[743] Principled Act

I try to explain “calmly and logically” the many things that go right in my life constantly. Where this habit becomes insufficient is in actual moments of dread or despair. When you just recite the lines or go through the kind of “I need to get this out of the way so I can get to the bitching part” motions, you don't feel what you need in those shitty moments to bring you back to anything.

I tried to do a little more affirmation and testimony in my last blog. I had a series of “it's okay” sentiments about my behavior and feelings. Because while I tend to feel the responsibility for “everything,” rarely do I ever let the positivity take me over as much as the paralyzing terribleness. Like, I think it's okay to wish for things you don't think are going to happen. I think it's okay to feel bad when people you care or cared about no longer do for you. I think it's okay to remind yourself that when you've done things in earnest affection and effort, no matter how many people will throw that back in your face or find something to resent you over, the positivity came from you.

I forget that about myself. I'm the positive force. I do things. I create change, and conversation, and blogs. I learn and explore. I make jokes. I do the tasks I don't want to as extreme and earnestly as I do the tasks I do. I don't get off on hurting people. I don't have some secret demon lurking to be exposed about my being or thought process. I tell you where, when, and why. I'll apologize when I'm sorry, and I'll work as quickly as I can to attempt to make things right.

These aren't just good things about me, they are excessively good things. I cherish those things about myself because I meet damn near everyone who is nothing like that. What good does it do me to constantly references a “capacity” and “awareness” to do shitty things all the time when that's not who I am, it's just what I know? Those awarenesses push me further into wanting to transcend any and every excuse to ever be shitty. It's like yelling at someone once in years and beating them up about it after every disagreement for the next 20. One time, my grandma hit me. Not hard, and I was going out of my way to be a dick. What kind of psycho would I be to reference that instance as meaningful insight into who she was or how she treated us?

This is at the heart of the sickness in how we talk about each other, especially when distance has been put between us. A fuck up or behavior quirk no longer looks like one color on the whole group painting. It's this thing people have been dying to rant about for forever! But you can't know that about someone who's comfortable being dishonest with you. You get pivotal times in your relationship that really do expose true colors. My true colors, good and bad, are easily anticipated, and manifest in stupid things said or done while drinking. Prolonged intentional maliciousness? No. Incidental inappropriate misplaced and immature? Absolutely. I don't know what the number of those you get a year is, but under 5 seems a fair allotment I'd be willing to grant every individual.

My current goals are still to what? Create places for people to live free to cheap. Become self-sustainable. I dream about being able to swoop in and fix some problem because I've been able to generate more money than I could ever use. That's significantly more who I am than drunken overt or inappropriate flirt. If we went by the numbers, I'm mostly a composite of television shows and food. This is lost on me, and lost in our dramatic depictions of each other and what we project of our hopes and admonishments onto people.

When I think about what I miss about the past, be it in partying or relationships, it's the chance to let the not depressed and whining on the couch person win. It's the idea of having people to look out for and provide. I'm a total Italian grandma cliché.

It's hard to hold the idea that someone “was never much of an individual in the first place” in so many words, and then think your life would be so much better if they could just come to some realization about where you were coming from or what you meant to them. People need to feel things on their own, or as I'm growing more and more fond of saying, you don't exist. If they don't exist, you can't, by definition. If they're merely the collection of stress, judgments, and gossip, that's the filter all of your efforts and all of your words are reduced to. Think then, someone like me, who relishes the thought of holding your words up to the mirror and pointing out how they don't make sense, I'm an engine for literally making those who are unwilling to do the work of becoming coherent crazy.

You can't “love” someone if you can't figure your own shit out. That's an easy thing for this insecure and ridiculous world to try and exploit like ravenous vampires. Every layer of society is saturated with the mythology of love. Why? It feels like this unobtainable mode of being, literally inspired and embodied by ethereal sky daddies. And we pretend there's enough songs or relationships or random acts of kindness that are going to get us all there. No one wants to admit that, just like anything worth having, if you want to get to love, you have to do the work. You have to understand what's being communicated and how. You have to suffer through understanding way more than you bargained for, and you have to cope with holding more in you than you'll ever be able to see reciprocated.

I breathe a sigh of relief when I think about how I'm not angry at the people who are angry at me. I couldn't do it. I couldn't hate myself as much as I'm capable of, and then take on the work of pretending I can think that much of you personally. I can poke and joke at an avatar or memory of you, but your disregard of me is not me hoping it stays that way. I'm almost positive if I make too much money one day, I'll invite everyone who's never wanted anything to do with me to a party. Half because I miss them, half to rub it in their faces. And no, I don't think being petty is the same thing as being mean or getting off on hurting people.

I've never been a person that wants to run from the issue. I don't know how it hasn't dawned on the people who disassociate, but I'm arguably the biggest “feeler” there is. This is me coping. This is me training. This is me fighting my beating chest and dropping stomach. I had lovey dovey professions about a girl in high school, I got jealous when my friends started dating people even when we were never together but to hang and fool around. I think it's okay to not feel purely elated when you see a picture of someone you spent a huge portion of your life with and invested in emotionally on the arm of someone else. It's like what I've previously said of jealousy. You don't have to fly off the handle and turn crazy, it just means you give a damn. Your memories and feelings that have shaped and continue to shape you matter. It means I'm not an evil bastard who would sacrifice those I claim to care about to my selfish designs on their being. This seems like a wildly important thing to know about yourself.

So, “haters,” and “critics” and those who are primed and willing to think every worst thing about me from a line, or an opinion, or some deep-seeded place that's been waiting for an excuse, I don't hate you back. I've worked myself to a place that tries to be stronger than that. I'm still willing to talk. I'm still wiling to try and make it better. You're still invited to share in my excess. I take my pain and turn it into shit like this. I look for roads back to relative stability. It's never been easy, and it breaks my heart every time something I care about dies. But everything dies. I'm not living as a killer.