[xx-26] Bully

I have some time before my first session today. I need to break this conversation down or I'm going to be thinking about it more than it requires. Only read this if you're incredibly bored.

Context: I've been looking for people to help write grants, fundraise, and not pretend to work for $45 or more an hour to result in me getting nothing in return. This is the 40th or 50th person who's made an "offer." I'm trying, explicitly, to be mean, after her response to my explanation of my circumstances. Each time I read over it, there's really only two or three parts that I want to highlight and talk more about. I'll quote them at the bottom. 

Her:

I am a Litigation Paralegal, previously incarcerated woman, writes grants, and in recovery, This is right up my alley but I have some different thoughts for you that I would be happy to share, If you would like to contract an hour over zoom, let’s do that! Depending on budget, remote access availability, and a slew of other factors, this sounds interesting and right up my alley. Let me knock if I may be of assistance.

Best,

Me:

I'm open to talking, but I'm bleeding so much money with zero coming in that I'm not in a position to hire anyone else that isn't "You get percentage of what you bring in" anymore. If you still want to talk, cool. If not, I get it.

Her:

That’s a hard push and honestly, you likely need to fire someone or get rid whatever you need to because I thought you are on the verge for something. Giving you all my ideas for fee is a sucky proposal. Why not apply for a grant? But you expect someone to do this for free? Not very mindful and the people you want to help you, has to be mutually beneficial. You knew this won’t likely work like you are hoping, I am afraid. Bu hell,

There is always hope. What about a partnership of some kind?

*know

I can’t spend time on growing someone else’s revenue for nothing. However, we might be able to collaborate together, if you can tell me more about your organization, business structure and status, what year in operation are you? Staff? If you ow this company solely, happen to belong ons underrepresented population? Rural or urban area? And services offered remote?

Ok you are a 501-c3? 150 k in this area for a grant isn’t huge and where are you located?

It’s late, but my husband is snoring the loudest EVER so, good things happen to people who do good, call me

Me:

I expect literally nothing of you. You messaged me. I explained my circumstances. You proceeded to offer advice that's wholly uninformed about what I'm doing. What makes you think I trust what else you'd have to say?

You want to chastise me about being mindful while providing literally nothing of value beyond a series of opinions I can't begin to understand where they came from. You proceed to tell me what I know. I suspect you believe something incredibly odd about what I have or am willing to pay for. The amazing ego of your behavior I wish I could chalk up to being in recovery, but it's nearly everyone. Your "ideas" aren't ideas. You, and everyone who has sounded like you, pretend I'm trying to get something for free. No. You, and everyone like you, have literally done ZERO for me in spite of insisting you can.

I'm on the verge? Yeah. I've been on the verge of rage navigating this abject nonsense from "professionals" who you must think you're better than? How does someone who is better than them look and sound exactly like them?

Now, wait a second. I've gone off and been explicitly hateful. Go ahead, take everything I've said as "clear" and "obvious" why I'm not getting the outcomes I desire as though you're the only person I've talked to in 2 years and not just the latest who's finally getting all of the pent up exhaustion of another invitation to spend more money on nothing from no one.

I want nothing from you. I want you to disappear and for me to pretend I didn't have another one of these inane ridiculous conversations attempting to placate your curiosity. You are incorrect. For you and I, there is no hope. We will not be partners. I will not ignore my instinct and hopefully this grand show of rudeness and impropriety will persuade you to block me and not even respond. You're "passionate" about uncovering the truth? I'm not hiding it from you. I hate that you messaged me and that I've been persuaded to write this. Good things happen when you do them. Do not let yourself believe you've done a good thing to or for me.

Let me call one more thing about you. Suppress the urge to wish me "good luck."

Her:

Woozars, the industry you are in is difficult and trying and life changing. Most do it because of this, I am not sure why you would suggest I persuaded you to write anything but no thank you. I am sorry you are going through it and my mom has been in and around nonprofits like forever, she pioneered women executives with outrageous budgets or something but it availed me to start an organization and I shouldn’t have used “partnership “ in nonprofits it takes on a derogatory word of sorts, lie stealing your ownership and hard work. I have s sense of humor perhaps hard to communicate with text and collaboration would have been a better word choice. If you had shared you offer remote services my thinking was you could provide services at a going rate, providing me with a service I allocated in budget already and this would hopefully help you and your organization. I am also a previously incarcerated woman and sober. I do want success for you and those around you. I would also like to share when we practice a culture of kindness, no bad intentions are made and nor is there room for anything but the kindness, maybe in more jest delivered than the support you need. I am sorry you are upset and find it fascinating that your thoughts went to making you believe me. We all have the ability to take in what we need and want, simply leaving the rest, maybe for someone else. You seemed to have want to intentionally hurt me with your words. Hurt people, hurt people. I get it. You are overwhelmed and something I said bothered you, again my apologies. Me: Couldn't help yourself? Everything you said bothered me. I could quote and write entire paragraphs about each line. Then, like an addict, you doubled down! You're not even reading what I wrote lol. Again, typical for "professionals" to hear what they want, react to that, and then pretend to empathize. I'm going to save this exchange and use it for a class one day. Please go away. Or, zero in on 3 words you'll somehow misinterpret and tell me again how sorry you are. Either way, this isn't good for either of us.

::I block her::

"Giving you all my ideas for fee is a sucky proposal. Why not apply for a grant? But you expect someone to do this for free? Not very mindful and the people you want to help you, has to be mutually beneficial. You knew this won’t likely work like you are hoping, I am afraid."

This is quintessential condescending mind-reading bullshit that fucks with seemingly every conversation I attempt to have. This is the "polite" way to "enlighten" me that I'm an idiot. How am I an idiot? I proposed she work for free! Except, of fucking course I didn't. I said I'm too poor, and if you want a percentage of what you bring to the table, more power to you, and if not, I get it. This bitch knows my hopes too! If only I were mindful and could figure them out for myself!

You know who's worked for fucking free? Me, currently, and on Byron's house, and Allie's garden. I know what fucking free work feels like, and it's not a few phone calls or sales pitches to your already instantiated network IF THAT'S WHAT YOU WERE EVEN FUCKING BRINGING TO THE TABLE - AND IT'S NOT. How gracious of this bitch to offer me MORE FUCKIGN IDEAS like "Why don't you write a grant?" BRILLIANT! How do you double or triple caps something?

She proceeds to ask questions that are all answered in the ad. So, you show up at 2:30 AM, don't read the ad, tell me you have a ton of "ideas," respond to my circumstances with a lecture you refer to as "humorous," then desperately ramble, still utterly delusional about what you don't have to offer.

"I am sorry you are going through it and my mom has been in and around nonprofits like forever, she pioneered women executives with outrageous budgets or something but it availed me to start an organization and I shouldn’t have used “partnership “ in nonprofits it takes on a derogatory word of sorts, lie stealing your ownership and hard work."

This is as messy and run-on nonsense as it gets. This betrays her opening. It's her mom who might have the expertise, not her. Big "might," because often people who are desperate to sell or justify themselves recall all of the "good sounding" accomplishments that have almost or completely nothing to do with what you need them for. She decides to hang on to the word "partnership," as though I made any specific point about it beyond to say we would not be forming one. She's creating her own straw-man one feverish back-peddled misspelled response at a time.

"I would also like to share when we practice a culture of kindness, no bad intentions are made and nor is there room for anything but the kindness […] I am sorry you are upset and find it fascinating that your thoughts went to making you believe me. We all have the ability to take in what we need and want, simply leaving the rest, maybe for someone else."

Mind-reading and perfect irony. Take the parts that explicitly tell you, several times, I do not wish to talk to you. Instead? Oh, she took what she needed to service another condescending word-salad salvo on "kindness." Her reflex to hang on to a single word or sentence shows up again. She thinks she "persuaded" me. No, dumbass. I persuaded myself to waste the effort being mean to another exhausting interaction.

I am every bit the asshole and "wrong" in how I treated this interaction. But, you know what, I don't give a fuck. I feel satiated. I'm tired of being told how wrong I am in attempting to do things "right." I'm tired of your fucking lazy opinions. I'm tired of waiting around and fake enthusiasm and self-congratulations cozying up to the idea, magical farcical idea, and you're righteous by association. I'm fucking over it. I understand every maniacal CEO. How the fuck does anything work if you aren't tyrannical about cutting this bullshit out of your interactions? How many people on the planet can do a real call and response useful exchange of information?

[1072] Kid Gloves

I’m just over halfway through my Vegas adventure. The first 3 days were spent somewhat in the company of my brother, at his place, and just under his general him-ness. As I reflect on the explicit and hateful text I sent him as I Ubered away from his apartment, it struck me how “empty” the whole thing felt. I’ve gotten by for so long in just not having to consider him, navigate him, or give a fuck, there’s no real energy or animus there until it’s been dragged out by what my instincts and experience have already taught me.

I sent him the following:

“I apologize for even flirting with the idea that we should have tried spending time in the same space. I don't like or trust you and I know literally everything you do or offer is in bad faith or looking for leverage or you feel put upon. I never wished to rely on you for anything, and were dad not part of this equation you never would have heard from me. I won't fuck that up again. Next time, just tell me to go fuck myself. It's some bitch shit to say ‘that's north and we're going south’ lol.”

I was not “lol”-ing. I also sent him $100 for the inconvenience of having to exist around me for 3 days, detailing what I ate or drank, and any gas he burned carting my dad and me to our activities. I’ve discussed my brother a handful of times in the past, mostly after he’s been considerably more explicit in the show of his true nature. I started initially thinking he had a “piddling sincerity” that kept him more honest to our upbringing. I’m no longer entertaining that idea. He’s now working to solidify and protect his judgmental and pretentious posture. It’s the identity he thinks best hides his inner shivering child at the prospect of addressing his deeper issues.

That would be some pretty crazy and baseless speculation if I knew nothing about him. If I didn’t know the years he spent playing the battered-wife in service to our abusive mom. If I didn’t know how he reacted to the last things I wrote about him calling out his proud expression of pathological bravado. If I didn’t just live through 3 days of the fakest high-strung performance to piece together “respectable adult” verses “running screaming blind through the darkness.”

My brother is starting to remind me of my uncle George. If something is just a little off or inconvenient or not in their wheelhouse, a switch flips and “fuck it” is engaged, and everyone around them is to blame. My uncle used to snap at my grandmother about it while she was serving him food or otherwise taking care of him or the house she allowed him to live in indefinitely. My brother, say, when he can’t figure out how to use his GPS in order to pick us up after a concert, will spend an hour attempting to make it sound reasonable that we should walk 5 miles to meet him wherever he’s decided to stop and tantrum or burn out. He’s 33.

I feel like we need to say a few things about hospitality. In theory, when someone let’s you stay with them, cooks for you, let’s you drink a beer or otherwise plug into their space, they’re being hospitable. Unfortunately, for people like my brother, he’s so in his own world, you can feel every ounce of his resentment that you’re there. He’ll carry on in that extra way like “we’re all friends here” or you can “help yourself to whatever’s in the kitchen,” but it’s also daring you ignore the looks, commentary, and subtext.

I feel a little bit like the tortured protagonist in a horror scenario who has like a dozen real things happen to her, but she can’t explain it, and given her own stress or situation she sounds crazier and crazier when all she wants is to be seen and believed by her loved ones. I promise you, it’s not just because I’m so full of hate or really wish for you to feel one way or another about him. I was extremely unwise in allowing myself to be around him and have walked away lesser from it.

It feels like such an own-goal. This trip has been in the works for a literal year. What happens? We get to the main event late and miss the first band. Am I able to maintain perspective and appreciate all the other bands I saw that day and the awesome time I had with my dad? Absolutely. Did we get Joshed like the Bears got Grosssmaned? Absolutely. It was preventable. I knew I wanted nothing to do with his perception of time or severe inability to prioritize or consider anything beyond himself. I was in the car anyway.

I almost feel like with my text it’s punching down. It was in retaliation for his incredibly disingenuous statement to be sure. You’re about to hop on the road for 5 hours for a mini California vacation. You just have to get there and eat. You have the extra 20 minutes to save me $25. I was clearly open to paying you for being so put out. God knows the entire fucking year we’ve had to prepare for this time together we couldn’t have planned this any better.

My Uber driver was from Nicaragua. I asked him if he got along with his siblings. He just got back from an extended vacation with one of his brothers and regaled me with all of the excellent times he’s had with his gigantic family that all travel and spend time together. He and his wife lost a child 15 years ago, and it sparked in him a desire to refute the joke that is life and dive into as many experiences as he could get with the rest of his kids and wife.

In a world that made sense, I’d still be at my brother’s right now, perhaps watching his cats, instead of him paying to have them boarded up while they’re gone. But, you know, because I’m “lesser” or “not to be trusted” or whatever boogeyman I’ve morphed into for him over the years, it’s ridiculous and laughable that the idea would even be entertained. I’m fundamentally not worthy of whatever he feels he’s created for himself with his codependent extremely high anxiety wife, “ridiculous number” paying job, and future world travel plans.

He has the picture of what he thinks everyone should want or need, but he has no perspective and he’s not real. I didn’t need the “better couple’s communication” book left out on the coffee table to start predicting the nature of their impending cracks when they can’t nerd their way through buried resentments that will build over time. I told my dad to not let Josh get away with downplaying things when he inevitably goes to him in confidence.

