jem on jém

[ENTRY 018]

terminal\user\jem\journal

Nothing is interesting about my suffering. Or new. It is far from a novel concept and uniquely tethered to my not-so-unique perception of what I, not anyone else, would consider to be interesting. Suffering looped over monotony looped over nothing new forever.

I read my last entry from weeks ago and feel sad for that version of me; ‘jem-self_v01_29-06-25,’ I’ve labelled on his file. Like it was neatly written with a Sharpie on some tape stuck to one of those plastic containers they use in The Bear. The weeks passed, I’ve been looking at this hurting past self, giving an occasional glance to the low shelf he occupies in the rural town library of my mind that only has DVDs and not Blu-Rays yet.

In one of Arthur Morgan’s many journal entries, after what I recall to be written after enduring a string of bad fortune for the Van Der Linde gang (including the usual casualties and robberies gone south in a futile pursuit of a better life), he laments this:

‘What a mess of things we’re making.’

That’s how I feel, or rather, ‘felt,’ when I wrote my last entry. Not angry at the world for my misfortune, but at myself for being the way that I am. Which doesn’t fix anything, as I so subtly conveyed with absolutely zero restraint. Calling in all my flaws like the fucking ensemble cast for a tired franchise for one last swan song, one last crack at the formula.

I recall a text sent to a group chat, typed with some, but not a lot, of second thought:

‘Honestly I’m more relieved that, occasionally, there are bad things out of my control, and that I am not in fact the sole architect of my own suffering’

This was after being told that it wasn’t my fault that the impulsive piercing I got for my birthday was looking pretty worse for wear, because the bar they used was too short. The overexplaining of how hard I tried to take care of it to the nice piercer wasn’t warranted, because there’s nothing more I could’ve done. It was a moment so validating that weeks of undue stress practically evaporated before my eyes. Perhaps too unnaturally. The opposite of a cruel twist of fate shouldn’t feel this good. Or so the part of my brain that simply won’t let things go likes to think.

So now I look at my garden, wilted and drooping from neglect. No finer a representation for how I’ve mistreated myself. To have disregarded a pledge made some entries ago, only to have the fruits of labour decay, laid on the dirt from no warm sun.

But I fill my watering can again.

I remember what this used to look like, remember all those feelings, and imagine how much lighter a green (or whatever shade of light salmon) it could look once more.

What a mess of things I can make, the cities I can completely level or burn down, when I don’t look up.

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