I keep missing something when I write. I always used to write in order to feel better. I needed it to get my stomach settled or to get my head to stop hurting. When it became clear I was just always going to be an “on” person, a kind of regulating mechanism. I used to find useful bits of insight. I hadn’t really landed on as many pieces as I needed to shape and grow confident in my identity. If anything, today, I’m hard-pressed to tell you what I haven’t asked and answered about myself. The only thing “new” is my propensity to hyper-focus on doing a handful of new things every few months or years.
Take something simple, like band shirts. I’ve been buying a lot of them. I bought a heat press and 10 blank black t-shirts. I’ve spent what I easily consider “obscene” amounts of money on them so far. Until this shift into, basically collecting, band shirts was kicked off during Riot Fest last year, I reflexively balked at the $30-$40 price tags and completely ignored every table. Now? The shirts have come to mean something more. They stand for a “style” choice I almost never make for myself. They signify I’m supporting an artist directly who I’ve almost certainly been stealing their music their entire career. People have been noticing the shirts and complimenting me or saying they like a band. They’re more comfortable and fit correctly unlike the random shit I’ve bought from American Eagle or Goodwill. A mostly black wardrobe means you don’t have to think about visible sweat stains.
But I’m also feeling “fuck you” every time I buy one. Fuck you universe who says this should constitute more debt or something seemingly unreasonable. Fuck you teenage me who didn’t have the presence of mind to budget for shirts that would be vintage and extra cool today. Fuck you overpriced monopoly Ticketmaster which makes the whole spectacle of even seeing an artist expensive as fuck, so why not double it and at least take home more than a memory? I want all the shirts in the same way I wanted to obsessively write down animal names, collect Pokemon cards, or approach 50 different tasks at once in developing the land. I’m manufacturing meaning in a sea of otherwise ambivalence.
You know what shirt I absolutely don’t want? Your stupid brand, fest, or infinite lineup. I don’t support Rockville or Wonderoad or Bonnaroo or any of the way-too-many festival names as though they haven’t almost become parodies. If anything, going to so many shows has made me deeply appreciate the 400 person venue and the different palpable energy of a room verses the expanse of “festival types.” I’ve never had a concert touch what Steaksauce Mustache did at The Hi-Fi, but Anxious, and Knuckle Puck both earned t-shirt buys with their energy in the same room. Legacy bands like Earth, Wind, and Fire don’t need me buying shirts, but I’d slap a sticker on my speaker and testify to their unique power and energy across a stadium forever. I also bought a sticker printer.
I need shows and shirts and time-consuming activities like reading or watching everything because the alternative is darkness. The alternative is thinking, endlessly, about how often things get fucked, how hopeless they feel, how alone I generally am, or some narrative about how I still might not be doing “enough” in spite of any benchmark achieved. I need a story of indulgence and largess not because I’m blind and greedy, but because it’s what I’ve been working towards. I’ve arguably jumped the gun in overburdening the credit cards, but also, to this day, I’m in no more debt that I could have comfortably paid off had I not gotten fucked on the house flip. I can’t take the double whammy of not having anything to show for the time, effort, and investment. So I’m going to carry on like I invested in “the universe” and now that fucker needs to pay dividends.
It’s hard to get a handle on how angry I really am. I don’t do a lot of angry things. I don’t yell. I’ve even managed to dial back being particularly cunty in the road-rage vein. I’ve never just gotten used to or okay about the shit storm that is our politics or capitalist environment. If I ruminate on that stuff, “little’ things start to nag deeper; perhaps a proudly ignorant and defiant client or an entitled cunt baffled by the dynamics of a rock concert pit. I get angry that people praise and compliment me. I get angry at the idea of paying for glasses as my over-used contacts scratch my eyes. I get anxious about what I’m wholly prepared to say to the person who, for reasons I cannot grasp, thinks to treat me like I don’t exist or won’t react to them touching me or dictating something they have no business speaking to. I never know if it’s really appropriate to crack. I don’t have to. I don’t want to discover how much I needed to by surprise.
The amount of people who have asked me, ”Well, then, is he really your friend?“ when I’ve described the circumstances around the kid being in my friend’s care and the speeding and gun pull is getting high enough to mention in a blog. I’ve never made excuses for that series of circumstances and wouldn’t play along with the logic I couldn’t see. It’s also an undeniable crisis I still wish we could be rid of. I don’t know what to make of getting blown off. I can’t tell you the next time I won’t get angry at the words, ”I’m sorry.“ It feels as though my safety net is under attack. I’ve literally auditioned another friend for being the one to call in an emergency. I don’t think I have much of any real responsibility towards the situation but to keep speaking to it as honestly as I see it.
I’m not ungrateful, but I’ll stray. - not quite Tegan and Sara
There’s a version or mode of me that has every book I own read, an instrument practiced at least 30 minutes a day, and every video game beaten in the next 6 months. And then what? When I’m feeling lost for what to do, I start to vibe and feel gratified at the prospect of hunkering down like the world’s most accomplished introvert/nerd. I get home, dick around online, put on the next show, and retreat to the meandering middling task-handling for work or chores or needing to eat. Can’t retreat when you’re in Chicago next week. Can’t pretend you’ll know your focus or energy on your next in-office day. You’ll totally forget Secret Invasion came out or get a surprise perfect day for working outside. Best play things in stride, no?
When I played guitar 10 hours a day for months, I was becoming what I felt was a decent musician. When I read every single thing I could find, watched every lecture, and wrote extensively on a topic, I was confident I could earn my PhD or obliterate the ”lazy“ and ”ignorant“ person who couldn’t be bothered to learn anything before they spoke on it. When I decided the land was the place to live, I sacrificed fucking everything by way of comfort and self-respect, sleeping in my car, on a couch, and working non-stop at as many as 3 jobs at a time. I’m not meant for whatever it is you want to call what I’m doing. The average person sees 3.2 live shows a year. If that’s true for you from 15 to 55, you’ll get to 128. I beat that by 1 tonight between now and last year.
I’m growing increasingly fond of having a handler and being pointed in a direction. James Bond is an employee. I don’t need a mythical daddy, but I do need a sponsor or benefactor or nominally malicious overlord. I can function better when I’m housed within something. I keep working my job. I got through school. I’ve never been fired. I can memorize the rulebook. I can learn the language of your field. I could be something if you’d just give me a chance.
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Monday, June 19, 2023
[1045] Out Of My Mind
Let’s do an “all over the place” one.
Things are considerably less mysterious. That is, I see what it takes over time. I start to see how the dynamic is shaped and what compounds. I’ve reached a milestone, so to speak, in surpassing my “fun things” number from last year this weekend. I’ve been to 66. It is day 169 of the year. That’s 39%. What have I noticed? There’s no shortage of openers saying something like, “I can’t believe I’m on tour with so-and-so.” A good portion of artists are still psychologically arrested by 2020, and 3 years later, are so grateful to be touring again. Labels matter in getting exposure. Pockets of “different” companies profit from the entire chain they put bands on.
