[499] Color Me Blue

I feel like I’ve been something of a tragic little headcase lately.

Waaah! I’m angry at my friends. Waaaah! Fake and broke social scenes have broken down. Boo-hoo it’s one problem and satirical comment after the next. Of course I’m writing this in the wake of the depressed and foreboding feelings that follow a hangover. Of the various powers of alcohol, it really is the drug that grants me the capacity to feel.

I used to blackout and be told that all I could do was foist lovey-dovey heartfelt sentiments about everyone in the room. Anymore I seem driven by a desire to bring up terrible shit to say that apparently seeks to degrade and remove me from any obligations I might feel towards friendship. What a tired cliche…

I think maybe I have a growing fear for the speculation and skepticism I’ve built in my life. I don’t allow myself the “naivety” to think the new people in the bar cared about our conversation. I don’t expect the majority of people I know to come through for anything I didn’t like actively prime and coax out of them. I’ve had to stifle a solid amount of the pretense that fueled much of my behavior. My identity has been in limbo.

I know once this feeling wears off I’ll go back to normal. I know that while ideas can always haunt me, I’m never a slave to a particular regret or drunk text. I just don’t know what to think about my normal anymore. If I was an impassioned dramatic free-spirit, I might barrel into some kind of expressive medium. I’d put aside all my criticism for there being too many competing and lackluster voices and try something new.

And at least in the moment of feelings like this, it would feel worthwhile. It’s why I write. The need to speak or connect. Blogging is coping more than something I’ve sought anything more than incidental attention for. I’m beholden to throw all my sad sack of shit feelings in a place like this so the damage control aspects of my life can actually be controlled.

It’s that I feel like I’m constantly lying. I’m better at being the friend who picks up where we left off after not talking to you for years than I am the check in and see how you’re doing type. I feel like I stopped paying attention to a lot of potential social cues and qualifiers because they get in the way of me steamrolling through some desperate stab towards more and deeper connections. Or, if I get them right, I’m not convinced on the regular days I’ll find it in me to keep caring.

I’m jealous of when it was easy. Of course it was gross and superficial, but it was easy. You just got together and all got drunk. You just started some random project or group activity. You just did a little flirting and body language cues before disappearing somewhere. And then maybe it wasn’t even that superficial; at least for a little while.

I’ve been grasping in the dark at lines that would hopefully unlock the sentiment behind how I’ve been feeling. My brother the other day said “I never thought I’d be 25 with a master’s degree living at home with my parents.” I had that concern my freshman year with all I’d been reading about kids doing that exact same thing. And so what? What did it get me? What does my knowledge and foresight ever really amount to? You still have to get fucked. You still have to keep falling uphill. I still have to cross my fingers that I’ll finagle a way to build the kind of future I’ve been dreaming about since I was a kid.

I’m too hard on everything. I don’t know the happy middle ground. I packed so many expectations into myself I’m choking. Every year that goes by with me being a discontented basement dweller railing about the system and bolstering his capacity for media trivia suggests the larger reality is even heavier and even more fucked than I could possibly have the capacity to ridicule. It makes me feel dead before, during, and after I’ve tried. It makes the anxiety of hope unbearable.

I’ve never wanted to be the cynic. I’ve never considered myself as such. I don’t want to believe it, but it feels like it, that the honor is foisted upon me. Like I could cope with feeling downtrodden and guilty anymore than you can. Like I get some kind of enjoyment when things are actually that bad. Yes, once the hangover subsides, I’ll stop sounding so pathetic and I’ll genuinely be more implacable husk uncontrollably scoffing. But until then, hopefully I’ve been able to peek into what’s been contorting my guts. I’m rather lost.