lzim

It is said that the measure of your character is what you do with the small fish.

Where I don't fish because I don't have a lure, I just have a rod in my hand and it falls in the water occasionally. When it isn't dragging along the bottom.. it snags against whatever lurks in the depths.

When it so happens, that I have the worst kind of luck, of being able to land exceptionally large fish with my naked hook.. they're disproportionately large.. for me to deal with. It feels like my heart has always been large enough to cope with them in hand but I can't be sated and sustained by all the little fish I normally deal with.

There's that time with the large ones on the line where it's me and it working with and against each other.. The more reticent the catch about being caught.. the longer it seems that time on the line persists.

How does one deal with little fish when one's heart and eyes are accustomed to exceptionally large catches?

When one's memory is filled with exceptional experiences. There's no context for the little meaningless ones and so they are just there on the wayside. Swipe left.

I'd love to say that's how it is. That I don't intentionally fish because I have nothing with which to bait a lure, that all that I have is that shiny hook.

That I'm that one loud kid (in chat) that demands attention and often gets it. Once I have it though.. what? My stomach isn't big enough for exceptionally large fish. My limbs aren't large enough. I don't have the strength or the stamina to deal with any of it. I just nibble until I've had my fill. Am I just a piranha?

So those little fish.. those big fish.. none of that matters. I give all my attention to anything that hits my hook.

So earlier this week on Bigo I felt that familiar feeling that I was being too loud.. that I was ruining the mood.. so I thought ok.. I have to pull back. She was expressing that she was lonely anyway which.. being an observer for so long.. was obvious.

I'd told her she was brave to get on a livestream and bare her heart and cry and tell her followers and I and her viewers why.. that she was lonely. She didn't have to say anything because it was obvious.

Then a little while on she called me old. Felt like the last straw. I'm very well aware of the fact that I'm old. In the last two years I've finally felt body old. Not just mentally and in my soul old.. But being off work for a year and not wanting to go back.. I was feeling old.

Most of that time was spent on Destiny withering away and literally losing my hair. Some of that time was spent in the company of one of my only friends. She's 18 now. I'm 35.

My aunt had reminded me over Christmas to find work and she'd suggested UPS. That was impetus enough. I did that a bit and was back into the work force.

I got into TEKSystems who placed me at CAE Inc next to the airport.

Although I'm not enthused about the position or the pay.. being up and about every day again is good enough.

But that's only for a few hours in the day. What the hell else with the rest am I supposed to do?

My friend is older now and she's started working the week before I started again. Plus she's dating and she'll need to start working on college meaning we won't have much time together (funny I'm listening to [Esc] Reality's ASMR and she said exactly the same thing as I typed it just the) Playful romantic cuddles.

And that's the breaking point. Was choosing to not realize it or to deal with it.

I was listening to her Spilling your Sorrows video.. and although I didn't feel lonely then.. or when I'd been smacked in the face with a too callous 'you're old' by a girl of only a tender 16, I'd only been trying to be there for her as an any someone.. that any one random there listen to her.. whining.. It finally started to bubble over.

She pulled the, for the second time.. why.. why are you here [in my Live] all the time. I don't miss them when I can so help it. And she asked why that was. So I told her because I felt you were lonely, but of course didn't. I did tell her that I'd made my schedule at work change so I'd be on the night shift where there's literally nothing to do, same as Twitch a few years ago.. so I could be there for you.

She didn't exactly respond.. but cut her Live as she's become accustomed to doing lately. When she came back on.. what? What am I supposed to do. She says she's lonely when I'm around. Then I won't be.

As much or at all? I don't know how to make that call.

So, lonely, I listened to Cloveress's Kissing Sounds along with the other videos also.. It's just too much.

Then on Bigo again as I was mentioning earlier.. having had enough of feeling old and unneeded.. I ventured out into other broadcasters (exactly the same as on Twitch a few years ago).. and found a few cool other people. Kids though. Minors. They infest the place. Sad because the other 99% are perverts. Really disgustingly vile perverts.

I'd told her that I had already been looking around Bigo for other places to be.. she didn't believe me.

So I'd let my hook out and it got snagged on a couple of young broadcasters that had that great skill of actually engaging their audience and not just sit there reading comments and doing nothing to be interesting or to reciprocate the enjoyment of being there. Meaning, for me, being that one loud dude was bound to catch their attention and.. god damnit she made me an admin.

Of course since there's 99% pervs on Bigo I wasn't going to reject the duty.

It just happened to be funny when within a day I get caught up in a game of telephone between the broadcaster and one of her viewers and their 'fake relationship'.

Annoyed with myself that it took half a day to figure out what Ily and Ilu2 meant. Annoyed with myself for having any of these children on my snap when all I was looking for was a happening place to chat. Somewhere that could replace the place I was at where she would come on and sing and dance and be happy doing silly things like that.

I had a moment when I was like... HOW am I in the middle of this shit AGAIN. Why is this boy asking me for help with this girl. The sick part being I'm older than their combined ages. Fuck both of you little shits lol.

I'm there trying to tell the boy, look.. be patient. behave yourself.. No one has said anything one way or another. You're not 'losing' her.

He's only going to fuck up the situation for himself.. and ultimately he did. Tough shit.

Sitting back I'm finally seeing my younger self.. sadly not as young as his age though.. being just as stupid with a girl I thought I should have been with and couldn't and shouldn't just accept something as meaningless as a friendship.

How obnoxious we were both when all it would have taken was patience and understanding. When it ended up not working out.. some grace. NOPE.

Older now all I can think is... I just don't want to be in that position again and had tried to avoid it and wasted those decades that could have been better spent.

So why.. why when I was fine with 'loneliness' because I haven't had much experience with shit else.. am I bothered. It isn't the intimacy and truth of the ASMR and artists producing them.. it isn't the young foolishness I don't need to be part of or frankly that I'm not going to find for myself..

Why is it the small fish. Why am I so critically bothered that she's feeling lonely and there's nothing that I can do to help.... again and again and again. I'm not a shepherd. I have no duty to her or reason to feel bad she doesn't want to talk to me the way so many others have. And where are they when I might be in need of them? anyone to listen.

She's the rule and the others were exceptions. I can't expect to be able to help and I have to find the appropriate amount of grace and strength to deal with it all or any part large or small.

I don't know where they find that grace and strength.

10 hours ago Cloveress posted a video where half-way through she says she had been having issues to explain why she'd been offline for a time. It might not have been directly related to the shit she deals with in the comments on her videos.. but it's there. The loneliness and pain and strength she couldn't sustain without someone else to be there with her. She promptly stopped talking about it and the video ended too soon. But it was there.

The strength is just to get back up and keep walking. It just feels like there should be more to it than that.

Getting back up and still being or feeling alone every time only to get back into the activities that brought it all down. There needs to be more than that.