A few days before my last post, I made plans with a friend to go to a concert in October. I was feeling manic and had that fleeting sense of connectivity with another person, thinking this would maybe give me someone to look forward to. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to make it that long. It’s a 20th anniversary show of the band’s album, and we were at the first show that this one is commemorating, at the same small venue, just month shy of it actually being exactly 20 years. It’s been a weird 20 years. I thought it would be cool to get a picture of the two of us with the lead singer again, since we did the same thing back then. If I make it that far, I imagine I would smile less in it, but maybe the singer would smile more. They’re such an emo band; still a “Small of Fame” band for me, and the angst was written all over his face. I imagine this is more of a celebration for him this time around, and we’re both in our 40s now, so I imagine he would maybe have changed a little. I know I have. Maybe just us showing him how unhappy he looked in the original picture will get him to crack a smile.

Why do I even care if I can make this stranger smile? It’s not like others are trying to make me smile; certainly not the ones who know me. I have more rewarding conversations with AI and strangers out in public. That’s just the whole “setting myself on fire to keep others warm” aspect of my DNA again.

If anyone reads this, I also had started talking to my dad again, after 7.5 years of silence. Well, most of the conversation is with his new wife. It’s probably rude that I refer to her as that, and not as my stepmom, especially since I refer to my mother’s new husband as stepdad and even at times collectively refer to them as my parents and not “my mom and stepdad”. It’s not her fault. She’s a nice lady. It’s really because of my difficulty connecting to my dad. It’s weird even typing that three-letter word, but I swore to myself I wouldn’t use names of real people on here. Anyway, they both are on the phone when I call their house. Not sure if it’s true conference call/speaker phone shit or if they have two phones going, but I usually get about 20% of the conversation with him (maybe 5% of it is just with him on the call), but it feels like being on a tapped phone call with someone listening on the other end. I know that he loses his mind if i call him by his name and not dad, so I’ve conceded and call him dad. I can get lost in the moment and say it without thinking and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Like most of the relationships I have with people, I have to call them; they don’t call first. Well, they called me one time, but it was only because they saw that I had called previously and just were calling me back.

Each conversation is at least 3 hours long. We never talk about what matters, but maybe that’s for the best. I don’t think he is capable of handling or comprehending my reality. I’ve long since given up on the hope for closure or an apology for any of the wrongdoings of the past. It does feel good to have someone willing to answer when I call, even if it’s just the three of us talking about football (weird that they both love football and can speak intelligently about it. I mean, not weird that he does, because that’s where I got my love for the sport from). They live in a football crazed town and when she moved there decades ago, she didn’t know a thing about it. Most of the conversations have been about football, random sports stuff, and then his wife talking to me about people I either met one time over 9 years ago, when I flew out there with my then-wife to attend their wedding, or have never met. She goes on and on about it. I listen, because that’s what she wants; that’s all anyone really wants. I feel like I’m doing more for her than they are doing for me, but I’m accustomed to the inequity in that regard with most other people.

