everybody’s everything
A few scattered sentiments for today.
This month seems to have brought something with it, something must be in the air. More so than usual, I seem to be garnering the attentions, solicitations, and flirtations of more people. I suppose I should be used to it by now, but truly it's happening with greater frequency than usual, and I’m a bit jarred by it. It's a better problem to have than the opposite, so I have some trouble navigating the less than positive feelings it at times stirs up in me. I’ve been thinking also about my reactions to receiving certain compliments and being presented with certain behaviors. I distinctly remember being in the car going to church with my family. A passing neighbor made a comment about my sister and I being beautiful. Even back then I knew they meant it in a “beautiful family” sort of way, but I had somehow convinced myself that she meant I was beautiful in the way they would talk about girls. I felt so much more chuffed about being called beautiful than handsome, I suppose I should have known back then huh? Nowadays, I see the word so often in my comment sections and chats, in all honesty, I’ve become desensitized to it, and I hate to admit that. There’s that sound byte - “You’re beautiful!” “Thank you! But what else?”
In this sort of way. I have the vague sense that recently, someone I was conversing with complimented me in a way that had nothing to do with my appearance. I don't remember who it was or what they said. But I do remember feeling so much more distinctly pleased with that interaction than the others. I feel ungrateful, especially since I find myself so often ugly, average at best. Others think the opposite, and I’m no longer appreciating that? I think about how I would feel if something were to happen to my face and people stopped saying it to me. I don’t know that I could handle that, I’d miss it so much I’m sure it would further fuel my thoughts of removing myself from this mortal plane. I’m sorry for being so ungrateful. Thank you for telling me that you think I’m beautiful, I’ll make a conscious effort to appreciate it more. I know there's nothing wrong with wanting to be interacted with for more than my appearance, but still, I feel ungrateful. Along with this month’s phenomena, I find myself with a handful of options for real suitors, a “roster” as the kids like to call it, all very captivating in their own ways. However, something is missing. As always. One of them was having car troubles and I said “I’ve never so badly wished I was a mechanic’
“You wan’t to fix Orpheus that badly?” She replied,(Orpheus is the name of her car)
I thought about this.
I just want to be useful to everyone, I want to be worth something to everyone, I want to be worth everything.
2. You have to just keep shooting. A few random videos I posted that I didn’t think were that funny or clever went semi viral, and led to that level of engagement and interaction on my social media pages that I’ve been missing for a while. This seems to be how it often goes. You succeed when you don’t try. It felt for a while like I’d “fallen off” completely. Nothing I uploaded seemed to do well, I was in a death spiral with my content. Put something out, it flops, I feel bad, because I feel bad I hesitate to make more things, put out less things, put less effort into things, they don’t do well, on and on. I’ve been ready to give up at several points in recent times, or to rethink myself and what I’m doing. Then Lo and Behold, there it is, several hundred thousand views, several hundred comments. I look at it, finally having attained the thing I’ve been lusting after for so long, and realizing oh man, this doesn’t feel as fulfilling as I convinced myself it would. It does feel better than the opposite though. I uploaded like ten short form videos in a day that flopped, post after post after post. I never know which one will take off, I never know when or how, and I don’t want to go back to studying algorithms and doing things strategically, in a calculated fashion. I would rather have fun and succeed doing it, maybe I’m asking for too much. Y’know what though? I certainly do the work. I stream and record and edit and upload and write, and buy and spend etc etc etc. I have a lot of peers who simply don’t do it, though we share the same dreams, I thought it was luck but perhaps that's the only thing separating us, is that I do the work, and they don’t. Perfectionism paralysis, fears of humiliation and failure, whatever it may be stopping them. I do the work. It doesn’t matter though, if I eat, everyone eats. I’d be happy to carry everyone on my back if I could. I saw a clip a while ago of this established creator saying something like “If you can just get over the fear of the experience of being humiliated and failing, that's the biggest part” something like that. I am still trapped by my fears of being cringe or looked at as weird. I’ll start to practice exposing myself more to that, I truly just believe there are rewards for me on the horizon, and I may be running out of time to make it, and feed everyone before I’m gone.
3. There's a filter trending on tiktok at the moment showing people what they may look like when they are old. Several dermatologists have made posts about how its actually quite accurate to how the skin ages. People have been applying the filter to old images and videos of celebrities showing how exactly they’ve aged in alignment with the filter. At first, I could not imagine looking in the mirror and seeing what the filter showed me, I recoiled from it. The second time I used it, I found it a bit funny actually, I felt like I was that old man, and I smiled, laughed at myself, in good humor. In a positive way. “I’m not gonna live that long anyway” I tell myself. When you know, you know. I know. Be it by circumstance or by my hand, there’s not so long left, it's been this way in my mind for a decade or more, it's just the perfect end to this story. I just have to be one of those, I just am one of those. I’ve been thinking a lot about getting the news that my mother has passed away. I live in great fear of this day and think about it so much that I’ve gotten tons of practice. It lingers in my mind especially present now that I’ve finally ended our relationship and we no longer speak. “What’s the last thing I said to my mother? It was something nice I’m sure. I don’t think that matters though considering the ache our separation must invoke. I want to go back but it’s simply too painful. She apologized for whatever pain she caused me once, but I simply cannot do it, especially knowing how they’d react to find out fully and truly what kind of queer I am. How murderous, this ache I wonder what they are thinking, what they are doing” These sorts of thoughts. Once, a former friend who was very into reading tarot cards and that sort of thing looked at my chart and said “you are ruled by death” I think it was something to do with all the scorpio in my chart. I feel it, truly I do. Grief. Grief. GRIEF. Once, I ghosted this girl named Yuna I’d met on hinge because I chose my last partner over her, she was a fashion person and worked in the industry. She made really cool stuff. I told her how I only dress in black tshirts, joggers and sneakers as a matter of pragmatism. “I don’t have the mental energy to think about whether or not my clothes work well together in the morning”
“I think people dress how they feel” She said. I met a friend of a friend the other day, bright pink hair, candy earrings, lots of pastelles and bright, cute trinkets.Truly, they looked amazing. In contrast, there I stood, dressed how I feel.
Everybody’s everything.
