Parents came over and we did fuck all. We went out to eat during which we don't speak much, but for once no other families nearby spoke much either. None of us are extroverts and we got no "funny uncle" in the family, yet being around extroverts with huge families at work all day really hammers in that sense of "you should be out doing shit and meeting people", despite no one in basically our entire family doing that.
I was exposed to a clip of some guy saying "don't have social media accounts, have a hobby that puts you outside and volunteer in a way that puts your life in others' hands". He does none of these things himself, and honestly who does? A shut-in friend of mine volunteered in relation to some Ukrainian refugee thing and he loved it, but even then he only did it twice. I more or less stopped biking, my primary hobby. Way too expensive, too much preparation, way too little payoff. I could easily go for a 35 min brisk walk every single day in comparison. And yet, whenever I drive home I see friends, fathers and daughters out biking. I'm envious of those who have the urge still, and it comes 100% from doing it with others, but that'd turn it into a chore.
I'm apparently nuts. Social workers just showed up to make sure I wasn't going to kill myself immediately. I can't blame them because that was definitely something I was considering. Thanks sister. I wasn't going to do it though.
I know people aren't rational in this state of mind but to think "my father who put decades into raising me would like to see me kill myself over him disappearing". Or "My late wife surely wouldn't want me to marry someone else and be happy. She'd want me to weep and be miserable forever".
These kinds of childhood fandoms are basically like Discords. You join initially to partake in a certain discussion but at some point that disappears entirely and you're just there because you happen to fall into that slot. I watched a video about those Warrior Cats or whatever, going on +50 books, and it's the exact same. Dogshit literature full of actual typos but people aren't gonna leave the fandom because it's their one way into a community. Harry Potter ain't had new material in fucking decades, what's to talk about? Fanfics?
That last breath hit hard, and it changed me.
My grandpa visibly breathed his last, specifically heavy and after the last of us arrived at his place. It's scary that people can literally cling on by choice. I wasn't there for my grandma dying and it made the funeral a lot more tolerable and my last memory of her a better one than seeing her die. I won't skip out on more immediate family obviously, but doing what you can to avoid family drama and bullshit certainly helps. My aunt tore the cheap rings off my grandma AS she died.