lifewithcraig - Tumblr blog

[lifewithcraig]

“In fact, I took it personally that people would reject a perfectly good house because of circumstances beyond the house's control.”

Martha Grover, The End of My Career

[lifewithcraig]

“If the job requires energy, in the end, is the pay worth a portion of the limited time I have left on earth?”

Martha Grover, The End of My Career

[lifewithcraig]

“Don't ask questions. If you don't know what something means, pretend that you do. Inspire confidence even if you don't know what the fuck you're doing.”

Martha Grover, The End of My Career

[lifewithcraig]

“My father, a proud union member, has given me one piece of advice in regard to jobs. "Fuck them before they fuck you." And I suppose on a certain level I have taken it to heart. This sentiment is not to say that I have hated all the bosses and jobs I've ever had. Instead, it's a warning. The company will always care more about a nametag than they care about you. It's not personal. Basically, the manager of Gap was telling me: It doesn't matter what you do. You could be anyone.”

Martha Grover, The End of My Career

[lifewithcraig]

“I could survive financially without the job, but I didn't like the feeling that I was somehow coasting along, not living up to my fullest potential.”

Martha Grover, The End of My Career

[lifewithcraig]

Is this the end?

In 30 years, I feel like I've lived and died a hundred times.

I've been taunted and touched without my consent.

The people who were supposed to love me the most have instead hurt me the most.

I've become a pawn in someone else's chess game.

My life, my goals, my dreams handled with the reckless indifference of someone who knows they will always win whether or not I'm on the board.

My chest is hollow where my heart should be, and my head is a catacomb of buried memories too painful to awaken.

In each of my past lives, I have always known how to get back to the land of the living. 

But this time feels different.

I don't know how to come back from this. 

I don't know if I can. 

Maybe this is where it ends.

[lifewithcraig]

“I want to hurt myself because it's the only way I know how to hurt you.”

[lifewithcraig]

“You can't give me hell more than I give myself.”

[lifewithcraig]

Take

The sweet and innocent thing? It's not working out for you, babe. Next year is your year of profection in the seventh house. The house of relationships.

You have to work on your relationships at work.

You have learned firsthand this place runs on relationships. Close mouths don't get fed.

You have also learned that there is still a lot you need to learn, and maybe your style of creativity is not what the agency wants. You need to lean into people who know more than you.

And you have to be better at collaborating. It will prevent you from presenting too much. And it will also help your art directors actually want to work with you.

Take some inspiration from Evelyn Hugo, and take, take, take. She's exactly the kind of person who would succeed here. Focus on your relationships, what you can take from them, and how they can help move you forward.

Next year, your job is to learn. To learn from people. And to learn about people.

Because your seventh house is also in Aries. It is time to let the ram out. Be fierce. Be competitive. Be angry. Be aggressive. Stop letting people walk all over you because you want them to like you because they simply don't care. Look people square in the eye, and don't retract.

What you need to do is make an impression because you have not done so thus far. But do it in a Craig way. A calculating and measured Aquarius, Virgo, Libra way.

What would an Aries do? Push their way forward with pride.

Maybe one of my Saturn return lessons is to lean into the repressed parts of myself and let them out. My repression is stagnating me.

[lifewithcraig]

“My life is normal, but I feel like I don't know how to be normal.”

[lifewithcraig]

Ugly

I’m ugly. That’s probably not a healthy thing for me to say about myself, but it can’t be any worse than deluding myself into thinking I am or could ever be beautiful. When you are ugly, you know, whether you are able to admit it to yourself or not. It’s when people make more negative comments about your appearance than positive. When your uncle constantly brings up working out and lifting weights. When your father compares you to an ugly family member or an uglier version of himself. When everyone from your aunt to the lady at the barbershop comments on your blemished skin. When people make comments on how thin you are. When people who have a crush on you say, “Looks don’t matter to me.” When none of your crushes reciprocate your feelings. When you were, are, and continue to be the perennially single friend, having never been in a relationship or so much as kissed another person into your late twenties. When no one comments how nice you look even on your best day or when you make your hardest effort. When you call yourself ugly, and not even your closest friends can bring themselves to disagree.

I guess I always hoped one day I would be beautiful because I wasn’t sure what else I could offer. I’m not dumb, but truthfully, I’m not particularly bright, just as smart and average as any typical person. Besides, I could never be the smart one in my family because both my brother and my sister outshine me in every avenue of intelligence. My whole life people have called me, “smart,” and I’ve always hated it because it feels insincere. No one knows me well enough to know if I’m smart. It just feels like the default compliment for when you don’t know how else to compliment a person.

I’m a failure as a man. I don’t know how to change a tire or jumpstart an engine or throw a punch. I can’t play sports or mow a lawn or drive a stickshift. I don’t speak like a man and I don’t act like one.

I was a nice person once, but niceness doesn’t have much social currency. I don’t lead. I don’t influence. I was the one who was cast aside on the playground. I was the one who was picked last for games. I am the one no one wanted to partner with on group projects. I don’t know what it is like to have lifelong friends and be a part of a group. I don’t know what it is like to be wanted or noticed or have people gravitate toward me. Instead, people label me as weird.

My entire life I felt like I needed one redeemable quality to justify existing, which was only exacerbated when I discovered I was gay. And my entire life, I have struggled to find one. I do feel useless. I do feel like a waste of space. I do feel like my state of being is wrong. And consequently, my entire life I have felt as though I needed to defend why I exist.

What I’m starting to realize though is that I don’t owe anyone anything. At the end of the day, I’m the person I’m stuck with. I’m the person I’m destined to spend my life with. So, I need to take care of myself and do the things that make me happy only for myself. I need to accept myself -- even if no one else does.

