I'm shooting for long and something of a ramble. Save yourself the
time.
I hope to layer cliché upon cliché until I can balance the word
meta on a turtle. Also, to make obscure references/metaphors to
answers about what holds the Earth in place that don't quite work.
It's wrong to say “I don't care.” It's very wrong to say “I'm
depressed.” I suppose it's good to get those out of the way quickly
as I anticipate this sounding like both.
As I get better at framing my position in ways that keep people
older than me from being condescending, the nature of the excuses
they offer to help their fellow traveler become clearer. You'll
always find a habit. For example, they always have a “secret.”
Some of those secrets include that your views and ideas will
change more than you can appreciate until you're older. Things that
used to matter “just don't” anymore. You'll realize that all
there is to do is focus on things like friends, family, and caring
about other people. Sometimes, if not most of the time, you have to
suspend your disbelief because it will help make life “bearable.”
They used to hate hate hate as much as you. Time will fly by! There's
always something new to learn.
Wild and crazy stuff right? It's almost like the veil has been
lifted. You mean I used to crave the latest video game, and then one
day, almost like a switch was flicked, all I'll be able to care about
is the next country we go to war with? Or, how about that lesson plan
that tells you to appreciate and care about people. Brilliant! If
only we told that to our children before they reached existential
crisis mode in college. At least we caught them before that looming
mid-life crisis.
To me, it's no secret that simply because you are old, that does
not grant you Wise Old Janitor status. In fact, the majority of the
stupidest shit I've ever heard my entire life has come from people
older than me. That's likely an obvious statistical point, but one I
hope still serves to shit on the idea that if your tools for
“consoling” someone about what they don't feel are “give it
time” you're making a very obscure appeal to authority. That you've
experienced more, even if it's strikingly similar, does not mean you
grasp the particulars of anyone else's head.
It's worth noting, that this is why I offer habits and
contingencies, not necessarily “how to think” advice. You love
your abusive boyfriend? All I can really say is that eyes get black
when you keep your face within his arm's length. If you don't like
black eyes, step back, maybe even several hundred feet. If the pain
from black eyes = less than your desire, maybe stop complaining and
focus on how happy he makes you.
But look at that example. Isn't spousal abuse pretty terrible? Why
don't I give a shit that I could make it sound like the person being
abused is so impossibly stupid that I basically want her to keep
getting hit?
There's a certain kind of “thing” I don't care about. A kind
of reaction. The idea that I could provoke you. I don't respect an
inability to read the example and miss the point. I don't respect
allowing your feelings or history with the problem instantly making
you think I'm the worst kind of human being. And I think all I ever
see out of people is their reactions. Not all the time of course; I'd
go insane. But overwhelmingly I get their conditioned responses.
They're no better than battered wives.
Take this Comedy Attic situation. A rude person would talk and
text during the show. A rude person would order the beer, dump it on
the floor, and then refuse to pay. A rude person would have called
the waitress a cunt, irrationally dammed comedy and all it's
followers, and gotten off on making a scene.
I just didn't want to spend more money or drink anything. I calmly
explained that if I wasn't Comedy Attic suitable, I could just leave.
It wasn't a weird stab at a threat. The house was packed. I literally
asked them if I was so in the wrong that I should just not partake in
the show at hand. But there is no calm way of expressing to someone
that their set up is as bad for you as they think you are for them.
Not because I didn't explain it calmly, but because people don't
react to you acting differently than they expect you to terribly
well.
And part of it harks back to an idea of boredom. I know what
happens when I pay for something I don't want and capitulate to a
pushy waitress. I don't know what happens when I get a chance, so to
speak, to explain what I don't like about the situation, and to the
head honcho no less.
At that point, it's an adrenaline rush. It's not anxiety. My heart
races more often than I care to think about. Races like when you get
called to the principal's office. It's like I always feel guilty of
doing something before I've done it. I'm living the consequence of
calling the waitress a cunt or throwing a bottle at the door. I'm
convinced I'm that big of an asshole and I'm very intrigued to see
why I'm going to move one way or the other.
That's the kind of disbelief I can't suspend. The one about our
worst demons. I don't take any special prize home for realizing my
capacity. I just get to shoulder it when my body defaults to “ultra
pissed off man mode” about exceedingly innocuous situations.
But I can't allow them not to matter. I'm rather obsessed with the
idea of strings. Everything being tied to everything else. We're as
much “star stuff” as we are the bonds we form between people. The
rules we put in place. The ideas we cultivate and defend. I can't
pretend that I don't have something to say.
Whether it's the guy “stepping up” and buying a beer to “not
hear me talk anymore.” Or thinking about the owner's motivation in
his ticket prices or how he structures his payouts and rents. Maybe
he's been given an unfair shake on something like property taxes so
he has to do “marginally shady” things in how he runs business.
But how do we ever get to a conversation about poorly structured
Bloomington tax law if we're squabbling over the merit of squeezing
people as part of the “policy.”
