The absurd is normal. Everything else is weird.

My grandmother died recently. I say “recently”, but this is “recently” according to an ADHD timescale, or a COVID timescale. “Recently”, is anywhere between six months, and a year ago. She died from complications of Darier’s disease, which is a highly uncommon outcome. I likely wouldn’t have known about any of this, if I didn’t have a reputation that my family alternately resents and depends on: I am a functional human, with useful skills. In this case, I used to be a military medic. Worked in a hospital for 3 years. While I wouldn’t go as far as to say that they trusted me, they trusted me more than any hospital — being as they are convinced that every professional is out to get them, for unclear reasons.

I did not attend the funeral. I couldn’t afford it. Not only could I not afford it, but I suspected that if I went, some utter bullshit would occur. This is not the suspicion of a paranoiac; this is just the math of it. That’s how it was, and there is no reason that would have changed. I didn’t even know what day the funeral was, besides, since apparently helping someone navigate their dying mother’s health care is not enough motive for him to tell me when or where said mother’s funeral, is. I didn’t hear anything about it from anybody who attended — in fact, I didn’t hear anything at all from anybody who attended, about anything — until, in what still seems to me to be a freak occurrence, I met up with one of my great-uncles. This, too, came about because my grandmother was dying. I was, once again, contacted on account of being passably normal, this time to serve as a bridge between my grandmother’s brothers, who are not just normal, but successful, and my uncle, who is a series of angry exclamation points in the shape of a man.

(Let’s leave aside the feelings of disappointment, resentment, and abandonment I experienced on realizing that I had two brilliant, successful great-uncles who did absolutely fuck-ass nothing to get me out of Brain Hell, despite having met me and expressing surprise at my intelligence, my ability to even fucking exist twenty-plus years before. It wasn’t their job.)

A while after the funeral, one of the aforementioned great-uncles wanted to meet me, since I was going to be back in Austin for a while. He lived… not nearby, exactly, but near enough. We ate tacos with two of my friends, and his wife. So, he starts telling me about the funeral. Things were, of course, uneasy. That’s the best-case scenario. He tells me that as an employee of the funeral home shoveled dirt into the grave, one of my uncles grabbed the shovel right out of the man’s hands, threatened him with it, and insisted on shoveling the dirt himself. This information was shared with me in the same way one might tell another about having run into a high school classmate at the mall, which is how I know my great-uncle and I are actually related. He knows this is how it is. We were both just glad, and sort of surprised, it wasn’t worse. At the same time, I know perfectly well that if this happened at most funerals, it would be a crisis. Funeral ruined, by an unsocialized crazy person. People end up in therapy over that shit. Growing up, that was just Tuesday.

I spent a long time just ignoring how I grew up, if possible. I ended up in many, many Tuesdays’ worth of therapy. Over time, I started to think that the reason I couldn’t let things go, was because I couldn’t understand them. My childhood — my existence, my way of being — simply did not make sense, and as long as they didn’t make sense, there would be this nagging — itch at the back of my mind. Your existence makes no sense. I shouldn’t be where I am, doing what I am. I’m not in jail. I’m not homeless. I’m not dead. I’m not addicted to pills, or meth. I don’t open my mouth, just for word salad to tumble out. Sometimes, when I hear Once in a Lifetime by the Talking Heads, I cry. Other times, I just go outside and stare into the distance, at nothing in particular. And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife. And you may ask yourself, well,

How did I get here?

