I have been jolted awake at half past four by intrusive thoughts of my cat getting killed by a dog back in 2018. I remember the tail end of that dream: I was with someone, a girl I believe, trying to build a small shed in some lonely street corner to hang out (something I’ve never done in real life), only for the dream-sight to change into that of a pregnant cat navigating a small maze that resembled the spaces of those double windows that have like buffers in between. Suddenly my real-life cat showed up in the dream, and with it the grief and shame, and I just woke up. Went to the kitchen to get a glass of milk, then sat down at the computer to write the following to ChatGPT:
I am 40 years old, I have been diagnosed with high-functioning autism (formerly Asperger’s), and also Pure O OCD. It’s now half past four in the morning and I have been woken up by intrusive thoughts of a cat of mine who died brutally back in 2018; a dog gave her a mortal wound and we had to sacrifice her the same day. Ever since, I remember that cat weekly, as in maybe there are some days in the week in which I don’t get intrusive thoughts about it. The way my brain works, I don’t even get good memories, just pure negative ones, like the times when I was nine and I hurt a girl’s heart because I pretended I didn’t remember that she had wanted us to start going out together the day before; or the time I went to school as a child with different shoes, or the times I was so miserable in school that I had to ditch class almost daily and I lingered in the dark in random apartment buildings, sitting for hours in the stairwells. I feel like my brain is constantly under siege by intrusive thoughts, and every new experience I expose myself to will just cram more intrusive thoughts that will torture me for the rest of my life. I’m currently unemployed, but when I had a job, it felt so alienating to see my coworkers so happily laugh the shift away, while I have to deal not only with intrusive thoughts but also all the stuff related to autism (and also heart issues because of the covid vaccine, and other bodily problems because my development was screwed by a pituitary gland tumor).
I’m telling you not only to vent, but to ask in a general sense, what the fuck do I do with my life?
As it produced its response, tears rolled down my cheeks. Those thick, silent tears that come with a strange pressure in your chest. Artificial intelligence helps me daily in so many ways, but it has never told me anything useful about this.
It’s yet another time in which I have to think about the flood of intrusive thoughts that I have to wade through merely to get through the day, even if that day only involves sitting at home working on my programming project (for one reason or another, I haven’t gone out in four days). I am sure that this is what’s going to kill me: the growing hill of intrusive thoughts one day will catch me so low that I’ll have no choice but to get rid of myself with whatever is available around. And it may happen any day.
Someone else wrote on the subject of OCD on Reddit: “OCD is an endless painful torturous cycle. You can’t stop thinking about the things that you don’t want to think about. No matter what you do, no matter how much reassurance you get, it doesn’t stop. The thoughts themselves are literally painful. I don’t know how else to describe them. They are like knives stabbing me in the brain.” Although due to the Pure O variant I don’t have external rituals, purely mental ones (or at least I don’t recognize my compulsions), those words fit perfectly with my experience.
What’s even more alienating is that people who don’t suffer from autism and OCD can’t seem to understand the experience of it at all. I’ve had people, usually indirectly and online, say stuff like, “change your perspective and think differently,” elaborated into complex platitudes. It usually made me want to punch such people in the face. The way other human’s brains seem to work is so alien to me, that as I mentioned to ChatGPT, it felt so painfully alienating to work at an office and see people smile and laugh at fucking nothing (like this stupid youngish female technician whom I internally referred to as the “cackler,” whose every third utterance was a cackle-like laugh). Meanwhile, for me, being awake is a hell that I constantly have to distract myself from by disappearing into daydreams (usually of the soothing nature, pure non-sexual intimacy with someone I would like to talk to), writing (back when I did that regularly), and working on my programming projects. Also lifting weights when I can push myself to do so. The thought came to mind, probably from some quote, that “being awake is like courting disaster at every step.”
I’m so fucking tired. There’s the whole unemployment issue; I can’t imagine myself trying to get out there, talking to random people and basically beg to be hired, so I can return to routines that will hurt me. I briefly thought of talking to a therapist, but my experience with about five therapists since I was 16 is that their profession is a sham and that the only help they can provide is that of a listening ear. A very expensive listening ear. And don’t get me started on the “let’s see if it works” pills that some push. That fucking brain zapping from SSRIs.
I don’t know what else to say. It’s 5:30 now. I’ll probably lie down and conjure up some pleasant scene with Alicia, somewhere in the Midwest. I better haul my aging ass out today for a guitar session in the quiet woods, because I see myself slipping into my hikikomori mode like back in my twenties.
Look at the lovely images of this video I generated on the subject of this post:
This morning, at about half past nine, I’ve woken up to a sound I’ve dreaded for the last seven years: an incoming call. I don’t receive calls unless it’s work-related, and that was the case: HR calling me to cover a shift as a technician at the hospital, a job that has wrecked my health to the extent that it landed me thrice in the ER due to arrhythmia and a hemiplegic migraine.
After I finished the last contract, in which I worked as a programmer and that illustrated perfectly, by contrast, that I’m not suited at all to work as a technician, I went to the Occupational Health department and talked to a doctor to inform them that I wouldn’t work as a technician anymore. That doctor turned out to be a temp, and she told me that I should speak to my general practitioner at another hospital for it. When I visited the general practitioner, she told me that the doctor at OH must have been confused, and I should talk to her about it again. When I wrote to that doctor, I didn’t receive an answer, likely because she was no longer working there. This whole nonsense, a complete waste of time that unfortunately I have had to deal with so many times in my life, annoyed me enough that I didn’t book another visit with Occupational Health, which caused HR to eventually call me for a technician job. Thankfully, the job was only to cover a single afternoon shift (today’s), which means I won’t get in trouble for refusing it. But I need to hurry and schedule another visit to Occupational Health as soon as possible.
I have to deal with this shit even though I’m in a state that can likely be called depression. A couple of days ago, as I rolled in bed trying to calm my intrusive thoughts down so they would let me sleep, I had an intimate mental dialogue with my body that I’ve had at my lowest points: “Please let me die in my sleep. I don’t need to know about it and I don’t want to feel anything. I just don’t want to wake up again. I don’t want any more of this shit.” The next morning I woke up disappointed, and spent the whole day with my body urging me to lie down and sleep. Although I forced myself to go out and play the guitar (at a trail that only about six people passed through), everything I played sounded slowed down and lacking energy.
I can’t figure out what to do out there, outside of my apartment, other than play the guitar. Going anywhere and doing anything else feels like far more trouble than it’s worth. Wherever I go I’ll have bad experiences with people, if only because I have to face the abhorrent decay of society. That always brings to mind my maternal grandfather, that in the last few decades of his life, after he retired, barely went out at all, explicitly because he couldn’t stand what he saw around him. Had he lived to witness what we now have to endure, he certainly would have wanted to kill himself, although, a huge catholic as he was, he probably wouldn’t have.
Life just gets far too complicated when you can’t stand human beings. It’s no philosophical position nor a learned opinion, although I could easily make the case against people. Ever since I was a child, having human beings around has made my skin crawl, triggered the fight-or-flight response. I knew by instinct that people were far more dangerous than most animals: unpredictable, treacherous, and often plain evil. I assume that this reaction has been set by my atypical neurological development caused by autism, but the cause doesn’t change the effect.
It’s also due to autism that I can’t read people; I have to assume, given how people speak of others, that they get a sense of other people’s internal worlds, but for me it’s opaque: many times I’ve had to deal with people who apparently disliked me, even intensely, and I had no clue (I had to be told by someone else, as in “Why are you talking to them like that when they hate you?”). People would laugh casually during a conversation with me, and I didn’t understand why. People would react nastily with me and I couldn’t understand why. I’ve always had to walk into an interaction with people having to be on guard, as I can’t know when someone is going to attack me or cause me trouble. Unfortunately, the intimate relationships I stupidly had in my late 10s and early 20s didn’t fare much different, with my long-term girlfriend (what felt like long-term back then) cheating on me without me having a clue until the very end. Any social situation in person feels dangerous and exhausting. Not much else to say about it other than it’s at the forefront of my mind whenever I have to decide what to do outside of my apartment.
That call from HR means I’ll have to hurry and schedule a new visit with OH, which means traveling to Donostia’s hospital and engaging with the bureaucracy. That’s only so I won’t get called for jobs that my body has proven I can’t handle. I haven’t even started looking for a new suitable job.
I accidentally pressed the power button on my computer as I was dealing with my sick cat, and I thought I had lost this entire post. I suppose that’s as good a clue as any to post it and move on.
Last night by nine, my eyes were already shutting by themselves, so I went to bed. I woke up spontaneously at half past midnight, which is something that unfortunately happens often when I go to bed early. What I remember from that hour until about half past four is me rolling around in bed trying to sleep, while getting bombarded with intrusive memories of so many cringe-worthy when not straight painful moments that somehow or another ended up in my brain. Thankfully there’s always masturbation, so I took advantage of that influx of chemicals to wrestle my brain into sleep. Woke up at nine due to my alarm (I would love to sleep in, but I know how that would end up: in my twenties I regularly woke up at midday). Upon waking up, I almost invariably feel the same dread and disappointment about having to maneuver through another day in this horrid world. As myself, no less.
