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.
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