[1192] Babble Babble Bitch Bitch

I need to try to identify another pattern. A few days ago I felt I had good examples at different scales of what I was looking for. Of course, I got busy or distracted, and now I need to try and claw away what I thought I had from my latest mental fog.

I’m often curious about “transformation” or “evolution” in people. Elon Musk is someone I felt immediately drawn to when I first saw him on like 60 minutes back in college matter-of-factly talking about what society needed to do to not kill itself. As someone who considers himself an adept reader of people’s bullshit, I didn’t sense that he was coming from anywhere insincere, and at the time, the proof was what had so far been accomplished at his companies.

Jordan Peterson also occupied a prominent spot in me being interested in what he had to say or how he arrived there. There’s hundreds of hours of him not being a Christian or fascist apologist, notably, before his star began to rise out of control and the peaks of his illness were reached.

In my life, I reflect on what brought me together with girlfriends, my best friends, work cohorts, or what I thought constitutes my family.

We’ve gone through, at least a rhetorical revolution, as it pertains to the fluidity of identity, the loci of power, and the nature of harm or what will save us.

Meanwhile, I feel like I’ve, overwhelmingly so, pretty much staid the same. That isn’t to say I haven’t “matured” or “tempered” or found ways to better emotionally regulate. It doesn’t mean I’ve continued to fight as vociferously for causes or actions I was particularly naive about. It just means my broadest lens has focused around the same things in spite of my environment.

There’s something that feels stable in me that I don’t recognize in the same way from other people.

The thing I do recognize in others is what we’re witness to from the likes of Jordan Peterson, Elon Musk, or our exes, but specifically the ones that, on paper and emotionally, made the most sense. The nature of the transformation feels almost impossible to account for, and people seem to only try decades later or after all the major players have died.

The word that keeps creeping in is “honesty.” The nature of the change I believe has to do with how you understand that word. I think most people understand it as some extension of the phrase, “Your feelings are valid.” It’s a very complicated and disingenuous phrasing that hides its arbitrary redundancy. I would say instead, “You have feelings.” When I see people struggle with what to do with their feelings, it’s often they wish to automatically suppress and obscure them. Perhaps that first phrasing is trying to make a persuasive argument that ignites your capacity to feel them altogether. I don’t know that it’s working.

I honestly don’t believe Elon Or Jordan started evil. I think they believe they are “deathly” honest. I think I had the same complex when I was younger, thinking “harsh” or “real” expressions of my opinion were the same thing as being honest. I would apply one exacting mode of determining the “objective truth” of a situation, and let the consequences be what they may. I wasn’t feeling necessarily insecure or scared or much of anything at all. I just didn’t care, because I was “right.” I wasn't prepared to accept, let alone be interested in embodying, the depth of my existential ignorance.

I think each step on the path to evil is the avoidance or ignoring of your conscious. You avoid and ignore by leaning into emotional expressions that act as justification. Whether it’s John Oliver tearing up on air, Jordan Peterson’s snarl, or your car-ranting TikTok star wanna-be, it’s the same dance away from what a more honest and accountable expression would look like. I think Elon knows the math doesn’t add up in crippling federal institutions for anyone but himself. I think Jordan knows it’s an embarrassing fascist inversion of the X-Men to compare them to Trump acolytes. I think the daily devotional resigned sentiments offered to me about the nature of a work environment, the future, or our responsibility to fix or work differently are driven by the same mechanism.

I don’t get the impression people know what they can trust about themselves. Or, they only trust the worst things about themselves. Or, they only trust their woefully incomplete conception about how the worst things about them actually play out. They know their anxiety is going to win. They know if they try they’ll fail and it will all have been a waste. They know which thing after thing doesn’t matter. They know they’re going to get too tired, or distracted, or someone in their life is going to object and dissuade. I’ve had thousands of conversations about what isn’t possible or what someone isn’t really like or capable of for every one about limitless potential for anything besides chaos.

I feel they’re all fundamentally dishonest. I think we’ve achieved our current levels of decadence because critical masses of people dragged perhaps their own predilections to lie to themselves kicking and screaming into a future they otherwise believed could be worked and fought for. I don’t think that internal investigation or discussion even has to do with the future. I think it has to do with asking yourself, what else are you missing from “right now.” What isn’t making its way into your conversation that’s just as true as the details of your complacent or complicit rut?

I think for Elon there’s a discussion about compulsivity, the coldness autism can inspire, and the danger of ego. I think for Jordan it’s his desperate longing to fit into something greater than he’s achieved through being an intellectual or via accident in bonding with his wife as children. I think he knows his story isn’t remotely typical or realistic, but he sounds so sure of himself when he’s excoriating modern attitudes and practices, no? At home, it was fairly easy for me to see the differences in disposition and, let’s say moral core, as to why a relationship wasn’t going to work. With family, I can see the placating apologetics employed to keep the peace. The catch-phrases at DCS and now the YMCA are all to do with “care” and “safety” devoid of discussions about demonstrated betrayals.

Capital or attention-based “success” is a unique form of capture. We’ve never had the kind of chance to transcend the lanes we’re born into that we do today, and we’ve never been able to witness the transformation so closely. Mostly, we’ve just been captured by our family, region, or work culture. Now, with so many new avenues competing for our attention and our unwillingness or inability to articulate how they work, I think we default to angry ambivalent animalistic survival modes of expression. That’s “me and mine.” That’s apologetics for sin. That’s cliches and average days because nothing more could or should be expected.

You can go back to my first writing, deeply emotional and angst-ridden 15-year old me lusting and confused and still find the things about me I consider my stabilizing core. I tread in obscenity and trying to be light-hearted. The title is:

“If You’re A Girl You Better Fucking Read This”

I’m curious and constantly asking questions.

“Okay, so this is like a call-out for the inner workings of the womanly mind.”

I’m responding to what I see as a self-destructive pattern.

“Over and over, I talk to my friends who have been in relationships that do nothing but fuck them square in the ass, and despite my warnings and suggestions, they still fawn over the assholes that fucked them over.”

I’m offering concrete examples of the behavior I think is wrong.

“If your boyfriend makes you cry, orders you to do things, or makes your friends and family uncomfortable... leave his ass now. It's plain and simple.”

Today, I stop being so prescriptive, and have had hundreds more interactions with people about domestic violence or emotionally manipulative dynamics, but at bottom, it speaks to a core belief I don’t think is unreasonable. It’s not evidence of a healthy dynamic to me if that’s the nature of yours.

I continue to lay out my “answers” and “harsh truths” about 90% of guys being in it for the pussy, and attempting to anticipate the feedback that often comes in from questioning girls as to why they’re excusing something.

I didn’t know the word “limerence” back then. I wouldn’t have copped to the writing being a passive aggressive way to trigger some form of introspection in my targets or side-building as I looked for ways to air dirty laundry. I knew my feelings were intense, I didn’t know how to address them, and it was occupying my thoughts in an unsustainable and compulsive way. Something broke, so I started to search through writing. I didn’t find a way to talk her into dating me. I found the world of information that wasn’t yet informing how I could understand myself against or in service to that world.

The fervor and fascism of pop-cultists and apologists rides the kind of energy I was on at 15. It’s totalizing. It’s self-reinforcing. It’s an artificial motivation bred from untempered inarticulate ignorance. It’s probably where the wisdom of “hate the sin, not the sinner” comes from and why so many are compelled by the idea that they have to give up their pathological behavior to something external. What’s juicier than the idea that the absolutely necessary sacrifice to find salvation is His problem, not mine?

I had to give up being “convinced.” I had to stop pretending I knew the truth in any form that I wasn’t actively manifesting or participating in. As long as I work, then the “deepest” or “most practical” truth is that I will more likely get the consequences of that work. If I’m working on the wrong shit, I will compound my problems. If I “believe” that which I’m unwilling to fight for or achieve, I’m playing a rhetorical game with myself in order to avoid responsibility. If I’m unwilling to define the nature of that work, from writing, to advocating and speaking at all, then I’m at the mercy of the people or plans that can account for my chaotic drag on the future.

No one is coming to save you. I don’t think you could recognize who’s even trying. They also can’t hammer for you what you need nailed to a cross. It’s not immigrants or trans people. It’s not the concepts of diversity, equity, or inclusion. It’s whatever is keeping you from being consistently curious, concerned about those getting fucked with, or capable of building the case that doesn’t depend on how passionately you can scream or cry through it.

[1151] Friendly Refiner

 A good portion of how I understand the world is extracted from conversations and observations on relationships. I’m a pretty big believer that you can get to know a ton about yourself through introspection, but it’s still less than half of the necessary information if you don’t invoke who is, has, or you’d like to be shaping you.

For many years, before I ever knew what it actually symbolized or its history, I wore a yin yang necklace. I was literally drawn to it, noticing it dangling from a display at the Lake County Fair when I was in middle school. To this day, 25-ish years later, I’ve never read that deeply into Chinese philosophy, because the interconnected and counterbalanced symbol itself pretty much matched my intuition. It helped to have a kind of reminder imprint.

Balance is a much different place from dependence. “Codependency” is when there’s an excessive emotional or psychological reliance on a partner, and the other enables. These are not distinct and discreet measurements when you’re attempting to assess “excessive,” and as a matter of basic existence, one might argue we psychologically rely on our loved ones, networks, or imbued sense of self bred from our culture.

One of the things I’ve had to practically discuss and work out is how to balance healthy doses of traumatizing and often nakedly destructive forces against the appropriate level of State intervention, or against an individual’s sense of self and safety and security. At DCS, with a policy for children to remain with family if at all possible, that’s remaining with a sometimes wild cast of characters. In addiction counseling, you get clients describing physically and emotionally abusive partner dynamics all the time, and yet, they’re so otherwise unstable, that the abuse becomes “less bad” than being alone.

