I Love These So Much

It’s been forever since I’ve written a proper blog, so forgive me if I sing out of tune. It honestly has been hard to essentially have my out/my biggest safety net/my way of getting myself back to good taken away from me during this pandemic. Writing no longer helps me feel sane. These days it just takes me into deeper darkness, because for months now, I’ve known that each new day will be worse than the last for the foreseeable future.

Early on, I could see our current reality coming. You can’t play catch up with a pandemic. You can’t open too soon and just expect it to magically go away. Basic logic matters. Science matters. But, trump talked loudest. Fauci had to filter his message to fit trump’s narrative. And people want good news. People don’t want to stay home. People don’t want to assume the worst in a president who has given us every reason to assume the worst in him. and that’s a mistake.

So, I called it that repeatedly on facebook and I think the general reaction was that I was overreacting or needed to tone it down or I was being crazy or needed to get my tin foil antlers snipped. But, here we are…new daily records are being set every day and I would have much preferred to be completely wrong than to watch this be the current state of our union. When I first had the thought that the next day will be worse than the last, I never thought it would get this bad.

So predictably, that was too long of a preamble to what I really wanted to talk about. I saw some beauty today in the wild of the twitterverse. And maybe because it was so out of place with the general mood and escalating tension that we are used to seeing daily. It wasn’t Karen being Karen. It wasn’t trump tweeting manure. It was actual beauty. And it made me cry.

A guy put a comment on a twitter post. It was his art. A photograh. And his drawing of that photograph. Times four. The art was what a friend would later tell me would be considered “outsider art”. It looked maybe a little more primitive than what a mainstream opinion of art might be. That’s probably a really shitty description, but what wasn’t shitty was the response this person got. Someone said, “I love these so much.”

It was a stunning departure from what I’ve become used to reading on Twitter. it reminded me of me in kindergarten. A kid was having a hard time with his coloring. Another kid at our table kept laughing at him. I whispered in his ear, “I think your coloring is good.”

And the combination of my kindergarten memory and present day kindness in an ugly world reduced me to tears. Something about the idea of someone putting a virtual arm around someone else and giving them encouragement really got to me. Fuuuuckkk. I have three great buddies who are doing that for me right now. I’m struggling. We’re all struggling. But, my people help me keep my chin up.

And one of the things that’s helped me do that right now is to rage. There’s some small sense of power when I speak truth into the vast space of the internet. Our country is so fucked. And you have to speak truth in the face of evil or evil will run you the fuck over.

I got to experience that as a kid. My grandma abused me. She had a history of that. my dad found that out first hand when he was a kid, but still let her babysit me so that he could go preach some fucked up version of a gospel to other people’s kids.

But, the point isn’t that story. The point is my mom on her death bed told me that she knew what was going on and was sorry she didn’t speak up. It took me years to figure out that’s what she meant. And that still fucks with me. There should be someone speaking up for the less thans.

So, this blog doesn’t get read much, but that's not the point. it's not the mainstream i'm aiming for. it's my people. what I’ve always wanted this space to be is me speaking up for my fellow less thans (in addition to me just trying to keep my head above water and the ahhh feeling I get when I finish writing.) And to an extent, I think, my mashing of the keyboard these last few weeks on facebook and twitter has been kind of a primitive or cave man version of the type of stuff I usually write.

Shorter brush strokes. More anger. Less eloquence. It’s felt good, but not good like the blog feels. The blog makes me feel like me. This moved me to tears. Okay…write out why. Learn something as I write. It’s just natural. Weird. Just had a flashback to earlier in the day when I read about John Prine talking about how easily song writing came to him. Fuck you covid for taking out the down and outers lead spokesmodel. The man was a poet and a visionary and could do it in a non-commercial commercial way. He was popular. But, not too popular. He wasn’t trying to write monster hits. He was just being himself.

And there. Again. As I write, one thought just naturally flows to the next. Writing this blog was where I went to be myself. Covid put that on pause and my writing became this extremely primitive pounding of the keyboard. Throwing shit. Tearing my hair out. not what I did, but how it felt. To be so out of control, but still have each article retweeted or every random thought finding somewhere to land...that felt better than how my head feels all the time these days.

Because see…I could write about my trauma after it happened, but there would have been no way for me to write about it while it was ongoing. And there was something about today’s tears that released me from that hold. That’s not exactly right. The covid trauma is going to keep going. But, tears are often what moves me to write. And that’s how it felt today. I’ve been walking around the house with a ton of jumbled thoughts and for the first time in months there was a call or desire to get back to this space to unjumble them.

And I don’t even have half of them out yet, but I just paused after that last sentence and said “aahhhh,” because this is what writing is supposed to feel like for me.

Well. This is still caveman level shit, because I haven’t even gotten to the heart of the matter. What I really wanted to talk about was “outsider art” being who I am. I’m pissing upstream in a land far, far away from the mainstream. My writing isn’t for mass consumption, but oh my god the heart to heart conversations it’s facilitated with my fellow down and outers.

There’s being paid to write. And then there’s what I do. Write my shit out. overshare. Write from the heart. Take it or leave it. the vast majority of the world leaves it. but, I can’t not write. It makes me feel like garbage to have the shit I rage on about out here stuck inside my head with no outlet.

So, that adult putting his drawings out for the world to see…that’s unbelievably brave. I guarantee he’s been rejected. His twitter profile talks about how he draws to help with his anxiety and depression. Anybody talking shit on his drawings would only give him more of both. so how fucking impossibly great did it feel for him today to get a response that said, “I love these so much.”

More tears, because see I’m him. I write to help with my anxiety and depression. Or whatever you call the struggles in my head. And the number of times I’ve gotten a simple thumbs up or gotten inboxed or commented on one of these blogs, it’s been life changing. The expression of my feelings in written form is me being the real me for the world to see and when I get not judgment, but support, the feeling is other-worldly.

And actually I’m going to stop there. I’ll write part 2 and make it a different entry. It just felt so good to write again. It’s funny. I write out here and never get rejected, save the one time my dad commented. But, what I’ve written these last few months on facebook has gotten rejected a handful of times. It hurts. I see things that people don’t see or don’t want to admit. So, I understand why they wouldn’t want my message to be true, but it’s not them that I’m writing for. and those who, over the years, have put their arm around me and said, “hey buddy. It looks like you’re having a hard time. Let’s walk and talk.” Those are my people. And i seek an audience with this blog that allows me to be an arm back to those people. I want to help you or be an encouragement as you walk through your own shit. You are not alone in this. And these conversations I have with other people who struggle like I do, well…I love these so much.