Weeeeee! I'm a Horsie!

You might be SHOCKED to learn I use this blog sometimes to write inappropriate and fucked-up weird shit when I feel like crap.  By SHOCKED, I mean you're all very smart, and you already knew that.  For every one thing I write about how hurricanes names are apparently selected by people who eat wallpaper or how Christmas music by Paul McCartney is mind-bendingly boring, there are five posts about how shitty life can be, but how it's not really that bad if you put it in the right perspective.  Some days, that perspective is easier to find than others.  Today, it's somewhere in here:

Finding a needle in a haystack?  Piece of cake, compared to finding the damn thing when it's piled up WITH A BILLION OTHER NEEDLES, jackass.

To be clear, this is not a veiled cry for help.  Or even an obvious cry for help.  I just feel like shit and I can't find the right perspective, and writing about it and making jokes and putting up funny pictures makes me feel better.  It's my version of talking it over with a friend, but I get to do it while on my couch, eating potato chips, and not having to wear sunglasses so you can't see my stupid cry-eyes.  This is like my therapy, and you guys are my therapists -- you sit there while I talk and talk and talk until I realize I'm retarded and I already knew the answer.  But I'm not paying you to listen, so if you're looking for some sort of hourly rate here, then you can piss right off.

I have a friend -- someone I've known for about 10 years, someone who will always be my friend even though we live far away from each other now -- who I probably could have fallen in love with.  But I didn't.  Couldn't.  Right place, wrong time, blah blah blah.  Or maybe I did, but my brain knew better than to let me know it had happened.  Sometimes my brain can be smart.  So instead of falling madly in love with this male version of me, I ended up making a friend who I don't think I could live without.  He has a good life now and a beautiful family, and someday I'll stop being so lazy, and I'll go visit him.  And yes -- I am talking about you, mister.  Bet you didn't know any of that, did you?  Should make my next visit slightly awkward :)

Possibly even more awkward than this.

I used to think I missed out big-time, when I missed out on him.  But realized a few years ago that's stupid.  If I'd fallen for him, I'd never be able to lean on him the way I can now.  And he has no idea just how much I lean on him, just by knowing he's out there.  I wouldn't have that friend -- far away and infrequently seen, yet more important to me than he could ever know.

This is too mushy.

That's better.

I have another friend (well, I have several -- but for the sake of this part of the tale, we'll talk about just this one.)  He's honest and straightforward and doesn't bullshit me.  Sometimes that hurts, but only because I know what he says is true, and I have to accept that he's onto my devious little plan to fade into the background, avoiding anything that could even remotely lead to pain. And it's like every part of me from the top of my head to my freakishly-shaped nugget-like baby toenails and every part of me from the middle of my insides all they way out to my outsides knew the second I met him, without question, that I would need him to be my friend.

Getting mushy again.

That's better.  Again.

So, I feel like shit.  Even though I've thought about that first friend and I've talked to that second friend, it's not going away yet.  Even the pictures of horribly deadified cartoon animals isn't helping, which is pretty much unprecidented.  I've made jokes and been self-deprecating and as close to honest as I care to come right now.  These are the things that usually work.  Fuck.

So on I go, doing my best to be open and honest.  Using the Interpipes to semi-but-not-really-anonymously talk to my friends about what's bothering me.  Writing on a goofy blog instead of doing what normal people do, and just sitting down and talking to someone else.  I know I should do that, but it involves face-to-face contact and crying and sometimes a snotty nose, and I don't wanna.  You can't make me.  So there.

Everyone around me is doing stuff.  Things for them are changing, moving forward.

And then there's me.

Or at least, that's how I feel today.  I know it's not really true.  I know that's not really me.  For one thing, my ass isn't nearly that big.  But today, and lots of other days lately, I feel like a big stupid horse with my big stupid head stuck in a big stupid tree.  So I'm sitting here thinking about that today, and thinking about how everybody probably feels like that sometimes, and thinking about how when they feel that way, they feel just like me right now: that they're the only one.  That all the other horsies who aren't fucktards are running ahead, and I'll never catch up because I apparently thought it would be a super idea to stuff my head in a tree -- even though I'm a horse and nothing I eat lives inside trees.

Seems every few days I find myself with my head stuck in a different tree.  I got used to it.  Can't see the scary things around me -- the things I should be doing to keep up with the other horses.  Can't see them getting further and further ahead of me.  If I don't see it, it ain't happening.  If I don't know it, it's not real.

No one likes an oblivious beaver.

So today I pulled my head out of a tree.  And it fucking hurt.  Not because I wanted to keep my head in the tree forever, not because I'd developed some sort of inappropriate fascination with the tree, but because this tree, this particularly comfortable tree with it's strong branches and sturdy trunk and calming shade, made me feel safe.  Kept me from having to see what the other horses were doing.  Gave me somewhere to hide away from everything.  Gave me an excuse not to look around me for somewhere to go.

Now my head hurts and I'm a bit wobbly from trying to hold myself up after leaning for too long.  It's too bright and windy.  But it feels good, too.  It feels right.  The other horses are still pretty far ahead of me, and I'm still terrified I won't catch up and I'll be left by myself, just looking for more trees to stick my head in.  And I'm worried when I look back, my tree won't be there anymore.  It might fall down, it might be gone if I need it again to protect me or give me somewhere to hide for a while.  There's nothing I can do about that.  Horses aren't in charge of trees, because horses are (despite what people who haven't had horses might think) kind of dumb.  Don't believe me?  Scroll up and take another look at the horse with it's head stuck in a frigging tree.

How exactly did I turn into a horse in this story?  Oh.  Right.  Heaven forbid I just come out and say something straightforward.  Wouldn't want to accidentally be open about how I feel.  Might come across as a dufus or a loser or some sort of dufus/loser hybrid.................

You had to know I'd work this skidmark into the story somehow. 

Long story short (which actually makes this entire story longer, when you think of it) -- I'm trying to keep up, but I keep finding something to lean on.  Something that makes it ok for me not move forward.  Something that validates my staying behind, so I won't have to admit that maybe I feel left behind not because I have been left behind, but because I haven't even bothered to keep up.  Because I'm scared that if I try and fail like I so often have, I'll fall and lose even more ground, like I often do.  And because it breaks my heart to think maybe the place all the others are going to isn't the place for me.

I hope I can get up and go.  I hope I can keep up with the rest of my herd and stay with them for as long as I can.  I hope I can stop sticking my head in trees and hiding -- because one day, one of those trees might break.

I hope that the horses coming up behind me -- instead of seeing me with my cracked-out cranium crammed in a tree-hole, leaning and hiding and avoiding changing and growing -- get a big eyeful of this as I move on with my life:

A horse's ass.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~