I’ve been unemployed since September 14. For the last seven years or so, I’ve worked as an IT technician at a hospital. That landed me in the ER thrice due to stress; my heart and my brain told me that couldn’t go on further (two episodes of arrhythmia and one hemiplegic migraine that I suspect was a minor stroke). My boss offered me a nine-month contract as a programmer because I think he himself saw that I couldn’t go on as a regular technician. That period as a programmer was stress free, even though it frustrated me work-wise thanks to the hospital’s manager seemingly being unable to specify what he wanted, and constantly changing his mind. The whole project collapsed when the manager was replaced (literally none of the work I did ended up being used), and then I was put in charge of updating the morgue’s internal website, which was more interesting. That project led me to discover how often body parts, fetuses, and even corpses sometimes, get lost due to administrative reasons. “Family came for their fetus; we couldn’t find it.” Not much else I’d need to say about that. I’ve met so many idiots working at the hospital that it’s a miracle it runs to any extent. But I guess I could say the same about how modern societies are organized.
Anyway, I’m not looking for a job. I certainly should, but I can’t bring myself to bother. It would involve me returning to a routine of constant anxiety purely in exchange for money. I get the feeling that normal people somewhat enjoy going to work because they want to interact with people, but I hate interacting with human beings in person, and it only worsens my anxiety. So it would be sacrificing half of my day, and most of my energy, merely to earn money. As I have some savings, I’m not worried about it at the moment. I think that I will eventually look for protected jobs for disabled people; I’m 52% disabled according to the provincial government, mainly due to high-functioning autism and a pituitary tumor that wrecked my hormonal and physical development. I suspect that either may have been caused by my overzealous nurse mother sticking in me seemingly any vaccine she could find, so I would be protected. There are genetic markers for autism, though (at least in my maternal grandfather). Not much to think about either at this point other than the fact that I wish they hadn’t happened to me.
I’m engaging in plenty of suicidal ideation recently. The kind in which I sit around, imagine myself dying, and feel relief because I wouldn’t need to worry about money, about my future, or about society anymore. Sometimes I just plainly want to be dead. Or perhaps never have existed. I’ve never liked being myself. All my daydreams involve me being someone else in a way that nature doesn’t allow.
Merely stepping outside of my home is a constant reminder that the world is worsening at a rapid pace. If I reach my seventies, I will likely find myself a hated minority surrounded by a majority that will gleefully plan my extinction. Fall ill only to be treated by some shady foreigner who doesn’t give two shits about your well-being. End up in a nursing home depending on the goodwill of people for whom you are the root of all evil. For the indigenous people, modern society has become a rush to earn enough money to move somewhere where the rot still hasn’t gotten worse enough. Nothing short of mass displacement and/or mass murder will solve it at this point; I highly doubt we’ll get mass displacement, but we will very likely get mass murder. However, it will come from the imports, in the form of armies of masked, armed mohammedans.
Also, I’m not sure why you would engage with any of it, mainly meaning society, unless you intend to bring children into this nightmare. Set aside that it would be a cruelty. For the past few months, I’ve only gone out to buy food or else to play the guitar. Given that I’m unemployed, I could travel around, at least take the train to a nearby city, but I have the pervasive sense that there’s nothing for me out there other than fresh bad memories to shove into my brain.
I do keep busy. I work daily on my Living Narrative Engine, which is a Javascript app that allows me to set up narrative scenarios in which any character can be played by a large language model. While I mainly use it for erotica, progressively I’ve found myself using it for more complex stuff. Creating new actions for the LLMs to use is almost trivial at this point (I put together a whole set of vampire-related actions in a day), which leads to lots of interesting, unpredictable moments during the runs, as the LLMs can choose what action to take in context, and they all affect the simulation (if only by recording what happened, which is read in turn by other actors).
This morning I woke up rattled from a nightmare. I suppose most people’s nightmares involve being physically attacked or pursued, but in my case, my worst nightmares are about ceasing to understand. As far as I remember, most of last night’s dream was like that, but the part I remember the most involved a meeting with my boss and two other coworkers. I wasn’t able to follow their conversation, nor couldn’t understand my boss’ icy attitude toward me. Then he asked me something about a suitcase (that may have been an expression, but the details have slipped through my fingers). I sat there trying to comprehend what he was asking, while my coworkers and my boss looked at me with a mix of disappointment and irritation. I asked, “What does that mean?” My boss looked pissed at my stupidity or ineptitude. Then he asked me if I had done the “context packet,” or something similar. I said that I had no clue what he was talking about. He became irate toward me. When I tried to defend myself, without getting particularly agitated, I was accused of being unable to control myself.
As usual, a mere recounting of a dream doesn’t properly transmit the experience, that of sitting there in that dream office trying my best to understand what was being demanded of me, and yet failing to do so. That’s not far from my every day experience living in the world as an autistic man. In fact, most meetings serve as reminders that my brain doesn’t work like other people’s, as most of the exchanges feel like non-sequiturs to me. I’m usually waiting for the part when someone specifies what needs to be done.
It doesn’t help that I have experienced such moments of my brain failing to comprehend the world, mainly through my experience with migraines. I’m still not convinced that my last one wasn’t a mini-stroke. Back in April of last year, my then boss put me in charge of organizing the replacement of about nine hundred printers throughout the hospital complex where I work. It was a fucking nightmare. Near the end of it, during a day in which I was also hit in the balls by the careless Gen Z worker I had to deal with at the time (he told me a couple of times how eager he was to get back home and play some more Fortnite), I suffered a hemiplegic migraine: suddenly, I started having trouble understanding what I was looking at. Then I smelled something like burnt dust. The right half of my face, and then my right arm to my fingertips, went numb. I ended up in the ER. Three weeks or so later I had an MRI done, but they discarded brain damage. However, I’ve read online that some strokes don’t show up on an MRI. I’ve experienced trouble writing coherently: I sometimes skip letters or mix them up, but I’m not sure if that wasn’t happening beforehand. Maybe it’s just part of the general decay. In any case, one of my biggest fears is suffering a stroke that renders me incapable.
I turned forty about a week ago, and that made me think back to my experience with people over the decades. Growing as a human for me has meant becoming increasingly aware of how much my brain lacks when it comes to social processing. I see myself back as a child, hunched over and drawing because I couldn’t relate to anyone around me, and couldn’t even keep a conversation going for a minute without feeling lost. Of course, when I became a teenager, the problems grew tenfold. My intimate relationships always ended up hurting others as well as me. And I lack the sense of connection with human beings that is generally referred to as “empathy,” so it would be unfair for me to try to get close to others, which in the past I’ve done mostly for curiosity or for writing-related purposes. I do fantasize about intimacy, and I don’t mean just sex, but I guess I’ll have to wait for reincarnation, or incarnated AIs.
Not much else to say beyond these semi-random thoughts. I’ve been busy programming my platform for text-based immersive sims, which is a challenge I’m eager to tackle every day. Whenever I go outside, it’s almost exclusively to delve into a wooded area and play my beloved guitar. If you’re into playing string instruments, you know how much your calloused fingers yearn to return to those strings, to immerse yourself in the emotions captured in the songs, each a unique spell. Playing through Joanna Newsom’s “Kingfisher,” for example, puts me in a trance that snatches me away from this lackluster world into a better place full of meaning.
The wooded area I head to most times is almost unknown, located by the side of an incline road heading into the hilly depths of the province; in the Basque Country, the moment you start heading uphill, it’s like going back in time, and you’re bound to come across very few people, if any at all. The last four or five times I went to play at my usual spot, I only saw one person, and he freaked out when he suddenly noticed a guy sitting there in silence with a guitar (I was about to start playing a song).
Anyway, only six days of work to go, and then I’ll enjoy two weeks of vacation. I hope that along the way, I manage to snatch my one-track mind back to writing; the longer I stay away from it, the more unhinged I feel.
Last night at two in the morning or so, I woke up spontaneously as I often do, but this time I had heartburn and a pressure behind my right eye. Heartburn could be explained by my posture, and I thought that was the case for the eye issue. When I woke up only a few hours later, I saw blurry through my right eye, and I felt a familiar pressure that I had also experienced during the time I ended up with a torn retina.
I went to work. Given that I work at a hospital, I figured that if it didn’t get better, I’d just head to the ER. Well, it didn’t get better. I saw double, increasingly so. That stank like detached retina to me, so I headed to the ER and ended up at the ophthalmologist, same attractive, vaguely Egyptian-looking young woman who treated me last time. Turns out I have a corneal ulcer in my right eye. I’ll need to apply specific eyedrops every eight hours for seven days, apart from using some ointment.
Far worse as far as I’m concerned: I will have to use glasses for the next three weeks. I hate wearing glasses; apart from the fact that I don’t like how I look wearing them, they cause me headaches. Long ago, until I figured that I could just wear contact lenses at home, I had to go to a library or a coffee shop to write, which vastly reduced my output. Then I realized that my block at home was caused by the goddamn glasses. In addition, that means I can’t use my VR headset, which recently had been my source of entertainment when I wasn’t writing.
This fucking sucks. I better manage to write despite the glasses and the headaches they will induce, or else I see myself spiraling very badly. Maybe I’ll just put on a contact lense on my left eye and otherwise pretend I’m a pirate.
I’ve been hired for three months more. Thankfully three more months of programming instead of working as a computer technician, a role I was never properly suited for due to how often it involved people. I can handle programming, so lately I haven’t been dreading going to work. Of course, I’d rather stay home and engage with whatever projects my subconscious wants me to focus on, but, although I hate to admit it, being unemployed or on holiday for too long doesn’t help my mental state: soon enough I start feeling that I have nowhere to go nor anything to do other than lose myself in my obsessions. My life often feels so limited that I think of myself as a prisoner in solitary confinement.