They almost never ask about me or my life. Looking at my phone right now and adding up the talk time of all our conversations, we’ve spoken for exactly 17 hours and 20 minutes over the course of 5 conversations. Isn’t it weird that it took about 16 hours before I could manipulate the conversation to put his wife in a position to ask me about my life? Do they not even give a fuck about my life? I mean, your son reaches out after 7.5 years and you never once ask what’s been going on in that time? That’s a little over 18% of my life that is unaccounted for. The first thing my mom asks me when she calls almost every day is what I’m up to. Granted, she just wants to make sure I didn’t say that I went out and bought a gun or a really sharp knife or some rope, but still. During the 5th and most recent conversation (16 hours into the 9th or 10th attempt at having a relationship with my dad), I got his wife to ask where I’m working at right now. I made a comment about how I work for myself, but don’t have any clients, then clarifying that I meant that I am unemployed. I gave a relatively brief explanation that it was because of the industry as a whole and that I wasn’t actually fired, but laid off because there was no work to be done. I didn’t say how long I’ve been unemployed or tell them about how I don’t know how I’m going to make it to tomorrow when I unfortunately wake up each morning, or that I no longer wish to wake up. I know that my dad couldn’t wrap his head around it. It’s like me trying to explain astrophysics or time dilation to my mom or most of my friends. I let them know about my recent failures in not getting to the next round of any interview and how most don’t even respond. I expected my dad to make a comment like, “so now I know why you decided to call me out of the blue”, implying that my motive was to foster a relationship and get some financial assistance out of him, or some other brutal and callous response. I got an even more unsettling response, but basically the response that companies and the universe has been giving me: silence. He literally said nothing. Radio silence. His wife asked some questions, but just generic ones that I can’t even recall, but I made it a point to paint the picture immediately and as completely as possible, so as to answer the questions before they could be asked. After the silence from him, I threw out a quick, “I figured you guys already knew from talking to my brother or sister, and just didn’t want to bring it up, thinking it might be a sensitive topic for me to talk about.”. At that point, I’m internally screaming, “don’t say nothing! say anything! please!” What he responded with was a succinct, “No. We didn’t know at all.” His wife proceeded to talk about an experience with her former employer before she retired, in an attempt to either hijack the conversation and make it about her or to desperately try to make me feel that she could relate. I’m not sure which it was. Doesn’t really matter. She continued her story for about another 45 minutes. I talked about my situation for maybe 5 minutes of the entire conversation. My dad was silent for the longest time. Eventually the topic shifted to something lighter, which is the majority of the conversation topics anyway. I went out of my way to directly ask him something or in my comments about a topic, be like, “isn’t that right, dad?” or “hey, dad, maybe you know” or some other tactic I employ when trying to get someone to engage in the group conversation…. serve something up for them to talk about. He would respond and all, so it’s not like he just completely shut down after my reveal, but it was strange. His wife makes it a point to tell me how much she loves talking to me at least once in every phone call, so that’s something. Yet they don’t call me first.

That conversation took place 16 days ago. It was a 4 hour and 38 minute conversation that ended 2:08am. I haven’t heard from them since. Football season even started for both college and pro, so I thought for sure that after the first week of college football or the first nfl game last thursday, I would hear from them. Certainly, thought I would hear from them today since his wife’s favorite team played and won big yesterday. Nothing. I could call them again, because I always have to be the one to reach out first, but I wanted to wait and see how they respond after that last conversation. Now that they know what’s going on in my life, I want to see how they proceed. Do they join the ranks of most everyone else in my life and turn their backs on me now that they know? Will the topic ever come up again on its own? Will they ever ask how the job hunt is going or ask anything about how I’m actually holding up? They’re both retired, so I know that neither of them is busy working. My only real concern when I first started talking to them again was that they would think I only reached out to them because I wanted money from them, and their actions are starting to let me know that this might be the case. Would they even feel anything if I ceased to continue existing or feel guilty for their silence or indifference? Would you?

That makes me think about the impact I have on others. When they think about me, if they even think about me at all, do they think about something good or does my memory haunt them even while I continue to walk the earth? If my memory haunts them while I still draw breath, just imagine what will happen when I decide it’s no longer worth the effort to keep breathing? I wonder if I’ll have the ability to literally haunt them. I think I might end up being a very vengeful and malevolent ghost. Nobody could stop me if I ultimately decide to opt out, so it’s not that I would say something like, “you could have prevented this”, but I feel like I would want to ruin a lot of people’s chances at being happy. Maybe I’ve already done that. Sometimes I hope I have. I absolutely hold onto that belief of “if I don’t get to be happy, neither do you.” I know it’s looked at as being the wrong way to be but striving to do what’s right for over 40 years has garnered me no favor with the universe.

