Beginnings were never my thing.
When it came to writing, it was always a painstaking, headache inducing process and I'd find myself lured into the swamps of possibility, only to get mired down in it. I'd start writing it all in my head (where I can write flawlessly, beautifully) but trying to get it down on paper resulted in a fiasco much like a spider wearing roller-skates. My writing is stop and go at best and sometimes I find myself staring at a Pages document as if it's going to write itself, constantly going back to check if anything else has magically appeared until I realize that it's MY story, and no one else is going to write it. Sometimes that thrills me, and sometimes that frustrates the hell out of me. Twenty points to Gryffindor if you can guess which reaction is most prevalent.
I’ll say it again-beginnings aren't really my thing.
There's twenty million and a half things I'm always trying to start, and only about thirty (if I'm lucky) of those things are seen to completion. I don't like unfinished things at all, so starting and stopping in the middle of a task irks me like lack of symmetry irks other people. However, there are some things I have started that I know might never end, and I alone have started them, and can blame no one else for the repercussions. For instance: time alone.
Funny thing, time alone. The more you seem to get it, the more of it you seem to need. It can be many things: cathartic, lonely, illuminating, but you don't seem to realize that it's addicting until it's too late. If you are already an introvert, there's little you can do about that- it's the way you are made. But if you are an extrovert or an ambivert, well, that's a fresh hell all by itself. You can entertain yourself up to a point, but just a point, and when one of those increasingly rare invitations to hang out come along, you go with excitement. At least, at first.
It has nothing to do with the quality of the company; it is nothing personal at all. You find yourself having fun, drinking, making conversation with people you care about and miss. It fills you up like a helium balloon. But at some point, you start thinking about all the things at home that don't require you to make eye contact, to make conversation. You start checking your phone, but you don't think about the fact that you're probably already hanging out with the people who you follow online. And then the anxiety, lovely lovely anxiety, begins to bloom. It is nothing personal against your friends, your family, your hosts-but all you can think about is the fact that there's too many people around, and all you want to do is get in your car and go home, where there are no demands. And you feel guilty at your rudeness, but at the same time you can't help wondering if anyone else is feeling this way, too. So you make your excuses (sometimes they're real, and sometimes they're not) and say your goodbyes, and by the time you get in your car it no longer feels like you're being squeezed through a tight rubber tube. You struggle with guilt on the drive home (am I the world's biggest asshole?) and try to tell yourself that the relief of leaving is the result of many things-you're tired, you have stuff to do tomorrow, you didn't want to get too drunk, but the fact remains is that even the tiniest amount of social responsibility is beginning to exhaust you.
It is the way of things now. Why hang out? Why use the gas, the time, the money-when you can just leave comments and have gif wars? Why have a conversation when a Like will do? We're all prisoners to it. Even if you disdain social media, it's as involuntary as blinking now. Even if you're one of those rare ones who can disconnect their accounts-it's not that easy, because in order to have the full effect, you'd have to convince the people in your world to disconnect too, and that's very unlikely.
And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy-you don't want to be alone, but you can't be around people, either. The invitations grow sparse. When they do come, you already know what's going to happen, but you don't want to lose your people completely, and that's the extrovert (or ambivert) trying to scream through this bell jar that you've trapped them under. So you go, although suddenly that story you wanted to write (that’s been stuck in the same scene for three months) is begging to be written, you have three new episodes of your favorite Netflix show waiting, Jesus, your laundry is a hot mess, and man, work has you exhausted-surely they'll understand? But you still go, praying that this time you'll be able to to enjoy a get together or a party without feeling the siren call to home. You know you don’t have many chances before you stop getting invited to things altogether, and you know before long, people will be having more children and the chance of social interaction without interruption disappears completely.
But there's no such luck.
Sooner rather than later, the invitations do stop coming, and it hurts. It doesn't hurt as much as the secret relief that now you don't have to succumb to the slight social pressure, but it still fucking hurts. You are undependable and flaky, and you hate those traits in other people, so why are you being a hypocrite? Somewhere along the way, it just got easier and easier to make excuses. Some people understand. The grind is merciless, and it leaves no one untouched. We're all adults here, some at least in age-we all get it don't we? There's just only so many times you can bail before your friendship and your word is substandard, unreliable, and your little trapped extrovert is bellowing in protest, but home is a powerful draw. So you stay there.
...to do what, exactly?
