The passage of time, decay, entropy and many forms of failure.

Failure takes many forms, and we are not always the reason it occurs.  

Yeah, sometimes you try real hard to win the big game, but the other team is just a bit better and you lose.  That is not personal failure.  That is life.  Maybe you could have run faster you think, maybe you could have thrown farther you think, maybe the one catch or shot or yard you missed mattered enough to have swung the odds you think, but this way lies madness. 

There are too many moving parts.  Too many variables for you to blame yourself for this "failure" as you see it.  YOU lost, you think, forgetting the team. It has happened, and it will happen again.

Losing, or failing, is the cost of playing the game.  If you refuse to play out of fear of failure, the results are all together more dour.  The prognosis, worse.

To protect yourself from the possiblity of breaking your ankle out there in the world, you break it yourself, in your bedroom, and you never leave for fear of the thing you would instead make come to pass yourself. 

Hope your enjoying that cold comfort of being right about your own misfortune by causing it yourself because NO ONE ELSE WILL ENJOY HEARING ABOUT IT.

You will be ruthlessly negative, hopelessly negative, the one that always complains.  The one for which things are never good enough.  The latte is never quite right, The weather is never QUITE right, the food is never quite right, the boy or girl or job or show or car or shirt or child or pet or show or song IS NEVER 

QUITE

RIGHT

.........You were so exhausted by life so now you've taken to becoming exhausting to everyone else who is STILL trying. Still fighting. Still climbing while boulders and bolts rain down on them, while radical winds try to RIP them from the steep incline, rather then encourage them, root for them, hope for them, you snipe from afar, shooting covert arrows and throwing stones.  Because in THEIR EFFORT you see your own failures.  Your own compromises.  Your own hurt.  HOW DARE THEY NOT BE BROKEN.  HOW DARE THEY KEEP TRYING.  I wish they fell off the mountain and they were crippled down here.  

With me.

Because i miss them.  

On some level you do. You miss trying, you miss being on that mountain.  You miss when people heard your complaints as you both clung to the sides and responded with, "I know RIGHT? This is fucking CRAZY!" because you were trying, and yes maybe even failing, TOGETHER. 

It's a relatable state to be in.

A human state to be in.  Try to be brave.  Try to try.  You may not win, but the alternative is truly a fate worse than failure.

I am garbage.

 I am humanoid garbage.   I am worthless. 

I am part of a system wherein billionaires and millionaires can get away with raping children, sex trafficking,  fixing presidential elections, gerrymandering to steal districts,  insider trading and accepting bribes to accumulate mass personal wealth, and all but drinking the blood of live babies on national television under a backdrop of a giant MAKE AMERICAN GREAT AGAIN billboard while legions of blood thirsty demons cheer in support. 

There are no consequences for these inhumane actions.  No laws that are adhered to or enforced.  There is no punishment waiting for these bad actors in this world,  and no karmic receipt appears to be manifesting as we suffer at their behest.  They harm us and the ticket is hand waved.  They steal from us and the supreme court protects them.  They hate us and try to kill us with every action.  They Black Bag protesters and anyone non white or opposed to their doctrine of hate. They try to extract more from us each and each waking hour in the form of lower wages, higher taxes, lower benefits and draconian loopholes we must jump through to receive the meager stipend they allow us. 

There are no laws now.

If there are no consequences for bad actors, for the purest of evil, then the fact that laws exist at all is an illusion.  If the laws only apply to the poor,  then they are not laws, they are polite suggestions that money renders ineffectual.  Those 800 billionaires own 67% of all the wealth in america, while 50% of the population of the U.S. owns 2.5% of the total wealth of the country.  

So 175 million people,  own less then one twenty fifth (1/25) of what 800 billionaires own.  

There is only one conclusion I can draw from this.

I am trash.  Subhuman garbage.  I do not deserve to live because i am told so by my government each and every day.

Every time i go to the dentist and they tell me my insurance does not cover dental i am told that i am garbage and deserve to suffer and die.  Every time i go in for medical care and am presented with a bill that dwarfs what i make i am being told by my government that i should just go die. Every time i vote and it ends up being meaningless because the electoral college and citizens united have rendered the idea of a popular vote obsolete THEY ARE TELLING ME TO GO DIE.

