Most times, my world feels very small.
In the stupid language of the liberal caricature, I've been
“triggered” by an interview from Joe Rogan's podcast with
Sebastian Junger. Junger describes how we evolved to have bands of 40
to 50 people. Everyone was responsible for food production and could
more or less be described as needed by everyone else. I've heard this
before. But perhaps it's ringing a little louder right now for a few
reasons.
Every time someone in my “friend group” from college gets married or something, now in come the pictures and smiles and yada yada perfect facebook life stuff. Hardly the friend particularly good at keeping in touch, I don't long to be there or wish for some “secret” or “magic” thing to happen that would render life into episodic romanticized memories from the past into a 20-something sitcom. I'm not hurt or confused by not being invited. I feel like, well, I don't know. It's kind of a lot of things at once, and also nothing.
I remember being oblivious growing up. I know in many ways I'm still primarily “goofy” or “nerd-type” fundamentally, no matter how cool my hair looks. I remember looking at parties or friend groups and just being baffled. I didn't know what to say or wear. I didn't know why things were cool or how to get the cute girls. I didn't even know I was cute because my mom made such a show and game out of it growing up. That “on the outside” feeling that everyone feels and makes not-that-great series like Freaks and Geeks spew nostalgia jizz on everything is alive and well in me, even if I learned how to defeat it.
So there's that. I've been on the inside. Well, sorta. I was mostly along for a ride. I cut out a reputation as something something at the party. I managed to +1 myself into a few weddings. I carried on like me adjacent-enough to convince myself I fit. Put any amount of distance between the bonded myth, life plays out as it does.
The inside is where you go to either ignore or confirm the things you see in people. I picked ignore. I thought it was the friendly thing to do. My friends are different, I told myself. This is my tribe. But, I'm just one very dumb man. I can't compete with all the monkey feelings I find myself in constant competition with, at least and especially with myself, let alone theirs. I've no business trying to turn the tide on a gaslit culture spiraling out of control. I have to “believe” in “my people.” I have to reside under a fundamental faith claim. All of my years of bitching about faith forsaken for what!?
I've discussed before the idea of all moments being this moment. You're as much “living in the past” as you are actively cultivating the future. I think it's desperate and naive to pretend we're all not living in the past. Our brains and bodies are wired on past rules. I can subconsciously crave a friend group, as though my life depends on it, because according to my body, it does. I can be shackled with the emotional fallout of “love” as many times as it takes to procreate and finally find myself too exhausted to give a shit anymore.
I'm okay with living in the past if it's in protecting the memory and feeling of what went right and why. I want to build on that, not try to return people to some former glory or conception of each other that's not only no longer true, but was hardly well-conceived then. I'm okay with sending invites to the forgotten bonds years later for one or two more drunken professions of affection and respect. With any luck, I'll have cultivated a new tribe along the way and create even more connections between people.
That seems to be where I fit the most. Put everyone in the room, see what they do with each other. I'm really good at finding cool people to meet other cool people and then sort of half pushing myself, half exhausting the rest of the parties out of the picture. I think about the hook ups and relationships started at my parties, some that still last today or ended up with people getting married. I think about all the crazy shit I have to do in the background to start your movie. Or maybe it's my movie because I'm always the one watching. I set the conditions, I don't get to play along without enticing backlash.
Wasn't I talking about feelings or something? Are they so weak and fleeting I can't even capture this? I feel like I know too much. I see the group of people, and I know how they operate. I know how they think. I know why they've ended up in that picture that way. I kinda, kinda, wish I could just be happy for them. I wish I still believed. Or, I'm glad that belief isn't lending itself to a more faulty perception, but it did used to feel good.
That's been kind of a weird note I've picked up when I know I've come up in conversation. A “friend” will state, “I'm sure it must be hard for you to deal with being accused or losing friends or [wholly without irony] finally being made to reflect on your behavior.” It makes it easier to disassociate if you pretend to sympathize with the sad and bad actor licking his wounds. They don't want to believe that I never want people in my life who abandon ship over conversation. I don't want to believe in someone who only sees “my behavior” up unto the point that it made someone uncomfortable and chooses to remain blind to corrective measures and deaf to the questions on how to make it right. No, it doesn't hurt to lose people like that.
For whatever reason, people never seem to realize that I can recognize when there's been a shit-talking session...you literally all use the same words in your explanations to me. I don't mean similar ideas. I mean like someone phrased something in a way that got the group head nod and pause, and that was the shorthand sentiment meant to confront an assault of my mention. Someone's feelings are doing the work of thinking for you, and that's weak and dishonest. A token few are about “dominating a conversation” and the assumption I'm unwilling to listen. In the mind of the person unwilling or unable to talk, the only one bothering to do so must look properly dominant or intransigent indeed. Don't forget, I usually have to defend the idea I have feelings, or anything in life worth having a stake in at all, and am want to forgo believing in myself.
