I’ve settled into a routine that fits me: wake up at six in the morning (even in the weekends, I wake up around seven), prepare for work, put on my earplugs, take the E29 bus that carries me to Donostia, read some manga on the way, walk through the hospital complex while avoiding looking at people’s faces, sit at my desk, put on my headphones, do my programming of the day, take the E29 that carries me back to Irún, do some more programming, go to bed. From time to time I lift weights, and on the weekends, when I have the energy, I walk to the nearby woods and play the guitar for a couple of hours.

Perhaps this is what being middle-aged is, after all: you realize your shortcomings and what you weren’t meant to do. I’ve thought back on my life and the relationships I’ve had. All of them were a mistake. I’ve hurt so many people without meaning to just because of how broken I am. I keep getting reminded, by my own brain, of this girl I knew when I was in middle school. She was likely autistic as well. Awkward as hell. Very lanky, generally plain looking. She used to write me elaborate letters. I doubt I ever read any of them. I don’t have them anymore. About a year or so after she last spoke to me, some stoner dickhead slung one of those big choppers of arts-and-crafts, and bisected the girl’s forehead, leaving a massive scar. I haven’t seen her since I was sixteen. I wish I knew if she killed herself, but I don’t remember her name. People only become somewhat real to me when they turn into myths in my mind. She’s now a girl I could have helped but failed to do so because I never had the means to. Stay away from people. There’s only hurt to come, both ways.

Due to my peculiar brain configuration, my memory is abysmal: I barely remember anything. I have stronger memories of the stories I’ve written than of stuff that has actually happened to me. And what I remember is almost invariably negative. Due to my daily intrusive thoughts, I’m usually reminded of, when not directly bombarded by, stuff I wouldn’t want to remember. Not worth the effort, the pain, the bother. It’s really simple: I wasn’t born equipped to live like a regular human being. Ultimately you just end up becoming yourself and discarding the useless alternatives you tried.

I recognize beauty, though, and I’m attracted to some of the young women I see on a regular basis. I don’t know if I wish I weren’t. On the bus, at the hospital. Nurses most likely. Most of my daydreams end up involving sex in one way or another. But in these daydreams I’m not myself. Perhaps my biggest regret is that I can’t redo it with fair odds. I would have settled for a body I wouldn’t have to be ashamed of. I think I have more things to say about that whole business, but I can’t figure out what that would be at the moment.

Soon enough it’ll be September 14th, when my current contract as a programmer will end, and I’ll have to either return to work as a technician, which terrifies me (the stress of that job landed me three times in the ER, two with arrhythmias and the other with a supposed hemiplegic migraine that I suspect was worse than that), or find myself a job as a programmer at forty years old, when programmers are on their way out due to AI (not complaining, I use it all the time).

It’s all a big whatever. I just want to be left alone. That’s what I think about most of the stuff I have to deal with on a regular basis: just let me sit in peace. Just let me program in peace. Just let me play the guitar in peace. I think my biggest aspiration in life has been to sit alone in a room without being bothered. I don’t think I ever truly believed I could aspire to anything more. I’m trying to get as much of that as possible.

I think I need more grenade-throwing in my life.