There's no escaping trying to capture this moment. First, “rent negotiations” sends my head spiraling after what's arguably been a prolonged period of uncharacteristic passive aggression. Then, I decide to do better. Now, I'm sorting through how to proceed. As a not-human, I think it's important to explore how this parallels and differs from my seemingly similar experiences of the past.
If there's a trope cloud hovering over my life I wish I could shake, it's the saga of roommates. From living with people who grow to resent you, to random people, to literal mental breakdowns, the surprises in expenses, the being left responsible for the shit they leave behind or bills they decide they're no longer responsible for. I've had everything beyond any evidence one of them has stood over me and watched me sleep. Relationships with roommates seem to mirror relationships between people who seem to have chosen to be with each other, and so there's at least an angle to depersonalize it.
My closest and perhaps longest friend and I have generally managed to avoid that kind of mess of human crap. He literally lived in a mess of his crap in my tornadoed living room for a while, but hey, it was his space at the time. Now, having lived together in the ever-falling fallout of my last living arrangement, familiar bells start to get rung. I'll skip right over all the ways roommates can manage to get under each other's skin and try to dive into the meat.
It's safe to say I've felt on the brink of madness given my desire to move out to the land. I want to stop calling it my garage or shed, and start working on and refining my home. I've sacrificed incredible amounts of time, money, probably health, and even the idea that I have much control or value but for what toothpicks and Popsicle sticks I can cobble together in so many labored motions.
So I hate my car payment. It doesn't matter that I can afford it. I hate it. I hate car insurance. I hate interest. I hate the new plates and reading the title in the bank’s name. I hate my job. I don't hate my job, but I hate my job. I hate waking up early even with little expectation to be on time. I hate driving to houses where I might have to bathe in anti-bed bug spray before I enter them. I hate listening to tired, angry, helpless liars hide their abuses and crimes. I don't hate it because it's hard, or I'm bad at it, or it doesn't pay enough. I hate it because it's not me out on the land learning how to make soap or build a pool.
This hate I try to mask, but for everything I've ever written. I try not to let it affect how I engage with people. I try to stay basically quiet and “even.” When you no longer feel that way is when you appreciate how hopeless a task it really is you're engaging in. It has to come out. There's a higher-order truth that underlies your existence that needs to be reckoned with, be it in entertaining your most horrifying and terrible thoughts, or in some physical manifestation of stress or pain. It's there. It's going to win something, eventually.
Interpersonally, this is the underlying kind of hatred I view in people. The one they always hate me even more for antagonizing. I don't want to be hated in secret. I want you to be able to let it out, as petty and hurtful as it may be. Remember, I'm not human. I have 5 minutes and a meal to get over it, or what else are we really doing here? My attempts to honestly relay where I'm coming from adopt the hate word plenty. This leaves me vulnerable to a kind of disregard or disrespect. How can someone so uncomposed be worth too much consideration? With so much to pass around, what of him are we really to take seriously?
I've always been a fan of the Greek Gods. I liked the idea that they acted like people, could actually hurt each other, and were like Divine White Trash. They're Gods, after all. Incredibly powerful, practically eternal, and a persistent analogy and lesson. Me, in leaning towards the idea that every individual is tantamount to a God, clicked with those stories. And now, when I feel like I've hit a significant height of grievance, I try to remember that I'm a God too. I'm no more at the mercy of the corners I feel backed into than the ultimatums or the lazy and incredibly tasteless words. I get to choose how to use my lightening.
That’s what has me always return to writing instead of driving my car over a cliff or borrowing Byron's gun to just get it the fuck over with. Don't you know? I'm to blame for my stuff getting stolen. That's the line I get to think about, or has wedged its way in tonight. I didn't buy the right kind of lock. I didn't find the right builders fast enough. I didn't check on it every night, ready to shoot or samurai chop whomever I may have come across. Because of course I am. Just like I'm responsible for this government shut down. Just like I'm responsible for every misfired neuron addicted to sugar and every second I stay up later tonight than my, simply poorly controlled, brain wishes to allow.