I don’t know what the best way to talk about that thick sticks-in-your-throat layer of things left unsaid that just carries into all of the interactions. If he asks you something, it’s because he’s already prepared to say whatever he wanted to on the topic. If, and this has gotten worse, I’m talking, he’ll just interject in a loud way whatever he wanted to say that doesn’t even acknowledge what I was talking about or was talking at all. He’s like attempting to erase me from his psyche in increasingly obvious and awkward ways.

I’ve been attempting to erase him too. I think the only way we managed to get along on the last layover in Vegas was because his wife was out of town, he literally had nothing to do, wished to drink, and I had already started drinking and was open to do more. We then proceeded to talk to other people the entire time at the bar and only had perhaps 10 minutes of fluff on the ride back to the airport. That’s about all we’re good for, and probably after this last round, even less than that.

It’s easier to believe that at least things are “kinda even” or “okay” when you’re not forced to engage with them. Everything that’s ever annoyed the fuck out of me about him or that I’ve alluded to, but hadn’t reached boiling points yet, came as a flood with each bump in the day. He’s literally still the instrument my mom engineered to torture me, and he’s completely unaware and disregarding of that fact. So much so that I can literally do and say nothing but “please” and “thank you” and he can’t hear me, or if I ask for a ride, I’m asking for a dam to break.

“You know Nicholas, I’ve been going out of my way for you this whole weekend!”

I’ll never unhear how he said that to me years ago. So much condescending vitriol like I was slime and he was deigning to carry me along. Like I asked him for anything. Like I needed a fucking thing from him. You know, as the “good son” for some empty semblance of “family” or in service to our father. This cunt. I’d bet money that the same tone and sentiment has been ringing in his head like a nagging bell the whole time I was around. Who does he think I am? He doesn’t think I’m anyone. I’m an incredibly cool, smart, and hardworking person. It’s not a secret how I learned to perceive how deep me being me can really cut someone. I can consciously be silent or polite and people like him will go out of their way to ensure I know I’m a burden and out of my place. Fucking Colorado trip comes to mind, “Nick must be miserable walking up this mountain…” yada yada. Great mind-read to set an unnecessary and incorrect tone. Thanks!

I don’t wish to get locked into some pathetic sibling squabble. I’ve been comfortable since as long as I’ve been cutting out shitty people from my life to continue doing so. I wanted to write about this today so I can digest the muck I’ve been swallowing and carry on the next few days focused on the things I planned to continue enjoying. The thing he’s severely lacking I dish to him like a sledge hammer to the head. What he could provide or trade on in more civil ways he doesn’t have the self-respect or awareness to mine. We’re on two different planets, and I look way too salty and spiteful, as though he’s not just another addict offering me an opportunity to over do it on rage-a-hol.

I feel like my family is cursed. We have intellectual assets, money, a certain degree of ambition and potential, but for the love of everything holy can’t figure out how to sit in the here and now and just fucking enjoy it. That’s my biggest sin in all of this. I’ve literally been enjoying myself nonstop for almost the entire year, and instead of just veering past the predictable unfixable problem, I stepped right in. Stupid, Nick. just like with Byron’s kid. You can’t fix these people, nor do you have a desire to. They don’t wish to get better, and you will always be the considerably bigger problem to them if they even conceive of a shared dynamic or responsibility. Cut them off harder, faster, and run as though you’re fleeing a cult.

I made myself small. I haven’t done that so aggressively before. With the Byron’s kid situation that was some overlap of many things breaking down over years. With this, I just don’t interact with Josh. I don’t visit him. I don’t call or text out of the blue. He wished me happy birthday 4 days late this last year. Like, fuck that guy. He’s a fucking asshole. I’m a fucking asshole too, but I won’t pretend to play nice and at least I’ll tell you why I hate you or that I think you’re a bitch.

[xx-23] Who's Bad

I'm flabbergasted I feel provoked to write this, but here we are. I'm just going to post the whole conversation at the end as it highlights many things at once.

To be brief, if you know nothing about me you should know that “manipulation” is one of my most beaten-to-death topics, and I developed a whole mode of being to ensure I could create relationships that didn't only and always play to what I could get out of them. As a result, I read a ton, became hyper aware of how I constructed my social dynamics, and regularly hit the page to evaluate if I've somehow lost the thread.

What I find is a continued stream of people who not only allow themselves to be perpetually manipulated, but insist it is everywhere that it is not, most notably from me. I take umbridge to this, not least of which because of how often I would get warnings from different family members about how “manipulative” their child was. I could only stare and try not to look confused and condescending. You allow yourself to be manipulated. The second you claim someone is manipulating, you're explicitly denoting that you don't know what manipulation looks like, are powerless to stop it, and built yourself a typical defensive narrative saying the exact opposite of the truth of your situation.

I worried pretty consistently about my capacity and willingness to manipulate people. I'm cute. I'm smart. I know immediately what your soft spots are, how to steer conversations, and what I could do or say to give or drain your confidence. I know this because it's not hidden and we're all animals and our faces, tone, posture, and word choices say things about us. This isn't magic or a special skill. When you feel yourself at the mercy of someone “manipulating” you, you're doing a really bad job of translating what everything about yourself is saying to yourself.

The person below is insecure. They're extremely outgoing, personable, and do a good job at a stressful job. They have a rough Southern affect that toughens up when their feelings get pinched by trying to silence the conversation. The person below is very afraid, and presumably has been swamped by people who have taken advantage of their insecurities.

The conversation depicts a crossroads that I'll say emotionally mature and immature people come to. Difficult topics, like how much responsibility you should take or what if any actions might contribute to solving a big and scary problem, create a stress response. An emotionally mature person recognizes this and goes to work analyzing the feeling. An emotionally immature person attacks the thing that scared them.

For me, I don't need children as “friends” or acquaintances. In a racing heartbeat you become the boogeyman. I have a very large and complicated social, psychological, and emotional problem I would like to address. Wouldn't you know it, that's a perfect analogue for a lot of the families lives we get thrust into as caseworkers. Do you believe anyone is capable of doing a good job when they're teetering at the mercy of their own baggage? They can go through the motions. They can recite the catch-phrases. But they aren't helping. They don't have the tools to build the mechanism to grow into a better place.

I can handle emotional outbursts. I can handle shitty things said in a moment. I have exactly zero patience for taking zero responsibility. Holding no respect for what someone said is it's own hurdle, but as someone who fundamentally or professionally treats everything as maybe true enough kinda, I can at least understand that.

See if your thoughts match mine in the (parenthesis) analysis.

Scared Person: Dude I read your whole post, and I get it, but no way in hell am I gonna speak out against them like that. I can't afford to risk losing my job. (reasonable enough fear)

Me: You don't need to put your name on it (troubleshooting)

Scared Person: But you legit just made a post, calling us all out by name, asking us to do that.

Me: I forget you guys have like other people at work you're friends with

Scared Person: So no, I'm not gonna do that and risk being looked into and potentially losing my job because of it.

Me: see, this facebook stuff, big big reasons I don't add people lol

I deleted it

Scared Person: You should've sent it in a group message instead of posting it like that

Me: Absent mindedly made the post to function as a group chat

I fucking hate social media

Scared Person: Trust I get it! I really do!! But I literally cannot afford to lose my job. (3rd time's the charm)

I'm sorry I can't help.

Me: No one usually can, the families get to pay the price of things shuttered under the veil of fears

you can, like, lol I don't need to out you for your stories (troubleshooting more impatiently)

Scared Person: I just do the best that I can for my families. (Default to cliche)

I try my hardest to make a difference for them, but I can't save them all. (Default to cliche)

Me: The best thing that place needs is a flush on the clogged toilet of shitty leadership lol

Scared Person: You're not wrong. (Seemingly acknowledges the problem)

Me: I won't be able to help alone. (fact)

Me pissed off is just me looking like I can't let go of some petty grievance (no?)

but the things that are wrong are large and systemic (fact, digressing)

and that takes organized collective action and perspectives (fact)

Scared Person: I am sorry, but it's a risk that I can't take. I'm sorry for letting you down. (presumes my feelings)

Me: It's not about me dudette (fact. And extremely important detail)

Not gonna twist your arm lol (pulling back, cliché joke)

Scared Person: Nick, please stop trying to guilt trip me into risking my own wellbeing (What? Derailing happens now) 

I cannot afford to risk my job. (I meant 5th time's the charm.)

Me: Here's the thing, this is where it gets difficult. I know you can't. I'm not trying to guilt trip you. I'm saying pretty plainly that a story divorced from who tells it is still powerful and compelling. You disagree. That's cool. (My attempt to acknowledge, affirm, assess, condense, and accept.)

Scared Person: And you're not hearing me when I say that I'm not going to risk them looking into me for other shit. (Starts to spiral into other compounded fears. “Not listening” indicator that all trust has been lost.)

You don't think they would realize what case I was talking about if I said anything? (Condescending flail)

You don't think they would put two and two together and go through all of my work and try to rip me apart? (Condescending flail)

They wouldn't even have to fire me for giving you a story, I'm sure they would find some other reason to do it. (Denoting another layer of just how big the problem is)

Me: The fact that this job makes you this scared, practical concerns or otherwise, is pretty horrifying alone. Denoting their shit behavior is what I'm looking for. If you've got other skeletons that would get rattled, I def get it. (Acknowledging, clarifying with specific goal, cunty speculating knowing there's nothing to be gained)

Scared Person: I would be scared to lose any job. (I've lost count)

I'm not privileged enough to have anyone else supporting me and paying my bills for me if I'm out of work. (I still can't tell if this is insinuating I do)

I'm not scared to lose this job because of this job, I'd be scared to lose any job. (Same reassertion, extra salt)

Me: No one we know or work with is lol

Scared Person: You say you're not trying to twist my arm and that you're not trying to guilt trip me, but you absolutely are. You are absolutely trying to manipulate me right now and I don't appreciate it. (Now we get into the pound down onto the worn pillow of open wounds. Left is right. Up is down. Absolutism, fold arms, pretend the monster is vanquished.)

Me: I'll find another way to contend with the in-built fear associated. I trust you don't want to be a part of it. You have nothing to fear from me even if you found the ask annoying.

It's unfortunate you feel that way. It was not my intention (It doesn't matter what I say at this point)

Scared Person: You're twisting my words. I didn't say I found the ask annoying, what I find annoying is you trying to manipulate me. (If the irony here is lost on you, you may be suffering from the same issue. Nothing can supplement or replace their assertion of the truth. Even if I were to buy in, people often jump into further spurious details while doubting your sincerity.)

Me: I'm gonna peace out. (I didn't realize it would be a lie)

Scared Person: It may not have been your intention, but it's how I have perceived your behavior. (And Lord knows, when you're the one who's afraid, your perception trumps everything)

Scared Person: Again, this is unfortunate.

Scared Person: I do wish you luck with your efforts though.

Just please leave me out of it. (Adults understand they are in it, complicit, and the guilt is only resolved through taking more responsibility. Children want to be left alone to play in their own worlds)

Me: They always do

Fuck it, I gotta say it. I really really dislike being accused of trying to manipulate you. I think your fear response flipped its shit and took where I was coming from well beyond what was required. I feel uncomfortable pretending I'm cool with that, and if it's the kind of thing you believe about me so quickly, I don't know that I can jive with cats like that. It's unfair, emotionally immature, and does overtime in distracting from the proactive approach or topic of how to fix the problem I'm aiming at. I can accept you don't wish to be a part of it, I can't accept all that flood that came with it. My intentions matter and I'm not going to be told I doing something significantly shittier than I was which I pretty actively police because I know how to manipulate perfectly well, and the first rule is the other person doesn't feel manipulated.

It's really the only rule

Scared Person: If that's what you need to tell yourself to feel better about that. You act like I don't know when I'm being manipulated. I've been manipulated my whole life. I tried to ask nicely and you kept pushing it. You kept trying to guilt trip me and that's a form of manipulation. (If you can recognize the dialogue that's be prescribed for you, face the fear instilled in you, and respect the truth when it's presented to you, then you might hint at knowing when you're being manipulated. Demonstrating you haven't even shuffled the demons in your past and doubling down in your fear and insecurity betrays your indignation)

Manipulation 101 dude (From someone super in control)

Me: You experience elevated levels of guilt, presumably because you've been manipulated your whole life (If you look close, you'll see these are their words. Mirroring evokes the blame response.)

It's clearly a soft spot

Scared Person: Still trying to manipulate

Me: so everything looks like a tiger (Mixing metaphors, but you get it)

or explain (tit-for-tatting)

what would explanation of that behavior look like? (Questions will never be answered. They can only exist in an environment open for examination. This is not one of those.)

Or is always and only what you say?

Scared Person: Ok you're rambling at this point and making no sense. (Attack the person, avoid the question)

Me: I'm curious, what would explaining your behavior look like in a form you wouldn't consider manipulation?

Scared Person: No Nick. You're trying to turn it around on me and I'm not playing that game. (Read: Won't become the target of my own disingenuous and dishonest scrutiny)

I asked a question. How do I learn how you perceive things without doing so?

Simply telling you my view registers as manipulation.

Scared Person: What the hell are you even asking? (Several things at this point, but don't expect answers)

Me: Asking you does too

Scared Person: You're literally making no sense. (This is the same panic response when you confront an addict with the consequences of their behavior or abuser or overbearing mother. Nothing makes sense because they don't register the impact of their subverted personal agency.)

