#I've been favoring my left foot for awhile. i have. something wrong with it. and i need to go to a doctor.

[jaspertheshark]

🙃🙃🙃🙃 something happened to my fucking knee

[violetsystems]

#personal

This morning is a creative writing demonstration of what happens when I take a full day to be away from people. The most complicated thing I did in public was check the mail and do my laundry on premises. The vibe around here has been tense. There's always somebody out there to check on me when I step foot on the sidewalk. Sometimes when I greet them they talk back. But not often. Most of my experience in this city has been that the burden of civility and initiative is always on me. You can tell it is all about keeping tabs on me and with this being America and all it makes me somewhat uncomfortable. Mostly because it doesn't benefit me at all, least of all my mental health. But for the most part, managing my frustration with how society has failed me happens behind closed doors. My immediate neighbors left their laundry in the dryer again. They are the only people I actually communicate with in terms of neighbors. I text them when their packages arrive sometimes. They brought me donuts awhile back. It is safe to assume in context that they are members of the LGBTQ+ community. Ironically, the only community I actually still have an open line of dialogue with in this city. Everybody else just stares and looks on expectantly as if I'm going to incriminate myself quicker that way. I'm used to people in this neighborhood always assuming I'm the villain or have done something wrong. I'm also used to the married couple next door frowning on over your shoulder whenever you leave the property. I decided to pack up the two large loads of laundry in garbage bags and drop them outside on the porch. I texted and apologized but made it a point to note my intention. I didn't want nosy people on the property complaining about the laundry room. The neighbor apologized and explained they'd been sick. I told them not to worry and most importantly that I had their back. What does it mean to have someone's back these days? When it's a member of community that isn't quite your own? The whole world is my community. That's the goal of peace. But most importantly, they're the only people I have a logical dialogue with after all this crazy shit. And so I was just looking out. Something I do not see happen in my favor at all. I'm expected to manage it on my own if I don't fall in line with some peer group or political party. It's not the first time I've done that for people. And it's not always returned in favor or care. But you do this to keep the peace and help a culture grow. Including your own.

I say this because nobody around here helps me grow whatsoever. It is kind of stifling. I pick up the trash. I shovel the snow. I pay my rent five days early. Sometimes in the case of the maintenance it is appreciated. Or when I save a package for my upstairs neighbor. I am told I am appreciated. There is actual communication that validates whatever I'm trying to do is at least contributing to something. Everywhere else it is accusations and stares. We reward that behavior in this neighborhood because people love to gossip. But the end effect is persecution. Something I think we forget every member of any community can fall victim of. Especially in a populist environment in America. If you aren't on a side, you have no protection. And yet I'm out there trying to protect everyone just the same including myself. People try to write off my narrative and act like I don't have a point. I don't have a right to live my life just the same as anyone else. And I often find myself protecting people weaker than I to demonstrate I care about sharing. This is the give and take of a society that looks after one another. In a neighborhood where everyone is fighting for the right to call a place home, there is enough intimidation from people who want to profit from it. Affordable housing isn't something that just happens. It is something that is in constant doubt. Just two blocks over is a homeless encampment where the gangs congregate. The minute you start talking to them, the whole neighborhood starts assuming you are part of them. And it becomes a constant nervous spiral of scared people trying to band together to fight a new monster. I'm not fearful of any of this by now. Everyone knows on here why I roll alone mostly. I frustrate myself as a writer knowing full well people's reading comprehension doesn't click when I roll out my intentions here in these journals. How could someone put it so fucking clearly and yet see everyone around him get it twisted in the most ridiculous ways? Everyone out here likes to say they care. That they are woke. But they are afflicted by some socially inept version of the Dunning Kruger effect. That since everyone is in this together, we all have the same risks and skills at keeping the peace. The real story is people are overloaded sometimes. Somebody forgets their laundry for a day. You know someone will complain. Hell, even you are a little perturbed. But you take a moment to understand and be nice. That shit for me is never returned. And so I dish back out what I'm given and it makes people more incensed. The opposite is not true. No matter how nice I am gets drowned in the hunt for something I did wrong.

When I take a day and shut the world out completely, my mental health recovers a bit. This isn't to say that the judgement goes away. And I think to myself most of the downhill battle lately is improving the way I deal with conflict. I care too much even to this day what people think. And yet if I don't care, the culture around me will erode and I will be left to face the torches of this neighborhood and country myself. Yeah, I have never done anything wrong per say. At least not in correlation to the wrongs done to me that I've explained for years that have no closure. I don't really care about the past. I don't have the luxury of going back to it. The past would rather avoid the conflict and conversation much like everyone out here who seems to have a problem with me. It almost just sits there watching for the day the bogeyman goes away. I am the boogeyman in this respect. No matter what I do seems to connect with anything human out there in the streets. When it does it plays out like a scene from Mad Max. Meanwhile I'm stuck in the worst kind of limbo. No friends who text on the weekends. Nobody invites me out to do anything. People might side handed tell people who inquire that I'm anti social. And yet every morning when I roll over in bed there's a familiar url in my dash that makes me smile. Actions. And interactions. I'm weird because I want people to come to me naturally. I'm strange because I'm always front and center and ready to answer any question in real life like I'm being interrogated but nobody can give a fuck whether I'm happy, breathing or alive. They just want my money and the bills paid. When I feel guilty about what this neighborhood, city and country expects from me I wonder what exactly it is they give back? What have they done to grow culture? What art have they created other than the trash I pick up from the ground? What more can I really be patient with when I feel like I'm playing host to an invasive species. Is this gentrification or is it just feudal Japan on steroids? I don't really feel like I belong here anymore and yet I still feel the love enough to have patience. Maybe that's why I don't complain when I return my gay neighbors laundry they forgot for the second day in a row. Imagine if more people did something instead of complaining? Imagine if people stopped putting me on the spot to face my privilege for the tenth year in a row and actually held the people you give the pass accountable for whatever it is they don't do other than stare? I only like imagining the love of my life naked so tell society good luck with that one. If "we the people" wants to cancel me just remember I'm busy and we never made plans anyway. <3 Tim