[540] Things We Never Had

I have an increasing problem with language. The more I hear it, the more I just get frustrated or downright angry. For much of my life, I never really thought words mattered. I had a very simple view that a word won’t punch you in the face or shoot you. Needless to say, I was unfamiliar with neuroscience at the time. Your body can respond as if it’s experiencing physical pain. Words can scar you. Words can swallow you up in depression or make you burst with rage.

But at least when that happens you have something clear to work with. A pissed off person is to be restrained or ran from, or perhaps politely engaged with. A depressed person needs pills or to attempt therapy. What we don’t pay attention to is when words make us sick, but we don’t really feel sick. We don’t feel different at all. In fact, the more you try to point to the words that are responsible for the sickness, people think you’re the sick one.

We take talking and language for granted. Whether a word is male or female or “rooted” in another language. We don’t struggle with every syllable like it didn’t start as a bark or a scream trying to convey something from more primordial times. We assume the meaning is built in. We act like when I say “car,” the mental picture is the same across the board. It’s innocent enough, as in, who cares if you pictured a Hot Wheels toy or a Nascar racer, we can clarify with a few more questions or specific words.

Humans have more unidentifiable experiences and feelings though. They have complex relationships and institutions. Words that once had meaning float away or become something entirely different, and new ones pop into existence seemingly daily. And we don’t even notice. I’d put money on the idea that someone’s said something akin to “I took this selfie in 1995 before smart phones.”

It’s how we arrived at the all-encompassing nature of the word “love.” It’s why people have an impossible time finding the “truth.” It’s the struggle behind your relationship with “friends” and “family.” Most, in service to trying to feel “normal,” see no point in searching for a kind of excruciating exactness. “My mom’s my mom and I love her! That’s the truth!” And you’re hard-pressed to disagree, even if the person making the claim doesn’t know why or care to learn why they’re wrong.

I think a lot about this when I consider my relationships. I don’t believe my ex feels any real guilt that isn’t masked in a language of relief. The stakes weren’t as high for her. I don’t think she even grasped the nature of the problem. In the handful of things she was willing to type out and explain to me, you can see the contradictions written sometimes in the next sentence claiming something different. It’s not that her explanation doesn’t make a certain kind of sense in “normal” or “everyday” terms, but I would describe it as missing a soul. I think there’s more to be said about the lines, “I don’t believe we started off as friends. At least not honest friends,” and “I think the lying stemmed from a true desire to see you happy” than there’s time for here.

Consider planting a tree you don’t want. You hate this tree. You hate the idea of trees. Yet every day you water it. You watch it get taller and taller. Its roots start to crack your foundation. Its leaves clog your gutters. It attracts animals and bugs you’re constantly swiping at. You buy expensive equipment trying to blow them away and make repairs. Then your neighbor comes over and proclaims how hard you work and praises you for your dedication to taking care of your property. You look up, angry and exhausted and scream, “I wish that damn thing had never been planted to begin with!”

The “logic” of property maintenance requires the expensive tools and hours in the sun. You need trash bags and allergy medication. You need new gutters and a new foundation. But you hate trees, and you planted one anyway? But wait, you may think to yourself, trees are good! Trees help ecosystems. Trees suck up carbon. I like apples! Perfectly fair and valid points, just in an entirely different discussion. The root of your problem remains unaddressed.

This is why I write and ask people to pay attention. This is why I find it so weird that people are threatened by my mere descriptions of aesthetic things that are causing them a mindgasm. It’s why I urge you to run from judgmental language because it’s a hearty signifier that you probably have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Our judgments are fundamentally corrupted, and if we attempt to base our feelings on them, we’re throwing food at a wall trying to assemble an emotional meal from whatever sticks.

Why am I so “defensive” or “difficult” to talk to? Why is it so “exhausting” to answer my questions? I don’t feel responsible for the lies you’ve told me. I don’t accept the idea that my perspective is “less magical” or “normal” or “worthwhile” just because I call a mountain a mountain and you’ll cry or cum if you stare at it too long. That doesn’t make me angry at you or resent you. I climbed the stupid thing because I wanted to be around the people doing what they enjoy. It seems practically inhumane to ignore that motivation for the sake of a mound of dirt.

It speaks to why I don’t regret getting into a relationship as well. What if I had sacrificed myself, like I was prepared to in high school? What if I stopped partying and said “I believe!” when it only felt like torture? What if I hadn’t done all the work to really discover who I was and what was important or what I was willing to do? Because that’s all you really have at the end of the day. Trying to be true to yourself.

