Bottom of the ocean

I find it strange, the safety of it. Not what I ever expected when I thought of not having a roof over my head. I worried about so many things before now. I worried about my past, my future, about so many facets of existing, I worried about worrying too sometimes.

There's this need to be perfect. Good enough. Satisfactory for the world. I've seen it on TV. I've seen it in random comment sections where everyone is arguing to be in the right, not the wrong. Homophobes vs allies, pro vs anti, on and on it goes. Everyone thinking they're right. Because they have to be. Because what does anything matter if you aren't doing the right thing?

I thought the right thing was rather direct, long ago. Because it was what my parents had done. And what the ones before them tried to do. Get a job, marry the opposite sex, have children, bring in more life onto an overpopulated planet that groans from the very weight of our selfish species.

But now here I am. Under the stars. And when I say safe, I don't mean it completely. No life path is without its dangers and possibilities and anxieties. But you have to understand the relief I felt when I came to this country and slowly but surely lost everything.

The only family I had here threw me out for being queer. In every and all sense of the world. By family, I mean vaguely blood related, not people I cared about. So I understand that those conservative bible-thumpers didn't think twice to send me away. And I suppose logically, I should have gotten a job that would've kept me afloat.

Instead, I walked. Tired of it all. The sounds of my actual family shaming me after I was outed to them ringing about in my ears. Until I came across this place. "Walmart", the Americans call it. What a weird name. A mart of walls. With this small patch of my own hidden under a distended roof that doesn't do well to cover me but blocks out the sun from my eyes when I want it to. It's cold, it's strangely always damp and I live not too far from the dumpster. I think my hands are rotting away.

But I'm happy here. Because I spend my days politely asking for money, nipped of shame because a living being has got to eat, no? I clean up around the way whenever I feel like it and though I don't know the names of the people here, many of them see me as a regular. Smile at me on their way out or in. And once in a while, when the mood hits me, I do it back out of actual desire, not forced politeness.

Don't tell Americans but they're actually sweeter than they seem to be. I understand now. That they're all as scared as me. That everyone is confused and struggling a bit and fucking terrified and holding onto the little things and or big things that keep them going.

But we're doing what all animals do. Surviving regardless.

It's like a TV show. My life must be rather comedic. Fall from grace. I've been falling from that height a very long time. I put myself up on such a pedestal as a child... There was really nowhere to go but down.

But if this is hell... I might be frozen solid and stink quite a bunch but I rather like it here. It's nice to know this is what many consider rock bottom - what a relief to finally hit the ground. It feels nice on my feet. Keeping myself afloat did such a wonder on my psyche. And now here I am at the bottom of the ocean...

The surface is so nice to reminisce from here - it felt so awful when I was above it. Now I can just smile and wonder why I thought staying was the only option.

The sand tickles my toes sometimes, too.

I'll get a job soon... Maybe. Try to, anyway. But this is nice. And this is shitty. And this is the least threatened by being alive I've ever felt; my very own place at the very bottom of it all.

How lucky am I.