Bottoming Out on relying on others

It’s been a consistent running gag with me since forever that, after years of it being mostly-satire based on my natural inclination, is calcifying into reality. “I am a rock”, “I am an island” – metaphors from Simon and Garfunkel that I adopted in theatrical exaggeration that became a joke among friends years ago in high school. Ironically, that group of friends dissolved due to moral deficiencies of many of its members who proved to be just as undependable as the humor of our “don’t trust anyone, ever” humor would have suggested.

I learned and remembered in grade school that the “if you want something done right, do it yourself” mantra was solid and true, but carrying it to its full conclusion and becoming one of those weirdos living in a cabin in Alaska has always been something to satirically laugh at. Lately, with current airfare and real estate prices, Alaskan seclusion doesn’t sound so bad.

I kid, of course. It’s not people I ever seek to escape from. It’s the Trojan Horses. The real warming to Alaska going on is within. I would much rather have a more intimate and connected professional and personal life, but when you absolutely without a doubt can’t rely on others – it’s impossible.

The way of the rock is the only way. An island fortress is the only path ahead. May it be known and documented for the digital archeologists sifting through these posts in the future looking for evidence of the roots from my conversion from happy-go-monkey fanciful goodtimes to Frank Millers version of a grizzled, tired and wholly cynical Batman.

I’ve reached rock bottom on teamwork. My inner child, whose lifeless body I cradle in my — Omg, I just remembered something hilarious I have to interrupt this to share: A few years ago I was corresponding with someone on a similar vein as this (melodrama, personal “poor me, I’m such a tortured artist, blah blah” stuff) with the same context (thinly reporting actual events, but mostly dramatizing them as a way of both satirizing the overly emotional reactions so many have to such cases and also cuz highlighting the ridiculousness of such matters is the best way I come back down to earth about them and never actually become the whiny teenage girl our human husks try to tempt us into being so often) and they totally did not get the context and thought I was 100% serious. “So what”? you might say, until you consider some of the things I said, which (I wish I could remember more, but) included the line “Don’t cry for me…I’m already dead” – which is one of my favorites, taken from an art film depicting exactly this kind of emo-satire from Barney Gumble on an old ep of The Simpsons. Can you even imagine? Reading a quote like that from someone and thinking they’re serious? lol. I’m chuckling just thinking about it right now.

Okay, sorry I had to break character for that aside. Back to what I was saying:

The naive optimistic child within me who looks to others for help, reasurement, love, tenderness, aid-of-any-kind, mercy, compassion, attention or dependance in any form – is finally dead. After decades of being weighed down in the boggy swamp of life, the struggle ceases, and he lays motionless peering through the murky water at the sunny idilic world above. A world he was swimming toward. A world he once knew and wished to recapture. That world is dead to him now forever. For I am a rock. And rocks do not float.

“In my opinion, all men are islands. And what’s more, now’s the time to be one. This is an island age.”