I think this is a really hard thing to understand for most people. One reason, life might not be as bad as it definitely is if you’ve occupied a certain level of wealth for a certain level of time. The exact same kinds of drama and mental health issues do not play out the same between the people attending their remote counseling session from the bench they slept on, and the people who can go to adult summer camp indefinitely. If you tell a story of someone’s impoverished circumstances to a “regular” middle-class person, they’ll tell you and them exactly what to do based on their sense of horror about it all.

Thankfully, I’ve had limited exposure in my personal life with cop-show plot levels of relationship dynamics. It’s not zero, but it’s never been remotely close to chronic. This means when I’m reflecting on what I think a “healthy” relationship is, I have the prolonged explanations and explorations of dramatic incidents from my life. I also have the dynamics, few and far between, that have sustained my more positive and prescriptive behavior.

One of the places I’ve landed is the question, “Do they even treat you like a friend?” I’ve struggled with the word “friend” for a long time, but even my proved-to-be-superficial relationships were friendly in a way that I often see missing in people’s dynamics. It’s like a movie trope to see two outwardly hateful people speak terribly to one another or occupy their own physical space, and then something weird happens that sheds a light on their deep and abiding love for one another. I think that’s a horrible and entirely misleading picture.

You can’t really see how someone is being a friend if you don’t know what constitutes you being one. I have a knack for being everyone’s “not-therapist.” Being up my own ass, reading all the things I do, and desperately trying to cling to my life values each day has lent itself to an awareness and perspective that I’ve received a waterfall of feedback suggesting it’s helpful. Getting certified as an addiction counselor was a pretty natural extension of my practice already, and if I had the money I’d become a therapist just because.

I’m also “too giving.” I want to be wanted. So when you need something from me, I’m extremely likely to go out of my way or do anything I can to help. I’m so like this, that I can recall the handful of times I’ve ever told someone no when their issues had reached a point that I would no longer be able to balance.

These two pieces alone give me enough of the half of a relationship puzzle to inform whether or not I think you’re being friendly in return. I don’t think you need to be a not-therapist to me nor be willing to give me any and everything at the drop of a hat. I do think you need to respect and recognize those things about me, and not take advantage of them. What would taking advantage look like? Attempting to use me to justify, instead of explore and fix, the things on your mind. Attempting to squeeze my effort and goodwill until I’m threatened financially or my life ends up in danger.

The third thing about me is that I’ve developed a really good ability to read and connect with people. That’s a deadly tool in the hands of someone who isn’t concerned with being transparent, friendly, or balanced. It follows then that I’m my best version of being a friend when I listen, give as much as I can, and refrain from unduly utilizing what I know about how you operate.

We make this very complicated for ourselves. An example that stuck out for me once was a speaker talking about how if our pet got sick and we picked up a prescription, we’d make sure it got the whole thing at the same time every day with the right food and cuddles until it was better. We won’t take our own prescriptions, if even go to the doctor. Now, this example is royally fucked by the practical issues of the American healthcare system, but the sentiment rang true at the conceptional level and in my experience working with people.

I know people who will work two jobs, take care of kids, put up with endless bullshit from their emotionally unwell parents or siblings, get demeaned by a boss, deal with health issues, and the impending psychological terror of whatever anniversary that’s coming up that they’ve never coped with. They’ll simultaneously struggle to take even 30 minutes for themselves a day to breathe, relax, or watch their favorite show. It’s a package of guilt, chronic stress, and “survivor mode.” They forget how to be friendly to themselves.

One of the things that confused and bugged me for a very long time was how to wrap my head around my friendships petering out. Beyond the ones that just went silent, there’s the ones that went out with someone lobbing some observation or judgment about who I was or what I was thinking, as if they ever really cared to know in the first place. I wasn’t giving myself credit for both the kind of friend I was trying to be, nor recognizing that simply existing around each other or being polite is not the same thing as establishing a friendship.

I discovered “normal” people were mostly in the pageantry and pretend game. They need you to perform and defer your actual sense of self and agency to their insecurities. I’m the type of person where literally anyone I might recognize or have enjoyed their company for an hour, I would invite “back in” in a heartbeat. I’ve been pretty confident in myself and who I am for a good portion of my young-adult to adult life. My perception of your, at the time, positive energy or influence is the thing I’d seek more of. I’d know it’s there. You can’t deny it, even if you’ve drifted into normal life morass as we’ve gotten older.

Maybe a way to illustrate this is to think about Christmas cards. If you or your family sent those out, how many people made the list that you might never talk to for years? It’s like your friend’s list on facebook. There’s like 10 people that sign on anymore, and if you’re lucky, 1% of them will notice when it’s your birthday. That kind of superficial engagement passes for normal “friendship.” It always felt fake and like a waste to me, and even when I tried to spice it up with personalized and creative messages on birthdays, they seemed to fall flat or get ignored over time.

I’ve got a lot of practical behaviors that inform my sense of friendly behavior. I’m not trying to yell. I don’t expect you to do anything for me that I’m unprepared to do for myself. I’m not lying to you about what I feel or don’t. If and when I have the money, I’m excited by the prospect of buying your ticket, meal, the gas etc. I’m one of those people who is physically unable to stop himself from voicing what he thinks is fucked up, and if that’s something about you or how we’re relating, I’ll do so out of respect and hope it can be fixed, and in a respectful way. I’m not going to ghost you after years nor stay vague and passive aggressive about the road forward. If only! I was treated the same way.

I believe it’s important to living well that you find your center independent of anyone else. The moment I return to the kind of teenager I was ensconced in limerence, be it with a person or too-compelling idea, I’ve hit a codependent state and am looking for ways to enable it. The adult version is to belabor the story of how many years you’ve been with someone, or employ a cliche about not knowing who you’d be without them, or reflexively listing all of the services they provide you that justifies whatever you need them to.

I do not think you can truly be of service to other people if you’re unable or unwilling to figure your own shit out. What happens when someone you care about dies? They’re going to. Sooner than you think. Mostly sooner than you think because you never think about it. What happens if you get critically injured? I think about this one all the time. If I lose a hand, I’m thinking about how to get a chip that let’s me write with brain waves or a robot one that types faster than I ever could. The point is about looking forward and rooting in the idea that life, my life, is worth it for it’s own sake, despite what may happen or my inability to square my ideas with my actions in any given moment.

I think we collectively reel at the idea of abusing animals. We’re animals. We’re our own kind of confused, dumb, and helpless. Give yourself pets and treats. Find habits and ideas you can cuddle up next to. Ask yourself what the people who treat you best would do, and then if you’re doing the same for yourself. If not, that should give you pause. If you don’t have people treating you that well, that should inform some larger shifts in your behavior or priorities. They will become you way more than you’ll become them, because they don’t have a real and friendly relationship with themselves, so neither will you.

[1146] Check Please

I’m mostly sick of writing about accountability. It feels like the thing that just bubbles up incessantly. Whether I’m listening to stories from people I know, a podcast, or just carrying on through a normal day, the consequences of whether or not the practice of accountability takes place play out.

There’s many ways to get accountability wrong indefinitely. I think it’s easiest to see in relationships.

When you’re unduly possessive or controlling, you’re not being accountable to your insecurity. When you’re trying to spend or lie your way out of your bad behavior, again, clear as they can get indications that you are in the wrong. Overt praise and what’s colloquially been hijacked as “love bombing” is a good way to obscure the landscape of your broken mind by what’s flatly emotional manipulation of your target.

You can also get your sense of accountability wrong by adopting a hero story. That is, you can pretend your entire life that you’re waging some kind of personal war against unjust forces in a way that only you can understand. It requires no sacrifice, no team, and no paper trail. It’s the story you tell yourself to quell any rebellious feelings towards your boss and unjust work environment. The kids and the mortgage, after all.

You get accountability wrong with apathy. You’re just not going to play? That’s an unhealthy reframe that pretends you don’t have a choice. You’re just gonna live as though you have a personal island, and use your ability to talk about “reality” to acknowledge and designate all that you observe to be fucked up, but it’s not about you in any meaningful way. The unironic amount of attention paid as you pretend to lounge or hunker down I guess we can just ignore.

There’s a component to accountability that requires a scientific ethic or sensibility. If all we needed to do was amass information by literally counting everything or making infinite lists of facts and their counters, we could exist in an arbitrarily held-harmless space, just awash and overwhelmed by too much to operate with. In science, the more you’re demonstrably wrong, the better your chances for arriving at better truths. The more you can describe how you might be catastrophically wrong, the better your chances of shifting a paradigm of assumptions and actions entirely.

This is illustrated just in how we’ve come to understand toxic chemicals in what we’ve built things with. This is constantly shaping our understanding of what constitutes “healthy.” This is under-girding panic about screens and hours faux-socializing. This speaks to the power behind a metaphysical belief system where all roads can terminate at “divine judgement” regardless of how suspiciously it aligns with any given era or adherent’s opinion already.

But, it’s also not a mystery to us or anyone watching when something meaningful isn’t being accounted for. You live in a formerly safe place where the police are getting hamstrung by a new philosophy about crime? Shit snaps into focus. You used to eat every day and a new Republican bill takes food out of your mouth because you’re a poor kid who doesn’t deserve it? You don’t have to understand convoluted debased moralizing like you will hunger. I think when it comes to a “passable” sense of a life worth living, what needs to be accounted for is built in and built in deep.