As well, like anyone properly convinced about you, it never does any good to point to your ongoing book of reflection and suggest maybe, just maybe, I have deeply considered a charge or two, and exhibit more-than-a-little-mild obsessive behavior in picking apart words like “negative” or “friend.” and how I relate.
Anyway, I think my instinctual disregard is a self-preservation mechanism learned in youth. I envy those Army brats who just get used to befriending and dumping people, add thousands to their pages, and pop in once a year, if that, and “had the most amazing time with their besties in such and such!” I get too in my own head about when I should be claiming such things. Either the alcohol has to bring on the feels, or I have to have a few months build up of skirting around texting or messaging someone so it can come from the drive of “I actually missed you” or “I have something real to ask you about.” I can buzz between a hundred people at a party or the bar, but if you do so without a plan to get home, or someone willing to help get you there, you're just really sad if you call those people friends.
I feel bad for the people who don't consider the “friend group” a friend group anymore. I'm sure buried in some blog is me expressing more than a few times how I'd like to see the explicit group of people on my friends list as the ones continuing onward and upward together. How can you claim they aren't a group and still feel comfortable going to one of their weddings? Obviously we're all big and important busy adults now so we can balk at the idea of those childish memories, right? Seems like an old cunty thing to do. Seems someone maybe never tapped into the spirit of the moment and was the real outsider all along.
The reason my hands and arms are stung, cut, and sore is because I miss the feeling like anyone could be my new best friend. I liked cultivating a crowd of more-or-less cool and acceptable people. I liked setting people up to push their boundaries or wrap them up in the spell of my enthusiasm and energy. The shit heads went home and talked shit, and the ones who stuck around really stuck around. The parties were for me, and them, and then some other people showed up I don't know they suck. Just like everything I wish to create or offer to people is for those who can appreciate where it's coming from or what it took to get. I do that for you in not holding grudges or trying to deny and betray what I feel for you. That doesn't mean I forget, I just prefer to remember what I like about you. If you had any sense, you'd do it back by working harder to think and talk.
Excuse me, I guess I just dominated this whole blog and left you no room. I exposed all of the intimate details of our conversations and now aren't you so embarrassed! Or, wait, that's right. You aren't here anymore to beat yourself up.
Every time someone in my “friend group” from college gets married or something, now in come the pictures and smiles and yada yada perfect facebook life stuff. Hardly the friend particularly good at keeping in touch, I don't long to be there or wish for some “secret” or “magic” thing to happen that would render life into episodic romanticized memories from the past into a 20-something sitcom. I'm not hurt or confused by not being invited. I feel like, well, I don't know. It's kind of a lot of things at once, and also nothing.
I remember being oblivious growing up. I know in many ways I'm still primarily “goofy” or “nerd-type” fundamentally, no matter how cool my hair looks. I remember looking at parties or friend groups and just being baffled. I didn't know what to say or wear. I didn't know why things were cool or how to get the cute girls. I didn't even know I was cute because my mom made such a show and game out of it growing up. That “on the outside” feeling that everyone feels and makes not-that-great series like Freaks and Geeks spew nostalgia jizz on everything is alive and well in me, even if I learned how to defeat it.
So there's that. I've been on the inside. Well, sorta. I was mostly along for a ride. I cut out a reputation as something something at the party. I managed to +1 myself into a few weddings. I carried on like me adjacent-enough to convince myself I fit. Put any amount of distance between the bonded myth, life plays out as it does.
The inside is where you go to either ignore or confirm the things you see in people. I picked ignore. I thought it was the friendly thing to do. My friends are different, I told myself. This is my tribe. But, I'm just one very dumb man. I can't compete with all the monkey feelings I find myself in constant competition with, at least and especially with myself, let alone theirs. I've no business trying to turn the tide on a gaslit culture spiraling out of control. I have to “believe” in “my people.” I have to reside under a fundamental faith claim. All of my years of bitching about faith forsaken for what!?
I've discussed before the idea of all moments being this moment. You're as much “living in the past” as you are actively cultivating the future. I think it's desperate and naive to pretend we're all not living in the past. Our brains and bodies are wired on past rules. I can subconsciously crave a friend group, as though my life depends on it, because according to my body, it does. I can be shackled with the emotional fallout of “love” as many times as it takes to procreate and finally find myself too exhausted to give a shit anymore.
