Today is a good day. Most of my days are good, but today is an “official” good day where one of my longest-standing problems, a pending bankruptcy ruling, was resolved. I’m back to normal broke instead of under the heel of predatory debt service. After much otherwise stress and increasingly frantic emails with the law firm, this little chapter is done.
I wanted to compound my day. I’ve been thinking about my former “best friend” and our dynamic. He tried to get into politics. He made a lot of connections that, ultimately, didn’t seem to really serve the goal, but practically speaking might, remotely, serve mine. I’m building Civic Mirror. The handful of local organizers I’ve started talking to are getting jazzed and throwing out more and more names of people they want me to talk to, perhaps present to, and we’re exploring ways to get it funded so I can focus on the vibe-coding and not have to spend a week door dashing in order to afford the ability to do so.
It’s been…maybe a year or more? since I last said anything to my former best friend. But I was feeling inspired. I wrote what was mostly a dunking-on “fuck you”-esc message about how embarrased he should be about his lies to his mother, the police, and the aunt of the kid he’s pretended to adopt. I told him I resented him using my work and time against me (to rehab a house that, when flipped, only cost me money, making him and his parents even.) If you don’t know, this prison-destined child pulled a gun on me, who he lied to the police about what happened. It was the nail in the coffin of our dynamic that had been deteriorating for a couple years.
Predicatably, he did not take my invitation to support the project at $200/month in tax deductible donations. He didn’t like the poetic justice I was seeking in the idea that he’d be working or sacrificing anything in service to my goals, ironically politically. He didn’t take kindly to the suggestion that his behavior in any way needed to be materially accounted for or met with any standard of truth or humanity. What’s tragic about it, is that it was predictable. When you become as broken as people like my mom or uncle in that I know precisely where you’re stuck and how you will respond, that’s the special kind of death.
I’m an idealist. I believe in trying to maximize potential, even if it’s explicitly cold and caluculating. Him, as a person, means nothing to me anymore, and didn’t the moment he picked his selfish lies over our 25 years of a dynamic. Would I turn down a political connection? I’m not under any illusions about his capacity for guilt. I’m not looking for him to validate my effort, apologize, or admit anything. I wanted $200/month to keep working on a thing celebrating what he forsook. He even gave me an awkward political brush-off in the text lol.
We can’t have nice things because they don’t exist unless you bring them into the world, protect them from the people who will destroy them as reflexively as a reactive cat, or as methodically as a hateful, still reactive, supreme court justice. The value, the goal, the practice…they all have to exist outside of and independent of any story you impose. It’s not about titles like “best friend.” It’s not about years spent. It’s not about any given despotic detail you want to offer about your dismal interaction. It’s about right now.
Right now, can you be honest? Nope, lol. Right now, can you see the harm you cause? Nope. Can you be bothered to expand your perspective to include things that don’t make you feel good, but are no less true? That will tell you the story of every corrupted heart up and down chains of power. That will tell you every story of love and loss. When your romance, your idealism, your “hope,” start to get the better of you, make a prediction. I didn’t think I was going to walk away with $200/month on top of my good news today. I thought a selfish, stuck, ugly no-longer-an-individual was going to keep up his act.
What you need to understand is that so will whomever has been on your mind as I’m writing about him. He’s not special. They aren’t special. They’re the banality of evil bred through neglect and denial. You can choose to play with them, play off them, or get played by them. You can choose to practice a different set of values and exercises of your time altogether. Me, also kinda psychopath-y, probably autistic if not, pokes my head in from time to time to, in a manner, emipircally test my biases. Do people change and get better? Maybe 1 or 2, little by little, over time. Ones who lie, dance, and lie again? Never. People are animals. You gotta protect your individual.
I imagine dying a lot. Of old age, of course. But getting to a point where it really does start to feel appealing. After I’ve outlived everyone I give a shit about. After I’ve accomplished basically everything I set my mind to. After I’ve watched everyone and everything I care about die in 1,000 ways before they ever actually die. This is just part of that rotation. One more cliche spoke on the wheel that never made it anywhere.
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