[497] Brain Dump Deux Pour Toi

This is a brain dump. There is no promise of continuity between paragraphs, no over-arching theme I'm trying to approach. I feel stuck with fragments of thoughts that I want to paste together like a psychotic note of magazine cut-outs. Read to the degree you want to punish yourself.

You can always find what you want to hear. Every moment I complain about not hearing what I want out of my friend group or social circles, there's wave after wave of what I'm concerned about in a hoity-toity magazine or website. There's people who get paid to think and tie together voices of history into insights for today. As a result, when I say I hate my friends, another way to look at it is that I hate myself for being unwilling to make the kinds of friends who read and write like me.

That's an oversimplification. I want diversification and experience. That isn't to say there aren't philosophers that climb mountains, but I did think to call these people friends for a reason. It's a reason that has apparently diminished as my language espousing their very being no longer matches the feelings they allegedly aroused in me. I think it was another extension of my selfishness. A large part of me exists because of the boisterous joker at parties. These people helped facilitate that. They disappeared. I blamed them.

Harking back to being constantly immersed in media. I've claimed I'm searching for inspiration. I like finding old characters or basking in unknown comedic cultural styles. But it goes further. They're a surrogate family. They put each other first and by the end of the episode onto the end of the series, you think of “them” as a unit and what they went through. Why do so many cliché big happy white family shows still do well as the language is about diversification and minority voices? The old white people with Nielsen boxes feel a sense of loss that immersed-in-their-phones teens never knew. Part of our psyche's crave that stability while we cling for dear life on the towering rocket of technological advancement.

I've also claimed identity qualifiers in different characters. Daria is my go-to first “I'm going to stop and pay closer attention” character that informed how I might be approaching or feeling about the world. But in any piece of work you can see a twinkle of what you like or hate about yourself and how it plays out against a different personality. That's the endlessly interesting thing, that when it's done well, it's genuinely informative and captivating. You don't just play up the “theme” of each character representing, for example, the 7 deadly sins. Each one gets to be a whole person and then the aspect of them that is drawn out to be the loudest is experimented with.

Take something like abuse. I imagine there's a solid group of women who've been beaten up. When they watch a piece of media that sees a “strong family” go through “an incident” where the wife was hit, where does their mind go? What if it really is just a one-off? Are we willing to entertain instances in our culture where we use the language of “her deserving it,” even when we know overwhelmingly it's totally abhorrent? These are conversations I've been in with people, both men and women, who've said there are times where she does deserve it! But how often do we get to engage with those ideas head on?

It's the silence that kills me. Not because I can't be quiet or don't like to reflect. It's just in silence that I don't feel like we're in it together. I don't feel a shared human identity with my friends or especially the culture at large. I don't know if they agree that talking helps. I don't know if they would put their money where there mouth is for a shared project. I don't know how they feel when I tell them I hate them. I get absolutely nothing and it drives me insane. Oh, maybe I take that slightly back. I have them asking if I'm okay. Let's just listen to “Flagpole sitta” on repeat and stop asking me that question. I don't know what to root myself in but my endless reading and watching because nothing else is there besides random trips to visit, maybe once a year.

I fucked up using “boredom” as my qualifier for shit that I do. I'm constantly engaged. If you think reading is boring, I'm boring. If you think setting up event after event and sending out text after text to do literally anything is boring, again, I'm boring. People forget the amount of effort I've put in to trying to keep some face of “together” alive before I resigned myself to whatever you want to call my “leisure” regarding books, media, and drug studies. I don't know how many times you have to be blown off or ignored before you feel like someone isn't your friend, but I apparently can't stop inviting. It's always seemed, rather counter-productive, to then despise and disavow everyone while I carry on about how “awesome it is to have real people in my life.”

I'm still, however many weeks later, hung up on ideas about me being negative or someone unable to take in information that doesn't come in “how I want it.” That's so unbelievably stuck in my fucking head. Me, who so believes in his capacity to break from the drama and stress of a “regular work day” to pursue the ideas that fall out after a ton of reading and writing. Me, who has group after group of invitations to do things and make jokes and pay for drinks to be met with 2 or 3 of the same people (who of course I'm not complaining about), while the rest go silent or show up and act like the lounging around on their couch instead of mine is to be preferred.

How do you think I want to hear it? Coherently? Patiently? Thoughtfully? I know it's at least honest as far as you feel or are relating it, but how can I be anything but concerned with “how I want it” if I have no fucking clue how to understand it and you refuse to explain it to me!? How the fuck is it my fault to be ready and willing and trying and only told I can't and you won't? Fuck you! That, I hate about you. I feel like a dyslexic dying to read with an abusive parent inventing endless ways to humiliate me. Good job, I'm painted as the intractable asshole again and you escape protecting your precious feelings.