Me: What could I say about how you responded to me that wouldn't register to you as manipulation?

This conversation is over Nick. I'm done. Good night.

Me: Exactly

Literally nothing.

Scared Person: You could say ok I get it, have a good night, and leave it at that. Period. (I do get it, but to a degree they don't, and it's not left. It's going to get dragged into the rest of this person's decisions and interactions with families unto the ages of ages, amen.)

Good night.

Me: I think I've learned a great deal tonight. I'm gonna save you the frustration of dealing with me further. (I unfriended. My friends no better than to “let me manipulate them.” If they don't, we aren't friends, by definition. And I certainly can't trust them.)

[733] Truth Rapists

I feel like if I don't write about this now while I don't feel anything, the thoughts are only going to become corrupted by anger that cause them to drift further away from what needs to be explored.

I really don't know how to begin. I say this often, but this time it's really important because the different parts that need to weave together actually speak to one larger point and isn't a million random roads trying to make sense of it all. Keep this in mind if any one damming sentiment starts off a paragraph, as that was just a door or window into the house I'm trying to construct.

I was finally de-friended by my ex. In her words, “I can't justify you as a friend.” She explained that she couldn't figure out how to defend herself, or me, when I came up in conversation. Instead of attempting to anymore, better out of sight and out of mind.

What was she being asked to defend? Well, to start our conversation she straight up asks the million dollar question, “Did you rape Girl?” I go, “What the fuck? Fuck no?” You see, for several months, not only has the “overly masculine” tenor of our friend group in common come under question, spurred on by #metoo, but the sole player who set everyone up to fail in general was zeroed down to me. That failure consists of either setting the party conditions, condoning shitty behavior, or otherwise being completely unable to change or recognize when what I'm doing has made someone uncomfortable.

I feel for the sake of trying to keep coherent, and relative brevity, we need to pass right over a discussion of endless interpretations, the fallibility of memory, fickle nature of feelings, and otherwise previously noted angry agendas one might bring to that conversation.

But to quickly put a bow on my understanding of the night and girl in question. I sat down on a couch next to her after a bit of dancing. She rubs on my leg. I rub on her arm. Wink wink, nudge nudge, I literally ask her if she wants to go fool around. She says yes, follows me upstairs, through the living room, outside to the side of the house, quick little make out, quick enough sex to not encounter anyone on a smoke break, and we head back inside. I, in an open relationship, sit down next to my ex and say, “Dammit, I just had sex with Girl.” She laughs and goes, “Really? Why?” The only answer that makes sense is drunk and generally horny.

I don't know about you, but people who rape don't seem to ask the girl if she wants to have sex, do it semi-publically, and then sit down next to their girlfriend and talk about how dumb it was to fool around with someone they weren't attracted to. It was perhaps rude, or crass, or slutty, but the way you call it rape is from a collection of forces I hope to describe going forward.

I've been on the outs with, at least the females, of that college group for some time. You know, or maybe you don't, when no matter what you say when or how it will always be wrong? I'm not saying you even did something wrong, but you've found a person that were you to bring them flowers, they'll tell the world you tried to cause them an allergic reaction meant to kill them? Well, I was getting a lot of that. Often, this is related to me as a difference between “thinkers” and “feelers,” so named. While I want to analyze and break down words, they just want to call me a name, make sure I believe it, and we both walk away healthier or better for it? In that I understand they felt really bad and it manifested as a measure of how terrible I am, therefore now we're better?

Honestly, in the years I've been writing, not a single person has ever bothered to explain why this is better, mature, healthy, or something I should just accept.

So, with one of the girls it was jumping down my throat about relaying my desperate feelings under an article she posted about dying polar bears. You see, I'm not allowed to feel, or tell you about it. That spiraled into a whole thing I've already written about. Then, another girl comes to town and I text if her and her boy want to hang out. A follow up text resulted in a clap back, in modern parlance, essentially shuffling me back in my corner for daring to ask or want to hang in the first place. Probably the first pin in these cascading examples of “fuck that guy” was a wholly terrible conversation where I, probably stupidly, decided to try and gain insight from another girl about my ex, another, highly liked, saga that I thought required a breakdown.

Mind you, none of the guys who are with these girls have given me shit nor changed their attitude, nor said they were right on board with setting me adrift on the ice sheet for my misdeeds or words. Either all of these girls are with complicit lying cowards, or they've all accepted something vital to a lasting relationship that I ignore to the degree in which I seek to alienate myself. It's not an either/or, but it also is.

So I've got angry girls, who I've made so before #metoo, who are every ounce of the chatty gossip dick heads that everyone I hung out with was or is, cooking for months. Now Girl, fairly good friends with one of them, shares her story. Damage I've managed to do in the last 2 or 3 years, combined with the reimagining of the past with fervent moment energy, more than enough for more contributions to the cascading damnation of my character, a galling man, no less.

Can you take all that in as one or two pieces, or one or two windows? The next part is more personal and about my relationship with my ex.

I've said many times I knew we were doomed to fail. I wasn't looking forward to it, but I knew, like I generally always know, people. I don't mean generally. I mean individuals. I know what's running their machinery. I know it despite my convoluted ways of attempting to describe. I know it in ways that I try to contradict in efforts to be “normal,” in some Hollywood or cliché fashion. The only reason I know it is because I was forced to look and pay attention in order to avoid causing myself harm. So, I know that she never “loved” me, in the broadest sense of the term. I know, in the least condescending way the idea can be conveyed, that I started the relationship a jaded old whore, and she was an enthusiastic child.

What do children do? They play with things. They test things. They're generally open to new experiences. That's great! For a jaded old whore, yet also overgrown child, like myself. I can make it fun and lead her into worlds and behaviors she wouldn't necessarily pick by herself. This is key. I'm a novelty. I'm not “[redacted]” at this point. I'm a point of intrigue and a tool for her self-actualization. It's worth noting, I don't even have to claim this as conjecture, she literally described her process this way yesterday evening.

I also frame it like this because I hesitate to simply regard her as “maliciously selfish.” I believe the naivety overrules malcontent. I don't think she played me, but I do think she was playing with me. I, like a romantic fool, took my feelings and time investment and willingness to be open to more than my high-school forlorn teenager perspective, and ran with it. I had the hottest girl. She had qualities I thought complimented or I might learn to adopt a measure of. She had interests independent of mine. She seemed to surround herself with a measure of also caring, informed, or otherwise worthwhile individuals. Can't really ask for more, on paper. So, how do you justify having a tool in your arsenal that's outdated?

Here I think it's worth noting that for all of my worries concerning my potential malevolence in manipulating people or treating them as objects, or hell, even direct condemnations of my character alleging as such devoid of all evidence, my crowning testament on my built up concept of “friends” was to do the exact opposite of this kind of behavior. It was live and let live. It was meet people where they are. It was accept their quirks or habits or issues as them, and just be a good goddamn friend. For that matter, it's still what I believe in, even if I persistently stab or have forgone more monolithic conceptions of “friend.” Even if my slutty behavior registers as a measure of shame or regret in someone else, I don't think sex is unfriendly, unless you're a rapist.

We've got child-like love interest, women of a certain age pairing off and resentful, the cultural zeitgeist of every man is a rapist devil, my general, at least questionable, behavior and attitude compounding over years, and then I serve up hundreds of blogs discussing fucked up topics or ideas and picking apart what it means to manipulate or relate, throw in a few niggas here and there, and the soup never stops blending. How could anyone justify that? As an idea, even before a tool. What kind of horrible monster did these poor girls find themselves entangled with?

The only thing I wish to testify to my character, because god knows my words are horrible, is the opinion of the friends who don't behave like that. It’s the relationships I've had since high-school or elementary school, who don't entertain for months or years the idea that I'm a rapist before they choose to call or ask me about it. What are friends for? Gossip, intolerance, and vitriol? No no. They're supposed to let you know what's fucked up. They're supposed to see and relate things to you, that while maybe obvious to them, you've pathologized. Should I trust the message after it's gone through the process described above? Do I need to look inward at my horrible soul in a way I never have before now that finally, all of these people who've, on significantly less serious issues, shown themselves as hostile witnesses or implacably biased juries?

Maybe now we've got 5 or 6 windows: Zeitgeist shit storm, I'm an impossibly (so much I don't even exist!) easy target, complicated mess of feeling-based judgment thrown in gossip-cycle, general children and child-like proclivities abound, and my “hopeful” (willful?) blindness about what I perceived to be things as “as good as you can get” with regard to friendships beyond the realm of my “quasi-sociopathic” ones.

Still with me? Then a quick reiteration and aside.

One of the things that concerns me considerably more than choosing to do something stupid is the idea that I would be wildly surprised by how much damage I'm causing carrying on in the way I do. The Girl who claims rape? That fucking sucks to think that all the atmosphere and ideas and work I've put towards trying to stop having sex vilified or be used as this all-encompassing testament to misused power or misunderstood connection would be regarded as “he possibly raped someone” by the people most involved in creating that fucking atmosphere! And no, I didn't say it sucks that she would feel that way. It does. But that's, honestly, not something I can understand without throwing everything about me and how I understand the world off a cliff. Today we talk about things like “affirmative consent.” We say things like, “she can't give consent if she's drunk.” By the overtly-”safe” and, if not at least often impractical, metrics of today, I apparently couldn't give consent either, as I'd been drinking too, or should have taken her word “yes” and accompanying head nod and follow as a warning of impropriety?

And what kind of person who isn't wholly behind a cliche hippie-adjacent sex ideology (I've never heard of them taking to rape either) takes to the page, twice now, to delineate his potentially shit behavior? Methinks he doth protest too much? Fuck you! You can't protest ridiculous irrational debasement of people enough. Would I be the first to introduce you to the cultural psychosis that is Trump?

Let's try to bring it home.

All of this is to attempt to speak to the house in which your mind rests. Is your opinion the rumor mill, or the investigation? Is your concept of “friend” the direct confrontation and open acceptance and engagement, or the punching bag? Is your first impulse to deny there's a person there at all, or to give them such the benefit of the doubt that you'd earnestly hope and spend 5 years with them, and then not even be angry or blame them after the dust settles and you figure out how talk about it? I figured out how to talk about it, she figured out how to get rid of her old tool. I'm willing to get into the weeds of drunk sex behavior, because I'm not ambiguous about where I feel I sit in relation to the people I've had or wanted to have sex with. Has the thought “Yeah, I'm gonna fuck this bitch and she's gonna like it and can't stop me” ever crossed my mind? Not until now in order to write it or without more irony than there's words for. Is that a melodramatic depiction meant to disguise my otherwise sly and corrupt soul that could justify anything? Of course, if you want it to be. I don't have 740 blogs of insight into my being and hundreds of relationships or sexual encounters over years that should give me the benefit of the doubt. Girl felt bad that for 2 dissatisfying minutes, I turned her as slutty as I am. Just like the girls felt bad that I chose to question when they put words in my mouth, or described feelings I didn’t have, behind something I said they disliked.

Who, right now, is leaning towards a sentiment that I'm trying to bash or unfairly stereotype women? Can the ones who feel that way even see the previous sentence? Because what I did was stop and think about my phrasing. I took my opposition's side and imagined what they feel like as someone's ex, or who empathizes hard-core with any girl who's felt violated. And I know that, while I, explicitly, am making a larger point about the lens from which to view the world and the people in it, I have juxtaposed a “relationship story” against a less than deferential tone about #metoo, employed trigger words like “gossip” and “naive” with regard to women, and denied myself the opportunity to demonize sex or masculinity as inherently evil and precarious. Clearly, I just don't understand the depth of the feelings that should render my perspective mute. I'm basically Trump.

Now, go on, opposite-world engine, do your thing. I'll hide behind my enablers and words until it's time to execute. Because, again, I already know what you want, and how you go about getting it.

[662] I'm The Best

There is no way to state this but plainly. I'm actually the best. I'm better than you. I'm better than people you know. I am the best, and it's a burden, but it's been true for a very long time, and I think it underwrites a good portion of why my life looks the way it does, good and bad.

Let's get the classics out of the way. I was the best at work. No one else ran around. No one else could easily demand promotions or stave off plots to get me fired. I was so good at one job they told me to slow down and taught me things only the managers were supposed to know. I got so much free food and random store items, I couldn't use their ticket incentives fast enough. I threw the best parties. I utilized every physical and mental inch in what I created and who I invited to keep them (primarily) safe and memory-makingly entertaining. I had the best car. It wasn't the most expensive, but it got the most looks, most people talking, and got the most attention. I wasn't the valedictorian, but I did school the best. You have to have something figured out when they let you drop a whole class from your schedule and fit 3 band periods into your senior year, right? I got an entire semesters worth of work done in less than a week after my computer got stolen in college.

Keeping it going, I had the best girlfriend. Girls surely compliment each others' looks, but no one garnered the attention and comments like mine. She was, as I'm learning more and more over time, genuinely the best person in that little circle-jerk thrown together by school. I've got the best hair, the best teeth. I dream the biggest, take on the biggest tasks. I give people that over and over and over again fuck me or lie to me chances and make room for them in my, often personally referred to, “sociopathic” sensibilities. I work harder and longer at things you pretend to care about or be interested in. I account for the details in the lives of the people I care about like taking the dog out or trying not to wake you when I come in the door. I read the most. I watch the most. I contribute the most energy or jokes to make sure the party isn't a bust.

