The Benefits Of Thinking Economically

Sometimes, this feels so self-indulgent.

By sometimes, I mean all the time. Blogs are fucking ridiculous and I'm sure every blogger has written at least one blog about why blogs suck, so here's high hopes that this one won't turn out that way.

I have a lot to complain about, but not enough sadism to actually put people through the gauntlet of me talking about it. I like to think I'm merciful. Or sometimes, even nice.

I went out on Saturday. I woke up at 8:30 am (3 hours after I had gone to sleep), took a shower, ate some waffles, and drove over to Dia's house. From there, we figured out the directions from her house to the coastline and left. I drove for 2 hours before we reached Salisbury, where my grandfather lived, died, and is currently buried. We drove over to the old house to check on it and I found myself a little choked up seeing it as it was.

I've been visiting the house since I was born; this was the first time I was there without any of my parents and it was the first time I had seen all of the things that used to be neatly packed away; they were all spread out waiting to be sold or thrown out. It was a little unsettling to find bottles of gin and whiskey in the house; I should've figured out that if the man lives by himself, far away from his family, he's going to be drinking a lot.

All of the beds had been removed. Thrown away. They weren't needed anymore, no one was living there. My mother's old stuffed animals that I used to play with when I went over there had been thrown away. Old knick-knacks had been brought off of their shelves and put onto tables to be sorted through. It was really just weird to see his house utterly dismantled from the inside out, letting my childhood memories come out from the woodwork.

The moment I looked in each room, everything I had ever done inside of it came back to me. The first time I saw ET when I was 4 or 5 and I cried at the end ( it was also the first time I was ever ashamed of crying and told my mom that my I was just tired). The first christmas that I can still remember, when I was 6, when I got a beanie baby and it was my all-time favorite toy ever. The time I brought my guitar with me and broke a string and spent the rest of the weekend sulking that I didn't bring extras. The time I fell asleep on his couch for nearly the entirety of Easter weekend, which was the last time that I would see him.

He would always tell me to get my haircut and I would always laugh at him for making such a request. He would tell me that he liked me and I could tell that he meant it in a way that most grandparents probably wouldn't say to their children; we disagreed on a lot of things, but we never let the other know and we got along really great, even though I hardly ever spoke to him. When he died, my hair was shorter than it had been in years. He never saw.

After combing through the dusty records, I locked the house up. It was probably the last time I will ever see the inside of it. I'll finish the journey later, as it is 5:30 in the morning.

I promise the second half is much funnier and much less depressing. I'm just exhausted and can only recall bittersweet memories and feelings of unfulfilment