2025: Chapter 2

‘Do you hear?’ asked the mute gaze of Vasudeva. Siddhartha nodded.

‘Listen closer!’ whispered Vasudeva.

Siddhartha endeavored to listen better. The images of his father, himself, and his son merged. Kamala’s image also appeared and was dispersed, and the images of Govinda and others merged with one another, all turning into the river, and all heading for the goal as the river itself. They were all filled with desire and suffering, and the river’s voice was filled with yearning, burning woe, and unsatisfied desire.

The river was headed for the goal, and Siddhartha saw it hurrying. The river, which consisted of him, his loved ones, and all the people he had ever seen, hurried in waves of suffering water towards many goals: the waterfall, the lake, the rapids, or the sea. Each goal was achieved, and every goal was followed by a new one as water turned into vapor and rose into the sky, transformed then into rain and poured down from the sky, turned into a source, a stream, or a river, and then continued to flow onward once again.

The longing voice, however, had changed. It still resounded with suffering and seeking, but other voices had joined it: voices of joy and suffering, good and evil, laughter and sadness. There were hundreds or even thousands of voices.

Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse

On the heels of my last post, I can assure you that I will not be making these types of blogs a regular occurrence. I am not some goddamn drug addict who relapsed by posting something and now the fucking floodgates are open and now I can’t help myself. It ain’t like that.

It has been barely four months insofar as my 2025 campaign is concerned and the biggest trend that has developed, if we are to do that thing that I always do where I live vicariously through my sports teams and relate them to myself, and my own life, is that they are letting me down. My sports teams, I mean. And I don’t say that in terms of them like sucking or whatever. It’s much worse: They have done really well and yet they have faltered just before the finish line.

The most obvious example of this were the Kansas City Chiefs, who on their quest to be the only team in NFL history to ever win three consecutive Super Bowls lost to the Philadelphia Eagles, 40-22, in a game that was hardly a contest. In other words, the final score was not at all indicative of the action that transpired. It was a blowout in the realm that I have never seen before in the seven years in which Patrick Mahomes has been Kansas City’s quarterback.

But that wasn’t, like, the worst loss I’ve ever taken. Just as when the Chiefs lost 31-9 to Tom Brady and the Buccaneers in the Super Bowl to conclude the 2020 season, there is something significantly more comforting in getting absolutely fucking destroyed than the game coming down to the wire and losing on a walk-off field goal, or in overtime. Emotionally it is easier to grapple with. To say that the other team was better. That the other team deserved to win. Etc.

What is much more haunting, as a sports fan, is what happened to the Duke Blue Devils the other night when they lost in the Final Four to Houston, 70-67, after holding a 14-point lead with something like eight minutes left in the game. It was 67-61, Duke, with 30 seconds left on the clock. My favorite team literally only needed another bucket or a couple free throws to go in and the game would have been over. It would have been mathematically impossible for Houston to execute their comeback.

It is thus how severely difficult such an outcome is to deal with in retrospect, whenever it is I choose to celebrate how much I thoroughly enjoyed this particular season of Duke basketball. Because Duke was the better team. They deserved to win against Houston. They were in fact the best and most talented team in the sport this year. But the best team does not always win. That’s the way this shit works.

And so it is how relatable these sports happen to be — to life itself. Sports outcomes such as I have dealt with over the course of 2025 remind someone like me of the old philosophical question of whether or not it’s better to love and lose, or to never love at all. I.e., would you rather your teams suck so badly that they aren’t put in positions where they are competing for championships, or would you rather your teams push the proverbial boulder all the way up the hill only to have it crash down on them when the lights get the brightest?

I did not wake up one day in 2025 and decide that the Chiefs were my NFL team and that Duke would be my college basketball squad. I have absorbed enough of these losses over the last 25 or 30 years that I have plenty of perspective on how to deal with them. It never feels good, though. That much I can admit to. The child in me still throws his micro-tantrums and feels physically sick for an hour or two at a time. And it still surprises me, to some degree, anyway, that I still feel it as much as I do. I’m almost proud that I still care so much.

I happen to be one of those sad-sack old men that would rather love ardently and lose everything than one who never reached such heights. I would rather my favorite teams break my heart by making it to the ultimate (or penultimate, in Duke’s case) goal and fucking blow it than some random team who wasn’t good enough to get there in the first place. It’s like I have said a million times before, give or take: I spend my life pretending not to care and choosing whenever possible not to feel things, but in truth, in actuality, I welcome the feelings, the pain, the ecstasy. Everything. That’s why I get out of bed in the morning, with the wonder of when the next time will be when I feel so alive.

