With the amount I've written in the
last day or two, I don't even know if this needs to exist, but since
I don't feel empty, hopefully I can sweep up and throw out the last
of it by the end.
I've speculated that I might have some kind of mental illness. There are a lot of people that crave a diagnosis, and particularly in our landscape of over-medicating and normalizing recreational pill usage, you're a hot second away from claiming an anxiety disorder and working to build a tolerance. I never settle on anything because I even-out fairly quickly. My emotions are one long string of being “mildly perturbed.” Then I get excited adrenaline shots when I get pulled over, or, as tomorrow will bring, I get an opportunity to talk to a real live person about something I'm apparently doing wrong as it pertains to women.
What would it look like to be “going crazy” though, or to be walking some such path of mental degradation? Would 4 or 5 blogs in the space of 24 hours count? I mean, I think writing thousands of pages of fiction is borderline insane, and I don't care how often they call it a “gift” to either be able to read or write 100+ pages of technical jargon, those seem worse. I feel focused on an intense discord. There's a pit that needs smashing harder. My mind is forming words, and they're all pressed up against the inside of my forehead.
I think about the worst thing I ever did in college was to let my guard down. Immediately stop and erase anything your mind linked to some “neckbeard” or “nice guy” sentiment. My thing is not about some inherent valuable thing I am that nobody can recognize or appreciate. My thing is about my practical cynicism. The only time I employ cynicism to describe myself is with the “practical” qualifier. I let myself believe in the “simple” narrative offered by television and facebook picture montages. I took it for granted that a kind of “pact” was made between people who drank that much together or were part of the mass text to do something. I let my “friendship goggles” blind me to all of the things I knew already I hated about people.
I did this for a number of reasons, not least of which, they did seem like some pretty baller people. I was having fun. I felt myself growing closer. I also wouldn't be a proper scientist if I didn't at least run the experiment that tested my preconceived notions. It's why I started drinking. It's why I stayed in a relationship I said how and why it would be left by her the second night we ever hung out. To be sure, they probably are still pretty baller people, but the keyword in that sentence is “people.” What I saw as individual persons who complimented each other and seemed to accept each other for who they were reverted to “people” the more time they spent apart.
People don't sit with their friends and have heart to hearts. People unfriend and forget you like a bad day at work. People gossip not to figure out a way to bring their concerns and make something right, but to diminish whatever narrative doesn't fit snugly into the one they've cultivated. People watch. People sit back and watch the show, because the world is reduced to a place of mild bemusement, like a former friend contemplating his own capacity to break down, as they opine on how they saw it coming or that he never sat quite right in the first place. People can't be bothered. People are busy. People are irreparably damaged by things they used to do by the dozen.
Well, I've never gotten along with people. My best friend is a mirror-image sociopath who shows me how I would have eventually started treating all of you. I guess, how I'm comfortable letting you know where I've retreated once again. It's not personal, I just don't know what it means to be your friend anymore. You're still invited to the party, but when you do people things to me, I get to respond differently than if you're a friend. It's an idea that makes me sad, but that will pass.
I also sometimes wonder if I function like that show you “love to hate.” I'm told people don't have the focus to read anymore. If you don't have an eye-catching freeze frame for your 2 minute video cut together to give us the impression you don't breath, you've lost them. It helps to say things people already agree with I hear as well. But if you read my blogs, and especially if you hate doing so, have you considered how fucked up you are? You know, I'm pretty familiar with what I write. I wrote it, and then I read them back dozens of times. I know when you've read something and then use it to shit on me. Instead of a friendly conversation under the blog inquiring about things you didn't understand or explaining what you disagreed with, you took your angry impression as ammo to muck up an interaction weeks or months later. That's what people do. Always looking for something to fight back with, because they exist on the defensive. Sociopaths do it to, but it's called planning, not kicking and screaming.
I hate that I love to say it, but even if you followed your dreams and figured something out, in terms of sheer material and potential, I think there's a smidgen of jealousy. This unremitting asshole complains about the stupidest shit. Oh you have to drive too much? You're so stupid you fell for meth head scammers? You claim to have figured some things about life out, but can't seem to persuade any of us to give a shit, genius! But not even deep down, you know. You know I know how to turn it back on and sway a dozen new assholes. You know I'll have a small pity party for myself and burn things in a symbolic letting go of what I thought we once were, and then I'll fuck right off and continue on with the rest of my life. You have to hate that, right? Did you believe in our connection back then? Because I wasn't the one who worked to break it.
I know what's going to happen to your relationships. I know the forces that come out in full force against me can be turned in any direction. I know what excuses will sound like when you're fighting in private. I know how you'll try to negotiate. I know how long different Band-Aids last and about the number of things that have to keep going well so “things” keep going “well.” I know about how long two people can share a dream, or how often the more forgiving and understanding one can carry water. I know that the lessons of our parents and grandparents happened over age-groups most of us haven't even reached yet. And I'll get to hear about it, from that friend of a friend who didn't start treating me like shit for no reason and thinks the past amounts to something more. I'm not rooting for failure, but I know what's going to happen.
I know that the day I start creating and achieving again, when my statuses are just about the things I'm accomplishing and happy to be engaged with, I'm gonna start popping a few people's neck veins. When I start popping up in strangers pictures at different locations. When I start taking pride in what I produce and I'm no longer stuck turning over the TV shows and parking lot time in my mind, the labels and “obsession” I seem to have with contemplating who I've let into my life and who's left will feel like the joke it is. I'm still dreaming about humanity-level impacts. I'm still (naughty word) “hopeful.” I still dream in spite of whatever condition I'm harboring that I refuse to take pills for. If I'm better for a hundred “ghostings” or labels along the way, so be it. If my memory is that of overcoming you, hey, I get to pick my delusion like you get to pick yours.
