Rant, November 2020!Hello, world!Go f**k yourselves.Great opening, huh? Cheery, then angry? I guess that's a microcosm for my perspective. Smiles on the outside, bitter anger on the inside. Well, that's what I am, at this point. Respect to the kind people I know, those that still make me smile. I'm not angry at you. You're good folks.So, where are we? It's late 2020, and we're looking at what is a miserable year. For me, it's been pretty good. I've spent time serving my state and my people, doing visibly more in six months than I have in five years. I can be happy with that. I can also be happy that I've zeroed one form of debt, and bought a lot of little things to make me happy.Physical things, to be sure.The immaterial things are few and far between. I could say I've recovered from the fiascos of last year. No longer am I angry at the selfish actions of one woman, nor am I longing for the selfish desires of another. I still dislike one, and I still miss the other. But those wounds have healed, turned into the scars of resentment and longing. There's no action to take, so I don't feel missing, mostly.I still wish one the best. The other can die in the slow hell she's made for herself, and I firmly believe all her efforts will meet failure, given who she's become. A twisted shade of a girl I once loved. The other, broken but trying, I hope finds her own joy, whatever it is. I don't blame her for what she did; in fact, I thank her for it.To come out of the nightmare that was one, to be taken in and subsequently abandoned by the other... it could have been worse.But they're only steps in the story of my life. Bricks in the house that is me. Built on shaky foundations, on a floodplain in the path of tornadoes and volcanoes and worse, it still endures. I still endure.It's been a shitty decade. Some high points, some pride, but a lot of loneliness and anger. It must be balanced, else I would not be here. Were it not for the grace of god, the former bitch would have ended me by my own hands. But I endure, and I carry on.But I look to next year. I look to the final end to my time serving my country. My beloved, divided, dying country. To see what happened this year, to the endless violence and increasingly unhinged division, and to look at my chest and see it reading United anything? A lie. We are anything but. I firmly believe it won't get better.The original ideals of this land, of liberty and freedom, are under relentless assault by the new Marxists. Those seeking control and suppression, in the pursuit of some utopia. That by, putting down many, they can equalize them with the minority. Crimes long since committed, repaired by new crimes. That's the world I live in.It will get worse. It seems, at the moment, that their voices scream loudest. That their agenda, pressed forth by the major powers at play in society, is taking root in the systems we endure and accept. There will come a point where debate will fail, where words will meet ideology, and falter. I fear violence in the future, but I accept the inevitability. This is my adoptive country, and its ideals I have fought and killed for. I believe that time is not yet done.But that's the future. I won't play a hand in affecting it now. God willing, ins'hallah, it may correct itself (a bit of learned irony, from those I once held arms against.) It may just be that all of this is out of our hands. It's certainly out of mine.I know I have only one voice. One quiet, smothered voice, against a raging, rabid majority. That's here. Should plans -or lack thereof- come to fruition, I will find myself among more reasonable kin. I hope that comes before it all tears apart. Six months. Half a year, and I will be free to find a new reality. I wait.So, the horizon brightens. I can see it. I can hear it, smell it. The scent of a rainstorm on the wind. Change comes, but how best will I face it? I know right now that I will dive into the river with the barest of preparation. I will find myself in a new home with little else than the clothes on my back, the car at my seat, the things collected, trimmed, in a box somewhere. I wont have much when I land, and I'll suffer, but what else is new?I've suffered. I've always suffered. Nothing new. I still stand, despite the best efforts of many. I still stand.And I'll pick myself up. I'll make something good of it all. I have always clambered, hand over hand, over the walls built against me, and I have always come up. That won't change.It is my sincerest hope that the next year will bring about a desperate change. A violent and damaging one, but a new beginning, at least. I'll throw away everything to make it happen, but it certainly must.To look around me, to see what I'll lose... Really, what? I have already lost. I have made close friends in the last few years, and lost them. I don't blame them, no; they went on to better things. As will I. So what do I lose? The familiarity of an environment? The few I still socialize with? To lose such scraps will barely scratch my skin. There is a blessing in the losses I have felt- they were preempting what I'd eventually have to lose. Reality took its toll before I needed to pay it.So I'll land. I'll crumple, roll, and get back up. It won't be easy, but nothing ever was. Nothing worth anything was ever easy. It'll be better.If I'm right, and I'm determined to be so, I will be in a better place in a year's time. I know I keep telling myself such, and I have been proven wrong to this point, but I sincerely believe this is the time. I've been kicked down for so long, that this last desperate attempt to fix things should be the tiebreaker. Horrific loss, to be sure. The loss of friends and family, the death of who I currently am: these things are devastating, but a price to be paid. There's always a price, but what can be gained will mean more that what is lost.It's already lost. Friends gone. Family torn. Nothing home to welcome me. There's almost nothing left. The few things, my sole remaining accomplices in this mess, will remain, albeit at a distance. Truth be told, they have been. Where I am doesn't alter that at all.So, what do I expect? Coming up in some town, some city, alone with none who know me? That might actually be good. I could be someone else, anyone. My prior life with all its crimes and failure, could just die and be left behind. I don't doubt that some will follow, as I can't change who I am, but I can become someone new. It's just that the old has to die, first. I have to die, as I am.(Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to. A shit movie, but a good line.)I want a home. I want a place my own. If I'm to work so long and strenuously, then I want something to show for it. Here, it's borderline impossible, but elsewhere that may change. I want to be able to come back to someplace mine, someplace not shared or threatened by anyone. I want a home to feel secure in, where anything trying to change it is met in a hail of steel and fire. Once I have that, nothing will be allowed to threaten it, my life the line.It'll be mine, and mine alone. I would love for a dog, a canine to share it with. I know I can't, that I spend too much time away. It'll be a quiet home.Those will argue that it needs another. A feminine touch. I'll deny that, knowing the absolute nightmare that is women these days. Will I make a home, and chance it on the fickle winds of another? Will I give someone everything, only for her to take it for herself in a snap decision of selfishness? Absolutely not.If anything, I've learned to severely distrust the fairer sex. The ideals, of a partner, a wife, a friend, have been decisively burned to the ground. With things as they are, with systems rigged entirely in their favor, with a society pushing selfishness and personal gain above all, I can't chance someone taking what little I have. I don't doubt that a partner would give so much, but she could also take everything. That's a gamble even I'm not stupid enough to take.So I am the end of my line. I will never live to hold a young one in my arms. I'll never share the things I've learned with a smaller version of myself. My legacy, my family's legacy, dies with me. Would that it were not so, but perhaps it is for the best.We face the death of many things. The death of the individual, in the face of social media, groupthink, and violent suppression of dissenting thought. The death of the family, in the face of divorce and a pleasure-focused existence. The death of the country, in the face of failing debate and ever-widening differences. A war, either between brothers under stars and stripes, or between those in favor of liberty and those pushing control. I sincerely believe we will see an end to the greatest civilization to see light, in the remainder of my life. Thank god I did not create a life to subject to that.I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, to my unborn daughters and sons. To those I would have loved above all. It would be a nightmare to live through, worse than this one. I hope I'm sparing you something worse. I hope I'm wrong, that it will all somehow correct, like a pendulum swinging back. I don't hold much faith in that, so you will continue to not be. The suffering will be mine alone.To whatever woman out there, that might have been the best possible scenario? We'll certainly never meet. I hope you find joy, and make the best of it. But I will not be a part of it. A reprehensibly dangerous gamble, one I won't risk. It would have been wonderful, but this isn't the day or age for it.To my family, to those who worked so hard to make me, to provide? I'm sorry. I could have been so much better. I have failed so badly at so many turns. To say what I hope for, as a best case scenario, is to build something out of garbage. I am garbage. Always have been. I'll polish this turd, my life, into something. And I will somehow end up the best of all my relative kin. That might be the greatest tragedy of my family line, that the mess that is me is still somehow the least terrible.And I'll die. Quietly, alone. Unwilling to subject myself to the capricious, selfish whims of a partner, unwilling to create life to suffer the future oncoming. No one to share the home I'll make. No voice to give kindness, no tails to wag happily. Nothing. It's dark, but the road I'm on was never lit to begin with.I don't blame anyone. Well, aside from myself. I could have been so much better. I could, had I not failed in nearly everything I endeavored in. The few things I do, I do well, and I hold pride in that. I mourn for the dreams I've had, those lost. The writings I'll never share show what I hoped for. They'll die with me, unread. I am a miserable failure of a being, a direct strike against parents and family, who expected better.But, for all of it, I will endure. It would be trivial to eat the wrong end of a firearm. It would be the easy way out. But when have I ever faltered in such a choice? I have taken easier paths, as anyone would, but to make that choice, to put an end to this suffering, would be more than I can do. I keep fighting, keep pulling myself up. I have, I will.So all of this is to say: I know where I've failed. I know what's before me. I know where I will end. It's a dimly lit future, but I will make the best of it. I look forward to the technology of the future, to the things so far beyond me that I will consider magic. They'll be truly incredible.I don't look forward to the state of society. It's already miserable, and getting worse. I do want to see where it goes, if only to laugh and share memes of. To the friend who shares my miserable pessimism, I hope the best. Please, take care of your son. He's entering a nightmare, but maybe he'll thrive somehow.To my shattered dreams, of family and home, of a wife and children, I'm sorry. Maybe twenty years ago, it might have been a thing. I must regretfully take the path of those I hate, that idea of self-care. The drive to care for others has brought nothing but misery and failure, and so I have to protect what little left that is me. I will continue to dream of the home I'll never have, of the father I'll never be; -I will cry my regrets out. But at least I will not subject you to my misery.With any luck, in a year's time, I will be standing on my own porch, looking out at mountains and forests. Perhaps then, I will be proud of what I have. Perhaps I will have made something. But I will kill and bury who I am, to do so.And that's for the best.