[918] Act The Part

I've tried to write about embittering things over the last few days. I thought, hungover, mildly reeling from an answered drunk text regarding harm I've caused a different ex-girlfriend coinciding with the new ex showing up to pick up her cat for the last time, I was going to proceed down some sorrowful road of regrets and woe. Then a curious thing happened. My first swigs of Dayquil start kicking in. I lose the ability to keep typing after six or seven sentences, and something clicks.

I'm not sorry.

I'm not full of woe I don't have people in my life to any greater or smaller extent than I do now. I know where I was coming from in my shitty or otherwise behavior, own it, trust it, and can describe in detail the generally aberrant or absurd circumstances under which I break down. I don't take some special pride in anything I haven't worked for, which has not been someone trying to cause harm, but either can't help himself or finds people on their own little paths of self-destruction and is unwittingly enlisted.

I don't feel bad about reaching out to old acquaintances drunkenly expressing what I wish I could have done better. I think it's kind of funny and me, feebly crying out for help and connection in the face of my clearly lacking capacity to do so. I'm not scared of the consequences for doing so. I'm not one who bends to notions of “awkward.” I think I texted like 20 different people last night, and on the whole have like 3 dinner/lunch/beer plans. It's not that serious whether or not you're deeply up the ass of the people you claim to be close to. When I get to be more human, drinking, and I'm not calculating the gas and time and weighing them against my budget or daily obligations, I'll reach out, and we'll either eat or won't.

That's the kind of friend I am. It's maybe the only kind I'm good at being. I'm your fading memory of my obnoxiousness who drunkenly texts you every few years when he's feeling lonely and questioning every interaction he's ever had with an ex-girlfriend.

That's not quite right though either, is it? I'm not really questioning my interactions. If anything, I've gotten dramatically more patient, deliberate, and forgiving in my posture towards people. I'm relieved I get to come home and not be obligated to a fight. I'm thankful I've been on top of the math and reasons I came out here so that my whole life wouldn't blow up when the “inevitable” blow up happened. This was literally my plan all along. Offer, trust nothing until it happens, make peace with manageable losses in advance.

What I take to be a weird and broken part of me like yearns to be more sorry or sad than I am. It's another reason to drink when you can like trigger emotions that I've functionally talked my way out of fluidly experiencing. I can't get over the irony though, of how people approach their emotions, particularly with regard to me. I'm, oddly, often, accused of being manipulative for doing just this. I'm implored to consider the depth and consequences of how people feel.

Meanwhile, I lend myself to being emotionally leveraged perpetually, and if or when I express mine, it's time to beat irony to death again. People won't talk to me again, ever lol. I'll give them room for dozens of angry emotional outbursts, laundry lists of judgments about me, gossip trials, distance, resources, but one thing must remain absolutely true at bottom. I'm the enemy beyond redemption. My perspective is just this mess of garbled words and excuses in the face of your true and noble feelings. It's not all people or all of my friends who do this, but when I think about it, an incredibly large amount relative to how many I had, I've subjected myself to.

So maybe I should cut that out. Maybe that's the nature of this calm I'm tending to find on hangover days where there used to be panic about what I said or to whom. Wake up, Nick. You moved to the middle of the middle of nowhere, on purpose, and spent many hours and dollars trying to get away from the impact those kind of relationships have had on you. You know you're a dick with a heart of gold and black soul. Stop pretending you're suited for some familiar or common idea of togetherness or a relationship. If people want to be emotionally manipulated, just do them the courtesy, and stop this game of seeing who can balance on this conceptual “level” you have about who's a “real” person.