why the fuck am i here (?)

(ed. note: this post is brought to you in part by the letters f, c, k, and u, and the numeral 2. some naughty language follows. i was surprised as i edited. heh.)

it’s a friday afternoon. it’s a pleasant day. i really do want to get out and go for a bike ride or something since it’s been a shitty week, but i’m honestly more tired than I’ve been in months. but i feel compelled to write and have no idea where this is going to go. let's take a ride, shall we?

it’s been a long week. it started off last saturday with a nasty scare when i thought my father was having a stroke. it turned out to be just a nasty warning symptom, a stroke precursor, so to speak. ultimately, it could be a really positive thing if my dad gets his shit together and lives a healthier lifestyle.

for a short time there, i was left with this huge weight of horror, a fear that yet another tragedy and challenge would be blanketing my life. when something like that hits you, out of the blue, it provokes some pretty startling thoughts. fear infects you and it’s hard to fight it off.

i’m no stranger to adversity. but there comes a time when you just say fuck it, you’ll deal with it. you don’t share it, you don’t let people in. you just fucking deal.

(and it’s a stupid fucking way to do it, man. trust me. a couple walls have come down for me in the last 18 months or so, and i think it’s profoundly improved my friendships. i think it makes me a better person to know. but i didn’t know that when i was 20. my 20s were hell.)

i used to be a pretty serious existentialist. i always wondered what the fuck it all meant. all this grief and pain and sadness and difficulty. what’d it mean? why me? why now? why? why? why?

say it fast enough and it sounds like “wah, wah, wah!”

i’ll be 32 this fall and i don’t mind being over 30 one fucking bit. and i don’t get it--everyone’s so fucking worried about age. it’s only as a result of my age that i now know what a totally self-involved twat i once was.

seriously. what does it all mean? it means you pay taxes, you do your thing, you experience as much as you can, you enjoy as much as you can, and you weather the fucking storm in between it all.

existentialists are twats. sorry. get over yourself. you think you matter? if you’re lucky--extremely damned lucky--you’ll one day amount to a hiccup (or, if the gods are on your side, a burp) in the history of mankind. you might, just might, have a legacy that spans the decades, never mind the centuries. if.

our tragedies? on the grand scale? meaningless. does that lessen the pain? not a fucking bit. but it does kill the “why me” shit. why you? it’s your fucking turn, man. we all get it. everyone gets their hurts and everyone gets their highs.

wow. all i wanted to write was that existentialism sucks. i’m watching i (heart) huckabees, the charlie kaufman-esqe “existential comedy” by david o. wilson (flirting with disaster, three kings) with a whole schwack of awesome actors.

i’m sort of enjoying and loathing the movie, simultaneously. why? because existentialism is for twats.

i guess i’m not being very sympathetic to other people’s beliefs, but let’s face it. it’s my blog. fuck that shit. you’re just lucky it’s free, man. :)

seriously, if i still believed in existentialism? i’d have to believe that everything happened to me for a reason. that sometimes leads to the “god hates me” mentality that eats up a lot of good people. and you know what? i sorta do believe it happens to me for a reason, though: to make me a better writer. i’m a cross between an incredibly impetuous shallow person and one deep chick. that’s what i bring to the table and it’s the juice behind my writing. and it’s a fun combo to have to juggle.

but i don’t believe it’s all on me for any reason greater than what i attribute to it. meaning, i decide the reasoning. we all do. your tragedies can be the best thing that ever happened to you. that’s what i believe. and i try to make my adversities add some meaning to my life. it's not easy to do, but with a little introspection and growth, great things can come.

i don’t believe life is a series of randomly cruel happenings coupled with occasional bliss and glee. i believe the universe is more complicated than we’ll ever be able to comprehend. it’s like dots per inch. the more complicated and saturated your photograph is, the more pixels, the more seamless and lucid it all is. just like life.

i like to call it the brilliant nothing. but i’ll never really understand what i think about life, as much as i might try to. and i don’t give a shit. i’m just here for the ride, man.