happy birthday

---

i am 26. i am 26 in 9 days. i am 26 and i planned on killing myself at 17, so failed step one, and then i tried again at 19, but it didn't stick, so strike 2, and then i tried again during the pandemic at 20, and it didn't work out, and then i got talked down somewhere between 23 and 24, and that's fourth strike! the inning should be over! the ump didn't call the fourth strike, though, he keeps signaling 3-2 like he's waiting for me to swing and a miss. maybe every strike has been a foul ball. i hit it off the tip of the bat and the fans get excited before they realize it's out. i'm so fucking tired, dude, just end the at-bat.

i am 26 in 9 days and i'm too fucking old for anyone in my god damn year book: people younger than me fussing over discourse that hasn't mattered in years and people younger than me and even more disillusioned than me but they want the world. the world doesn't exist, just get over it, it makes the days go by a lot better when you realize none of it's rela, buddy. i haven't seen a god damn callout in a year and thank the gods for small miracles. i keep a whistle on my keys but it isn't for me - gods, no, i'm white and charming and i only pass half the time so either the pigs wanna fuck me as a gal or they're irritated by the next kurt cobain.

anyways, my coworkers are 19 and 20 and 21 and maybe even sometimes 22 and i go holy shit you're a fucking baby, even though they're like, grown adults now. i can't tell if i had "i'm 16 and traumatized so all my problems are nuclear missiles" disease until i was 22 or if that's just like, what it's like to be a victim of grooming and fucking insane. i fucking hate calling myself a victim, because i got so sick of being pigeonholed into how i was supposed to act. am i consumable enough now that i'm on HRT and spiking my fucking leather jacket and my vest says don't bully me i'll cum and i'm smoking and smirking at the guys at the bar because even if i piss them off, it's a good time? that i gave up trying to be pleasant and appeaseable and having no identity except the mirror others hold up at me?

i got married last year. it feels like a god damn lifetime ago. i turn my wedding ring over and over on my finger and try to remind myself that now legally speaking my husband would walk directly to hades and drag me back out by my neck collar if i killed myself. it kinda helps. sometimes i wonder if i let him down by not killing myself faster so that he wouldn't get too attached, but here we are: i'm 26 soon, so i should've really made up my mind a while ago, huh? i think my sabremetrics are like, asinine. 60 Ks across like, 9 plate appearances. they're saying how did he see so many pitches, dude, that shouldn't be possible, the average at bat is like 6-9 pitches. nice.

i keep saying goddamn tonight because my mom gave me teary doe eyes and fake tears and asked me to pwease stop saying god damn so much it offends her, as a christian, as a good christian woman, it really upsets her, and she tries to avoid "words i don't like" (i still remember her calling me a baby and a pussy for saying stop calling people the r slur or dykes) so i should show her the same courtesy, which is really funny because she absolutely doesn't. she doesn't! anyways, i stared at her and realized none of it matters anyways and one of us is gonna die sooner rather than later and i said i'd give it a try halfheartedly because realistically, i probably won't. but it's like, my ethos to *try* and respect other people's religions. i hope god asks her why she was so hateful and why she fucking hated her son and why she was such a judgemental bitch using his words to spread hatred and fear and division and cast out the needy.

i'm 26 in 9 days and all that happened as i walked in the door from work while my dad bemoaned the people gaming the system to get EBT and welfare who are "fat and lazy" and "get nothing but junk food" and how "everyone needs to work to live" and how he NEVER got handouts and my mom complain about how taxing the rich in this state will delete more jobs and i'm like, god, we're divorced, but just get rid of this house. burn it to the ground. there's nothing in here. this house has blood and rot in every floorboard and wall and crawlspace with the black mold and the rats from hoarding and fuck statistically probably some asbestos in there who knows.

i think every day about john darnielle's interview about how like, you don't realize you're not gonna die young until you hit 26 or 27, like -- there's so much of you that was suicidal that when you get there, it feels a little like a betrayal of your past self. like your younger self judges you a little. but it's a monday and you have to buy butter and milk anyways. i genuinely don't think i was supposed to make it this far, though, like: the fates are just gambling with me at this point. every day this week dead animals have followed me. i literally cannot stop seeing corpses. i've neve seen this much roadkill in may before. it feels like an omen, like, hey this was supposed to be you. you don't know what you're doing by going through with this.

i'm gonna be 26 in 9 days and i have been fucking at war with myself because i do want to live and i want to visit my siblings i have now (not blood, every god damn drop of my blood has been tainted beyond human comphrehension so thank the gods for that honestly they don't deserve it) and i'd like a little apartment with my husband in the city. but i also want to become lost media i want to haunt the goddamn narrative i'm sick of having no control over the developers plan for my life i'm so fucking sick of being the character everyone loves to see suffer, i want to become a ghost in the machine that is remembered like a concept. everyone had a different idea of the boss's legacy. they were all so fucking wrong. let my blood color the fucking pages and the rest of the runtime until it runs so goddamn burgandry that you can't read the pen marks for the script anymore and every person is trying to interpret what would've saved me until i'm a mythos and not even a well written person any longer.

i smoke out the window for half an hour and wonder, like, what the fuck happened. iis it so much to ask for normal-ish parents? they don't even have to be normal *and* not transphobic. i would literally take just 1. i went to a baseball game with my dad and we pretended everything was normal and we were a normal family and i drank him under the table at the ballpark and watched the colors spin out the train home and felt so much peace and happiness at the idea of sinking to the bottom of the puget sound at sunset and never having to think again. i wondered if i could open the doors and fall directly into the water. they definitely have safety measures for that.

some of my coworkers affectionately tell me i dress like kurt cobain. i love that. snakes in the grass beneath our feet, rain in the clouds above. some moments last forever. i think about how every birthday is a practiced theatrical routine where my parents know nothing about me and i pretend vaguely i want to be around them for a few hours and that's like, a normal family thing. i think about how many times i stare out the windows at my job at 3 pm and wonder if i should just sleep in my car in the parking lot. i think honestly my managers would fucking call a wellness check on me.

take a hit and celebrate 1 year and 5 months of not trying to fucking kill myself! the only thing outweighing the despair is i want so badly to get that number to 1 and 6. perfectly even, as all things should be. it's something, though. i'm writing this and not drafting a will, so the coping is working somehow. i never considered the part of my safety plan where i hate being alone when every small thing anyone does starts to piss me off like i'm instantly overstimulated. like, i don't want people to just stop living, so what the fuck, brain? it's like a misfired attempt to control every variable around me as if i have any agency in anything but i don't and i never have and i'm not really upset at anyone i just. i just. i just? i just. i just like, need everyone to immediately understand what i'm saying and also i need to explode, and also i need to be vivisected open and my internals taken out, but god please don't leave me alone either i'm so scared. it's so isolating. i need to pretend that the world turns when the game is paused.

raise a glass to 26, dude, i never expected to live this long and apparently my brain has decided that this is the perfect fucking poetic time to try to fucking blow up. i stopped taking birth control but that was at the start of the month-- no wait that was like, two months ago? i've been on HRT for a year and two months so i can't blame that, i'm just boringstyle crazy.

there's no point to this. i stare at the streetlamp out my window and the little wisps of fog and i really sincerely think i missed my chance to become a missing persons case, but miss it i did, and now i have to live with it. live, for better or for worse. i turn 26 next week. happy birthday to me, i guess.