Survival is not always pretty,
not always photoshop beautiful, not always a meme-worthy mantra that can be
printed cheaply to be sold at an outlet store for great aunties to put up on
their living room entryway wall. Survival often is navigating the human mine
fields, explosions that took lovers and kin, friends and enemies, blew up the
world around you multiple times over. Overdoses, over-reaching, over-doing,
over the edge and/or top. And yet somehow, some survive through all that, go
far past where others got left behind, even though the survivor might’ve gone
harder and more stupidly through the mine fields. That’s the fucked up thing
about the metaphysical mine fields of Amerikkkan culture – you got no idea what
will keep you from getting exploded. You can carefully plot your course and be
gone in an instant anyways. You can plough ahead like a drunken fullback, and
make it to 69 years or nicer. There’s no explaining it.
Survivor’s guilt gets you, when
you’re thinking while standing safely for a moment in the mine fields, maybe
even off the worst part of the mine fields, able to be safe more often than
not, wondering “why me?” and how come you didn’t get exploded while your people
did. The RIP tattoos and picture altars on small thrift store wooden shelves to
those who are gone but not forgotten. Why them and not us? How did I get to be
here, greyed around the edges, puffed out from more life than others, slowing
down, my transmission leaking fluid from the eyeballs unexplainably now and
then, but still going? And why did the others not?
There’s no fucking explaining it.
You survive. That’s all. Keep going, don’t think about it too hard or you’ll
miss avoiding the next explosion.
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