Sometimes I do. I think I'm fucking nuts, but I can pass for human in most situations. I don't trust people, I've never held a job for more than nine months , I don't have any goals or ambitions, I'vce always felt alienated from society, I form some close friendships but usually fuck them up one way or another, with some notable exceptions; I've had two girlfriemds and three fuck buddies my entire elife, none of my relationships with women last very long. I have some female friends but I remain distant with them, I don't like really getting to know people as much as exchanging trivial bits of information and mutual interest wityh them, if you do that diligently enough, you can camoflage it for a real feeling of closeness. Most of the people I know think I'm kind of smart but crazy or at least weird, not like schizophrenic crazy, just a little off. I kind of agree with them. For a while I was getting my shit together, working a real job and making decent money, living with a wonderful woman, feeling like finally, in my late twenties, I was gettingthings together and starting to grow up. I knew I had been affected by Straight, but I didn't really know how deeply. My relationship with my family was pretty much nonexistant by the time my parents died. I don't talk to any of my siblings and wouldn't know how to reach them if I wanted to. I've been out of work for a while now, and thinking about going back to school, unemployment check sa re gonna stop in a month oand I'll be fuycked if I don't get something going. I've thought about going back to school, but I don't know. I'm starting my life over, again, for the thousandth time it seems like. The other night I found a piece of paper I had written on two years ago, trying to piece together the last ten or fifteen years. Now two more have gone by in a blur of booze and pills. I tried antidepressants a year or so ago and they kind of worked, I stopped drinking as much as I had been, which was every day, getting drunk four or five night s a week. I got pretty depressed after I wrecked my car and couldn't replace it and lost my job because I couldn't get to work, they probably were going to fire me soon anyway, but I still had insurance so I got the antidepressants. I quit taking them when they ran out and felt OK, but then I started getting wasted again a month or two after I stopped taking them. I try to just smoke pot but it's expensive, I can buy a six pack and do a xanax or two and be OK for a lot cheaper, so that's usually the route I go. I've been known to dabble in harder stuff occasionally, but those drugs usually make me more deptressed afterwards. I think I'm just kind of jaded on life at forty years old. I have younger friends that have their shit way more togeth er than me, most of my friends my age are weirdos like me, live with their parents, or get SSI, or somethinglike that. I am pretty far removed from the mainstream of society. Sometimes I really like that, hell, I'm proud of it, particularly when you look aroud and see the shit that mainstream society has become, fat women beating their kids in grocery stores, people blowing each other up to show them whose God is right, people buying cheap plastic crap they neith er need nor can afford, and deep down , probably don't even want, just because eveyrone else is doing it. I was weird before I went to Straight, I'm weirder now, parrtly , at least, because of Straight. Like I said, sometimes I'm proud orf that, like it makes me feel superior to the herd, the group, the whole mob runnning around driven by god knows what. Sometimes, though , I feel so isolated, that I am in some hopeless struggle against forces I have no chanxc eof overcoming, like I might as welltry to stop a wave from hitting the beach or turn back time. That's when anxiety and desperation sets in, and I pop another V and down a brew or a cheap rum drink. I smoke way too much and think about quitting sometimes, then remiond muyself that I don't have anything to live for anyway other than smoking another cigarette or having anothe rdrink so I migh tas well do it. Nicotine can help hold back that feeling of tingling desperation I get in my solr plexus during times like that. Sorry to rant or rain on your parade but I just felt real close to flipping out for a second or two there, it was good to write this and vent a litlle biit. Straight really fucked a lot of us up, good.
