Just the other night mythical wife said that our household should be What We Do in the Shadows characters for Halloween. And without any hesitation, she said that I should be Guillermo.
To the credit of that opinion, my face immediately made the same face Guillermo does whenever he looks at the camera after the vampires do something stupid. But I wasn’t at all impressed at the knee-jerk association.
The lack of excitement of that was obviously noticed, and the back pedaling and explaining begins; he’s a badass vampire slayer, he’s the glue that holds the house together, he’s the guy that’s perpetually on the edge and verge of snapping being sick of everyone else’s shit, and I’m just thinking about the guy that’s fat, gets walked on by everyone around him, and is basically there for comedic relief but usually at his own expense.
Now I love the show, and it’s a fair comp, but the fact of the matter is that Guillermo is kind of the show loser, and it depressed me to be so immediately comped up to him. He is an awesome character with a lot more depth than all the others, but when you take a step back and look at Guillermo as a whole, he’s a guy with no discernable identity, and spends the vast majority of his existence cleaning up after others and not at all doing anything for himself, much less forming an identity. He’s the joke, he’s the doormat, he’s the comic relief.
But like I said, it’s not a completely unfair comparison. I am the guy that keeps my house together; I’m the guy that maintains or manages the landscaping, the (attempted) cleanliness, tries to keep the house in working order and somewhat organized, with little or no help. I take the vast majority of parenting duties, and any minute where I’m not working my job, I’m spending time with my kids while they’re awake, and it’s not until they are in bed that I have any semblance of downtime, that is when I’m not back to managing the home.
And I am, perpetually on the verge of losing my shit, because my life is not at all easy, I’m overworked, under-helped, taken for granted, and I’ve just been reminded of my general lack of identity in the world other than a dad or a housekeeper. Both titles are undoubtedly important and I take them seriously, but when I try to picture anyone else thinking about me, I struggle to wonder what in the world words formulate in their minds when they think about me, other than those two things.
Because I don’t know what words formulate in my own mind when it comes to trying to describe myself. I think I used to be a sports guy, specifically a baseball guy, when I was super into baseball and talking about sports all the time. I used to be a League guy when I spent so much of my life buried in the League of Legends community. I used to be the wrestling guy, which might be the closest thing I’m still identifiable to these days, and I most definitely was the belt guy, but the thing is that I’ve gotten pretty much every blet I want and until I have an office again, there’s not much point in getting any others. Ironically, the one thing that I have staunchly refused to ever give up, being my desire to write, is probably the one thing so few people actually know I do, because I have zero readers and I’m neurotic and don’t want to advertise that I do it, so being a writing guy or a brogger isn’t exactly something anyone would know me for.
But the thing is, other than the latter I don’t think I’m really any of these things anymore. As my kids came into existence, and my personal time diminished into negligible amounts, all my hobbies and interests fell to the wayside as any time I had to myself was either staring at a wall or trying to motivate myself to write something, usually about how burned out and over my life in general I was feeling at the time, kind of like I’m doing right now.
And so, I don’t really have an identity anymore, I don’t think. As often as I think I would benefit from a day or two completely by myself to actually rest and recharge, I really don’t know what I’d even do. I’m so money conscious that I wouldn’t want to spend the money to go hide out at a hotel or something, and I’d feel guilty eating out and spending money that I know I shouldn’t be spending, but I also can’t really expect to get any recharge time when I’m around my kids, because I want to spend time with them, so I’m left in this spiraling swirl of indecisiveness and end up doing nothing but watching television and treading the waters of depression.
Really, I just need this funky emotional wave to pass so I can go about my life without the baggage. Hopefully I won’t be reminded of how much of a Guillermo I am again any time soon.