It gets more complicated when you dive in to social circles, preferences, monetary policy, or navigating an endless series of dangers. Should the rich entitled 60-something woman I was chatting with yesterday learn to actively listen and refrain from being condescending towards her older husband? I think so, but that’s with a snapshot of their dynamic and a whole personally opinionated framework of observed and engaged conversational dynamics. Can it account for theirs in particular? Or, can it account enough*?

Right at this point, we need to look at motivations and goals. I don’t need her to change anything about her dynamic with him. We paid to use their garage and he likes to supply cheap beer and chat on the porch. If the second we leave they go inside and he beats her with his cane, still, does not change a thing about what we needed and used them for.

But what if my goal is to get a handle on a “healthy” or “healthi-er” relationship dynamic than the one I’m in or about one I hope to get in the future? Well, now my concern about her rudeness informs how I interrogate my preferences or approach if I encounter the same thing. Certainly, people love and care for partners, parents, kids, family and friends who are incredibly rude to them constantly. The accountability is still personal though. I can’t account for their dynamic, just how it makes me think and feel about mine.

So, it’s “enough” to get me thinking. Whether or not I suppress those thoughts, write about those thoughts, or make excuses for those thoughts is the work.

If you don’t know how or what to be accountable to, panic sets in. Luckily, the logic of capitalism, norms or radicals, and conservative practice immediately step in to tell you what you need. You need to free Palestine! You need to find Jesus! You need 2.5 kids and a nice car! You need to work 3 jobs and grind and hustle! You need increasingly specific degrees and specializations and to reinvent yourself every couple years to keep up! You need to be in debt, but told through a story of pretty pictures and memes!

If you return to the question of your goal and examination of what everything on offer makes you think, you can cut through.

For me, my goal is to feel free enough to do what I want, when I want. Kids don’t comport with that. Jesus certainly doesn’t. Debt has a way of making options feel exceedingly restricted and clouding even thoughts about what feels possible. My goal could, and has, led to some choice paralysis and obscene amount of time spent alone, but I’m not confused about why it’s my goal or why it needs to be foundational in pursuing or building towards other goals. I also don’t want unreasonable hard to articulate or impossible to achieve things.

In order for me to be “free enough,” I need a basically functioning country. I need principles that aren’t being whispered into the ears of eager and motivated ideologues mostly steering the ship. I need to encounter people who feel like they have some purchase on their domains and lives. I need to exchange and relate in ways that can inform and empower either side. Where, how, and when I can be more accountable comes into greater focus. Aspirations begin to look like daily achievable activities on the way to getting somewhere meaningful purposefully.

I think it’s normal to have your sense of accountability to be “implicit.” It’s whatever “feels right.” It’s what was handed down or dictated. It’s part hero story, part excuse-ridden child, and part exhausted checked-out ironic solopsist.

It’s a wonder how often we feel lost without intuiting that we never understood or articulated the goal in the first place.

What kind of friend or family member do you wish to be? What kind of citizen? How would you need to act in order to develop a sense of what to reasonably expect in return? What would you need to learn or lean into to fix what you already describe as wrong? Where can you place your discomfort or confusion so that it serves more than suffers?

[1114] A Mild Infection

A theme about what constitutes "healthy" is bubbling. Health is at once abstract in the positive, but explicit when it goes negative. It's hard or impossible to say someone who can do 105 push-ups is "healthier" than someone who can do 100. Conversely, we can pretty much say anyone without cancer is unquestionably healthier. Again, the opportunity to get specific beckons.

I just got done accidentally watching TikTok Murder Gone Viral. The people killed came from "happy" families, or were literal influencers with hundreds of thousands of followers. They were as superficially "healthy" as modern society can get. They're artistic, funny, well-connected and outgoing. They had clear and present futures and were infinitely consumable. The influenced-to-kill influencers in the first episode had millions of followers and money coming in.

How did these families get implicated in murder? How did they enmesh their lives with the darkest corners life has to offer?

To my ears, there was a fundamental dishonesty. The show resonates as extraordinary examples of perfectly ordinary realities we use to keep pretending. The "fun" Insta-lives that betray our lived experience. Our insecurities regarding our "healthy family" get pushed into their ultimate conclusions. The show interviews "best friends" and grieving parents who all wish they could have "done more." At one level, it's altogether another opportunistic dive into murder porn. At another, it's a chance to examine the stories after-the-fact.

I don't pretend to have a great grasp on some objective sense of "healthy." I do know, personally, that it feels particularly unhealthy to treat my thoughts, words, and actions as analogues for cancer. If what I say and do starts to eat at me or multiply uncontrollably, something needs to change. I'm as stuck in the world of biases and familiar self-destructive patterns as anyone else. I'm not going to notice them without efforts like these. In fact, some of my very first attempts at writing were explicitly trying to resolve my perspective of abusive and controlling boyfriend dynamics carried out on the girl I liked. Whatever healthy was, it wasn't what they were doing, and her description of it didn't match her face and body language.

We know smokers who live to be over a hundred, and people who run ultra-marathons and die in their 60s. We know perfectly blood-pressured people who eat nothing but junk, and those who will shit themselves for days if they eat the wrong things. The contradiction over the word "health" is in every anecdote, and every detail from your life that betrays the worst-sounding examples.

I said I watched the show "accidentally" because it happened to be on the front page of The Pirate Bay, so I added it to my queue, and once I saw it was only 3 episodes, and I could watch it at 3x the speed, I thought "why not." By the numbers, my TV habit would suggest "unhealthy." It doesn't seem to make sense. How can you watch, according to Trakt, the equivalent of 13 or 14 days worth of shows out of every 30? Details like speeding things up, watching things that don't require looking at the screen while driving, not watching intros, credits, or commercials, doing so primarily at night, or doing so while playing a video game or waiting idly start to make the picture clearer. One trip and back to my dad's house is ~12 hours worth of content. Drive into and back from town, 4 a day.

I could imagine my TV habit going into "unhealthy" space if it became compulsive. It would be unhealthy if I had wild swings of emotion were I interrupted or unable to locate what I wanted to watch. Anything, TV just feels like a good analogue, can be the avatar for a set of unhealthy behaviors. The internet and scrolling is normalized to the point that we couldn't measure how many hours we're on our phone if we tried. There's programs for it, and we're not downloading them. They had to literally quell a budding mass hysteria about facebook going offline for less than an hour.

But back to murder. None of these people's tragic behavior or fates happened in a bubble. They whispered something to a friend. They posted their intention. They received praise and attention for their "off-handed" remark or for the example they were setting. Yet, the legions of fans and followers, loving friends and family, remained powerless to keep them alive. Something vital was missing, that I think starts with the story of honesty, and ends with the nature of accountability.

What does that mean?

You might argue that a social media influencer isn't obligated to "tell the truth." In fact, it's regarded as something of a media job. Coke commercials don't advertise how much they contribute to microplastics in the ocean. Leaving aside the assumptions and ethics of big business behavior (and fuck is that a lot to leave aside) the role of "influencer" feels almost too appropriate. They influence as they are influenced to produce the kind of content that fuels a certain form of engagement. It's not engagement that's concerned about how many hours it's engaging or the consequences of its content - at all. Occasionally, you can get Coke to act like it's recycling or cleaning up a waterway.

Is it "healthy" to be an "influencer?" I suspect most people would react to the question with at least a mild disdain because it's "obviously" something we all kind of want, right? Kind of like celebrity. We don't want fans ripping our clothes off or bothered while we're eating, but to strike joy at the very sight of us? To get paid for seemingly no reason beyond our winning personality and talent for talking? Stories of stars being driven mad be damned, you'd do it better. Add to that the story of your current mental health and conception of yourself, and anything that upped your prospects or battled a sense of loneliness and being lost is going to feel perfectly healthy.

I liked when people called my name from across the park because my parties in college reached a certain level of influence and popularity. I did not like being pulled into a random dude's video, after being kicked in the head by several crowd surfers, at Warped Tour after Less Than Jake invited me on stage and I made out with a stranger, making me concert-famous for a day and a half. Whatever "just enough influence" to gratify me is, is somewhere between those examples. I like when people in my field have heard of me, because I take pride in my work and they know I don't fuck around. I don't necessarily like if people feel they have to "warn people" about me in advance of us meeting.

Every abstraction asks the same thing of you in order for it to make sense. Can you ask specific questions about how you feel or behave? Can you then answer those questions honestly? Is your family "healthy?" Yes and no, it's not a good or specific question. Do you respond appropriately to the asks or demands of any given member? Now we're getting somewhere. If your mom's anxiety provokes yours indefinitely, your behavior relative to hers probably needs to change. If you find yourself making excuses and acting in fear when you think on one or more of your dynamics, ding ding ding, you've found a relationship to explore! Almost no one "gets away" from the pool of relationships and habits that groomed them. Why? Well, who's bothering to ask the questions, and when has the cultural influence ever trended towards real honesty more than performative "realness?"

I'm not suggesting you need to be "too blunt" or lay every grievance you've ever had out. I'm saying you can measure the relative "health" of your behavior, environment, and words in these kinds of conversations with yourself. If I didn't get my ass up and do things regularly in service to my other goals, feeling bad about myself and uncontrollably drawn in, I'd have a TV problem. If I surrounded myself with people who make me feel like shit or practiced apologetics for abusive dynamics I have a hard time recognizing, I'd need to work on getting myself as relatively isolated and refocused as I currently am. My goals for the business, my land, or my relationships are all subject to the same scrutiny and can become problems in complicated ways the less I bother to identify patterns and evaluate how I feel.