I have no voice, I have no influence, i have no money, i have no power.  I am paste to be ground down to build parking lots for Porsche's and Buggati's. 

I am told to vote, to protest to organize but also shown that my vote is worthless, and that if i protest i will be shot, harassed, imprisoned or deported.  I am told to take part in my local government that is equally corrupt and worthless.  I am told to do these things while i struggle to not die from exposure.  To not die from lack of health care. To not die from lack of basic resources and food.  I am told to work 40 hours a week.  No 50 hours a week.  No, 2 jobs.  No 2 jobs and work in government.  Also your rents going up.  Also food prices are going up.  Also the value of your money is going down.  Also we can't afford to give you a raise this year in a soft market.  Also those immigrants are why we can't give you a raise.  Also nazis are pretty cool actually.  Also women should be enslaved maybe. Also police wear masks now.  Also we don't need police.  Also death squads with no remorse and no code of conduct and no oversight sounds better to us. Also beating colored people might be what we have to do to protect your job.  Actually now your job IS beating colored people. Actually it's okay to call them colored people.   

Remember that.

And we are supposed to endure this?  We are supposed to be MENTALLY HEALTHY while this occurs?  We are supposed to seamlessly continue to function while we are lied to by pedophiles, thieves, grifters, liars, drug addicts, losers and morons all the while they are fucking killing us?  

It was passive once, they just didn't care about us.  Now it's active.  THEY WANT US TO DIE.

To what end, i don't know, but i know one thing for certain is that I AM GARBAGE. 

We are social creatures and we judge each other ruthlessly.  We accept that social stigma is how we keep a society in line and that natural social pressure keeps anti social behavior in check by pointing it out and insulting and berating those who would act out with anti social behaviors. 

We also judge ourselves by how others appraise us.  

So given all this information. I know what they think i am.

Given what you know now, 

What are you?

Dear mom and dad

 Dear mom,

I'm sorry things didn't work out.  I'm a 44 year old man now, and out of all that time here i only spent a short 13 or 14 with you.  I know you had challenges, not enough money to be a single mom in the beginning,  not enough confidence to date men that were actually good men and not just the man of the hour, and your upbringing left you woefully unprepared for the creature you created in me.  You were raised in a religious family and you bore an autistic savant child.  Speaking sentences before i was 2 and processing everything everything EVERYTHING in a way you could not possibly comprehend or be ready for.   I don't think either of us was ready for what kind of life i would have.  Severely sick and asthmatic. Allergic to the air.  Almost killed just getting out of the womb with nerve damage that nearly broke my neck.  The time, you know, didn't help.  It being the 80's no one really talked about autism that much then, or knew much about it.  Of course growing up in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the shitcaked boots of local farmers didn't help one bit.  I went to 3rd grade in a chicken coop.  Yep.  A chicken coop in a small town full of small minds and no place to run.  I was hated, beaten on by kids in school, a teacher or two, and the men you dated, and the men you wed.  Not the first man, mind you, not my actual father, but that will come later. 

You seemed impressed by me when i was little.  You were a protective mother and fought for me when i was little.  That matters.  You stopped fighting for me as i grew up, i got smarter and felt confined in a world and community that did not want me.  You, changed to suit your surroundings.  Became less city and more country.  You worldview shrunk as you agreed more with your redneck husband, and no amount of a kid talking could convince you.  You were not alone in that.  It's not surprising how little value a child holds in the world, the minute they stop being little, they become problem children to be discarded, no longer kids to protect.  Teachers didn't listen either, and students were constant antagonists.  Small minded bullies and assholes that only responded when i fought back.  I tried words mom, i did.  I tried harder then any boy has ever tried ever.  One autistic kid against the world and i was always always always treated like i was wrong.  Like i was an experiment,  a freak, a test subject. 

You stopped believing in me, and started believing in the crowd, and that was it for us.  The string cut and cord severed and i was off to learn to be a man alone at 14.  

