I genuinely wonder how "dumb" I truly am. I don't mean in an intellectual sense. I mean in terms of what it is supposed to mean to exist as a friend, man, "leader," or "basic human being." I primarily feel like I'm watching. I still find things confusing that I was watching when I was a child. Every day I'm presented with some new confounding, "I could never…"-esc situation that feels like there's a driving absurdity. I refer to it most often as an "unyielding irony" or series of consequences bred from immutable spite.
I simply don't know what I am. I don't know if I'm a good friend, or an eager puppy looking for pets and validation. I don't know if I'm actually causing some immense amount of harm or stress to people in how I exist. I don't know how I'm perceived, and when someone offers to tell me, it's too familiar or predictable and functionally devoid of any real depth.
The number one thing I hear from my clients as feedback that glances with anything to do with my actual personality is, "When I first met you, I didn't like you and thought you were a dick. Then I realized you were pushing me or making me uncomfortable because you cared or were trying to help." I have heard that half a dozen times this week alone. They acknowledge a negative feeling, the utility of doing so, and working through what I was asking.
To explicate this further, say you tell me you want to be "mindful" about "not yelling at my son" or "spending more time with my kids." When, each week, I ask you how many times you recorded noticing that you yelled at your son or how many times you recorded making more time for your kids, if you say "zero," I'm not an asshole. I'm opening the door to exploring why you're yelling or wasting your time. This, predictably, makes people uncomfortable, but it's the first step to any form of progress along any dimension in your life you wish to improve. You can't fix what you're not even aware of.
This feels like my dilemma. I feel like I'm missing something very deep and fundamental about how, why, or whether I interact with people. I have friends who I've given a hundred or more dollars to who've never invited me to dinner. I have friends who I've answered the call or text for in the middle of the night who I'm almost certain were I to reach out in the same manner it would fundamentally alter how or whether they bothered with me again going forward.
I'm certainly not saying I have some giant list of friends and I'm just naive about the nature of hundreds of superficial connections. I'm saying when I reflect on what are supposed to constitute my "closest" or "longest" dynamics, not all, but the vast majority simply don't seem to have ever existed? What, then, am I even trying to capture or refer to?
My closest friends at present are H, who is pathologically helpful and industrious. It's great when you're trying to promote an empathetic hard-worker in service to your company. It's dangerous when he's seeing the heart doctor because he can't draw effective boundaries about how to use his energy. We're both "desperate" to make money, though I've enough lived experience "failing" at entrepreneurship, I'm just as active in trying to enjoy the ride as I am in achieving anything. He's helped me immensely with my vehicles, in having an exchange regarding business ideas and distributing work, and just demonstrating that there's genuine people who deserve to be enabled instead of taken advantage of.
I've spent the next most time with J. She's fun to be around and funny. She's more intuitive and potentially hard-working than she wishes to follow-through with, and this lends itself to a kind of chaos. She cozies up to people with major issues. Whether it's because she sees herself in them, or because she doesn't feel she deserves more than the places they're at is unclear. Either way, she wants to be told what to do and fit into a dynamic that lets her "play." Her blasé attitude towards her health contributes to aggravating old sports and substance abuse injuries, and it's not clear how long she could be relied upon in a role of too much responsibility, as I continue to talk about ways to do just that.
I role with B, and have off and on since high school. She's as smart or smarter than anyone I've ever met, makes and follows through with plans, and is getting a handle on her emotional patterns and drives. We live in very separate places. When we do get to hang out, it's for a few days at a time, or for dinner. I've never gotten the "game playing" vibe from her. She's in touch with her damage, and I think doing so pre-empts what defensive and insecure people do to obscure or blame. I've never felt I've had to censor myself or hesitate talking about anything with her.
My dude HS is in a similar position across the country, growing in the depth of his understanding of himself, and fitting neatly into more leadership roles. I didn't really feel a beat was skipped even not having seen him in person for several years. In my perfect world, he's my first and perpetual neighbor who I know can be relied upon to, you know, actually get drinks or go dancing or hit a show without it registering as an obligation or some extra effort.
To be sure, if I'm ever writing about you, it's either because you occupy a very special and privileged place in my head, or you're fucking up royally and in a very confusing way. Even when I'm attempting to be specific and discerning, it's never meant to beat you over the head or blame you. I just don't know enough. I'm not in regular conversation with nearly anyone. No one messages me out of the blue wondering what I've been up to. I don't get emails from old work connections who happened to incorrectly type something and my name popped up. I'm not invited. I'm not getting "just wishing you well" or getting Christmas cards. I'm not reached out to by my family, save my dad and step-mom, anymore than I am the hundreds or thousands of people I've gotten to know over the last 30 years.
That's like the first thing, right? The people mentioned above text or message me. They don't have anything approaching months of effort, thousands of dollars, or gun-pulled-on-me levels of betrayal. It's literally cheaper to cut dead weight and budget to fly around the country to spend time together than it is to waste away in an unhealthy and exploitative dynamic.
Conversely, I've reached out to damn near everyone I've ever remotely called friend. It's not as precisely unreasonable as it sounds on its head, but does mean I've sent at least one "test the waters" kind of message to the people who a short time later get defriended or deleted. When my idealism bumps against their, "Why is he messaging me?" it's time to go.