I want to shoot to what matters. There are immediately ten ways
that situation could have been handled that would have been just as
“effective” without ruffling a ton of feathers. The waitress
could have ignored me. They could have taken me up on my offer to
leave. They could have snickered to each other about “that asshole
with the pony tail who never wants to buy anything” from the
corner. But none of those happened. And even if they did, we still
wouldn't have started on a path to discussing why it became the
policy in the first place. In truth, I'm more interested in how much
these comedians are getting paid and what it takes to get them on
stage anyway.
In that situation, I'm more concerned about ruining my friends'
time, or the time of the people around us, more than what the
waitress or manager think of me. Now I get to run through that line
of speculative thinking. Are they pissed at me? Are they going to
bother inviting me out to places? Do they see any merit in anything
I've offered as my reasons? If they don't, why am I calling them
friends? If they do, are they feeling as hopeless as I am right now?
Doubtful. Am I going to get a “time and a place” or “pick your
battles” speech? Is this more likely going to get swept under a rug
like most things and tomorrow's another day? Cool.
It's something of a traffic jam, but the cars are coming from all
directions. Like, out of the sky. Until a big enough truck comes in
to pave the way to how I find myself proceeding throughout the
situation. Often, it's like I'm watching. Waiting for my mind to give
me the signal that of these many balls of potential, it wants to play
with the pink one right now. Did you know our brains invent the
color...SHUT UP NICK THROW THE BALL!
I think in this...tunneling...this quick shooting down many holes
(you hear it too?) speaks to the ambivalence. Like I've watched every
possible future but the one I'm experiencing “now.” And so rarely
is it ever one of the good ones. But this might be over-stating it.
I think about what makes me happy. I'm not, old condescending
people, thinking that it's this “thing” I'll one day achieve
after enough gamer points and sexual conquests. I've argued that it's
a choice. Like right now, I'm exceedingly happy to dig into the
depths of my head. Figure out my motivation. Dissect disagreements. I
was happy to piss off that waitress. I would have been happy if I had
to leave the room. What makes me happy is actually doing and behaving
like I want. I like to see myself speaking to the things I have a
very hard time explaining. I can tell you the waitress was a cunt.
That doesn't make me happy. What makes me happy is when someone hears
me call them a cunt when that's the loudest and most honest thought I
have in that moment. I don't want to tell you I hate you. I want to
make sure you can never un-feel it.
That's sort of how we conduct ourselves though, right? If we go
back to abuse. Your most compelling horrible feelings seem to dictate
how you behave. You were abused, so you abuse, whether it's yourself
or others. You take your insecurities and, if you can't act in spite,
you try to live in denial. Or, you “accept” that you're only
going to feel like shit no matter what and that becomes your new
baseline. Whatever you're afraid of, whatever you've felt the most,
that writes the rules. That gives you direction. In a way, I'm only
trying to speak your language.
Whether those fears are real or imaginary, they're real. But, not
as real as when you experience someone else at critical mass. A
genuine threat to your being. An explicit personal affront to the
very fact you exist. That's what I like. That brings me joy. You
wonder if your boyfriend still loves you as much as the day he met
you? Surely that's an unpleasant thought, but you're unsure. But I
can make you sure about something; there's someone that hates you as
much as you could hate anything, at least for this fleeting moment.
Even if it fails to haunt you, you'll remember it.
And talking like that brings me joy. It's motivating. Not because
it's powerful, but because it's as honest as I could be to a person.
I can take all my gobble-d-gook about tunnels and flying cars and
boil it down to, first one thing is true, YOU'RE A DEPLORABLE CUNT!
And we've started down the road to rebuilding.
But this idea of “being in on the joke” like everybody
knows the world is like this or this. NO. Fuck no. I don't
believe you. I think everybody knows how to make that empty
statement and everybody knows how to respond to it like
we're all on the same page. I believe we have similar emotional
states. I believe we abuse old adages and cliches. I believe we've
all had moments of “super real realness where shit got so real you
never wanna see me so real again.” But that doesn’t mean anyone
knows shit. How do I know this? They never talk about all the shit
they don't know. And they don't care to go about figuring it out.
Everyone's got answers. That's how I know they're full of shit.
The biggest answer I ever come to about most things in life is “well,
we can talk about it” or “well, if you do this, this is seemingly
likely to happen.” REDDIT, HOW DO I STOP LOVING THE PERSON I LOVE!
Well son, when I was your age, I realized the meat bag who's more
bacteria than human was going to die one day and get saggy tits I'd
no longer find attractive. I decided to just picture what that would
look like now and took off down old road 37. At the behest of my
dick, I found someone within my proximity to lay my emotional baggage
on. You'll see, it's all gonna come up roses for ya if you can just
find yourself so exhausted that things you once cared about you no
longer do! Exciting! Upvote my wise! ALL THE WISE!
But we don't talk. Not until we're drunk. Hint why I like to get
you drunk. Or not till we're “in a bad place.” What if you're
always in a bad place? What if that bad place isn't a fix like, stop
putting yourself in front of a fist? What I've learned is you write
and write and write, and then you read it back over hundreds of times
so that you can at least pretend to be having a conversation. Because
that's all that ever makes you feel better.
Next Entry: Artsy Fartsy