I don't think it's healthy to seek attention for its own sake. Functionally begging for codepency erases the path to being accountable for what you're putting out and whether you can navigate the attention it is attracting. It strikes me as emotionally immature. It's healthy for a baby to scream for "no reason," not you. I don't think it's healthy to treat a performance, which all social media is, as "normal," cramming the connotative baggage of "good" and "healthy" and "obviously so" into the weight of its consequences. It's healthy to share things that make you laugh, or think, or that you're proud of, but not when it's compulsive or you feel unduly obligated. Most of Prince's music sucks, and has gone unreleased. He's a dead drug addict. If you're moved to conflate his fame and influence with his health, you might have his same problem. The walking dead are still walking, getting those steps in!

[1089] Tell Me That You're All Right

I'm hit with an idea, so let's see if there's anything there.

The thought was "Already Home Syndrome." When you engage people's pathological communication online, when you dive into particular social or political contexts, or if you just consider your individual family dynamics, the context has the same "form." It's a form manifested of feelings and expectations. You're "already home" and it's not clear how often you're able or willing to leave.

I flit about reddit. Recently, I attempted to contribute more responses to the /r/self page where 20-something lonely fat women and 20-something poor suicidal men talk about how hopeless their lives are in reddit-appropriate speak. This means "tl/dr" and infinite qualifiers so they don't sound "too whatever" that might elicit a wave of backlash. I discovered very quickly it's, like everything else, incredibly insincere.

I'm as sympathetic to the need or desire to bitch and moan as you can be. What I'm not, and never have been, is looking for sympathy and validation in spite of my shitty perspective and behavior. I've always wanted to try and better understand what felt like incomprehensible thing or behavior example after example. What "people" do is use their words to assert justifications and side-step the conversation about how they can be more accountable.

You can go to reddit and find immediately a paragraph describing "how fucked up my life is," and with almost no effort, each line will testify to glaring gaps in perspective, show a lack of appreciation, or build who is to blame into the conclusion. The more I've observed this, the easier it's become to detach and try to study it. It's incredibly human. Scaled up you get these flame wars politically. We make it noble and build it into religions. There's always always always a scapegoat. And you're mean or rude if you even suggest the problem is you.

We habitually fail to entertain the idea of context and history. When you're caught in a reddit dogpile of people's internal "yikes" sentiments regarding your replies or posture, it takes the opposite of effort to criticize a caricature of you, feel great doing it, and get validation from the errant barking. Say someone comes on to complain about their relationship. They aren't there looking for strategies to healthily navigate their dynamic. They're soliciting hundreds of votes in service to a new, more comprehensive, placating narrative to explain and excuse away the behavior.

Do you have any idea how many people are comfortable claiming their husband or boyfriend is "addicted to porn" before they'll entertain the simpler notion that guys will continue to find other women attractive, or even more attracted to others than them? They don't want to talk about other cracks or flags in their dynamic that would suggest a bad or dwindling relationship. They want the problem located in something seemingly external or slightly foreign to their experience like some kind of invader to an otherwise perfect picture.

I never thought I'd come to understand people who've learned just to not talk or share anything with anyone ever. I complain and excoriate how silent most people are on many issues I care about, but that comes from high, perhaps unreasonable, expectations of people I like to believe I've been witness to their better capacities. I don't want to hear from everyone all the time on everything. What I've learned, again the hard way, as that even when you come in patient, deliberate, informed and you got the lived experience and honed instinct, you're just asking to have it thrown back in your face. I've never raised a teenager, but I suspect it's close to the same thing.

With my ex, it didn't matter how patient I was, how long the conversation went on, what words I chose, what project I agreed to help with or pay for, how much time went by, what rules I asked her to follow so we could stay friendly and communicating…at the end of the day something was driving her emotionality, reactivity, and judgment that had nothing to do with me. It didn't, and I'm inclined to believe, still doesn't, see me or my perspective at all. By context-specific default, I have nothing to offer her or I have to be extremely cautious and conscious of what I am or am no longer willing to contribute to the dynamic.

So it goes for all of us in all of the contexts we share. Is it even worth making the same kind of appeals you have to the people in your life who've proven themselves intransigent? They're already home, and you're telling them to make renovations they think are ugly, move to a state they don't like, or keep the best (only slightly abusive) dick they've ever gotten out of their spare bedroom? You're crazy.

Reddit is a specific context. You're expected to conform to the horrible way people communicate on that platform. Spits and stutters and presumptive assumptions that validate feelings. It's longform Twitter with micro megalomaniacs policing speech more fervently than any authoritarian. And it teaches you to conform or not exist within its context at all. Then these people step out into the world and try to make it conform to the same online rules. I consider it literal fuel for fascist thinking.

Your "porn addicted husband" never gets a say. No book or researcher or statistic exists in these environments. The concept of "personal responsibility" doesn't take shape at all, and if it's remotely alluded to, baked into the newspeak connotation is an accusation and enemy you'll be shamed for not reflexively condemning! That is, you're only personally responsible, in crazy town Twitter world, if you adopt my catphrase, deplatform "violent" words, and encourage I emote in whatever direction and to whatever degree I see fit. Anything less, you're kicked out of the house.

This gets so complex because it gets conflated with "setting appropriate boundaries" or "communicating healthy needs and expectations." The key to these discussions being coherent and productive is respect for evidence and shared conceptions of reality. Otherwise it's a competition between gaslighting and ignorant narratives.

When my ex and I were arguing, if I bled her funds dry, withheld my tools and time, verbally berated her and picked at her self esteem, beat her up, threatened her stuff or cat, sabotaged her effort in the garden, spoke ill of her to friends, or did any of the shit I hear people do in their "normal" relationships, you'd have evidence to rightfully assert I'm the problem. If you don't have that attitude about your own behavior with regard to any topic, especially ones that piss you off or scare you, you're probably not doing what you're doing in a healthy or appropriate way. If you're looking for validation from strangers on reddit, you're definitely not doing what you need to be doing lol.

That we're so dispositionally biased to believe whatever it is we currently do is why so much is shit. There's an incredible amount of heinous shit built into our normative behavior and presumptive "value systems." You don't get millions for Trump, or Palin, or Putin, or Hamas in a world that fundamentally "makes sense." You don't suffer indefinitely under completely avoidable poverty without some powerful persuasive compulsions to protect greedy impulses. It's not abstract. Your husband isn't addicted to porn. You're not in a fanciful romantic love story where everyone is happy in the end after an hour and a half of animated wish-fulfillment and expectations built into you from childhood. Without irony, they scream, "Fuck your feelings!"

We're not humble. We're not curious. We don't volunteer for the necessary pain that draws out our best conceptions and potential realities we long for. We're just whiners. We're feeling more and more entitled to whine. We think, "Well that's how all the rich white privileged people won, so now it's our turn!" No. There have always been people willing to exploit and capitalize on their proximity to power or access. It's a historical fluke and your deliberate framing of the oppressor and oppressed to service your version of victimhood. It really is the same mechanism at different scales and contexts.

Don't you know men are x, y, and z therefore…

Can't you see how woke or privilege has…

He thinks…! Bitch, you don't know what he thinks, he barely knows what he thinks, and worse, you're both probably not even interested in finding the truth together. If you can get him to agree that you've remotely captured what he thinks, I'll start listening to you.

It feels like someone screaming, "I didn't ask to be born!" Sure. That's absolutely true. What do you think you're saying with that statement? How many concurrent ways can you imply you'd rather be dead before we move on and recognize you're saying it to justify behaving in a shitty way? A child who does that we might think of as "just following orders" from their developing lacking-in-control systems. A culture that builds on that propensity and protects and refines it we might think of as fucked up, sick, and doomed.

My brain's been echoing the "You make people feel small" accusation from my ex-coworker. I had a session with a new client a couple days ago in which I started in talking about "fight or flight." She didn't know what I was referring to. When I explained it, she said she understood and thanked me. I'm already home in my go-to proven sentiments that have helped people in the past or helped me better conceptualize myself. I struggle to think of a more ubiquitous and common piece of knowledge than "fight or flight," but here we had someone who didn't know it. I don't consider her dumb, ignorant, or "small" nor had an impulse to criticise. It shouldn't be controversial or read as some kind of unfair judgment or priviledge if we recognize the disparity in what information we have and how we're using it to address our relative issues.

It's just factually correct that we barely know anything about anything. That's as quick a test as you can offer someone to determine whether or not they're really worth spending your time on. Do they recognize their own ignorance? Can they entertain gaps in their knowledge? If that answer is no, ever, for yourself or about others, you might as well just make squawking noises back and forth. You're ideologically possessed. You're contributing to our seemingly inevitable collective cultural downfall. Your house is on fire, and you need to move.

[1020] Missed You

I hope I can take my time with this. I had a lot of fun and helpful ideas on the drive home, but I don’t know that I’ll recall them all. First one is easy. I’m allowing myself to use the word “hope” again. I haven’t found a good substitute, and I think I’m aware enough to not allow hopes and dreams to supersede any amount of work it would actually take to get something. I think I’m fundamentally a hopeful person, but that always felt like a kind of shameful notion. Fuck hope, work. Why bother hoping if you can do? And then as you pay attention to so many things you can’t do anything to help or fix, the desire for them no less antagonizes, and you’re hopeful, if not still helpless.

I almost posted a tipsy status saying something like, “I want to do big things.” It’s a stupid statement. It’s the first pass of an idea, vague, nonsensical, and empty for its very “hopeful” sensibility not backed by any tangible commitment or sacrifice. I felt like it bubbled up as a reminder. I want to make a discernible impact on the whole of experience. I want to shift “things” and demonstrate an awareness or capability with power that you can measure independent of opinions. That hasn’t stopped being true no matter the seemingly infinite series of humbling scenarios I’m meant to swallow with regard to my budget, time, or energy.

