In domestic situations I remain estranged, uninvolved.

When I was small, my mother screamed and rampaged, breaking plates and destroying things, more than once drawing on walls with magic markers, more than once smashing walls with a hammer.

 

When I turned 19, I lived with my 10th grade girlfriend and the guy she dated then, a “crust punk” who salvaged food from dumpsters.

 

They occupied the master bedroom.

 

I overlooked the road in a slightly smaller room the crust punk would sometimes clean and sometimes steal things from.

 

I moved back in with my mother and stayed with her until I was 25, at which point she refused to let me live with her any longer.

 

I DON’T KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING, I warned her.

 

I found a room in a farm house for rent on Craigslist.

 

The house was very isolated.

 

A couple my age informally managed the house.

 

I filled my room up with books and trash.

 

I hated interacting with them and avoided being heard and seen.

 

I bought a skeleton key from a hardware store to lock my door when I left.

 

I was worried they would evict me if they knew how many books I owned and how dirty and trash-filled my little bedroom had become.

 

I felt unable to motivate myself to clean the squalid room except immediately prior to the rare occasions I entertained women there, including an ex whom I still sometimes fucked, and a girl from the thrift store where I worked at the time.

 

I spent virtually no time in the rest of the house, even altering my diet to include more nuts, crackers, and canned fish so to avoid spending time in the kitchen or using the refrigerator.

 

At 28, I quit my job without notice and moved back in with my mother.

 

I focused on “my writing” until my savings was depleted, at which time I started an online business selling vintage clothes.

 

My business became improbably successful and, at its peak generated over $50k in profits for at least two, maybe three, consecutive years.

 

During this period of fleeting success, my time was spent sourcing and selling clothes, but my attention and interest always remained elsewhere, mostly with literature and the strange currents of feeling I registered when reading my favorite writers.

 

I reconnected with a third ex while still successful at selling clothes online.

 

I moved in with her and we were married.

 

Her large house had been paid for by her parents and I eventually stopped doing my job to focus on my more fanciful literary activities.

 

Doing things with my wife was how I felt I was justifying my presence in her life, but there was too much “hiding out” as she called it, and a marriage counselor we eventually started visiting disclosed that my wife discussed “feeling like [my] mother” during a private session.

 

The marriage was loving (if unconventionally so) but unhappy, and we separated in June 2020.

 

This was a few weeks after I suddenly quit the job I had been working for the prior year – that having been “the final straw” as it related to her ability to cohabitate with me.  

 

(There had also been problems with repeated psychological breakdowns, protracted periods of unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, dalliences with fringe political movements, and the squandering of shared funds.)

 

The divorce was finalized during the final two weeks of 2020.

 

I spent June and August 2020 staying at various Airbnbs and selling clothes online in a new, and immediately successful venture.

 

In August an alcoholic whose Airbnb I had been staying at invited me to stay long-term in one of his rooms.

 

Tonight, New Years Eve 2020, I heard the alcoholic talking about me to another guest, his house manager, a woman receiving treatment for stage-1 breast cancer.

 

He discussed his desire to coax me out so I might drink with them.

 

“I don’t want to bother him,” the house manager said.

 

I am embarassed by the mess here and am always sure to lock the door when I leave.

 

I am losing interest in selling clothes again.

 

I find myself reading and writing more and more.

 

This is my role.

 

I am the son.

 

I don’t want to become further integrated into society.

 

I dislike society and other people.

 

I am only comfortable around others when in control of how they perceive me, when I am accepted as normal, competent, average (or moderately above-average).

 

When my “image” falls apart, I need to flee.

 

This game I play with others is tiring.

 

It is better to spend my free time alone, rather than carrying the burdensome game out of my days and into my evenings.

 

I am the evil son.

 

When I attempt to transcend my predetermined role I suffer shocks and traumas.

 

When I sink below it I face panic and the elements.

 

When I can maintain it, my stress ebbs to a low and I find time to focus on my art-making and studies.

 

My nature is perfect for me and I am perfect for my nature.

 

I am the bad son.

 

Feel free to talk about me outside the bedroom door.

 

But don’t bother knocking or attempting to intrude.

 

I remain intrigued by depictions of families.

 

 

I will find a different and better family in 2021, and on this eve of a new decade, starting in earnest tonight, right now really, I attempt, behind closed eyes, to decide what they will look like.