A vent by Naomi “Norbez” Z\nContact on [[Twitter|https://twitter.com/naominorbez]]/[[Tumblr|https://naominorbez.tumblr.com/]] @NaomiNorbez. Email at mninorbez@gmail.com\nDo not lose hope. [[Here are some suicide hotline & other hotlines for your use.|https://naominorbez.tumblr.com/post/165080791871/fuwaprince-us-helplines-depression-hotline]]\nI also feel this song may be apt: [[Lonely Town by Blossom Dearie|https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YscfrkUx-B4]]. I dunno. I’ve been using it to try and make sense of things lately. Sorry. \nThanks for reading. Have a lovely day. Be well.
It was kind of incredible, really. The front wheels missed the insect, but the back wheel caught the end of it and caused the bug to make a flip in the air. [[Then it landed on the ground, its guts strewn out on the sidewalk.|7]]
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. . .\nIt's been a hard week, to say the least.\nHurricane Harvey hit Houston hard. People died. Places got massively flooded, homes were lost.\nFires hit the northwestern United States. The air filled with smoke. The fire continues to rage, massive in its size.\nAnd Hurricane Irma has hit the Virgin/Caribbean Islands, and is coming for Florida. Barbuda was basically destroyed.\n[[These last few days are full of the stench of death and grief and loss, and feels almost world-ending; it’s terror that the mind cannot fully comprehend.|2]]
A personal response to Hurricane Harvey and Hurricane Irma. Written September 8, 2017.\nThis game contains swearing, and detailed discussion of death, self-deprecation, and suicidal thoughts.\n[[Click here if you still want to see it.|1]]
. . .\nI didn't cry. I did sit there, unmoving, with my hands folded, as my mind screamed and raged against me for around ten minutes.\nThen I finally stood up and began to walk again. This was probably a waste of time. Maybe all that stuff pent up inside you was meant to be there, baggage around your neck forever, punishment for all the mistakes you've made. You've made so many mistakes, haven't you, Norbez?\nI walked down the brick-laden path. My head looked down at the ground. If I had pockets, both hands would've been crammed inside of them. But I didn't have pockets, so I settled for letting my hands hang pathetically at my sides.\nMy eyes caught a tiny bit of movement as I put down my foot. [[I landed it away from the movement and stopped.|4]]
I'm pathetic. I'm far removed from all these disasters; it hasn't personally affected me or my family as far as I know. And yet this last week has left me nearly broken. Because of all this disaster, and because of my own depression and self-deprecation. My own mind screaming against me, calling me to kill myself.\nI'm weak. [[Why, in the midst of such disasters that have affected thousands of people, do I get so caught up in my own personal drama? Why? Fucking idiot.|2.1]]
Then another pair of wheels came. Went straight over the insect—the bug was underneath, unharmed. It continued crossing.\nThen nobody else. I watched the bug for a while, then I straightened up, wavering between continuing on my journey and watching the insect complete its journey across the street. I wanted to see whether it would be killed, or make it.\nThird pair of wheels--yes, at this hour of the night. [[Came right over the bug--and then it happened.|6]]
It was a bug. Looked a little like some kind of bee? It was fuzzy and long, crawling on the sidewalk. I love insects; whenever I see one, I usually stop to look at it. There's a fence near where I live that I love walking by, because there's always a bug hanging around on or by it (inchworms, ladybugs, spiders, etc).\nIt started crawling across the path, moving rather fast for such a small insect. Then a figure appeared--a pair of wheels, heading toward me and the bug. I straightened up and stood on the side of the path, letting them pass. They didn't go anywhere near the bug, thank God. [[When they were gone, I bent down and watched the bug cross again.|5]]
