[618] Don't Wanna Be

This might be one of the least well-thought out premises I’ve tried to start a blog with in a while, but I have my suspicions I want to see where they take me.

I don’t react to happiness well. I don’t trust it. I have a certain guilt about it. I even make a distinction between “laughing” and “joking” and happiness. I can laugh myself to tears nearly every day. But very little feels at stake. Maybe the joke works, maybe it bombs. Maybe it was the most inappropriate comment I’ve made in the last 6 months, but who cares? There’s a level of indulgent affirmative “joy” in that kind of carrying on, but it’s not what provokes me to search for the darkest of the dark sentiments and behavior to quash happy rumblings.

My first thought is that this seems to make sense to me. Who gets off being happy? The “happiest” times that mostly have been relayed to me have been considered some of the most self-centered delusion dives into Olympic grade contortion bullshit. My “happy” family was filled with selfish children happy to obliterate the examples set by my grandparents. Rarely do I see a “happy” marriage that doesn’t coyly hide behind the word “compromise” or evolve into the “special wisdom” of selective honesty. In fact, the longest marriages I’m aware of had the most egregious examples of abuse a longing heart could ever ask for.

Beyond the realm of what I’ve encountered in my family, I get an onslaught of media that in one form or another seeks out a celebration of some form of “happy” be it the level of comfort terrible characters have with their terrible selves, or the frilly and quaint on again off again couple games predicated on zero perspective and faux high stakes. Attempting to mimic some or all of these graphic depictions are facebook and Instagram where a smile and a laugh carry on for a veritable eternity at what you might remember being the world’s most boring party. And just to interject for the sake of it, I hate that Pharrell song.

Happiness, for me, is a kind of impossibly dangerous and delusional self-assuredness akin to pride. In a way, it’s better for me and you to always be suspect of each other. It’s not to be preferred that I can simply trust you or your motivations. I have to wake up hungover the next morning from what was arguably an amazing night and feel haunted that the only part of it that mattered was some ill-advised come on or text that really mattered. I mean, that’s been my experience too. What was once months of solidarity and drunken fun turned into a silent coup which to this day I can’t account for in terms beyond resentful jealousy.

Happiness as well carries with it what to me feels like a lie. I’m contented beyond all reason. I’m down, I’m prepared, I’m good to joke or work or carry on well-enough. But I’m certainly not happy. I don’t think we do enough work to think of our lives like this. It’s unhealthy and weird when people are too or always happy. We call it manic. We call them naive. They get exhausting and are prone to a very particular kind of self-deception. The more unnecessary celebration, errant clapping, fruitless likes, the larger the wall between combating and digesting your real lived experience, living instead in service to the facade.

What I wish I had better control of was my insistence that I aggressively pursue the wrong course of action to drive my happiness emotion to zero. Usually drunk, I pick up my phone or pull every awkward pointless comment out of my ass to text exactly the wrong people. I’ve been fascinated by this for a while now because it shouldn’t be so complicated where the behavior comes from. It’s like I want nothing more than to prove to myself that my deepest skeptical angry stirrings about my interactions with these people are true, and I’m going to prove it this instant! All of the pussyfooting and cordiality and inconsistency becomes a provocation. Maybe now I’ve voiced it explicitly enough to be bored with it and never do it again.

I’ve never gotten anything but the cold slap of reality in experiencing happiness. I think a solid portion of the word consists of trust. Trust in your relationships or path. Trust that you’ll wake up and someone you were close to hasn’t betrayed you. Trust that whatever candle you’ve lit in your stomach for friends you haven’t seen in forever or time and money you’ve invested in something will come to fruition, even as it takes forever as well. I don’t take a million selfies and with myself surrounded by bullshit smiling faces. I want to see solar panels lined up in a tick-ridden field suggesting the sun can indefinitely power my internet habits until I’ve learned enough to matter to the degree that matches my ego and capacity. That’s the hottest I ever want my “happiness” to burn. I want to be proud of the work to come.

I don’t want to be as bad as those I accuse around me. I don’t want to give you the impression that I’m anything more or less than my most depressing balls-out disconcerting blog. That’s the underlying reality helping bolster my decisions and pursuits. I’m not an “optimist” or “happy” I drive around all day delivering food and it let’s me buy things and pursue projects I should have be able to complete 7 years ago. I’m not happy I sleep on a floor and have eaten barely sauced spaghetti for 8 of my last 10 meals. It’s better to say I can remain “sane” to the degree that I can express the depths of what my environment and decisions do to and for me. Whether or not it will be a meaningful story of the work that takes I’ll only know when bullshit behaviors stop sounding appealing.

In service to past ideas about being a reflection or perhaps have an overactive capacity for empathy that makes me have a shut-off valve for self-protection, perhaps that speaks to my problem with the lie at the heart of happiness as well. I don’t really see and reflect happy people, so what would I be doing? What am I reflecting if not a horrid pathology meant to disguise and run from what’s really going on? Were you genuinely happy to talk to me with your strong handshake and pearly whites, or did you think I didn’t notice you lean a little too hard into referring to your girlfriend as, your girlfriend. From impossible to hide petty insecurities to every forced grin and extra round, you’re not primarily surrounding yourself with “happy” people at the bar.

The bar, the video games, the drugs, the general lazy escapes and deceptions can only get you so far, and it isn’t that far. A great line I heard, again Jordan Peterson relating someone he studied, was, “Be wary of wisdom you didn’t earn,” with regard to the feelings and proclamations one comes to with drug use. Any “extra” layer of deceptive bullshit you introduce into your perspective can do the same thing though. A child can watch the same movie over and over, gratified it can see what’s coming and remain nestled in the familiarity. Do the life lessons and emotional impact of The Lion King really sink in for it though? It takes actually experiencing loss, being tricked by the malicious, and getting bored with and seeing though hakuna matata before being simply enamored by the colors and music starts to change.

As if I needed a reason to be “justified,” in writing, I feel I go above and beyond to earn what little I claim to know. My life isn’t about “getting by.” My example might at times be a horrifying or terrifying one, but to the best that I can speak to it, it will be mine. It will be one I can recognize and respect when you ever need to go there. It will continue to lambaste you and myself when I can’t seem to recognize what’s in the mirror. And anymore, with regard to most people in my life, I’m flying blind. Maybe it’s time to get out while you still can.