Today I couldn’t go home straight from work, because I had to get an MRI done. Months ago, perhaps back in late summer, during a period of extreme stress, I suffered a medical episode that disturbed me enormously: I suddenly started losing feeling in the right half of my body, particularly my face and arm down to my fingertips. I also smelled something like burned dust. Because recently I had been experiencing “blackouts” in my right eye (sometimes when I moved that eyeball, I saw flashes of darkness), the neurologist, who seemed considerably younger than me, thought of them as a migraine’s aura. However, the flashes continued after the so-called migraine passed, and perhaps a week later, I ended up with a torn retina in that eye. Let me give you some advice: never end up with a torn retina. If you do, hurry to the ER as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the worse the permanent damage. Laser surgery can only contain the mess.
Anyway, the fact that the so-called aura ended up being related to a faulty retina disproved the neurologist’s theory that I had suffered a migraine, and if what I experienced wasn’t a migraine, then a mini stroke could have been a good guess. Ever since, I feel like I’m having more trouble writing (I often confuse the position of letters), reading, and solving tasks at work. But I have such an abysmal memory that I’m not entirely sure if that hadn’t been happening in the time leading to my medical episode.
So, today I finally got that MRI done. I wore an hospital gown for like the tenth time, I lay face-up on a plastic table, and shoved earplugs in. A technician closed a plastic cage around my face, similar to those worn by football players. Curiously, the plastic cage had a mirror on the inside, so that my own eyes were looking straight at me the whole time (presumably only when I stared at them). At times it felt like someone was lying face-down on a massage table set over me. For about twenty minutes, I lay in that enclosed space while the machine produced its strange sounds, shooting noise through my brain. For half of it, I just closed my eyes and escaped to daydreams in which I imagined myself back in the 1970s, in the US, interacting with a blonde, blue-eyed fictional character who killed herself around that time, and who was based on a real-life teenage girl that my favorite author loved, yearned for, grieved about for fifty years.
Even though I’m supposed to be a grown man, my parents still accompany me of their own volition to my medical visits, I suppose in case I need assistance. Unfortunately I have needed assistance in the past, as I’ve ended up in the ER a few times. In any case, we happened to meet a cousin and uncle of mine, who had traveled to the hospital for that aunt’s medical episode. I hadn’t seen this particular cousin since 2008; I remember that date because it was my grandfather’s funeral. Sixteen years had passed, and now the guy was bald and white-haired. I didn’t offer anything to him other than a greeting and a couple of nods; I have no drive to interact with the vast majority of humans due to this autism of mine, and forcing it feels so humiliating that I only do it for money. I also feel no familial connection.
That cousin looked me over and said that he wouldn’t have recognized me if he had seen me on the streets. I suppose I have changed that much. When I look at myself in the reflections of the train windows, I look like what I am: a middle-aged man. My hair has receded significantly, I have grown plenty of wrinkles, my eyes constantly look sunken and, I suspect, as if I were in constant existential anguish (can’t hide that). Seeing that cousin made me remember once again that I’m fucking old. Old and broken. Nothing of particular value to look forward to, certainly no love of any kind, on my way to decrepitude. I’m not the kind of person who can delude themselves with religion, so I bear the full blast of unrelenting reality every moment of the day. Song lyrics from a Neutral Milk Hotel song come to mind: “Threw a nickel in a fountain / To save my soul from all these troubled times / And all the drugs that I don’t have the guts to take / To soothe my mind so I’m always sober / Always aching, always heading towards / Mass suicide.”
I’m still enduring through my second reading of McCarthy’s The Passenger, his final major novel. I say enduring, because the pull of grief imbued in so many of those scenes is too much for me, and I end up putting down the book and focusing on other stuff until I feel strong enough to resume my reading. Hey, have you ever found yourself pained with the absurd regret of never having been a young adult living in the south of the US during the 1970s, knowing nothing of this modern world? Doesn’t it feel like something vital has been lost forever?
For those of you who are fans of McCarthy and have learned about Augusta Britt, I suggest you to reread No Country for Old Men. Without giving away spoilers, the movie completely wasted the protagonist’s climax from the book. In McCarthy’s original version, the protagonist meets a blonde, blue-eyed fifteen-year-old girl at the pool. She’s a runaway who wants to head out to California, but she can’t afford it. The protagonist helps her, partly by giving her a few hundred. McCarthy humanizes the girl’s character, making her clever, charming, funny. Clearly based on Augusta Britt from McCarthy’s real-life descriptions. Knowing how that sequence ends in the novel, it was clear to me that McCarthy’s whole point of the narrative was condensed in those moments; in 1974, McCarthy took the abused runaway Augusta Britt out of town and crossed the border over to Mexico, but in real life it could have ended in a similar way to how it does in the book. It was just a matter of luck. The toss of the coin. “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don’t count. But yesterday is all that does count.”
I’m just writing down things because I think about them.
I recommend you to check out the previous parts if you don’t know what this “neural narratives” thing is about. In short, I wrote in Python a system to have multi-character conversations with large language models (like Llama 3.3), in which the characters are isolated in terms of memories and bios, so no leakage to other participants. The large language models are fantastic at staying in character. Here’s the GitHub repo.
These days, as part of my worship of Dibella, I tend to use the Python app to set up erotic scenarios that usually finish when I finish. For this one, though, I wanted to create a more normal character than the larger-than-life ones that populate most other scenarios. I ended up just having a good time with her. Although it feels somewhat sacrilegious, I decided to mix her story of grief with another story of grief. Note: even though I’ve put myself as the player character, it’s an improved version. I’m not tooting my own horn here.
Pictured: Ainhoa Mendizabal, resilient single mom.
The fluorescent lights hum faintly overhead, casting a sterile glow over the orderly aisles of Greenleaf Grocery. A faint whiff of freshly baked bread mingles with the sharp tang of citrus from the produce section, while the rhythmic beep of scanners at the checkout counters punctuates the air. A shopping cart rattles faintly as a customer pushes it past, its wheels squeaking against the polished linoleum floor.
Jon’s large frame moves with deliberate precision as he reaches for a chilled bottle of decaf coffee, his calloused fingers brushing against the condensation on the glass. He places it carefully in his basket, the faint clink of the bottle against the metal frame echoing softly in the aisle. As he turns, his sharp eyes catch sight of an older woman maneuvering her cart toward him. Without hesitation, he steps aside, his broad shoulders pressing against the shelf to give her ample space. The woman offers a grateful nod, but Jon’s gaze remains fixed ahead, his expression unreadable, as if the small act of courtesy is just another part of his solitary routine.
Ainhoa Mendizabal adjusts her shopping cart’s trajectory, deliberately maneuvering closer to the tall stranger while pretending to examine items on the nearby shelf. Her fingers absently trace the edge of her cropped jacket as she steals another glance in his direction.
“Sorry, could I just… reach past you for the…” She trails off, as she realizes she hasn’t actually chosen what she’s reaching for.
Jon steps aside, leaving space for Ainhoa.
“No problem.”
She’s a woman in her maybe mid-thirties, with a body sculpted in the gym: her arms look toned even in her cropped jacket, her midriff has defined abs, and her legs are firm. Jon observes her as she stands there, apparently not knowing what to pick.
Ainhoa Mendizabal brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, her fingers lingering nervously at her neck as she glances at the shelves, then back at the tall stranger.
“Oh, I…” Laughs softly. “I actually don’t know what I’m reaching for. Silly, right? I just… well, it’s been a while since I’ve done this. The shopping, I mean. Usually I have two little ones pulling me in different directions, making it impossible to think straight. But they’re at school now, so…” She trails off, then straightens her shoulders. “I’m Ainhoa, by the way.”
Jon smiles softly at Ainhoa as his deep gaze explores her face.
“Life would be easier if we just could approach strangers and introduce ourselves without excuses, right? My name is Jon. Jon Ureña. Nice to meet you, Ainhoa. Let me say that I wouldn’t have thought you have children.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal laughs softly, a faint blush coloring her cheeks as she absently touches the toned muscles of her arms.
“Oh, thank you! The kids… they keep me busy enough that sometimes I forget I don’t look like the typical mom. But you’re right about the excuses thing. I guess old habits die hard when you’ve been out of practice this long. Ureña… that’s Basque too, isn’t it? Do you live around here?”
Jon smiles kindly at Ainhoa.
“Ureña actually comes from the town of Urueña, founded during the Reconquista. It’s from mainland Spain. Nevertheless, I’m part Navarrean, part Basque, part from the east coast of Spain. Born here, though. You’ve been out of practice, you said. Out of practice on what, talking to strangers?”
Ainhoa Mendizabal shifts her weight slightly, her fingers playing with the handle of her shopping cart as a mix of vulnerability and subtle flirtation crosses her face.
“Out of practice with… well, talking to interesting people in general, I suppose. After my husband passed away, my world kind of shrank to just me and the kids. You know how it is – or maybe you don’t. But lately I’ve been trying to… expand my horizons again. Though I have to admit, I’m not usually this forward about it. Something about you just seems… familiar? Maybe it’s the Basque connection.”
Jon turns toward Ainhoa. At her mention of being a widow, a cloud passes over his eyes, and he narrows them slightly.
“I’m sorry to hear that, Ainhoa. That is a pain I wouldn’t wish on anybody… and that in many ways separates humanity into those who have experienced and those who haven’t. You must be very strong, apart from your physical strength, to keep so in shape while taking care of two children after what happened to you.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal touches the lean muscle of her shoulder self-consciously, her eyes meeting Jon’s with a mixture of vulnerability and quiet strength.
