mh (--), massive expulsion of emotional plaguefoam, call the psychic hazmat team (Space Raccoon division)
Sorry to be Sadness Raccoon lately. I... I don't know. The adjustment down here has been harder than I expected.
I'm slowly coming to realize that the problems weren't with leaving Seattle, they were with the way I related to most people up there, and... that hasn't been a healthy realization. It's brought a lot of old social anxiety and self-hate to the surface.
If I were a really Self-Actualized Zen I Ching Granola Warrior, I'd be accepting the fact that my life down here is peaceful and quiet in a way it never was up there... that Peggy is an excellent partner for a temperamental idiot like me... and that being cut off from all those agonizingly ambiguous social opportunities and false hopes for decadence was a blessing in disguise.
I'd be accepting that I was destined for quieter, tamer pleasures. I'd be accepting that just getting to work on something like Parallax (even if it often feels like I'm doing it in a vacuum, or a Total Perspective Vortex) with a talent like Peg is fucking amazing.
But I guess I'm just not that mature. Or not that ready to get over my midlife crisis. Or not that ready to be 44 and accept that I was SO CLOSE to getting so many of my bucket list items, and then it all fell apart with an ego-incinerating fall from grace, with no hope for getting anyone to listen to my side.
I worry that I'm bitter and burnt-out for good. I worry that I'm such damaged goods, and ever getting a social circle in the first place—even just getting anyone to like me—was an unreconstructable miracle. And I worry that we are truly in a Final Age of the Weird Internet, that I came of age in the one and only set of conditions so bizarre that even a lumpy, boring male-presenting self-hatey greaselump like could get my unreasonable and hyperspecific desires met, and maintain for a brief shining moment the illusion I too was something cute and glamorous and worth it.
I don't know. I'm not dead. To the best of my knowledge, I'm FAR healthier than I expected to be in my mid-40s. I'm even damn near middle class now, by the enjoyable low-rent standards of New Orleans. That should be enough for me, in a nightmare year like 2019. But you know, I MISS being a perverted rubber alien thing in real time. I miss having so many messages in my chat that I feel overwhelmed. I miss places that are so anonymous and strange that even _I_ could flirt there.
Maybe I just miss being so oblivious that I thought all this was a good idea. Maybe I miss being able to get excited or hopeful about anything. Maybe I just learned too much about people, including and most hatefully myself. I don't want to die—in fact, I want to die less I have in any other era of my life—but it really feels like all there is to do now is wait out my sentence. The only really amazing thing that can still happen is a comics career—which would be amazing, but dammit, so were the things I was striving for. And they're all gone.
I don't know. I feel better for having finally hacked this all up into words. And I'll get by. I have a hunch most of this is just Getting Old and it's at least normal. I just feel like I've disappointed everybody, and I've done it mostly by failing to hide my real, unglamorous, embittered self. And I'm really sorry. I'm sorry I let the magic die. I'm sorry I ever came out from behind the curtain.
re: mh (--), massive expulsion of emotional plaguefoam, call the psychic hazmat team (Space Raccoon division)
@Leucrotta I don't know, those are good points, but I think it's different for me, because my previous moves were respectively (a) getting the hell out of my hometown (b) getting away from my increasingly libertarian nutcase ex and moving to a REAL CITY (c) moving away from a lonely situation and a terrible housemate to be with Rik and (d) leaving the memories of a humiliating job experience and harsh winters to go back to a city I, back then, really loved. I've never had anything like this level of regret before—in general, let alone regarding a change of scenery.
I think this is the first time I've ever moved to a place where I didn't have some kind of clear opportunity waiting for me. It's a nice city with a lot of things to offer, and the fact Peg's enjoying the hell out of it is VERY much worth it, but... I think this is the first time I've really, truly felt like I left unfinished business behind—even if that, the more I think about it, is an illusion. It sure FELT real for a while.
mh (--), massive expulsion of emotional plaguefoam, call the psychic hazmat team (Space Raccoon division)
@zebratron2084 Also yes, this is the looking in the mirror and being depressed that your not your characters thing talking.
And the weight of the dystopia and distress of the world we live in, and why is it still so godamn awful and what are folks still so godamn stupid and ignorant as they always have been.
And a lot of other things...
*hugs softly*
mh (--), massive expulsion of emotional plaguefoam, call the psychic hazmat team (Space Raccoon division)
@zebratron2084 Honey... as someone who still hasn't come out from behind the curtain and is so absolutely terrified of the curtain that no one would even have the slightest idea what I look like or who I am to be able to contact me if something happened...
... you're braver than I am.
And yes, this is the age thing talking.
mh (--), massive expulsion of emotional plaguefoam, call the psychic hazmat team (Space Raccoon division)
@zebratron2084 could I suggest that moving to a new place is going to be a downer at some point no matter how together your shit is? I know I still get hit with residual Bay Area stuff and I’ve come to despise the Bay Area tho for less personal reasons than you wanted to bug out of Seattle. Maybe the relief of leaving here camouflaged regrets for a bit?