If I may borrow a phrase from a movie I just watched (even if I don’t believe in love), “The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.” You can of course get half of the lesson right if others find themselves incapable or unwilling to acknowledge what’s worth loving about you. Your tokens can still represent true feelings. (I find it curious they’ve all been left behind.) You don’t have to adopt the same complacent exhaustion or judgment that denigrates the other person.

To be honest, I thought I’d feel more dramatic lol. But once I heard the foundation was a lie, I went out like a light. I was relieved. I could stop believing. I know how to treat liars, or, basically every person and “friend” I’ve ever met. Keep them at arm's distance. Maybe get something out of them. Play along and lie back as earnestly as they’re asking you to do so. Finally! Some direction.

Now I’m hung up on the “trying to be true to yourself” line. Because it’s the default language that people employ when trying to justify their behavior. I need to be more specific. Be true to what you’ve worked to discover. Be true to things you place higher on the shelf than the pit in your stomach. I felt nothing but excited and proud when she hooked up with girls. I felt absolutely terrible the first time my ex slept with a dude that wasn’t me. As compared to the 15 or so girls I’d been with since we were together. That means I’m a culturally programmed romantic sexist who literally embodied a painful hypocritical double-standard, not that there’s something wrong with sex and attraction or paying attention to history, human psychology, and animal behavior.

Important reminder, I didn’t blame her for my feelings. I didn’t think she was trying to hurt me. I believe she would have stayed home if I asked her to. She didn’t punch me in the gut. I put my trust in our life together and a spirit of sharing and honesty. Oops. And even still, if I may borrow a line from a song that I find spectacular, “Indiscretion is a blessing if you know how the truth is told.” Truth is told one line at a time. It’s every moment, and every word that captures where you’re at in time and spirit. That moment competes for the truth as it is against the truth that you’re desperate to justify. And while it’s extremely hard, if not sometimes impossible, to tell the degree and nature of how we’re lying to ourselves, I’ll catch you every time when you try to lie about me.

I’ll never blame anyone for feeling confused, angry, or hurt. It happens, it sucks, and it betrays our best conception of ourselves. But don’t blame me for you not recognizing what I find beautiful. Don’t tell me what I do and don’t see. Don’t allow yourself a second of pretending to know what I think if you’re unwilling to ask, and don’t tell me to respect your feelings when your misused words insulate you from experiencing mine. I chose trust when I wasn’t trusted. I chose ideals over butterflies. I choose friends even when I don’t believe they can see me. I choose writing to fighting, be it with myself, or you...mostly.

I think the only thing that brings people together or makes someone “right” for someone else is the decision to say so. Make no mistake, when you’re lying to someone, you haven’t chosen them. You’re not concerned with their happiness. You’re not in love. You shouldn’t trust what you’re finding beautiful. You’re not sacrificing anything anymore than Jesus did. The reality of your hard-sold godly standards will rise again until you can recognize them for the empty fairy tales of self-indulgence they are. And you’ll hurt a lot of people along the way. And at least if you’ve caught this and paid attention, we’ll both know it’s no longer innocent.

[539] Avra Kehdabra

Very often, I’m terrible at the interpersonal details. I’ll forget how many brothers and sisters you have, let alone their names. I don’t know what degree you graduated with or your favorite food or color. I never really counted those things as mattering. They don’t represent what I think about you or how I think we get along.

I like your disposition. I like your understanding. I like how you reason or attempt to genuinely engage and think through things. Something I’m not sure ever gets across is how biased I am towards sincerity. Sure, it can be coupled with mounds and mounds of naivety and, more often than I’d like, provoke disagreements and judgments about my disposition, but when I was running the “let’s simply be friends” game, I was hanging my hat on the idea of a kind of fundamental reliability. It was that you would remain you regardless of how you change or what you struggle with in life.

Perhaps that speaks to my own naivety, but I thought I couldn’t at least run the experiment with a better group of people. (The one’s who’ve survived my endless, soul-crushing assessments and commentary.)

I complain all the time that my friends don’t write. Well, they do, they just don’t usually share it. I’m listening when you tell me you do. I’m desperate to read it because we don’t live on top of each other like we did in college. I don’t feel “friendly” on facebook. Conversations on the phone are...eh. And we’re literally at that cliche point of maybe once or twice a year bumping into each other as someone is passing through, desperate to have a good time because it took so long to find that time or the money.

And we’re all kind of fucked. Whether we stayed in school or decided to go homeless, our lives are a story of being lost in the wind, pounded by debt, and constantly reimagining our circumstances at the whims of bad jobs or chance. At least for me, that makes me exceedingly angry. All of my thoughts are provoked by that anger first. I can’t keep the smile. I’ll be getting a little too drunk. I’ll make the less than happy comment.

