But lamenting who I was before my own personal fracturing (and honestly, I liked who I was. He was a swell guy, a real mensche type. It was honestly kind of a bummer watching him go) allowed me to see all the different parts of me in a thousand different lights that I never would’ve looked for before. There’s actually something quite liberating about it, but…but the price is very, very, very fucking high, and as far as I can tell the price is pretty non-negotiable. Worth it? No idea because I have no fuckin clue what my other options were. High fuckin price though, either way. Not a fan.

So, a lament. Lamentation as therapy – sure, but so, so much more. Lamentation as a way to sing a new story about myself. At least that is what I’ve found. Or am beginning to find, anyway – rebuilding your entire sense of self takes some time, and a process in which you can only really see how far you’ve come and not how far you still have to go. One very important thing I learned about myself along this path is that I am most certainly not alone, I am just one token of a type – and a type that is very susceptible to a certain type of affliction. An affliction that I am calling doomerism. And the others out there who share this susceptibility matter to me. They are my pack and many of them are out there wounded and alone – and that is just not funking okay with me. At all.

So, lament as a call to pack. That’s why I said before that if this doesn’t apply to you, then I’m just not talking to you. No offense meant for real – I know there are tons of other afflictions out there, these days. I want everyone to heal, believe me. But the ones I’m calling to, those afflicted with the condition that I swear I’m about to start to actually describe (I promise this time), those are my pack: the people who look out at the world and see what I see. No translation needed (languages of course still need translating, doomerism isn’t an anglophone thing at all; it’s a twenty-first century human thing, and there are a lot of those so even a microscopic percentage of the population is still quite a lot of individuals.). That is, the perspective needs no translation, No need to explain what you’re talking about or why it matters – no more need to explain why anyone should actually freakin care about any of it.

I’m singing my lament as loud as I can so that those who need to hear it – those who already know the tune even if they didn’t realize it until now – can lift their voices to it, too, and we can each of us finally hear those other calls that tell you that you are not a lone wolf, which as we all know is an irreparably broken wolf. A dead or dying wolf. 

So, a lamentation and a call to pack. Not much of a guide to be honest. Truthfully, I liked the sound of the title, I don’t think it was ever even aspirational. More of a sick joke played by one of the more dickish aspects of my personality (even though I’m usually such a sweetheart lol). Whatever the accuracy of the title ends up being isn’t super important to me, though, but what is important is to find my pack. So I’m putting out the call. [Me go gently into that good night? GTFOH!]