There’s a chance for a role at work to be fully remote. I want it, but of course I don’t. I want it so bad that I continue to work to create my own business, again. What kind of “exotic” locales could I be in while I conduct my groups? How much “freer” would I feel if I could literally plan to spend more time with friends located much farther than 20 minutes from me? I bet I spend less on gas to and from the airport with $9 a day parking than I do driving to bumfuck Bedford.

Today has been weird. I haven’t felt anxious in a bit. Once I figured out it was my righteous “fuck you” impulse that spoke to my difficulty doing “easy” notes for work, I pretty much mellowed out. Then, ex-girlfriend comes back into the picture, and I’ve just been off. It’s not even confusing or complicated to me, but I’m in this observer state. I don’t feel seen by her. The last time I reached out, I was admonished, and it was made clear to me that if there was going to be any kind of “friendship” going forward, it was going to be on her terms and at her pace. Umm, great, but friendship is an exchange. What do you have to give to the person who can’t see you?

She suggested we walk around a trail at the dam near my house. I’m tired, don’t give a fuck about trails, it’s cold, and I’ve been less than adequately active for months. It felt like an analogy for our dynamic on the whole. I was just along for the ride. She spent a year or so discovering more about herself and finding the capacity to apologize. Cool, good for her. It has nothing to do with me. You want to spend time with me and have a “low key” or chill environment? Come bowing or let’s get food. That would suggest you have a remote inclination about what I’m into or would put me more at ease with you.

And I could just say “no.” I could just be like, look, I don’t trust you, I’m not angry at you, but you don’t make me feel good and I don’t want to have a dumb forever non-conversation about what it takes to look and feel like a friend, but I appreciate your effort or the direction you feel you’re trending. What does that get me? I couldn’t begin to pretend to understand how that might register to her. So, instead, I’ll be tired and complicit in my own caricature, walking along the forest path small-talking like I’ve recovered from the severe blow to my hopes and dreams come back to manifest as a perhaps more self-aware ex who confidently dictates the means by which we might relate.

Whatever.

I both enjoy and am a touch worried about how much I’ve learned to shut the fuck up and let things go. I’m literally too old. I’m 34. I really don’t need to say anything most of the time. I’ve seen it before. I see you coming. I’m not lacking in confidence or direction. I’m not an insecure or proud know-nothing powering through idyllic fantasies. I just want to hang out, build some shit, laugh, watch my shows, and not entertain too deeply the thought that were my plane to go down, I’d be getting off easy.

I’m taking more planes. I’m barely in less debt than I normally am, and I’m being way more deliberate about booking the flight, getting the place to stay, and just manifesting that “do shit and see people” ethos I wanted to be at 10 years ago. I don’t care about the debt. Even if I have money in the bank, I’m still in debt. There will always be utility bills and property taxes. I’ll always have to eat. My car…is a car, and I have 3 of them. So, debt? Oh well, at least I visited wherever, saw the band or friend, and get to talk about it again in whatever blog comes next.

I’ve been refreshing myself on different philosophers lately too. So many seemingly concerned with finding the best ways to live and think about things. Meta questioners by default mostly folding their arms after a quasi-circular reasoned thing registers as a novel way to state the obvious by the onlookers.

It's two days later.

I’ve been listening to Philosophize This! segments. I’m reminded in simplified ways that the vast majority of remotely “novel” insights I’ve ever infused into my perspective are pieces of what stuck from classes in college or reading. Each philosopher answering and undermining and substituting their words and versions to help explain just what it is we’re made of and why we bother.

I’m here at the beginnings of the last couple days where faint anxiety has started to creep back in. For a while there I was pretty smooth, working out why notes were such a chore and resolving myself to work at my own pace and/or in advance. My stomach still drops a little at the prospect of working each day, but it registers as an insult to the idea of suffering to bother mentioning it (over and over and over again). I feel bad I missed my friend’s text. Part of me heard my phone 2 hours ago, but a larger portion of me was in my own head. I put on a cheesy movie from 2002 and proceeded to play with sewing a pair of pants I’ve been saving for several years for repair because they fit so well. They deserve a person who actually knows how to sew or with the patience to watch more Youtube videos.

I tried to go to the gym today. My body was reaching that odd state of discomfort that knows it needs to be pushed in a way that I haven’t in a while. I thought I had the clothes packed and discovered otherwise in the parking lot. My plan was to use the energy working out tends to give me to come home and work some notes in advance. I act as if I’m not going to be up until 2 or 3 anyway. I’ve been fighting the temptation to maximize a level of debt to spur myself into more movement. At bottom, I know I need to move, I just rarely seem to identify what that’s supposed to look like each day.

For all of the different schools of thought and means of describing the same restless-human-syndrome, I find myself drawn towards the “everything at once” and “all is connected” sensibility. I think it’s why writing persuades me in a persistent way that it’s actually working at doing something. It’s an analogy for the perpetual process. The words can be infinitely translated and reinterpreted. Every time I return to them, they mean something just a hair different to me than they did before. They’re an embodied “form,” mathematically described, yet perfectly abstract and inaccessible until you activate your machinery for determining meaning. It really is a fascinating “thing.” When I’m dead, they get to act as different reincarnations. In summary of everything I’ve written, you might gather I’m rather angry and don’t like jobs.

It’s the next day.

I’ve just gotten off another dumb interaction in the world of sales. I find it fascinating there are people who have been in business for decades selling crap to idiots with cliches and soulless imploring who don’t have the persuasive skill and coherence I intuited at 15 fucking up your credit with Target red cards. I’m too sharp a weapon, man. I need to take your kids or go at 35 felons at once. I recognize my capacity to make “instant-friends.” Why can’t I get introduced to ones with money or influence lol? Is there truly nothing of value that needs introduced to someone who could use it? It’s always got to get gross and kinda forced or hidden under the corporate-speak that doesn’t let you engage with thoughts about how you’ve abused their ignorance or sold your soul?

I have to end this thing at some point. This week already feels incredibly long and I have a party I was invited to Thursday, Louis C.K. Sunday, and didn’t realize I’m off on Monday. I’m caught up on notes.

I say often how I’m lied to dozens of times a day. I think people mistake this as though I feel I’m somehow on the receiving end of deliberate attempts at deception. No no, it’s the colloquial language lies. It’s body language lies. It’s professed standards and competencies with no discernable measurement or distinction worthy of holding. I’m awash in lies and they make me extremely sensitive to when there are attempts to cajole me with them. I find commercials often psychologically tortuous. I hear on repeat the “wrong” word like “opportunity” you’re calling the cold-calling bait-n-switch “sales” job. Your acronyms and mission statements mean nothing to me. All the hyper-insisted upon “I’m sorry” “I don’t know” and “good luck” sentiments fogging your mind and air.

If I’m a philosophical cliché in being ever-restless and striving to individuate or manifest my power as described in dozens of works and religious traditions, so be it, but whatever I’m after I’m wholly convinced is impossible to achieve while under the spell of so much bullshit. If nothing else, no matter how obscure what it means to exist may be, you don’t do it better lying. You don’t do it better calling those lies “pretending” or “professional” or “mature” or anything that helps conceal and disguise the intention to hide.

[971] You Big Fat Phony

I’m a little annoyed that I feel I have to write right now as I’m a hot second from heading outside to build some walls. I subscribe to the subreddit “askwomenover30.” I came across a post that extracted a title from a 5-page PEW article on dating. It briefly describes how a majority of single women have pulled out of the endeavor for the first time since they started recording such data. The comment I left, which garnered 22 downvotes, is as follows:

“I think a lot of men have lost the thread of what it means to be both a man and in a partnership. As I read through some of these top comments I'm just generally embarrassed that these have been your experiences. Men have gotten scarier? Maybe I just live around a weird area, but I can't really tell the difference between the men and women as I'm walking down the street. I don't know if that's scary or trendy or what.

I've never been a "dater," per se. It's either been straight to the drunken fooling around or mixing with friends until something longer-term kinda spills out. The idea that there's a litany of people who just exhaust you to the point that you hold your errands up as something "better" or "more productive" to do is a travesty. There's a meek and mild level that empathizes (I'm in social work), but at the same time, I feel like the drive and motivation I have in being with someone I can do things for/with is a different kind of energy. This, provided you differentiate it from codependency and insecurity of course.

Like, I definitely think the culture has shifted into a "softer" or "whinier" or awkward and "entitled" kind of space. I do think men of a certain age probably struggle more than they should with not being aggressively sexually inappropriate. But I also think the conversation has moved away from discussing how and why we partner up or what the expectations are.

You want to be left alone to do your own thing in a way a 1950s housewife wouldn't dream of? Tell the people you date. You have a boundary a "typical man" is "unbelievable" in his willingness to cross it? Make yourself as explicit as humanly possible if only to save yourself time if not disappointment. I've spoken to thousands of people who do a really really bad job of honestly relaying their wants and needs if they can genuinely define them at all. Combine that with the myopic isolating influence of the internet, it's hard to say how deep the real person is really buried.

It can be a little too easy to pillory a given sex. I don't write off the women I meet for their mental health concerns, anxiety, children, or thickness, even if that's the vast majority of who presents as available. I like the person who highlighted the lack of social skills. That makes sense to me more than "men are x y z." I also don't think a dating app is wise enough to factor in the ways and reasons people get together. Women sexually select for the species. They didn't do so by swiping away all the unsolicited dicks, but in that the means exists, we just carry on like it's the normal or appropriate app to use.

I don't know (wo)man, I'm a dude who's been in 3 longish (1-5 years) relationships, 2 ending because we were young, and 1 over unyielding anxiety turning every interaction into an opportunity for resentment. Anymore, I just ask that whomever I try to partner with be "cool." Can you just be honest? Can you not scream at me? Can you be remotely in shape? Cus I've got a fat ass too, but only when I do next to absolutely nothing physically for months at a time. I don't need you paying the bills, cooking, cleaning, bolstering my ego, pregnant, nor sexually exclusive.

