Sometimes

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, or how hard you turn yourself upside down and inside out for a person you love, they aren't going to love you back.

It's an unfortunate truth that just because you love someone that doesn't mean they will also love you. Many times, they won't.

Maybe they will love you in some way that you don't identify as love. Or you will love them in some way that they don't identify as love. Maybe you'll never have the conversation you need to have.

Young loves - infatuations - can be terrible blows to the psyche, if not handled well.

Old loves can hurt, too.

When the people you are trying to make love you are folks who really ought to love you anyway - parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles - family - that makes it all the harder.

Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, nothing is going to work. Your friend is going to pull away from you. The dog is going to die. Your spouse is going to be more interested in work than in taking care of the house. You're going to hit a deer with your car.

Crap happens sometimes.

Nothing is happening to me right now. There is no crap flying around my head, or landing in my face, or messing up my shoes. At least, no new crap. I have a lot of old crap trailing after me, stuff I can't shake off. Maybe I never will.

I'm just brooding, watching the world as I tend do, and thinking how hard it is to be a person. It seems harder every day.

Life used to be physically hard. My ancestors worked the soil, toiling in the heat, hoe in hand, the man making hay while the woman sweated inside over a hot fire as she canned vegetables. Water and tears rolled down their faces; they had callouses on their hands.

Were they happy? I don't know. I think, during the times they had enough food and resources, they probably were. Struggles can make anyone unhappy. Having just enough, whatever that is, can make you feel okay for a while.

Most of us don't work with our hands like that anymore. We don't toil physically, and our bodies are awful because we eat poorly and we're obese.

So we don't feel well. That happens even to rich folk.

On top of that, life is hard mentally, now. Harder, I think, than it ever has been at any time in recorded history.
 
You can't move or say anything anymore without someone having something to say about it. We are constantly under a barrage of discord and disgust, from commercials pointing out that you need to go on a diet to Internet slander because you exist and take up space.

Everybody thinks they have a right to criticize you. To mock you. To hurt you.

The presidential election is about to kill me because there is so much crap being flung about. Everywhere I look, I feel like I have to drop to my knees to avoid feces.

When did this become okay? When did it become fine to beat someone down until individuals want to crawl into holes? Until they give up on love, and give up on themselves?

What happened to manners and polite society? Did that exist? Was it an illusion?

I trace the changes back to 9/11, when America became emasculated to the point that anger and hatred shriveled the nuts of all of the males, and the females went running backwards into the patriarchy, away from self-sufficiency and strength. The terrorists won, because they turned this country from the one I knew into something I no longer recognize.

(I asked my husband if the above paragraph was a bad thing to say; he was walking by as I wrote it. He said he didn't know. "Maybe," he said, "you shouldn't try to write a blog entry when you don't feel well." He is right, but I don't have many folks who read these long entries, anyway.)

Today my thoughts are all over the place. My pain is high, which makes me think funny things. I wonder about love. I wonder about truth. I wonder about hate.

I wonder if I'm really living in a world gone insane. Do you feel it? Do you feel the rage and anger when you walk through public places?

Why is everyone so mad?

Some days, I feel it everywhere I go. I duck my head and move as quickly as I can from the public sphere. Am I moving further away, maybe, from someone who wants to love me? Could it be I'm not noticing it because all I feel is the meanness emanating from the folks around me? Am I missing out on a friendship because my brains are fried by the craziness around me?

Sometimes it eats me up. Sometimes I think I'm losing my mind.

Sometimes, I just don't know.