I don't know when it happened, but at some point in my life making plans started to feel dangerously presumptuous. I'm having the opportunity to reflect on the small changes in my behavior. Planning a vacation in July? Why do I assume I'm going to live that long? Or that every mode of transportation to and from is going to go off without a hitch? Or that the weather will be conducive? Or insert any number of questions and surprises that could result in things derailing.
I'm well aware I've made it this long. I even built into my disposition and preparedness after enough shitty cars the idea that I will break down, it's just when, not if. The biggest “surprises” to my life are things like traffic tickets or broadly speaking mere unanticipated expenses. But there's still a deeper kind of dread. It flirts with tapping into the panic impulse. Why should what I want or plan on doing work?
Here I suspect is a kind of learned response related to emotional trauma. The things I've invested in in that capacity I had high hopes for. I've had to grind myself down. I've had to reexamine my place across many different levels and figure out what kind of responsibility I could and couldn't take. The kind of healthy staples they say predicate long-lasting and fulfilled lives, I've treated like tacky cliches subjected to endless jaded shade.
As such, to the extent I ever believe in myself, it's what I can pull off right now. I'm here in the moment we're together. Otherwise, it's lost in the wind or sea as useless strings of words catch and release the swollen bubbles in my chest. I get that kind of resolved anxiety with certain kinds of shows or scenes I encounter. The hopeless love story of an Orville episode took me away. I'm burning through Friends From College as adjacent-enough scenarios drag me into that awkward “but we're older and things are different" energy flow.
I guess there's things that sort of act like little shitty reminders. The big picture game we all pretend to understand, let alone strive for, related to those deep and trusted friendships or partners is a recycled plot when it fails with each generation of age-appropriate actors. The plans and idealism degrade as quickly as secrets get out or feelings dissipate. Maybe this is something I've misunderstood about how people operate. Maybe we want the illusion to begin with. When that's the case, when it inevitably fails, we can treat it more like a movie that's ended or embellished romantic memory reinforced with each retelling.
I also know that, as a robot, I'm likely the exact opposite of the kind of not-person to be attempting to draw insight from these sorts of things. It's just, the stirrings are hard to ignore. The desire for the occasionally moving depiction on screen to be real is a compelling mental narrative, if fiction. To be able to believe has a kind of power that begrudging skepticism and doubt will never match. I feel if there's a single lesson each day teaches it's that you'll do well to increase doubt to critical levels. Inching closer to the wizened detachment, I suppose, only to invest that much more because you've built the death into your disposition.
That's something I don't like about myself. I actively wait for, not root for, the crashes in the lives of the people I know. I think they're as happy to gloss over details and sugar coat as anyone. I think I've experienced the sharpest edges of their deeply-rooted judgments, fears, and hatred. God forbid they believed in me as though I were a “spouse.” I have sincere doubts anyone is thinking of the unborn children. The reasons for the inevitable are too obvious and numerous. What I can't get my head around is why we can't do better.
Maybe we only know the language of fantasy. All there is is the abstraction. It doesn't take work to feel right along with a character. It's not hard to repeat the romance as it's been sold. The spell of what we watch and retell is strong. Strong enough to have me needing to break it into pieces and find the trauma. And I want to break it, you don't. Another death to build into my story of what I attempt to believe in.
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