Post your random thoughts/feelings etc

GraybeardGhost said:

The apartment office sent out their stupid little "newsletter" today: a reminder of when rent is due (which everyone ought to know already), advice on getting travel insurance (completely irrelevant), and some helpful, timely information about the city's Fourth of July festivities, which were held two days ago. h:

They also included, as usual, a list of the current office staff, not one of whom I have ever met or spoken to. The one person I sort of knew is now gone—quit? fired? buried in the woods?—replaced by some new God-knows-who-or-what. I find this very disconcerting. How do they expect people to feel comfortable and secure here and want to stay if no one ever knows from one month to the next which lunatics are running the asylum? :idontknow:

I've come to realize (and almost accept) that I'll never leave this godawful place. It has long been my dream to have a place of my own somewhere a respectable distance from what passes for civilization in this century, but that's never going to happen. How can I go out and buy a house and land, with all the hoops and hurdles that would entail, when I can't even go out to buy a few sacks of groceries? There's no way.

No, I'll never get out of here. I'll almost certainly die here, in this filthy, cluttered apartment, and almost no one will notice or care. The sooner the better. I want to live long enough to get my estate in order so that what little I have will go where I want it to go, and not to the state or my ******* brother, but after that, I'm done. I've had my fill of loneliness and misery. I've had my fill of this hateful, stinking world and the scum who inhabit it. That's all, folks. I'm done.

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BlackPuma said:

It's now been little over a week since the surgery, and I'm happy to note that it worked as expected. Removal was the correct thing to do, and the right side is as it should be.

However, on the left side I think they've left some of the nerves behind, which are now causing a lot of irritation. I've send the surgeon an e-mail for advice and possibly a second correction which I hope is soon.

All in all the procedure wasn't that bad. The worst of it by far was the local anesthesia injection - which lasts only a few seconds anyway.

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GraybeardGhost said:

The apartment office sent out their stupid little "newsletter" today: a reminder of when rent is due (which everyone ought to know already), advice on getting travel insurance (completely irrelevant), and some helpful, timely information about the city's Fourth of July festivities, which were held two days ago. h:

They also included, as usual, a list of the current office staff, not one of whom I have ever met or spoken to. The one person I sort of knew is now gone—quit? fired? buried in the woods?—replaced by some new God-knows-who-or-what. I find this very disconcerting. How do they expect people to feel comfortable and secure here and want to stay if no one ever knows from one month to the next which lunatics are running the asylum? :idontknow:

I've come to realize (and almost accept) that I'll never leave this godawful place. It has long been my dream to have a place of my own somewhere a respectable distance from what passes for civilization in this century, but that's never going to happen. How can I go out and buy a house and land, with all the hoops and hurdles that would entail, when I can't even go out to buy a few sacks of groceries? There's no way.

No, I'll never get out of here. I'll almost certainly die here, in this filthy, cluttered apartment, and almost no one will notice or care. The sooner the better. I want to live long enough to get my estate in order so that what little I have will go where I want it to go, and not to the state or my ******* brother, but after that, I'm done. I've had my fill of loneliness and misery. I've had my fill of this hateful, stinking world and the scum who inhabit it. That's all, folks. I'm done.

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MollyBeGood said:

How long have you lived here?

I find I have a 2 yr limit if a place doesn't suit me. I move a lot as a consequence, but the flip side is I never get too stuck I guess.

Last place I lived the longest at had an 80 acre parcel of woods that no one used that bordered my property. I would hang out on daily, except in the dead of winter, never see another soul. That was my sanctuary. Just me and the woods and the animals and nature....

I don't have that peace and privacy anymore-which I need to be happy. So I have to find a way to get it again soon.

It is hard for people like us who have depression and things of that nature to make big changes and take leaps of faith-trust me i Know, but for me it is almost mandatory anymore, till I find my right place to keep moving somehow. I often think that is the key is to keep moving. Once I get stagnate nothing good comes of it.

I am in the same boat though in a lot of ways as you right now. :kickingmyself:

For instance I am currently not making barley any money, and I cannot go to the grocery on my own without a breakdown.

My brother just said I am in a self-imposed prison. Is he maybe right?

I think I will never be happy until I am in the right place, and this isn't it. I feel like I have to make changes and keep moving. I just have to get the courage it takes and I know you have it as well, you have just forgotten. We have to learn to have courage to do things even when we have no idea the out come.

