. Not interested.

.ORG is for a lot more casual of an organization — and not about money. Anything but money. It could be academia, but more likely non-profit kinds of stuff. Education is .EDU — my favorite, but you don’t get a .EDU web address unless you’re a school. I’ll settle for a .EDU email address; that’s cool.

.ORG might look a little clunky, but i’ll take it. Back when i worked for Peace & Love, Incorporated (in a fictional version of 1993), we had a .ORG address for the limited number of computers hooked up to the very young internet, such as it was — still mostly universities. Then the numbers exploded.

Wikipedia describes .ORG as being intended for websites “for organizations that didn’t fit anywhere else”. Not fitting anywhere else; perfect for me.

Why would i want to fit in? (Except for the obvious reason: that most other people want to.) Well, typically i just don’t fit in. And that’s fine with me. (As it is for anybody who truly cares about me.)

Do you fit in?

The more that i think about it, the more i decide that i would not change the past — not one thing. Those past decisions, however foolish, … they made me who i am today.

I used to be a really cool guy. I was that hairy sexy funny guy in his 20s who wore tank tops and went running, you know, like ten miles a week. It was the 90s. It was a good thing. I really like who i was then, even if i didn’t like him so much at the time.

Why should i want to change the past? The past was fine.

Once upon a time, i wanted to be a writer. Why the hell can’t i just be one now? I’ve got the time.

I didn’t used to worry about stuff. I just did it, and it was fine.

What do i have to worry about anyway?

The Management have now asked me not to walk behind the Phase 2 apartments on the nice grassy walkway because it’s not covered with tarmac. They apparently only want people to walk where there are OFFICIAL walkways. No walking on the grass.

So i cut a pathway into the conservation land that surrounds Avalon so i can walk a slightly longer route through the woods, and that will make me happy because it gives me something to do for a while, cutting this path through the woods.

Eventually the new path will join up with an older one, and i’ll have a way to get to NARA Park the back way on foot through the woods and not disturb the precious Phase 2 residents by someone having the audacity to take a walk.

It gives me something to do, something harmless (but still vaguely productive) to worry about.

Maybe part of the reason i miss Ojo so much is that he was Sandi’s familiar. Lots of witches have cats as their familiars, so it makes sense that i became more attached to Sandi’s familiar after she died.

I don’t have to worry about scaring Ojo with the vacuum cleaner anymore.

I don’t have to worry about stepping on Ojo‘s tail when i walk around the apartment anymore.

Ojo will never show up in the bathroom in the middle of the night with me anymore.

I can open up a canister of whatever and not have Ojo scrambling to the kitchen in case it’s cat food (because he knew he could always wrangle a treat out of it from his old man, who was such a softy).

I don’t have to prepare meals ahead of time for Ojo, usually in batches of four, with essential fish oil, ground up steroid pills, and powder from gabapentin capsules added to each meal. But it was 100% worth it; after a while i didn’t give it a second thought.

And i miss it. I miss him.

Sandi & i were blessed to have Ojo in our lives, and Ojo benefited too. Lots of love all around.

“To everything, Turn! Turn! Turn!
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose, under heaven” [The Byrds, 1965, Pete Seeger 1959]

Just keep going; that’s all you can do, really. Turn!

(And i can finally pull the blinds down all the way on my porch door — Ojo doesn’t need a space to look out anymore.)

What’s really sad about the situation with R? I probably don’t even remember the issues we were having — whether it was Sandi wanting to say too much on their websites or discussions, or if i was the one saying too much; i don’t remember. I guess it doesn’t matter, because R does not seem that interested in being friends again anyway.

They’ve moved on with their life; i suppose i should move on with mine.

Recently I’ve started rereading the Rabbit novels from John Updike, starting with Rabbit Run (1960). Part of my strategy for dealing with the world is to make up a little stories to myself to explain why things are the way they are. And reading Updike again, maybe i think my friend took their non-binary name from the Rabbit series. Or not. At least it’s worth thinking about.

Ten months ago, my wife died. Our cat, Ojo, just had to be put to sleep today; and i’ve spent most of the day crying. It’s almost as if Sandi still lived on through that cat, and she didn’t actually die until today. It’s just been a year of mourning, and i’m worn out from it.

Maybe i can never move on. Maybe i’m just as stuck as lots of other people are — manacled to the past — as they drag it along behind them. Maybe this is it, and the rest of my life will just be dragging all the wreckage behind me.

At least most days shouldn’t be as bad as this one.

I wonder if other people feel held back by their past; i’ll have to ask, if i ever happen to meet any again. Maybe i don’t want to ever meet anyone again. Maybe i am done. Would certainly simplify the hell out of things i was done.

All right, that’s enough.

I don’t ever want to be in love with anyone again. Love has *not* been a positive thing in my life. Yes, i’ve gotten some life experience out of love, but it’s mostly just brought me pain.

