THE NIGHTLY MIRROR

I kept it subdued but there were a couple things which got a rise out of me. The worst one was that we flagged out where this monument was supposed to go, and then when the guys were going to begin digging, they asked where exactly I wanted it, and I drove over there and they had pulled 3 of the flags out already. Haha. And I was like, well, there were flags here. And they were just like… oh…

What concerns me though, is that sometimes I’ll just be “on one”. Like I’ll just get riled up when it’s not really that serious and it’s like I’m just shadowboxing looking for a fight. So then someone will come to me about, say, this woman who has come to the cemetery to complain four different times that the paint is falling out of the lettering on her monument when it looks exactly like the day it was delivered. She insisted on small, thin lettering engraved directly into the polish and that’s exactly how it looks. It is literally perfect. The design is bad. And so I’m just ranting about this, and I sound aggressive. I’ve just spent the last year very concerned with how aggressive I appear.

I could be more concerned with how aggressive I am. But, honestly, I have had people walking all over me with totally impunity for years and they’re all still breathing and perpetrating, so, I’m fine. I just have to stand up for myself in a way that is confidently unmoved. See, no. That’s not the issue. Because reality is that pricks love when you are unemotional and unmoved. They don’t like it when you get up in their face and give them a hard time. Nobody wants static. And I’ve become a ballbuster of sorts. I am very talented at menacing people. Just channeling Malcolm Tucker. That’s the god.

I think I’m most often surprised how little it matters how honest I am, or how well I listen, or any level of neediness or care or attention. This is all rather vague, but I wonder how often this secret message was simply “I don’t love you. I can’t bear to be with you anymore. I don’t want to be with you.” But it’s just so hard to take the step. Hesitation rules everything.

With hindsight, in all possible situations, what’s the difference? What’s the difference between leaving me or hiding from me? Living in some prison I created out of some obligation someone felt to my feelings. That’s so much worse.

I’m too tired to think coherently. I was thinking of one particular situation in which someone asked me a mysterious question and I gave the realest answer possible, like, the “if you are looking for the fullest scope of reality before deciding what you’re about to do, here it is, and I’m sorry it’s bleak, but I will never lie to you”, and they just sort of cried and moved on. Haha. So, a very different story than the one I constructed in the beginning, but still.

I feel like people just barely scratch the surface of what real honesty would be in this life, and it terrifies them. And it’s tragic for me. If I was very rich or handsome, I might not have these problems. But they’d still exist. They’d still be possible for someone. They’d still circumscribe life. But it’s for me to witness, for some reason. I’ve chosen it for some reason.

That’s what keeps me waking up every morning.