I’ve gotten, regrettably, considerably more jaded about the fame or money any given band may achieve. There’s an incredible amount of talented people who take the time to learn how to do just about anything with their instrument. Can they conform to a model that has them filling an arena? Can they box their creativity into something uniquely them, yet familiar, spontaneous, but in time for tour, rebellious, but safe for the radio? You know music is a business, but recently, the veneer of the work ethic or star power has worn off when fat little marketing trolls take the stage after Weezer to remind you the bars are still open! Can’t you help a humble promoter out and share your pictures with the right hashtags a little sooner too? Did you check out our meet-n-greet tent!? The only charismatic member of the band whose name you know won’t be there.
Shift.
When I hang out with one of my friends, the sentiments, “I just don’t give a fuck,” or, “People don’t give a fuck” are a common refrain. Why try too hard at work? The state doesn’t care. Your coworkers don’t care. You’re not getting a raise. You won’t get in trouble. No one notices half the shit you do or don’t do on any given day. It’s just reality, you, them, the fucks aren’t there, and you’re not wrong for not then insisting we infuse the space with fucks indeed. This will only serve to alienate, draw the wrong kind of attention, and highlight the overall no-fucks-given environment that your naivety wishes to lay at everyone’s feet.
At scale, you get essentially failed fascist states and wholly ambivalent corporate identities subbing in for any given right or obligation a mere mortal might’ve conceived in the way-back times. If you’re me, you make persistent flailing attempts to subvert the entire paradigm with quickly diminishing gains. I won’t stop trying, but I won’t pretend I think I’m going to ”win“ save plugging into a kind of network or thread of enthusiasm I’ve never personally encountered in life. I’ll be 35 in just over a month. The odds feel stacked against me.
I think of it like all of the creative types moving to creative cities. You know where you need to go if you have a certain drive to act or sing. Hell, you know where to go if you’re a solid engineer. If you’re just kinda smart or motivated or can pretty much learn to fit in anywhere, I guess you just drift. If your business is people, and not necessarily ones with money or connections, it’s your job to keep picking up the cigarette butts and old gum marring someone else’s picturesque landscape. I’m pretty much just a tumbleweed custodian in my field.
Rev.
We get hundreds, if not thousands, on the same page though. It takes crews to get these festivals set up and organized. It takes all those names on every one of your favorite movies. The drives to my different shows across the Midwest have hundreds of small-but-large-and-profitable companies across the landscape none of us have ever heard of. On my best day, I can get me and 2 other people in the same room. When I do so, are we talking hopes and dreams? In a sense, if the dream is to resolve the current frozen hellscape of our arrested lives and prospects.
The shows I attend so rarely ever have a ”that person is definitely here alone“ person. When they do, it’s the weird dancer, or bizarre hat wearer, or odd configuration of ill-shaved hair. So many people have friends. Don’t catch yourself listening to what they talk about all through any given performance though, or painful reminders will blast why you often prefer to be alone. My friends are busy. My friends are tired. My friends have obligations. I don’t know what’s going on with all of these people and their friends or family, but they must not be from around here.
This feels like the time to point out the disconcerting number of tattoos I noticed of state outlines, presumably where they are from, that people must identify with to a degree I feel as though were I so afflicted by Indiana, I’d likely kill myself.
One performance today stood out for how goddamn insufferably hokey it was. I was so uncomfortable. First, and I’ve said this a lot, I fucking hate ”hippie“ types. Every stunted thought experiment they never run gets answered by a pathological implementation of ”love“ or ”togetherness“ or some feel-good sentiment backed by nothing but the most inane pageantry available to the devout of any faith.
Michael Franti not only asked you to turn and hi-five or say hi to your neighbor, but to form giant circles together and have someone dance in the middle. He insists you hug the friends you came with, a lot. He knows that no matter how confused he gets or divided we are, love wins! Include strangers in your general jubilation! Doh-see-doh the entire park! Then, everyone gets a turn on stage, the main one or the mini ones set up in the crowd and visited every other song. Let’s hold a small child and encourage it to sing, through 9 increasingly excruciating false endings to 1 of a dozen songs that felt like the dog from Blue’s Clues or a Teletubby were poised to step on stage. It was gross and insincere, and I was happy to deny and annoy the drunk mom who poked me in the stomach to say, ”You have to do it“ in beckoning me for the dance circle portion. I’m only here to get a better spot for Jason Isbell 2 hours from now…the fuck I do.
A good faith steel-manning of that behavior would be entertaining the idea the he actually believed what he as saying, there’s nothing wrong in democratizing the space and inviting people who were clearly eating it up to stuff as much as they could fit. It’s fine for that to not be my vibe, kind of people, and there’s no harm, right? I’m not so sure, but I don’t wish to keep revisiting my trauma.
Hussain asked me what I was doing yesterday. I sent him a picture of a stage. His response: ”Fuck“
Shift.
I’m thinking of going approximately 20K in debt. It would be for the supplies to finish my fence, garage/wood shop, solar panel pergola, driveway, wood-burner set up, and above ground pool. That’s estimating another 7k. I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I’ve grown so ambivalent to debt, or because I actually want to shift into doing a ton of big fun expensive things at once, and am sick of hearing the excuse that I don’t have the money, time, or help.
Ultimately, I have “the” job to lose in the broadest context. This begs an entirely different question of that “comfort” one shouldn’t get comfortable with when you’re plugged into a space where no one gives a fuck, but I’ve found myself willing to suspend getting so antagonized by that thought with new performances pounding through my head every few days. Make no mistake. My job is easy. My job is placating. My job is not what I want to do with my life, does not bring me fulfillment enough to ignore what’s wrong with it, and does not pay me anywhere near what it nets them. Fuck my job and the harm they cause in the name of “harm reduction.”
Shift.
I have so many tools. Music tools. Tool tools. technological tools. Crafting tools. Massage tools. I can only use one at a time and in service to the most haphazard ideas or projects. I have as many books as I have tools. By now, I’ve forgotten why I was so interested in getting half of them. My book shelf, slowly bending forward like an arthritic spine under the weight of so much wasted potential and initial enthusiasm. I used to be so smart. I still am, but I used to be in a way cooler way.
I want a “thing.” I want to turn down the dial on the “mutli-potentiate” bullshit and just have a thing. I know so many families are miserable thinking that was going to be there thing before it sunk in families are made of fucking people. You’ll hear that sentence differently if you’ve worked in child welfare or had a slutty step sibling. Turns out, just like you can’t actually dance or sing the pain away, you can’t “love” your manipulative immature ignorant and petty family into a place of mutually prosperous mental health states. Go figure.
You get a tool to fix a problem. This presumes you’ve accurately diagnosed the problem, know how to use the tool, and care to fix the problem in the first place. I think I have a lot of tools for an incredibly hard problem to diagnose. I think it’s a multi-faceted problem to do with my relationships, or lack thereof, my willingness and capacity to focus, learn, and do in spite of any meaningful spirit animating the behavior, and my existential concerns regarding time, will, and ego. When I say something like, “I’m not ready to die,” I think my behavior overtly suggests as much over highs and lows and long periods of time. I try to exude less desperation and more indulgence. I try to ask more questions and run new experiments. I recognize the next level and continue to explore. Thankfully, I know I’m in charge of my sobriety and need to put myself first or I might have a tattoo of a state that sends 10 years to Indiana for abortions. I suspect that person can’t diagnose their problem anymore than I can mine.
