4/10/2024

Today I’m supposed to start working on my self assessment at work. I’ve been really screwing up for the past year so I really don’t know what to write. Maybe “with all the shit I’ve been dealing with in my life, it’s a miracle I can get out of bed in the morning. I’d have offed myself a long time ago if I’d known this was what my life was gonna be. So my self assessment is this: it’s a miracle I’m still alive and breathing. Anything else is above and beyond.”

I feel like writing about how I make a great salary but can’t afford rent or utilities because my estranged wife who told me two and a half years ago she was gay and wanted a divorce has refused to sign the papers because she’s getting a free ride from me. I’m paying for two houses, two sets of utilities, four kids, and her. I feel like writing about how I have four young kids ages 4-10 who are struggling and having behavior problems and depression issues because of their fucked up, fractured home lives. I feel like writing about how my mom is failing mentally and can’t remember to take a shower or brush her teeth or do all the things we take for granted and how my brother moved her closer to him so it wouldn’t be as big a burden on me but I’m missing her and constantly worrying about her and I don’t even have her phone number or address. I feel like writing about how my dad died four years ago but I never grieved him because my life since then has been catastrophe after catastrophe. I feel like writing about how my soul mate who I had a short fling with is with another man now and it’s killing me emotionally and intellectually along with everything else. I feel like writing about how hard it is to work when my mind is fixed on her and my heart and soul are aching and dying. I feel like writing about how I no longer have a person, a helper, someone I can turn to. I’m drowning and I have no life preserver, nothing to reach out for. No hope.

I feel like writing about how amidst all of this, I haven’t been evicted, my electricity is still on, my kids are being fed and have a roof over their heads and the structure and discipline I’m implementing are improving their behavior. I feel like writing about how rather than sitting around moping, I’m playing music at clubs and bars, I’m facilitating a bimonthly writing workshop and a poetry/spoken word open mic. I feel like writing about how I’m constantly getting out socially and meeting new people. I feel like writing about how I’m taking karate classes, working out, and running through all my pain and sorrow. I feel like writing about how I’m in the best physical shape I’ve been in my whole life. Though there are still nights I spend alone missing my kids, missing the woman I love, smoking weed and trying to watch movies to keep myself from staring into a bottle of pills.

But somehow amidst all of this, I’m alive, living life even, and trying my damned hardest to move forward somehow.

Today I’m supposed to start working on my self assessment at work. And I feel like writing all of this. But I have to stick to work stuff. Accomplishments and whatnot. And I’ve been barely holding it together, sometimes not holding it together at all. I haven’t accomplished much of anything at work. So even though I’ve done so much, and just turning on a computer and typing a sentence is a miracle for me right now, I’m afraid all I am is a blank page.