Dear Diary,
I’m trying to come to terms with the overwhelming majority opinion of the folks that know me that I am, probably, a bad person.
Not really sure what that means. I don’t feel compelled to commit crimes or get revenge or take what’s not mine or lie or go out of my way to take advantage of folks or beat folks down. Just seems to kinda happen naturally. Sometimes out of desperation, sometimes because of mental illness, and sometimes because of pure, idiotic circumstances. I tell myself that everyone does that stuff, when placed in a comparable situation. Even if that’s true, I don’t know that it necessarily excuses the things I’ve done. The hurt I’ve caused.
I think about New York City, a lot. I’ve never been there. But it’s a big city and I can imagine getting lost there. There’s a morbid romanticism of that, to me. This country has the greatest economic disparity in the world. It has the greatest child poverty rate of any modernized nation. By almost double the percentage than the runner up. That’s, just… well, I don’t wonder why I’m crazy, often, but I think about why, a lot.
I grew up dirt poor. Window-Shopping the toy section at Wally World was a treat. When I was a kid, you could play video games in the electronics section. We didn’t usually get the game systems until the next generation came out and they went on sale. My siblings and I played weird, violent games outside. There was this variation of dodgeball, but we didn’t have dodgeballs, so it was whatever blunt object we could find that didn’t look like it would hurt, too much, when you got hit.
We moved around, a lot, whenever my mom or dad would extinguish the charity of one family member or another and find another one to sponge off. It was hard to make/keep friends and it was EXTREMELY hard on my social development. Thank God I was cute. And smart. Lol, and undeterred. I wanted to have friends. And they meant a lot to me, even if I didn’t have a healthy model for how to express that sentiment to them.
I’m, like, 37 years old and I still struggle with how to behave around people. I still don’t know what I’m doing when I talk to people. Sometimes I get lucky. Sometimes I piss folks off. Often, I just leave folks bewildered. But it’s… lonely. I deliberately didn’t hang out with Gurpreet so I could see what other trouble I could get in to. I messaged a handful of folks and got… well, folks were busy, lol.
This Wally World job is surreal. I got this reminder that it was my “One Month Anniversary”, last week. Which is dumb, cuz “anniversary” means “year turning”. Like, I dunno what you call it when a month passes, but… whatever. Anyway, they’re already having me train people. Which is stupid. They also have me in the back almost all the time. Like, the job is separated in to different positions and now I know how to do all of them and they’re having me show people who have worked there way longer than me how to do the shit in the back. Like, wow.
At the very least, it means I’m doing the job well enough that I can get away with taking slightly longer breaks or say something condescending without getting in trouble. Already testing boundaries to see what I can get away with. I don’t wanna do this much longer so I’m not overly concerned. Just enough to stay under everyone’s radar til I make my escape plan.
I’m going back to Pittsburgh, next month, for Rashishi’s wedding. I’ve been asked a few times if I plan on staying there. I kinda wish… but I also kinda wanna go somewhere a little bigger. Last time I was in Pittsburgh, I was recognized on the street a few times, despite only spent an accumulative week and a half there since 2012. I wanna go somewhere where it’s harder to be recognized. Some place I can find my underground cult of ne’er-do-wells. Rogues, poets, and artists. The folks in the place I inhabit, now, are a little too sterile. I can’t even get anyone to go roller skating. I piss folks off. And I’m starting to feel like a prisoner, no room to move or breath, staring at a blank wall, dreaming of escape…
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