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I always thought howdy meant hello.
Maybe that’s embarrassing for me, especially being from the south of the US.
My girlfriend though, she’s from Turkey.
When a language is your second, there’s something more exact about it.
She might miss the nuance of a word, what it can become through slang and usage. But she gets the original meaning, more than I do at times.
For the longest time she’d text me saying, Howdy, and I’d say, Hello.
Funny, when she would send that message, it was seldom ‘cause she wanted to say hello, or even ask how I’m doing, and something must’ve been building inside her, a kind of frustration, because eventually she started adding a question mark to the word.
“Howdy?”
See, howdy can mean, “how you doin’?”
Maybe the etymology of the word says it even better: originally a dialectal contraction of a phrase inquiring after someone's health.
Like you’re checking in on somebody.
But there’s something about someone who knows you, like a woman who loves you. When they are asking about you, they often already know the answer to the question they ask.
At that point, perhaps, howdy takes on a third connotation.
Neither hello nor how you doin’.
Rather, it becomes, I know how you’re doing, what you’re up to, and I’m giving you a chance to tell me, to tell the world, lest I have to be the one who does it for you.
They’re asking first, because no one wants to be the one who has to disclose the deepest matters of your health.
It’s been four days since I last binged.
Food, at least.
Tonight, I’ve been watching every Bray Wyatt video since he returned. Some are a second watch, even a third. Some, the latest ones, are for the first time.
Tonight, I asked myself why some people live their entire lives at war with themselves. After forty years of living, that seems a foolish question to me.
I guess the question is how some people live lives not at war with themselves.
They go about being the loudest in the room, always projecting outward.
God, there must be so much room in their heads.
What is the difference between declaring, “Feed me more,” and it always being an extroverted spectacle at the expense of a jobber or three, and being the eater of worlds but always finding yourself the most consumed on your own planet?
Does it have to be this way?
Maybe not.
After all, look at me. It’s been three days since I last binged.
Such an excess came with him, that it brought the credibility of matches and angles to a near breaking point.
It made sense to me that when the fired Bray Wyatt returned he would do so in tears.
Cry for Barry Windham.
Cry for Mike Rotundo.
Cry for all the credibility wiped away in a single PPV Cell.
I hate to be the one who says it, but that man should have cried.
He should have been ashamed of his past.
And I can make that judgment, for I, too, used to be ashamed.
Luckily for me, I've changed.
After all, it’s been two days since I last binged.
If I can be honest, I never knew if I was being brave or finding a newer, crueler way to declare war upon myself.
I moved far away for very little, and I gained even less in the time between.
I didn’t like the program I was in. I wanted it to be different. I wanted it to be more. I wanted to be more. Or, to be seen as more. Or maybe I only wanted to be seen, to be understood.
If I can be honest, I never knew if the problem was my pride or my insecurities.
I'm sure my girlfriend, 1,000 miles away, wanted to ask a thousand questions:
Why aren’t we talking as much as we once did?
Why are you starving yourself of the hope you once fed upon?
What happened to your passion? Why do you claim it never was? That it wasn’t you?
Why do you look more unhealthy each time we Skype?
Why are you skipping classes and binging meals?
Why is your sleep pattern as irregular as the heartbeat you still haven’t had examined?
Why is your left eye chronically red?
Why do you look like you had a stroke?
Why aren’t you minding your blood pressure numbers?
Why did you quit the program before a semester’s end?
Where will you go after December?
If you’re not careful, how long will you be with me beyond December?
But she never said a word of that. Never asked one of the thousand questions clearly on her face.
All she'd do is send a desperate text.
Howdy?
A few weeks ago, he seemed on a path to redemption, with his only opposition being some pesky, demonic face antagonizing his recovery.
But who was it that headbutted L.A. Knight?
Who was it that left Knight on crutches and in a sling?
Why does the man who once spoke of shame with great remorse now sound like he’s taking a gleeful bath in its flood waters?
And how is it that the demonic face that seemingly antagonized this poor man might have been the only one who was trying to tell us the truth by locating a single word in his own name?
Who are we meant to believe in a world where nothing makes sense?
Each time I do this, I pray that nobody will see me on my path.
Yet, I also get high on the idea that somebody might.
See, since I was a child, it felt like a universal truth that there was a reason that my name was only one letter off the word, Shame.
Like no matter how hard I’d run,
No matter how hard I’d try,
The very thing I sought to avoid,
To not be associated with,
Was the one thing that would forever be witness of my time upon this earth.
So don't ask me how I’m doing.
Or if I’m okay.
Don't say that word, Howdy, as if it will conjure up anything you want to hear.
Maybe I’ll tell you that lately the irregular heartbeats occasionally seize up, as if someone hit pause in the middle of them, squeezing in my chest longer than even I am comfortable experiencing. Or that, when I go to sleep, I can hear my heartbeat in my knees, and I wonder what that means. Or sometimes my heart is either beating so fast or so slow, and I’m either so hot or so cold, that I’m not sure if I’m still in this world or not.
That I fear a heart attack and don't know if the symptoms are of body or mind.
Or maybe I’ll smile and tell you I’m okay.
That it's been a full day since I last binged.
And you can choose to believe me or not, but know this:
when you engage an unreliable narrator, whose not even in control of his own hands and always on the brink of his own destruction,
even if you come in the name of inquiry,
the name of howdy,
you become part of the game, one with the eater of worlds, and he has you, if temporarily, in his ever-hungry hands.
Maybe that’s embarrassing for me, especially being from the south of the US.
My girlfriend though, she’s from Turkey.
When a language is your second, there’s something more exact about it.
