Survival

This is not a novel or a story or anything remotely what people expect. After 4 years of watching the world pretend it was not burning, sometimes literally, the idea that we can move forward and grow and make the world a better place is delicious and tantalizing, calling to all of us to move forward and upward together. We can go high now, with no one actively encouraging people to go low and listen to their baser instincts.

This world is not perfect or pretty or kind, but it can be full of love and beauty. And maybe hope. We all have to be willing to grow and learn and have new experiences and care about other people. We have to be able to push ourselves and encourage others to be better than we are. We have to change while keeping the best parts of ourselves the same.

I am average and original, unique and like so many others. I am a compilation of all the people I've loved and retaliation against all the people who have hurt me. I can be kind and strong and protective of others, but I am also weak and furtive, hiding from some of the things I know I should do to make my life better. I am stubborn and hateful almost every day, but I still try to be better than I was yesterday. Plants don't like to grow without light, so here I am, shining a big spotlight on myself to illustrate how weird is my tiny corner of the world.

I want to learn ASL, not to help the hearing impaired, but to eavesdrop on their conversations.

I want to learn Italian because I love pasta and pizza.

I want to finish my novel and maybe edit it and figure out how to submit it for publication.

I want to find patience and a calm center in this world of chaos.

I want to have deeper faith in people and the world and maybe, even a little bit, in myself.

I want the people I love to be happy.

I want the people I like to be successful.

I want the people I don't like to be safe, because even though I don't like them, I don't want harm to come to them. I just want them to stay away from me.

I want all of the people who knowingly hurt others to learn to have better hearts and I want the people who hurt others by mistake to learn and grow and not repeat their mistakes.

I want people to realize that being asked to wear a mask is not an infringement on their rights, but a request to care about someone else more than they care about themselves.

I want to trade my brain in for a newer model, one less prone to brain fog.

I want my body to be healthy because it's a piece of crap that wants to attack itself for no reason other than it thinks it might be a good idea.

I want relief from this unending low-grade grinding anxiety and depression that is always there, in the background, watching what I'm doing, waiting for me to fuck up everything, waiting for any tiny mistake it can replay and expand upon to make me hate every little thing about myself and this life and everything around me until I really do kind of want to die just to escape myself. Hell is other people, but many of those "people" are just the voices in my head that tell me, over and over and louder and more persistently that the only reason I am suffering is all in my head.

I want to learn to be happy.