Things are considerably less mysterious. That is, I see what it takes over time. I start to see how the dynamic is shaped and what compounds. I’ve reached a milestone, so to speak, in surpassing my “fun things” number from last year this weekend. I’ve been to 66. It is day 169 of the year. That’s 39%. What have I noticed? There’s no shortage of openers saying something like, “I can’t believe I’m on tour with so-and-so.” A good portion of artists are still psychologically arrested by 2020, and 3 years later, are so grateful to be touring again. Labels matter in getting exposure. Pockets of “different” companies profit from the entire chain they put bands on.
I’ve gotten, regrettably, considerably more jaded about the fame or money any given band may achieve. There’s an incredible amount of talented people who take the time to learn how to do just about anything with their instrument. Can they conform to a model that has them filling an arena? Can they box their creativity into something uniquely them, yet familiar, spontaneous, but in time for tour, rebellious, but safe for the radio? You know music is a business, but recently, the veneer of the work ethic or star power has worn off when fat little marketing trolls take the stage after Weezer to remind you the bars are still open! Can’t you help a humble promoter out and share your pictures with the right hashtags a little sooner too? Did you check out our meet-n-greet tent!? The only charismatic member of the band whose name you know won’t be there.
Shift.
When I hang out with one of my friends, the sentiments, “I just don’t give a fuck,” or, “People don’t give a fuck” are a common refrain. Why try too hard at work? The state doesn’t care. Your coworkers don’t care. You’re not getting a raise. You won’t get in trouble. No one notices half the shit you do or don’t do on any given day. It’s just reality, you, them, the fucks aren’t there, and you’re not wrong for not then insisting we infuse the space with fucks indeed. This will only serve to alienate, draw the wrong kind of attention, and highlight the overall no-fucks-given environment that your naivety wishes to lay at everyone’s feet.
At scale, you get essentially failed fascist states and wholly ambivalent corporate identities subbing in for any given right or obligation a mere mortal might’ve conceived in the way-back times. If you’re me, you make persistent flailing attempts to subvert the entire paradigm with quickly diminishing gains. I won’t stop trying, but I won’t pretend I think I’m going to ”win“ save plugging into a kind of network or thread of enthusiasm I’ve never personally encountered in life. I’ll be 35 in just over a month. The odds feel stacked against me.
I think of it like all of the creative types moving to creative cities. You know where you need to go if you have a certain drive to act or sing. Hell, you know where to go if you’re a solid engineer. If you’re just kinda smart or motivated or can pretty much learn to fit in anywhere, I guess you just drift. If your business is people, and not necessarily ones with money or connections, it’s your job to keep picking up the cigarette butts and old gum marring someone else’s picturesque landscape. I’m pretty much just a tumbleweed custodian in my field.
Rev.
We get hundreds, if not thousands, on the same page though. It takes crews to get these festivals set up and organized. It takes all those names on every one of your favorite movies. The drives to my different shows across the Midwest have hundreds of small-but-large-and-profitable companies across the landscape none of us have ever heard of. On my best day, I can get me and 2 other people in the same room. When I do so, are we talking hopes and dreams? In a sense, if the dream is to resolve the current frozen hellscape of our arrested lives and prospects.
The shows I attend so rarely ever have a ”that person is definitely here alone“ person. When they do, it’s the weird dancer, or bizarre hat wearer, or odd configuration of ill-shaved hair. So many people have friends. Don’t catch yourself listening to what they talk about all through any given performance though, or painful reminders will blast why you often prefer to be alone. My friends are busy. My friends are tired. My friends have obligations. I don’t know what’s going on with all of these people and their friends or family, but they must not be from around here.
This feels like the time to point out the disconcerting number of tattoos I noticed of state outlines, presumably where they are from, that people must identify with to a degree I feel as though were I so afflicted by Indiana, I’d likely kill myself.
One performance today stood out for how goddamn insufferably hokey it was. I was so uncomfortable. First, and I’ve said this a lot, I fucking hate ”hippie“ types. Every stunted thought experiment they never run gets answered by a pathological implementation of ”love“ or ”togetherness“ or some feel-good sentiment backed by nothing but the most inane pageantry available to the devout of any faith.
Michael Franti not only asked you to turn and hi-five or say hi to your neighbor, but to form giant circles together and have someone dance in the middle. He insists you hug the friends you came with, a lot. He knows that no matter how confused he gets or divided we are, love wins! Include strangers in your general jubilation! Doh-see-doh the entire park! Then, everyone gets a turn on stage, the main one or the mini ones set up in the crowd and visited every other song. Let’s hold a small child and encourage it to sing, through 9 increasingly excruciating false endings to 1 of a dozen songs that felt like the dog from Blue’s Clues or a Teletubby were poised to step on stage. It was gross and insincere, and I was happy to deny and annoy the drunk mom who poked me in the stomach to say, ”You have to do it“ in beckoning me for the dance circle portion. I’m only here to get a better spot for Jason Isbell 2 hours from now…the fuck I do.
A good faith steel-manning of that behavior would be entertaining the idea the he actually believed what he as saying, there’s nothing wrong in democratizing the space and inviting people who were clearly eating it up to stuff as much as they could fit. It’s fine for that to not be my vibe, kind of people, and there’s no harm, right? I’m not so sure, but I don’t wish to keep revisiting my trauma.
Hussain asked me what I was doing yesterday. I sent him a picture of a stage. His response: ”Fuck“
Shift.
I’m thinking of going approximately 20K in debt. It would be for the supplies to finish my fence, garage/wood shop, solar panel pergola, driveway, wood-burner set up, and above ground pool. That’s estimating another 7k. I’m not entirely sure if it’s because I’ve grown so ambivalent to debt, or because I actually want to shift into doing a ton of big fun expensive things at once, and am sick of hearing the excuse that I don’t have the money, time, or help.
Ultimately, I have “the” job to lose in the broadest context. This begs an entirely different question of that “comfort” one shouldn’t get comfortable with when you’re plugged into a space where no one gives a fuck, but I’ve found myself willing to suspend getting so antagonized by that thought with new performances pounding through my head every few days. Make no mistake. My job is easy. My job is placating. My job is not what I want to do with my life, does not bring me fulfillment enough to ignore what’s wrong with it, and does not pay me anywhere near what it nets them. Fuck my job and the harm they cause in the name of “harm reduction.”
Shift.
I have so many tools. Music tools. Tool tools. technological tools. Crafting tools. Massage tools. I can only use one at a time and in service to the most haphazard ideas or projects. I have as many books as I have tools. By now, I’ve forgotten why I was so interested in getting half of them. My book shelf, slowly bending forward like an arthritic spine under the weight of so much wasted potential and initial enthusiasm. I used to be so smart. I still am, but I used to be in a way cooler way.