Much as I do whenever the Chiefs play in the Super Bowl, I called in ‘sick’ from work a couple Saturday’s ago when Duke played Alabama in the Elite 8. I simply did not want to put myself in the position (much as I did when Duke lost to Houston in the Final Four) where I am at work, sweating it out, and opening myself up to the possibility and/or potentiality of them losing. They whooped Alabama’s fucking ass that night that I called in sick, Duke did, 85-65. I should have saved my ‘sick’ call in for the Final Four when the outcome was not so favorable.

Unironically, or coincidentally, I suppose, I actually did get sick on that Saturday when Duke played Alabama. And it’s funny because before I found out I was sick I told my friend Sarah that I was planning on taking four days off — the full amount, in other words, given the incredibly conservative, almost draconian call-in-sick-point-system in which the casino I work at operates under — because I needed a break.

(This is neither here nor there, but essentially when I mentioned a conservative point system, I was really saying that we as employees only get 10 points per year before we are at risk of termination, and that every call-in is worth two points. Theoretically that only allows a worker five call-ins [excluding blackout days, which are worth double points] over a 12-month span.

The one so-called bone that this particular casino throws its employees is that they/we are allotted to call in for four consecutive work days whilst only being penalized those same two points. I hardly ever take advantage of this loophole, or benefit [whatever you want to call it], because I make only $9.50 per hour and thus every day I call in is worth a mere $76. By calling in four straight days I imagine I sacrificed anywhere between $1,000 and $2,000 in tips. But like I said: This is neither here nor there.)

The moral of this story is that I took four days off (legitimately sick or not) and that I really liked needed it, I believe. Not because I am in an unhealthy place physically, emotionally, or spiritually. Not because it’s my style to dodge my responsibilities as a human being in the labor force. Not for any of the bullshit that I tend to imbibe in on a regular basis — sports aside.

I did it for the simple and yet simultaneously incredibly complicated circumstances that arrived to me subsequently after Niña’s death. Namely, I did not take any time for myself. I was in such a goddamn hurry to get back to work, as a matter of fact, after she died, so that is what I did. I liken the casino I work at to the best possible distraction I have ever known. A place where I can focus on dealing stupid games. Where I can make money. Where I can flirt with all manner and literally any flavor of woman. Where I can separate who I am as a man in real life from the character he plays to earn a living. The casino is a playground that I love to hate and hate to love, and it loves me and hates me right back.

Up until this very recent four-day stretch the last time I took any more than an extra day off (as in a three-day weekend) from work occurred in May of 2023. It had been almost two years. 23 months more or less consecutively, grinding away for five days per week, in a place that is so fucking much all of the things I love that, in a way, whether literally or in an abstract sort of sense, it takes something out of me. It makes me less of the things that I hold dear about myself. And yet also it accentuates, or shines a light on, everything I am good at.

But whereas I was running a fucking race to meet these distractions that I so desperately was in need of, circa December of 2024, I realized how much metaphorical weight I had accumulated since. Sure, the Chiefs played a couple playoff games that I got off. But I didn’t have the time to just, like, chill. Relax. Play video games and get bored with myself. Eat fast food and take naps. Watch YouTube. Etcetera.

It wasn’t even as if I dedicated any time to Niña during my recent four-day vacation. To just sitting around and dwelling on everything that I lost when she left my life. That wasn’t necessarily what it was all about. It was just about getting a break, and taking one. Giving myself the time that I generally refuse to give. The best part of it all is that I still don’t know if it was productive or not, those four days. I just know that when the fifth day came around and I returned to work that I was ready for it. I was looking forward to it.

Niña learned to hate to the casino. She really did. She grew tired and bored of her coworkers, and the general public, harassing her, and flirting with her, and always paying the wrong people, and always taking money from the good ones. It was all such a chore for her. It was real work. It was bad for her and unhealthy and she was up until the very end exploring a different avenue as far as work was concerned. Because she wanted out.

I can obviously sympathize with her criticisms of the business, and yet I am also the kind of fucked up individual who accepts and even sometimes welcomes each and every negative aspect of the so-called game that the casino provides. I enjoy in a weird way being talked down to, because it gives me an opening to talk back and get into an ego battle or pissing contest. I carry the type of mentality that gets it… paying the bad ones, and taking money from the good ones, with the understanding that usually the odds will even out and eventually the opposite will be true. I take the good days as they come, and don’t allow the bad days to come home with me.

After all, perhaps the best thing that ever came from my casino experience, and arguably from Niña’s, is that it was the place where we came to be. Her and I. Not every smile is reciprocated. Not every flirtatious comment lands the same. Not from the general public, and not from coworkers. But mine did. And it changed the trajectory of both of our lives, Niña’s and mine.