There is no way to make sense of how I grew up. I’ll never know why things happened the way they did, or what made my family the people they are. I realized that knowing would never solve the problem, anyway; the real problem is the alienation, and the alienation is a product of dissonance. When I was a child, I learned to live in two worlds, with very different sets of rules: the world outside, and home, where nearly everything ran contrary to what the world outside, taught you. Never mix up the rulesets. Mixing up the rulesets, fucks you in both places. I thought leaving would let me abandon that ruleset I internalized for home, but no matter how hard I Brain, I can’t unBrain how I grew up. I’m still functioning under two sets of rules; the logic, the math of my own life, and everybody else’s. Other kids in elementary school were learning not to be mean to their siblings; I learned not to make, and then give, my mom an origami tiger because it pissed both her AND my stepfather off. At the same time, do make and give one to your teacher, because they like it. Pretend (badly) that you’re a regular kid. Today, I take out the trash. I fix things in the house, when they break. I wash the car, I wash the dishes. I draw for a living. I am a regular adult. I am on max doses of two antidepressants, one “alertness aid”, had 15 years of therapy, and get ketamine infusions. I am not a regular adult. I am pretending (badly). The dissonance between the reality I internalized, and the one I live in — the one others live in, and seem to have always lived in — will never fade. Living in this world — making the outside world ruleset, into the home ruleset — may never feel normal, or even real.

I used to live in Austin. My grandmother had some serious health problems and little money, but she always loved to travel. I respected that, respected that need to be out and about; to be alive. Once, she decided she’d come to Austin, and hoped we’d meet up at the State Capitol building. I do not like my grandmother, but after not seeing her for so long, there was some morbid curiosity there. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

I thought she’d come on a bus, or something. She did not. She showed up in a bright red pick-up truck, driven by one of my uncles. Another uncle and my half-brother came along for the ride. I knew I’d been a fool, as soon as everybody emptied out of the truck. You see, somebody had to stay behind to guard the truck. Because, you know, that’s what people do. Guard patrols on a fucking pickup truck. Okay. They argue over who will stay, then leave Shovel Thief, very possibly the worst choice for a guard patrol, behind. I get it, because he’s creepy even by the family’s standards. Actually looking at the State Capitol went fine. When we walked back to the truck, Shovel Thief was gone. Back to the Capitol Building. Here’s two cops, standing at the gate. Here they are, pointing back and muttering into their walkie-talkies as Shovel Thief creeps Very Sketchily around the Capitol. Grandmother looks at me. Uncle looks at me. I am useful for the thing I am resented for. While Shovel Thief isn’t actually doing anything harmful (or illegal), it is impossible for him not to seem threatening. His very presence alarms. The cops step toward him; I get their attention before they leave the gate. It is my task to convince them that I am a Normal and Upright member of society — yes, the same one they are part of! Wow! — and that I am responsible for this weird, smelly, hunched man. Please, give him back to me. I will take him away, and you will not be burdened. I am Well-Dressed, do not smell, and can be taken seriously. We talk like Adults. The cops decide not to accost him for being illegally creepy. We get his attention; he walks back to us. We leave. It’s Tuesday.

At this point, I plan to walk back to my own car and get the hell out of there. I’ve had enough of Tuesday. I had enough of Tuesday when I was 17, which is why I fucking left. My grandmother insists, absolutely insists, that they give me a ride. I am a fool twice. I am sandwiched in the back seat with my other uncle, who mostly just loves meth and the song, Mack the Knife. He starts off on a flight of ideas, but they eventually coalesce into a story: he saw a parrot flying around somewhere, then a lady running after it. He caught the parrot, brought it back, and then the lady let him have sex with her. That was the story. Tuesday. He sticks his head out the window at a stoplight. A woman with two bags of groceries walks past the truck, clearly unaware of house rules, of what day of the week it is. He shouts, FAGGOT! at the top of his lungs. It wouldn’t have been better if the woman with groceries were a flamboyant gay man with groceries, but at least it would’ve made sense. I forgot that it’s fucking Tuesday. Tuesday doesn’t end. Tuesday is forever. Tuesday is for life.

The absurd is normal. The absurd is truth. Tuesday is why social instability produced Dadaism, and why Dadaism comes back to us as post-irony Internet Humor. Absurdity knows what day it is, and doesn’t pretend (badly) to be a normal kid, or a normal adult. The absurd isn’t fucking around. It’s everything else, that’s weird. By god, I don’t know if it’ll ever be any other way.