I believed in more than your capacity to cope. What I wanted to be different about me and my friends was the same kind of “magic” that turned house parties from dreary desperate and dangerous affairs into something worth remembering (well-enough) for the rest of our lives. The conversation. The creativity. The similar goals brought on by a shared ethic and awareness. But what happened instead?

We found corners to struggle alone. Sure, some of us got married or are close enough to family, but we adopted where we were put. We stopped talking. We symbolically started climbing mountains while our realities remained under water. Things started to feel like eggshells. If this time together doesn’t go right, what drama’s gonna happen next!? Our friendships have started to turn into the kind of tepid pleasantries that I’m positive you’ll find me criticizing in blogs all through college.

You guys made me feel understood. It’s why I have such an angry whip and quick backhand for when you start acting like you don’t. You can’t give up. You can’t let “the world” swallow you and think all that’s left is the drudgery and routine. You’re better than that, and it’s why you get to read what’s on my mind and not the hundreds of “friends” who fell by the wayside.

I suppose it’s sort of the point that there is no easy fix. I don’t think I’ve ever pretended to offer answers. Self-indulgent bitching is all I’ve managed to figure out. Well, except that I know as well I’m not capable of getting better or doing much of anything without help. And not the kind of help that cheers me on while I spend money or pretend like I can pull away from what’s on my mind.

It will remain a perpetual truth that I write for me first, but when it clicked how important that connection could be, I tried to be more mindful of what I was putting out into the world, and that I was in fact doing so. I’m not trying to be mean for the sake of it. I’m not revelling in negativity. I’m waking up daily not recognizing who I am or who I found in becoming friends with you people.

Which speaks to the most disheartening thing. You could have been lying. I was recently told that my entire 5 year relationship was a lie and that, no exaggeration, the basis of what I thought was understood or special about us felt like punches to her gut every time. By the end of this crescendo explanatory moment, where the truth is finally revealed...! She thought it was all scattered and probably not helpful at all. I’m handed the perfect reason to calm my nerves and move on with my life, and she never considered it relevant to tell me. Just how little can someone think of you?

What a perfectly selfish and unsympathetic question to ask. What about her pain? What about her truth? All those punches to the gut I gave her. All those comments she didn’t like. All those girls I flirted with or fucked! Where do I get off!? I’m the mean one, remember? The one who has it all figured out and is worthy of taking the responsibility or blame. I should have known how she felt! What’s the point of being a mind-reading manipulator if you’re just going around pissing everyone off!?

You’re right. I did figure it all out. I knew from being an irrational emotional wreck in high school that I would try my damndest to speak to things accurately. I knew that my relationships had to be about you because I can’t be trusted. I found myself trapped in cliched conversations and timeless tales from history and mythology that no one had the wisdom to teach me, or beat me over the head with, growing up. It’s too real for me how easily we get fucked and fuck each other. The crowd that could figure it out, the crowd who reads everything, jokes about everything, and even refrains from too harsh of gossip behind each others’ backs could totally do it better!

We’re not, and we don’t even feel like we can. We’re scrapping. We’re quietly consoling. We’re still taking the best pictures and getting dolled up for the reception, of course. But we’re not doing it better.

At what point do we get to stop thinking of it as an innocent lie? When does that get to carry more weight than my tone or social faux-pas? Does the sympathy for the devil ever really kick in? Because I feel you, soooooooooo hard. I do. But I’m not willing to lie to you. Whether it’s how I feel or about what I want to say. Your silence is a lie. Your struggle is a lie. It’s buying into the lie that that’s where you really are, and that’s all you’re really worth. Nick P. thought to make you his friend. It’s worth considering why.

Just be careful. Pay attention. I don’t mean focus in how it’s never getting better and your cheery weekend better carry you through the next week, or else. I mean actually pay with your attention to access your voice and find the reason to put it out there. I know too well how to exist for years thinking the precise opposite of the truth as it pertained to the person I thought I was closest in the world to. Did I really know better? I could dig up enough blogs that would certainly say so, but let no man claim I didn’t earnestly work to be the opposite of cynical, or negative, or a know-it-all in caring about that relationship.

Yet, my feelings didn’t matter. What you honestly believe does. I’m no longer willing to accept anything less, as it’s all I can offer.

[538] Heart Attacked

I’m stressing myself out about my map, so I want to explore all the things causing it. This will likely be very specific to the project and perhaps perfectly uninteresting as a “general” thought digression.