I want a “thing.” I want to turn down the dial on the “mutli-potentiate” bullshit and just have a thing. I know so many families are miserable thinking that was going to be there thing before it sunk in families are made of fucking people. You’ll hear that sentence differently if you’ve worked in child welfare or had a slutty step sibling. Turns out, just like you can’t actually dance or sing the pain away, you can’t “love” your manipulative immature ignorant and petty family into a place of mutually prosperous mental health states. Go figure.
You get a tool to fix a problem. This presumes you’ve accurately diagnosed the problem, know how to use the tool, and care to fix the problem in the first place. I think I have a lot of tools for an incredibly hard problem to diagnose. I think it’s a multi-faceted problem to do with my relationships, or lack thereof, my willingness and capacity to focus, learn, and do in spite of any meaningful spirit animating the behavior, and my existential concerns regarding time, will, and ego. When I say something like, “I’m not ready to die,” I think my behavior overtly suggests as much over highs and lows and long periods of time. I try to exude less desperation and more indulgence. I try to ask more questions and run new experiments. I recognize the next level and continue to explore. Thankfully, I know I’m in charge of my sobriety and need to put myself first or I might have a tattoo of a state that sends 10 years to Indiana for abortions. I suspect that person can’t diagnose their problem anymore than I can mine.
Sunday, June 11, 2023
[1044] Reason Seasoning
I haven't talked religion in a long time. I just watched this "Skinny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets" series though. My brain is kicking off down some heavily compacted trails, but I'd still like to see if there's anything new.
I'm very much in the "religion poison's everything" camp. Whatever you may wish to claim is right or wrong about human behavior, there's a familiar, comforting, and easily digested religious anecdote, adage, or idiom to summarize and excuse away any remote lesson or inclination towards accountability. At bottom, every book, every tradition, every gathering of thousands boils down to "Because God!" The unprovable, ineffable essence of what us boring nerdy types recognize as self-satisfied circular-reasoning and infinite regress. Every single religious tradition terminates the same way.
As such, you take whatever fiendish inclination between thought crime to child molesting to child torture then molesting then murdering, as long as you punctuate it with "God's will," or spin-doctor it into your next trial and lesson, it never actually has to get dealt with. And why should it? It's the same people perpetrating that get attention, power, money, and literally thousands of people crafting their day-to-day excuses to not think for themselves or find their agency. Arguably, beyond the wholesale corruption of critical thinking, the thing I hate most about religious types is the unearned pride and piety bestowed by thirsty empty sheep looking for a strong daddy.
This isn't shaping up to be a blog where I feel moved to qualify anything positive about religious experience, so don't expect this to look "balanced" or "fair" or giving much a shit about your personal story as it pertains to your Jesus. You've been warned.
Anyway, now that I deal with addiction, I get to see new, but precisely the old, patterns manifest in ways I haven't written about yet. It could be notions of "purity" and "submission" that plague the minds of those who literally can't see a paradigm that would allow them to be independent. You're at the mercy of the eldest man who I don't think it would be unfair to say you're addicted to. We're addictive creatures, trying to indulge the positive feelings at all costs. Literally, we will die to feel good, and I don't think this is framed as dangerous as it's registering to me in this moment.
I've heard a lot of, "I just don't want to deal..." from my friends as much as any client. No one wants to deal. They don't want the headache. They don't have the time. Whether they're addicted to their vape or to some desperate conception of their duty or destiny, they don't fundamentally feel situated to deal with the heart of whatever their own issues may be. It becomes very easy to get enmeshed in family issues, client issues, indulgences for their own sake, or a feverish "busy-ness" pointed in no real direction in particular. They want to feel good. Maybe not even "better" than "good" or "good enough."
That's part of the religious impulse, no? You want to feel better about the infinite. You want to matter. You want to think you've created a kind of noble and lasting example in your attempt to start a family or in how hard you've worked to get letters after your name and higher paychecks. You want to pay your respects and keep the traditions of your elders alive. You want to think someone's paying attention and keeping score. It doesn't matter if in your heart of hearts you "don't believe in anything," as one woefully incomplete phrasing tries to caricature it, it matters that it feels better to "believe in something" than your insignificance and lack of connection. Jesus is a thousand times easier to understand emotionally than "quantum" anything.
It just feels so fucking boring and disingenuous after, well I spent years reading/arguing this stuff, but with an adult brain and 15 minutes, some deeply consequential layers of this shit needs to crack. You can be a perfectly good person without anything religious making its way into the conversation or your identity. Your car takes gas, not God's will, and for whatever scientific description you want to use about the combustion engine, the same scientific principles and rules apply to what's going to make you "go" as a healthy connected individual verses an incidentally alive node in a narcissist's cult.
I genuinely wish for the shedding of religious indoctrination to happen as quick as possible. I wish the people who hold it harmless would spend more time in good faith analyzing what they think it's been teaching them. Every form of abuse is justified "because God." Every opportunity to hold someone to account is a move to kick the can all the way to Hell. You reduce yourself to the dog who got in the trash. It's never going to walk up to you, apologize, and begin picking up and putting it back in the can. It's going to live in fear, or oblivious pride, and wait for daddy to decide what comes next.
It's always and of course the religious household where you get the most abuse and allegations. If you build church bells to sound "duh" on the hour every hour, we would still carry ourselves as if noticing a cross on the wall is tantamount to a Safe Space sticker for runaway teens. Where else are you going to find the worst kind of predictable tragedies of human behavior than where there's billions of dollars and adherents fundamentally situated to pretending? They pretend they weren't abused. They pretend to know what it is to be accountable. They pretend to have an identity. They pretend with every single word meant to obscure. It's easier to say "sin" than, "He made an 8 year old suck his dick."
There's so many parallels in my thought right now, it's hard to put it together. People defend the wrong things in the exact same ways with the exact same language. Your abusive partner, Trump, religious pedophile, terrible drug use influence..."He didn't mean...." and you're off to the races of excuses and reinterpretation of words and actions that have about as definitive a meaning as you could ever ask for. Every second you experience a moment of hesitation or confusion about something you haven't studied or don't have the mental faculties to entertain..."It's part of a larger plan." Yes, someone's always Ocean's 11ing things in the background.
People will escape! Then they will still say, "You can still trust God!" As though I should be surprised that an entire lifetime spent being punished for having your own identity could lend itself to any other conclusion. No no, dear traveler, what all of these rich sex and violence addicts were doing with all of their influence and time, never being held to account, that's the "fake God" stuff. The "real God" stuff is do literally everything they've ever said and done that doesn't rise to the level of pedophilia or violence that leaves marks. Nailed it!
I get annoyed when Hussain will say something about sex or relationships that is as purely distilled "purity culture" cult shit as you could stomach. Even if none of his actions reflect that of a controlling husband/ownership dynamic, he can't shake that it just feels "right" that you have your one woman, and anything else is grounds for divorce or disassociating. This, with I guess his tongue sticking straight through his cheek, as he tells me the permissibility of having 4 wives in his culture. You see, you can't "cheat" or be "open," but you can corral four bagged women to be at your beck and call if the money's right. You don't get that stupid convoluted headspace without religion.