I am reading a blog about a girl who moves into the woods by herself and does it with little to no money and no real plan-but she does it and stays positive and hopeful and is now happy. She takes the most amazing photos of her life in the woods alone with her dog. She is my idol. This isn't historical fiction either, she really lives it today.

What do you want your life to be? Focus on that if you can.

She says focusing on "the good" has been the key for her in working through her self doubts. Good advice for everyone, particularly those who are prone to the negative-words to live by.

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Nanita said:

You have a way with words. I wish I could write as well as you.

I can relate to the loneliness and misery.

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Kiwong said:

My 7000th post. Time to get a life.

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GraybeardGhost said:

I've been here eighteen years: almost ten in this apartment, another one in the same complex before that. I came here straight from college with a six-month lease—that's how long I planned to stay while I looked for something better. Naturally, I got stuck.

I grew up in a place much like you describe. Forty acres of woods and rolling fields; maples and poplar trees (and one great god of an oak); mayapples, ferns, and wildflowers; dragonflies, deer, and buzzards soaring high above. It was, and always will be home. All gone now, the peaceful solitude of afternoon hikes, scrambling up hills and wading in the little stream that played along the edge. Gone the music of the silent places—the rhythmic hum of insects, birds calling from the rustling trees, with never the rude affront of human sounds.

For every bird that comes to my feeders or sings in my trees today, a hundred cars and trucks go by an hour, assaulting my nerves and insulting the peace of nature with their obscene noise. This is not a good place, and it's certainly not the right place for me, but what other place do I have?

There's a patch of woods at the back of the complex, part of the national park system, and I'd like to go there to try to regain some of what I've lost, perhaps make it a daily destination. Just to get there, though, I'd have to walk the full length of the property (about half a mile) past I don't know how many other apartments, windows, eyes, judgments. I'm not sure my courage—or my old, feeble legs—could carry me there and back.

Other places, other people. Anywhere I might go, it would be the same. Humanity squeezes the beauty and peace out of life and stamps the empty husk into the ground.

I like the idea of the transient life—pack everything you own into a car or van and move on to the next horizon when the time feels right—but it's not a path I've ever followed. Eighteen years in my first home, about nine in the next, a few years at college, and then this. Staying in one place for a while is all I've known. I wanted to be a hobo at one time; it wasn't a very realistic notion.

Stay in one place. Put down roots. Become involved in the community (with the right sort of people, of course). Belong. That's the philosophy I was raised with, but what roots I've grown have withered, and the community has cast me out. I have no roots here, no reason to stay. I'm just stuck, like an animal caught in a tar pit or a ship run aground and left to rot. I don't suppose I'll be going anywhere for a while, and I don't expect to like it.

A self-imposed prison? To some extent, yes, but not entirely. There have been machinations and betrayals, not exclusively in my imagination. Friends have turned or drifted away; some have died. Fate, too, has played a sick and twisted trick and made a monster of me, left me quite literally afraid to show my face in public. We may build the walls and set the bars, but it's often other people who cut the stones and stir the mortar. We are not the sole architects of our isolation.

I don't think I'll ever be happy until I find the right place, either. Whether I'll be happy there—if there is a there—is another question. The geographic cure isn't known for its success rate. It is certain, however, that I won't be happy here. What to do? Perhaps I've already had the happiness I'm due—a beggar's morsel now and then as luck allowed—and nothing more remains ahead but loneliness and misery. Perhaps I'm wrong; there could be so much more.

Courage is indeed the thing that's wanting. I've had it in the past, I believe, though at times it could have been a mask worn by fearlessness or foolishness. If I do still have a measure of it, I fear it may be buried so deep beneath the rubble of my mind as to be lost for good. I wouldn't even know where to begin to dig.

I try to focus on the dream—a cabin in the woods, a proper workshop, my own laundry, a kitchen with a window where I might grow a few herbs and ripen tomatoes in the sun. To that end, I try each day to scrape away a little bit at the excess in my life—papers, books, flea market junk—that has adhered like a legion of barnacles to my every side. A bit here, a bit there, lightening the vanload. It's a slow and tedious process, and possibly not the most direct or effective way to pull myself out of the mire, but it does keep the dream at least somewhat alive—comatose, perhaps, but alive. For now, I don't know what else to do.

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hidwell said:

You have such a gift for the written word.

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