Chernobyl

I promised I would try to take care of myself this week. I want you to know that I meant it. 

I went and walked on the beach and listened to the birds sing. They were seagulls and it was probably more a frantic cacophony of squawking, but honestly that seems like an appropriate theme song for 2023. 

I stopped and smelled the roses. I mean, maybe they weren't so much "roses" as they were "weeds," but isn't it more symbolically appropriate to find weeds life-affirming anyway? After all, anyone can appreciate flowers. I kind of prefer the unyielding tenacity of weeds. Their commitment to grow in the most inhospitable environments is admirable. I could probably learn a few things from weeds. 

I took some time at lunch to walk around the marina by the office and soak in the beauty of the boats gliding through the water. With all the grace of a bull in a china shop, I may have tripped and fell into the water. I waited to see if anyone would notice me starting to drown. They didn't. They never do.

I've indulged in relaxing baths and a little light meditation before bedtime. It seems I've found the perfect routine to allow me to drift off to sleep peacefully. Or perhaps piece-fully might be more accurate given the unrelenting nature of my nightmares lately. Nighttime is no longer about "rest." It's simply about collecting tiny fragments of unconsciousness and hoping like hell they add up to enough energy to get through another day. 

Of course, maybe I did absolutely none of those things and instead spent the week writing shitty magnetic poetry about nightmares and going down a rabbit-hole of Chernobyl documentaries, as one does. But hey, that should at least count as some proper downward social comparison, right? Because at least I'm not radioactive, and I haven't been forced to abandon my home at a moment's notice.

So, I dunno…

Maybe it's time to just build a blanket fort and hide from the world so I don't have a total meltdown and poison everyone around me. You know, kinda like the No. 4 reactor in Chernobyl, which also lost control during a test at low power due to poor design and insufficiently prepared personnel at the helm. And I, too, have a very inadequate containment structure for my toxicity. Hell, maybe that's why I'm so fucking isolated and lonely all the time. I've created an exclusion zone to keep everyone far enough away that I won't hurt them. 

On the positive side, I think I may have found my spirit nuclear reactor. Everyone has one of those, right? 

And eventually reactor No. 4 did get a proper containment structure, so maybe there's hope for me still. Of course, that containment structure is referred to as a sarcophagus, so I'm not sure that inspires a lot of optimism…

But hey, if I'm gonna be kindred spirits with a nuclear reactor, at least maybe I'll get a decent superpower out of it...or at least a third eyeball.