Let's get back to "deal with it" as a phrase. We just don't want to deal. We don't want to deal with climate change. We don't want to deal with the fallout of our toxic friends or habits. We don't want to deal with our oppressor be it at work or in abstract attacks from the government. Why deal? It doesn't feel good. No one in our various religious contexts is showing us what effectively dealing means. It's not even really an option because it can't be conceived of. What are you not "dealing with" in your "addiction?" After a few weeks/months you can pretty much be physically fine if not in dire need to recalibrate your dopamine and serotonin over the next 2 years.
I'm interested in what moves us past this whole "religious debate" that doesn't get to the heart of making excuses and fantasy worlds verses working within our actual power. We talk about "raising consciousness" which I think looks a lot like people showing people things, but without an appreciation for how or why they learn so it doesn't really matter how often it comes up, it never sinks in. You could very easily discuss the assumptions and illusions we're situated in as conscious beings altogether to persistently derail what that next conversation space could look like. I don't need another cult-leader, rich god-guys-is-an-asshole story. Do you? Are you ripe and ready to fall for NXIVM or Scientology if your Jesus or Mohamed wears off?
These crazies, these cultists, these monetarily powerful playing on human weakness fucks think in generational terms. We can't be persuaded to get half a dozen people into an intentional community, but you have millions on the same smug team regularly donating, indoctrinating, infiltrating, and humbly requesting through speakers outside the baseball stadium that you meet them halfway in a discussion about who's more likely to burn for all eternity as though we're not literally on fire already. Blame Canada!
You don't want to deal? You don't want to accept? You don't want to try? You don't want to touch an ounce of the anger you hear from me when I type? You're the piddling middle-ground that doesn't protest when the Nazi sits at your table. You're the $10 donation affirming private air fare for your spew-daddy while your neighbor starves. You're the held-harmless "individual" "who's just trying..." every overtaxed phrase about caring for them and theirs or what it means to be "good." They're not trying. They're not just. "They" aren't real or a person. They're a water molecule without the language of "flood."
We're all part of more waves than we can conceive. You can disappear into it, or you can adopt the buoy's perspective. You can learn how to be weather and impact resistant, bob and weave, act as a warning and help others navigate. It's dangerous to give your checking capacity to anything else. You need to be able to recognize the impulse, what ignorance looks and sounds like, and feel, as deeply and radically as the ideologues do, a sense of purpose and direction. Religious thinking is arsenic sprinkled on food and you say, "Oh! Almonds! Want a bite?" It's where you go to feel good about not taking responsibility. It's where you go to celebrate addictive thinking patterns. It's how you get to Hell. "You," of course, not me, because I don't need your daddy. I don't need him molesting the kids I try to place. I don't need his money. I don't need his excuses or story for my behavior or sense of agency.
Why the fuck do you?
Sunday, June 4, 2023
[1043] One Step
The ten second version of my Saturday night/Sunday morning is that, on a trip back from Fort Wayne, I pissed off the kid, he pulled over and kicked me out of my friend's car while waving his airsoft gun around and ranting about how he does whatever he wants and what it is to be a man. The several pages that come next are going to build the months, if not almost two years-long context around that moment.
Most of you know my friend adopted a kid. It was a kid from his caseload when we were at DCS. He's known him since he was 7 or 8, and he's going to be 18 in July. He's, by the numbers, the highest you can score across categories recording trauma. He's had, or continues to have, every "behavior" dumbass eager Christian foster homes blithely discuss before they figure out they can't handle it. He's adopted the hood gangster affect, changes how he talks, walks, and is always, always, "on" in some form of aggressive tip, be it in name-calling or slamming cabinets in pouring himself milk. That is, to hear my friend tell it, if there's anyone else around and it's not just the two of them.
This is the same kid who found his dead brother, cousin, and cousin's fiancé after, in the months before the murder double homicide, my friend warned the kid if he kept antagonizing his brother, something like that tragedy would be the result. My friend had made a certain kind of pact with himself, that if he was ever going to foster or adopt, it would be this kid or this other little girl with her own sordid story of abuse and behaviors that he could navigate in a way others couldn't.
To my friend's credit, while it is an extremely weird habit and pattern, his "adoption" of disaffected white boys and seeing them all grow up, not precisely in the best place mental-health wise, but not having committed suicide, all with professional jobs, homes, or a connection that sees them reaching out for decompression or hang-out and come-to-Jesus sessions that don't spiral more than they need to. That this kid, with his extra-special aberrant status would kind of fall into his lap feels like so many mile markers on a highway we've been driving down for 20+ years.
The last few times I've written, I've wondered why so many "simple" things about what I desire are so hard or expensive to achieve. I've asked how much agency or control we really have under the spell of our pimps or cultural paradigms. Rarely anymore am I looking for the lesson, more than underlining or reiterating things it can be hard to build into new normative behaviors. Regardless of your trauma, level of emotionality, discomfort, or specific story of woe, you either discover and practice the littlest pieces of control and accountability, or you don't. It takes one moment to eschew your better demons and best ideas, and so practice, and honesty, and articulation deeply matter.
With all that in mind, if your goal in taking on a child is to merely "keep them alive," my friend is doing very well. If it's to expand their horizons and attempt to plug them into the larger world, no one is more keen to travel with the kid, take him to art galleries, buy him things related to cars and video games, and invite him along to the shows or activities he might otherwise be doing. Most parents, at least the ones concerned about how "the world" is going to perceive their children, know the task is much harder than keeping them fed and culturally enriched. And don't get me wrong, my friend knows this as well.
Here's the big "but."
This kid is mean. He's mean-spirited. He's volatile. He's aggressive. He's as unaccountable a person as I've ever encountered in life. I've worked for DCS. I've worked in prison. This kid is meaner and more disingenuous than people barely older than him serving years of their life for things he glorifies. Anyone who's been or has a teenager knows they're irrational and a certain kind of frustrating or "crazy." But you also probably have a strong instinct of when you're feeling particularly hormonal or out of control, and just being mean for mean's sake. It's unclear if the kid can differentiate, but again, to hear my friend tell it, when no one else is around, he's otherwise pretty decent and "normal." So?
We're beginning to shape the "have it both ways" portion of the narrative surrounding this kid. The fact that he can turn off and on whether he wants to be decent is not points in his favor. It shows that he's being as deliberately malicious as I accuse him of being. If I thought he was just "stuck" in some form of extreme PTSD or disassociative acting out, I'm backing off. I'm not writing this, forming some damming opinion, nor expecting him to behave in any other way than someone who functionally doesn't have their brain in their possession is going to behave.
My friend is extremely indulgent and entitled. I don't mind those character traits in and of themselves as, obviously, so am I. This influences his approach to creating a "stable" or "therapeutic" environment for what I call his "charges" more than "disaffected white boys." You're depressed? He'll take you to the woods and do some shamanic acid session. He'll get food with you and smoke you out. He'll let you rant about your blind spots and the consequences they've wrought indefinitely. It feels bad to be broke, abused, neglected, and lonely, like so many of us are, so if you get around him or he decides to care for you, let's flood your experience with the opposite of the pain.