I wonder if I’m thinking too hard about it. The irony being, I don’t think I could ask for something simpler. I have examples of significantly more complex maps with functions I want to adopt from. I want things stripped down. The idea is to be able to tell a million different stories with the data plugged into it, but you can’t tell a coherent story with a million “other” data or distraction points nowhere near relevant to the task.

I’m concerned that I’m on the hook of promises and reassurances. I know my programmer is competent. I know the company she’s working for is something of a start up. But, as recent history has informed me, I’m at the mercy of other peoples’ perception of their abilities and capacity to understand me, as well as their honesty or complete lack thereof.

The last time I remember being excited for the project was after the first “correction” was made to what she initially sent me. It was just a white sheet with a map outline of the U.S. I was ecstatic. It looked like a whiteboard ready for me to push pins in it, plug widgets into, and mold into what I needed.

The next iteration that popped up looked like that whiteboard had been put through a “sure, but LET’S MAKE IT LOOK COOL!” engine and it had more options, places to look, click, and scroll through that I didn’t ask for. I can only assume the things are partially related to a generalized long-term vision related to previous conversations we’ve had.

Now, that “general map” is hosted and updates I’m not quite sure of may or may not make it to me before I get into another study that will keep me from doing anything meaningful with it for another 3 weeks. I started this project 3 or 4 months ago? With a whole host of pauses and confusions that had nothing to do with my willingness to explain or ability to pay.

I’ve been talking about it for so long, I feel like a total asshole. I’m so insanely fucking stressed out about playing with it and actually seeing the things I’ve asked for put into it. I haven’t seen but one, the massive strip down, consequence that I recognize is my message getting across. I’ve been told literally everything I’ve asked for is straight forward and easily enough put in. Where is it? Where’s my search box? Where’s my drop down menus? Where’s my ability to navigate to files and upload them from a spreadsheet? Why do I have 700 backlogged articles and not one of them is represented on the map? Why does it take 20 fucking seconds for a mini panel of options to load or some filter (again that I don’t want even on the page at this stage) to be applied? You know what didn’t take 20 seconds to load? The whiteboard with an outline of the U.S. on it.

That’s sort of my biggest issue. The logistics of coordinating the different pieces of information I want to put on the map are going to be hard enough. If I can’t even streamline the logical pipeline of how to input, access, and display the information, there’s little hope for finding hidden correlations or making meaningful connections amidst a thousand data points marginally related to a physical location on a map.

I want a mind map. That’s what is occurring to me as this develops. I want something to mirror what I’m reading but to be able to access it in a fluid way that helps with recall. I want a physical compiler of my hours spent reading so I’m not half-assedly remembering some fact or digging through years worth of NPR articles to find the one superintendent that I want all superintendents to be aware of. The joke is that I could likely do what I want with note cards and a large wall. I could just compile sticky notes from various books.

I have nothing. I have nothing to do, nothing I find value in, and can achieve nothing of merit or worth but to find a purpose and intention in the exercise of my brain. I JUST WANT TO FUCKING WORK. Let me work. Let me have something to fucking play with so I can stop going out to eat and getting drunk alone. Give me a hard and fast date that I can rely on.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. I need something to go right for fucking once that isn’t predicated on self indulgence. Even that is failing! Fucking Green Day got sick and I’m stuck with expensive ass tickets I don’t know if I’ll be able to sell or make the new date that hasn’t been announced. I’m living in perpetual failure. Nothing I do and no one I talk to seems to be able to respond to me or be relied upon. I’m not even trying to be hyperbolic. I feel like I’m living some karmic payback for being a mass murderer in a past life or something.

I’m genuinely in crisis mode people. I’m worried I’m going to break down. I don’t know what it will look like, but I think it will involve part of my skull cracking. I’m tired of watching TV. I’m tired of yelling into the ether. I’m tired of being told yes when you mean no. I’m sick of the prevailing lies used to shit all over my life and intention. I’m going fucking crazy that nothing feels real. Nothing is helping. No one is helping. I’m alone losing my mind because there is no place for me and what I want to create.

[537] I Don't Care How You Feel

We're only as real as the stories we tell. Variations on that theme are, “history is told by the winners,” "there's your side, their side, and the truth lies somewhere in the middle,” and even “happiness is a state of mind.” We convince ourselves we're moral. We don't have to be the most moral or the best at it, but we have to believe our intentions were pure, if not rational and certainly speaking to some correct identification of our feelings.

There's a reason I remain perpetually desperate. I don't care how I feel. My feelings tell me absolutely nothing, ever. I've had this sinking, hollow, very confusing sense of foreboding in my stomach the last few days. I thought maybe it had to do with approaching this blog from a very deliberate and informed way, because I hope to speak to something at the heart of my being. I still want to write something important, but all I had to do was take a shit. I was none the wiser.

