I think this is going to be decently self-indulgent. If that’s not the headspace you’re in, please avert your eyes. PSA: Fuck ICE. General strike now. This digression has little-to-nothing to do with those topics, even if everything, in some way, does.
I’ve never been that good at being “one of the guys.” I’ve been told since I was very young that I was a leader. Well before I had any conception of what that meant, it worked its way into my expectations and approach to life. I’m the roommate that finds the roommates, pays the bills, and throws the party. I’m the group project presenter. I’m the one at work who gets promoted to supervisor or manager. You know how at fast food places there’s a 22 year old managing 30-50 year old rough-looking line-cooks? I was that 22 year old, dispositionally at 15, and actually at 18.
I’ve had friend groups. Every time I reflect on them, they’ve felt less and less like they should be described as such. I’ve had people I’ve spent a majority of my social time with for at least a couple year periods at a time. I haven’t spoken a word to 95% of any individual from any of those groups in at least 5, probably 10 or more years. There’s passing glances on what they may post to social media. Many stopped using it entirely. One just declared he’s exhausted by the hate on “both sides” and said to reach out individually before he deactivates. I liked the post and declined to do so.
As “mental health” became a popular buzzy thing, a lot of people started asking questions like, “Does this person serve me?” They started conceptualizing their life in terms of “needs.” The “toxic” and “gaslighting” narratives were getting examined and the locus of “power” reimagined. A lot of people, at least superficially, appeared to be waking up to the power they have and the nature of their choices. That’s, broadly, a good thing.
What was hidden in that newfound awareness was a perfect selfish self-justification narrative. When you’re concerning yourself with your needs, perhaps for the first time ever in a meaningful way, you’re not going to be open to challenge and contradiction. Probably, when it’s new, rightfully so. But once you’ve made some obvious readjustments, there’s a temptation to think the work is over. Like, once you get dunked and saved, you’re going to heaven, right? You don’t have to actually practice your faith provided you believe in earnest. Don’t get hung up on, “faith without works is dead.”
My instinct is that I’ve been Marie Kondo-ed out of many lives. It’s incredibly rare that even tipsy I’ll bother to message someone I used to hang with or call a friend. What did I serve that person back then? Maybe they laughed. Maybe they liked the party environment. Maybe we had good conversations. Maybe they liked to fuck around. But, as we grew up and priorities changed, increasingly you start to register as just a kind of annoying bag of opinions. You don’t fit the narrative of what it takes to look after a family or succeed at work. When you’re reminiscing it registers as a kind of exhausting and pathetic appeal to what no longer exists.
I’m not a trapped in the past kind of person though. I’m a student of history. I’m also deeply investigative about why right now looks and feels the ways it does. Your “past” brain and all its memories exist today, morphed every time you access them, and signaling as safe or dangerous to entertain. To the extent that I’ve caused psychic injury, it might as well have been yesterday, and I think it goes a long way to explaining the disingenuousness of reaching out or trying to “stay connected,” if we ever really were.
I also know the power of lore and gossip. I’ve been a genuinely mean or ridiculous person in the past. I’m inclined to argue against that being my default setting or indicative of my broader project bent on hurting people. I’ve got a couple acutely dramatic and damming stories that I’m certain have made their rounds and would disincline most from hearing my perspective. At one level it’s perfectly understandable. At what I think is a more important and reasonable level, it’s the precise kind of unreasonable we unironically crave and claim in service to our “joy” or “mental health.”
I’m someone who struggles to conceive of “forgiveness.” I’d rather be understood. I’d rather there exist a series of things we can both point to that show contrition, change, or evidence we’re moving towards some mutual aim. When I was younger, almost every time I was asked to apologize for something, it just conjured resentment. I wasn’t sorry. I couldn’t understand the reason to be. You want me to lie? I used to get viciously beaten for lying! Certainly as a kid, I wasn’t coming from a place of personal responsibility nor grasping the impact of my words or actions. Apologize? But YOU MADE ME!
I’ve heard it said that forgiveness is about you more than the other person. If you can forgive, you drop the weight of that resentment and judgment. This selfless act regarded as the pinnacle of Christ’s love is actually a selfish tool to let yourself off the hook in learning how to cope and conceptualize your pain. You can adopt that methodology an infinite amount of times, sacrificing as many relationships, narratives, or responsibilities as it takes to feel like your needs are finally being serviced.