When I finally was accepted into graduate school, it gave me something I have not had in a really long time. Hope. I might not ever be beautiful. I might not be the smartest person in the room. I might not have charm. But I can be a kickass writer. My successes can redeem me. My successes can save me. So, I think that’s what I’m going to try to focus on.

[lifewithcraig]

Deli

This building has a way of making you feel invisible.

People don't say hi.

Or ask, "How are you?"

They don't greet each other in the hallway.

Or do drop-bys at each other's desks to see how things are going.

Not if they don't care about you anyway.

The difference in wavelength between a disinterested interaction and an enthralled one is palpable.

But you wouldn't dare say anything about it.

Because what would that accomplish?

You'll make your manager feel bad?

Evoke the essence of a guilty Catholic schoolboy reprimanded for sinning but predestined to do so again.

Or will they get angry?

Defensive?

Will you simply expedite your expiration date?

And watch things wilt from sour to stale?

Perhaps the worst thing they could do is say it's all in your head.

That you're composing a false narrative.

As if anyone would actually choose to be this miserable.

The problem is feelings are not facts.

You can't argue with auras.

Energies aren't evidence.

There is no antidote for apathy.

And maybe it doesn't matter.

Not when you don't have a regular boss to report to.

But when the building loses color and shape and pitch every time there's a layoff.

When the same echo chamber of centuries past continues to rise in a flash of white.

It makes you wonder if those of us on the outside are all just waiting for our number to get called.

[lifewithcraig]

"It's infuriating when people act like you're brave for being who you are. As if it were ever a choice."

[lifewithcraig]

My dad is the sun. My mom is the moon.

My dad was like the sun – like I suppose most dads are. On the surface, he was bright and sunny and commanded attention. His smile, his laugh were warm and infectious and could light up a room.

But there was something dark and sinister beneath that sunny facade. Something hot and tempered and cancerous. As though if you stood too close, you would burn.

My mom, on the other hand, was like the moon in the night sky. Something quiet and subtle but absolutely divine and delightful.

She had her moods, much like the lunar phases. There were times she felt so close. And others where she felt distant and far away.

She was tender and mysterious all at once. And although she was not so expansive as to take up as much space as the sun, she was the brightest light during my darkest nights.

I guess you could say I was always more of a night person.

[lifewithcraig]

I want everyone to feel like my No. 1 priority because I know how much it hurts not to be someone else's.

[lifewithcraig]

I'm not afraid of death. I'm more afraid of reaching the end of my life only to realize I never lived it.

[lifewithcraig]

I'm ready to go.

It is 12:25 on the morning of Christmas, and I am going to bed in a bad mood.

A few hours ago, my mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law, and I sat at the kitchen table. We talked about my favorite topic: my love life. (If it is not abundantly clear, this is certainly not my favorite topic.)

As I once again tried to gently hint that I would not end up with a woman, my dad gave a drunken monologue about how ten years from now, I will fall madly in love and sing a different tune. (Sorry, Dad. In ten years, you will likely be very disappointed in me.)

I like to say I am not in the closet. I am just not out of it per se.

I began my usual pitch of laying the foundation of the truth.

I have never liked anyone.

I do not see myself ending up with anyone. (This one is a half-truth. I do not see myself ending up with anyone for as long as my parents are alive.)

I have no interest in ending up with anyone.

I have been single for all 28 years of my existence and would not know how to share a life with someone – which is entirely true. I have felt alone my entire life, and as painful as that can be, there is something equally painful about the stress of finding someone – and of trying not to lose them.

I even cracked a joke about how maybe I would end up with a pilot or a concierge nurse or, hell, even a doctor like my sister – anyone with an occupation that involves either being away for stretches of time or spending most of their time at work.

And then my sister had to deliver her assholey sisterly death blow.

"I don't think a doctor would want you."

"Why not?"

"Hygiene."

I want to be clear that I have never once had a friend tell me I smell bad. No one has ever told me that I look unprofessional or unkempt. I regularly shower and brush my teeth.

Yet I cannot help but mentally spiral. While I have never liked anyone for as long as I lived, no one has liked me.

Do I want a mate? I don't know. I waver on this.

Do I feel like a failure for never being able to attract one? You bet.

But this has nothing to do with my prospective partner. No. This post is about my family.

On Tuesday, I am hopping on a plane to Portland, Oregon, to begin a new life. A life that I have wanted for a very long time. A life I never thought I would have.

And to be honest, I was apprehensive about it. I was scared about feeling more alone than I do in moving to the other half of the country to a place where I do not have a single friend. My burgeoning sense of adulthood and the weight of navigating new expenses and responsibilities I have never had stressed me.

But I have come to the realization I can no longer live here. I do not feel encouraged or supported. I do not feel valued or respected. When I speak with my family, I am ignored and talked over. When I meet others, I am pulled away like a toddler being led away from a stranger. Everything from my hair to my clothes gets criticized for no merits other than they are not the way my family would like. I lie and I hide things and I suppress who I am.

Sometimes I feel so unbearably depressed it is as though I am suffocating, drowning in a well of suppressed emotion that feels like it is only getting deeper and darker and thicker like the depths of the Mariana Trench. When I lie in bed for hours, there is no attempt to understand why. Instead, I get called lazy, moody, and difficult.

I live in the city where I was bullied and harassed every day of my adolescence. I have not a single friend in my hometown. I am immobile only because my father could not spare a few hours to teach me how to drive when I was a teenager. I feel like a prisoner in my own home. I would not want to live if I had to continue living this way.

And so, as terrified and reluctant as I am to bear the frigid weather and excavate the unknown, I can finally admit that I am ready to go. This place was never my home. I could never hope to be happy with my family. And the best thing I could do for myself is to go where I can be free.