Can you just be chill? Even with this bar, which to my mind feels both fair and incredibly low, maybe because I'm meeting people in the social work realm, it's a struggle. I don't need you madly in love with me, but like, can you be nice? Can you talk and share your perspective on the day? I don't care if you like the same shit I do, it's more interesting if you don't. Please, be free, go do you, and then like maybe we can do some cool shit together and enjoy each other's company. It just doesn't seem like it needs to be as hard as people are making it.

Maybe I'm weird, but like single remotely attractive honest chill girls are few and far between. And if you do find one, settle in, because we're old, and processing the trauma of our abusive pasts has little to do with feeling sexy or emotionally available to run yourself through a new thing lol. Anyway, I just try to be a friend anymore. It's just easier all around to suck any remote expectation out of the dynamic and take conversations or time together on its face as something appreciable. Emotional investment is a risk worth taking, but maybe you know people more in touch with their emotions than me.

tl:dr no, no you cannot be chill lol.”

The only response beyond the downvotes was from someone who said, “Thank god a man has arrived to tell us to be more chill and less fat.” Then some tit-for-tat and she adds, “I wrote a flippant one sentence comment in response to your eight paragraph screed, so which of the two of us seems more upset?” I say, the person without the patience or honesty to see anything but a screed. I wake up today to a temporary ban lol.

I guess this stands out to me as indicative of my experience in general, neatly packaged. I write a whole thing with a dozen claims bred from my perspective. I’m then “understood” as a one-sentence summation extracting the most emotionally-triggering sentiments rephrased to sound more damming than intended. That’s pretty much my interactions with most people conversationally online as nutshelly as it gets. This is my former coworker when she said, “That was a lot of words to say ‘fuck you,’ just a different subject matter. This is everyone who impresses upon me how I’m overlooking how an incensed person feels when I question the facts or veracity about literally any topic of contention.

You’ll notice, the “solution” to not garnering the anger is always to be quiet. I’m over here impressing people to speak up more, and also showing them what it gets you lol. If I don’t want to get banned, don’t bother explaining lightly, but explicitly, that a man who’s not attracted to you is not by default every caricature you’ve lent to the pile-on discussion. Someone in the thread said, “I’m tired of all the men with fat-phobia.” Phobia? Just like I’ve been accused of transphobia? Like, no, not afraid, just not attracted, and don’t think J.K. Rowling is the enemy.

Mind you, I’m not “upset” by this, I’m just increasingly fascinated it’s the default setting, and how we double-down. One of the top posts on reddit today is a satirist interviewing someone claiming more people die from hammers than guns, and when they Google it and show he’s wrong, he reiterated his second amendment right and scoots right past. The “liberal” or “enlightened” reddit crowd loves the hypocrisy on the right, but is equally blind and unwilling to engage with their muddy thoughts.

Is there really anything else to be said? I hope to not be a The Daily Show analogue, where I spend my whole life pointing out the contradiction or decline, and then can only step away with the knowledge that things have gotten worse, and the best I can do is a 60-minutes spin-off and maybe help get a bill passed every 10 years. I mean, good for Jon Stewart, but he knows he can’t fix “us” anymore than I can.

[915] Eyes On The Prize

This is as about as low as I ever manage to feel. It's the final scene of the movie of my relationships. It's part of a cycle. It's painful and traumatizing each time.

I struggle with “niceness” or “help.” I'm eager to please and get taken advantage of. I see someone help or feel the impact of their help, I never want to consider us square until their wildest dreams are being attended to. Allie helped me at an extremely stressful point in my life. I was making appeals to smug and rich relatives. I was sleeping in my car. She loaned me $2000 to pay off my house. I drove straight to her when she confirmed it was a real offer.

I thought we had the right amount of different but similar characteristics. She played with fire, I play with fire. She is thoughtfully critical of the world around her, I say “fuck that thing” about a lot of things. When she gets an opportunity to work at something she cares about, she does it.

We moved in kind of accidentally, which is a repeated pattern from Kristen who specifically denoted moving in as a poor choice for her back in the day. When me and Allie did it, the pandemic was locking everything down, and we were both under the impression she was going to be living out of her trailer. Well, we ended up functionally on top of each other in the shed.

Country life, let alone bachelor-shed-life comes with a host of negotiations in order to stretch those pithy paychecks. I go into “attempt to attend to needs” mode. I buy an expensive tiller. I look to explore ways to cultivate the space so she feels like she's not completely alienated.

I have no less than 30 projects I'm considering doing at any one time. There's 30 on the board right now. There were at least 30 on the board back then. They all took time, money, overcoming the learning curve, and often some shared concept of what either of us where going to contribute. We eventually decide to pick our particular projects and generally go about them alone.

We never really got to communicating well. Before there were any work tasks or dreams together, it was just going to classical concerts, dinner, and sex. It was the getting-to-know each other dragged out over the distance to Kentucky. We had a really fun time at her cousin's wedding, which shortly after is when I asked if she'd be my girlfriend instead of my “Kentucky girl,” as though I had girls all up and down the Midwest.

Eventually, every few days, then every two weeks or so we'd have some version of the same argument. We tried writing out discrepancies on the white board. She was not a fan of that method. I eventually demanded we parse through things and email each other, as recording our fights and maintaining civility were not seemingly possible. We cut each other off. We reacted and doubted verses listened and questioned. The emails didn't seem to resonate with her either.

The fights? The classics, “I want you to hang out with me!” “I do want to hang out with you.” “If you wanted to you would X, Y, or Z!.”

“I do more chores than you!” “I'm not sure that's true, let's count them and redistribute them.” “You never just believe me and support what I feel!.”

She zeroed in on aspects of my personality that she does not like or thinks I have little reason to express, like arrogance. She spoke to the relatively big game I've talked and compared it to the amount of TV she's witness to.

For my part, after many months of feeling hopeless, I started losing my patience. I punched a hole in my white board and have punched my door. Today I threw the full-enough recycling bins, certainly not attempting to hit her, but definitely close enough for it to not be worth splitting hairs. I emotionally leveraged and antagonized her until she ripped off a piece of the small porch pillar and busted through my front door demanding her cat, then grabbing the piece of broken wood as though prepared to stab me. When I asked her about this, she said I made her afraid, and it was self-defense.

Situations like these are why I have so little faith in myself, intentions, or long-term “fixes” to anything. We'd been talking across purposes for so long, I consciously decided to turn on what I understand about emotional leverage. I was desperate for an honest exchange, risking everything for it. I've felt ignored, caricatured, taken advantage of. I felt like I've spent hundreds of hours and thousands of words attempting to grasp where she was coming from. Only after I induce her to rage-quit my door frame does she capitulate and start speaking honestly?

For greater context, for reasons unbeknownst to me, we'd frequently be in some disagreement right before work, where there's no hope to take the time to try and find a resolution and it can devolve over text on the drive in. Or it would happen while I'm in the middle of talking to people about how there is hope for some resolution if they stick to the plan and remain responsibly accountable to what we've all agreed upon. I talk about irony so often it's lost all meaning.

I know I'm not normal or an okay person. I know whatever aptitude I have for approaching people to bring them ease or hash out their issues is because I'm so deeply enmeshed in my own. I will never be able to outrun, or out think, my feelings, or the cycles they provoke in me. There's something deeply life-affirming and meaningful when you are connected to people and able to invest in them or see them grow. I don't have any guilt or shame for that desire, but I really want to live in a certain kind of fantasy too.

I want to believe people with shared goals, personalities, or the general inclination to get along and work together can do so somewhat “easily.” I want to believe things can be talked out. My experience is shaped by dozens of “friends” I'm no longer connected to in any real way, having a psychopath best friend who's statistically more disagreeable than me, and now three relationships that have ended all with similar narratives about how I'm just not quite capable or willing or worth engaging in all this blogging nonsense that has apparently made me so set in my ways I'm just unable to “people.”

The worst thing about me is when I get the desire to burn something down. It speaks to my sensitivity to condescension. I hated nothing more than feeling erased and ignored. The story of my life was so often dictated to me in spite of all reason or contradicting information. I could move seamlessly between daily tension and drama into chill and video games and food in different divorced parent environments. I know which I preferred, and today I know my brain formed patterns around both environments independent of my preferences. I've seen enough instances of going crazy for “no” reason. I am someone who can do the same.

At the peak of the emotionality, and the wave of whatever washes over you as you're coming down, I felt I was finally able to have an honest exchange with her. I asked questions, she answered them, and not with another question or statement about me. In my writing, I've recognized that when I'm at my peak of some emotion, and in the feverish exploration, I find the most flow, insight, and useful actionable material. Today she told me, if I really knew her, I'd know she was “weak.” She understands weakness as not being able to trust.

Functionally, we have a recipe where anything I say, by default, isn't trusted. I'm feeling constantly on the defensive trying to unpack statements like “don't tell yourself you're doing me any favors” or “you only consider this one thing.” I use the word “dishonest” a lot when it comes to trying to understand where people are coming from. If they can't articulate it, which is often perfectly reasonable or understandable why they wouldn't be able to, then I ask to formulate something that can be observed by both parties. You think you do more chores? Let's define chores, count them, and explore. If you refuse to do that, confidence in my charge of dishonesty grows. You're either lying that it's about chores, afraid to be caught learning you don't do more, or unconsciously or otherwise presenting the situation because you already know how I'm going to respond, and are betting on me to fail you.