This thought train isn't empty yet, because I'm the best at turning my shit circumstances into living like royalty. My perspective is the best because I know, believe, and assert constantly that I don't have real problems. I take and work with my stress, talk about it, and attempt to connect or diffuse. I take difficult conversations and generally refrain from name calling, throwing your entire being under the bus, or ignoring any questions you may have. I pay attention to the details. I make plans to incorporate or help people who don't even know they're on my radar. I treat everyone with the same courtesy and honesty that I treat myself with, and while it's rarely appreciated, in the liberal fantasy land dream where we're all equal, you have to meet me in order to see what that really feels like.

As the best, if you don't meet people who are also the best, be prepared to die. They don't have the balls to actually try and kill you, they try to tear down your conception of yourself. They make no distinctions about those who are the best and those who can only claim to be the best. They make memes romanticizing their good grades and awards growing up only to have melted into a pile of self-involved nihilism. They start speaking too happily about whatever job they've fallen into or mediocre friends that have one interesting thing about them they've clung to their entire lives.

You, as the best, by contrast are sad. No, really, you are, they insist. You're sad because you're lonely and mean. You're sad because you insist that people actually acknowledge and speak to you instead of call you names and judge you. Who are you? They scream, to suggest their thoughts, opinions, and feelings are wrong? Where do you get off? Talking about their happy lives or hobbies as if you have some secret they don't. They get together and gossip and create feedback loops and adopt their cliches because even the thought of you is an abomination! All without irony.

The most fun you can have with being the best is seeing every scathing detail of where a conversation, or likely fight, is going. You know why every line exists. You can see the need for them to turn towards pissing matches. You can feel their sadness. You can see their inner-child's lip quivering at the thought of saying that perfectly stupid thing that I'm going to pounce on and turn them inside out with. I'm the best at body language, tone, and word choice because I've spent an untold number of hours thinking about how I used to be less than the best in how I exhibited them. It's never an accident, I knew my earnest desire for truth and honest questions would piss you off, but I chose to “lose” my way and not with a temper tantrum you wanted to see.

The best does. This is an extinct concept in modernity. I do what I say. I create, I try, I work, and I scrape together every inch of the perfect picture I dream of. I will make you hate me when I'm tired of your cowardice. I will make you, oh you, little “nice” accommodating fucking dog shit liar, bust out the “fuck you” after I've decided I'm tired of your bullshit. My instincts are the best! Why don't you listen? I knew it was a lie. I wanted the distraction, the option to maybe fuck around with down the line, not a right and proper friend. I knew you weren't capable of that, but I played along. For you, for your deceit, I gave you a chance. I got wasted words and effort in return. I get told “fuck you” because I don't roll over and say, “You're right, I'm roasting in my own personal hell, everything I do or say is wrong, I'll just go over here and die now.” I don't accept your lie anymore. Feel free to keep thinking all sorts of terrible things about yourself, but you're not hijacking my mind.

You have to think, any expression of being the best, with Trump as president, has to make your stomach sink, right? Ego and narcissism are wrong by default. They're going to march us into World War III applauding and cheering. But this is only a distinction lost on people who aren't the best. I'm not at the mercy of my conception of myself, as my relationship to anyone less than me testifies. I'm not addicted to empty boasts about things I haven't actually done or don't actually believe. I don't want attention for attention's sake. I want 5 minutes with any, literally any, real person. Overwhelmingly, that absolutely is not you. It never was.

I have the best friends. It's not because they're sociopaths or social manipulators. They're actually them. You know why you don't mean anything to me? You know why I'm comfortable “brow beating” you into a whiny lashing out pulp? You're pushing 30 and can't engage the bratty child in your gut that still dictates your decisions. You can't make the insecure crying tween in the mirror happy. You only know how to respond to reality by pulling back, hiding behind, and biting. I'm the realest you're ever going to meet, so I get bitten the hardest.

Real. This concept that's reduced to a black people twitter meme picture of a hood rat mouthing off about the dangers of the street or who's about to get beat down. Real is that life was never, nor will ever be, this shining beacon of achievement and love on a hill. No amount of paint you use to cover up the shit stain of your being is going to erase the hint of a smell. Real is that you don't matter. Our relationship doesn't matter. We're inventing it every moment, and when you or I die in the plane crash or car accident on the way to see each other, no one will blink. Only you'll die a liar and afraid and full of regret for how you've squandered all that's been given to you.

To feel all of that at your core and still refrain from treating you like the husks and cunts and disgusting lazy creatures that you are? To be disrespected and disregarded and made to swallow the black holes at the center of your being, sucking everything into your crushing hell. How else do you bare it with a smile and resolve to keep going unless you're the best? You can't live up to me. You aren't even you. You're the recycling of a broken culture and nonsense words you'll never bother to learn how to use. I no longer wish I cared. You're up here, as the best, with me, or I'm literally going to attack you. You ready?

"I'm The Best - Inspiration" excerpt:

This is the most important thing when you're dealing with lesser-order animals you might want to consider friends. They are death. If you treat them as anything less than death, you will grow blind to what's being killed within you. They are the death of reason. They are the death of honesty. They are the death of truth. Their struggle is not “the struggle.” They're words you should liken to the noises of a distressed farm animal. They will kill your esteem. They will kill your desire. They will make you forget that the best exists and ensure you forget what it looks like. No invitation to hang out, no dollar amount, and no magically tightening around your cock pussy is worth giving yourself over to them. They are not your friends. They are not your family. You've been duly warned.

[627] Brotherly Shove

I don’t make much of a secret or specific point of it, but I significantly dislike my brother. The root of it is knowing how we grew up and being unable to resolve that with how he speaks and who he calls friends. He’s the shining beacon of insecurity that fell in with your typical monied douche crooning about the money spent on clubbing, clothes, and fucking bitches. He’s slowing morphing into the older 2nd cousin we have whose wife’s pretentiousness makes sure he only makes contact with the rest of the family when someone dies.

I used to say that while he had that crowd he was still basically a nice enough person. He’s a runt and was always the weakling so he retains a kind of piddling sincerity in his goofy or awkward demeanor that people can find endearing. Anymore though, and upon every time I see him, it’s this feeble boasting and lewd stories on overdrive, repeated enough that you wonder if he’s rehearsed them in the bathroom mirror each morning. That “tight little Latina chick he fucked real good” is going crazy because she’s pushing 30 and isn’t wifed up with kids, so has been blowing up his phone. The sentiment in and of itself I don’t mind more than the scummy feeling I get as I hear how he describes it.

Have you heard about his paycheck? Along with some of his friends, who somehow despite the money they’re making are living the Chicago version of what the people I see in Bloomington are. 4 or 5 guys to a house, 60%-80% of their paychecks going to rent. While these guys are gentrifying neighborhoods, pissing off the locals, the only thing they can conjure as worthwhile expenditures of money are various barely affordable indulgences. One of his friends, in a story my brother took great joy in relating, crouched down next to a homeless man to ask about and belittle his experience and then tell him to get the fuck off his corner of the block.

The closest parallel to his and their behavior I can draw is to my own. I’ve certainly whored it up and would love to continue doing so. I’m not a fan of Bloomington’s homeless population anymore than the people who’ve actually been threatened or who have to deal with a dozen overdoses or fights a day. But I don’t feel I insist on describing for no one who asked the intimate details nor approach the problem of homelessness with drunk “wit” and ridicule. This faux “alpha” condescension and pretension derived from pounding the frat bro script is stomach churning.

Now, my brother has resented me for as long as I know. It’s why I’m so good at recognizing, and then antagonizing, the people who think I’m just a measure of socially blind. I was the smart kid picking things up easy where I have memories of him pronouncing “the” as “ta-huh-eh” when he was learning to read. His and my mom's mutual resentment meant that he didn’t just get away with antagonizing me as “the little brother” but was encouraged in a passive aggressive way through my mother. Now, as he’s got his job stuffing rich cunts with cum and his downtown Indianapolis apartment for over $1000 a month, he still resents me. He knows my attitude to my intelligence and life. He knows I’m quicker witted. But mostly he knows that he doesn’t live up to my standards.

Consider that effect in his bro mind when I’m comfortable telling you when and why I’m sleeping in my car. Where does someone like me get off looking down on someone like him? He can’t reconcile that superficiality well before he acquires the introspective tact to ponder how weird it is to repeat, “Wait, she’s 60!? She’s 60? Well, damn, she looks good for 60!” about my aunt to her brothers and me. Because, of course, if your first instinct isn’t to fluidly reduce the world into sexualized ranking, you don’t understand the bro code and language. You think Hitler 2 Trump wants to fuck his daughter because he views her as an autonomous person, or just another shiny pretty object he deserves?

As it is my nature, I pick choice moments to antagonize. I say I’d only go back to school for the joke and the ability to insist that people call me “Dr. Nick” in an allusion to The Simpsons. He got his master’s from Purdue Calumet (which he remembers as simply “Purdue”) and played his role as the indebted, hundreds of applications sending, basement-dweller until finding the in vitro clinic he works at now. He runs marathons with his bosses and relates a story of one of them hoping to venture out into consulting and wanting to bring him along as the business grows. I said, “Now don’t forget about me if you guys get real big! I don’t know the specific lab stuff, but every company has a marketing or back end logistics department!” He got real quiet. Aren’t I crashing in my car? Didn’t I fuck up the coffee shop? What do I know about his privileged place!?

He has a singular story of his worth or place that’s been adapted from a cadre of insufferably superficial and shitty people. He’s so steeped in it that he’ll never figure out that no amount of his “success” is ever going to speak to me like he really wishes he could. It doesn’t speak like he thinks it does to his bros, he thinks it does to my dad (who’s just happy if we’re happy), or to the world at large that is increasingly moving towards sentiments regarding collective survival over drunken chest beating.

I maybe see the the kid once or twice a year. The conclusion of this year’s Cubs game rendezvous had us gearing up to leave. We’re 3 minutes away from my house at a gas station as I get a text from my dad about a key I borrowed that’s still on my key ring. I tell him we need to go back. “Fuck!” He speeds back to our house, I drop off the key, get back in the car, and find him staring at me, mouth agape. 

“What?” I ask. 

“Thanks, Josh! For taking the extra time!” 

“If you didn’t return, you would have mostly just been fucking dad over.” 

“You know, I’ve been going out of my way for you this weekend.” 

“I didn’t even want to come.” 

“I didn’t want you to come! Now we’re taking even more time...” 

“Well do you want to talk about it, or drive?” 

“Drive!” 

I present his steering wheel to him. 

He didn’t care about the 6 minute detour there and back. He’d been looking for an excuse to say something to me all day. About anything specific? Probably not. He bought me a hot dog at the game. He drove, though no one asked him to. None of it out of the kindness of his heart, or because I asked for or needed anything from him, but because he needs to view me as lesser. He needs to diminish the scar on his brain I represent for him. In fact, I know he regrets telling me he never wanted me to come, because a few months ago he drunkenly texted me about hanging out and not seeing me enough; these plans of course he never really had any intention of following through with, but his brain plagued him nonetheless.

So the dislike I have might better reduce to a pity. We’ve never, I mean never, had a particularly good relationship. He’s filled with all the hopes and dreams and sentimentality that keeps him going back to our abusive mother he vehemently hates when I talk shit about. You know, because who am I if not the person who recognizes that and provokes the ever-strengthening of that head-fuck of a bond. The day I have at least as much material wealth as he (which, I’d be willing to pull out the calculator today given the amount of stupid shit he obligates himself to pay for), but it will be a day that he will wither. If I ever get my doctorate and persist in calling my time in school a joke, he might one day get the balls to haul off and hit me! Though, I suspect he knows that he can work out every day and it won’t speak to the anger I carry that would correct for his decision. If we don’t just want to rely on once bigger and older, always bigger and older.

And yet, it’s not even remotely that serious. It’s just a magnified example of the general tragedy that is my family. It keeps the thought in the back of my head that were I to ever have children, they could fall in with the Josh’s and no matter what I provided or imparted, I’d have to figure out a way to swallow (like that bitch he met last week) their path. He could drop the douche guilt and work less on self-aggrandizing and more on self-respect, because the difference is recognizing yourself with respect to the rest of the worlds you inhabit. He’s in his, I try to be in “the.”

[535] Seussicide

I’ve been reflecting again on the differences between what you say and how you say it. A pattern emerged, I steered that insight into thoughts related to stand-up comedy. I penned a drunk desperate profession of my desires and opinions related to my map project to the programmer, voiced a drunk ramble about all the things I’m bored of fighting about to a friend I should have spent more time listening to, and likely alcohol poisoned myself because my inability for dealing with shitty feelings outweighed my then willingness and ability to cope.

I don’t know if the wording works for you, but as far as opinions about myself are concerned, I’m so bored. I’m tired of the same fights, pretending like I don’t know how to phrase or play it differently. I’m tired of coaxing anxiety that, without trying to sound ironic, I don’t actually care about. I’ve referred to that conundrum as “keeping things interesting” when I’ve little of value left to contribute to anything else. This leads me into just doing unnecessary things that do more work to undermine any positive conception of myself than any poorly-worded blog could.