There's a reason I'm constantly tossing the definition of things over and over again in my head. There's a reason I want to question your integrity and shit on the concept of “friend” every other month. It's necessary. I'm absolutely correct in doing it. I've spent most of my life attempting to nail down the intricacies of how we employ certain words and ideas, or how we should approach our interpersonal relationships. You've just been living them. If I find something confusing or absurd, it's not that you can't understand or ever even generally disagree. But it's built into your being in a way you're not actively trying to extricate. It's behavior and perceptions that have the greatest consequences.

What to make of consequences? We think we live in a pretty straightforward world concerning consequences. You don't pay, you get punished. You won't work, you don't eat. You don't say the right thing, you'll be written off or ostracized. Maybe instead I should put it like this. It's certainly insisted, quiet consistently, how I should know better as there are rules for your world. And I call it your world because you all act the exact same ways in response to it.

Say something simple like cussing. If I do so, you say, “Shush! there may be children!” If I don my perpetually ridiculous caricature and make a racist joke, you say “Shush! you may hurt someone's feelings!” Something ever more confusing when it's us alone, sometimes even in my own living room. I say relax and have another, you say, “I need to be alert and ready so I can hate my job, put on a fake smile, and throw up my arms because nothing else exists.”

Your feeling-laden world of blind expectations does so much work to arrest and account for your behavior. You're not concerned about accuracy or accountability. You're not concerned with truth as it may exist in between the words and beyond our best definitions. You don't want pragmatic daily action plans and reminders to pierce the veil. You prefer your judgments. You prefer acrid piety. You need your sacrificial goats for the God of the Dammed.

I don't care how you feel.

What do you make of that sentiment? Am I making a moral claim? Am I speaking my personal truth, or am I shooting for some loftier generalized conception? Do you have to treat me differently now? Do you have to re-evaluate what I am to you? What is a person who doesn't care how I feel? A psycho or sociopath? Am I trying to hurt you? What are you supposed to make of all the things I've done or said that seemed to try to make you feel good? Maybe he's just an idiot and jerk who doesn't want to deal with how I feel.

I don't care how you feel.

I really want that sentiment to be repeated to have it sink in. It's the kind of phrase that provokes those words we need to invent that transcend irony. It's something I've so often been accused of it's lost all it's meaning for me. It's something I watch people behave so manifestly destructively in service to, they think the overall carnage is normal.

In fact, you don't know how I feel, I don't know how you feel, I barely know let alone care about how I feel, and as a matter of circumstance, I do not care how you feel.

The best you can do is take people at their word. The one with the best words, or, the one who employs them at the right times to the right people, tends to win. This is why you're pieces in the overall capital G Game I refer to. This is why I'm fairly unapologetic in my phrasing and behavior. When I'm playing your game, I'm the coolest person you'll have ever met. When I want to die without regrets, I'll carry on picking you apart for as long as it takes for you to be as large a disembodied whirlpool of words as I am.

Consider the insane amount of problems at taking people at their word. Now you get that ridiculous language of “respecting feelings.” By virtue of opening your mouth and talking about your irrational fears and irrational political positions, you get your respectable adult hat! No checks and balances. No training course or certification. You're living it, and I have to swallow it! Isn't this fun, kids!

There is no metric for lies. There is no follow up. Each day you get to wake up with a new memory of events gone past. You get to fill your internal dialogue with every cliché you pick up from misappropriated thinkers and insecure megalomaniacs that would have never been able to stand a conversation with the likes of you. And you get so many followers! You're playing the game so perfectly, everyone is there to reinforce you because they feel you're so sweet, and loving, and sacrificing! You work so hard! You're being all you can be! You deserve the world!

But then you fuck up. You meet someone like me, or Byron, or Smash, or Pat Patterson, or just that person who seems to have a superhuman capacity to be off yet completely engaged. While I've basically shed my capacity to constantly say the right thing or even pretend I can grasp even the most feeble body and language cues anymore, these people are stars. You love them! You'll tolerate me.

I can pick you apart. They pick you apart. Their world and our conversations are different than when we're all being super cool with each other at a party and wildly engaged, normal, and interesting. They know how to lead with the active, thoughtful, analysis of their own minds and employ the truth before they play the game that makes you feel good. They're watching, not judging. They won't call you out, I will. They collectively have 1700 facebook friends, I have 59.