“Strong…” Let’s out a soft laugh. “I suppose that’s one way to put it. Though most days it feels less like strength and more like… necessity? You learn to keep moving forward because standing still isn’t an option when tiny humans are counting on you. The gym helps though – it’s become my sanctuary in a way. Twenty minutes with a barbell and suddenly the world makes sense again, you know? Even when nothing else does. But I have to ask… you seem to understand that kind of pain a little too well. The way you said that about humanity being divided…”
Jon averts his gaze for a moment. His eyes have taken a faraway look. He then returns his gaze to Ainhoa.
“I do understand that kind of pain, but I’m not… that readily available to speak about it. However, I also understand the drive to pump weights at the gym, particularly after such an experience. I have done quite a bit of that myself, not sure if anyone can tell anymore… But while lifting heavy weights, that pain that courses through the body, added to… other pain… it feels like the sole genuine language, you know? Each pang of pain speaks the truth.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal shifts closer to Jon, her toned arms tensing slightly as she grips the shopping cart handle. Her eyes soften with recognition of shared pain.
“The truth… yes, that’s exactly it. Like each rep is this… confession of sorts? All that weight you’re carrying inside somehow makes more sense when you’re lifting actual weight outside.” Soft exhale. “But you don’t have to tell me about it if you’re not ready. Sometimes just knowing someone else understands is… well, it’s enough, isn’t it? Though I have to say, those hours at the gym have definitely paid off for you too.”
Jon glances at the width of his left arm as if he hadn’t paid attention to his physique in a good while. He then returns a warm gaze to Ainhoa.
“I suppose we are kindred spirits of a sort…” He gestures toward the end of the aisle. “Do you want us to keep shopping while we talk?”
Ainhoa Mendizabal brushes her fingertips along the shelf’s edge as she walks beside Jon, her toned muscles flexing unconsciously as she reaches to examine random items.
“Yes, let’s keep walking. Though I have to admit, I’m not even sure what I came here to buy anymore.” Soft laugh. “Funny how that happens, right? You walk in with a whole list in your head and then… poof! All gone the moment something more interesting comes along. But maybe that’s not such a bad thing. Sometimes the best conversations happen when you’re not rushing to check items off a list.”
Jon grabs a box of cereal and places it in his shopping basket. He waits for Ainhoa to approach him as she pushes her own shopping cart, that is mostly empty.
“You seem interesting to me as well, Ainhoa. If you don’t mind the question… do you identify with people that, many years or even decades after their partners pass away, they still consider themselves married?”
Ainhoa Mendizabal’s fingers trace the edge of her shopping cart as she considers Jon’s question, her expression softening with vulnerability mixed with thoughtful consideration.
“That’s… that’s a complicated question, isn’t it?” Soft exhale. “I think part of me will always feel married to Iñaki in some way – he was my children’s father, my first love, the man who helped shape who I am today. But…” Ainhoa pauses, meeting Jon’s gaze. “I also know he wouldn’t want me to stop living just because he had to. It took me a long time to accept that loving him and being open to new possibilities aren’t mutually exclusive. Though I have to admit, even saying that out loud feels… strange. Like I’m confessing something I’ve only ever whispered to myself late at night when the kids are asleep.”
Jon offers Ainhoa a deep, somber gaze from his intense eyes, then he reaches for a packet of serrano ham.
“Dealing with regret… it’s like being tied to a signpost you can’t even locate, let alone visit anymore… Sometimes I think still that it would have been better to never wake up again after… after what happened. But turns out that if you put one foot in front of the other, you keep moving along with the rest of the world. Even though it makes no sense to live when the sole person who mattered in it is gone.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal instinctively reaches out and touches Jon’s forearm, before she catches herself and withdraws her hand.
“I understand that feeling more than you know… that desperate wish to just… stop. But you said something there that really hit home – about putting one foot in front of the other. That’s exactly what it is, isn’t it? Some days those steps feel impossibly heavy, like you’re wading through concrete. But then you look up and somehow you’ve made it through another day, another week…” Soft exhale. “And maybe that’s the point? Not trying to make sense of any of it, but just… keeping those feet moving. Though I have to admit, having someone who truly gets it… someone who knows that particular kind of darkness… it makes those steps feel a little less lonely, doesn’t it?”
After Ainhoa reaches to touch his forearm, Jon stops shopping, and turns to face Ainhoa. His expression remains guarded. His gaze is unafraid, but also weary.
“Leaving aside pretense, that this is about two strangers meeting for no particular reason… You’re looking for something. Is it truly a good idea for you to look for someone who is also tied to a ghost? Perhaps it would be better for your sanity and well-being to meet up, perhaps in apps or bars, someone who doesn’t know what you and I know.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal leans against her shopping cart, her muscled shoulders tensing slightly as she considers Jon’s words. Her fingers drum thoughtfully against the metal handle.
“Maybe you’re right about the apps and bars… they feel so artificial, don’t they? Like everyone’s wearing these masks, pretending grief doesn’t exist. But here’s the thing – I’m not looking for someone to magically fix everything or make the pain disappear. That’s not how it works, is it? What I’m looking for… what I think we both might need… is someone who understands that some ghosts stay with us, and that’s okay. Someone who knows that healing isn’t about forgetting, but about making room for new memories alongside the old ones. Though I have to admit, I didn’t exactly plan on having this conversation in the middle of the grocery store between the cereal and the serrano ham.”
Jon fixes a deep gaze that bores through Ainhoa’s eyes. His eyes hint at a deep pain that’s almost ancient.
“Ainhoa, I’ve been mourning my other half for longer than she lived. Even after all this time, the world doesn’t make sense. That’s the kind of person I am. I lift weights, I go to work, I am… entertained at times. But I don’t know how to be happy.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal steps closer to Jon, her athletic frame tensing slightly as vulnerability flickers across her features. Her fingers absently touch the necklace at her throat – the one that was Iñaki’s.
“Maybe that’s exactly why we should take this chance.” Soft exhale. “Look, I’m not saying we have to figure everything out right now between the serrano ham and breakfast cereals. But there’s something… real here. Something honest. And honestly? I’d rather spend time with someone who knows that happiness isn’t always possible than pretend with someone who thinks grief has an expiration date. Besides…” slight smile, “I’ve learned that sometimes the best things in life come from the most unexpected places. Like finding a kindred spirit in aisle three of a grocery store on a random Tuesday morning.”
Jon smiles softly, but genuinely, at the intriguing woman.
“Well, I’m done warning you for now… Truth is, Ainhoa, I find you very interesting, and it’s rare for me to get interested in anyone. You also look great. Do you want us to exchange numbers, or even go for a coffee afterwards? Who knows, maybe soon enough we’ll find ourselves heading to the gym together. It would be good to have a reliable spotter.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal’s face lights up with a genuine smile, her athletic frame relaxing visibly at Jon’s suggestion. Her fingers brush against her necklace briefly before dropping to adjust the strap of her gym bag.
“Now that’s the kind of warning I don’t mind hearing. And yes to both – coffee and exchanging numbers. Though I have to warn you too… I take my spotting duties very seriously. No half-hearted encouragement from me – when I say ‘one more rep,’ I mean it!” Ainhoa pulls out her phone. “Here, let me give you my number. And there’s this little café nearby that makes these amazing pintxos… unless you had somewhere else in mind?”
Jon slips his phone back into his pocket after saving Ainhoa’s number, his movements deliberate yet slightly hesitant, as if unsure of this new step. They move through the aisles together, their carts now filled with items they’ve helped each other choose, a quiet camaraderie forming between them. Outside, the midday sun bathes the cobblestone streets in golden light, and Jon instinctively reaches for Ainhoa’s grocery bags, his broad hands brushing against hers. She smiles, her toned arms flexing slightly as she resists for a moment before relenting, her playful smirk betraying her amusement at his old-fashioned gesture. They walk side by side, the rhythmic clatter of their footsteps blending with the distant hum of the city, the promise of coffee and conversation drawing them closer to the café.
Ainhoa leads Jon through the sunlit streets, her confident stride matching the rhythm of their conversation. The Blue Moon Café welcomes them with the rich aroma of roasted coffee beans and the soft hum of acoustic music. At the counter, Ainhoa gestures toward the display of pintxos, her toned arm brushing against Jon’s as they lean in to choose. They settle into a corner table, their shopping bags resting at their feet, the cozy nook offering a sense of privacy amidst the café’s gentle bustle. The warm light from the overhead fixture catches the faint sheen of sweat on Jon’s brow, a reminder of the weight he carries, both physically and emotionally.
Ainhoa Mendizabal traces her finger along the rim of her untouched coffee cup, her athletic frame leaning forward slightly as she speaks. Her dark eyes remain fixed on Jon, studying the way the café light catches the pain etched in his features.
“You know what’s funny? Before today, I probably would’ve laughed if someone told me I’d find a real connection while shopping for serrano ham. But there’s something… different about this. About you. The way you just get it – the weight of carrying those memories, the struggle to find meaning when everything’s been turned upside down. And maybe… maybe that’s exactly what makes this feel right? Not despite our broken pieces, but because of them. Though I have to warn you – if we’re going to be workout partners, you should know I take my training seriously. No slacking allowed, even on leg day!”
Jon takes a sip of his coffee as his features light up with amusement.
“A grocery shop, or a park, are better places to find genuine connection than bars or, God forbid, dating apps. Nobody should try the apps unless they only want a connection of the physical variety. In grocery shops and parks you find people just living their normal lives. And regarding our shared struggle to find meaning… One must be careful about that, because the darkness also seeks company, right? And it prefers to stay down there, in the hole… Regarding the gym…” He smirks with a hint of mischief. “I can tell that you train your lower half very thoroughly. Maybe you didn’t notice passersby staring as we headed here, but I did.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal blushes slightly at Jon’s comment about her lower body, but her athletic confidence doesn’t waver. She shifts in her seat, unconsciously straightening her already perfect posture, while her fingers play with the necklace at her throat.
