Snippets

"Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear."

- Joan Didion, Why I Write

"Sorry. I'll just be a minute here. Supposed to say a few words about Jackie Dellapietra, who's over there across the hall in the empty loser room. But, well, I just... I can't talk about him to an empty room. That's not how it should go. That's not how he should be remembered. Or not remembered. 'Cause apparently, no one remembered, because nobody showed up. Except four people. Four people to send you off. Where the f*ck was everyone? A man dies, you show up at his funeral, right? This was Jackie. Mean, he never hurt anyone. He just... He lived his life. He did nice things. He fixed up my shitty apartment. Put up curtains. He painted. He made stew. He built whatever the hell it was he built for the f*cking monsignor over there. Apparently, no one gave a shit. No one noticed. f*ck, I lived with the guy, and I didn't notice. We slept very close. I mean, I knew personal things about the guy. You know, he snores. Yeah, certain foods did not agree with him. You kept the windows open on those nights. I knew his laundry day. I knew when he cut his hair. Shit like that. But I never knew him. Yeah, I never knew he fought in the w*r. I never knew he got a medal for bravery. I mean, they don't just hand those out. You got to get sh*t or-or save somebody or blow up a f*cking t*nk. A medal is a big deal! He collected Bazooka Joe comics. He kept the little ticket stubs to the opera. He had a baseball signed by Babe Ruth. Can you f*cking believe that? Jackie met Babe Ruth. And he kept it in a shoebox like an assh*le, but he had it. I mean, this guy lived a life, and I never knew any of this. I mean, it was just a minute ago I found out I was his friend. No, I'm sorry, one of his closest friends. I had a close friend, and I never knew it. And where the f*ck is Darla? Hmm? She couldn't take off one afternoon to come and pay her respects to a man she wrote f*cking idiotic letters to? A heart over every "I." What's so important she couldn't take the time off to come and give this man a proper send-off? She better be dead. You know what I really don't understand? How is it a decent guy, a guy who worked his ass off his entire life... How is it he could barely afford to sublet the corner of my sh*thole apartment? I mean, he never caught a break. He never got ahead. How f*ck is that? All these f*cking horrible assholes in the world that just get shit handed to them. And this guy fought in a w*r. He traveled. He... Oh, he won a Lindy contest. I didn't know Jackie could dance. Half the time, it didn't seem like he could walk. But there is a first-place ribbon sitting in this f*cking b*at, rat-eaten, f*ck, little box that he shoved in a corner. A man's life. In a shitty box. A really good man's life. You know, a man who deserved something, and he wound up sprinkling sawdust on vomit at the Gaslight. Well, this can't continue, okay? I cannot stand by and watch this happen to another poor slob, so I am dedicating the rest of my miserable f*cking life to finding the Jackies of the world. The ones you walk by. The ones you don't see. The ones who never catch a break. And I'm gonna make sure that they never, ever end up in my f*cking apartment!"

- The Marvelous Mrs Maisel (kind of exactly sums up how people dying feels in sad situations)

"So even as you say “Oh look, I’m behaving from a place of anxious attachment” or “watch out, that guy is a narcissist” or “Uh oh, his aloof attitude is making my confidence plummet,” these messages aren’t sending you to a calm, confident place of self-acceptance. Instead, you’re sent back to your default beliefs about yourself and the world:

I am bad and broken.

He’s broken, too, but he’ll never notice or get help or fix himself.

I have to fix him to get him.

I have to fix myself to get him.

I have to fix myself to get over him.

I have to make myself better to win love or be happy.

I have to work harder.

I have to stop fucking up in the same old ways.

I’m someone who fucks up a lot.

Notice how, even though you’re recognizing real behavior patterns and using accurate names for what’s happening around you, you’re still failing to cohere to someone else’s limited notions of what you should be. Not only doesn’t ‘anxiously attached’ sum up who you are, but your understanding of what it means to be anxiously attached is both limited and bent, like light through water, by your prehistoric feelings about what’s ‘broken’ about you. As long as you’re still swimming in that prehistoric water, you’ll take every behavioral pattern and clinical term that’s thrown at you and turn it into a new reason that you’re incomplete and unworthy."

I don't know, kind of eh? I keep thinking of situations with a kind of finality. I'm trying not to because nothing ever is final, right? The more I go through life, I think the more memory I have of things that felt like the truth but turned out weren't or if they were to not be as catastrophic or even if they were super catastrophic, to know that it goes. It makes a mark, but goes. I feel like I'd abstractedly known about moving to #nextphase and here is universe giving me a giant kick in the ass and actually shoving me. Ahhhh, I don't know. Madness. 

The end of an era.