Writing while I think of it and will return later with pictures and further explanation.
Things fucking blow right now, gentle reader, where I live. It’s been one rug pull after another for myself and Roy, since about early 2020.
Being a wraith around your own home while being completely separated from your friends, family, and your partner and repeatedly trying to find footing in new communities grates on you after a while. It’s easy to be in a Mood.
Regardless, this week in particular is a sword of Damocles hanging over our household. We shall know by Sunday if things are to get a lot worse or a lot better in my household microcosm.
But I partially digress –
What occurred to me this past weekend is that as alone, hopeless, and just generally terrible I have felt for the last five years, I have been doing a great disservice to the people in my life by not recognizing that they are, in fact, there. The thing about spending the majority of your adult life thus far (from about 2006 to 2019) in the clutches of complete and utter wankers that spend most of their time tearing you down to make themselves feel better, it becomes a bit of a forest/trees situation. Add to that being very isolated, moving multiple times, and your body becoming your enemy, everything feels impossible and people feel so far away (not just physically but in every other way, too.)
I am very used to having friends scattered about the country and the world, and driving a couple hours to see someone or taking phone calls in the middle of the night because it’s the afternoon in Britain or the West Coast of the US. The last couple years, though, I was alone pretty much 75% of the time, sometimes going whole days without speaking out loud except to the animals or even bothering to write a letter, email or text. (I love the advent of texts and emails, honestly, as a prolific note-passer in high school.)
All this to say, I did not realize that I exist in other people’s minds. I am shocked when people recognize or remember me or they say “so and so told me about you.” Every time. Without fail.
So I was a bit surprised when about a month ago I got a message from someone that I knew just socially. I am a bit of a lurking member of some special interest groups or talk channels. In this case, a bit of a club that is run by a couple of paranormal investigators that has grown past the confines of a club to real friendships and to conversations about all sorts of things. For the record – I think the universe and world are far bigger than we imagine and I love all things high strangeness. I was a Goosebumps and X-Files child.
I had talked to her – I’ll call her by the name I first knew her by though I don’t think she minds general first name usage, and that name is Fire Breathing Unicorn (she is in fact a fire performer!) – over the past three years just in conversation, responses to things, about books, just a general club sort of association and it grew into a friendship, along with a handful of other folks that I have done things with or see as friends.
But she said to me, summarized as such:
“Hey! I heard you moved very far away from everything after having a very bad time and you now live in Very Cold State. I also live in Very Cold State! In fact, Mimici and two others live not too far from me in Very Cold State and Other Very Cold State. It must be hard being alone and starting over, and I have heard about the hard time you are having. Winters can be isolating here, so how about we all find a central place and meet up? Things are scary in the world right now and this will also give us a chance to feel okay and also have a great time being weird.”
I was pleasantly surprised.
FBU found a farmhouse that was available for rent in a surprisingly central location. We all pitched in to rent it for the weekend.
This past Saturday, I rose early, attended the animals, told Roy I wouldn’t get in too much trouble, and headed out.
And it was easy. Reader, it was so fucking easy. I arrived and it was like no one was a stranger. Someone made local wild rice soup with mushrooms and sourdough bread. I brought drinks. Another had snacks. All n attendance were laid back, open to being weird and goofy and playful, and adventurous. We talked about conversations we had, philosophy, high strangeness, the state of the country and what we could do about it – punctuated with excited exclamations of “THE DONKEY IS BACK!” every time one of the animals wandered past the window in the snow.
And everyone brought something with them on the topic of exploring the world beyond what we know. A show and tell of ghost hunting equipment, tarot cards, a stack of books on quantum theory and philosophy and Jung, spoons to bend, a spirit board, all manner of things.
So we dove in. We did remote viewing, someone suggested living room karaoke, we tried to bend spoons. I sure do miss having slumber parties. I have slept on a lot of couches in my time, partially just because visiting people were often weekend trips, or we stayed up too late for it to be safe to drive home.
We also had an adventure – it turns out someone we all know in the same manner, who is a Swedish researcher for the BBC and folklorist, mentioned off handedly he had a branch of his family that moved to America a hundred yearsish ago and was looking for someone in America to see if they could find anything out. And it turns out that they moved to THE TOWN THAT WAS CENTRAL TO US THAT WE WERE IN.
So we dove into ancestry research, checked records and found the cemetery. We trudged through a foot of snow in negative Farenheit weather, determined to find the burial place. We found the wrong person the first time, but I was informed after I returned home the next day that they went back out and found we were at the renamed version of that cemetery and they found the actual place and LOCATED THE FAMILY.
.
I sat on this thought this past Sunday, when I returned to the Grief that lives in my home right now. That maybe, no one is ever too far away. Same moon in the sky and all that. Or in the case of my best friend, the Rivendel Elf to my Hobbit Self, Beth – “we have the same joggers with stars on them so we can match from two sides of the continent.”
Hell, the fact that we almost lost our home at the end of 2023 and people I barely know did a fund raiser and auction for us, sent us canned goods and food for the animals. I will never, ever forget that, but somehow part of my heart did.
Maybe, though Grief is less a shambling thing or monster under my bed, and is more a season for me, sometimes these seasons can have a spot of sun.
This took a bit of a turn in this writing, I suppose, but part of doing this is maybe having catharsis.
Additionally, I found that when doing psychic experiments, getting progressively baked does not in fact increase your psychic abilities but you do get damn confident in your guesses. Also I may have a future in remote viewing.
If this week goes well, we will go see Captain America: Brave New World on Sunday because Mackie deserves his fucking flowers and I am terrifically excited.
Today’s book, recommended to me by my therapist:
Victor E. Frankl – “Man’s Search for Meaning.”
Stay weird
Be ungovernable
Hydrate
Make your own happy