The strategy has kept many a potential school shooter or suicide statistic alive. The strategy is incomplete and is being taken advantage of by the exact kind of mean-spirited violence engine that thrives on chaos. My friend drives a Camaro. That is, he did, before he functionally gave it to this kid who doesn't work, barely does chores, can't refrain from getting suspended or expelled every few weeks, and uses it to drive a series of high school girls back to their apartment to fuck and dismiss with some regularity. When my friend's cars are busted and the Camaro still works, he's coming to borrow my, also old and broken vehicles, because he doesn't want to leave the kid without a car.
The kid's "therapeutic environment" consists of constant access to vapes, I think Delta-8, weed, all of the accompanying parts that enable smoking from torches or pieces or batteries and surely a dozen other things I couldn't name. There's a tightrope you're walking at any given moment regarding his stability, and that's not to be disrupted. If he doesn't have a car, he doesn't get to go to his usual spot to get the "lesser" drug from the reliable spot and people they've coordinated to facilitate. Drug use is literally built into this kids DCS safety plan, because for years every other form of intervention has proven to cause more harm, stress, and drama than anyone involved, including the judge, cared to keep returning to.
It feels like now is the time to tell you, as I was being kicked out of the car, the kid referred to it as ,"my whip," which it absolutely is not, and he's had a melt down upon the realization of such in the past. Yelling at my friend, "That's not my car, that's your car. I don't have anything around here, none of this shit is mine for real," not an exact quote.
Anyway, some of the consistent interests the kid has shown are in guns, violent Youtube videos, Grand Theft Auto, and cars. He and my friend will talk cars indefinitely. The kid will bring out and clean his guns, airsoft or otherwise, like he's a war veteran trying to stay vigilant. They'll spend hours flipping through different skins and modifications to their in-game characters and cars. I can forgive a kid for being boring and single minded or having shitty taste in music. But he uses his interests to help bolster and glorify his thug-life narrative and demons.
On the way to Fort Wayne, there are decent stretches of straight highway. The kid, smiling, seatbelt-less, gestures with his head back to my friend, "You know, we have to come back out here and see what we can hit (speed wise.) We gotta make a pact though, that if one of us dies, it's not on the other one. You don't gotta feel bad or there's no heaviness or bad blood." Also not a direct quote. As far as I can tell, the kid has a familiar suicidal impulse that I want nothing to do with. I certainly don't want to be in the car with him as he's racing past 120 miles per hour weaving through traffic and riding asses from old people to bikers.
The kid does not seem to retain the capacity to genuinely appreciate the chance he's been given. He was literally on his way to a mental facility or prison before my friend stepped in. On his super speeding racing stints he'd say something like, "I got this bitch all the way to 125 even with your fat asses in the whip." I'm as much for jovial shit-talking as the next person, but that's all he's ever on, and he's proud of the danger and, at least while I'm around, almost never corrected or redirected. It's precisely here you start to flirt with terms like "codependent" and "enabling."
My buddy has his own list of stressors and drama related to his family and a bank fucking him financially. DCS has always played games. His jobs require a lot of time and driving. If the kid was a saint, his life would be particularly stressful the last couple years. With the kid as an ungrateful, hateful engine of chaos, we've seen even periods of remote stability get shaken by a stiff breeze. For every little seeming win, he's just as eagerly prepared to regress and destroy and throw what's been accomplished out the window. I don't care if for the first time in memory the kid is waking up and regularly taking out and cleaning up after the $800 dog he got last week if he's prepared to wave a gun at me when I yell at him to slow the fuck down and stop driving like he wants to kill us all.
We're at the point now where I want the game called. I want to press charges. I want consequences to send the kid where he belongs, which is not in a struggling household with a single foster parent who does not have the time, energy, or intention of the mental facility the child needs. Would they do right by him? Probably not. We live in Indiana and a country that doesn't train or care or invest in dealing with kids nowhere near his level. Is that his, or especially my, cross to bear? I don't think I've for a second supported him getting this kid well before I had any instantiated opinion on the kid for a dozen reasons related to getting our own shit together first. There's many reasons I don't have kids, even if I went to zero concerts the last two years and had thousands to spend on them.
The problem has reached the point where I'm feeling very "me or him." I want nothing to do with the kid. I'm watching my best friend functionally abandon me to the whims and chance of his kid's behavior, and I'm so devoid of how to conceptualize that, that it doesn't even make me feel angry or like I want to move into a space of judgment and resentment. I think my friend cares. I think he tried. I think it's an abject failure. I think I accepted the nature of our dynamic being that of, "You know, I'm not really trying to take the bullet for you," when we were having those discussions as teenagers. I'm not taking a bullet, or high-velocity air rifle rounds, from this little shit.
I handle crisis or crisis-adjacent situations all the time. To even talk about my "anger" related to the situation might give you the wrong impression that I didn't make a calm deliberate call to the police as I heard the tires screeching as the kid peeled away. My adrenaline wasn't pumping. I wasn't yelling. But, much as when I handed my ex the knife to shit or get off the pot with the threat of her slitting her wrists, I don't deal well with living under the sword of Damocles. This kid has been too hot and too unstable from the jump, and the gifts and rewards and placations have done nothing but provide an environment for him to feel emboldened to continue and draw pride from his self-destruction. My friend smokes a lot, speeds, and plays the same games. I don't see the capacity to lead by example along the metrics the kid needs to change. I see an uncle the kid might be allowed to visit in small doses after he's actually shown something worth rewarding.
One of the topics I've been talking about in Groups this last week is forgiveness/grace. How much room do you give? In my view, we never had to get to dropped on the side of the highway at 3 AM after gun waiving, but we did. I was certainly speaking to the issue well before it got that far. How much should we belabor the story of the kid's trauma? Certainly to a serious and far degree, but are we willing to also accept that you can be a fucking dickhead psychopath on top of that? Our job isn't to save anyone. It's to exercise your perspective and try. I tried right up until the point I couldn't stop repeating to myself, "I'm not dying for the fucking kid," and thinking about Ryan Dunn or all the shows unseen and projects not attempted.
I'm not forgiving the kid anymore than I'm forgiving my mom. Like her, he's not equipped to build on and exercise an accountable perspective. His upbringing or genetics broke his brain. The Hail Mary that is my friend attempting to contain this kid is causing me to contemplate in a measured way how I need to consciously uncouple from anything to do with either of them. This isn't a game, for all of my analogies suggesting otherwise. An excellent DMT trip might have released my buddy from a fear of death, but I'm not so ambivalent.
We can return to fundamentals. What can I control, what can't I? I can't make my friend adopt my perspective. I can never be in contact with the kid again. I can deny my truck to be loaned out and say, "You invited his impending meltdown into your home, not me." I can clear my booze and video games out of their house and go back to paying to do my laundry. I can press charges. I don't know if there's an underlying cry for help to release my friend from some sunk-cost fallacy that's rooted itself into this dynamic because I don't know what I can trust in the "I'm sorrys" that change nothing and persist in bad behavior, and tales of appeasement held up as growth. That's not good for my friend, for the kid, and certainly not for me.
