[556] Wait But Why?

I want to discuss a question that I promise doesn't bug me. I want to discuss it because it comes up over and over again with, I can only assume, every one of my friends at one point or another. I don't find it insulting or necessarily hard to understand. I think its roots can be explored and I have a few ideas I think are plausible.

“Why are you friends with Nick?”

To be honest, the best answer I have for anyone being friends with me is because they see an important part of themselves reflected back. I've fashioned myself for a long time as something of an expression of almost pure id. I used to point to monetary benefits when it came to pimping out the house or my access to a car and willingness to chauffeur people around. That stuff is always weak and superficial of course, but for the pragmatist it might be easier to look past my mouth.

Perhaps I should slow down though. It's a question I'm asking just as often to my friends about who they associate with. Say you come home from work and have nothing positive to say about your coworkers, my first question certainly rings with the memory of your frustrations before you hit the town with them. It's easy to blurt out the question of friendship when you've no context for the long history a pair or group might have. At the darkest end you could be asking about the pure emotional or tangible extraction someone is getting out of stringing their prey along.

With regard to me though, I find it gets a little more complicated for the ones asking. Say they asked Kristen. Sweet, innocent, Kristen. Their mental model for her didn't jive even remotely with what they think of me. The confusion, though superficial, speaks to those disingenuous mental shortcuts unthoughtful people take when considering potentially complex human beings. In other words, it's a failure of imagination more than necessarily something insidious. This crowd would make sweeping generalizations about open relationships or draw an uncrossable line that protects their judgment from your explanation. Childish, boring, moving on.

Then there's people who genuinely can't appreciate for a moment my brand of exceedingly dark humor. I make the spousal abuse or cancer joke, they're looking around the room at all the people not up in arms or shuffling me out the door. These are moralizers. They seek less to protect their judgments than to impose and control with them. Flippant or funny disarms those who want to move against you. If they're fuming in the corner and you get even one person to crack a smile, their confusion rests in the disconnect between their pseudo-reality where things are good and make sense, and mine where I guess I'm just trying to hurt people or something. Who could befriend such an untamed beast?

The excessively hilarious one is when they ask Byron why he's my friend. There's almost no words for the level of irony. It's hard to explain knowing someone who basically inhabits your brain. In the deepest possible sense that I've encountered in life, it's like asking why you would bother liking yourself. Our style differences are not brain or disposition differences, but the clean cut politely spoken professional that holds your hand or speaks your language is a jarring contrast from the curly haired ripped jeans despot cursing for what you're positive is absolutely no reason.

Objectively, were I to give reasons for someone to be or not to be my friend, well, pick your favorite drunkest and craziest sounding blog. It's not that I think I'm special or particularly worse or “crazier” than anybody else, but there seems to be a key to my madness. I know my shit.

There's different ways to know your shit, and not all of them are equal. For many, confidence springs forth from their resolve to accept their lot. Whether it's their average or lacking look, motivation, or general mental state. I find it no coincidence that OKCupid matches me highest with every punk rock looking girl with dyed hair and a septum piercing who's rebel attitude and crass jokes make her the life of her small world...if she can be bothered. Smart people in general get a whiff of how they can run something and settle pretty nicely into “know their shit” status.

Then there's bookworm types. They can learn every fact in the world or the particulars of their job, but if you tried to turn them inward you're begging for a substance problem or major depression. The isolated academic types speak a very particular language to a particular crowd and understand the world through an endless stream of books and theories that help shield them from any personal insight that might leak through. Maybe think of Ben Carson. A man who could literally save your life by cutting into your brain, but can't figure out the deadly consequences of playing with fascism.

Then there's that last page of self-help books kind of knowing your shit. When you've therapied to death your past trauma or daily anxieties and you stumble from one realization to the next until you float out to sea on a contemplative island. This speaks to my brand. I'm not just confident in many things I do, I've done or will do a lot of work in explaining the story of how I got there. I'll do it to such a point that you'll start questioning why you got upset in the first place. I sit so deep in my own world that you'll start blaming me for your back pains on the seat you chose.

This is the best explanation I have for people I've know for years or managed more than an acquaintance with who just go radio silent. I was simply comfortable with our dynamic, refused to read minds even when they were begging me to, thus I am to blame. This helps me explain people who actively spoke out against me with, to my knowledge, no if even negative provocation. The girl roomy who re-befriended our other roommate who choked her while disavowing me, who threw him off her, will always be illustrative. She fashioned herself as someone who knew shit, but when faced with the reality, she's just choking against the wall, and how dare someone like me step in and remind her.