It’s just boring to see it over and over. Why are we fighting? Because you might think spending 2 hours talking is 2 hours too many. It’s not because we both believe friendship and understanding take time and you need a break, something about our fickle modern psychology keeps us teetering on the edge after every interaction that is less than harmonious. That’s boring, unfair, petty, and any number of digressions speaking to the degradation of our shared conception of humanity.

Some people get off easy and hate themselves. They hate themselves so hard they don’t even realize the power of the armor they’ve adopted. It’s both invisible and invincible. They can’t be criticized. Their words are final and timeless. It imbues them with pride and motivation. It’s co-opting the secret of a psychopath’s charm. There’s nothing there, so there’s nothing to impede.

I can find myself perpetually conflicted about the definition of “friendship” or what is worth my time. I can recall “enjoyable” fights and opportunities to gain perspective and insight about how to go about it better. But I’m playing a longer progressive game. My one wrong move, in your eyes, could be my last. You can say you don’t hate me, and treat me like you do. It’s fluid. The description of it will sound infinitely more dramatic than it will ever feel in the moment.

I wish I could hate myself. That sounds like a weird thing to say. Things would get easier then. The problem remains constant. Me. I’m now too inventive of excuses. I’m now so unbearably blind and selfish it’s amazing you ever got two words in. I start deliberately and callously playing on sympathies or look to emotionally control. I judge over and over again with no capacity or willingness to try and explain. Back off, the bitch is here, leave your offerings on the table.

There’s such a common pattern, by the way. It’s not reserved for one sex or another. From an “innocent” standpoint, I try to chalk it up to fear. From a cynical place, I call it dishonest laziness. In general, I don’t think I have a single friend who’s so socially oblivious to not know how to approach someone who differs in their conversational “style.” Maybe you have to navigate a drunk ramble. Maybe you have to use positive and impersonal language. Maybe you have to coax questions and explanations out of someone and refrain from voicing your thoughts. The game is endless.

I call it cynical. I think it’s the necessary, yet cynical game you have to play to keep yourself healthily oriented in the world. I make a distinction between how I engage with the rest of the world, and how I engage friends or choose to phrase something in writing. You need to be able to handle it. You need to be able to forgive. I’m not throwing myself to wolves on a world stage eager to accept clichés about “it’s not for everyone.”

I try to give you as much credit as I give myself. Take the flow and general point of the argument even when one line pisses you off or you can’t shake the pretentious tone you’re certain I’m writing in. Intentional and head on is, in my view, foundational in qualifying a relationship worth having verses one you’re forced to cope with simply because you exist; friendly, intimate, or otherwise.

Yes, it can be exhausting. Yes, it can zap up your hope and you can find every best thought you’ve ever divined for how “this isn’t me” or “it’s impossible.” And if you lose sight of what you’re truly fighting for, you’ll be absolutely right. And is that what you want to be? “Right?” I, for one, don’t want to be any more or less right than what I manage to claw together in blogs. I want to account for the moment. I want to respect the feelings and patterns. I want you to know that even if I saw or spoke with you for a short amount of time, you’re still there. I’m still in your corner.

It’s just the friendly thing to do.

[488] Character Assassination

I was recently told that I was not people.

That's the first interesting thing. The second was that no one wants to become a blog. This meaning they apparently don't want to be the subject of mine specifically. While I certainly don't plan to name names, this thing has practically written itself.

I'm currently embroiled in a controversy. The main ideas floated to me have spoken to my propensity to be negative, defensive, argumentative, guilt-trippy, prone to exaggeration, and almost incapable of listening to try and better understand where someone is coming from.

On top of those charges, my responses are assertive, dismissive, belittling, and attempt to dodge or transform the conversation.

First, I must admit, I am attempting to transform the conversation. You'll see it in this blog unfolding. I want the conversation boring. I want it line by line. I want it to feel like I'm trying.

What you have any time 2 people are trying to relate is an, unfortunately often referred to “battle” of their perceptions, and the claims they make in service to them. A white person says “those hoodlums” were “acting shady” next to the expensive car, the hoodlums, incidentally black, immediately protest that person is racist and there's nothing shady about standing around admiring nice cars.

Who's right?

Traditionally, people say it boils down to perception and there is no fix. You can't argue perceptions. You can't ever get them to agree. More than that, it's pointless to try, and only a frustrating spin down the toilet bowl when, against your better demons, you try to anyway.

Non-traditionally, you can separate out where and why there would be points of confusion between the parties. You can introduce context. You can run counterfactuals. You can ask questions that get increasingly specific until you get at the heart of the matter.

How does the white guy define hoodlums? If it's just black people, a “more right” coin can be dropped into the basket labeled “he's probably racist.” Did the white guy see something that could be construed as shady even if it wasn't? If so, place a coin in the basket that qualifies how we define what shady behavior looks like. You can do this all the way down until you describe the physics that hopefully leaves everyone rested and assured that we are all one and language does a terrible job of making us feel that way.

I've spoken about stories and characters before. How a story isn't complete until the last line. New contexts and decisions can do a lot of work in describing everything you think and assume about your subject. You can almost think of an author as arguing with you. Perhaps the same with a movie director. This person is a killer, this person is a rapist, this person is the epitome of evil, and yet why are you rooting for them? Why is the memory of what they did for another character still on your mind while you're watching them slaughter a room? It's easy, in my estimation, to empathize with the complex nature of being a human animal in thinking about our relationship to media.

Now, what happens when we bring it into the real world? Does Tony Montana feel as evil and despicable as your ex? Provided it wasn't amicable, of course not. And don't get lost in thinking it's because one is fiction and one ripped your beating heart from your chest and threw it on the ground. A documentary depicting similar acts will lean your feelings more Scarface than break up.

In the real world, we're very quick to assert the “truth.” Here I feel it important to reintroduce the idea that, somehow, I'm not people. Maybe too often, I'm accused of asserting the capital T “Truth” about a situation. I don't know why this is. One, I think I'm human, and humans are impressive failures at getting things right. Hence why I write. Two, I think people, innocently enough, overlap claims about me or what they've assumed about me with their perception of me. After this happens, it becomes absolutely impossible, in my estimation, to breach understanding. Three, I'm semi-constantly trying to concede what I can while either asking questions, or offering to clarify where I was coming from.

And wouldn't you know it, number three is precisely where I fuck up...because I'm not people.

One thing I will never try to argue is your perception. If you think I'm negative or mean, I'm negative or mean. What I will try to pick at is the underlying assumptions or behavior you're using to inform your perception. Unfortunately, people do not separate the two, and it gets me in trouble.

When I'm told that I'm any number of damming sentiments, as far as people are concerned, I’m told it's best for me to shut up and accept it. The more and the quicker I accept, the deeper friends we'll be. As a not person, I habitually take issue with having my being recited to me while I'm perfectly aware that I wasn't in fact thinking or doing what you think I was. I don't mean I perceived differently than you, say in observing the beauty of a sunset, I mean, when you call me an asshole for not appreciating the sunset, I trust you think I'm an asshole, I don't trust you knew what I was thinking about the light it was providing me to read my book.

It boils down to skepticism. When you root yourself in skepticism, you're not so fast to make judgments about what someone else is thinking or feeling. You're not quick to describe their behavior in terms that automatically puts them in a defensive place. I accept that I often express negative comments and it weighs on people. I do not accept that I'm the only person responsible for any situation involving more than myself.

Here, a conversation about comfort often comes up. I've been told it's hard to talk to me because people have failed in conveying something they had a problem with. There's further decisions or conversations to be had here. Please, program me. Like my friend who didn't like racist jokes, tell me I can't say them around you, when I do, we have a clear and present failure point and you know I truly don't respect where you're coming from (provided it's not just a lapse in memory). We can then depart without mud-slinging and I can take proper responsibility.

There's a deep, deep, irony in what happens when I'm told I don't try. Whether it's try to understand or try to listen or try to empathize. While I certainly have the, likely damaged brain, that can't easily or fluidly express emotion, I do not know who else is willing to ask dozens of questions or write hundreds of blogs in trying to get to the bottom.

It's unhelpful to get into pissing matches about whether someone sounds defensive, is assertive, or embodies some other personality quirk that makes them a tough nut to crack. I literally have no control over how you feel. I can't stop your assumptions. I'll stumble over your particular definitions. I don't know how much slack you'll give me until it's just long enough to hang myself. When I do control things, we're not friends, we're not equals, I'm playing with you. We're going to approach conversations and social situations with different experiences and expectations, but in the retelling and understanding of those things, we can remain clear and positive in our language. We can give the benefit of the doubt before dipping our recollections into judgmental qualifiers. I admit I’m not perfect at it either. 

That deep, deep, irony applies when I'm told I don't empathize. The problem, no one believes I've learned how to fix those terrible horrible feelings that are used to relate all of my flaws to me in ways I won't do back to you. I'll accept what I did or said. I'll accept you didn't like it. I won't easily accept we're agreed on how we should approach the word “negative” or “defensive.” It immediately disavows how I feel while claiming how important feelings are. If yours matter, so do mine, let's stop labeling them and unpack them. Let's stop blaming each other for lapses in self-control.

I want to stress. This is part of the experiment of being in relationships and having friends. When I want to do what Byron does, we won't be friends. If I need to be a happy puppy bot who only says positive and reassuring things, tell me. Then accept I'm now your conventional human robot and we'll be best of “friends.” You'll feel better. I'll stop feeling like I need to defend myself, or patience and clarity, and you'll never feel another fight or challenge from me again.

I think many of life's cliches come out of the hopeless thrown up arms related to conversation. One of my cliches is to say people kinda like me for a bit and then they get bored or angry and disappear. I'm not naïve, blind, or unwilling to change, I'm desperately looking for other people to take responsibility for themselves and lay out what they want of me coherently. I don't want an act. I don't want to be coddled. And I don't want to pretend. I mostly don’t want to be told that I’m liked or accepted or understood when each time that’s put to a test, it fails. It doesn't have to be a fight. It doesn't have to be stressful. I'm not gonna yell or throw things. But it has to be understood. It has to be a mutually beneficial agreement. I don't want to be the king of my friends, I want to be their equally flawed, but equally lovable asshole, until they tell me otherwise.

No one wants to be a blog? Well, I'm a blog. I'm almost 500 blogs of stress-induced pursuing of empathy, understanding, and connection that I didn't have to mold. No word will bust your ear drum, spit in your face, or raise its fist. Everything, every conversation, can be broken down and explored and be made boring so we're not evil manipulative missed connections, but responsible accountants for our feelings provoking a potentially more fulfilling and accepting reality. If we can't play that game, consider me not playing yours.

[387] Put Your Dukes Up

Why do we fight?

Immediately there are easy answers. To defend yourself from harm. All-consuming fear that makes you lash out uncontrollably. Insecure conditions leading to competition for resources. At the basic animal level, the picture is pretty clear. We're still programmed to “win or die.”

I suppose I'm more intrigued by the more trivial realm. We battle with ideas. We don't all get an hour-long spot with a moderator, and often there reaches a level of emotional investment that the more I contemplate it, the more I wonder why it's there.

Perhaps I'm just losing a sense of self. The more I learn, almost in fact with each thing I learn, I become more and more aware of how many branches led up to that thing. It's easy to simply theorize, “well of course everything is connected.” The picture becomes eerily clearer though with each new puzzle piece. Significant parts of you are tales of history and politics you find yourself intimately familiar with.

I suppose you have to have a charge. Something that is tied to a need maybe. If you don't express your idea, you'll go through very real emotional pain. You'll suffer depression or anxiety. Your body now physically reacting and making you push. You're not just convinced something is true, you think that the implications are so big they have a direct line to your well-being. Your fight is to keep something from dying.

There's a pattern in debates. Whether I'm watching a philosopher and linguist meddle over the usage of the word “creativity” or two girls fight about whether there should be feminists, almost immediately the same things happen. Semantics. You're rarely even in that much opposition to anyone. If 20 minutes of an hour debate is devoted to “well when I say cunt bag I really mean raving lunatic,” you know, to assuage fears of appearing sexist or something, I feel the goal of the dialogue wasn't clear from the onset.

You've not only got the wordplay at the level of the topic, but you've got the political game of what you can get away with characterizing the other person as. Can you show them to be grossly misinformed, yet make it sting like you've called them an asshole? Probably not, but every other explanation you're gonna try. And if you like your combatant, or he's also a high minded intellectual who's barely present during the proceedings, you'll direct the volleys towards their weakest ideas or worst representatives of their camp.

It appears as if the real winner, every time, is the one who can get away with explaining their position whilst at the same time showing, either through body language or an inability to focus on whatever the main point was, that they're not really that emotionally invested. The facts speak for themselves as translated through their disposition. In the right crowd, skilled orators don't even need to be right.

It's why I sort of got bored with arguing. I think there needs to be a kind of shorthand impersonal form you should fill out before you ever get started. A clearly stated goal, a mutual acceptance of the question to be debated, and a sorting program to quickly skip past the built in stumbling points.

When you learn we're having the same religious “debates,” in practically the same words, that started thousands of years ago, it gets immediately boring. You know it's smarter to take up another method if you feel the compulsion to show someone they're wrong. But again, what's in it for you? Why does it initially stress you out? Why does it come packaged emotionally charged first, then you get too used to it, perhaps to the point of eventual complacency?

