There is an infinite list of things I do not understand. If we’re to narrow that down at all, they often have to do with “the human condition.” I want to avoid too many empty and sweeping cliches. It simply doesn’t matter to me to say what we “could” be or belabor the depth of our atrocities. I might be trying to invent a concept for myself on the fly, so for now let’s call it “the loop.”
When people yearn for revolution, I don’t think they necessarily believe themselves to be going in a circle. Overthrow the powers that be! The problem, it’s assumed, could never be that now you’re in power and there’s something intrinsically worth being suspicious about its nature.
“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
As an, alleged, individual, I think about the power of my feelings. I think about how for years I rode the energy of resentment and revenge. I delighted in the idea of who or what I could destroy, either materially or intellectually. It was a regular occurrence that I might make someone cry, and no part of me felt bad. What? I was just talking. All I did was use my capacity to see through the bullshit, locate your pain, and bring it into view for all to see.
You do things like that when your conscience is clear. I wasn’t evil. I wasn’t hateful. I was right. Moreover, I was making things better because I was wielding the weapon of truth. When you were either forced to do the same, or suffer the consequences of not doing so, I remained absolved of responsibility because the higher-order thing we all need was just doing its thing. That’s the nature of truth; it hurts.
I made no distinction between my subjective experience and “the truth.” I had no appreciation nor awareness of how my feelings might be coloring that truth. I was either basically dead inside, suppressed by years of emotional trauma, or confident in my activated capacity for anger over perceived injustice or silliness. My unarticulated assumptions gave me license to bull my way through many a china shop.
I’m still that person, but old. I’m more curious. I’m tired. I’m not the kind of tired that you hear from normal people who can’t be bothered to do “more” or “extra” than they do on any given day. I’m tired of seeing the same story. I’m tired of my own words. I’m tired of perceiving the loops. I’m tired of waiting for the revolution to arrive at a place where anyone acts like they’re capable of making decisions.
That was a key underlying insight about the nature of my power. It’s one that people pick up on and use to beat me over the head with how much is my fault. The parties in college, for the hundreds of people in and out of our house over years, fell to me. Was it “our” house? I organized it. I built things for it. I bought the booze. Greenlit the friend groups. Assigned roles. It was crazy how quickly people fell in line. If you got too drunk? I got you too drunk. If you had a questionable sexual encounter, surely we all know I raped you.
I’m used to being the excuse. It’s an outgrowth of me realizing my ability to choose in a more deliberate and conscious way than other people adopt for themselves. Their choices show up when…well, that’s the question, isn’t it? When do they choose? I don’t really know. I don’t, honestly, conceive of most people making real choices most of the time. I see people as animals first. When the automatic food dispenser drops, they run over. Were they even hungry? Have they ever known real hunger?
If you were starving, you might choose to kill for it, and, circumstances providing, anyone looking from afar might have a hard time blaming you. You might have the perfect excuse. Maybe the food is going to your young child. Maybe you just earnestly worked for days to get your hands on a previous morsel, and it was stolen before you could bite. Maybe you’re the last person alive with the blood that’s going to save the world if you can only get to the secret mountain bunker.
How fantastical of a tale do we need to rest within our excuses? I don’t think most people need more than an empty sentiment like, “I’m a Christian.” I don’t think most people need to do anything beyond point to objects they own of status or only need to tell you about ways they’ve suffered. The loop, the ritual, of invoking your excuse and then carrying on with business as usual is baked in. You deserve it. They deserve it. If you weren’t so dishonest, you could see the truth too. You could share in the dignity and pride of my perspective. You could atone for your sin.
I can feel myself when I’m begging for an excuse. Whether it’s to flip out or pick the naughtiest words. I know when I want to ride the righteous lightening of condemnation. I know when I want attention. I know when I want to get something for less than I hope to put into it. The superficial engagement of social media highlights it. The woe-is-me spirals of anxiety over what I consistently and explicitly call “not real problems.” I know how quickly the wheel turns. I know I’m hurrying up to slow down. I know it’s because I don’t fundamentally trust the impact and results of my choices anymore.
My old superpower was genuine belief. I was a level of naive that has probably had hundreds of people going out of their way to ensure I wouldn’t die prematurely. I’m not, “Sure, let’s hop in your van” kind of naive (true story), but I believed things made sense. I believed families love each other. I believed businesses hired and rewarded the best workers. I believed school challenged and emboldened. I thought friendships, when based on a kind of psychopathic approach to truth and accounting, could last forever. I thought I could think or argue my way in or out of anything. I thought I wouldn’t get “a version” of the things I was aiming for, but precisely what I was after. I had previously only ever been after extremely simple and superficial things.
Now I realize I’ve potentially been in something of a years-long crisis. I lost the plot. It was a story that might’ve only been a rough draft of what you’d need as a, hopefully unironically, “higher” functioning adult. I didn’t pick new or better goals. I didn’t search for what an evolved well of infinite motivation may look like when it’s not fueled by “fuck you” energy. Me, allegedly, so capable of responsibility and actually making choices, lost at sea?