The irony of being my friend is that I'm exceedingly transparent and easy as hell to disarm. Well, that is, if you're a person. If you're an insecure husk who's needlessly provoked, I'm a nightmare. If you have an opinion of yourself that you value which allows you to see through my superficial behavior, we get along seamlessly. And yes, this is in utter spite of any and all of the worst shit I can be or have done. I'll always find it odd and unfair that people approach me as if my day to day is setting fires or seeking out people to make cry. At bottom, the reason I'm making you uncomfortable is because you're not comfortable with yourself.

This means that when I make a racist joke, you haven't worked out your relationship to race, so you scoop from your general knee jerk impression of what you think “the culture” would do. If I insult you or your family, you might have deep seeded issues with your big ass ears that even 30 years on the planet never helped you with, and a friendly gathering over drinks is not where you wanted to cope with your thoughts about your dad. To be clear, there is more than a little difference between dark and cold jokes and being genuinely mean-spirited. It does exist. If you don't believe me, you're suffering from something I'm the absolute last person to help you deal with.

Never forget, if you're not laughing (which you usually are) I'm cracking the joke for me. I repeat that shit to myself when my mind wanders and lose my shit days later. I love my humor. I love it so much and it brings me so much joy that I revel in the resentment and anger it conjures from those who think it has anything real to do with them. Of course, when it does, when it feels real, you can take that as a chance for introspection or exploring context, or you can keep blaming me like my joyous coping mechanism will be cried or sneered out of existence. My best guess, it's here to stay, but feel free to slut shame.

It gets deeper though. Because a bad or mean joke is still a pretty wimpy metric for judgment, right? You don't have to know anything to be crass. The dirty part is feeling yourself concede. It's your smile betraying your indignation. It's your stupefied look as my half-drunk comment cuts you in two. You thought I didn't see your look? You thought I didn't notice the tone? You thought my questions weren't a bit leading? Did you think your posture found an invisibility cloak? Did you pretend there was something secret I couldn't figure out about you that I haven't already dug out of myself ten times over? That's when it truly bites.

Then you have no choice but to accept I both understand and legitimately disrespect how you're going about where you're coming from. There is no protest or negotiation. I'm not going to find myself enlightened about how I went about speaking to you. I'm not on your emotional level and that makes you feel bad. You haven't sought out my brand of knowing shit, and that makes me feel nothing about you besides fleeting frustration of a classist air. Engaging with that kind of person then becomes this exhausting negotiation and navigation of the febrile feelings. One I'm brilliant at when I adopt the style you're familiar with on Byron. I still just find it in me to always pick on children.

That's a hefty amount of rationalization there Nick, but why? Why does any of it speak to being your friend? What do you really bring to the table but bad words and explanations I don't buy!?

I've said it before, but it bears repeating, sincerity wins. I don't just dream about the best parties and making movie moments, I build them. I don't pretend to hold you in high or low esteem without having tested our relationship for what I hoped to get out of it. When I say I want the same mental and financial security for my friends that I seek for myself, I get my spine tapped so I can afford the land to invite people to as a refuge or for experimenting. If I call you a cunt, I think you're a cunt, but more importantly, you're probably actually a cunt. 

Whatever you hate about me, you can trust it. When I'm in an out-pour of goodwill and sentimentality, you can trust that too. I'll be dammed if I'm ever as confused as you about how and why I approach my relationships. At least as dammed as you, that is. And I think people like to be able to trust, as I very well know, nothing ever seems like it can be trusted. My worst self isn't some outward display of stupidity or negativity, it's when I stop inviting you in to read about it.

I'm a person who laughs until it hurts about his demons, routinely, practically daily. I put on display as much truth as I can discover in the moment. I work with and engage my contradictory and confusing nature instead of merely suffering it. You tend to learn a lot more shit than people ever want to give you credit for because they can't really see or hear you over their own issues. I might as well have a superpower in my capacity to recognize or disarm them. Why I don't use it to smooth everything over and make everyone happy, like they perpetually fail to do, is somehow baffling. As if I should sacrifice the path to my best relationships to their selfishly small conception of being.

