I can immediately speculate and say she was particularly sensitive to feelings of betrayal. I know her parents were kinda crazy and pathological in their own ways. I feel like I’ve taken her expression and morphed it into my own. I’m less concerned about people lying to me as I am them to themselves.
Each time I sit down to write I’m thinking about the various illusions I might be operating under. What pulled the wool over my eyes, and for how long? How long before I’m prompted to just stare into the mirror until I can’t recognize myself? Are my ideas about how to organize information better viable? A belief in them just a reassuring ounce of self-esteem and reason to get up. Am I getting too old or ugly or fat? My foray into eating better and treadmilling hopes to keep my ass far from having to dwell in that realm too sincerely.
Just take the idea of lying. I’ve gotten into semantic arguments about what does and doesn’t constitute a lie. Can you lie unknowingly? I think so. A colorblind person describing something as grey when it’s green is an innocent liar. The lie always has to remain relative to something. Back to my last blog, you’ll swear up and down you’re telling the truth of your perspective even if none of the facts are on your side.
I think we play a game with those facts. We remove them or hide them when they don’t fit our narrative. This speaks to one of the best reasons to write. When you haven’t gone far enough, someone can point it out. When you read it back later, you can feel where holes needed to be plugged.
I think about being smug. Try to fight it as I might, reading comment sections always leaves me feeling like I’m trapped in the world’s worst TV show bound by every cliche. Matter-of-fact language and style. “Deep” pronouncements of wisdom. In my day, as far as I know, anybody could see, if only they’d done this instead, mark my words…
They don’t even know they’re lying. They don’t think in terms of “this is the language I’m giving other people license to use.” When we adopt those sayings and habits, we’re stuck perpetually lying and living out the consequences.
And so how do you get better? To me, this. You keep the conversation going. You keep examining.You stop pretending. When I hated school, I have blogs that laid out explicitly why I hated school. Just because some academic or reporter cleans up their language and adds a few more citations didn’t mean I wasn’t speaking to important truths about pissing away time, energy, and money. When I thought I was in love, thank persistence I managed to write and read for as long as it took to stop looking like a tired teenage cliche.
If I had to think of some of the biggest lies I think people operate under, potentially, if they’re talked about at length, it would drain your will to live. This is how it’s related to me at least. I have friends who climb mountains. One slipped foot can mean any number of fairly disastrous situations. I have friends who work 80 hours a week. I know I’d want to kill myself if I spent that much of my 20s devoted to shit I cared nothing about. I know people who thought they were being smart staying in school, and the shadow of debt or the itchy reality of their program keeps them up at night.
I think I’ve managed to lie to myself about the power and impact of friends. I think I like distractions. I think I like conversations. I think when I don’t have people to lean on, I do an exceedingly good job of self-preserving and acting.
The thing is, I don’t need the extra flack. I don’t need your insecurities. I don’t need your judgments. I don’t need your words of encouragement. I don’t need your love, your couch, or your food. I like the positive things, but I don’t need them. I don’t need to feel anxious that I haven’t talked to you in a while. I don’t need to feel anxious that 9/10 times it’s me sending a message or text to usually be blown off. I don’t need to keep making excuses about how busy you are or how you get a pass because you’re “cool” and we have “history.” I don’t need entire diatribes trying to separate out different kinds of selfishness and pragmatism. I don’t need to resist the urge to play in the mud of baseless accusations and hurt feelings.
It occurs to me that I only ever really get along with the people who are willing to talk. And I don’t mean politely over drinks a few times a year. I mean all the time. I get along with people who are actively working through their thoughts and willing to take the time to consider or respond to all of yours. Everything else feels like cheap pleasantries. In reality, I could easily write a few pages a day, but even this feels quasi-lacking. I have a sense. I have a weak feeling and distaste I wanted to get across.
I think I should have been more realistic with myself about what the exercise of trying to maintain friends was going to entail. I should have considered blowback. As currently, I’m feeling cynically dead inside about the prospect of staying pleasant. I was told I was negative. I think what’s seeping into this blog is me wanting to express what I consider an actually true feeling and concept of negative. I’m pressed to prove you wrong by showing the reality of me negative. It’s in that moment of course you give your accuser the evidence they didn’t have and all the self-righteous indignation they can swallow.
Consider the following my perspective, and if you ever feel like playing my game of asking and searching until things line up, let me know.
I’ll live. Maybe like a wounded animal that narrowly escapes getting eaten, I’ll live, none the wiser to the brewing infection or coursing poison. If my facebook goes down to 0 friends and it’s just a swirl of terrible news and Onion titles, I’ll live. I’ll live if I lose all my money and all my shit. Hell, to a certain degree, that’ll feel like a fucking relief.
I think I’ve adopted a position of watching everyone constantly struggle. How often is it thrown out that life is a struggle? Doesn’t matter, I know why it’s a cliche, people do it to themselves. Yet, I watch people who don’t blame themselves for the right things. I watch them fake it, really hard. They fake enthusiasm, be it for a job or for their spouse, or for themselves and what they didn’t realize they don’t like anymore. And they fake it because they’re afraid of being “negative” like me.
But of course, they don’t know me. They don’t talk to me. They have memories of “Nick P!” at parties, or they caught a particular blog at a particular time. They’re polite when we hang out. They don’t trust me. Whether it’s to change or respond in some other way they’d consider acceptable. It’s like they’re trying to survive, while I know I will. Their struggle isn’t mine.
I think maybe this is why I get reactions I do about the capital T “Truth” pronouncements I make with regard to my life. My reality is something of a constant. Things happen around me. I mostly don’t have feelings about them or reactions to them. This makes people uncomfortable. How can I just delete people? What real world evidence besides a kind of secret unspoken pact was keeping us connected? They don’t struggle with defining friendship because it’s easier to both take it for granted and forget it when you can’t anymore.
It’s great offering your perspective right? Doesn’t matter if it’s correct, you can walk away from this thinking I care nothing about you. I’ll live. You can feel sympathy that I’m so lost, angry, and alone. I’ll roll my eyes and live. You can feel blank like “eh, hope the next one’s a little on the happier side.” But you’ll probably just continue to ignore what I talk about and why and we’ll keep “living the dream” because, you know, life, and shit.
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