I suppose for me, it boils down to a perceived importance of ideas as they pertain to well-being. I argued religion because I saw religious friends justifying an abusive relationship of someone I cared about. I learned everything I could because I tied myself up in a crusade centered around her. These religious lies and happy-faced justifications had dramatic and inexcusable consequences. I couldn't “act” in a sense and like kick his ass or something, so I armed myself with knowledge to try and pull back the veil.

When I removed myself from that situation, the biggest fight I had in years involved business partners and assumptions. I was defending my hundred miles an hour thoughts about what I could achieve, and no one was going to take it from me. My partner at the time seemed motivated to undermine the foundation we built for it. This I arguably saw coming, it's detailed in a string of blogs somewhere, but I don't really yell, so it got bigger than I was anticipating.

Then other than getting attacked by the dooshy gay kid while being super drunk or the inevitable lover's quarrel, I retain my general low-key style. For anyone who's seen me drunk and engaging with something I find perplexing, I stress that asking a lot of pointed questions I don't equate with fighting. Which, it occurs to me, I've sort of lost the drive. Until two nights ago when Malibu's Most Wanted decided to sucker punch me at random, I wouldn't have thought you'd survive attacking me. I was more concerned with picking up my glasses.

It's not that I don't care, it's that I don't feel I have the right tools. I use words and videos and books. I simply want to aggregate and sort. But I don't have the people who operate like that. Or, I haven't incentivized them correctly is the more explicit statement. Combine this with perhaps too much security? Malibu got 3 shots to the head, but I certainly wasn't on my way to the pavement. I know I'm not made of glass and I know what I'm capable of.

I know leading by example is best. I know plugging people into an environment churns out the most immediate results. I know there's a way to engage with information that makes it proactive and useful and not a semantic nightmare. And apparently I know that none of that matters right now. That's why I'm not really fighting.

[212] Baby Put Herself In The Corner

This was a fight between (no longer) friends. Petty and annoying at the time. I find it hilarious today.

 Monday, February 22, 2010 at 6:30am

We will never form the kind of productive and thoughtful society that I fantasize about because of our feelings. More specifically, your feelings. Men and women are fickle. In my experience, my “friends,” you all, generally tend to see a different reality between us than I do. My life doesn’t depend on you. We either provide each other with some utility, have a history together, or kind of think the same in enough situations. I like this, I appreciate this, and I will keep it going as long as you want. The second my friendship to you is dependent on your feelings, we’re not going to work. I can’t hate the people you hate, merely because you hate them. I won’t damage my happiness or relationship with someone because you hold a grudge. That isn’t something a “true friend” who “respects” you would ask of you let alone expect without reason. Let’s highlight a scenario I feel relevant to the topic at hand.

Chris choked out Jvo. That one girl you let break your heart. One scenario, an act of physical violence was perpetrated against a girl, who’s my friend, for a slew of horrible reasons and childish bullshit. It’s reasonable for me to expect friends of mine to assess that kind of behavior as inappropriate and a reason to not want to associate with that person. I don’t hang with people who attack women, if you do, explain to me why and how the relationship is justified. I don’t endorse that behavior, I don’t respect that behavior. The latter scenario involves a boy and girl, some bad actions, but at the end of the day, you are responsible for your feelings about it. She didn’t stab you, you let her in. She didn’t make it her goal to hurt you by getting into a relationship, nor does she care to continue talking about it until you start drama by random insulting and bullshit texts.

Jvo, if and when you read this, you would be justified in giving me shit, not being my friend, and whatever else that distanced you and me if I was still cool with Chris, brought him around, and was trying to rub it in your face. Let’s remember, he choked you out. Correct me if I’m wrong Jvo, but you still talk to most if not all of your exes, except the one who’s tried to maintain his “best friend” status with Chris. I’m sure some bad shit had to go down for you to break up with them, but I know you see little utility in crying about it and trying to make you or your other friends hate them because you do.

Now you might be saying to yourself, “Nick, you dated Steev, are you still talking to her? You guys the best of friends?” And I would say, all too predictable, yet understandable. What you may not know is that I’ve told Steev that I had this crazy idea one day in the bathroom of Casa Brava that me and her could one day be cool again once I got over the fact that I did the same thing as the boy above, I let her in and tried to trust. I don’t blame Steev for that, I blame her for lying to me and being a generally fake as shit person, but I separate her being responsible about that fucked up-ness about herself, and my fucked up-ness about myself. This is why I have no respect for the games people try to play with me. I’ve been there, I get where you’re coming from, but it’s easy for you to simply state that I don’t care and am not a real enough friend for you. Okay, fuck off and die, I wash my hands of you.

Conversely, if you’re not retarded, give me the credit I deserve, and accept good reasoning, we’re usually happy together. As they say somewhere in the interwebs, zomg! What a concept. It’s crazy too, that I’ve gotten into it pretty heavily with other generally reasonable people, and even still manage to reach a middle ground even if it takes longer than I’d like. So, yes, I know how and why I’m conducting myself and where I’m at with my friends. No, I will not help you project your feelings and insecurities onto those relationships. Yes, I have at least one standing example of how you should conduct yourself and your life. No, I don’t necessarily respect or accept why you would “choose” to behave otherwise. This is why I’m a real person, and you are not. It’s not my fault

Also, I really hope this is one of those blogs that everyone manages to read, because I want to stress this point any time I’m talking at you. And yes, for whatever reason it is at you when you conduct yourself unreasonably. When I go out of my way to explain something to you, that is me being friendly. For someone who doesn’t give a fuck, it’s hard to really explain how annoying it is to watch myself type words you know you understand and are going to deny and argue back anyway. It’s viewed as pointless to me to try and sum up in a blog or two, or a few texts, the entirety of why you’re wrong or why I do in fact get where you’re coming from, but don’t agree. Why? This is part of my friendship towards you. When I take the time to denigrate my time for the sake of your understanding, you should learn to appreciate it. You don’t have to and that’s okay; I get on much quicker without treating you as a speed bump, but if you want to take it for granted, I’ll correct the discrepancy.

I want to make sure that I preface this next part with a disclaimer. If there are any questions, you really need to ask, because I’m almost certain it’s going to get at least marginally confused or come out not perfect and result in some negative feelings. The topic is need verses want. The statement is, I don’t need you. I don’t like it when people need me. I prefer to exist in a world of wants. I want there to be a rational actor behind the desire, a good reason behind the feeling, before it’s validated. If you are my friend it’s because I want to be friends, not because we are desperately attached to each other for leeching and feeling coddling. If I’m your friend who has any control over your feelings, you need to distance yourself from me. I’m good for what I’m good for, you’re good for what you’re good for, when we both recognize that, we get along fine. If I give you a ride, pay for a movie, let you eat my food, or let you take any of my time or resources for any reason whatsoever, that’s my utility towards you. That’s what I have to offer. That’s the only reason I matter. Any feelings you have about me or towards me, are yours to work out and/or discuss with me. It isn’t my goal to outright fuck with or hurt those feelings, but I will, and you will blame me.

I would think it stands to reason that if we are both providing each other with something, the feelings would tip in favor of positive and we never have to delve into the deep dark world of doubt and painful thoughts. ::shudders:: Not everyone agrees with this though. They want to pretend I care about their feelings in the same way they do. I don’t because I can’t do anything to change them. I can’t tell you how compelling they are for you, but I can say I’ve had compelling feelings. I won’t tell you I respect them for who they make you hate and what they help you enjoy, I’ll tell you I understand where you’re coming from, and have made a different choice. Your feelings matter to you. You deal with them. I’ll talk to you sure, I’ll try to help as long as you care to be friends, but you won’t drag me down with them. It works the other way too, no matter how happy you are, if I just got back from getting gang raped, I’m probably not going to enjoy your mood. But I still understand happiness and know I can get back there.

This is the kind of friend I am. This is not the kind of friend everyone is, or that most people are even capable of, at least in their own minds. Obviously, if you’ve managed to refrain from deleting me, the things I say must tend to make sense, or at least give you fuel to argue somewhere beyond my ears all the reasons I’m wrong. I don’t surround myself with people who always have to agree with me, they just have to be reasonable when they don’t.
”But Nick, your ‘reasoning’ always seems settle on something that leaves me feeling angry or you feeling self-righteous….”

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Written about a week ago · Comment · LikeUnlike

John Hartman

when will you stop hiding behind the illusion that you are "real?"

February 22 at 11:13am ·

Lucas Peterson

you say that when people don't agree with you they have to be reasonable... people make irrational decisions everyday but it isn't necessarily wrong. people make these decisions based on deeper feelings... feelings that you only get to by taking the risk of getting hurt... sure you can have the feeling of friendship and sorts with little risk but ... See Morewhen you dive into deeper feelings such as love there is a high risk of hurt, anger, hate, a many negative feelings... but yet people still choose to go that direction. although it may seem "unreasonable" people still do it... meaning there has to be some possible outcome, no matter how small it is, that ends well... it seems as though you close yourself off from these deeper feelings because there is that high risk of negative side effects.

i wont speak for jvo but the reason she most likely still talks to her exes is because on some level there was a deeper bond and although it has come to an end there will always be traces of that bond in her everyday life... weather she likes it or not, or anyone for that matter, when you have a deeper relationship it effects everyday of the rest of your life... it changes you as a person. this is not necessarily a bad thing its just an "effect" but by staying in contact with these people it helps to come to terms with the events that have transpired... when 'deeper feelings' are involved and a break up occurs it hurts... but by staying in contact those feelings are more likely to get better and you are able to find out why it happened and most of all you are able to focus on the things that were good.

you may not agree with this but its how i feel... it may be irrational to attempt to have a deeper more intimate relationship but i believe that it is worth it... it is worth it to risk being hurt and becoming angry to possibly and maybe have a relationship on the next level.

February 22 at 11:48am ·

Byron R. Turner II

Mr. Peterson, you attempt to make the argument that irrational decision aren't always the wrong choice. My one argument which has no rebut is that in being irrational, you are automatically in the wrong hence it being irrational. Rational is the only right choice and path, but rationality is not to be confused with morality which is in a totally separate realm.

February 22 at 12:41pm ·

Nick P.

John, when you will grow up and understand enough to take it for granted?

February 22 at 12:44pm ·

Nick P.

Luke,

I would have to say that I don't think deeper feelings are necessarily irrationality, if anything a hyper rationality concerning a world you create for yourself. I don't think it is unreasonable to want or feel like you're in "love", but if the feelings get blamed, when feelings have to be manifested and dwelled upon through thought, that's when it becomes unreasonable.

I can understand why you think I close myself off. I would have to say that this isn't exactly the case, but I take much care and guard against letting my feelings go awry. More importantly, I try not to let them help me persuade myself to make bad decisions. Every person I meet and try be friends with is a risk. Some throw tantrums and are eager to piss away that friendship, some calmly and logically explain to me what they think or how we may differ and why. You really have no idea what that means to me, thank you.

Your thoughts on Jvo's reasons are part of the reason I used her as an example. I agree.

But ya, ultimately I don't think it's irrational to want a "deeper," whatever that means to the individual, relationship.

February 22 at 12:57pm ·

Lucas Peterson

well nick, i agree that there is some risk in creating a friendship... my point is that the more feelings that are put into a relationship, the higher the risk of hurt.
also, i'm not saying that you close yourself of, just that you are very careful about feelings you show... more so than others... not that that is a bad thing, some people show more emotion and some people are more resistant

byron,
i'm only saying that from an outside perspective many decisions that are based on feelings such as love or hate seem irrational but to the person making the decision may seem totally rational... its completely based on perspective.

February 22 at 1:04pm ·

Nick P.

Things you don't do when you're being reasonable:

1. Text "bitch" to your ex when you take the fact that she came to a party with her boyfriend as a threat.
2. Get pissed at one person, me of all fucks, for their interaction with your ex when you've known how I've felt about the situation every time the topic has come up. (Disavowing our friendship when you first heard me say I'm still going to be her friend would have kept you consistent and reliable.) Not to mention, another real mother fucker like Luke, who invited her to his party will probably never hear a word out of you.
3. Refrain from actually answering direct and useful questions like "tell me why I should hate the people you hate" with abstract and indirect bullshit like "real friends" would "respect" me more than that.

I'm real because no matter your petty feelings, I'm still going to call you a whiny little girl when you act like a fucking whiny little girl. Pouting, needing "warnings," random unprovoked texts, flyers in the the dorm halls, etc. You don't become a topic of interest or care until you put your bullshit out there for people to get pissed at it. This is what's happening. This is the reality. If you have something more clear, or more helpful to add, you know how and what you have to say, but you're hung up on some bullshit insecurities and immaturity. I don't play these games. I won't give you any room. That's the best I can do as a real friend.

February 22 at 1:07pm ·

Lucas Peterson

and that would be the difference between how john and jvo handle the presence of an ex boyfriend/girlfriend

jvo handles it and comes to terms with it weather she likes it or not rather than since you dont like the situation you just get mad every time she appears... deal with it, move on, get over it, just do whatever it is you need to do to to come to terms and stop getting shitty when no one else hates her like you do

February 22 at 1:14pm ·

Nick P.

Luke,

Aha, see this is an interesting point where we may differ. I don't think there are "amounts," if you will of feelings in general that get put into things. I am the deepest of friends with people who were well established individuals and thinkers well before I knew them. The more they realize, are open towards, independently come to and discuss with me, the closer I am with them. The more "risks" I'll take in telling them things and being honest with them.

