The Year in Review
Dec. 31st, 2003 02:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oneirophreniaIn short, the year that is soon to pass was Hell on Fucking Earth. Beyond any shadow of a doubt, the worst goddamned year of my life.
Oh, everything started off just peachy-keen. I was not alone, for once in my fucking life, with a girl I swore I could trust and whose love and dedication I honestly had no reason to doubt. I was teaching a Spring semester at Penn State for the first time and making phat cash for once, too, between that and my job at the newspaper. I was surrounded by friends whom I could count on and respect. I was just about to put out the NYARLATHOTEP EP, Our thoughts make spirals in their world, which even then was shaping up to be a Big Deal. And I was reasonably healthy. Sure, not everything was perfect, but for once I was looking forward to the next year with a sense of well-being and optimism, a warm feeling of accomplishment and security.
And then the whole fucking house of cards started coming down, one card at a time....
In February, I got the chicken pox, which was the sickest I have ever been, and which set me on a long, slow landslide of gradually-declining health.
In April, my boss at the newspaper, whom I loved like a grandfather, dropped dead at his desk, five feet away from where I was sitting. (I wasn't actually there at the time, but that didn't really make it that much less disturbing.)
In May, Jennifer started to go haywire, which put a major strain on me throughout the entire summer as I tried to figure out what the hell was bothering her or had happened to her....
In August, the fucking cunt hits me with the news that "Oh, I just think of us as friends now." In the ensuing chaos, I lose my home in Pittsburgh, my ability to trust anyone for more than twelve seconds, and most of the security and self-worth I had been fighting for with that miserable waste of breath since May. The only things I had left after this shit were my jobs and my cat. I am thankful primarily for Christy, because with out her, I wouldn't've even made it through those first few weeks.
In September, I began getting sick. I had started coughing a lot in early August, but it wasn't until September that I really started to notice that I was coughing something awful, and first started to feel the pains in my chest.
In October...well. A lot of October is a blur to me. There were a lot of prescription painkillers, a lot of booze, and...Idaknow, two or three half-hearted attempts at taking myself out of the goddamned game once and for all. Then we all know what happened on Halloween. That was probably the lowest I've ever sunk in my entire life.
In November, I found out I had a voracious viral lung infection that eventually developed into pleurisy, as well as a sinus infection, and kept me damnear immobile with pain and flatout sickness for weeks. All told, from September until Thanksgiving, I was sick for 9.5 or maybe even 10 weeks. I had never been sick for that long ever before. it wasn't as bad as the motherfucking chicken pox, but it was pretty shitty nonetheless.
Now in December...well, December hasn't been that bad. Other than the crushing, holiday-season depression and the constant pain in my joints as my arthritis acts up worse than ever. Still, things could be worse. They have been worse.
Yeah...some good shit happened this year. The NYARLATHOTEP EP. Greater respect and employment opportunities at Penn State. Greater responsibilities and stuff at the newspaper. And I've made some cool new friends, and some old friends have come back into my life more strongly than ever--for which I am unbelievably grateful. I love every damned one of you. Word is bond. True playa for real.
But the bad far outweighs the good.
So I have no real hope for this year coming up. I know for a fact it CANNOT BE AS BAD AS THE ONE JUST PASSED, but I know the vagaries of fate and the grinding mill-wheel of karma far too well to even dare to look forward to anything but sheer, unmitigated survival. Which I will do. It's one of the few things I'm good at. I have the tenacity of the cockroach. And the spite of a deposed dictator. Between sheer stubbornness and pure, unadulterated spitefulness I will keep going throughout the next year and beyond, until biowarfare or my own body's uncountable failings take me out of here for good. Or I get uploaded into a computer. Whichever comes first.
One last thing:
To everyone who stood by me through this hellish year, and gave me places to crash, shoulders to cry on, or who sat on me or busted my ass when I was in a homicidal frenzy--thank you. I couldn't ask for better friends. A billion years won't erase the gratitude I owe to you folks. Thank you so very much.
To all the motherfuckers who played two-faced games with me, sided with the wrong people, fed me volumes of bullshit, or just otherwise broke the back of my ability to seriously trust anyone: GO FUCK YOURSELVES. You know who you are. Oh, and while you're fucking yourselves, please steer well clear of me. I never used to hold grudges, but I sure as shit do now. My Shit List is carved in diamond. A billion years won't erase your fucking names.
To all the new people I've met this year: I really can be an asshole sometimes, and I may be psychotic at times, and neurotic all of the time...but to those who were willing to call me up completely out of the blue and not hold craziness against me--thank you so very much. I will do my best to be an ideal friend of you as well, even though sometimes my reticence may seem to stand in the way. I'll get past it eventually. Probably. I sure as hell will try, at least!
Anyway, that's it. Time to turn a new leaf. Hope it won't be a dead one.
My one resolution this year:
THE HAMMER SPEAKS
"Why so hard?" the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. "After all, are we not close kin?'
Why so soft? O, my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my brothers?
Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?
And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me.
And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut and cut through, how can you one day create with me?
For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on bronze-harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard.
This new table, O my bothers, I place over you: become hard!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra III .29 .
Consummatum est.
