After a year and a half, I still hate grocery shopping. Nothing destroys me like grocery shopping. Iām sure other things could, but I do not do those other things.
Partly it is reminders. Shopping for food is filled with reminders. There is something Eugie would have enjoyed. That was a favorite snack of hers. Oh, I always skipped that because she didnāt like it. I used to buy two of those, but now I buy one. Yes, far too many reminders.
But more it is because it gives me time to think, and thinking is very bad. My mind wanders, and there is nowhere good that it will go. Other activities give me a chance to think as well. Driving is good at that. Any waiting or traveling excels in allowing my thoughts to flicker about. Which makes those things to avoid.
If I could cease thinking, that would be a gift. And at home I do a good job of just that. I am a master of self-distraction. I can take my mind on a thousand trivial journeys. Books and movies are good for that, as long as I choose carefully. The Internet is better. Ah, the Internet is a gem. Facebook alone is a giant gapping hole I can get lost in. All those angry people. All that rage. All the claims of offense and the far vaster number of pointless insults. All the politics that everyone finds so very, very important. Little of it is important to me. Little of life is, so it is a given, but that truth shines a bit brighter online. I never get angry in the midst of all that anger (although many have ascribed to me that emotion). I am an observer. Rage is left for those who care, and in any case, anger to me was always a personal matter. You donāt find rage in a thousand deathsāthose numbers are statistics and you calmly find a way to fix the problem. No, rage comes with one death. One pain. Anger is always singular, and in the first person.
I donāt laugh at what I see either. Thatās not the way of observers. And I donāt want to laugh. I have no interest in emotions of any kind, since emotions tend to grow, and when they become strong, they always go to the same place for me. And that defeats the point. The point is distraction. The point is to take me away from feeling. And as I said, Iām good at that.
I have to be good at that. In a year and a half, nothing has changed. People like to lie. They like to lie to me which I suspect allows them to lie to themselves: That things will get better. It is an absurdity. Why would things get better? Byā¦forgetting? By abandoning what was? No, things getting better or worse here depend on actual, real things, and nothing actual, real, is going to change. Without a handy resurrection spell, things will not get better. And like anger and laughter, I have no particular interest in things getting better. People in recent years have adopted the philosophy that life is about happiness. That the goal of life is to be happy. This is a very new occurrence, but so many cling to it as if it has always been the case and it is natural and ordained by the universe. It is not. Far more people in the history of the world have spent their lives trying to ābe goodā or ābe honorableā or any number of other things. Happiness is not the meaning of life, and while I have been happy most of my life, far more than most people I know, it is not my goal. It is a thing, like other things.
And some who see anyone not happy, or see themselves not happy, want to start giving their advice on depression. It must be clinical depression. There must be therapies and drugs to kick this sickness. But I was married for twenty-six years to a psychologist. Iām not allowed such self-deception. Depression is a mental illness. It has meaning. It has effects. It is not simply equivalent to a lack of happiness. Some people need the crutch of calling themselves sick, or more often, need for others to be sick. I do not need that. Depressed is not depression. Pain is not depression. Donāt mix them up. It is not fair to those who are sick.
Which leads me back to, I went grocery shopping today. And I hate that. And no, I do not intend to come up with some method to avoid that chore. I plan to distract myself again. Because that is what I can do. Hell, that is what most people do whenever they watch a game or go out to a bar or fiddle with a hobbyādistract themselves from lives that are not what they wish they were. I didnāt do that. I didnāt need distractions. And now I do.
Time to read Facebookā¦