I came to this realization thinking about T. If i keep interacting with her, i’m just gonna fall in love with her and it will only lead to pain, whether or not she could actually love me back. It’s just pain. I need to not see T anymore (or at least not very often).

I don’t know … i wish there were something positive to do, but the only thing i can come up with is negative — don’t do this; don’t do that; don’t see T; don’t try to help her more than you have to. I’m just a fucked-up individual who can’t help it. I’ve just got to stay away from love.

Like Linus said in Peanuts: no problem is too big to run away from.

I sit on my patio and listen to the wind rustling through the trees. The sun is bright; the skies are blue. I can hear various birds in the trees. And if I activated my Cornell Bird app, it could probably recognize most of them.

Even though I am pretty disabled (traumatic brain injury) and my Social Security income puts me well below the poverty line, i am also very privileged. I am privileged to live in a good town in a good state in a good country. I would never have survived my injuries if considerable resources had not been put into my care. I was not expected to live, but I did. My TBI probably falls under the category of diffuse axonal injury, meaning that pretty much the whole brain was damaged. I was young and my brain healed remarkably well considering; but i no longer have the emotional endurance to work any kind of a real job, and most of my energies go toward just taking care of myself, now that Sandi is gone. I know that I am one of the very, very lucky ones.

Now, in my 50s, i get to spend some time writing again. I was always sort of a reluctant writer; it was not my first choice of occupations. My memory is not so good, but my creativity and brash spirit live on. My discipline also kind of sucks, but this blog gives me something to do every day.

I am really thankful for what i have and what i can still do. Maybe I was not grateful as a kid and that was part of the problem. Maybe i was not a very good person (originally), but i’m trying to be one now (post-TBI).

I was never great with people, and I’m probably worse now. All we can do every day is to go along as best we can, any of us.

Some seventeen years ago, i hurt someone whom i had been close friends with for about thirteen years.

I made a mistake; i was only a year or so into a new romantic relationship with B, someone i probably should not have been involved with in the first place. R wanted to get together for one last lunch before they moved far away; but this new relationship was in a delicate stage, and i was too afraid to confront the flood of emotions i was sure to feel when i saw R again.

So, like a fool, i told them no for lunch; and i didn’t get to see them.

I guess i was afraid to compare the depth of friendship i had with R to the comparatively shallow new relationship with B — i was trying to stay with B, and not give up too soon.

So i was an idiot, and i let the chance to see my friend slip away. Whatever online contact we’d previously had … it dwindled over time. This was all a long time ago (to me), and i don’t remember things very well to begin with.

A few years later, Sandi sought me out on Match.com and asked me to marry her (after a year or so). She didn’t have a problem with my being friends with R — not like B did — but i didn’t prioritize the friendship with R like i should have.

Again, my fault, my mistake.

The marriage with Sandi went well (or at least as well as it could between two stubborn people), but Sandi’s health started to go downhill. She eventually had to stop working and took Social Security Disability. The doctors couldn’t find a whole lot wrong with her, aside from discovering an autoimmune condition, Sjögren’s syndrome.

Then a few years later the unexplained bleeding started, and we knew it had gotten more serious. (Sandi’s GYN at Lahey Hospital had previously found a large uterine fibroid, but after an MRI, determined it to be benign — they never biopsied the fibroid.) Now, years later, they biopsied her uterus, and the findings were inconclusive.

But Lahey suspected cancer; they were just too timid to begin treatment and only ran more tests. Sandi wanted a second opinion and got one from Emerson Hospital, who took one look at her records and started her on radiation therapy the next day.

Stage 4B uterine cancer, already spread to her lymph nodes and her bones. That was the conclusion.

Rounds of Chemo followed the radiation, and then rounds of Immunotherapy; but it was too late to do anything but make Sandi more comfortable and slow the cancer a little.

Eight months after the diagnosis at Emerson, Sandi died — not before we went to several Ben Folds concerts, a vacation in Maine with friends, and a few other modest celebrations we could manage — including a lovely Samhain ritual on Halloween that our UU church put on, with as many friends as good fit around Sandi’s bed! She died seven days later.

This is when i really began to miss R, grieving for Sandi. In decades past, R had overseen every pagan ritual i had ever been a part of.

Now i begin my quest to reconnect with R. I’m not very good at finding people, but i will do my best.

Let’s see how it goes.

I would not blame R for not wanting to reconnect. Despite my limitations, i did not act very well toward them. Maybe they can forgive me; maybe not.

At least i’m in a better position to help them out a little when they need it. My life has become simpler over the last nine months, and more affordable.

As i look back on the last thirty years, i see how much of an effect R had on my life, especially intellectually. My writing style, for one. My interest in pagan matters, which Sandi shared. The development of my tastes in music, literature, and people. All shaped by my interactions with R. (Even some of my word choice, capitalization, and punctuation is influenced by R.)

Maybe i can earn R’s trust again, make a fresh start.