[375] I Can't Hear Myself Think

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.

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