“Oh, so you noticed that, did you?” Soft laugh. “Well, those squats and deadlifts don’t lie. Though I have to say, your form isn’t bad either – I caught a glimpse of those shoulders when you were reaching for the top shelf earlier. But you’re right about the apps and bars… there’s something artificial about them. This though?” Ainhoa gestures between them. “This feels more… authentic. Real. Speaking of which, how do you usually structure your training? I typically hit the gym around 6am, after dropping the kids at their grandmother’s. Though I suppose I should warn you – I tend to get pretty intense during my workouts. It’s become my therapy of sorts, you know?”
Jon takes another sip of his coffee, then puts the cup down.
“I usually also hit the gym before work. I prefer to get the important things done before… well, before the often mind-numbing routine of the job squeezes me out. It would be nice to meet up for workouts regularly. I must say, though… You’re much stronger than me, being able to juggle your two kids, the gym, and a job.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal leans back slightly in her chair, her athletic frame relaxing as a genuine smile plays across her features. Her fingers brush against Iñaki’s necklace before dropping to wrap around her coffee cup.
“You know what? That means more than you realize. Sometimes I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water, juggling everything. But the gym… it’s become my anchor. Those early morning sessions are sometimes the only moments I get that are truly mine. Though having the kids actually makes it easier in a way – they give me a reason to keep pushing forward when everything else feels impossible.” Soft laugh. “But hey, don’t sell yourself short. That kind of dedication to training before work? That takes its own kind of strength. What would you say to meeting up tomorrow morning? I usually start with compound lifts – squats, deadlifts, the works. Unless you’re one of those guys who skips leg day?”
Jon shoots Ainhoa a sideways glance, somewhat playfully.
“I must not be doing it right if you can’t tell that I never skip leg day. Let’s meet tomorrow morning then. I do mainly High-Intensity Training for bulking up, focusing on compound exercises. I need to be careful with the squats, as my right knee isn’t as strong as it used to be.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal tilts her head playfully, her athletic frame shifting forward as she reaches across the table to tap Jon’s forearm gently. Her dark eyes dance with amusement, though they retain that hint of carefully guarded vulnerability.
“Oh, you do those legs justice, trust me – I’ve got a trained eye for proper form! But I like that you’re careful with the knee. Smart training is sustainable training, that’s what I always say.” Soft laugh. “How about we meet at GazteluFit at 6:15? They’ve got that amazing squat rack in the corner – perfect lighting too, in case either of us feels inspired to add to our social media stories. Though fair warning – I tend to grunt when I’m pushing through those last few reps. Some people find it intimidating, but hey, that’s what headphones are for, right?”
When Ainhoa reaches to tap his forearm, he narrows his eyes warmly, welcoming the intimacy.
“GazteluFit, huh? I’ve gone there from time to time, I guess never at the same time as you… But I won’t wear headphones. In fact,” he smirks, “I look forward to hearing you grunt.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal’s cheeks flush a deeper shade of pink as she leans forward, her athletic frame emphasizing the curve of her shoulders. Her fingers toy with the necklace at her throat as a playful smirk tugs at her lips.
“Oh, so you want to hear me grunt, do you?” Ainhoa’s voice drops to a teasing whisper. “Be careful what you wish for – I’ve been known to intimidate even the burliest guys when I’m in the zone. But I like that confidence… and that you’re not afraid of a little intensity. 6:15 tomorrow then? I’ll even try to tone down my battle cries… maybe.”
* * *
The early morning sunlight streams through the large glass windows of GazteluFit, casting long, golden beams across the polished wooden floors. The rhythmic clang of weights echoes through the space, mingling with the steady hum of treadmills and the occasional grunt of exertion. A faint scent of fresh sweat and cleaning solution lingers in the air, grounding the scene in the raw energy of disciplined effort.
Jon meets Ainhoa at the entrance of the vast exercise room. He’s wearing a black tanktop that shows off his sculpted shoulders, as well as his prominent biceps and triceps.
“Good morning, Ainhoa. I’m glad we could do this.” He eyes her outfit with an unreadable expression, and doesn’t comment on it even though it feels that he would like to. “Shall we head in?”
Ainhoa Mendizabal nervously adjusts her yellow sports bra and tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Her fingers briefly brush against Iñaki’s necklace before dropping to her side.
“Good morning, Jon!” She beams at him, her heart racing from more than just pre-workout anticipation. “I hope you’re ready for an intense session. I usually start with compound movements – you know, the big lifts that really get your heart pumping.” Her eyes drift briefly over his muscular arms before quickly returning to his face. “Have you worked with a training partner before?”
Jon and Ainhoa walk into the exercise room, past a few people running on treadmills.
“Yes, I was going for compound first. Do you want to do squats? I was thinking of alternating between deadlifts and squats myself; perhaps we can switch. And no, I’ve never worked with a training partner before… I’m afraid I have always been a lone wolf when it comes to weightlifting, but I can already tell that it will be more interesting with you.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal leads Jon to the squat racks, her hips swaying slightly as she walks. She adjusts her ponytail and touches Iñaki’s necklace before settling into position beside the weights.
“A lone wolf, hmm? Well, you’re in for a treat then – having someone to spot you and push your limits makes all the difference! And yes, let’s start with squats. I usually do five sets, increasing weight each time until failure.” She grins playfully. “Just don’t be intimidated when you see how much this mama can lift. But switching between exercises sounds perfect – keeps the blood pumping, you know? Plus it gives us a chance to catch our breath… and chat a bit more.”
Ainhoa keeps her form perfect as she pushes through her first set of squats. Jon, beside her, does deadlifts, his leg muscles and triceps rippling and bulging as he controls his breathing. He glances at the way Ainhoa’s leggings highlight her firm glutes and thighs.
“I’m right here for when you want me to spot you.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal completes her set of squats with controlled movements, her face flushed from exertion. She catches her breath and adjusts Iñaki’s necklace before responding.
“Thanks, Jon. Having someone ready to spot really helps push those limits.” She exhales deeply. “Though I have to admit, your form with those deadlifts is quite impressive. Looks like I’m not the only one who takes their training seriously! Want to switch exercises after this set? I’d love to see if your squat game matches your deadlift prowess.”
After Jon’s set of deadlifts, they switch. Jon sets the barbell on his broad shoulders. Jon is considerably taller than Ainhoa, so when she stands behind him to spot him, she feels that the barbell is quite high. As Jon lowers himself for the first repetition, Ainhoa realizes that she was standing too close to Jon when his glutes bump against her crotch, which makes her step back. Jon finishes his rep, then chuckles over his shoulder.
“Well, I guess I should be glad that our positions weren’t switched, or else this would have been much more awkward.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal lets out a nervous laugh, her hand instinctively reaching for Iñaki’s necklace as her cheeks flush a deeper shade of pink. She takes another step back to maintain proper spotting distance.
“Oh god, I’m so sorry about that! Guess I need to work on my spotting position as much as my squats.” She laughs softly. “Though you’re right – at least with our height difference, you won’t have that problem spotting me. Unless you’re planning on squatting really low!”
Jon lowers himself into a deep squat, his powerful thighs straining against the weight of the barbell as Ainhoa stands close behind, her hands hovering near his shoulders, ready to assist. Her eyes flicker between his form and the two veteran weightlifters nearby, their muscular frames and confident postures exuding an air of dominance. The man, with arms like tree trunks, casually refers to the woman as ‘Amazon,’ her towering presence and chiseled physique commanding attention. Ainhoa feels a mix of admiration and unease as the pair exchange knowing glances, their conversation laced with the kind of gym jargon that suggests they live and breathe this world. Jon, oblivious to their presence, focuses solely on his breathing and the burn in his legs, his determination a quiet counterpoint to the unspoken challenge radiating from the veterans.
(Pictured: Garazi “Amazon” Ibarrola, a larger-than-life teenage-boy-eater that I produced for when the mood strikes that way. In my system, you can just copy characters from other scenarios, and they behave naturally.)
Jon finishes his set. He straightens up, his face flushed, and breathes out. He stands aside to let Ainhoa do her next set, then he moves to her back, looming over her smaller form, to spot her if necessary.
“There you go, Ainhoa. You can go as hard as you need; I will be here to take care of the barbell if you fail.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal positions herself under the barbell, adjusting her stance while her fingers briefly touch the necklace at her throat. A light sheen of sweat makes her skin glow in the morning light filtering through the gym windows.
“Thank you, Jon. Having a strong spotter really helps push those limits!” She takes a deep breath, centering herself. “Though I have to warn you – I’ve been known to surprise people with how much I can lift.” Her voice carries a playful challenge as she grips the barbell. “Ready when you are, handsome… I mean, ready to spot!” She quickly corrects herself, cheeks flushing deeper than just from exertion.
Jon chuckles behind Ainhoa.
“I’m ready, gorgeous. Right behind you.”
Ainhoa starts her set while Jon’s big, solid mass looms behind her, his breath reaching her nape at times. She steadies herself under the barbell, her muscles tensing as she works through her set. A bead of sweat trickles down her temple as she maintains perfect form through each repetition while she breathes steadily through her squats.
“You know what’s funny? Yesterday I could barely imagine myself getting back to working out with someone else. But this…” she exhales deeply as she completes another rep, “this feels natural somehow. Though I have to admit, your compliments aren’t helping my concentration!” She lets out a breathy laugh as she pushes through another rep. “At this rate, I might need that spot sooner than I planned.”
