17 may 2024
Something has changed.
Normally what happened today would have left me in a state of extreme anxiety. I'd be sweating, stomach in knots, and steeped in an inescapable sense of dread. Instead I feel nearly nothing and I'm about to make some popcorn and eat it in the dark. I think this is the feeling that Camus was trying to capture when the prisoner calmly goes about the day of his execution as if it were just a normal day.
If I'm doomed, whining about it won't help. My stomach squeezing to effectively trap me near a bathroom won't help. Quietly sobbing in the dark won't help. Being unable function won't help. So what then? Just proceed mechanically until the logic of the survivorship bias either erases me or makes me The Bubble Boy Who Lived: an inspirational story for folks who'd like to pretend certain flavors of poverty don't exist.
Negative seventy dollars is a really small amount of money for all these things to break concurrently. Maybe my response is due to the absurdity of this. All the automatic physical responses I normally experience seem to have been suspended because I've truly assimilated the things I know but couldn't yet feel. Or I'm already dead and I'm just slow on the pick up.
gratitude: neither hot or cold stomach feels fine am indoors not in a warzone was able to get medication from pharmacy have calorically adequate amount of food that will last until Monday, Tuesday if I'm clever have shoes without holes now have shorts that fit have 3 avocados that fit the ideal ripeness curve for this many avocados disabled? I prefer "un-draftable into future American wars" I've found two pieces of needed furniture outside in the past month. saw a bunny outside today. sat next to them and watch them chew no holes in socks somewhat fitter, happier (though not more productive)
I really hope the stories we tell ourselves become our reality. People have tried to convince me of this for years. I thought it was their way of ignoring the plight of the less fortunate, but maybe I was too harsh. "Just be positive" is a reductive, and I can see why people who weren't born into a shitty situation can believe it so easily. I hope that if I do make it that I don't become the sort of survivor who looks down upon the people who fail to make it.