What if god* does make mistakes

What if you were never intended to be born, that everything you did just make it worse for everyone in your life. Would that be god’s mistake?

Still from the director’s cut of The Butterfly Effect

I’ve survived the coronavirus pandemic. You’re reading this now, so chances are, you have also survived the pandemic. Whether that turns out to be a good thing or a bad thing for each of us remains to be seen. To date, over 950,000 Americans and 6 million people world-wide have not survived.

They died. They are dead.

What if I was not supposed to survive? There is a certain comfort in dying in a mass shooting, a war, natural disaster or a pandemic. The numbers are so staggering that the individual dead get lost in the crowd.

Nobody left alive really shares the individual grief of those left behind. The grief is so overwhelming that it’s easy to assume there is no grief suffered by the living. It’s hard for the survivors to demand sympathy for fear of being selfish, so in some respects, everyone heals faster.

Some don’t even feel, the grief is so overwhelming.

I think about The Butterfly Effect a lot and not in a good way. Well, maybe in a matter-of-fact sort of way. The director’s cut that ends with Evan traveling back to that moment his mother is about to give birth to him and he strangles himself in the womb with his umbilical cord.

He realizes that all his friends would be better off if there never was any version of him alive.

I often wonder if the same is true of me.

Now, there are clearly problems with the premise. If I did not exist, then my kids would not exist and the grandkids… but I’m not absolutely certain that is true. Perhaps they still would have existed because perhaps God* wanted them to be born. I would just not have been their dad or grandpa, but their essence — their souls, if you will — would have become part of this world. It’s like wrapping your head around infinity; you can try but it will drive you insane.

I’m not an easy person to have a relationship with. I know this about myself. I’m opinionated, strong-willed and like things the way I like things, especially when it involves a creative endeavor. I have a short fuse and a bit of a temper when you push my boundaries after I have been clear about what they are. I’m slow to trust anyone and even when I do trust, it’s not a deep trust. I live in a state of constant situational awareness.

As exhausting as I am to those around me, it’s exponentially exhausting to be me. “Surely,” I think to myself, “this is not a normal existence.” Few people around me seem to be in this perpetual state of vigilance, which is why I think often that I am an unnecessary burden to those around me. If I was not here, they wouldn’t need to make allowances for my sh*t in their own lives.

I recently learned that some people don’t have a mind’s eye, that the constant, multiple narratives and mental images that don’t and can’t have words that play in my head all day is not a universal trait. When there aren’t yet words, I see pictures and colors and these amorphous ideas like large clouds imploding and exploding constantly until a picture takes form that filters into a description that words can contain. I can’t imagine living without this “movie reel,” yet I can’t help but feel a bit jealous of those who have mental peace.

I once had a conversation with a client where he was asking for my expertise, but what he really wanted to do was for me to agree with him and just do what he wanted. I can respect a client who says, “I want to do this thing this way and I just need you to implement it.” It happens a lot and mostly, on the small things — like using this headshot over that one, this color over that — but in this particular case, the feature in question was one that would become harmful to his brand over time. I explained what and why. He hung onto his opinions. I tried another approach and still, he hung on.

“Why,” I asked? After all, he hired me to be the expert. In the end, we compromised.

I knew I was being difficult, but it was for his benefit. Perhaps he didn’t see it that way because after we said goodbye and in that moment before each clicked our respective “hang up” buttons on the phones, I heard him scream, “JESUS F*CKING CHRIST!”

He perhaps was unaware his circuit was still open.

That has stuck with me for over a decade.

Was I being too obstinate? Maybe, but if I just did what he wanted me to do without push-back, his life surely would have been easier that day, even if it would have gone badly further on down the road.

I feel most people are nice to me just to get what they want. Once they get what they want from me, I am disposable. If they don’t get what they want from me, someone else will do just as well. I’m merely a battery that fuels them. When they have used me up, I am tossed aside.

I recently read from a local publisher that she gets pitched memoirs mostly by middle-aged white men, close to 90% of all pitches. She doesn’t even read them as the market is already over-saturated and nobody buys them unless you are super famous. And even then, it’s a gamble.

There are approximately 20.5 million men between the ages of 55-65 in the United States. About 73% of these men are white, giving us about 14.9M middle-aged white men. Not a day goes by when I’m not reminded in some media channel that I am a member of the most disposable, useless and unwanted population alive. Nobody wants to publish our stories or even hear that we are aware of our own disposability and redundancy. Even this screed you are reading now has already garnered eight-two thousand eye-rolls and forty-seven thousand, six hundred and twelve deep sighs.

When we were younger men, we were expected to be silent, stoic and unemotional as we bore the weight of the primary provider of familial income, food and shelter. Now that we have time and space to tell our stories, nobody wants to hear them. The appetite for us has been satiated. The narrative of us has already been written by those with more authority.

There goes another eye-roll. I heard it.

Contrary to popular media narratives, the majority of us middle-aged white men don’t have powerful jobs. The majority of us have been worked beyond usability and economic viability, saddled with outdated skills and dated ideas, rendering us in physical and emotional pain, simply waiting to die. Repairing or retraining us is an investment with negative returns, so nobody is interested.

We’re also very lonely, having few if any friends. A lover or primary companion has long since tired of us and few are willing to take us on, fearing an overwhelming emotional burden. It’s just as well because we are mostly skittish about the expectations you have that we won’t be able to fulfill.

I’d tell you this, but you don’t want to hear it. Instead, I’ll avoid you, change the subject if a conversation becomes too personal, keep you on read and ghost you at my earliest opportunity, perhaps leaving you confused when you should be grateful I spared you the mess roiling under these green eyes and gray hair. It would only get worse for you as I age; a look that is simply a resignation of mortality and a wasted life. It too, is a lie.

Your youth need not be wasted on those who wasted theirs.

As I was saying earlier before we got off on a side track in the middle of nowhere without a handcar, we both survived the pandemic so far. But we won’t survive life. It doesn’t matter when or where we exit; it’s always going to be in the middle of something more important going on, probably inconvenient to someone. Life will go on; the faster the better.

I’ve been everywhere I wanna go; seen everything I wanna see… I’m tired of being me — Flack on Amazon Prime

I first said something similar to my optometrist about ten years back, when she said I will probably need cataract surgery in my lifetime. I replied I didn’t mind going blind, that I’d seen everything I really wanted to see. She started to tear up like that was the saddest thing she’d ever hear. I assured her I was at peace and she should be as well. It’s irrational to strive to see and do everything.

A person can only experience so much in a life.

It would be best if you each carried on as if I never existed.

Tired of me song from Flack

---

*To be clear about one thing; I don’t believe god exists. The title of this essay is one hundred percent click bait based on common parlance use in the culture. Seriously, I’m not up for that debate on anything relating to a god. Believe what you want; leave me out of it.

---

---

Substack made me ask you about their new app. Ok, they didn’t technically make me, but it’s actually not a bad app! It’s well-designed. You should try it out.

I have exciting news to share: You can now read Tarnished Pennies in the new Substack app for iPhone.

With the app, you’ll have a dedicated Inbox for my Substack and any others you subscribe to. New posts will never get lost in your email filters, or stuck in spam. Longer posts will never cut-off by your email app. Comments and rich media will all work seamlessly. Overall, it’s a big upgrade to the reading experience.

The Substack app is currently available for iOS. If you don’t have an Apple device, you can join the Android waitlist here.