I’m an antagonist. If I were the villain in a story, I would be regarded “simply” as the necessary component to a compelling tale. No one is cracking open a book to read hundreds of pages about people just hanging out and living their lives without conflict. They have to conquer the monsters. They have to overcome the dramatic tragedy. They have to forge a new identity and unlock powers they never knew they had.
I’m not a monster. I am, but it’s a capacity, not a hard and fast sole and coherent designation. I’m not a monster because you say so or because you can point a finger. I’m not a monster because of the pain I’ve caused and will take responsibility for. I’m a monster because I’m not actually “human” or “a friend” in the mind of most people first.
I find this ironic because we’re living in some catastrophic fascist times where people I’m more inclined to understand as “animals” or “as monster as it gets” are shooting people in the back and face. There are people murdering us in the street, kidnapping children, and lying for millions of dollars and more license to destroy literally everything that made our society what it was.
Would it be overstating it to say that I’ve felt a kind of coldness and anger that’s been more consistent and resolute than I’ve ever heard former friends or partners voice about what’s been happening over the last 10 years? I don’t think so, and that feels properly insane to say, but I don’t feel like I’m lying. Is that not more evidence of my actually monstrous and conceited nature?
I work in counseling. I’ve worked for DCS. I’ve been a general case manager and social worker. I’ve worked in prison. I’ve been face to face with people for years who have fucked up in ways you can’t imagine for yourself. They have been fucked by details that don’t show up in the most dramatic of TV shows or movies. None of them feel like monsters. None of them feel like people it’s not worth talking to or teaching. None of them feel beyond the capacity to be redeemed, so to speak, even if it’s unclear or unlikely the confluence of core wounds will actually resolve.
My professional life has added considerably to my understanding of how and whether people actually practice their humanity. It’s not clear to me most people are inclined to treat each other as real human people. For the longest time I wanted to personalize that. Blame my argumentative and explanatory style as “too much.” But while that can certainly be annoying and tuned up or down, what’s happening first is people want to be appeased and agreed with, regardless of what they’re doing or saying. Your value is directly proportional to their internal calculation of your capacity to do that.
Doesn’t that sound like the instinctual unarticulated practice of asking out loud whether something serves you or brings you joy? Does it look like we’ve just repackaged our animal nature into something that sounds more polite and professional?
I think there’s a direct line through the alienation I’ve experienced to the sense of helplessness about what’s happening culturally. I think people’s inability to truthfully discuss the painful details and work within the practical confines of what it means to do something meaningful is why they can only increase in their suffering of that condition. You get cancer, you say, “Thinking about this sickness doesn’t serve me.” You jettison the thought. The cancer grows regardless.
It’s not true to say that I want people who were friends to be friendly again. The truth is that I want people who I thought I saw evidence of what they were or what we were together to see the same thing I did. That’s a very different kind of longing or desire. I don’t just want to be accepted or tolerated. I don’t want to wear you down or conjure pity. I want you to feel the same kind of patience, affinity, respect, and hope that I have in working with people in earnest. I want you to be as discerning in your decision to never talk to me again, where the conditions for that to be true rise beyond gossip or incidentally hurt feelings.
I cut my mom off, for example, because 30 seconds into any conversation you’re transported into a world of mental illness, racism, religious dogma, and victimhood that’s beyond parody. I’m regularly setting the example of patient parsing and question asking. I’m making choices. She’s rabidly barking. It’s bizarre to be treated with the same tool or like we’re the same kind of bad thing. It’s, thankfully, hard to feel like you’ve been iced out when you start to recognize that you were maybe never seen in the first place.
I then wonder about how deep or whether it’s always been true that “things” or “culture” has been so superficial. I watch my dad seemingly pretty regularly interact with friends he grew up with on facebook or sometimes they’ll show up to a funeral. If I died tomorrow, I don’t know that I’d get to 20 people outside of immediate family. I cared too little? Fought over the wrong things? Crossed the line too many times? I’m not pitying myself, I’m seriously curious. And I kinda think I’m going to go the rest of my life never getting the answers.
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