Most of you know my friend adopted a kid. It was a kid from his caseload when we were at DCS. He's known him since he was 7 or 8, and he's going to be 18 in July. He's, by the numbers, the highest you can score across categories recording trauma. He's had, or continues to have, every "behavior" dumbass eager Christian foster homes blithely discuss before they figure out they can't handle it. He's adopted the hood gangster affect, changes how he talks, walks, and is always, always, "on" in some form of aggressive tip, be it in name-calling or slamming cabinets in pouring himself milk. That is, to hear my friend tell it, if there's anyone else around and it's not just the two of them.
This is the same kid who found his dead brother, cousin, and cousin's fiancé after, in the months before the murder double homicide, my friend warned the kid if he kept antagonizing his brother, something like that tragedy would be the result. My friend had made a certain kind of pact with himself, that if he was ever going to foster or adopt, it would be this kid or this other little girl with her own sordid story of abuse and behaviors that he could navigate in a way others couldn't.
To my friend's credit, while it is an extremely weird habit and pattern, his "adoption" of disaffected white boys and seeing them all grow up, not precisely in the best place mental-health wise, but not having committed suicide, all with professional jobs, homes, or a connection that sees them reaching out for decompression or hang-out and come-to-Jesus sessions that don't spiral more than they need to. That this kid, with his extra-special aberrant status would kind of fall into his lap feels like so many mile markers on a highway we've been driving down for 20+ years.
The last few times I've written, I've wondered why so many "simple" things about what I desire are so hard or expensive to achieve. I've asked how much agency or control we really have under the spell of our pimps or cultural paradigms. Rarely anymore am I looking for the lesson, more than underlining or reiterating things it can be hard to build into new normative behaviors. Regardless of your trauma, level of emotionality, discomfort, or specific story of woe, you either discover and practice the littlest pieces of control and accountability, or you don't. It takes one moment to eschew your better demons and best ideas, and so practice, and honesty, and articulation deeply matter.
With all that in mind, if your goal in taking on a child is to merely "keep them alive," my friend is doing very well. If it's to expand their horizons and attempt to plug them into the larger world, no one is more keen to travel with the kid, take him to art galleries, buy him things related to cars and video games, and invite him along to the shows or activities he might otherwise be doing. Most parents, at least the ones concerned about how "the world" is going to perceive their children, know the task is much harder than keeping them fed and culturally enriched. And don't get me wrong, my friend knows this as well.
Here's the big "but."
This kid is mean. He's mean-spirited. He's volatile. He's aggressive. He's as unaccountable a person as I've ever encountered in life. I've worked for DCS. I've worked in prison. This kid is meaner and more disingenuous than people barely older than him serving years of their life for things he glorifies. Anyone who's been or has a teenager knows they're irrational and a certain kind of frustrating or "crazy." But you also probably have a strong instinct of when you're feeling particularly hormonal or out of control, and just being mean for mean's sake. It's unclear if the kid can differentiate, but again, to hear my friend tell it, when no one else is around, he's otherwise pretty decent and "normal." So?
We're beginning to shape the "have it both ways" portion of the narrative surrounding this kid. The fact that he can turn off and on whether he wants to be decent is not points in his favor. It shows that he's being as deliberately malicious as I accuse him of being. If I thought he was just "stuck" in some form of extreme PTSD or disassociative acting out, I'm backing off. I'm not writing this, forming some damming opinion, nor expecting him to behave in any other way than someone who functionally doesn't have their brain in their possession is going to behave.
My friend is extremely indulgent and entitled. I don't mind those character traits in and of themselves as, obviously, so am I. This influences his approach to creating a "stable" or "therapeutic" environment for what I call his "charges" more than "disaffected white boys." You're depressed? He'll take you to the woods and do some shamanic acid session. He'll get food with you and smoke you out. He'll let you rant about your blind spots and the consequences they've wrought indefinitely. It feels bad to be broke, abused, neglected, and lonely, like so many of us are, so if you get around him or he decides to care for you, let's flood your experience with the opposite of the pain.
The strategy has kept many a potential school shooter or suicide statistic alive. The strategy is incomplete and is being taken advantage of by the exact kind of mean-spirited violence engine that thrives on chaos. My friend drives a Camaro. That is, he did, before he functionally gave it to this kid who doesn't work, barely does chores, can't refrain from getting suspended or expelled every few weeks, and uses it to drive a series of high school girls back to their apartment to fuck and dismiss with some regularity. When my friend's cars are busted and the Camaro still works, he's coming to borrow my, also old and broken vehicles, because he doesn't want to leave the kid without a car.
The kid's "therapeutic environment" consists of constant access to vapes, I think Delta-8, weed, all of the accompanying parts that enable smoking from torches or pieces or batteries and surely a dozen other things I couldn't name. There's a tightrope you're walking at any given moment regarding his stability, and that's not to be disrupted. If he doesn't have a car, he doesn't get to go to his usual spot to get the "lesser" drug from the reliable spot and people they've coordinated to facilitate. Drug use is literally built into this kids DCS safety plan, because for years every other form of intervention has proven to cause more harm, stress, and drama than anyone involved, including the judge, cared to keep returning to.
It feels like now is the time to tell you, as I was being kicked out of the car, the kid referred to it as ,"my whip," which it absolutely is not, and he's had a melt down upon the realization of such in the past. Yelling at my friend, "That's not my car, that's your car. I don't have anything around here, none of this shit is mine for real," not an exact quote.
Anyway, some of the consistent interests the kid has shown are in guns, violent Youtube videos, Grand Theft Auto, and cars. He and my friend will talk cars indefinitely. The kid will bring out and clean his guns, airsoft or otherwise, like he's a war veteran trying to stay vigilant. They'll spend hours flipping through different skins and modifications to their in-game characters and cars. I can forgive a kid for being boring and single minded or having shitty taste in music. But he uses his interests to help bolster and glorify his thug-life narrative and demons.
On the way to Fort Wayne, there are decent stretches of straight highway. The kid, smiling, seatbelt-less, gestures with his head back to my friend, "You know, we have to come back out here and see what we can hit (speed wise.) We gotta make a pact though, that if one of us dies, it's not on the other one. You don't gotta feel bad or there's no heaviness or bad blood." Also not a direct quote. As far as I can tell, the kid has a familiar suicidal impulse that I want nothing to do with. I certainly don't want to be in the car with him as he's racing past 120 miles per hour weaving through traffic and riding asses from old people to bikers.
The kid does not seem to retain the capacity to genuinely appreciate the chance he's been given. He was literally on his way to a mental facility or prison before my friend stepped in. On his super speeding racing stints he'd say something like, "I got this bitch all the way to 125 even with your fat asses in the whip." I'm as much for jovial shit-talking as the next person, but that's all he's ever on, and he's proud of the danger and, at least while I'm around, almost never corrected or redirected. It's precisely here you start to flirt with terms like "codependent" and "enabling."