We worked out that Gods could be bargained with. They can be bought off. The mightiest politician and business mogul all have numbers underwriting their pathologies, and my situation is no different. I lost things monetarily when they were stolen. The “tension” of this shared space is all of a few hundred dollars that were poorly negotiated from the onset. The apparent lack of tact I've exhibited in carrying previous roommates' feelings inevitably carved out more. So, yes, I'll keep worshiping money and the chance to have more of it than you. I'll buy your silence. I'll retreat to the farm and build walls and install cameras. I'll find the price it takes to stop playing the dumb games.
Because that's what they are. Incredibly small and weak games. We will cut each other up for emotional damage points when the heart is that we want a little more space or money. When we discover that's not what we really want, it gets even smaller and even weaker. You know why I want to be left alone? So I can actually play a game that's worthwhile. So I can focus on what can be instead of reimagining and adjudicating the past. In the span of 3 days I had one friend tell me they'd be pumped to come out and help me build things, they just need to be shown how, and another tell me it's my fault the things I moved out there got stolen. I think I'm playing the wrong kind of game with one of them.
I'm literally proud of myself that I'm prepared to eat as much shit as it takes. I leave. I remove myself from the equation when nobody feels they have anything to account for but their perspective of me. Always, fine, you are right. There's always someone considerably worse off than me. I've met or read of many a car-sleeper. I don't need to type this on a big screen. I don't need a California King size bed. And I don't need the flak about why my life looks like it does. I don't need friends trying to “save” me from my earnest desires and goals. I don't need a slew of regular-Joe bills and a title. I don't need the facade, and with my dying breath I will profess my hatred for the million tiny negotiations it takes to exist on the edge of self-annihilating hypocrite.
I believe feelings inform. If I'm not a suicidal person, and the idea of blowing my head off or punching something or just generally destroying feels good, if nothing else, it means the situation I'm in isn't a healthy one. I didn't break anything or scream. I threw a White Castle cup of water against a dumpster, and then I picked up the cup and threw it away. Clearly, I'm not one to be messed with. The idea of my “best friendship” was offered as the stakes if I didn't capitulate to a roommate setup for next year that would cost me more money, drag me away from my goals, and downplay how, if Duke told me tomorrow I had power, I'd be cutting the hole in my wall for the air conditioning before I ever learned how to properly install air conditioning.
Does that sound terrible? To humans, sure. Who gambles their friendships like that? You do it all the time, but you don't state it explicitly. Me though? I know what he wants. He wants money and space. That's nothing. That's boring. That's the kind of petty reserved for politicians and pathological first world. I want money and space too, but my conception of how to get it and the work required doesn’t live or die based on how I feel about a friend in my living room. Our friendship has always been transactional. That's why it lasts. And when he doesn't think he can profit from me anymore or I believe he's cashing too high of emotionally tolling checks, it will cease as arbitrarily as it began. I'll just be telling him to get his hands out of my fucking wallet instead of his fucking pockets.
I'm disappointed, mostly. It's characteristic of life's tragedy to watch people change in ways you're not crazy about. I certainly desire large amounts of money and a degree of “power” to be sure, but I'm not so reflexively keen to wield how I might go about getting those things against current allies. The bossing white-guilty townies around and blow to the pride from not winning the election has made changes. The finding a new marginally-motivated white boy toy is an all-encompassing saga. And here I am, about to leave. You'd think, if he were human, that might cause him to lash out and seek to control the situation in unhealthy ways.
No matter what, keep speaking the truth. That's the only way out. If things need to die, don't deny death. If things change for the worse and people who've never caused you to feel a certain way all of a sudden do, talk about it. Own it. Those feelings are yours. Your face in front of their face doesn't have to be there. And that's okay. Especially if you're me. Did you hear? I still have my own rent-free tiny house and a million ideas I want to play with out there. I even have a friend who said they'd be wickedly excited to help me build it. I should put more time into that game.
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