Oh, everything started off just peachy-keen. I was not alone, for once in my fucking life, with a girl I swore I could trust and whose love and dedication I honestly had no reason to doubt. I was teaching a Spring semester at Penn State for the first time and making phat cash for once, too, between that and my job at the newspaper. I was surrounded by friends whom I could count on and respect. I was just about to put out the NYARLATHOTEP EP, Our thoughts make spirals in their world, which even then was shaping up to be a Big Deal. And I was reasonably healthy. Sure, not everything was perfect, but for once I was looking forward to the next year with a sense of well-being and optimism, a warm feeling of accomplishment and security.
And then the whole fucking house of cards started coming down, one card at a time....
In February, I got the chicken pox, which was the sickest I have ever been, and which set me on a long, slow landslide of gradually-declining health.
In April, my boss at the newspaper, whom I loved like a grandfather, dropped dead at his desk, five feet away from where I was sitting. (I wasn't actually there at the time, but that didn't really make it that much less disturbing.)
In May, Jennifer started to go haywire, which put a major strain on me throughout the entire summer as I tried to figure out what the hell was bothering her or had happened to her....
In August, the fucking cunt hits me with the news that "Oh, I just think of us as friends now." In the ensuing chaos, I lose my home in Pittsburgh, my ability to trust anyone for more than twelve seconds, and most of the security and self-worth I had been fighting for with that miserable waste of breath since May. The only things I had left after this shit were my jobs and my cat. I am thankful primarily for Christy, because with out her, I wouldn't've even made it through those first few weeks.
In September, I began getting sick. I had started coughing a lot in early August, but it wasn't until September that I really started to notice that I was coughing something awful, and first started to feel the pains in my chest.
In October...well. A lot of October is a blur to me. There were a lot of prescription painkillers, a lot of booze, and...Idaknow, two or three half-hearted attempts at taking myself out of the goddamned game once and for all. Then we all know what happened on Halloween. That was probably the lowest I've ever sunk in my entire life.
In November, I found out I had a voracious viral lung infection that eventually developed into pleurisy, as well as a sinus infection, and kept me damnear immobile with pain and flatout sickness for weeks. All told, from September until Thanksgiving, I was sick for 9.5 or maybe even 10 weeks. I had never been sick for that long ever before. it wasn't as bad as the motherfucking chicken pox, but it was pretty shitty nonetheless.
Now in December...well, December hasn't been that bad. Other than the crushing, holiday-season depression and the constant pain in my joints as my arthritis acts up worse than ever. Still, things could be worse. They have been worse.
Yeah...some good shit happened this year. The NYARLATHOTEP EP. Greater respect and employment opportunities at Penn State. Greater responsibilities and stuff at the newspaper. And I've made some cool new friends, and some old friends have come back into my life more strongly than ever--for which I am unbelievably grateful. I love every damned one of you. Word is bond. True playa for real.
But the bad far outweighs the good.
So I have no real hope for this year coming up. I know for a fact it CANNOT BE AS BAD AS THE ONE JUST PASSED, but I know the vagaries of fate and the grinding mill-wheel of karma far too well to even dare to look forward to anything but sheer, unmitigated survival. Which I will do. It's one of the few things I'm good at. I have the tenacity of the cockroach. And the spite of a deposed dictator. Between sheer stubbornness and pure, unadulterated spitefulness I will keep going throughout the next year and beyond, until biowarfare or my own body's uncountable failings take me out of here for good. Or I get uploaded into a computer. Whichever comes first.
One last thing:
To everyone who stood by me through this hellish year, and gave me places to crash, shoulders to cry on, or who sat on me or busted my ass when I was in a homicidal frenzy--thank you. I couldn't ask for better friends. A billion years won't erase the gratitude I owe to you folks. Thank you so very much.
To all the motherfuckers who played two-faced games with me, sided with the wrong people, fed me volumes of bullshit, or just otherwise broke the back of my ability to seriously trust anyone: GO FUCK YOURSELVES. You know who you are. Oh, and while you're fucking yourselves, please steer well clear of me. I never used to hold grudges, but I sure as shit do now. My Shit List is carved in diamond. A billion years won't erase your fucking names.
To all the new people I've met this year: I really can be an asshole sometimes, and I may be psychotic at times, and neurotic all of the time...but to those who were willing to call me up completely out of the blue and not hold craziness against me--thank you so very much. I will do my best to be an ideal friend of you as well, even though sometimes my reticence may seem to stand in the way. I'll get past it eventually. Probably. I sure as hell will try, at least!
Anyway, that's it. Time to turn a new leaf. Hope it won't be a dead one.
My one resolution this year:
THE HAMMER SPEAKS
"Why so hard?" the kitchen coal once said to the diamond. "After all, are we not close kin?'
Why so soft? O, my brothers, thus I ask you: are you not after all my brothers?
Why so soft, so pliant and yielding? Why is there so much denial, self-denial, in your hearts? So little destiny in your eyes?
And if you do not want to be destinies and inexorable ones, how can you one day triumph with me.
And if your hardness does not wish to flash and cut and cut through, how can you one day create with me?
For all creators are hard. And it must seem blessedness to you to impress your hand on millennia as on bronze-harder than bronze, nobler than bronze. Only the noblest is altogether hard.
This new table, O my bothers, I place over you: become hard!
Friedrich Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra III .29 .
Consummatum est.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
hear, all ye good people, what this brilliant and eloquent speaker has to say!
Date: 2003-12-31 04:46 am (UTC)Hear! fucking Hear!