I think what most people describe as compelling love for example, is a perpetual thought pattern. I love this person, they are so beautiful, I feel not alone, they are so funny, that reminds me of them, that smells like them, I'm afraid or angry at the idea of not being with them...so no so forth. Each thing an independent enough thought enough for an opportunity to break the cycle. You may not be able to erase the physical things that engaged when a memory or thought about that person comes up, but how you think about those feelings and what's happening to you can garner better decisions.

February 22 at 1:18pm ·

Lucas Peterson

well i agree with the last part "you think about those feelings and what's happening to you can garner better decisions" part of life is using the things that dont go the way you would have liked to help make sure that doesnt happen again.
i'm not saying that there are "amounts" of feeling but there is an amount of effort that you purse each feeling with and sometimes to make a feeling or relationship to become stronger, considerable effort is needed and sometimes it may be worth it other times it may not

February 22 at 1:22pm ·

Nick P.

I can agree with that basically. I would just be a little confused on the metric used to gauge and talk about the strength of that feeling.

February 22 at 1:25pm ·

Byron R. Turner II

Mr. Peterson, I glad we can both agree that the rational choice can seem irrational and it is based perspective or moral philosophy. You however itiallily made the case for irrationality being the right in some cases, you simply changed you position in your clarification, however I like you new position and am glad you came to that conclusion. Kudos to you!, not many people would even make the attempt to change a bad position.

February 22 at 1:59pm ·

Lucas Peterson

that is an excellent question nick... maybe voltage created in the brain from thinking times 1/3 of the calories burned during effort divided by the amount of resources used (ie money/goods) so it would be some number with the unit caloric watts per dollar... :-P

February 22 at 2:34pm ·

John Hartman

Unprovoked? Nick, you instigate way more than people care to argue. i shouldn't; but i still have a problem with julie, and you know this. A "real" mother fucker wouldn't be a dick about it. And after everything i've done for u the least you could do for me is warn me. I don't mind that she was there, i mind that you brought her and that the first thing you said to me was "get over it". Obviously you don't give a fuck about me. I don't talk shit about you, yet you have so much time to insult me to my ex and my friends. Fuck You.

February 22 at 5:31pm ·

Nick P.

I've been telling you to get over it, and I'm still correct for doing so. You started being a dick, your refusal to stop behaving immaturely is what asked me to be a dick. How petty a thing to be someone's ride to a party. I'm done explaining shit to you.

February 22 at 7:46pm ·

Nick P.

Let's take a vote: anyone who thinks John should get over it...and less I point out this line. "i shouldn't; but i still have a problem with julie, and you know this." An admittance that he is wrong and still manages to think "get over it" is the worst thing you can say towards someone in that situation.

Or, should he hold his grudge and continue to give me shit because I have a relative tough love and little care to be bogged down by the past attitude.

1. Get over it
2. Keep bitching

Yes, this is interactive, it'd be great if you all responded.

February 22 at 8:04pm ·

John Hartman

To be quite honest i am fond of option #2...

But nick, this isn't about Julie. She may have been the start of this argument, but it's about you... All this fighting is because of how much of an ass you are and how little respect you show your friends. I'm not moving into the house because you have proven to me that your personal motives drive you. I've gone out of my way this entire year to help you with all your ideas and all your projects, with only the hope to benefit our friends. You on the other hand judge your friends based upon their (quoting you) "utility." Now that i have seen the true extent of this belief, i feel it best to stop pretending you are who you say you are... (real).

"Real" is just an adjective you have associated with yourself to give you a false sense of power. Your reality is not the only one, and it is not the best one. It may have its upsides, but it lacks the true values and faith friendships actually entail. Luke was right when implying that there can be deeper connections between friends, that you personally can not break down and completely understand. Your emotional withdrawal from those close to you only shows that ultimately you can considering them all expendable. ... See More

Treat everyone how you may, but your influence over our friends is slipping as we are all beginning to go our own way. Reaching out to Julie and new people can only do so much until they too realize how little you actually care about them as individuals (rather than pawns in your chess game). Over all I feel bad for you, I mean I may be emotional and insecure at times, but at least I know I have people like Michele, Laura, and KT that will always care. The day your thoughts get the best of you; who will actually care?

February 22 at 9:40pm ·

Julianne Elizabeth Stelzer

I do believe that despite what one's own personal definition of 'real' may be, real is essentially a term that can be coined in favor of being true to ones own self. We are all, in said reality, real and I don't believe that that is even an arguing point. As long as you can be honest with yourself and where your morals/priorities lie, there is no sense in trying to prove yourself otherwise. Nick is very real. He understands (while not everyone may agree with the views, connections and relationships that he forms and thoroughly supports) where he stands amongst those he associates with and how he views the world. I am very real. I as well know who I can consider my friends, acquaintances, and otherwise, and on what level I can connect or choose to connect with them. Likewise, John is real. Damnit, trying to disprove someone's own reality is like having the nonsensical arguement that 'this spoon does not really exist.'
Naturally, ones own reality and sense of realness is going to regulate how we associate with one another. On a personal level, I have no problem with the theory of forgive and forget because I tend to see the goodness in most people that makes me want to continue associating with them.
The prospect of making meeting new people, new ideas, new faces simply astounds me. Submerging myself in others ideas of the world and of friendships and relationships.
It is unfortunate that someone could expect something of another in return for simple favors, however. Given the circumstances, I am never ceased to be amazed that a 'true' friend could ask another friend to disown their friend and think it a plausable idea simply because he believes he is of more worth value than the other. The reason we form friendships is because each person means something to us. We maintain these friendships because each new person contributes something to our lives that wasn't there before. It is only when this contribution becomes a nusense and in-fact causes us or conversely, causes the other person, hardship rather than pleasure that we choose to break these bonds.
Alas, it becomes difficult to find the line between friendship and possession when one tries to put a price on their acquaintances.

February 22 at 10:01pm ·

Julianne Elizabeth Stelzer

p.s. not to make light of a 'serious' situation or anything but I almost broke out into song...why can't weeeeeeeee be friiieeends, why can't weeeeeeeee be friends, why can't we be friiieieieieiends. XD

February 22 at 10:10pm ·

Nick P.

"I'm not moving into the house because you have proven to me that your personal motives drive you."

I'm pretty sure I talk about my selfishness damn near every day. I don't want you to move into the house; I'm not a babysitter.

"You on the other hand judge your friends based upon their (quoting you) "utility."

Yes, and I base my views on myself as having a utility to them as well. You read that whole paragraph right? I fail to see how this negative.

"It may have its upsides, but it lacks the true values and faith friendships actually entail."

Hating Julie for you is not the kind of faith I want. Not that I want faith.

"Your emotional withdrawal from those close to you only shows that ultimately you can considering them all expendable"

Only as expendable as they view me.

"Treat everyone how you may, but your influence over our friends is slipping as we are all beginning to go our own way."

Did I not just have a conversation with you about getting away from people and starting a new thing? Again, what else can you pull from your ass to haphazardly frame as an attack? And say they are going their own way. Good! I don't want fucking zombie friends.

"....they too realize how little you actually care about them as individuals."

I only care about individuals. There are so few and frequently so depressingly flawed, but at least they're individuals. You can keep as many insecure, scared, and hypocritical friends as you want to make you feel comfortable.

"The day your thoughts get the best of you; who will actually care? "

If my thoughts ever get to me as badly as you've shown your feelings get to you I only hope one of them has the balls to recite the mantra "whiny little bitch."

February 22 at 10:28pm ·

Nick P.

Julie,

When I talk about real I mean honesty and personal responsibility.

So, when I say something like "John, I'm going to be friends with Julie" I take responsibility for my friendship with you and being honest with him. Contrast that with him admitting he shouldn't have a problem with you, but will maintain one anyway for attention and drama, and there seems to be an obvious disconnect. Yes, this is how a real child acts. Yes, this is "real" drama for people with no spine and common sense about how to take care of themselves. But it's not a real individual I can respect. I am not trying to disprove his reality, I'm calling his actions within it ridiculous and pointless, as evidenced by his own statements.

"On a personal level, I have no problem with the theory of forgive and forget because I tend to see the goodness in most people that makes me want to continue associating with them."

And you'd think someone who has such a "huge deal" with you would take advantage of such a philosophy, work it out, and learn to shut the fuck up.

"...when one tries to put a price on their acquaintances."

Apparently John only thinks he's worth some building experience, homemade wine, lights, and a bar. And you know what, he's doing a hell of a job showing it.

February 22 at 10:37pm ·

Helen Morris

I must say (1.) and I agree wholeheartedly with Julie. Whats is real? But being true to yourself, your (gasp) feelings, and your thoughts. And actually listening to your thoughts and feelings instead of being a mindless zombie who swings with whatever the crowd swings with. (Baa! BAA!) I think Nick is very "real", and can brag about that as much as he damn well pleases. I think that Nick probably listens to his feelings harder or better than most people do, and this is why he may seem so disconnected from them.

Let me try to put out an example to make this more clear; girl of random name (anna) meets boy of random name (jack). Anna is absaloutly infatuated (feeling) with Jack, she thinks the sun shines out of his ass, she is extremely excited when he even looks her way, and she claims she is "in love" with Jack. Rather than examining her feelings, thinking them through, figuring out who Jack actually is, etc... She throws herself at him blindly. Jack quickly spews out a few easy lies about loving her back, has sex with her and never talks to her again. Easy come, easy go.

How "real" is Anna? Is throwing yourself blindly to the curb at every new and exciting "feeling" all that admirable? Sounds like innocence and if repeated, stupidity to me. It doesn't take more than a day in middle school to know that infatuation is NOT love, and to see that the extreme adrenaline rush that comes with does not garuntee you everlasting happiness if you don't freaking find out who you are "in love" with first.

Now lets look at not-so-random-name (Nick). Lets pretend Nick is falling in love ((teehee)), how do you think it will happen? Will his heart flip-flutter at the sight of some new girl until he has to ask her out, and then, LO AND BEHOLD! He turns into a blushing emotional rollercoaster, just panting at her heels? ORRRR.....Do you think he might decide to himself one day that he really would like to have one person to spend his life with...and then some day (much later) he would find a woman who was intelligent, "real", and fit into his lifestlye....and then he would follow through?
'
(Idk Nick, you tell me!)

However, I'm guessing (just guessing) that Nick probably isn't all that keen on having one woman to deal with 24/7. So he probably is not exactly "looking", so, were a girl to come along who he was infatuated with, he (just guessing) would probably try to figure out why she made him feel that way, maybe get to know her and find out if she was actually all that great....figure out she is human, and than see that this is just an infatuation and not all that exciting to him.

Now that (in my cute little example) we see that Nick (P.) NOW is listening to what he wants, following through, figuring out his thoughts, ideas, FEELINGS, and sorting through them as such...

Riddle me this, Is Anna or Nick more "Real"?

February 22 at 10:47pm ·

Nick P.

"I've gone out of my way this entire year to help you with all your ideas and all your projects, with only the hope to benefit our friends."

I couldn't let this one go. No John, you want to help because you desperately and unending want people to like you. I stress desperately. You hear the comments and you see the looks back when you act like a childish asshole, and you think that by giving them alcohol or being "the playful cool guy" they'll just accept it and never give you as much shit as you deserve. Honestly, with this comment I could crack your idiot skull. The main reason I would ever call you a friend is because I thought you genuinely cared about other people. Now I see you just need them as a crutch to reinforce your pathetic life. You'll be lucky if your shit isn't sitting in the street waiting for you.

February 22 at 10:49pm ·

Helen Morris

P.s. youa sucky D.J. Mr. John! :D <-----my and="" comment.="" font="" immature="" much="" rude="" thought-out="" very="">

February 22 at 10:52pm ·

Michele Haas

I realize that in entering this cozy little 'let's judge Nick's friends in open court' blog that I'm opening my self up to the same ridicule and attack that you feel is necessary to prove your points but honestly I don't care. I'll take the literary rape of my person I'm sure will follow. I'll be a 'real motherfucker' and step up and say that though I'm sure I'll be seeing you a lot for what remains of this semester, seeing as we run in the sames circle of friends, I have no desire to be your friend and want you to know you shouldn't think me yours. Now I could rant about all the reasons I've come to this point with you but that's your forte not mine and I think I'd truly dislike myself afterwards. You should just know that you fucked up when you chose between Julie and John and then proceeded to rage that it was his own fault. I'm not saying you chose the wrong person (to each his own) but I'm saying you never needed to take it here. Learn to listen and give consideration to your friends like they do to you when you need it, and yes Nick you may be a person I don't respect but you are a person with basic human social needs don't kid yourself, and maybe you could have kept them both and not proceeded to show everyone whose read this how ugly and condescending you can be. Peace.

February 22 at 11:02pm ·

Nick P.

Now now Helen, John is much better now than the trial by fire he had at those parties. And I kinda have to totally agree with and like your analysis Helen. Mad props.

February 22 at 11:09pm ·

Helen Morris

Fair fair, You are quite right, I have not attended any parties as of late. Which is why that counts as quite immature and rude, and not all that thought-out.

February 22 at 11:12pm ·

Nick P.