The human connection is gone. The hearing about your day is “painful” and “hard.” Because new people are “icky” and only the sum of the things you want to criticize about them. It's fucking shallow. It's a disgrace. It hurts. It's exhausting. It's seemingly hopeless until a massive shift in our priorities or access changes how we anticipate seeing each other. What is the expectation? That inviting you out to lunch or to watch a movie is supposed to be as entertaining as a circus? What is the fear? That sharing your story or thoughts is going to have me pounding through the table in anger?

And if you don't have time, think about how fucked that is. Are you really stuck? Are you more afraid of “the long term effects” of something like a drug study than you are having no perspective, no life, and no time with mounting stress as to any long-term plan? What I'm doing is sketchy? At least I have blood work and blood pressure measurements done routinely. I'm not just healthy, I'm as ideally healthy as anyone they could ask to do these things. Are you? Tired and stressed? Have something lurking you can't afford to have checked out? The amount of time pissed away struggling alone as opposed to pulling together resources blows my mind.

Think about something like an investment account. I didn't ask you to invest in my “wacky awesome business plan!” I said, pull money, that's yours and will still be there, together, so interest can add up quicker and do the work for us. Nope, too sketchy. Let's all have a few grand as a nest egg tucked away, to be obliterated at random, that doesn't grow, and wait. Sound reasoning. Any of you got loans out? How much nicer would it be looking for a job after your grad program if you didn't have bills to pay in the meantime? I feel like a fucking spokesperson for drug study companies, but the heart is about pragmatism and easing stress. It's a cheat. A life hack. A safer than you give it credit for freeing up of your time, and hopefully by extension, your mind.

I think about getting a stupid job for even the semblance of community again. I liked the Sunday dinners and then hitting the video store to watch movies as a family at my grandma's house. I had the gamut of immature fuck-ups work with me at Showplace over 2 ½ years. It still felt like family. It's what kept me there during the dark days of shittier management. I hated electronic music and wasn't into partying and drugs before we banded together on a dorm floor. Before everyone got sad and resentful, there was a solid community of ridiculous people who could all basically pick up on what made coming to the house special. And all of it is just gone. And every attempt to create something new is met with feigned enthusiasm or silence.

And so you do what? You bitch. You say you hate people. You retreat and think it's all about you. What else are you working with?

I've already said so many things before. I feel stuck not because I'm not trying or unwilling to explore, but because I'm alone. I feel stuck because my problems aren't about “my” headache, “my” depression, “my” loneliness, “my” boredom, “my” negativity, or anything else really to do with me. I can't even help but to like myself, probably because when I'm desperate for change, I just do so. I've called myself a reflection. I complain because you're silent, because you blow me off, because you were something different in the past and you've changed and you won't say anything with regards to it. You won't tell me you don't care, so I stop blaming you. You won't tell me you agree, probably because you're afraid I'm then going to ask something of you. You don't answer questions. You don't pick a single question and try to say anything towards it.

This big impersonal “you,” because there's like 5. There's definitely 5 people who I think try and continue to try. And I appreciate it, and I thank you. And when I go back and read comments and discussions from years ago you pop up and remind me why I don't chop you off my ever-decreasing friends list. I'm no-less insatiable.

You just get into this habit of inventing peoples' positions. You have to try and infer from the silence, as stupid as that sounds, even though depending on what you read, it can tell you all you need to know. It's never indicated that everyone's doing well and we're all happy-go-lucky and I'm literally the only person you know who can carry on like there's always a problem. Which, again, I don't think is negative. I think it's wise. I think it shows perspective. I think you carry your demons with you and don't ignore them. I think you work as hard as you can now with them, so your life gets easier on the whole later. For every stressed out brain dump, I'm going to get a couple weeks of peace, or at the very least, an opportunity to move on to something different and more manageable.

I think you're stuck, because every time I try to relate to you, I feel stuck. I feel alone. I feel judged, and angry, and angst ridden. I hate that I feel guilty over what I presume to know, and you get a familiar dialogue. You ride the culture and the excuses. The secret “hush” to not disturb the status quo is part of it. The tired jokes and tempered expectations. The pleasantries. The unrelenting hurt feelings that prompt you to keep things broken and forgo believing in paths forward together. Silence has never helped me. Faking it feels tantamount to death. When I feel like I hate you, you'll hear it. But I promise it will never be as loud and palpable as the hatred I feel from your silence.