It's hard to believe that someone can know something about you that you don't feel. And that's only hard because you unfairly and unduly respect and care about feelings. The harder evidence is closed to you. The larger patterns, the awareness of the language, and the mannerisms or demeanor are lost on you. And the snippets of time you pop your head in to claim awareness usually bite you. You don't do the work, and so you hope you find someone who can hold your hands the rest of your life and make you feel good about your choices and ideas. I refuse.

For every judgment I get about “who I am” or “what you think I'm doing” or “how I'm not listening,” I'm going to be prepared to cut off our “friendship.” All I'm ever willing to do is constantly talk until I reach a point of understanding. I'm not going to hold a shadowy raincloud of doubt over my head about who you are or who I am to you. You have enough fodder from my brain to figure out your own position. You're someone capable of honesty, patience, or perhaps merely a perverse hope for more than the massive joke that is played on thoughtful individuals about their place in the herd. Or, you're not, and I'm not okay with you. I'm comfortable playing with you, lying to you, and holding your hand so you can tend to your dog shit fickle feelings.

I know better. And the only reason I know better is that I can go back and check my work. I can look at the decisions I've made in total spite of your feelings, know what they spoke to, and feel proud for having made them. I don't lose sleep, nor time, nor opportunities based on your judgments. If you're willing to walk with me and observe, I'll perhaps bother with working you into my thoughts. Until then, this is my new line in the sand. I'm not obligating myself. I'm not stressing myself out or wondering. I'm not going to get anxious if I don't write you a personal heartfelt birthday message or find the time to fly out and see you. I know what you want, and it's not me.

[536] Just My Imagination

What's being spoken to when we talk about “temptation?”

My mind immediately conjures thoughts about the bible. Eve was tempted by the snake. Knowledge is tempting. “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” When you're tempted, evil is knocking at your door. The sweet sound of The Temptations is a trap to drag you to hell.

Can it be rephrased? What if instead of being tempted, you're taking a chance. Significantly less insidious. It can accompany a boyish charm as he pursues his sweetest gal. Could be a job opportunity you weren't sure about, but may pan out better than you hoped. We play games of chance for fun. Does this make is it too nice though? Temptation is tied specifically to vice.

You're tempted to eat shitty food when your blood pressure is already too high. You're tempted to drink a little more because the first 6 went down so easy. Maybe this time you'll tell your boss what's what. Maybe you're sad and you're tempted to ease over the double yellow line and just see how this thing plays out. It's about falling off course to a range of varying destructive ends.

So what established the line you're diverging from? My mind shoots back to religion. Knowledge is only a temptation when you're a blind follower. Institutionalized ethics does so much of the work for you. Perhaps one can imagine the person with no inclination or conditioning who's never felt tempted. They just do or they just are. What to make of their moral code?

In attempting to constantly establish and then undermine myself, I find it hard to categorize myself in the language of temptation. I just do things. I'm fairly aware of why, even if I rarely manage to prepare myself for the fallout. Well, my preparation is to go dead inside, which is sketchy at best. I know I'll always be able to write about it, but there are moments where the worst thing you can do is focus your attention absolutely on such a degree of sickness in the mind.

If I were to try and put my behavior in the language of temptation, it's always pretty ridiculous and shitty things to do. I could be tempted to actively pursue, very insincerely, every person I've ever found remotely attractive. I could be tempted to eat a cheeseburger for every meal. Perhaps I'm tempted to keep cutting out “friends” for one, likely defensible, reason or another. Those are all pretty straight forward and not serving much a purpose beyond building a hollow throne of obscenity to sit on.

I've been tempted to be comfortable.

You might be aware that my normal is, let's think of a proper way to phrase this, maybe a bit on edge? Shit pisses me off. I can't turn my brain down. It keeps me from sleeping unless I'm exhausted. It keeps me from forming too many close relationships. I drive myself insane reading and go so far as to spend a few thousand dollars so I can better organize my hate into poignant, hilarious, and despotic takes on the world. I don't meet a single person who sees me out having fun or hears about the money I've squirreled away who doesn't give me the same kind of response. “I wish.”

I've achieved what, presumably, a number of people would consider comfort. I'm certainly not uncomfortable and constantly reinforce the idea that every problem I ever have is less than first world. The thing is, I adopted my disposition for a reason. It's a kind of creative motivation. Whether it's to come up with new jokes or mash different areas of life together, you don't really do that when you're content to sit around for months at a time watching TV. When you write quasi-moral proclamations about how most everyone you meet is a moral and intellectual failure, you really need to have something to point to that separates you from the herd. So I've taken the smallest amount of pride in being the cow inching toward the back gate, anxious as fuck, angry no one is following my “pssst” noises.