I didn't choose between both of them. I chose both of them. I didn't take it here, he did. I just wanted him to shut up, get over it, and grow up. This is what happens when you challenge a child. I can't help him getting emotional.

I gave a ride, and hung out for a couple hours after a party with a friend. John didn't like that, look at all the bullshit to follow.

February 22 at 11:18pm ·

Andrei Vajiac

When I read this insanely long dialogue (only because I was really bored) there is only one thought that came to my mind, if nobody minds me saying so: this is stupid. Completely and utterly stupid. I would like to bring it to the attention of the rational people out there that irrationality is sometimes a disease that cannot be cured and the irrational (people) will many times remain that way, drawing irrational conclusions from their irrational presumptions and further justifying them with more irrational claims. Sometimes you cannot change someone's opinion and are just wasting your time by trying to do so. Nonetheless, I will attempt to give my own two cents.

Please don't get me wrong by my initial comment. I only think this conversation is stupid when I look at the timeframe it has encompassed. John, if you don't mind me saying, you dated Julie a year ago, maybe a bit less, but that is all over and done by now. It is dead, in fact, if that word holds more meaning for you. You are quite aware that you two will never be on those kinds of terms again like you were in the past. I'm sure you're also aware that both of you, due to some twist of fate, have been hanging out with many of the same people during the last year. I think you should realize, at least by this point, that it would be a better idea for you to let go. You said it yourself, you should get over her. So why not? The ability to have problems and deal with them, whether on a personal level or not, without causing grief for your friends is something you need to learn to do. That is called maturity. When you are mature, you don't push your problems onto other people and expect them to deal with them, you learn to handle them yourself. Please don't take this as an attack on you, John, because it is not. I just don't understand how you can be so adamantly against "making up" after all this time when you have seen how your drama affects the group dynamic (and apparently not in your favor). If you can't get over it, that's a personal decision for you to make, and in that case I feel I speak for everyone when I say "fuck off". Nobody (that I am friends with at least) enjoys the drama and strife that kind of situation brings. If you can get over it, then maybe you'll be on your way to becoming a rational human being.

Don't get me wrong though. I'm not saying that I hate you, John, or that I don't think you can become rational, I just don't think the way you have been acting is conducive to a normal relationship between friends. Even you can see it's causing problems, maybe it's time for a change.

Further, to Nick, I don't exactly agree completely with your definition of friendship, I'm sure there are some semantic things I have issues with, but the overarching idea is something I can accept. The idea that friends have a sort of "utility" is something that everyone should realize is a truth of life. You call people your friends because of a certain reason, they provide you with a service, help you in times of need, or just purely provide you with an escape from the shit you have to deal with on a daily basis for a few hours. That is their "utility" as alien as the term may sound. If someone has no "utility" for you, they don't end up being your friend, and that's that.

On another note, as for friends being expendable, all I have to say is... well... DUH. If anyone cares to tell me right now, that if one of their friends turned out to be fickle, backstabbing, and in essence, not a true friend, they would just fall over and die is a liar. Of course friends are expendable. People are your friends because they provide you with some sort of happiness in your life, whatever that may be. If that happiness is taken away, what is the point of them being your friend anymore? None.

And as for anybody that is not driven by personal motives... what are you driven by? If you have no personal drive you will get nowhere in this life. Therefore the comment that Nick is driven by personal motives is not one I would take as an insult, if I were you Nick... I'd take it as a compliment. :)

February 22 at 11:26pm ·

Nick P.

Michele...,

I suppose there is no best way to go about this. You're one of the friends John considers himself closest to. I wonder why that is? You're someone who feels guilty or trashy for admitting she likes to fuck and make out with her friends, and he's someone who doesn't want to be judged for his uncontrollable feelings. I wonder the nature of your relationship; it really boggles the mind.

My friends, my actual friends, despite how many people are secretly or openly pissed off with how this has all transpired, are at the very very least honest with themselves. If I refrain from making a comment or calling you out on some bullshit that is so highly ridiculous I can barely stomach it, it's because of me saying, I'd prefer to talk about a situation instead of belittling and ridiculing it.

John, and now you, choose pretend this isn't the case. You think I get off on pointing out the obvious, and holding people to some remote standard that I still have to choke down as acceptable. This is why I don't consider you a friend. Fuck (have sex with) everyone, be upset with me because you're the kind of "true friend" that will confuse a situation for the sake of John's feelings. Rape your intelligence and life on the B school track. I don't give a fuck because you don't, not because it makes me feel good to surround myself with that level of ridiculousness and be the ugly pious asshole who's so much better than it all.

I can't exactly blame you for not reading previous posts, after all you don't want to be my friend, but I've digressed for hours about my basic human social needs, so if secretly to yourself you wanted to learn and know what you're talking about, you can go through and get into my mind.

February 22 at 11:40pm ·

Javon Renne Washington-Brown

JAYVO HAS NOW ENTERED THE CHAT. BRACE FOR IMPACT. MAY CAUSE EXTREME REALIZATION OF ONES SELF AND COULD POSSIBLY LEAD TO MIND ALTERING STATUS OF MINDSETS. PLEASE SEEK OUT: SEAT BELTS, KLEENEX, AND BROWN PAPER BAGS USED FOR HYPERVENTILATION IF SAID REALITY CHECK OCCURS.

February 22 at 11:47pm ·

Nick P.

Drei,

"...there is only one thought that came to my mind, if nobody minds me saying so: this is stupid. Completely and utterly stupid."

Lmao, god I agree soooo hard.

I'm so glad I there's nothing I have to argue against in all that Drei, lol thank you for another reasoned perspective.

We can go over definitions any time, it's rather hard to encompass everything especially when the topic becomes too far removed and disgruntled.

February 22 at 11:48pm ·

Michele Haas

Please don't tag me. I don't want to be associated with this shit.

February 22 at 11:48pm ·

Nick P.

See that thing I said about personal responsibility? You just missed an opportunity right there Michele.

February 22 at 11:51pm ·

Michele Haas

Whatever. I don't need to justify myself to you. I know who and what I am I when I falter I have real friends that let me know hard core. Take care of your own shit before you take on everyone elses.

February 22 at 11:53pm ·

Andrei Vajiac

Nick,
I would be glad to go over definitions with you at some point, and it's my pleasure to provide you with my logical (at least I think so) opinion. Unfortunately the reason I fail to comment on these most of the time is that the arguments end up being so long and convoluted that I just have no idea where to start unravelling the crap most people write down and fail to see their own fallacies in, much less do I have the motivation to do so. Rather, I prefer conversations in person but alas, I am not in b-town to be able to do so and unfortunately I don't think all the above parties would be willing to get together for a nice sit-down conversation about this topic. Even if that were the case I get the feeling things would be thrown, and broken (note that the "things" thrown and broken could be people as well as possessions) and I can't honestly say that faced with utter stupidity I would not get the urge to throw things :: read people :: myself. :P

And just so I'm clear, John, I never said you don't have the right to still be upset with Julie. That is your right as a being with thought, be it rational or not. However, you do not have the right to impose your opinions on others or to blame them for not taking your side. If your personal opinions were just your own and stayed there, nobody would have an issue. The fact that you get upset and ruin the mood of the group sometimes is what gets people to be upset with you like this. We have no right to make you change your personal opinion. Conversely you have no right to cause problems within the group because your personal opinion differs from that of everyone else. Further, you have no right to be shitty to Julie because you are still "upset" with her. Those actions are immature, childish, and do not bode well for you.

February 23 at 12:02am ·

Javon Renne Washington-Brown

If anyone, and i mean anyone, wants to start a "Hate on Nick P" Facebook group..It should Be ME. WHY? What makes me so special? Because I am Woman and maybe even Man enough to admit any discord btwn Nick P and myself. Those who feel the need to rant directly over facebook seem to have had these feelings for quite sometime. Dont be faulty and pretend these are new feelings You are having and then use this public forum to execute ur most inner thoughts.

Cut and dry. I've dealt with this situation several times in my life and what did I do... I got over it. Hell ive even had friends that i was LIVING with date ppl i was involved with and what did i do..i got over it. Its about adultdom. The main issue of this forum is that noone wants to take into account just how simple the "issue" is. There is no issue-its made up compared to what realities lay themselves before us such as:
Most of the people posting in this i said MOST not ALL, will talk to tico upon his return knowing what he did to me. IM ALREADY OVER IT. I accept that that is how most people function. This situation on the other hand is nonexistent in my mind because it is a waste of human expressionism.

Nick P wants you all to realize that. He is calling attention to ur character flaw and that breaks you-He technically hasnt done nething. Didnt touch the girl has known her since high school etc etc. Ur mad at urselves not Nick.

P.S. I will post no further thought via this forum. Unlike most who have been posting I do not hide behind the safety of facebook to communicate my feelings. If you want to grow mentally and learn somethings you may not like about urself come chat. I wont totally massacre you, Ill give it to you as light as possible. 2600 dekist. Txts wont work neither will calling, just meet me.

February 23 at 12:18am ·

Andrei Vajiac

aww damn... but Jayvo i'm so far away! I'll come visit as soon as possible :)

February 23 at 12:27am ·

Nick P.

Jvo, I wish people could talk, but if they can't even take quotes and address a specific issue on screen, I hardly think they'll manage a discussion. I'm hedging my bets that they'll sink back into their relative holes and continue playing pretend.

February 23 at 1:08am ·

Nick P.

Michele, you allude to this "shit" that exists in some ephemeral realm that doesn't translate to me. I point out your actions, your feelings, your statements, you guys retort with "Nick, you're more fucked up for reasons I can't really explain than ANY of us." Don't explain yourself to me, I already get you, you don't like that.

If we were friends I would've told you that fucking around isn't something to be sad about. If we were friends I would've been able to explain to you the definition of hypocrite and trusted that you'd start to man up and adopt different behaviors. If we were friends you'd be the kind of person who actually believes the shit she says and could stick by her "real friend" via something as simple as being tagged in a note where she's arguing on his behalf.

You fail to realize how much of "my own shit" I've managed to take care of, and out of some sick sense of sympathy? empathy? hope? desperation? or combo of that and more try to find someway to relate it to you. And still I'll get shit on and called a bad friend. Still I get purposely misunderstood and avoided. Do you know how sickening this is?

February 23 at 1:35am ·

John Hartman

Nick, i haven't once said a single thing you didn't deserve. You have gone to far with this. I offer some semi-constructive criticism, and all you can do is attack every world i say while incorporating personal and uncalled for insults. Your pathetic.

February 23 at 4:33am ·

Nick P.

I've had my fill of your empty responses, so I'll be quiet for you...::silence::

February 23 at 10:25am ·

Jacob Jerome George

Although this is late I'm going to comment anyways, mostly because I know all parties and can help John understand Nick a little better.

First things first I'm going to sum up everyone's dialogue, so here we go:

Bryon is being Bryon and I didn't read Andrei's comments.

*Helen:* Emotion can cause us to do irrational things but it doesn't mean you cannot learn for the mistakes based on emotion. My favorite part of her comment, "she thinks the sun shines out of his ass" hahaha

*Michele* is very upset and defending her relationship with John. She is being what her and John consider to be a "good friend."

*Julie* wants everyone to be friends and buy Beatles' Albums.

*Luke* is defending emotions, what I consider the greatest and only reason to exist. I was a one point going to write a book for adolescences that outline every possible way to avoid common mistakes and speed up emotional maturity; however, life is nothing without experiencing it for yourself.

I know Nick sticks to his logic (everything Nick has said here he has said before) and that is the tool that Nick uses to make decisions. Believe it or not me and Nick are on the same page in a lot of respects and I understand the shit he had to go through to be who he is today, although I will say I do disagree with how harsh Nick is at times...

*Nick* even though it can be painful to watch, you have to let people make mistakes for themselves, it's how people truly learn. This is best left for another discussion.

*Javon:* I believe that a face to conversion is always best, but I must apologize for my distance; even though you all know this is not normally the case. She also empathizes that being civil with someone despite differences is a part of maturity.

*John:* I'm not here to attack you and Nick (in his own way) isn't either. Nick wants everyone to better understand themselves and skip the bullshit, yesterday.

That being said, John, having a problem with Julie is not productive and from what I've seen it has divided people. John it is natural to want your friends to have the same enemies as you. Nevertheless, I have made it a point for some time now to individually evaluate situations and slap a friend upside the head if they had done something stupid and are bitching about the outcome. You are in that position. You don't have to be stoic to be civil with those around you.

I want you (John) to be as honest as possible as to why Julie being around you truly bothers you.

February 23 at 5:18pm ·

Erin Seri

After all I've ranted about people needing to shut up and stop getting involved (cuz really, was there any reason for anyone besides Nick and John to be having this discussion? No. Was there any reason it even needed to be on facebook? No. And I've told Nick that, but anyway) I will finally comment to say that Jake George is the only person who's butted in who I have not gotten annoyed with. Granted, I think there are some things in the above statement that aren't part of the core issue or agree with people I disagree with - whatever. I am so not here to get involved in the fray or argue or even discuss or whatever. But at least Jake George can say something that doesn't piss me off cuz he's at least trying and largely or ate least remotely understanding where everyone is coming from, and I thought he needed to be commended. Thank you, Jake George. Come back soon.

Everyone else can continue to shut the fuck up - like I've been saying for probably 24 hours by now.