I'm okay with living in the past if it's in protecting the memory and feeling of what went right and why. I want to build on that, not try to return people to some former glory or conception of each other that's not only no longer true, but was hardly well-conceived then. I'm okay with sending invites to the forgotten bonds years later for one or two more drunken professions of affection and respect. With any luck, I'll have cultivated a new tribe along the way and create even more connections between people.
That seems to be where I fit the most. Put everyone in the room, see what they do with each other. I'm really good at finding cool people to meet other cool people and then sort of half pushing myself, half exhausting the rest of the parties out of the picture. I think about the hook ups and relationships started at my parties, some that still last today or ended up with people getting married. I think about all the crazy shit I have to do in the background to start your movie. Or maybe it's my movie because I'm always the one watching. I set the conditions, I don't get to play along without enticing backlash.
Wasn't I talking about feelings or something? Are they so weak and fleeting I can't even capture this? I feel like I know too much. I see the group of people, and I know how they operate. I know how they think. I know why they've ended up in that picture that way. I kinda, kinda, wish I could just be happy for them. I wish I still believed. Or, I'm glad that belief isn't lending itself to a more faulty perception, but it did used to feel good.
That's been kind of a weird note I've picked up when I know I've come up in conversation. A “friend” will state, “I'm sure it must be hard for you to deal with being accused or losing friends or [wholly without irony] finally being made to reflect on your behavior.” It makes it easier to disassociate if you pretend to sympathize with the sad and bad actor licking his wounds. They don't want to believe that I never want people in my life who abandon ship over conversation. I don't want to believe in someone who only sees “my behavior” up unto the point that it made someone uncomfortable and chooses to remain blind to corrective measures and deaf to the questions on how to make it right. No, it doesn't hurt to lose people like that.
For whatever reason, people never seem to realize that I can recognize when there's been a shit-talking session...you literally all use the same words in your explanations to me. I don't mean similar ideas. I mean like someone phrased something in a way that got the group head nod and pause, and that was the shorthand sentiment meant to confront an assault of my mention. Someone's feelings are doing the work of thinking for you, and that's weak and dishonest. A token few are about “dominating a conversation” and the assumption I'm unwilling to listen. In the mind of the person unwilling or unable to talk, the only one bothering to do so must look properly dominant or intransigent indeed. Don't forget, I usually have to defend the idea I have feelings, or anything in life worth having a stake in at all, and am want to forgo believing in myself.
As well, like anyone properly convinced about you, it never does any good to point to your ongoing book of reflection and suggest maybe, just maybe, I have deeply considered a charge or two, and exhibit more-than-a-little-mild obsessive behavior in picking apart words like “negative” or “friend.” and how I relate.
Anyway, I think my instinctual disregard is a self-preservation mechanism learned in youth. I envy those Army brats who just get used to befriending and dumping people, add thousands to their pages, and pop in once a year, if that, and “had the most amazing time with their besties in such and such!” I get too in my own head about when I should be claiming such things. Either the alcohol has to bring on the feels, or I have to have a few months build up of skirting around texting or messaging someone so it can come from the drive of “I actually missed you” or “I have something real to ask you about.” I can buzz between a hundred people at a party or the bar, but if you do so without a plan to get home, or someone willing to help get you there, you're just really sad if you call those people friends.
I feel bad for the people who don't consider the “friend group” a friend group anymore. I'm sure buried in some blog is me expressing more than a few times how I'd like to see the explicit group of people on my friends list as the ones continuing onward and upward together. How can you claim they aren't a group and still feel comfortable going to one of their weddings? Obviously we're all big and important busy adults now so we can balk at the idea of those childish memories, right? Seems like an old cunty thing to do. Seems someone maybe never tapped into the spirit of the moment and was the real outsider all along.
The reason my hands and arms are stung, cut, and sore is because I miss the feeling like anyone could be my new best friend. I liked cultivating a crowd of more-or-less cool and acceptable people. I liked setting people up to push their boundaries or wrap them up in the spell of my enthusiasm and energy. The shit heads went home and talked shit, and the ones who stuck around really stuck around. The parties were for me, and them, and then some other people showed up I don't know they suck. Just like everything I wish to create or offer to people is for those who can appreciate where it's coming from or what it took to get. I do that for you in not holding grudges or trying to deny and betray what I feel for you. That doesn't mean I forget, I just prefer to remember what I like about you. If you had any sense, you'd do it back by working harder to think and talk.
Excuse me, I guess I just dominated this whole blog and left you no room. I exposed all of the intimate details of our conversations and now aren't you so embarrassed! Or, wait, that's right. You aren't here anymore to beat yourself up.
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