I start more sentences with the words “I don’t understand” more than I do with “I hate.” In both instances, the phrasing leaves much to be desired. Hate takes a kind of motivated energy I rarely have about the topic beyond the moments I’m engaging with it. And to say I don’t understand betrays the many times I’ve seen the exact same circumstances play out in wholly predictable ways. I still don’t find myself having a mode of properly accounting for it, nor have I persuaded myself to capitulate to the “better” outcome of lying and playing along in a return to exploitative ends.
Perhaps we start with a note on exploitation. I don’t know why it’s so often forgotten, but when someone is playing with you, they don’t make reference to it. It’s a very weird myth that the “master manipulator” is one who wears their heart on their sleeve and somehow makes you dance in complete spite of yourself as they giggle and you cower in submission. My whole exercise of writing is a giant “fuck you” and rejection of my willingness to deliberately manipulate those I consider friends or friends-enough. If this point is not understood, then any and every single time you think our relationship has broken down because “you’re a cog” or “you know I’m a manipulator” you don’t simply have no idea what you’re talking about, you’re going the extra mile to shit on the thousands upon thousands of words I’ve devoted to you. I won’t be shedding tears in your absence.
The reason then I may start so many sentences with “I don’t understand” is because I work so hard to step outside of the “normal people” speak and level of interaction. This is not to say what I do is “abnormal” in that it’s somehow removed from our general capacity, it’s simply that people are unwilling and dishonest, and this triggers the draining of my patience. So, yes, little self-centered neurotic overgrown child who needs an hour to make a 5 second decision, I do understand you. I do not have an hour for you. You are not that special.
The evidence I put up as understanding people has to do with the relationships that last the longest. The people who I often refer to as “putting up with me” despite having nowhere near the disregard for my person as I make caricatures of what they must be thinking about me. I call it tongue in cheek, others might choose shameless disregard. I never win, but I can make the case anyway. I get along with adults. I meet adults, make the same jokes around adults, offer my pearls of insight or opinion on something I read, and they love it! They love it sober or drunk. They remember me even if we meet years later as “you’re funny!” or “you’re the smart one!” They simply do not have the time and energy to be as far up their own asses as the people who turn me into their nightmare.
The friends that are my age that don’t give me shit also happen to be adults. They get adult jobs and concern themselves with personal enrichment or the betterment of others. They read a lot of the same things I do. They have the ability to make the same dark jokes. They relate to their mental struggles honestly and openly. I’ve said I don’t take pride in the idea that people only wanna talk to me when their life has blown up, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t an appreciation for the ability and willingness to engage their own psyches in that manner. I’m not saying “go fuck yourself I don’t want to hear it,” I’m just annoyed it takes so damn long for them to figure out we’re on the same side.
On the list of things I understand, it must include all of those “hidden” under-the-breath procedural or bureaucratic things, or I wouldn’t be the one shaping Byron’s public pronouncements. I wouldn’t get enlisted to write the personal statement for his mom’s military station with the nice weather. I wouldn’t be more than prepared to never get or revel in too much limelight once enough people scan my blogs and find instances of “nigga” and “nigger” used in ways that will absolutely derail any fleeting point I may have been getting at in the particular piece. I’ve made my bed and made peace with the idea that I’m shooting for a very select few of listeners/readers that I can roll with.
I also understand all of those shitty confusing and desperate emotions that move you to say and do all sorts of horribly contradictory and hurtful things. They are precisely what drove me to start writing in the first place. I understood them so well, in fact, that I could write up a kind of “star chart” based on your behavior and interactions with family and friends that would describe where you got in life and how and generally how or why we would or wouldn’t get along. Me and Byron actually still play this game and test ourselves in our capacity to “guess” things right after looking you up and down! Of course, nobody’s perfect, but I’d at least find it in me to shut up if I kept finding out I was grossly off the mark consistently.
I understand things to the same degree that fat girl knows she shouldn’t message and flirt with me on Okcupid. She doesn’t really know if I don’t have some secret fetish or a severe lack of shame, but the look on my face and the tone on my profile tell a flashing red light of a story you can choose to pay attention to or not. All of our lives work like this. Your desperation, often intelligence, are worn on your face. I know thoughtful brows and eyes. Your judgment and priorities are reflected in your clothes. No one I know personally dresses half as bad as the absolute train-wrecked sack of potatoes man I saw leaving the bar this evening. I know when you’re trying too hard to look smart or dumb or healthy or crazy.
What would you do if had this “power” that’s actually a habit that anyone can learn, but don’t for reasons tied mostly to things I say in blogs? Would you jump into 1001 bullshit friendships? Would you stoke along people’s terrible ideas about their partners and families and ability to deal with their particular ailments? Here’s where I get to call you out. Yes! Of course you would. That’s what you do! All you fuckers have hundreds or thousands of “friends” that you want to be in dozens of photos with and to shower likes and “love” and yada yada. You’re normal! If not still at least outlier adults. Your lives are invested in the cultural mythology and procedure. It’s not that I don’t understand this, it’s that I’ve pulled out of it. At least, am pulling until my hands are raw.
You understand this. You respect and I suspect quasi-envy it a bit. But you’re also wise enough to know that the grass is always greener and if you haven’t laid the kind of foundation psychologically or interpersonally, my style of living has to look positively insane, unforgiving, lonely, and very very angry. All of course contributing to the underlying ironic pulse of all existence. Because I could never hate more than when I’m lying to myself, or to people I wish to respect. Operative word, wish. When it happens, it’s literal magic. You people are magic adults.
Why do people say one thing and do another? They have no grasp of what they actually want and are terrified of feeling truly responsible for the outcome of their lives. Taking responsibility for the sheer depth and reach of consequences is almost suicide inducing. No one will call them out besides assholes like me, so there’s nothing to lose in reinforcing their posture daily with ritual sacrifices of language and conceptions of self-respect. Why don’t people care about the things that would make their lives actually better? Your brain doesn’t care how you trigger your reward system, just that it’s triggered. Pain makes people feel good and special, be it their own or someone else’s. They’re not even fundamentally wired to give a shit about more than 100 or so people over the course of 30-40 years. You think an impassioned news article or speech is going to traverse that void?
I understand so well that I know how to drive you into places that you’d think you worked on pathologizing all on your own your entire life. Arguably the worst thing about me is that I don’t know if I’ll ever grow out of the temptation to want to do so. Not arbitrarily, of course, but enough pathetic 30-something children who treat you like an angry god who’s somehow maliciously acting in the shadows in between bored drunken escapades, movie watching, and crossing his fingers he’ll have enough money next week to build a fucking shed...DEAR GOD THE SOCIOPATHIC MASTERMIND TWIRLING HIS COGS ROUND AND ROUND!