My buddy has his own list of stressors and drama related to his family and a bank fucking him financially. DCS has always played games. His jobs require a lot of time and driving. If the kid was a saint, his life would be particularly stressful the last couple years. With the kid as an ungrateful, hateful engine of chaos, we've seen even periods of remote stability get shaken by a stiff breeze. For every little seeming win, he's just as eagerly prepared to regress and destroy and throw what's been accomplished out the window. I don't care if for the first time in memory the kid is waking up and regularly taking out and cleaning up after the $800 dog he got last week if he's prepared to wave a gun at me when I yell at him to slow the fuck down and stop driving like he wants to kill us all.
We're at the point now where I want the game called. I want to press charges. I want consequences to send the kid where he belongs, which is not in a struggling household with a single foster parent who does not have the time, energy, or intention of the mental facility the child needs. Would they do right by him? Probably not. We live in Indiana and a country that doesn't train or care or invest in dealing with kids nowhere near his level. Is that his, or especially my, cross to bear? I don't think I've for a second supported him getting this kid well before I had any instantiated opinion on the kid for a dozen reasons related to getting our own shit together first. There's many reasons I don't have kids, even if I went to zero concerts the last two years and had thousands to spend on them.
The problem has reached the point where I'm feeling very "me or him." I want nothing to do with the kid. I'm watching my best friend functionally abandon me to the whims and chance of his kid's behavior, and I'm so devoid of how to conceptualize that, that it doesn't even make me feel angry or like I want to move into a space of judgment and resentment. I think my friend cares. I think he tried. I think it's an abject failure. I think I accepted the nature of our dynamic being that of, "You know, I'm not really trying to take the bullet for you," when we were having those discussions as teenagers. I'm not taking a bullet, or high-velocity air rifle rounds, from this little shit.
I handle crisis or crisis-adjacent situations all the time. To even talk about my "anger" related to the situation might give you the wrong impression that I didn't make a calm deliberate call to the police as I heard the tires screeching as the kid peeled away. My adrenaline wasn't pumping. I wasn't yelling. But, much as when I handed my ex the knife to shit or get off the pot with the threat of her slitting her wrists, I don't deal well with living under the sword of Damocles. This kid has been too hot and too unstable from the jump, and the gifts and rewards and placations have done nothing but provide an environment for him to feel emboldened to continue and draw pride from his self-destruction. My friend smokes a lot, speeds, and plays the same games. I don't see the capacity to lead by example along the metrics the kid needs to change. I see an uncle the kid might be allowed to visit in small doses after he's actually shown something worth rewarding.
One of the topics I've been talking about in Groups this last week is forgiveness/grace. How much room do you give? In my view, we never had to get to dropped on the side of the highway at 3 AM after gun waiving, but we did. I was certainly speaking to the issue well before it got that far. How much should we belabor the story of the kid's trauma? Certainly to a serious and far degree, but are we willing to also accept that you can be a fucking dickhead psychopath on top of that? Our job isn't to save anyone. It's to exercise your perspective and try. I tried right up until the point I couldn't stop repeating to myself, "I'm not dying for the fucking kid," and thinking about Ryan Dunn or all the shows unseen and projects not attempted.
I'm not forgiving the kid anymore than I'm forgiving my mom. Like her, he's not equipped to build on and exercise an accountable perspective. His upbringing or genetics broke his brain. The Hail Mary that is my friend attempting to contain this kid is causing me to contemplate in a measured way how I need to consciously uncouple from anything to do with either of them. This isn't a game, for all of my analogies suggesting otherwise. An excellent DMT trip might have released my buddy from a fear of death, but I'm not so ambivalent.
We can return to fundamentals. What can I control, what can't I? I can't make my friend adopt my perspective. I can never be in contact with the kid again. I can deny my truck to be loaned out and say, "You invited his impending meltdown into your home, not me." I can clear my booze and video games out of their house and go back to paying to do my laundry. I can press charges. I don't know if there's an underlying cry for help to release my friend from some sunk-cost fallacy that's rooted itself into this dynamic because I don't know what I can trust in the "I'm sorrys" that change nothing and persist in bad behavior, and tales of appeasement held up as growth. That's not good for my friend, for the kid, and certainly not for me.
Saturday, June 3, 2023
[1042] Wrecked
How about this. I'll write my current hell as it's happening. I'm currently in the backseat of the Camaro with the kid driving. We're cruising between 90-100 miles per hour. He's already swerved through traffic, hit the gas hard through a residential/construction area to run a red light. He's blasting rap music. He's in look-over-at-my-friend conversation. I've texted my friend saying, "I want you to take over driving."
The kid is volatile. He gets aggressive and would certainly be the cause of any accident the Camaro is involved in. He's hairs away from cars, and a biker, he flashed his lights at and sped around on the way up. I don't feel safe in the real way where one surprise or issue crushes this sports car and because....? We don't want to set an appropriate boundary and expectation for this kid who needs to be constantly appeased or danced around?
I'm over it in a way I wish I had arrived at before I ever agreed to buy a ticket for him. I get all the work my friend has done to get the kid to whatever point you want to describe him as. There's been and continues to be a huge missing piece in this whole endeavor. If you want to build all of that into your household, whatever. But I'm here. I'm not unfairly asking to be appeased across unreasonable metrics. You can't make the kid less of a dick or emotionally stable. You can say, "Hey bro, I wanna drive."
Oh yeah, the various cartridges of weed and vape shit is fogging the air and and adding to the headache of being a good 6 inches too tall for the roof.
We'll regularly discuss the circumstance in which the kid might end up dead or in jail. It's a kind of forgone conclusion that this whole thing could fail quickly and miserably. If the kid has a prayer, I don't wish to be along for the ride.
I'm fucking up by playing along. I don't like the kid, trust the kid, or want any kind of dynamic with him That's what it is. I'm not obligated to this psuedo-theurapudic dance. I have to survive 2 more hours with this Camaro potential projectile and then I'm never even flirting with this kind of shit again.
The kid is volatile. He gets aggressive and would certainly be the cause of any accident the Camaro is involved in. He's hairs away from cars, and a biker, he flashed his lights at and sped around on the way up. I don't feel safe in the real way where one surprise or issue crushes this sports car and because....? We don't want to set an appropriate boundary and expectation for this kid who needs to be constantly appeased or danced around?
I'm over it in a way I wish I had arrived at before I ever agreed to buy a ticket for him. I get all the work my friend has done to get the kid to whatever point you want to describe him as. There's been and continues to be a huge missing piece in this whole endeavor. If you want to build all of that into your household, whatever. But I'm here. I'm not unfairly asking to be appeased across unreasonable metrics. You can't make the kid less of a dick or emotionally stable. You can say, "Hey bro, I wanna drive."
Oh yeah, the various cartridges of weed and vape shit is fogging the air and and adding to the headache of being a good 6 inches too tall for the roof.
We'll regularly discuss the circumstance in which the kid might end up dead or in jail. It's a kind of forgone conclusion that this whole thing could fail quickly and miserably. If the kid has a prayer, I don't wish to be along for the ride.
I'm fucking up by playing along. I don't like the kid, trust the kid, or want any kind of dynamic with him That's what it is. I'm not obligated to this psuedo-theurapudic dance. I have to survive 2 more hours with this Camaro potential projectile and then I'm never even flirting with this kind of shit again.
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