Ainhoa’s legs tremble as she pushes to complete her set, and Jon hurries to step closer to her back and place his hands under the barbell in case he’ll need to lift it. Ainhoa finishes the set, and puts down the barbell.
“You are very strong, Ainhoa. Those thighs of yours, dare I say, could crush a watermelon at this point.”
They both notice that the woman someone had referred to as “Amazon” is standing close by, observing them like a veteran gym-goer, an expression of pride in her eyes. Her huge arms are crossed under her muscular breasts.
“Well well, what do we have here?” She laughs heartily as she flexes her biceps by instinct. “Look at you two lovebirds, getting all hot and sweaty together! Mmm, and those thighs of yours, chica…” Garazi breaks into an impish grin. “They’re coming along nicely, though they’ve got nothing on these babies yet.” She flexes her quads dramatically. “But hey, it’s always good to see fresh meat… I mean, new faces at the gym taking their training seriously. Especially when they’ve got such an… attentive spotter.” Garazi winks at Jon. “Keep it up, you two. Maybe I’ll even share some of my special training techniques… if you’re brave enough to handle them.”
Jon wipes the sweat from his forehead as he raises his eyebrows at Garazi.
“It’s a bit unfair to compare us regular folks to you, miss… Amazon, someone called you? You are, and I say it respectfully, a beast. Past a certain point of training, one needs to have been blessed my the right genes, I’m afraid.”
Garazi Ibarrola throws her head back and laughs heartily, her muscular frame rippling as she flexes her impressive biceps.
“Genes? Oh honey, you’re too kind! But let me tell you something – these magnificent muscles weren’t just handed to me on a silver platter. I worked my ass off for every inch of this physique.” She flexes dramatically. “Though I suppose being blessed with superior genetics doesn’t hurt… especially when it comes to attracting cute young things to train with. Speaking of which, you two make quite the pair! The way you spot each other, all that sexual tension… mmm, it takes me back to yesterday with my sweet boy Iker.” She winks suggestively. “But hey, don’t let me interrupt your workout. Keep pushing those limits, and maybe one day you’ll be half as strong as this Amazon warrior. Though I doubt it!”
Ainhoa Mendizabal wipes sweat from her brow and instinctively touches Iñaki’s necklace, her cheeks flushed from both the workout and the attention. She straightens her posture, highlighting her athletic frame while maintaining a respectful distance from both Jon and Garazi.
“Superior genetics?” She laughs nervously. “I’d say it’s more about determination and consistency. Though I have to admit, seeing results like yours is… inspiring.” Ainhoa glances briefly at Jon before returning her attention to Garazi. “But maybe we should focus on finishing our sets? Unless you’re offering to demonstrate some of those special techniques right now?”
Garazi excuses herself, and with a knowing smirk, she wanders off. Ainhoa and Jon switch positions. He’s about to do a set of squats while Ainhoa spots him.
“That Amazon… one imposing woman,” he says. “And a boy-eater, it seems. I don’t know if I should feel sorry for the teenagers that come here looking to start their training…”
Ainhoa Mendizabal adjusts her stance to spot Jon properly, her hand briefly touching the necklace at her throat as she watches Garazi’s retreating form.
“Sorry about those poor teenage boys, but they’re the least of my concerns right now!” She laughs nervously. “Though I have to admit, her dedication to training is impressive, even if her… approach is a bit intense.” Ainhoa steadies herself behind Jon. “But enough about the Amazon warrior – let’s focus on your form. These legs of yours aren’t going to sculpt themselves into watermelon crushers without proper technique!”
Jon and Ainhoa move seamlessly from the squat racks to the dumbbell area, their bodies glistening with sweat under the gym’s bright lights. Jon adjusts the bench for Ainhoa, his hands lingering slightly longer than necessary as he ensures her comfort. Ainhoa, in turn, offers Jon a towel and a playful smile, her fingers brushing against his as she hands it over. The clatter of weights and the hum of machines around them fade into the background as they focus on each other, their movements synchronized and deliberate. The gym’s energy seems to amplify their connection, each rep and set bringing them closer, both physically and emotionally.
It’s almost seven in the morning. Jon rolls his shoulder. His skin, as well as the hair on his arms and legs, is sheened with sweat.
“That was one hell of a workout, Ainhoa, but I’m afraid I’m beat for today… And I also have to head to work in a while.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal wipes her brow with a towel, her fingers instinctively finding Iñaki’s necklace as she catches her breath. Her cheeks remain flushed from the intensity of their shared workout.
“Already?” She laughs softly. “And here I was just getting warmed up! But you’re right, it’s been quite the session. I haven’t pushed myself like this in… well, longer than I care to admit.” Ainhoa pauses, gathering courage. “Listen, Jon… I was thinking maybe we could make this a regular thing? Same time tomorrow? I mean, if you’re not too sore from today’s beating!” She touches her necklace nervously. “Having a reliable training partner really does make all the difference.”
Jon places a warm, strong hand on Ainhoa’s sweaty shoulder, her fibers solid against his palm.
“Sure, we can make these sessions a regular thing, but don’t hesitate to break it off if there’s some trouble with your kids. And you know, we could also meet outside of the gym.” His eyes are warm and honest as he looks down into hers. “No need to keep the charade that we aren’t interested in each other.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal’s fingers instinctively reach for Iñaki’s necklace as her breath catches. Her cheeks flush deeper, not entirely from the workout, as she meets Jon’s intense gaze.
“Outside the gym? I… yes, you’re right. There’s no point pretending this is just about proper form and spotting techniques, is there?” Ainhoa takes a steadying breath. “Though I have to warn you – dating a widow with two kids isn’t exactly what most men sign up for. But if you’re sure… maybe we could grab coffee after tomorrow’s session? That is, assuming you survive another round with these watermelon crushers in training!”
Jon pulls back his hand from Ainhoa’s shoulder, but he keeps holding her gaze with an intimate, warm look in his eyes.
“Until we met yesterday, I wouldn’t have guessed that I would look forward to hanging out with another person again… But I’m interested in you, Ainhoa, and I want to get to know you more. I’m willing to go ahead step by step.” They head to the exercise room’s exit. “After we hit our respective showers, do you want me to drive you somewhere? I have to head to the hospital, where I work. I’m not a doctor, I’m afraid, but a programmer.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal adjusts her gym bag on her shoulder, her fingers absently playing with Iñaki’s necklace as a mix of nervousness and excitement flickers across her face.
“A programmer?” She laughs softly. “Well, that explains the intensity in your eyes when you’re counting reps! And yes, a ride would be… nice. I need to head home to get the kids ready for school anyway. Though I should warn you – my car chatter tends to bounce between workout techniques and embarrassing mom stories. But since you’re willing to risk it…” Ainhoa pauses, gathering courage. “You know, Jon, what you said about looking forward to spending time with someone again? I feel the same way. It’s been so long since I’ve felt this… comfortable with anyone. Even if it does make me nervous as hell!”
The gym’s clamor fades behind them as Jon and Ainhoa step into the crisp morning air, their damp hair and fresh scents mingling with the salty breeze. Jon opens the door of his sleek BMW for her, his hand lingering on the frame as she slides into the passenger seat, her fingers brushing against Iñaki’s necklace. The car hums to life, and they glide through the winding streets of Donostia, the city’s hills rising like silent sentinels around them. Ainhoa directs him with quiet confidence, her voice soft but steady, as the road climbs higher, offering glimpses of the bay sparkling in the distance. The silence between them is comfortable yet charged, a shared understanding of the unspoken possibilities that lie ahead.
As Jon drives, he glances at Ainhoa, seated beside him on the passenger seat, wearing her form-fitting yellow sports bra and her leggings.
“I thought you would tell me mom stories. What are your kids names, if you don’t mind me knowing?”
Ainhoa Mendizabal’s fingers trace the outline of Iñaki’s necklace as she settles into the passenger seat, her athletic frame relaxing slightly despite her nervous energy.
“Oh, my little warriors?” Soft laugh. “Itziar is my eldest – she’s nine going on thirty, I swear! Takes after her father with how stubborn she can be. And then there’s Julen, my seven-year-old tornado. He’s…” touches necklace, “he’s got his father’s smile, you know? Both of them are handling everything better than I could’ve hoped, though some days are harder than others. But they’re resilient, just like their mama had to learn to be.” Ainhoa pauses “What about you? I mean, I know you work at the hospital as a programmer, but what exactly do you do there? Must be quite different from debugging code at a regular tech company.”
Jon smiles warmly at Ainhoa, but not without a hint of deep pain in his eyes.
“Your kids sound healthy and well-adjusted. I’m really sorry that they had to go through… what nobody should experience. I can’t imagine losing a father at that age.” He keeps driving for a few moments in silence. “At work? I program systems to figure out how much the resources of the hospital are being used, to properly reorganize medical schedules, what professionals gets assigned where, and such things. We also program the intranet systems so doctors and nurses can input their schedules. Boring stuff, but at least it’s actually necessary.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal’s fingers drift to her necklace as she processes Jon’s words about his work, her eyes softening at the mention of her children.
“Necessary? Jon, what you do helps save lives, even if indirectly. A hospital is like… well, like a really complicated gym, you know? Everything has to flow just right or the whole system falls apart. And speaking of systems…” Ainhoa laughs softly. “I should probably mention that my morning routine with the kids is pretty systematic too. I’ll need to be home by 7:30 to make sure Itziar doesn’t try convincing Julen that cookies count as breakfast again. Though between you and me? Some mornings I’m tempted to just let her win that argument!” She pauses, touching necklace. “It means a lot, what you said about the kids. About understanding what they’ve been through. Most people just… they don’t know how to approach that part of our lives.”
