i’m dazed, in a sense.

so much is always happening, and when i try and sit down and hammer out a feeling of serenity, it feels forced. everything feels forced. it just comes rushing back that no one really cares about me, regardless of what i do to try incorporate myself into someone else’s world. i’m the sap who’s trying to help everyone else get along in life while acting as a stepping stone, or something inconsequential.

and really, i don’t care. how can i? i’m so hardwired to constantly feel like a failure at the goals i want to achieve, with a feeling that i’m not trying hard enough or something along those lines. intentions are good, but it’s all talk. no action occurs, and in some strange form of self-defense, i just don’t care.

i am who i am, and am (seemingly) comfortable with it, but still get worked up mostly to my own chagrin. in some sense, what else do i really have to do on this earth, what else do i have to strive for? it’s all so selfish and narcissistic though, and i just feel like i try and horn my way in to other people’s version of the same thing. if it happens, then i forcast into the future a feeling of purpose that ends up in the same realm of failure in the end (with all that hindsight). no one cares, including me, and i can’t bring myself to give half a damn. my expectations are so low that the slightest glimmer is enough to bring up my conditioned feelings of hope, a feeling of self-worth. it then comes crashing down at some point, and in the rubble is still me, not much different, not much changed.

i have somehow ended up being this delusional rock sitting in the middle of a harbor, thinking that i am changing the process of the tides, but am really just being slowly eaten away by them. the fact that i can even write a sentence like that means i have some self-awareness of it, and yet i can still delude myself into believing that i am somehow integral to all that i have surrounded myself with.

beyond my family, there really is just a wasteland of empty promises and good intentions. there’s a trick to becoming more important in this society, to myself and others, but i can’t master it. either the fact that i can’t or won’t (the delineation is small in this case) just leaves me apathetic. i end up in a dead zone of my own creation, with no one to blame but me. just try harder, says a voice in the back of my head, what do you really have to lose? right now, i got nothing on that. it’s right, i do have nothing to lose. i don’t act like it though.

i just don’t have the natural ability to make people care about me or my ideas in a way that inspires people that aren’t family.  and it spirals right back down into not caring. i don’t want to have that influence anyways because it probably will entail consequences i can’t fathom but would have to deal with. if i can get away with doing what i want and have people not really notice, then that will allow me to get away with it longer. start drawing attention to yourself, and then you have to deal with the “king of the mountain” mentality where you have to be on defense from people trying to knock you off, which just seems like an immense waste of energy for something so inconsequential.

i just can’t put that importance on it when i look around and see what this life is. i just can’t live in the moment, project into the future, and learn from the past. call it whatever you want, but all it makes me want to do is go hop on my bike or something mindless where i can do a task just to do it, and not have to worry about what others are going to think about it. i want to just exist in the moment, but am constantly being dragged back into speculation by the rest of society. and that’s completely my fault, because i want to take everyone else with me, which leads me back to wanting to just escape into myself. i care too much, and not at all.

so let’s really get into it now, the seed that planted all this. you might as well write it out to sort out your thoughts.

two weeks ago now, a co-worker of yours died. completely out of nowhere. he was in his late 50’s and was a good guy. always had a kind word for everyone, and spare package of gummi bears to give to you as a gesture. he fell asleep on the night of the 11th and was found dead of a heart attack the next morning. by his wife, no less.

this was the same guy that you met on your first post-college job, where you yourself worked as a warehouse dude, ordering what was needed and receiving packages to be filed away on a shelf for later use. he liked you a lot, because you were competent, and he held that in high regard. you were an energetic and bright-eyed college grad a mere 8 years ago, and when that company went under, you stayed on working in the warehouse because you were a temp they could hang onto to close up shop while they were getting rid of full-time employees. you had respect for him, but he could be a bit cranky, and he was just one of the many faces of people of people you liked that were let go when the company went under.

biotech is a small community though, and 3 years later, he ended up being the warehouse manager at your current job, and you were working in the lab PCRing like a madman. and you were happy to see a familiar face . for years you bantered with small-talk, mostly things about cupcake shops, family, and your favorite topic, beer. of course, everyone talks to you about beer, you won’t shut up about it. he just had the ability to be nice and ask pertinent questions.

a week after his death, there you are, staring down at him in his casket.  you seemingly had a conversation with him just the other day about weekend plans and having a case of the yawns that day. it’s fitting that he’s dressed in a train conductor’s outfit, but the waxen look from the embalming pulls all the wind out of your sails.  then you sit there as you watch family and friends that knew him so much better mourn his loss, their lives shattered and you feel so deeply for them, knowing that if you lost anyone of this magnitude in your life, you would be shattered too. after all of the gut-wrenching eulogies, there is a monet of lightness. with his love for trains, he (or someone in his family) decided to play Black Sabbath’s “Crazy Train” as the music to end the ceremony. you find the lyrics are actually strangely poignant considering the situation.

then it’s over, and all you can do is pull inward. you talk to other co-workers, but avoid family at all costs. you feel it’s not your place, and you feel a little ashamed in retrospect. loss is loss, no matter how you were connected. you go back to your regular life anyways, and so does everyone else.

leaving me back here, writing something that is really inconsequential to anyone but myself. i can only realize the impact of the events, and internalize them, because dwelling  is something i can do, but cannot feel on the level i feel should be proper.

life feels precious all the time to me, but of course that level varies. moods and events dictate so much in my life, but i can’t help but look at this with complete and utter sadness. if there’s one thing i learned from all this though, it is to know what i truly care about. there is only one thing in this life i could not bear to lose, and it’s certainly not me or any of my petty ideals or ideas of success in this world. caring about someone on that level just pales everything else in comparison.

there is no ‘me’ anymore, not really. why waste time dwelling and thinking on the inevitable when everything you need is right here.