I've been inside a kind of
deadness lately. It's not sad or dramatic. It's flat. Maybe it's just
a special kind of tired. I'm not sure, but all I know is that it's a
special kind of non-feeling. To generally run rather tepid when it
comes to things, then to get excited, is very much a high. It's not a
terribly lasting high, but the contrast is noteworthy. But when
nothing seems to
register, even if it's for a short time, it becomes noteworthy as
well.
A few examples. While everyone is naming their new babies after a
fictional pair of meth dealers, I can call it a pretty good episode.
While I'm assuming there's an invigorating passion to spend the next
several months flying new machines and blowing people up, I'm
reminded I have 2 video games I haven't opened and a 3rd I've been
playing for months and might be half way through. I think about how
quick, although I know it's not that quick, friends seem to pass
through your life and really really want to press people to
figure out why or why not I should be someone in their life. I see
more people getting shot up and think “of course...onto more
pressing concerns like dick cutting pictures.” I'm getting back
into business and realize that whether it does or doesn't work, I'll
know what to do.
It's all just stuff that's happening.
To the point on friends, I don't like to feel as if I'm treating
them as passing acquaintances. It influences very much what I do or
don't and how I engage with them. I can believe that it can be viewed
as a kind of insecurity. Like, just act natural Nick P! It's your
friends after all. But I understand relationships as work. Me,
natural, doesn't treat people as people. So I need to dial back
natural for better things like respect. I deliberately hinder my mind
of thinking of friends as “marginally intentional beings with
fleeting pithy feelings I need to deliberately navigate in order to
achieve x, y, and z.”
In that instance, I'd rather be misunderstood as a bumbling idiot
killing the mood or deliberately awkward, instead of understood as
someone who would treat you that way.
I'm certain this is hard to understand, mostly because it has
everything to do with me and nothing really to do with you. It's the
odd ways I can be made to think or feel and the work my rules do or
don't help with that. To say I take my friendships personally is to
say I have as much invested in the story I can tell about myself as I
can about our relationship. It's an ever-present conversation during
a high stakes game.
I don't think winning belongs to the smart, or loud.
Sincerity wins. They believe you when you believe you. It's less what
you say than it is they believe you. Feeling this deep in
your gut and knowing what it means is what necessitates my
“anti-behavior.” If I can't make you aware of a path I see, I
might find myself on it and not terribly comfortable, nor necessarily
convinced against, what it means if I keep following it. So help me
keep dialogue open. The more I can fumble over words and persistently
go nowhere, probably dunk, in person, the less I can recede so far
into my head that I can't hear anything.
I want to feel normal, but not at your expense.