I’m bored, but not because I don’t have things to do or because there isn’t a perpetual five-alarm fascist fire to put out. I’m bored of spirit. I’m bored waiting for something to happen as a result of choices instead of reactions. I can’t choose for you. I can’t invest of myself what you can’t realize. We weren’t partying together, I guess. We weren’t dreaming about the future we could create. We aren’t even able to talk about “the world” with the same level of awareness.
I feel like I choose to mock myself and my feelings by looking for things that challenge my perspective. I don’t care how I feel. It’s wrong. It’s incomplete and ill-informed. It’s automatic and antagonistic. I don’t “need” to feel “good” or “happy.” I don’t describe myself in terms of “needs” too often that don’t rest in things like eating or shitting. What “I need” is “us choosing.” I think implicit in that is me getting chosen in return.
I don’t feel chosen by anyone but my dad. I feel supported by friends, but certainly not chosen. I feel like their support often stems from places where they feel broken. It’s where I then have to be extremely careful that I’m not taking advantage and holding myself personally responsible for trying to square when it feels imbalanced. When I can’t simplify things in monetary ways, I get disoriented. Traditionally, I’m the free therapist-friend providing years of open-ended feedback, looping in and out of what they may “need” from me.
Do they know what they need anymore than I do? One thinks they need mushrooms. Another thinks they need less sex. Another thinks softball matters more than voting. I’ve watched from afar as friends choose their vocation, their equivocations, and their artfully crafted stories and reels celebrating their families. Just like I’m choosing to do TikToks and garner hatred from reddit.
To be sure, I’m meandering through the debased means of connection in a bid for the wrong kind of attention. I’m maintaining my status as a curiosity or piece of safe drama to watch, like a TV show you don’t care for but can’t look away. If the show gets out of line and asks you to really pay attention or start choosing your own adventure, can you imagine a greater betrayal? I’m yours to watch. None of this fourth-wall breaking bullshit.
I’m tired of waiting for you. I’m tired of hoping I’ll feel better or less anxious in the wake of something you finally figure out. I work myself up because I feel like, ultimately, it really does all depend on me. You won’t join me, but you’ll do what I say. You won’t shoulder the risk, but you’ll dump the resources. You won’t access the vulnerable disorienting nature of your power, but you’ll bask in mine. I don’t want that. I don’t know that it’s possible to get what I want instead.
No one sincerely doubts me. That’s part of the mythology. No one who has watched how I work or interact with the world thinks that, if I set my mind to it, I won’t get it. What they’re clocking is the exact thing about me that made so many people cry. I, like any other boring pathological megalomaniac, see your weakness. It’s the same as my weakness. It’s what we’re telegraphing when we’re not making choices. It’s our insecurities. It’s our cliches. It’s our desire to downplay and dismiss the catastrophic nature of our environment.
I live in a fucking shed. I love my shed, but I live in a fucking shed because I was born into a context that was cooking modern fascism. My shed used to represent freedom and possibility. It increasingly represents things to repair and clean up. It grows in its identity as a lonely white-trash island with each passing year. It has all my stuff that I haphazardly engage with. It has my cats which, I don’t exactly want eaten by coyotes, but I don’t want to have to think about if I leave for a week or what they cost me in vet visits.
It took 8 years, a divorce, and a friend moving back to this miserable state to find a consistent concert buddy. At least 10 people I used to party with several times a week for years live like an hour or 2 away. Who in their right mind would choose to shoot the shit over dinner or a beer even once a year? What former coworker would choose to share their new job stories or scuttlebutt after I left? It’s unthinkable.
The irony is such that “my power” isn’t mine at all. I can only tap into what feels like “choice space” to “break loops” in weird little pockets of acute awareness or frustration. I can reign in the feelings and chart a course of action when I seemingly align two oppositely charged magnetic tips and push back against the forces that are otherwise sending me for a loop. I can line them up whenever I want. I can disregard the waves. My mind need not shake. But I’ll still be the only one pointing and pushing towards…whatever it is I’m bothering.
I chose shed because at least the nature of its constraints felt closer to a place of true and actual choices than I otherwise tend to observe from people. I have very little external pressure to do anything out here. It’s all manifest evidence of my hairbrained ideas, effort, and in-processing. It’s a sanctuary where I’m not expected to perform. I’m not failing to live up to your needs out here. I can’t reasonably expect you to visit.
I don’t know what kind of example I want to set anymore. Demonstrating a degree of financial “freedom” has meant nothing. Efforts to salvage, create, or sustain garner 2 or 3 likes occasionally. Every job I ever get aggressively chases me away literally moments away from positive feedback and accolades. I’m funny, but never wanted to be “the funny guy.” I’m angry, but in this era every outburst is performative by default. I've been too big a whore to fall in with incels and worked too long in social work to self-pity.
I have this sickening sense that, somehow, everyone is watching what I choose, but not in an effort to actually see.
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