She might miss the nuance of a word, what it can become through slang and usage. But she gets the original meaning, more than I do at times.
For the longest time she’d text me saying, Howdy, and I’d say, Hello.
Funny, when she would send that message, it was seldom ‘cause she wanted to say hello, or even ask how I’m doing, and something must’ve been building inside her, a kind of frustration, because eventually she started adding a question mark to the word.
“Howdy?”
See, howdy can mean, “how you doin’?”
Maybe the etymology of the word says it even better: originally a dialectal contraction of a phrase inquiring after someone's health.
Like you’re checking in on somebody.
But there’s something about someone who knows you, like a woman who loves you. When they are asking about you, they often already know the answer to the question they ask.
At that point, perhaps, howdy takes on a third connotation.
Neither hello nor how you doin’.
Rather, it becomes, I know how you’re doing, what you’re up to, and I’m giving you a chance to tell me, to tell the world, lest I have to be the one who does it for you.
They’re asking first, because no one wants to be the one who has to disclose the deepest matters of your health.
*
It’s been four days since I last binged.
Food, at least.
Tonight, I’ve been watching every Bray Wyatt video since he returned. Some are a second watch, even a third. Some, the latest ones, are for the first time.
Tonight, I asked myself why some people live their entire lives at war with themselves. After forty years of living, that seems a foolish question to me.
I guess the question is how some people live lives not at war with themselves.
They go about being the loudest in the room, always projecting outward.
God, there must be so much room in their heads.
What is the difference between declaring, “Feed me more,” and it always being an extroverted spectacle at the expense of a jobber or three, and being the eater of worlds but always finding yourself the most consumed on your own planet?
Does it have to be this way?
Maybe not.
After all, look at me. It’s been three days since I last binged.
*
Personally, I was glad the Fiend was gone.Such an excess came with him, that it brought the credibility of matches and angles to a near breaking point.
It made sense to me that when the fired Bray Wyatt returned he would do so in tears.
Cry for Barry Windham.
Cry for Mike Rotundo.
Cry for all the credibility wiped away in a single PPV Cell.
I hate to be the one who says it, but that man should have cried.
He should have been ashamed of his past.
And I can make that judgment, for I, too, used to be ashamed.
Luckily for me, I've changed.
After all, it’s been two days since I last binged.
*
Last May I left a tenure-track job for a temporary program that would pay me half of what that already low-paying job was paying me.If I can be honest, I never knew if I was being brave or finding a newer, crueler way to declare war upon myself.
I moved far away for very little, and I gained even less in the time between.
I didn’t like the program I was in. I wanted it to be different. I wanted it to be more. I wanted to be more. Or, to be seen as more. Or maybe I only wanted to be seen, to be understood.
If I can be honest, I never knew if the problem was my pride or my insecurities.
I'm sure my girlfriend, 1,000 miles away, wanted to ask a thousand questions:
Why aren’t we talking as much as we once did?
Why are you starving yourself of the hope you once fed upon?
What happened to your passion? Why do you claim it never was? That it wasn’t you?
Why do you look more unhealthy each time we Skype?
Why are you skipping classes and binging meals?
Why is your sleep pattern as irregular as the heartbeat you still haven’t had examined?
Why is your left eye chronically red?
Why do you look like you had a stroke?
Why aren’t you minding your blood pressure numbers?
Why did you quit the program before a semester’s end?
Where will you go after December?
If you’re not careful, how long will you be with me beyond December?
But she never said a word of that. Never asked one of the thousand questions clearly on her face.
All she'd do is send a desperate text.
Howdy?
*
What happened to crying Bray Wyatt in the time I’ve been away?A few weeks ago, he seemed on a path to redemption, with his only opposition being some pesky, demonic face antagonizing his recovery.
But who was it that headbutted L.A. Knight?
Who was it that left Knight on crutches and in a sling?
Why does the man who once spoke of shame with great remorse now sound like he’s taking a gleeful bath in its flood waters?
And how is it that the demonic face that seemingly antagonized this poor man might have been the only one who was trying to tell us the truth by locating a single word in his own name?
Who are we meant to believe in a world where nothing makes sense?
*
Earlier today, when I was waiting for nightfall so that I could walk to the local pizza place to grab enough pizza for at least four, I had a thought.Each time I do this, I pray that nobody will see me on my path.
Yet, I also get high on the idea that somebody might.
See, since I was a child, it felt like a universal truth that there was a reason that my name was only one letter off the word, Shame.
Like no matter how hard I’d run,
No matter how hard I’d try,
The very thing I sought to avoid,
To not be associated with,
Was the one thing that would forever be witness of my time upon this earth.
So don't ask me how I’m doing.
Or if I’m okay.
Don't say that word, Howdy, as if it will conjure up anything you want to hear.
Maybe I’ll tell you that lately the irregular heartbeats occasionally seize up, as if someone hit pause in the middle of them, squeezing in my chest longer than even I am comfortable experiencing. Or that, when I go to sleep, I can hear my heartbeat in my knees, and I wonder what that means. Or sometimes my heart is either beating so fast or so slow, and I’m either so hot or so cold, that I’m not sure if I’m still in this world or not.
That I fear a heart attack and don't know if the symptoms are of body or mind.
Or maybe I’ll smile and tell you I’m okay.
That it's been a full day since I last binged.
And you can choose to believe me or not, but know this:
when you engage an unreliable narrator, whose not even in control of his own hands and always on the brink of his own destruction,
even if you come in the name of inquiry,
the name of howdy,
you become part of the game, one with the eater of worlds, and he has you, if temporarily, in his ever-hungry hands.
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