28 December 2024

This may piss you off, but hear me out

The part that will particularly piss you off will be this image. I don’t know who made it. I’m mostly including it to snap you to attention and also because I always illustrate these posts.

Got that? Good. Now, if you haven’t shat yourself and flounced off, this is where you hear me out.

First off, this whole Luigi Mangione thing has got me in this weird place between “Rich guys who could save sick people but let them die have got it coming” and “Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m not condemning an act of murder, especially after all those attacks on abortion providers in the nineties.” I happily share jokes about the incident, but I’m still appalled at myself and somehow — don’t ask me how because I have no fucking idea — I’m holding these two states simultaneously in my mind. Jury is WAY the hell out on what I will think of myself in the long run after this.

Secondly, therefore, I’m not very patient with people who look at me not roundly condemning Luigi and then deciding I’m for cold-blooded murder. Especially when I have already philosophized about this to some extent on Facebook and that was publicly available for anyone to read who is not so far up his own ass that he never listens to what I say anyway.

Oh. RIGHT.

Thirdly, you don’t get to tell me what I’m allowed to say. You may set your OWN boundaries, but you may NOT set MINE.

Well, someone tried to do both at the same time. And I’m not fuckin having it, so I both refused to let him tell me how to speak AND respected his boundary. And that was strike two. There will be no strike three. This is my life, not fucking baseball.

P.S. There is no “civilized way” to do anything about a CEO who allows, at the least, negligent homicide when in fact it isn’t legally considered negligent homicide because fucker’s behavior is LEGAL. By the time you got the law changed, a whole lot more people will have suffered that unofficial negligent homicide. They will of course be officially dead, regardless. So it’s either step in and solve the problem, or it’s be an accessory. (I said “accessory to murder” on my Facebook. It’s a toss-up. Apply whichever label you most align with.) Luigi decided he wasn’t going to continue being an accessory. He’ll probably die for it. He’s probably at peace about that now. It was a done deal as soon as they caught him. We care about CEOs to a degree that we will never care about a Porsha Ngumezi.

Or about Luigi’s mother.

I mean, United Healthcare fucked with an Italian boy’s mother. Come on.

Anyway. We all want to control our lives and our environments because it makes us feel safe and cozy — I get it. Well, guess what. We can’t. We can only control ourselves, and even then only sometimes. So we can stay in the land of comforting lies, including the one that goes We can have a just and fair world if we just let rich guys get away with harming everybody else, or we can wake the fuck up and face the world for what it is. Note that I did not characterize that as having any particular outcome. That’s because it may not have an outcome, or at least not one we would like. And yet, I think in the long run we’d be happier and healthier if we quit running away from what life actually is.

Me believing that, of course, is a big reason I keep losing friends. Or finding out they weren’t friends. Whichever.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way

The once-weekly odd job continueth apace and I am in the odd position of… having money? It’s so fucking weird.

We’re going through some growing pains; if I explained what I meant, not only would this post be entirely too long for most of you, but I’d also reveal details I’d just as soon leave mum. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that the nonprofit I’m helping would google me, and I don’t want the hassle. But I’ll be vague. People haven’t learned to just let me fucking figure things out yet. Even though they know I can, and have seen me do it a few times by now. This is a thing we are just going to have to work through. There are no shortcuts. Mostly I’m still okay with doing the work, so I’ll figure it out anyway and then everybody can calm down a bit.

One aspect of growing pains that I will mention is I’m having trouble getting enough sleep lately. Some of that is anxiety about my Mondays, so Sunday nights are a nightmare trying to get to sleep, but lately I seem to have early-waking insomnia on top of that. I have to drive something like three hours in one direction to get all this shit done, so I really need to figure this out so Neighbor’s truck can stay in one piece.

Meanwhile, I am in the weird position of (1) being buttered up for potentially going to [paid] work for this nonprofit when they relocate to Nevada; (2) being told there are lots of men in Nevada and perhaps I could find a husband there; (3) being offered a makeover; and (4) being told that perhaps I could marry a millionaire one day. I am not sure what any of that is about — and no, it’s not a man saying all this — but the last time someone made anywhere near this big a deal out of me, I think I was in high school.

I mean —

Versus —

…So, yeah, that’s interesting. I’m mostly letting it go in one ear and out the other, as much as I appreciate the sentiment. I’m a lost cause anymore.

Speaking of…

I need to just quit thinking about guys

Will I? No, probably not. But I should.

Basically, at this point it’d be a miracle if I found anyone. The mere fact of me saying that will mean I have to be extra-careful forever; some asshole will come along, see me obviously being lonely and running out of hope, and decide to fuck with my mind. It’s happened before. That, or I’d meet someone in person who doesn’t know me from online and it’ll turn out he’s pro-trans. Which I need like a second asshole. Less than the second asshole, actually. The second asshole would actually be useful.

Anyway, so therefore it made more logical sense to look for someone from amongst “my” people, so to speak. That’s going to go fucking nowhere. Either they’re already taken, they’ve given up on life, they’ve given up on women, or they’re not attracted to me and honestly, most of the time it’s the latter (even when a man’s taken, he’s not dead and usually not blind; they still have an opinion about all the women they’re not involved with). I have never understood why men have to invent bullshit excuses instead of just saying, “Y’know, you’re a cool person, but I don’t think of you that way.” Even if he trotted out that line they hate from women, “I just like you as a friend,” I am a woman and I’d parse the code accurately. I can take a hint. I just never get the hint. It’s always some dumb little thing calculated to keep me dangling. I know I’m not the only woman who goes through this, either. Straight ladies: Don’t you hate that shit? What a fucking waste of time.

But honestly, it’s just as well and it’s not all their fault. I may be doing better, but I’m not doing better enough. At this point it’s guarding against two possibilities: (1) that I would wind up economically dependent again on a man to whom I am emotionally attached, and (2) that some guy would pretend to be into me just so he can have a live-in caretaker. I do not want any of that nonsense. Insofar as the economic dependence, that’s just plain not a good thing for me to do, regardless of how any man might feel about it. I hate being weak. The other ought to be self-explanatory. I’m tired of being the housekeeper unless there is a very good reason for it. Right now I have a few housekeeping tasks but they keep me housed, and I don’t have to have sex with the homeowner; even if that were on offer, which it’s not, first off she’s got the wrong plumbing and secondly, I suspect her significant other would be rather put out, and I like him enough to not want to do that to him. So that’s a lot better than me having a live-in boyfriend.

But I wonder if there isn’t some way to navigate developing a relationship when one or both of you are broke. Because I also have to think about time investment just getting to know a new guy. If I wait until my life’s perfect I’ll be fucking eighty before that happens. Except it won’t happen, because who’s perfect?

BUT ALSO I’d have to actually meet someone. Well, I’m trying. They all keep being dead ends. It is very discouraging. So I’m at an impasse, and I’m at the point where I don’t see any benefit in continuing to try. Or to even think about it. I’ve got so many other things I’d be better off doing.

Oh well. I think my train of thought has now derailed. I’m going to go to bed, and let’s see if I manage a decent amount of sleep tonight. ‘Later.