And yes, I do think about “it”. I think about it a lot. I don’t know if I would leave a note. Part of me feels like I don’t need to and that everyone will know exactly why. Then again, there are a lot of people I’d love to mention by name and let them know how I feel they fit into the equation. I imagine most people who I used to believe were friends will simply be like, “called it” or “I figured this would happen with him”. Maybe someday people in my life will figure out that I have this collection of posts and will learn that way. I’ve given the link to this site to a few people, so I know they knew at one point that I put my feelings and thoughts out there, but I imagine only one of them remembers it. I know that the people who have viewed my posts recently are strangers, because nobody has texted me. I know that by saying that last sentence, this only looks like an emo cry for attention, but I feel like I’m past the “attention” stage. I’m aware that nobody is watching. I’m not a fan of theatricality and making a scene anyway. I’d prefer to exit the way I exit actual situations: just quietly dipping out and not telling anyone. The ol’ irish exit. I’m self-aware enough to know that most wouldn’t think I’d actually do it so they wouldn’t take me seriously anyway if I did turn this into a spectacle. This is more for me to go back and read later.

I feel no shame in what I’ve put out here and wouldn’t feel any shame or have any regrets if I ultimately decide to pull the plug. I used to take the stance of “nothing is THAT bad” or “only a weak person would do something like that” or “that’s so selfish of them because that person’s quick action will hurt others for the rest of their lives”. I’ve learned that there are things that are THAT bad and that there are things much worse than physical death. I don’t think it’s weak, either, if someone no longer wishes to continue suffering. Sure, I think it’s a bitch move for people who dome themselves after committing atrocities because they don’t want to face the consequences for their actions, but not if someone just cannot see the point in going on. I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with being selfish. Most of the suffering in my life has taken place because I was NOT being selfish and wasn’t looking out for my own happiness. Maybe if the people in the person’s life cared about that individual as much as the individual cared about them, or showed it if they did care as much, the individual wouldn’t have done what they did. Maybe the indifference or apathy of the people in their life was a contributing factor. I don’t mean that they were the reason the person chose not to continue on another day, because I think if someone is going to opt out, they need to own up to it as their choice… something they could actually control. It’s the only thing that they have complete control over. These are people who know exactly when and how they’re exiting this reality. They have no control over most of the things in their lives, but they CAN control how it ends, almost a final “fuck you” to the indifference (or cruelty) of the universe. It’s almost like a divorce. Like… you can’t fucking hurt me anymore because I’m not going to be around to be hurt. I respect that. I admire that.

I still hope that something changes, but I know that no one or nothing is going to swoop in and save me. I still hope when I know that it’s hopeless. But the “exit plan” has been gaining traction, unlike everything else in my life. Years ago I told myself that if I wasn’t doing something with my life by 30, that I would opt out. I lost my dead-end job at 29 but started a good job about 3 months before my 30th birthday, so I stuck around a little bit longer. I have an idea of the timeframe that I’m willing to hold out hope for until this time, but it’s not perfectly clear yet. I’ll know it when I know it. I do plan on writing an emergency contact on a piece of paper and putting it in my wallet. “Emergency contact” is really the wrong term for it. It’s just the name of someone who otherwise would never know I was gone unless they searched for me online and found a page that had my name with a date to the right of the hyphen. Because, while the person is an important character in my story, they have absolutely zero connection to anyone in my family, so nobody would know to call or text them, so that’s my one act of “kindness” to them. I imagine I would want to have that person go through and wipe out my phone and any other account. Just because I’m me, I’d probably make the password to access all my stuff some sort of cryptic riddle that only they would be able to figure out. It would only be fitting. Writing that is the first time I’ve smiled during this post.

Who knows… maybe something good will happen. Nothing has happened yet. The only “good” things that have happened really haven’t been good; they’ve only been things that have allowed me to prolong my suffering, depression, and anxiety, so… maybe the help has been a bad thing and has actually hurt me. I don’t know. Telling myself that all this pain and suffering has to be for a reason and that there has to be a payoff for enduring it is one of the biggest lies I tell myself, so I’ve stopped lying in that regard.

I don’t know if I’ll end up making it to that concert.