I stared at its remains. I almost cried, but I didn't. I grieved silently for an insect--an insect!--I'd known for the total of a few minutes.\nI'd been thinking a lot about death as of late. Not only because of my own mental illness, but because someone close to me (who is older and wiser than myself) has been speaking a lot about when they will die, because many of their friends have passed away. I know this person speaks to me about these things to warn me of when they will be gone, to prepare me, but it makes me ponder my own death, when I myself will be gone.\nWill my life have been worth it? What will I leave behind? Narrative games and YouTube videos and tweets? Is that my legacy? What of those in Houston, or on the islands, or in places across the world where people die in an instant, in the moment we take to breathe in? What of the loss and destruction there—what of the parts of their life that were destroyed?\nWhat is life; why is it so full of pain? In my Christian heart I know the answer--because this world has been corrupted by sin--but how is this answer enough? Is there nothing to do but to look at tragedy and see it as the inevitable result of a fallen world? Is that the only answer there is?\nHow does God look at tragedy? Are the heavens full of constant weeping, because the world is full of constant sadness? I don't know how He does it--it's something I will never understand. And even as I write, I wonder if God is real at all, if He is just a quite comfort invented by man so the release of death can be sweeter.\nBut I know that is not true. I have seen and experienced things that can't be explained with rationality; they can only be explained by God. But I also can't help but wonder why all the suffering in the world is so constant and seemingly never-ending.\n[[I don't know anything.|8]]\n
So. . .\n(Alternate Title: Existance Problems)
Maybe that makes me more worthless and pathetic. A Christian so weak in their faith that they struggle with the idea of death, the very thing that will reunite a Christian with their Christ. What kind of Christian is that? A weak one who shouldn't be sharing their thoughts on the Internet, that's for sure, Norbez.\nBut . . . maybe this struggle is what makes me human. Because maybe being human is being confused and scared of the one thing no person except Christ has ever overcome: death itself, unavoidable and nonsensical and dreadful and fucked up. (Messed up doesn’t cover it, sorry.)\nI don't plan to die anytime soon, but God knows what the future holds. Life is short and weird and ends all too soon for everyone who lives it. When I die, all my good Internet friends are at least invited to my funeral, that’s for sure.\nAnd my heart goes out to those who died in all these tragedies had their lives cut short so soon. There is never anything anyone can really say to make sense of it. Even if there is comfort in the afterlife, and beauty in current life (hope and rebuilding and love and friendship and so many other things that I so often forget when I ponder my own life’s worth) what can a person say here and now to console in the face of death?\n[[What do we do after deaths like these?|10]]
a vent by Naomi Norbez
Today, Friday night, I left my place to take a walk. To get some air, and maybe also take some time to cry, get a proper breakdown, since it's been building inside of me for some time.\nThe air is cool. Insects chirp in the dark as I walk under lanterns, in quiet streets. I find a public table in a more desolate area and sit down. [[Here we go.|3]] Break down here and get on with your life, loser. After this, maybe you can give more of a shit about the people dying who have lost their homes. Piece of crap.
. . .\nFinally, I approached the dead insect. I stared at it for a moment, as if I wanted it to hop back to life. But of course it didn't--it's guts were strewn out on the street, for goodness sake. It was a tiny, one-inch dead zone. Roadkill.\nI had my phone. I pulled it out and took a picture of the bug. Then another. And another. And another.\nI don't know. Why did I take so many pictures? Part of it is because my camera is pretty bad, and I wanted to capture the insect well. But I also wanted something to remember this. For this bug to be remembered. Some kind of legacy, I guess.\nI don't know. I wanted to make sense of this . . . this little death, this small violent act, for it to have meaning. So I took pictures of it and made this game to vent out my feelings. But what meaning can there even be in death? What kind of sense does it have? I know that as a Christian, there is heaven, but what of hell? What am I to make of it?\nI don't know. I just don't know. I understand now, a little better, that really thinking about all these tragedies this week means acknowledging the dead, and acknowledging the reality of death, and the shortness of life, and the seemingly meaningless reality of acts of destruction by the Earth itself. And maybe I wasn't ready to do acknowledge all of that, so I let it ball up inside me. Because this life and death doesn't make sense to me, even with what I know as a Christian. That I, as a Christian, struggle with death in my mind, and then face death again when I look anywhere in this world, is a fact that I cannot escape.\n[[And it took the death of a bug for me to fully acknowledge my feelings on all of this.|9]]