I think there's any number of areas in your life you're wishing you could be a little more like me. So rarely do people give me a reason to believe the relationship can go both ways.

[461] Lessons In "Fuck It"

Every day I feel a little dumber. The sentiment usually goes the other way. “You learn something new everyday!” The idea is that someone should always be curious and striving to learn, even if it’s from something like a word-a-day calendar. The world, an endless mystery with evolving technologies, myriad cultures, and new opportunities every day imbues the power to motivate and help you self-determine. Or so the sentiment at least hints.

So why do I feel dumber? With every new piece of knowledge you have a responsibility to recognize its sides. That doesn’t mean there’s always good with bad or vice versa. It just means that nothing is self-contained and you can run yourself ragged in pursuing the implications and influences. An easy analogy is to think of comic book arcs. You can read a single series that alludes to 6 different series that in turn each point to 6 more, all leaving a small but particular mark for those in the know.

When I learn, I pick up on the thousand ways I’m going to fail. I probably overuse the word “naive.” I think it’s the quintessential attitude, a sort of dispositional lifeblood if you will, underpinning most peoples’ motivations. Because in order to be naive, you only have to feel as if you’ve acknowledged dissent and then carry on. It’s where you get terms like “haters” and “naysayers.” Haters tyin’ to keep you down because they can’t appreciate the higher plain your actions and perspective exists on. People who don’t believe in you because they don’t share, or more likely aren’t capable of, your capacity for a vision for the future.

Essentially, it points to a difference in “acknowledgment” verses “internalizing.” Say you lash out in anger over some political point during a debate. Your opponent can quietly nod and say “I understand” as they move right into their point of view. They don’t feel your anger. You want them to feel your anger, because presumably then they’ll understand just how you got there, but they don’t. Like a practically neglected child, a random pat on the head or reaction to crying doesn’t in turn automatically manifest loving feelings.

I can acknowledge, for example, the many barriers to success in the political realm. From gerrymandering, rampant corruption, general voter ignorance, too many moving parts, historical perspectives lost to time, the cost of “doing business,” the grand timescales movements and revolutions rest on, what’s happened to the “best attempts”...the list could go on for a while. But until recently, maybe the last couple weeks, it hasn’t struck me as a kind of “existential lost cause.” I didn’t really feel it.

Notably, I feel it when I listen to my political heroes. When my leaders paint the world as a dramatic borderline chaos factory with little to no advice on how we get better barring an unforeseen miracle or catastrophe, everything I think to do in spite or to help feels very dumb, small, and pointless. It’s not a nutjob Tea Party member that scares me when they bang the war pots and pans together. I lose hope when Chomsky details perspectives and decisions over years from the people closest to the flames. I’d love to believe in Bernie Sanders, until Nader and Hedges lay out his position in larger contexts that laugh off capacity stadium attendance.

And yet, I don’t necessarily feel the desire to turn into a straight cynic. My understanding of a cynic is someone like Ben Carson. A person who can fluidly and perpetually lie about literally everything defines the kind of absurdity of our times. The fact that he’s a brain surgeon again shows God to have a sense of humor. A cynic would seek the attention for the sake of it. The cynic would seek to capitalize on the bluster and ignorance. I, on the other hand, want to just be left alone.

Who wants to fight for a lost cause? When you can feel so profoundly how screwed up the world around you is, how do you go anywhere but away? “The World” isn’t ready for and doesn’t deserve the kind of luxury and opportunity that’s on offer. We take it for granted. We assume things will work themselves out. We’re too “smart” for our own good.

I throw out the idea of being a kind of “sociopath” so often it’s lost all its luster for me. Another way of relating to how I feel might be characterized as an “overflowing empath.” I started in life feeling too much and just got paired with a crazy person long enough to learn when to shut it off. If I feel too much, and I just feel dumber, maybe the direction “in general” has won out. Maybe in my heart of hearts I know that whatever experiments I run, whatever resources I create, and whomever I meet or work with, will only be drops unable to quell a spectacular sea of fire.

It’s that I don’t believe in us, even a little. I don’t know if that’s being dumb, or self-preservation. I believe in me. I believe I can survive and ride out the times, provided I generally stay away from large cities. But the world from my corner has been shrinking for so long, I think this is a point where I say it’s swallowed me up. Bernie isn’t my savior. My heroes are old and detailed. The momentum is such that fighting all but provokes martyrdom. Revolution? We’re not evolved.