With that all being said, this is all really just an admission that I would have been remiss to write another blog without making it about the only person who, if truth be told, is worth writing about. Niña was her name. There is this little boy that still lives inside of me who feels as a child would when his favorite sports teams lose meaningful games. Like when the Chiefs lost in overtime to the Patriots in 2018, 37-31. Or when the Rangers lost the World Series to the Cardinals in 2011. Or when Duke lost to UConn in the National Championship game in 1999. Those sons of bitches hurt me.

But the beauty of sports is that they will come back around. Another season will exist. Duke has already won me three championships in my lifetime (2001, 2010, 2015). The Chiefs have won me three over the last some odd years (2019, 2022, 2023). Even the fucking Texas Rangers got me one in 2023. I can and I will die a happy man.

Niña I can never get back. She will never partake in another season of mine, or play in another championship game, in a manner of speaking. There is no comparison between these measly little sporting events and someone who held actual, tangible weight, in my life. Yet I treated her like the next season was always going to come around again. That she would still and always be there for the good times and the bad.

There was a wonderful juncture during my youth when these sporting events represented the hardships with which emotionally I lived and died on. They meant everything to me. Then I got a little bit older and had nearly graduated from my teenage years when I fell in love with a girl for the first time, and how quickly those sporting events paled in comparison to kisses and love-making. Sports became secondary (as did everything else) when I felt that initial heartbreak, which ultimately became the new thing that meant everything to me.

As I mentioned earlier, critical losses by my favorite teams have happened enough times in my life to where I never become, like, used to them, or comfortable with them. They still piss me off in that childlike way that says That Was Not Supposed To Happen. Even genuine heartbreak of the sort that has made me depressed, to where I shed 30 or 40 pounds in short order, has come for me on more than one occasion. It is no longer a novel experience.

Niña’s death, meanwhile, immediately made all the worst of my life’s various pains seem incredibly secondary once again, and such a feeling is exacerbated by the fact that I can’t get her back. She forced me to take another step on my own emotional ladder, which began by falling down flat on my face as baby boy, to finishing in second place instead of first during a spelling bee in elementary school, to becoming so heavily invested in my sports teams that I lived vicariously through them and took their losses as personal losses, to getting my heart broken by a girl, and so on.

The threshold for my emotional pain took a seismic leap when Niña left me without saying goodbye. And I don’t think that was an accident, that she chose at the very end to leave me out. I don’t think she wanted me to save her. I believe she went out exactly the way she intended. Without any warning.

It is thus how an over-thinker such as myself can invent literally an infinite amount of scenarios as to what drove her to making the decision she did. Something complicated and well-planned, or something extremely simple and impulsive.

The feelings of guilt that consumed me early on were, surprisingly, quite short-lived. Once one of my coworkers who dealt with a similar kind of outcome from a loved one told me that ‘If they are determined, it doesn’t matter what you do.’ Something about that word. Determined. It is such a great word. It is the perfect word.

It’s like that scene from the film The Time Machine, starring Guy Pearce, where all he wants to do with the time machine that he built was to go back in time to the night his fiancee was stabbed to death by a mugger. How disappointed he was when he made it back to that night — via his time machine — and she got trampled to death by the horses of a runaway carriage. In other words: The ink is dry. No matter what Guy Pearce’s character did, his fiancee was going to die on that night.

And, so, sure, of course I am so confident in my own abilities that I believe if Niña had presented me with her mental state that I could have convinced her to stay here. To stick it out with me. But to what end? Simply to do the same thing again in a few months, or a few years? How do I know that it hadn’t been boiling, or bubbling, for the prior few months, or few years? How do I know that my presence in her life, as the friend that I was, had not already saved her on multiple occasions, even if I didn’t know it while it was happening?

This ego of mine is and always has been part of my problem. Some would argue that it is my tragic flaw — the idea that one’s greatest strength is in fact their greatest weakness. That I cannot control everything all at once. That I cannot play god in the lives of my loved ones, let alone every one, even though I believe I can make things better, that I know what’s right, and that, if you need me to, I can lead the way.

I am mad at Niña for that reason, and that reason alone. Nothing else. Not for making me wonder. Not for leaving me to be her mouthpiece in the casino industry, the one who has the answers to most of the questions. Not for how she made/makes me feel, personally, with how upset I was/am, or how much I miss her.

The only thing I am mad about is that she quit on me. She did not allow me to make things better. She stopped letting me encourage her, and love her — in my own way. Because I would have. I would have kept going forever.

For her.