Friday, August 23, 2013

Splitting Headaches

Hey, it’s Beckley.

I’ve been feeling pretty sick lately and have been taking as much downtime as is possible.  Fortunately my work allows me to sit down with people, so that’s helpful.  Still, it’s hard to by sympathetic and understanding when you feel like crap.  But that’s an issue I’ve learned to work through long ago.  It’s kind of necessary as a therapist.  Having a bad day and getting snippy is career suicide.

I’ve noticed tensions have gotten higher lately.  I don’t think it’s the zombie attacks.  Those are still happening with lessening regularity.  Everything is under control in that department.  Rather, there’s been an increase in people getting in verbal, and sometimes physical, altercations.  Some between the Havenites and the UAS immigrants, but also between people in general.  Tempers are short.  People won’t admit why that is, or they just don’t realize, but I think I’ve got a good idea.

It has officially gotten real that people left.  Yes, Josh has been talking about leaving for a minute and he has been gone for a little while now.  But the last group of people have left and, according to Josh, are getting settled in.  Josh and his people are officially moved out.  It’s real.  And now people are dealing with all those emotions.  We all have abandonment issues.  That’s just a reality of the world we live in.  Anyone who says they don’t is a liar or a sociopath.  Or both.  If you’re a sociopath, it’s pretty much a given you are a liar too.  But I digress…

The point is that we’ve lost most everyone in our lives and the only solace we had, as poor as it was, was that they didn’t have a choice.  People died, they didn’t actively choose to leave.  With Josh and his group, though, they did.  And that’s not a betrayal, it’s not bad of them, but it does touch a wound that has only barely begun to scab over.  There can be a knee-jerk emotional reaction, and that leads to the irritability we’re seeing.  Right now, people probably don’t even realize it’s there, but it has to be dealt with.

If you let this anger grow, it’s going to take over.  We live in a world where death has become much more prevalent, but that doesn’t mean that it is the norm.  Death and abandonment are still tragedies.  So we can’t get cynical and act like we don’t need to deal with that.  When it comes to Josh and his wife and Kincaid and all the others who left, they didn’t choose to specifically leave us.  They didn’t take a long look at us and say, “Yeah…that guy.  I’m leaving that loser right about now.”  No, they decided, for their own good, to make a new home.  This isn’t personal and if you try to make it so, it will eat you alive.  This isn’t like the Exiles (who I heard a Havanite grumbling about under his breath the other day) who attacked the governing body of Haven, made it personal, then left.  There’s no judgment, no anger.  Just that sense of sadness when you move on from something you love.  And you can rest assured that sadness is on both sides.

Although, on the other end of that spectrum, I can’t help but notice that a lot of UAS guys seem calmer knowing that Kincaid moved out.  From what I’ve gathered, the guy is akin to the boogeyman to them.  Which is understandable seeing as how he went rogue that one time and blogged about torturing those UAS soldiers.  And how he blew up a weapons depot.  And how he’s made it very clear that he will end anyone who stands against him.  And because everyone knows his history of being a marauder, which some find it hard to move past.  Personally, I think that Kincaid gets a rush out of being the big scary guy.  I’ll leave it there though, since he once calmly threatened me with a facial/rectal exam if I ever “psychoanalyze my shit again.”  He also implied that the inside of his head would make me cry.  In my own defense, I can guarantee it wouldn’t, but it seemed pretty important for him to have me believe that, so I’ll just leave it there.  I like the guy, truthfully.  He's got issues, though.  But find me someone who doesn't.

Oh, and speaking of Kincaid, before he left, he dropped three cases of root beer off at my Luxury Shoppe (the extra “p” and “e” are for classiness!)  It’s premium A&W stuff.  Kincaid found it somewhere (probably on one of the many scouting trips between Haven in his new home) and traded it for my entire stock of mallow cups.  For real.  I don’t get it either.  I didn’t think I could so much as give those things away.  Dude loves his mallow, I guess.  Then again, soda is horrifically expired now whereas mallow cups have been on the shelves since the Great Depression so he may feel he got the better end of the deal.  For root beer, though, I will risk all manner of flat, sugary botchalism.  I know I’m not the only one to feel the same way, so stop on by and trade something neat for expired nostalgia.

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