I've speculated that I might have some kind of mental illness. There are a lot of people that crave a diagnosis, and particularly in our landscape of over-medicating and normalizing recreational pill usage, you're a hot second away from claiming an anxiety disorder and working to build a tolerance. I never settle on anything because I even-out fairly quickly. My emotions are one long string of being “mildly perturbed.” Then I get excited adrenaline shots when I get pulled over, or, as tomorrow will bring, I get an opportunity to talk to a real live person about something I'm apparently doing wrong as it pertains to women.
What would it look like to be “going crazy” though, or to be walking some such path of mental degradation? Would 4 or 5 blogs in the space of 24 hours count? I mean, I think writing thousands of pages of fiction is borderline insane, and I don't care how often they call it a “gift” to either be able to read or write 100+ pages of technical jargon, those seem worse. I feel focused on an intense discord. There's a pit that needs smashing harder. My mind is forming words, and they're all pressed up against the inside of my forehead.
I think about the worst thing I ever did in college was to let my guard down. Immediately stop and erase anything your mind linked to some “neckbeard” or “nice guy” sentiment. My thing is not about some inherent valuable thing I am that nobody can recognize or appreciate. My thing is about my practical cynicism. The only time I employ cynicism to describe myself is with the “practical” qualifier. I let myself believe in the “simple” narrative offered by television and facebook picture montages. I took it for granted that a kind of “pact” was made between people who drank that much together or were part of the mass text to do something. I let my “friendship goggles” blind me to all of the things I knew already I hated about people.
I did this for a number of reasons, not least of which, they did seem like some pretty baller people. I was having fun. I felt myself growing closer. I also wouldn't be a proper scientist if I didn't at least run the experiment that tested my preconceived notions. It's why I started drinking. It's why I stayed in a relationship I said how and why it would be left by her the second night we ever hung out. To be sure, they probably are still pretty baller people, but the keyword in that sentence is “people.” What I saw as individual persons who complimented each other and seemed to accept each other for who they were reverted to “people” the more time they spent apart.
People don't sit with their friends and have heart to hearts. People unfriend and forget you like a bad day at work. People gossip not to figure out a way to bring their concerns and make something right, but to diminish whatever narrative doesn't fit snugly into the one they've cultivated. People watch. People sit back and watch the show, because the world is reduced to a place of mild bemusement, like a former friend contemplating his own capacity to break down, as they opine on how they saw it coming or that he never sat quite right in the first place. People can't be bothered. People are busy. People are irreparably damaged by things they used to do by the dozen.
Well, I've never gotten along with people. My best friend is a mirror-image sociopath who shows me how I would have eventually started treating all of you. I guess, how I'm comfortable letting you know where I've retreated once again. It's not personal, I just don't know what it means to be your friend anymore. You're still invited to the party, but when you do people things to me, I get to respond differently than if you're a friend. It's an idea that makes me sad, but that will pass.
I also sometimes wonder if I function like that show you “love to hate.” I'm told people don't have the focus to read anymore. If you don't have an eye-catching freeze frame for your 2 minute video cut together to give us the impression you don't breath, you've lost them. It helps to say things people already agree with I hear as well. But if you read my blogs, and especially if you hate doing so, have you considered how fucked up you are? You know, I'm pretty familiar with what I write. I wrote it, and then I read them back dozens of times. I know when you've read something and then use it to shit on me. Instead of a friendly conversation under the blog inquiring about things you didn't understand or explaining what you disagreed with, you took your angry impression as ammo to muck up an interaction weeks or months later. That's what people do. Always looking for something to fight back with, because they exist on the defensive. Sociopaths do it to, but it's called planning, not kicking and screaming.
I hate that I love to say it, but even if you followed your dreams and figured something out, in terms of sheer material and potential, I think there's a smidgen of jealousy. This unremitting asshole complains about the stupidest shit. Oh you have to drive too much? You're so stupid you fell for meth head scammers? You claim to have figured some things about life out, but can't seem to persuade any of us to give a shit, genius! But not even deep down, you know. You know I know how to turn it back on and sway a dozen new assholes. You know I'll have a small pity party for myself and burn things in a symbolic letting go of what I thought we once were, and then I'll fuck right off and continue on with the rest of my life. You have to hate that, right? Did you believe in our connection back then? Because I wasn't the one who worked to break it.
I know what's going to happen to your relationships. I know the forces that come out in full force against me can be turned in any direction. I know what excuses will sound like when you're fighting in private. I know how you'll try to negotiate. I know how long different Band-Aids last and about the number of things that have to keep going well so “things” keep going “well.” I know about how long two people can share a dream, or how often the more forgiving and understanding one can carry water. I know that the lessons of our parents and grandparents happened over age-groups most of us haven't even reached yet. And I'll get to hear about it, from that friend of a friend who didn't start treating me like shit for no reason and thinks the past amounts to something more. I'm not rooting for failure, but I know what's going to happen.
I know that the day I start creating and achieving again, when my statuses are just about the things I'm accomplishing and happy to be engaged with, I'm gonna start popping a few people's neck veins. When I start popping up in strangers pictures at different locations. When I start taking pride in what I produce and I'm no longer stuck turning over the TV shows and parking lot time in my mind, the labels and “obsession” I seem to have with contemplating who I've let into my life and who's left will feel like the joke it is. I'm still dreaming about humanity-level impacts. I'm still (naughty word) “hopeful.” I still dream in spite of whatever condition I'm harboring that I refuse to take pills for. If I'm better for a hundred “ghostings” or labels along the way, so be it. If my memory is that of overcoming you, hey, I get to pick my delusion like you get to pick yours.
