From Wikipedia:
A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning.
I recently lost a Google sheets file that had some irrecoverable data on it. I had a backup in multiple locations and learned that, while Google drive backs up generic files, it only creates symbolic links to things like Google sheets on your pc. So when that disappears from the online service, your ‘backups’ just become references to nothing. So. Keep that in mind, I guess.
It wasn’t anything radically important, just something I kind of cared about, so the good Lord saw fit to take it from me as he has done so many times and will doubtless do many more. I try not to dwell on these things but it’s a losing battle. I’m only trying nowadays because the caring has become unsustainable mentally. But it’s just not something I’m used to. I’m used to being upset all the time.
I drove down to Bowling Green today to try to get a deer, and loading up at dad’s house, it was with that cloud of loss weighing on my soul that I found that my keychain carabiner was missing the One Ring replica that had been on it for twenty-some-odd years. I recall it costing something like thirty bucks, buying it around the release of the Jackson Lord of the Rings films. I had thought I’d lost it once before and seeking to replace it found that the original seller no longer sold it due to copyright or trademark restrictions. Replacing with something of similar quality would cost me significantly (due to same licensing) and any money spent at that level wouldn’t replace it anyway, since even I, dumb as I am, would never stick a two-hundred dollar ring on my carabiner. So it had become irreplaceable; if it was lost, it was lost forever. A trinket, little thing, that had become part of my person as any accessory could, cut off like a finger.
So I sat in the deer stand, hating my world and self. Idly considering deleting my website, collected works, burning my journals and letters from loved ones and paintings and possessions of any meaning then killing myself, in a vain attempt to deprive the world of anything I added to it in the same way I am so regularly deprived of this and that by some cruel mechanism that operates to the benefit of none. I tried not to think these things but I’m just so used to being mad.
After seeing no deer, driving them off with my radiating negative energy I’m sure, we got back to the house and I announce I’m driving back to Louisville to check if the ring had fallen outside my door or in the clutter of my apartment. Ordinarily I would stay the night and have breakfast with dad but left, stormclouds around my head, without having spent two minutes with him.
This is where we get to the ritual part. I drove back to Louisville, not because I wanted to go to Louisville, but because I wanted my ring back. But I knew that it was not outside my door and I knew that it was not in my apartment. It could have been lost a week ago, and may have fallen anywhere I’d been in the meantime. So why did I drive to Louisville? Why did I drive in silence? Because if I didn’t deserve the ring anymore, I didn’t deserve to spend time with dad. I didn’t deserve to listen to anything on the drive. God or the universe or whatever had informed me that I was being punished again, for… whatever, he hates me, it doesn’t matter. And like the child that intentionally chooses the greater punishment in what defiance they can muster against a parent who offers them a choice between two belts or some shit, I doubled down. If I was gonna lose, I was gonna lose hard.
So I get home, and do my little sweep of the doorway and the hallway and the living room and of course find nothing. So now back to the car to grab my shit. In a fit I wildly adjust my seat and pry my head under to see every inch, and find the ring resting inside the rails that the seat slides on.
So I drove back to Bowling Green right then, passively believing that my earnest endorsement of my punishment had been accepted and approved by the greater forces and that I was now allowed to enjoy myself. And I wasn’t even mad about wasting the evening I could have spent with my dad and driving an unnecessary four hours. I wanted my ring back and got it; how could I be mad? And that’s the shitty part. I know I’m wrong. But I still believe it. I still know it. As much as I know the world is round, I know if I had searched my car before going back to Louisville – I wouldn’t have found it. It wasn’t there until I had offered my own suffering and inconvenience for it. And I’m happy with the trade because I wanted the damn ring back. I already told you how it’s irreplaceable and all that.
Nevertheless I understand that I’m wrong. It just doesn’t seem to impact my belief. Just like how I’m mad all the time.