It's not about the chores, and basically never is. It's about whether or not you're going to change the subroutine that responds to their perspective. It reminds me of when I was supposed to just skip along with being accused of rape. Like, no, I have many questions, and while I'm perfectly willing to entertain or accept the depth of your feeling, we're gonna need to sit down and explore. I'm a “take accusations seriously” significantly more than “believe all women” type, and think we should all carry ourselves the same way.

I like the idea of being helpful and meaningfully contributing. I like the idea of questioning and searching until you break through into new behaviors or insights. I like the myth that I have an infinite amount of time and patience, at any point in the day, to parse through something after it feels like bad faith, distracted character jabs or lazy assumptions. I want you to bite the bullet and tell me you don't like me, don't trust me, and think you fucked up trying to do big things with me.

If you ever, for a second, delude yourself into thinking I'm a “good” person or think particularly highly of myself, you're not paying attention. I'm good at this. I can talk to myself in a way that quells the faint desire to just sleep and not come back. I can simultaneously crack the joke, and cry somewhere deep in my chest as I've practically forgotten how to sustain any real tears. I'm violent. I'm angry. And in one of the hardest ways to cope with, alone. I don't handle what feels like preventable disappointments and disagreements well. I don't like going into relationships waiting for them to fail in spite of everything I do or say. Or is it because of those things?

This is the only way I know how to approach what I consider “responsibility” and “owning my feelings.” I felt and carried out the worst of me today. I demonstrated, sober, in the pure light of day, why I insist on this forum, honest answers, and an inquisitive posture before the moves to mind-read, caricature, or demean. You think you can talk shit? You think you can scream? You think you're annoyed or afraid or alone or full of conflicting and complicated feelings no one understands? Watch this.

[791] There Goes Gravity

Think I just wanna take a stroll.

It never ceases to amaze me. Now. I had a memory of turning incorrectly during a practice driving session as a teenager. Drifting into the next lane as I turned, thinking to myself, “I should probably just go with it, but we were taught to maintain our lane as we turn” and proceeding to “correct” myself before the teacher swerved me back to the “wrong” path. Even if there wasn't a car next to me, it was close enough that cutting back would have been dumb. Part of me registered it would be dumb. I'd been anchored in something I learned in class.

There's something of an infinite anchor list, no? Down to which of your genes bother to turn on and off. I wonder pretty consistently why I don't appear to be in abjectly terrible health with the amount of fast food I eat. I think my body figured out when I was younger, when it all began, that this was “food,” and figured it out. I'm not saying I'm in particularly good shape or anything, but I manage to not look at myself disgusted nor think I'm ever more than that 2 to 3 months of actual effort before I start showing off before and after pictures. My body is anchored to the shitty food I was raised on.

It might come as no surprise that anchored ideas I find the most interesting. The love stories. The cultural mythologies related to family. The specificity of different areas and time periods in what they're going to take pride in or be willing to die for. I think about how deep those anchors must go for us to be persistently flirting with totalitarian thinking. I think about the murdered relationships and never-weres because people never left the land of their first ideas. I think about how, if you're “now,” you've an infinite capacity to reside in the deepest joy and harshest pain of whatever idea it is you're observing at the moment.

I'm subscribed to a subreddit dedicated to asking women over 30 questions. Today there were stories about 4 or 17 year relationships, husbands dying, things fizzling out, and then people finding their current love and never being happier. There's desperate 30ish women looking for rays of sunshine in their lonely or heartbroken space that's just now beginning to realize the special connection with their boyfriend in high school wasn't the kind of healthy thing shared between functioning adults. Everyone's “now” exists one click away from the last. Your single digit years relationship went bust? HAD 4 OF THOSE SISTER! And the surviving guy is the best so far!

Reading that kind of stuff makes the problems that have been related to me about my relationships feel exceptionally petty. But then, I've been reading the opinions and offered wisdom of old people since I had internet access. The drama has always felt, fundamentally, boring. The work of tearing through your first love and constant reminding yourself of death just wishes people would get over themselves and have another drink. That's kind of the energy and perspective I'm always looking for, I just got there 30 or 40 years too early. I'm still in the bracket where people say without irony what lengths they'll go to have a kid if they aren't married and pregnant by 35.

I consider when I've said I don't really have a conception of “forgiveness.” My new best stab at what it, incorporating “now,” would look like keeping whatever the offense is in your mind while you do your best with the person in front of you. “You broke my heart....okay, can I buy you an ice cream cone?” “You murdered my son....okay, I still don't think advocating for the death penalty is the best at-large decision.” “You shattered something that will never be repaired....okay, here's what I have to say about it, and now I can take responsibility for myself and how I'll go forward.” Forgiveness as a function of a kind of resilience I could understand. Forgiveness as a measure of pragmatism is, practically, a cop-out.

I don't know how often I want to “be forgiven.” I want to be talked to. I want to be taken seriously. But when I think back to times in which people have offered “forgiveness,” it's come with that condescending or matter-of-fact string. “I forgive you, foolish animal, you don't know any better.” “I forgive you, for I am pious and perfect in my exercise.” “I forgive you, will that make you shut up now?” God forgiving your sins comes with the presumption of guilt. To the extent you want to keep blaming other people for what neither of you tries to understand, perhaps the forgiving instinct grows. Old, tired, people no longer willing to bother, forgive you your brash and ignorant youth. What a better time to let things go then as life beckons letting go of you?

I just feel weird. I'm still as present in some of my memories as I am writing this now. And given that memory is but a tool, I wonder if I'm still hammering away at the same project, or if there's a singular space we all inhabit. I wonder if that ability to inhabit it is choice or circumstance. I wonder if any, or every, message is being translated through it. I wonder if I clench my jaw because there's something wrong with me, or what I'm connected to. I wonder if our future or inevitable demise are determined in the infinitely indeterminate.

When I'm even more obscenely wealthy, I already know what I'm going to do. I'm going to invite everyone. I'm going to look for more lasting images and impressions of what “now” means, and I'm already coping with the letdown and the surprise smile or sentiment that tricks me into thinking it was all worth it. I'm gonna pause and look around, and briefly pretend to reminisce on every conversation and cost that went into making the picture look the way it does around me. I'm going to be as poking around in the dark and floating around lost “then” as I am “now.”

[764] Placeholders

When I'm working this hard to avoid writing, I guess I have to start. I think I kind of want to talk stupid. I also think I want to make that stupid talk analogize to movies and songs. (Neither of which I ended up doing?...)

I've been thinking a lot about relationships. I glance at my blogger page and see the tag “relationships” is 8^th from the top of 427 tags I managed to pull out as mild coherence reference points in my usual blog soup. They mean a lot to me, but apparently not as much as Jordan Peterson, though they're tied with Obama.

For the longest time, every single conception I had of a relationship was about what I could get out of it. Maybe I wanted to be friends with dickhead kids because I wanted their power. I could play the ethical know-it-all in school because of the attention and accolades. I would garner a certain type of crowd to create a certain kind of fun or that could be controlled in specific ways. Basically, I didn't simply “not understand” relationships, I didn't have any.

That isn't to say people didn't try to relate to me. My general nonplussed demeanor or mild excitement at mostly-playful delinquency many depressed and “finding themselves” people are consistently drawn to. It's easy not to judge someone you're not invested in. And people, whether they're comfortable admitting it or not, like when the confident person filled with praises and gifts for them shits on everyone besides them.

That was a big part of my dialogue in my romance language regarding friends. They were “different” because of some ill-defined disposition that could tolerate me for longer periods than most. To be sure, I still think this speaks volumes, but I think I was willing to give out too much credit, and I was doing it at an unfair expense to my own self-conception. I wanted actual relationships. As such, I allowed other people's stuff into and onto mine.

Other people, for as much as I don't generally like them, can be something of a huge motivation. There's people who self-sacrifice in extremely unhealthy ways, and people who do for others out of loads of guilt or fear of themselves. I genuinely want to reward people I consider persistently better than me in some aspect of their life I'm not doing terribly well at improving. Perhaps even better said, there are people with qualities I find as equally valid and important as and I hold, but I want nothing to do with behaving like them. Arguably, given how actively I've sought to cultivate my crowds, words, and direction in life, that's basically everyone.

Here is where I think the word “unconditional” comes up. This is around the space people start to throw out the stupid love word. Unconditional, of course, doesn't really mean unconditional as much as it signifies a kind of persistence and determination through what are hopefully healthy and manageable levels of shit. It's the divine standard by which to set your own inadequacy watch. It's the kind of irrational place a parent may occupy in service to their serial murderer son or wife's devotion thrice beaten a day year after year.

That kind of place seems to pair well with irrational pride. The more you are unduly boastful about something you don't understand or don't deserve, the likelier it seems you'll go down with it. To simply call it “ignorant” betrays the very real motivated energy it conjures in you. The “deeply personal” feeling is everyone's scream for things to matter in a way that transcends the ups and downs of their emotions or tumultuous lives.

In that sense, it's not “irrational” for your stomach to drop when you look at a picture of someone you care about who's gone. They were more real to you than you have the words for. Their impact could have made you feel in ways you'll never experience on your own. Sure, those feelings are playing on survival instincts and deep-rooted fears about the tribe abandoning you, but we're also intelligent enough to extract a greater ethos and example who's death we're allowed to mourn as well.

That's the “heartbreak.” It's not any one person and what you did or didn't say or the details of some regrettable fight. It's the timeless example you thought meant something “special” proving otherwise. Or the proud presumption you have the capacity and wisdom to know what example that relationship was really setting. Or the selfish resentment you have for the work it takes to remain vulnerable and honest. Or the pain of knowing you were working hard, unsure of towards what, to death, conscripted into a cultural fairy-tale.

