I just randomly and violently threw a bunch of shit I was holding on to from the past against the wall. Don’t worry. I’m calm now.
Over the last few weeks, a few very observant members of the rwxrob community have sent me personal messages to the effect that they feel like my decision to cut loose and get some time away is in my best interest. Sometimes I feel like it is when someone says to a person who has lost a lot of weight, “You look great!” as if they didn’t before. But they’re not wrong. They’ve seen me randomly rage publicly about completely unrelated things before and they just want what’s best for me. (OMG, random people from the Internet can actually care about others.)
The truth is, I’m still filled with rage, even though I don’t know the specifics of why. I know the generalities, but every once in a while. I get surprised, like just now.
I’ve been going through every worldly possession I have preparing for the eventual move out of the apartment to ensuring that there is nothing too horrible anyone has to move if they happen to have to do it while I’m still out being a roaming, wandering, eccentric nomad. Nothing motivates me more than knowing my inattentiveness could cause others to have to pick up the slack. I hate that. Perhaps because I had to drop everything and move so many people while I was a Mormon working from home. I’d always get calls like, “Well, since you’re home…” and then they would guilt me into dropping my work for the day, dealing with some fucking irresponsible sucking welfare money off the church even though they literally have shit smeared on their walls, and then making up my missed work during time I could have spent with my family at night. Yeah, that’s Mormons for ya.
My moment of random violence against memorabilia came after unpacking a few boxes labeled “journals” and “nostalgia.” As usual, I went through everything deciding if it would pass the cut, again. But when I came to some stuff I felt my psyche crash hard. I felt the confusion, the absolute anger at what I’d been put through without a choice, and finally, all the guilt and expectations heaped on me over 40 years. I lost it and chucked whatever was in my hand at the time against the apartment wall. I probably woke my neighbors up with the sound. (Honestly, in this shit-hole they probably just thought it was another domestic dispute from some random couple.)
What is the moral of this short, sad story?
Let shit go. No one has to keep anything. We sure as hell aren’t leaving with it, and frankly, after we die no one really gives a shit. If it brings you joy, keep it, like the one sea shell I remember from a particular trip that means nothing to anyone else. No one is obligated to pass on anything. All the stuff we hold onto is for us, to get us through life, it’s not for others, even though others might end up benefiting from some of the stuff we left for ourselves when we passed on. We’ll be remembered by the memories others have about us, and by the works we have left of our own creation, for ourselves, not by an obsessively curated image of how we want to be remembered. We should capture what we want for our own memories and make that the only priority.
By the way, we have no responsibility to make sure others in our lives remember us or anyone else in our lives. “Family history” is mostly a red herring. History is always seen through the eyes of the person capturing it so it might as well be through that person’s own eyes rather than how another person perceives that person. Just focus on yourself.
So why hold onto my psycho Mormon journals?
Exactly because I want to remember just how fucking crazy I was and how far I’ve come. It’s even better that my ex-wife (still Mormon) shredded the most important journal of my life and ripped half of another out after bleeding red ink on everything that was wrong in it as if to teach me a lesson. What a psychotic bitch.
I was a cultist. Reading the words of my journals are absolutely, exactly what a cult member would say. Anyone who knows me now, including my wife, Doris (who kept an inspiring diary of messages to me while we were courting and later gave to me) would wonder who the fuck that guy is writing those words. I’ve spent the better part of the last 20 years studying cult mentality in order to better understand what I went through and I’m still processing it. I’m just glad to be out.
Why so public about such private things? For myself, above all. So I can find it again when I’m old and senile. And also because psychological health is an important thing that more people need to discuss and be okay with. They shouldn’t be forced to “deal with it” but come to it in their own way. Reading about others cult experiences has helped me in the same way my occasional realizations might help others.
Back to cleaning.