The trip back on the Silver Meteor was nice, but I’m glad to be back. My deluxe week in my DVC one bedroom villa was worth the time spent, even though I didn’t do much but eat at the nice restaurants and drink at the good bars and wander around Saratoga Springs. This is a problem that’s only getting worse as time goes on. I have no energy, and no motivation to do art much anymore, other than work on my “ghost” story novel. Which I hope to start serializing here eventually. If I can get motivated to make the illustrations I want to include.

Tomorrow morning I have a first visit with the doctor who will hopefully become my new GP, since the one they connected me with at Whitman-Walker after my prior one retired has been very indifferent. My new one will be affiliated with the same hospital my cardiologist and the surgeon who did my ablation are, and hopefully this results in better care for this 72 year old body. I’m going to talk to them about how I’m tired all the time anymore (it was almost too much just to walk to the grocery store a few blocks away to restock some items), and getting way too forgetful.

I put a lot of things down to being single and lonely, but I’m pretty sure I don’t fit the description of someone who is clinically depressed. On the train ride back I had a wonderful time chatting with my fellow travelers in the dining car and at various stopping-refueling points along the way, where passengers have a few moments to step outside the train and get some fresh air. I am not so introverted that I can’t enjoy the company of people I’ve never met before, where the situation provides natural ice breakers. It’s different than the highly competitive and very cliquish crowd at a gay bar, which was my problem with socializing in that environment. Not that they likely ever wanted to give solitary me an assist anyway, but all I ever needed was an ice breaker, and all I ever got from them was gaslighting about being too shy. Tico once told me I was good at getting a stand-offish table at Biergarten talking to each other and having a good time together, but that was Disney World which has an assortment of built-in icebreakers I could use. Actually, I really dislike sitting quietly by myself when I’m out and about. If I want solitude I can get it at home. Or just take a long walk. Go on a road trip.

But that’s probably also a problem, and partly at least, if not more, why I’m so tired and unmotivated anymore. My house is a lonely place. I walk alone. I go places, driver here and there and meet people along the way, but on the road it is just me and my car. That has been slowly killing me for years, I see now. 

There are dark times I keep picking at that I shouldn’t by now, but I can’t help myself. Tico telling me to go away would be one. But seeing, finally, the total indifference of the gay guys I trusted, and thought of as friends, was another, and it is worse. Tico got angry at me. The others stuck a knife in my heart like it was no big deal, and I’m pretty sure to this day they think I overreacted. It is indifference, not hate, as Elie Wiesel once said, that is the opposite of love.

I would add one more thing: friends get angry at each other, strangers just stick the knife in and walk away.