Oh sure, we tried a few times over the years to talk to each other, but you only got worse as time went on.  You moved to Texas with the Redneck and got ever more hateful and racist.  You got smaller while the world got big, you never knew that don't know shit.  I did.  So i was always reading always writing always trying to understand WHAT THE FUCK I WAS, long before i had a diagnosis.    I was out there being messy, trying and failing.  Alienating EVERY SINGLE FUCKING PERSON i thought i was friends with.  Without understanding any of what i was doing wrong.

I'm sorry i was right about him. I'm sorry he died.  I'm sorry you had to be the one to find him.  I'd never wish that kind of hurt on anyone.  I don't hate you, and for what it's worth i think i may have been a better man if i had parents.   It just wasn't meant to be i guess.  I was meant to suffer, to struggle to endure.  That is what made me the man i am today.  A force of will, a keen refusal to die.  For better or worse, i just keep getting up and trying.  I don't even know why anymore.  It's just instinct and i have no hope but to follow it now. 

You may think i am severe for not wanting to talk to you.  You were raised to not talk about money or politics or religion to avoid conflict.  I raised my self to learn the inner workings of everything and and everyone so that i could better understand the unwritten social rules of the world.  Autistic folks don't have the same instincts that social capability normal folks have.  We have to build it from scratch if we are lucky enough to be able to at all.    I tend to favor black and white.  Absolutes.  When you are someone who researches and reads and learns you find out quickly a lot of what people believe in is nonsense, fables, bullshit based on nothing.  I'm long past arguing with people about what is real, and IS and what ISN'T.  Your ignorance and that of the worlds is not my problem.  I have a zero tolerance policy for evil.  Evil thoughts, evil believes, and the ones who would enable or encourage evil deeds. In fact i'd say i'm more classically christian in that belief then 95% of people out there claiming to believe in god.   I don't support hate speech.  I don't support billionaires plundering the planet and killing poor people.  I don't support corruption and pedophilia and bribery and graft and the wholesale destruction of the justice system such that there is no longer justice for anyone who is not RICH.   Hopefully this helps you somehow.  Hopefully you can be at peace.  Due to my upbringing and the things i have suffered, i know i will never be. 

Dear Dad,

I don't really know what happened, or why you left when i was 2.  I know that mom claims you tried to kidnap me, but i'll never know that story for real.   I grew up an autistic asthmatic kid with a mom who worked 2-3 jobs and didn't understand me at all and your absence made that infinitely worse.  I don't know you completely as a man.  I know OF you, and from what little i know you seem like a decent man.  Clearly autistic as well, based on what mom and grams told me about you as a kid.  I wish you would have made an effort to be in my life, or returned my efforts that i spent trying to get you to communicate with me.  I've tried with you basically my whole life, and i usually get 1 phone call every 5 years and maybe one email or text every couple years.   The men that were in my life in your absence were abusive, shitty, idiot man babies that my mother hastily brought into the fold in what was no doubt a desperate attempt to fix a bad situation.  No dad, no money,  no help, for a kid like me, must have been truly awful to manage.  Especially without knowing what was wrong with me,  WHY i was so weird, so different.  Maybe if you were there i would not have endured such a horrible childhood.

Maybe i would not have been beaten by a stepfather in the grocery store parking lot, on the porch of our home, in front of a church.  Maybe i would not have been bullied by the other kids if i had a role model that was LIKE ME.  Maybe i wouldn't have to turn into the monster i became to protect myself in my youth, the monster i needed to be to survive being attacked from all sides. 

I'm sorry you were in a bad marriage.  I'm sorry carol was bad for you. It's hard to be with normal people when you are autistic, and i have the benefit of knowing, of having a diagnosis.  You never knew, maybe you doubt that still.   I'm sorry we never connected for more then a moment.  I don't know if you care, have ever cared, will ever care, but just know that for a man to grow up without a father, is a profoundly miserable thing indeed.  I am a good man. A strong man. A caring man.  I did all of that in spite of having no real parents most of my life.  But i could be better still, and if someone were to ask me what my biggest regrets are in my life, it would be growing up without a father. 

I am still here, for however long we have left, and so are you.  It's up to you how this story ends.

-E