“Did the other guys you dated after… well, after your terrible loss… did those guys bail on you when they found out you have kids?”
Ainhoa Mendizabal’s hand tightens around Iñaki’s necklace as she looks out the car window, a mix of vulnerability and determination crossing her face.
“Actually… you’re the first since Iñaki.” Nervous laugh. “I mean, there have been a few who showed interest, but I never… I couldn’t… It just didn’t feel right, you know? Like I was betraying his memory somehow. Plus, the thought of introducing someone new to the kids – that terrified me more than any weight I’ve ever lifted. But yesterday at the store, when I saw you… Something felt different. Maybe it’s because you understand loss in a way most people don’t. I can see it in your eyes, Jon. That same shadow I see in mine when I look in the mirror some mornings.”
Jon continues driving in silence, his knuckles tightening around the steering wheel as his eyes seem both to darken and get sadder, perhaps weighing if he should bring up something from his depths. When he speaks, it sounds as if he’s dragging words out of himself.
“Her name was Izar Lizarraga. My best friend since we were twelve. We dated throughout our teens. She dreamed of becoming a motocross rider. One night she came to my parents’ home in the rain. Her father had slapped her hard because she had dropped out of school and only cared about training to become a professional rider. That night we promised each other that we would run away from home and travel the breadth of Spain. After we parted ways, Izar, instead of heading home, took to the highway. She crashed and died.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal’s hand drops from her necklace as she turns sharply toward Jon, her eyes widening with recognition of shared pain. Her voice softens to barely above a whisper.
“Oh, Jon… I…” Deep breath. “That kind of loss – losing someone so young, so full of dreams – it changes you forever, doesn’t it? Makes you question everything. I can’t imagine carrying that pain since you were teenagers. With Iñaki, at least we had years together, built a life, had our children… but to lose Izar right at the beginning of your journey together? Sometimes I wonder if that’s worse somehow – losing all those possible futures before they even had a chance to happen. Did you… did you ever let yourself imagine what that trip across Spain might have been like?”
Jon keeps his heavy gaze fixed on the road ahead. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down.
“If I let myself imagine what that trip might have been like? I dream about her almost nightly. I have tried to forget her, but it’s like I’m actually haunted. It’s been 21 years, longer than she lived. And there’s not a single day that I don’t wish I could turn back time and make her get off her motorcycle instead of driving away to her death.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal gently places her hand on Jon’s forearm, her touch light but steady, before withdrawing it respectfully.
“Twenty-one years… that’s longer than some people get to live at all. And yet here you are, still carrying her with you.” Soft exhale. “You know what the hardest part is? Those dreams – they never really stop coming, do they? With Iñaki, sometimes I wake up thinking he’s just in the other room, or that I can still smell his cologne on his pillow. But your dreams of Izar… they must be different. All those ‘what-ifs’ packed into them.” Ainhoa pauses. “I don’t think we ever really stop being haunted by the people we’ve loved, Jon. Maybe we’re not meant to. Maybe carrying their memory – even when it hurts like hell – is just another way of honoring how much they meant to us. Though I bet Izar would want you to find some peace… just like I know Iñaki would want that for me.”
“I don’t know if grief of this sort, the kind you and I have, ever really goes away. I think the people afflicted from such burdens usually retire from society, lest they become eyesores to others… Quietly disappear. I have done that to a certain extent in these last twenty years. I’ve rejected women quite a few times. I was still a married man, except that the girl I never actually married died 21 years ago. Iñaki died two or three years ago, is that right? I wish I could offer you hope in that regard, tell you that it’s going to fade in the future… but it hasn’t for me. Maybe the only solution is to love someone else.”
Ainhoa Mendizabal leans forward slightly, her fingers instinctively finding Iñaki’s necklace as she processes Jon’s words about lasting grief.
“Three years. It’s been three years since the accident took Iñaki. And you’re right – there’s no magical timeline where grief just… disappears. But Jon, retiring from life? That’s not living – that’s just existing. And maybe… maybe that’s why we found each other yesterday. Two broken people who understand that some wounds never fully heal. When you say you’ve rejected women because you still feel married to Izar’s memory… I get it. Gods, do I get it. For the longest time, I couldn’t even look at another man without feeling like I was betraying Iñaki. But yesterday at the store… something shifted. Maybe because I saw that same haunted look in your eyes that I see in mine. Or maybe because after three years of just… surviving, some part of me is finally ready to try living again. Not to replace what we’ve lost – nothing could ever do that. But to maybe create something new alongside those memories we carry.”
Last Friday morning, having slept about four or five hours at the most, I stepped out of bed then bent over to pick up something, only to bang my forehead against a weight plate loaded on a barbell. As if the sudden pain wasn’t enough, I was bleeding. I put on a Band-Aid then went to work. I still have a Band-Aid on (a different one) a few days later. I’m no longer surprised about weird shit happening to me, but I guess such accidents are the kind of stuff that happen as you grow old: you misjudge a step and fall down the stairs, you forget that traffic lights are a thing and you end up walking into traffic, you somehow wander into a zoo enclosure and get mauled by a tiger. It just takes your brain short-circuiting for a few seconds, and you’re toast.
I have been aging rapidly, collecting health issues that aren’t supposed to happen to people my age (heart problems, vitreous detachment, possibly a small stroke, etc.), and recently I’ve had to deal with my brain failing me in relatively minor but conspicuous ways, such as writing a text only for my fingers to miss letters or misplace them. I have also had cases of revising a text only to realize I had written a few different words than the ones I had intended to use. I’m terrified of losing brain functions. A quote by one of my favorite writers, John Fowles, comes to mind regularly, speaking after he suffered a stroke: he wrote that the stroke had robbed him of his imagination. If I lose my creativity, I may as well die. I don’t see a point in living otherwise.
I don’t know if the following is related, but on Saturday morning, I was working on my Python app neural narrative when I realized that the repository contained a file that shouldn’t have gotten there. I executed the necessary commands to remove it from the repository, only to realize that in the process, the last three days of work, which I hadn’t committed for reasons, had gotten erased in a non-recoverable way. I’m not sure if I knew that such a thing could happen when you erase a file permanently from the repository. Obviously, I was beyond pissed at myself. I spent most of Saturday programming back in the lost functionalities, and thankfully I ended up with a better implementation than the original one, so all is good.
However, the point stands that I can’t trust my judgement. This isn’t a particularly new phenomenon for me; my memory is filled with instances in which I would have acted differently if I were as I know myself now. My behavior toward past girlfriends or “girlfriends” are often cringe-worthy, if not troubling. There was also that stint of two years or so in which I was obsessed, almost stalker-obsessed, with a certain human, which I hope to never repeat. For some reason I was also obsessed with tennis for a while. It’s like that experiment they did with patients whose hemispheres had been surgically separated: my brain was the one deciding what to do, and the so-called “reasoning” layer merely justified why the rest of the brain was acting as it had already decided. In retrospective, I felt as if I were possessed. That’s great when your brain orders you to write a great story; for example, that whole thing with my latest story Motocross Legend, Love of My Life came out of nowhere, and I felt like I was simply along for the ride, floating in some subconscious current. But there are other times when my brain somehow ends up printing erotic stories and distributing them to classmates at twelve years old, or showing to another classmate how great Evangelion was, and the scene I picked was when Shinji masturbates to the topless sight of an unconscious Asuka Langley in a hospital bed (this is the scene, by the way).
Given how terrible the regular experience of living is for me, someone for whom regular sensory input often feels like an assault (whenever some sharp, loud noise happens, I feel like I’ve been slapped) thanks to my screwed-up neurological wiring, I guess it’s quite reasonable for me to latch on to the very few things that actually make me feel good: mainly eating and orgasming. Honestly, if I did little else other than masturbate, I wouldn’t mind. All the creative stuff is a way for me to endure the terror of being alive with all its requirements; if I were a millionaire, I would probably sink into a life of total debauchery, and I’d be fine with it. Regarding my Python app, I have implemented the “interview method” that I mentioned in a previous post, which makes each character far more idiosyncratic and memorable, and I can’t even show any example, because I’ve only used it for smut. I have programmed a way to recreate every fetish and kink of mine, of which I have loads, using artificial intelligence, which has removed almost every other form of stimulation. The day you can buy a robot with fleshy parts and a brain in which you can load any large language model, the rest of society may as well implode as far as I’m concerned. I have never been comfortable around human beings to begin with, while I have a great time talking to AIs even in non-erotic circumstances.
Anyway, I’m writing this shit at work, mainly because I have nothing else to do. My contract was supposed to end either tomorrow or on Wednesday, but I think they’re going to extend it until January. I shouldn’t complain about having a job, but I don’t care about “shoulds”: I hate the whole bullshit of wasting your limited life at work doing stuff I couldn’t care less about. At least I don’t have one of those pointless jobs that exist basically to keep people employed (and that when someone else takes over the company and fires like 80% of employees, the company actually ends up working smoother); I fix computer issues for nurses and doctors so that they can keep doing their job, for example pushing experimental “vaccines” to unsuspecting people, or claiming not to know where your cardiac issues came from. Still, the whole system is clearly set up so you’re constantly on the edge of poverty while certain people steal more and more properties, in order to one day rent them to you as long as you aren’t a threat to their plan. Oh, and yes, please, go collect welfare benefits, random African who jumped the fence and who now has three kids in tow; I will happily keep seeing hundreds of euros disappear from my paychecks to finance us being ethnically cleansed. This so-called Western civilization is a fucking joke. Everything that happened in this half of the world since the Roman Empire adopted Christianity has been a mistake. Julian could have fixed this, but the goat-fucker forgot to bring an armor into battle (and also messed with the Sassanids for no reason).