I actually used the phrase, “oh yeah, I forgot about lying” the other day when it came to solving some problem me and a friend were discussing. I'm not oblivious, but I've a well-worn suit of honest armor that makes me feel almost incapable of lying about, so named, “stupid shit.” Or it's a lie by silence. I can only compare it to the religious upbringing conditioning. You don't even realize the magic man in the sky story and talking snakes or being evil sinners where sex is wrong is an insane thing to think. I “just talk” in a way that takes it for granted if it's stupid, you'll call me out, if it's wrong, Google exists. But, if I'm right it's even more informative because you'll either get uncomfortable and not want to talk, get angry for dishonest reasons, or be an interesting respectable person willing to talk back.

I just think it would feel so good. What if I didn't read a single book or news article for like, 6 months? What if I knew about the top 30 games to play on your phone? What if I spent $1000 on music lessons and a personal trainer to keep me on a schedule? This in contrast to worrying about saving money for land, having the funds for the map, or any of the other things I keep in the back of my mind to worry about and budget for. I could just denote my hobbies, take lots of pictures and post progress videos. Maybe I just travel. I could just be normal and comfortable amassing likes as you gain the impression I've really settled into my own.

It's tempting because I think I could do it. I think about school. I sleep between 5-7AM until maybe 12-4PM. How did I get up every morning and get good grades? How did I walk across campus for 25 minutes pissed off and cold to hear the lesson? (Okay, I dropped that class) I can build the structure. I can forsake all else. It may even be good for me.

I've habituated myself to a form of existence that circumvents rules. I think at one level it's vitally important, but I don't want to destroy myself as a kind of philosophical cliché. I don't know if I'm stressed out. Well, actually I must not be given my blood pressure readings. I'm just lonely. I want to fit in better. I want to tell you everything you want to hear, and not just make it who I am this week. Sure it'd be a lie and I'd be shitting on and contradicting so many blogs and arguments. But what else do I really do with myself?

What I really have to ask myself is whether it's taking a simple chance or submitting to temptation. The fact that it feels like temptation I think tells me all I need to know. It still would be nice to fit somewhere though.

[535] Seussicide

I’ve been reflecting again on the differences between what you say and how you say it. A pattern emerged, I steered that insight into thoughts related to stand-up comedy. I penned a drunk desperate profession of my desires and opinions related to my map project to the programmer, voiced a drunk ramble about all the things I’m bored of fighting about to a friend I should have spent more time listening to, and likely alcohol poisoned myself because my inability for dealing with shitty feelings outweighed my then willingness and ability to cope.

I don’t know if the wording works for you, but as far as opinions about myself are concerned, I’m so bored. I’m tired of the same fights, pretending like I don’t know how to phrase or play it differently. I’m tired of coaxing anxiety that, without trying to sound ironic, I don’t actually care about. I’ve referred to that conundrum as “keeping things interesting” when I’ve little of value left to contribute to anything else. This leads me into just doing unnecessary things that do more work to undermine any positive conception of myself than any poorly-worded blog could.

It’s just boring to see it over and over. Why are we fighting? Because you might think spending 2 hours talking is 2 hours too many. It’s not because we both believe friendship and understanding take time and you need a break, something about our fickle modern psychology keeps us teetering on the edge after every interaction that is less than harmonious. That’s boring, unfair, petty, and any number of digressions speaking to the degradation of our shared conception of humanity.

Some people get off easy and hate themselves. They hate themselves so hard they don’t even realize the power of the armor they’ve adopted. It’s both invisible and invincible. They can’t be criticized. Their words are final and timeless. It imbues them with pride and motivation. It’s co-opting the secret of a psychopath’s charm. There’s nothing there, so there’s nothing to impede.

I can find myself perpetually conflicted about the definition of “friendship” or what is worth my time. I can recall “enjoyable” fights and opportunities to gain perspective and insight about how to go about it better. But I’m playing a longer progressive game. My one wrong move, in your eyes, could be my last. You can say you don’t hate me, and treat me like you do. It’s fluid. The description of it will sound infinitely more dramatic than it will ever feel in the moment.

I wish I could hate myself. That sounds like a weird thing to say. Things would get easier then. The problem remains constant. Me. I’m now too inventive of excuses. I’m now so unbearably blind and selfish it’s amazing you ever got two words in. I start deliberately and callously playing on sympathies or look to emotionally control. I judge over and over again with no capacity or willingness to try and explain. Back off, the bitch is here, leave your offerings on the table.