I miss my relationships that went bad to the extent I allow myself to forget what got them started to begin with. I long for days of old when I pretend I made the mistake of pulling a trigger I never intended. Relationships need people willing to discuss and respect each others' decisions. This is as true between you and every insane-but-savable Trump voter as it is you and those difficult friendships or relationships that blew up for, probably, wholly ridiculous and nonsensical reasons. Check the record, I've never said, “I'm done talking about this.”

My best relationships aren't just time spent, but people who seem to respect that the time we have is limited, and the person in front of you is all you're going to get of them. My deepest sense of connection is when I allow that sentiment to embed itself into my moment. When people talk about things like “no expectations,” the wrong and lazy way to understand that is as the shirking of responsibility. No expectations needs to be making a plan, while knowing you can't control the weather. It needs to be something akin to that AA mantra about having the wisdom to tell the difference between things you can and cannot change, and then drilling down on how or if you really want to. It's me knowing I could blow thousands of dollars getting nowhere trying to create and be independently wealthy, and can only expect from myself to act as well as I can to the extent of my knowledge and ability.

That's the kind of leeway it gets easier to grant when you're older. I'm still a top-notch shit-talker, but if my first impulse was to roast everyone at the office, dear god. As life has felt both more and less in my control, I'm not so quick to throw people's baggage into their face. I still think I prefer to relate in that kind of “mean because I like you” space, but I understand I live in the wrong place for too much of that. I want room to “fail as a person” as much as anyone else. I'm significantly less apologetic or insecure than what's normal, statistically, but I don't want to believe in lost causes, thinking we'll cobble together some misshapen gluey Popsicle stick existence together.

I'm not sad people who want to leave, leave. My first drunk instinct isn't to blow up ex's phones. I don't think I'll create the same (it'll only get better) magic of parties. It bugs me to think that I didn't matter to them as much as they did to me. That my kind of “fucked up” is “too,” but what I accepted as them presumably only someone better than me could really understand or they could bother with in perpetuity. The things I like about them seem to lose out to the things I hate. It's parts of them I think they hate as well, but only they're allowed to suffer them on their own. Their depression wins. Their insecurity reigns. Their conspiratorial gossipy child runs amok. I don't end friendships in screaming and pissing matches inventing a dozen explicitly untrue things to say about you before never talking again.

The things people use to lament me are the things I take pride in. I like having worked for my views and methodical needling down on things. I like being sexual and fighting jealous impulses. I like cussing, and being blunt, and “rough” messy friendships where everything is at once a crisis and immediate celebration that it will all still be over soon enough, so relax. I like knowing what part of the imperfect whole I'm getting more comfortable accepting, and discussing what needs to change. There's a gigantic hole at the center of how we conceive of each other as “right” or “the one” or “best.” This isn't to dismiss people who's styles and experiences mesh more than others, but it's to allude to a lost spirit of entanglement. The kind that happens when “what if you can't get divorced” or “this child is yours forever” enters the picture.

I'm still celebrating. Every forgotten name from my parties frequently lives on in the spirit they conjured in me. Every lost friend or girlfriend occupies at least words on the page, even if the swirl of their influence will never fit neatly into a waffle cone. And I'm still working to create even better and refined circumstances to build the fleetingly small amount of relationships with impacts worth considering and preserving indefinitely. That's the kind of friend I want to be, and misfired regrets over people less willing than me serve no one and never recognized me to begin with. And I'm just the smallest part of everything else we're missing.

[718] Just Fucking Tears, Man

Well, if you're going to write a “crazy” blog, I suppose it makes sense to talk about what you went through to provoke it, no?

I was my usual charming self. I sat down at table, offered a beer, and found myself embedded in a friend group who's dynamic was happy to host my randomness.

Would you know it? I got along particularly well with one of them. We did the graze our fingertips on each other and quasi-hold hand thing that says “we're all but fucking tonight.” Her friends were on board too. All I had to do was shut the fuck up.

Can you guess what I didn't do?

Whatever you think about me, I'm still not about dishonesty. I don't “seem.” I just don't. If you're under that illusion, I take no responsibility. Basically, I said something that contradicted my “cool” persona, and the girl left my hand and the bar. And you know what? No harm, no foul. I'm charming. I get it. I'm much more disappointed we didn't talk about your immediate turn regarding my comment than I am at the prospect of not getting laid.

Here I think is the time to talk about “fucking weird” blog type shit. Mind you, I don't find it weird, but my perspective rarely registers otherwise, so I have to deal with all of your consequences.

Like, let's be real, I was, and am probably still, all about my ex. I'm not the stalker creepy type. I'm not lost in some naive Indian conception of “love.” I'm not even of the opinion that I'm necessarily right or the “best” for her. What I am is understood in what I want and don't want in people. So to the extent you want to blame “love” on me, you don't get better than my ex. That's going to just be a truth I die with. It's dramatic if you want it to be, but as a person who hates everyone, I just can't figure out how she's less than anyone should aspire to be with. Call me retarded, that's your right. What matters is I get to die alone writing, with all due respect, and not blowing up her phone like a crazy person.

This girl tonight wanted to make out. She wanted to fuck around. If I played it “cool,” I wouldn't be writing this. I'd be at her house fucking around, for some reason, because I know how to play the game. What happened instead, I was me. I talked honestly. I said some “trigger” idea about my ideas about sex that turned her off in a hurry. And you know what? I couldn't give less a fuck. I miss feeling connected with someone. I miss craving the “sacrifice” of trying to behave in ways they would appreciate. I didn't need to fuck this bitch tonight. And I couldn't give less a fuck that I said something that was “too much” that steered her towards the inevitable quicker.

I think this is kind of lost on people while I struggle and bitch about my relationship to friends. Remember, I'm not a person who respects and conceives of “love.” By the time we get along, it's a veritable spell. Most of my life I've wanted nothing to do with you. “Friends” was as big a joke as anything. Seriously, you fuckers, do you not get that? Am I just tooting my own faggy fucking horn thinking I have a bead on you and how you work? You're the 50 fucks I'm giving more credit than that.

I hate how much I care. I hate that I made friends. It's fucking terrible. It's fucked. I barely have a grasp how to approach it. Mostly, it's complicated because you don't get it. Sure, I have a responsibility to how I respond to you. But, more sure, you're not a piece of shit. Why do you act like you are?

This is my flirtations with “sociopathy” when it comes to clear and present danger fuck opportunities that I cannot find myself invested in. Are you some feeble bitch who's been looking for any excuse to draw her hand back? You're better than that, no? You see it coming. You see it for what it is?

I miss believing. I miss thinking the people in my life mattered for more than they were worth. I'm not lonely in some esoteric conception of the word. I'm not “too smart” or “introspective” eschewing the caution of some philosopher's warning.

“First things first, I'm the realist.”

I'll eat all the humble pie when you can show otherwise. I wanna fuck, but not when you're scared of who I really am. I don't believe in love, but if I were to throw together a shitty contradictory idea of how I conceived of my ex, okay you got me. I don't have even an ounce of hope that my ability and perspective is going to save or fix anything, but it's my literal reason to keep living to pretend otherwise. I was told today that, “you're afraid of life.” The only way that's even a little bit true is in respecting the shitty road I could take to ingratiate myself. Fuck you all, I have way too much power. I need you pretending, like me, that it can be used and accounted for responsibly.

I didn't go out tonight trying to get laid. I can't remember the last time that was the case. I just went out “open.” I've lost my agenda. My violent and voracious craving for the “real” transcends cumming on your tits. That's what it is. I'm violent. I'm going to rip what I want out of you. “Real” is forever an abstraction. My role seems to be immensely particular as an example of it being less so. Of course we have choices, but god forbid I don't choose this.

I'm always going to trust, when it seems due, to my detriment. I'm going to have “faith” in the people I do and scenarios I pretend to understand. I'm going to die trying. I'm going to fail believing. I'm going to get as close to “faith” as a nonbeliever is allowed, because I don't really get why you bother to exist otherwise. I believe in what I felt towards my ex. I believe in the fragments of the example my grandparents set. I believe in ever failed hook-ups at my most charming. The reality, that shitty “feel” fuck-all realm is real. I fucking hate it. I want to differentiate. But fuck me for fucking trying, it's just what doesn't seem to go away.

I'm glad that girl didn't fuck around with me tonight. I had it in the bag. But I still want people. I want connection. I want reality. The world is better off my not being a cynical pervert playing nice enough to play things out.

And that's always the rub. We got along. We could probably be fairly good friends. But, naw. How I “seem” won't comport with who I am. Like, whatever you want to say about me and my ex, I'm not under the impression she was confused about who I was. It's why I wrote a handful of blogs espousing feeling understood for who I really was. Naive or not, writing is supposed to capture the moment, right?

I miss sincerity. It's what I think my “friend” group in college persuaded me of. I miss believing. I'm fucking teary-eyed at the idea that it's just me and whatever I might imagine. How do you blame “friends” when you really miss the ideal that you were something more?

I always trust me. I will respond in what works. My ardent suspicion is that my concept of responsible is going to shit all over every remote conception of humanity. I'm going to fuel it with ego. I'm going to justify the merit in my “wise” perspective. I'm going to be “tired” and “matter-of-fact.” I'm going to adopt a posture of take instead of give. I really just want to cry. If I could ever lean how to do so without being immensely and beyond drunk, I would be.

This is the first moment I ever thought I might do something significantly “bad.” Like, on the real and fuck you, you know I'm smart. I just got an idea. I feel like I might be persuaded. I'm fucking crying right now because I don't want to do that.

Fuck man dude, I just miss believing in things. I don't want to be what I know I can.