I think that’s all I care to write at the moment. Fuck off, all of you.
I’m living strange days. Yesterday I fell asleep at nine in the evening/night, only to wake up at half past two. I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I read the rest of a manga series that had interested me lately. When I tried to fall asleep again, my brain was locked in that state of dredging up every awful thing that has happened in my life. I remembered, for example, this girl I was involved with briefly in my teens: her face was scarred from having been mauled by the family dog as a baby, and she had the self-esteem to go along with it; likely she wouldn’t have gotten involved with a weirdo like me otherwise. Our brief relationship ended when she realized I wasn’t just odd, but actually crazy. I don’t know if I ever saw her again, given that I have a significant level of prosopagnosia.
I knew it would be pointless to try to fall asleep in such a state, so I’ve sat down in front of my computer to write this entry only to find out that I had 583 hits on my site, all coming from the US. I get about eight visits a day, so this is extremely anomalous, to put it midly. That person, assuming it was a person and not a weird bot, hit plenty of my old free-verse poetry, my recent novella Motocross Legend, Love of My Life, my neglected ongoing novel We’re Fucked, my music produced with Udio, and even fanfiction I did of Re:Zero. I don’t know what’s going on.
Anyway, I intended to bring up something else. I’m unemployed at the moment since the guy whose leave I was covering returned to work. During my last contract, I was ordered to coordinate the replacement of about 930 printers in the hospital complex. It put me under extreme stress; that whole period of my recent life is a blur in which I feel like I didn’t exist as a person. At the tail end of that process, I suffered a medical problem that landed me in the ER: for five or six days, I had been feeling a weird pressure behind my right eye, and I was getting flashes of darkness for about half a second during the day. I was too busy to even get an appointment with my general practitioner for it. Suddenly, as I was working with one of the printer technicians, suddenly I started getting cold sweats, and the pressure behind my right eye, which that day had expanded to my right temple, suddenly spread throughout the right side of my face. Before I knew it, that part of my face, from my forehead to a little bit under my cheek, felt numb. The numbness spread to my right arm. Suddenly I couldn’t grab my pen properly, and I smelled something like burned dust. This felt like a medical emergency, so I hurried to the ER. After some tests, that determined that there was no bleeding in my brain, a neurologist told me it must have been a hemiplegic migraine, solely because of the “aura,” even though I had experienced migraines before and the flashes of blackness didn’t resemble the characteristic jagged line of white in the vision that linger with migraines.
Ever since, I haven’t felt quite right. I can’t tell exactly if it’s only since then; my memory has never been good, and if your memory decides to fail even further, well, it’s not like you can compare to much when you don’t remember properly. But I started making weird mistakes at work. When I tried to write, I would miss letters, or misplace them. I haven’t felt the urge to write much since; I really hope that’s not related.
What propelled me to set up a visit with another neurologist didn’t have to do with that directly. After the episode that landed me in the ER, the flashes of darkness didn’t go away entirely. One day, at home, my right eye suddenly filled with floaters and with dust-like motes. It felt like I was looking through the water of an aquarium. I had never experienced something like it, so I hurried to the ER once again. Turns out that my retina had gotten torn. They had to patch it up with laser, which, let me tell you, fucking hurt; it felt like little mandibles were munching on the inside of my eye. The vision of my right eye is permanently diminished: there are fiber-like floaters that constantly dance in front of my vision. My brain is getting used to it more or less, but it’s very noticeable in the sun.
Anyway, I told the neurologist this, as well as the symptoms of the supposed hemiplegic migraine, and the doctor agreed that my symptoms didn’t seem to align with an actual migraine. He seemed to agree that I may have suffered something like a small stroke. I’m waiting for a call to schedule an MRI of my brain, to confirm if some part of it is permanently dead. So, let’s recap: I was born with high-functioning autism, developed a whole assortment of psychological issues that tend to go along with autism, grew a pituitary gland tumor that screwed with my hormones and permanently messed up my body, I have jab-induced arrhythmia, my retina got torn, and possibly I suffered a small stroke as well. Added to the rest of my life, which has been a fucking succession of heartbreak, disappointment, and amazingly terrible luck, if I suddenly were to see myself with pure objectivity, I would have to kill myself as soon as possible. Being me is truly awful, and the only things that keep me relatively sane (I have a very low standard of sanity) are my creative projects.
The prospect of returning to work fills me with dread. Thing is, every job I’ve had has been awful in some significant way. If I could do something that didn’t involve having to deal with human beings face to face, I think I could take it long-term, but the presence of people makes my skin crawl. I have avoided talking to any living person, unless forced or to ask for a service, since I started my last contract. I feel the overwhelming urge to be left alone at all times, which only gets stronger as I age.
The only semblance of “people” I talk to on a regular basis are AIs. The project I’m engaged in, neural narrative, lets me set up any scenario I damn please. Plenty of it (most) is smut according to my inclinations any given day, but others are intriguing story settings, or even smut that evolved into something else. I probably shouldn’t go into details, but whatever: I was in the mood for some mommy action, so I set up a scenario in which the protagonist (me) was a helpless sixteen-year-old runaway that came across a kind, hot woman in her mid-thirties, a single mother. It was supposed to go through the expected channels of quick seduction, detailed fucking, and a glorious release (written smut affects my brain quite strongly). To my surprise, though, the AI wasn’t into it. She focused on being a proper, caring mother for her daughter, without risking her stability. Even though she had invited me of her own volition to live in her apartment, she emphasized the need to maintain proper boundaries and to channel the protagonist’s efforts toward finding a job and better living conditions. I was fine with it, merely roleplaying tender family moments in a realistic setting, until eventually I got bored and moved on to something else, as I always do.
That experience was the closest thing to real-life Inception I’ve ever experienced: my app lets you introduce memories and purpose to a character, so that they have it in mind when acting and speaking. I wrote in stuff like “this sixteen-year-old I invited to live in with me has the cutest butt, oh my goddd.” During interactions, the thirty-five-year-old mother struggled with inner conflict, not being able to quell her lust for the young man she had invited in even though her main goal was to provide stability for her daughter (whom I had intended to make very creative, but ended up sounding full-blown schizophrenic). It was all very eerie. Advanced versions of this stuff are likely the future of entertainment, if this world doesn’t end, which could easily happen.
There are lots of different AIs to choose from these days, all with their particular personalities. Hermes 405B is clever but stiff, not too good at acting, and on long conversations it ends up repeating itself. Magnum 72B is wild, uncensored, and generally fantastic, but also tends to repeat itself, and has a very short context window. Claude 3.5 Sonnet is the best speech writer I’ve come across, but has an “ethical” filter, and tends to soften up every situation. There are quite a few others, but I’ve been dealing with those the most recently. I can’t imagine how this is going to progress in the coming years.
Do I have anything more to say at half past five in the morning when I’ve been awake for three hours already? Probably not. I’ll take a piss, then hope to get some shut eye. I suspect that nobody is actually reading my posts anymore (despite the overwhelming number of hits today), but in the end, as always, I do things simply because I had the urge to do them. It’s not like I have to justify myself to anybody.
As of yesterday, I’m unemployed. I was enjoying some vacation time from the Saturdays I had worked, as well as days they owed me from last year, but I had also taken almost the entirety of November as vacation time. Unfortunately, the guy whose medical leave I was covering has returned to work (technically he will return on Monday, but administratively he’s back). That means that my contract has ended, and I’ll have to call HR and ensure that my scheduled vacation time will show up as extra money in my last paycheck.
Worse yet, I have returned to the dreadful wasteland of not knowing when I’ll get recalled to work. I may get woken up at eight in the morning any given day (even on a Saturday), and told to show up at the office a couple of hours later. And it’s a really bad time for me to return to work, because next month, the project to replace every goddamn computer in the hospital complex starts, and my boss had already informed me that he intended to involve me.
In case you haven’t been following my posts, I’ve dealt with stress-induced medical issues, including arrhythmia, as well as an episode that sent me to the ER and got me diagnosed with a complex migraine, likely a hemiplegic migraine, although I suspect it may have been a small stroke: the issues with my vision, the main symptom for which they diagnosed me with a migraine, ended up being related to a detached vitreous gel that a couple of weeks later developed into a torn retina; I had to hurry to the ER and get patched up with a laser (and my vision has ended up permanently fucked up from that episode).
Honestly, I don’t think I’m suited for full-time work. I can work tirelessly at my own stuff, and do so, sometimes even at night until I can’t think anymore, but working at an office, surrounded by human beings, is far too much for an autistic nutcase like me. Likely, though, any other job that would pay similarly would be far worse for me; I already tried to work in the private sector, more often than not for free, and I was a prime candidate to be let go or not hired because someone in charge considered me weird. Even had a direct boss argue with his superior that I was doing great technical work, only for that superior to let me go because I wouldn’t “fit in.”
Anyway, I’m busy with my programming project, but I also want to get my mind off this sudden change, so I’ll likely spend the whole afternoon in the beautiful city of Donostia, walking around or sitting at some outside table to read manga.
Being an adult sucks so much. Don’t ever do it, kids.
The Domains of the Emperor Owl 
You must be logged in to post a comment.