There’s such a common pattern, by the way. It’s not reserved for one sex or another. From an “innocent” standpoint, I try to chalk it up to fear. From a cynical place, I call it dishonest laziness. In general, I don’t think I have a single friend who’s so socially oblivious to not know how to approach someone who differs in their conversational “style.” Maybe you have to navigate a drunk ramble. Maybe you have to use positive and impersonal language. Maybe you have to coax questions and explanations out of someone and refrain from voicing your thoughts. The game is endless.

I call it cynical. I think it’s the necessary, yet cynical game you have to play to keep yourself healthily oriented in the world. I make a distinction between how I engage with the rest of the world, and how I engage friends or choose to phrase something in writing. You need to be able to handle it. You need to be able to forgive. I’m not throwing myself to wolves on a world stage eager to accept clichés about “it’s not for everyone.”

I try to give you as much credit as I give myself. Take the flow and general point of the argument even when one line pisses you off or you can’t shake the pretentious tone you’re certain I’m writing in. Intentional and head on is, in my view, foundational in qualifying a relationship worth having verses one you’re forced to cope with simply because you exist; friendly, intimate, or otherwise.

Yes, it can be exhausting. Yes, it can zap up your hope and you can find every best thought you’ve ever divined for how “this isn’t me” or “it’s impossible.” And if you lose sight of what you’re truly fighting for, you’ll be absolutely right. And is that what you want to be? “Right?” I, for one, don’t want to be any more or less right than what I manage to claw together in blogs. I want to account for the moment. I want to respect the feelings and patterns. I want you to know that even if I saw or spoke with you for a short amount of time, you’re still there. I’m still in your corner.

It’s just the friendly thing to do.

[534] Shut Up

Sowing seeds of discord in a mind plagued with doubt To turn it all black by selfish mandate and cry A hole opens up persistently pulling down every inch of Who you don’t deserve to be Dare not appeal or be appalled Words are mute

[533] No Apology

I’m not wrong. It’s the most fucked idea that I’m terrified to have. There can always be more to the story and nuances to a person’s character, but what drives them, what pushes me to cut them out of my life, it’s a force I consistently recognize. It’s a heavy and degrading force that likes to hide behind pleasant sounding words of no substance.

I regret deleting the texts. I got a little tipsy and started thinking about an old friendship that I severed. I sent an explanatory apology trying to relate my headspace and reasoning. If you’ll remember from Character Assassination, the worst thing in the world you can do when talking to someone is bother to explain yourself. All they want is waterfalls of contrition, and that’s certainly never enough either.

She called the apology mute, criticized how I went about it, claimed to care about our friendship but would simply have been too uncomfortable to discuss “my opinions” and choices about how to engage with the world. She cared about the friendship, just not enough to talk about or understand it.

There was a reason I stopped apologizing, and it had little to do with not feeling regret or sorrow. When you apologize to the wrong person, they only try to bleed you. They dismiss or downplay and criticize the nature of your apology. Their sympathies lie in the realm of platitudes and trickery. Lie being the operative word. They’re the saddest people I know, driven by the purest sense of pretension.

Without fail, I can go out and meet a, usually older person, who absolutely loves my energy, intention, or descriptions of the events of my life. Last night’s jovial soul told me I need to just bask in the glory of my own capacity for positivity. He, like others, told me I was doing alright and to not make it weird by concerning myself with trying to facilitate others. If I can speculate, I believe the heart of his words was about taking care of yourself more than a disavowing of empathy.

It’s a relatively straight forward and simple fact that as you pursue new knowledge and different voices, you undermine your general faith and convictions in the world. This uncertainty allows me to explore conversations with new people, explore things I previously had “strong opinions” against or about, and naively attempt to repent or downplay a course of action I made in haste. The trick is figuring out what remains consistent, both about yourself and the topics or people you’re exploring.

How do I feel confident a relationship is worth losing? Well, a year later when I’m moved to apologize, the response I get is precisely the kind of insulting joke that comprised most of our time together. I need to stop believing there’s anything that can be improved there. I’m the battered wife now, pouring my blackened eyes out knowing how much I deserved them.

The strength of any experiment is its predictive power and replicability. For social experiments, I feel like I never fail. I know who’s going to shit on me and how. I know if we were never really friends. I know how to get every word I’ve ever said thrown back in my face. I know how to illicit constant praise and reinforcement. It’s so fucking old. It’s so petty. It’s depressing as fuck.

But you can consider yourselves lucky. I’m growing more and more resolved each day. When you become the resentful “fucking downers” as my description went in my apology, who only shit on my ideas about the world with nothing but “talking about it would just make me uncomfortable” to hide behind, I’ll be happy to inform and dismiss you as well. You won’t get the drunk text a year later as an olive branch. I’ve run that experiment enough.