I'm drifting. I need to talk about how my experience contrasts. I've been accused of heinous shit. I've owned and written about actual things I've done, from hitting my cat in the eye with a Creepy Crawler snake as a kid, to being very-certainly too much at parties or in hitting on people and being handsy, to slapping Kristen. When I contextualize those things, I feel I understand them, it gives people a chance to compare instances from their own life and explore their own emotions, environments, ignorance, or motivations. In the minds of those who don't grown, learn, or own anything, it won't even take my actual behavior and ownership of such to put distance between us. They need to think of me as a rapist, Machiavellian, catastrophically ego-ridden, or phobic and angry in ways no genuinely moral person should have to entertain, let alone contend with.
I find this fascinating in an going way because I'm a literal counselor. I have hundreds of stories of people's absolutely terrible behavior to each other, and they turn it into a lovable routine! For the thousands of shows I've watched, there's nothing like the hellish dramadies of any given individual's life.
That is, if I panic-slap Kristen trying to bring her back to reality after a cartoonish reconstruction of what my mind jumps to after too much TV and watching her wrist bleed out, that's irredeemable. If you get beat, threatened, or controlled every day, and have so through a dozen partners for years of your life, I will never hear more "but I love them" sentiments. Sentiments protected and reinforced and defended by both sides and by onlookers. Sentiments echoing the pain, usual-ness, and shared expectations of that dynamic. We belabor a caricature of a "battered-wife" and completely ignore the context that smooths and justifies and condones.
If your friends and family have, with regularity, stolen from you, verbally demeaned you, or otherwise predictably and reliably taken advantage, you say nothing, except to maybe a therapist who's 50/50 not insane. I don't get invited to your wedding, but the abuser does. You don't do like me and say, "This is fucked up, Byron, and I'm not okay, and you haven't made it right," until the relationship passes reasonably salvageable. A crisis must ensue. An epic battle of crippled wills needs fantastic displays of hate-filled language, property destruction, self-destruction, and orgiastic guilt to cycle ad infinitum.
If I'm not yelling at you, stealing from you, beating on you, sexually exploiting you, or otherwise meticulously working a manipulative angle so that you're less and I'm more, how could I ever be trusted!? Why would you want to be "friendly" or "committed" to a monster that doesn't drink from the same sacrosanct smirkingly apologetic fountain?
Think back on my consistent feedback. "I thought you were a dick, then realized you were trying to help." What do you suppose gets someone there? Most seem to stop at the first half, then carry on into the sunset. I'll tell you, because they never actually started listening to me. They were never persuaded by how I spoke. They didn't "wise up." They had some experience with their own family or life they felt. Maybe they only caught themselves once refraining from yelling at their kid. Then they noticed the fear and dejected look on their offspring and it gave them pause and made them feel bad or for the first time connected to the causal nature of their behavior. I just invited them to even look at the door. Most will still take 6 months-to-forever to bother knocking or entertain taking a step through.
I'm "stuck" in this, "Sure, but look at this too," place. I need to see many many doors. I need options. I need creativity. I need license to explore and make hazy but demanding proclamations about what I want, who I am, or where I think I'm going. I need to trust myself to engage that process in a faithful, honest and consistent way when every friendship dies or evaporates. I don't wish to ever make it personal because we're not vulnerable in the same ways. If you hear me, or really anything, as gospel, our problems and perspectives occupy different universes. I consistently see what appears to register as an annihilation of your universe when it comes into contact with mine. You don't like that.
My universe is kind of cold. It can be pretty lonely, even if there are a lot of positives to being by yourself. My universe is work, patience, and significantly more questions than answers. My universe is critical, but not mean-spirited. My universe is being crafted with each line, and is hopefully setting some kind of example people are benefiting from or drawing on that, I'm trying to make peace with, I'm never going to hear about. Or I'll hear about it in "fluffy" ways, and no one will care to work together on more of a shared one.
Within 10 feet of me I have months of "entertainment" or "practice" or "study" or "meaningful work" insofar that it intrigues me or will color how I speak and whom to. I don't play in a band. I don't debate the books I'm reading. I'm not playing video games online. Any skill or business experiment will cost money I don't really have and time begging to be occupied by a new soul-consuming occupation. I'm literally alone with this "stuff" of existence almost all of the time. I'm functionally or practically in almost complete isolation in what I can only ignorantly describe as a kind of "spiritual" way. There are many jealous, pious, and righteous gods I observe people worshipping, and over here a decorated non-believer. Naturally, I deserve my exile.
The more poetic and ethereal you get, the more dramatic it sounds, right? I'll be happy if I can get the bills paid in advance, war stays off my lawn, and I can regularly bowl with my dad or find a decent club to join. My arguments and perspective is fundamentally rooted in a place of exceptional privilege. I want more I can't obtain by myself. I want more from you. I want more conversation. I want shared universes. I want creative fixes and chances taken to achieve things previously not even considered. Some of us might "kinda" get there with perpetual therapeutic structured and light suggestions that a fucking door exists altogether. Most of us don't have a prayer for anything more than we're already getting. Shame.
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