Resilient For What? — February 17, 2025 – John Agliata

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Alone Again😔
Life🎶
Fat🐖

THE DAILY UPDATE

At some level, I knew my life was not going to be what I thought it was on the day I heard my first son was likely going to die shortly after birth. I don’t know how conscious I was of what that life would be like at the time. When you hear news like that, it takes just about everything you’ve got to keep breathing. Thinking about a future beyond that next breath is kind of complicated.

Nothing has been the same since that day — August 30, 2000 — and that’s a long goddamn time for things to not be as you once thought they might be.

Listen … I get it. No one’s life really goes as planned. Real life changes things every damn day, and no one arrives at their destination without having taken at least a few detours.

But having Jacob live and die on Dec. 20, 2000 … well, that sure as fuck was a detour.

When I tell people about my life — be it the shitty mother I had who was a tad too free with her hands and a lot too free with her mouth or Jacob or any of countless other things that I can bring up if the need arises — the biggest compliment I hear is about my resilience. I fucking hate my resilience. Because they are right — be it the brain health professionals or few people who care to be in my life these days. I am extremely resilient. That’s been out of necessity, not through any desire to prove anything to anyone or to myself. I’d love to be a crapton less resilient and have had things go a little … smoother.

In the wake of Jacob’s death, Wifey Poo and I brought two more amazing boys into this world and, like Harry Potter, they were the Boys Who Lived, just without the evil archnemesis and fancy boarding school. My obligations to them have forced resiliency. Each and every thing that’s happened in the wake of their births, including the grieving for their brother that lingers to this day, that has led people to call me resilient hasn’t been any credit to me. I am a father to those boys, and they need me.

So I’m Here.

Still.

My resiliency has led me to get up off the canvas again and again and again and keep going like that goddamn battery bunny until I find the things that work that cure the things that lead me to have to be resilient in the first place. Whether it’s finally finding that thing that works for brain illness or finally finding the thing that works for the attachment issues I have because of my childhood or finally finding the thing that worked to deal with the Long COVID that nearly killed me or continuing the search to find the thing that works to finally mend this aching, bruised heart from the loss of really important people in my life … when you have something to live for and there is no other option because the Powers That Be in this lovely universe don’t allow you to just fucking die, well, I guess that’s one definition of resiliency that’s not in any dictionary.

I have joy. Despite the impression the previous paragraphs may leave, I do. Wifey Poo is a joy, and my Here boys are beyond joys, and now my daughter-in-law is a joy. Being able to bet paid to write for a living is a joy. Finally… finally … finding a day job that isn’t bossed by a total fucking lunatic and who actually is the very definition of a leader vs. a manager? That’s the biggest new joy I have. Coaching boys in basketball and baseball and seeing them improve or find something inside themselves that they didn’t know they had, that’s a joy, too. Seeing my own son be something to deal with on the basketball court and knowing I had a role in turning him into that something is a joy. Hearing Boy The Elder tell me he’s having great early success in his career as a research scientist because he’s able to communicate with the marketing folks and he knows how to communicate with those marketing folks because his dad has been one for lo these many years? That’s a joy, as well.

I have a lot of joy. I do.

I also have a helluva lot of sadness.

Today is President’s Day. I don’t really care much about the presidents who were born and lived to make this a federal holiday. I am none too enamored with this country these days, but anyone who leads me to get paid to not work for a day is fine by me. Wifey Poo had to work. Boy The Younger is slinging God’s Favorite Chicken. So there I was this morning, with an entire day to do with as I please … and no one to do it with.

I have whined a lot about the lack of local friends. I also know that said whining can be, besides annoying, extremely off-putting because I am where I am for no other reason than it took me way too long to figure out my shit and by the time I did everyone was gone, either by my regrettable choice or their own. There is no goddamn rewind button for living. Trust me. I’ve been searching for it for a few months now and can’t seem to find it. Equally frustrating, I can’t seem to find that fast-forward button to get me to the end of my time Here so I can just leave and go There, where at least Peace awaits.

No more being resilient. No more fighting off the ghosts of the past. No more hurting and aching and heartbreak and sadness and longing and regret. Just peace. A race, finished. Completion. Contentment.

Those things all sound so good on days like today when all I want is someone to hang with, someone to do something with, someone to be by my side to watch the movie I watched and pet the dog I pet. Loneliness, I know, is literally killing me. For fuck’s sake … I’m writing a goddamn article about the connection between loneliness and mortality! I get it.

I just can’t seem to fix it.

A point of contention I seem to have with anyone I’ve discussed this issue with, professional and otherwise, is about “putting yourself out there.” This is so like the argument retirement specialists give that if you just gave up that $5 cup of coffee each morning, you’d be a kazillionaire by age 60. No you won’t. It sounds good (unless you’re Starbucks, I guess), but it’s not. fucking. true. And neither is this whole fallacy that I just need to put myself out there.

How do I know it’s a fallacy? Because I have and continue to put myself out there. Regularly. ReguFUCKINGlarly. I have tried curling, improv, coaching baseball, coaching basketball. I have tried to create movie nights and book clubs and poker nights and DnD campaigns. I have said openly on Facebook that I am here and still Here so just ASK ME and I’ll FUCKING do something. And I have done all this over the course of about FOUR FUCKING YEARS now, so don’t FUCKING tell me that it takes time. I’ve given it time. A lot of time. And I’ve put myself out there again and again and again. And what am I doing today? Who is there for me to call and say, “Hey, wanna go do something?”

No one.

Well, there are some people from the past who I would love to do something with. But these people want nothing to do with me. As I said, I can’t seem to find that rewind button, and no remote I’ve ever seen has had a “Please … PLEASE just give me a chance to explain” button.

All of which tries the fuck out of my resiliency.

I’ve survived a lot. More than anyone knows or cares to know.

Now? Now I’m starting to wonder exactly what for.

Something I’m grateful for today: A day off work.

Something I’ve (ghost)written: Fat

Song of the Day: Bring Me To Life, by Evanescence

Meaningful lyric from the S.O.T.D.:

Now that I know what I’m without
You can’t just leave me

Something good from today/yesterday: Seeing Shucked at the Fox. For a dude who went to college in Iowa, a play centered around corn was fantastical.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: The next night of my DnD campaign as DM, on Suturday

Fat-Ass Update:

Starting weight: 230.6 on 2/12/25
Goal weight (for now): 199.9
Today’s weight 225.9, once again (-4.7)
Fat-ass burn-off remaining: 26.0 fat-ass pounds

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Resilient For What? — February 17, 2025

THE DAILY UPDATE

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