Yeah, it feels nice at first-sitting at home, watching Netflix, playing video games, eating large and diabetes inducing amounts of junk food, staying in your pajamas, taking endless baths/showers. Writing. Drawing. Screwing around on Instagram. Having sex. Not having sex. Being with your significant other, because work has been a bitch lately and you haven't gotten 1:1 time with them. If you feel the need to connect with people, it's safe, because it's online. It doesn't demand anything you're not already conditioned to give. Sooner or later, though-you run out of Netflix shows, and you can only play so many video games before you go cross-eyed. Being with your significant other is great, but no good relationship ever survived by being stuck up each other's asses all the time. There's only so many times you can stand frog-eyed in front of your refrigerator eating ham from a deli bag at 3am before it stops being funny and starts being pathetic.
So maybe you try, maybe you make an attempt to reach out-only to remember that you've forgotten how. I'm sure everyone's seen the variety of memes where it implies (or outright says) that saying hi to one of your friends is fine, but making conversation is a capital offense when it comes to someone's self inflicted solidarity. That's always in the back of your head when you try to reach out: what if they're sitting here, praying to god you'll leave them alone? And you know they are, because sometimes (not all the time) you do the same thing when someone tries to reach out to you. WELP! I TRIED! I'LL TRY AGAIN IN SIX MONTHS! SOCIAL OBLIGATION HAS BEEN FILLED! Unpause Netflix. Grab some Cheetos. Bask in the relief. We choose to express our inability to connect through memes. We use humor to mask a sense of what the fuck are we even doing and somehow, if it’s a meme, it makes it all okay. We don’t know! Our phones do it all for us! We try to relate through a machine.
We don't want social interaction unless it is on our terms. We're all sitting here wanting someone to realize we're not around anymore, but when someone does, we'd rather that they forget we exist.
There are many reasons why you tell yourself to stop reaching out. The excuses can go on forever and the more you get addicted to solidarity, the more sense they make. You're getting older and the people you once hung out with have different priorities, different schedules, and yes, I'll say it-different political views. They party too much. You want to hang out with more mature people and do more mature things, because that's what you think you should do, and you don't stop to think that maybe you could have had those things with those same people, if you had given a shit. It's just much easier to walk away, to tell yourself: I'm growing up, and it happens. Yes, it does happen. It happened before social media. We just had the misfortune of growing up in a time where social media accelerated it and provided ready made excuses for it. And so you're alone, with your Netflix and your bag of ham and your empty Messenger inbox. And it feels okay, as long as you don't think about it too much. And when people do need you, when they reach out for help or advice or just to know someone's there, just that tiny demand on your time is asking too much. It feels overwhelming, and it shouldn't. Enter resentment, stage left.
Human beings are social creatures. We are designed that way. Even if some of us are introverts, we are biologically wired to seek out other people, even if the sum of those people are few. We have to interact to survive. And now most of us don't remember how to.
When I went on that two week hiatus from people, I knew it would change things, and it did. I don't regret it, because I was nearly at the end of my rope. I anticipated things might be different, and they were. You don't generally think of two weeks being a long time, especially when you've been keeping to yourself to begin with, but those two weeks shone heavy duty light on things I'd been in denial about. Not just about myself, but other people. And when I came back, I found that conversations that used to come easily, didn't come at all. Small talk for me is like putting my hand on a hot stove-top-it is almost unbearable. I'm still wondering if it's because there are many things we'd like to say but can't, or if it's because we really don't have anything to say to each other, and never did.
I knew there would be consequences for that two week hiatus, and I knew I'd have to take them. It didn't take long for the flood of bullshit to come back, but I know taking another hiatus would not do me well. There's only so long you can staunch your responsibility towards other people, but as it turns out, you're in control of whom you owe that responsibility to. As much as that hiatus helped me, I am now coming to grips with the fact that this desire to be solitary is much like chemo to a cancer patient-it kills the cancer, yes, but it's also damaging me. I find myself prone to fits of vulnerability. I'll be in Walmart, walking to my car, and I'll be overcome by an intense urge to burst into tears, something that does not come naturally to me. I'll be taking one of my 3 hour baths and I'll be struck by the need to hide, to find reassurance in something, anything-it doesn't matter-and not finding anything, I'll fidget and wander around the house until I give into the impulse of taking another bath. I'll try to drink, which has always been a knee jerk reaction (an unhealthy one, yes-but it always worked) when something gets me down, and the whiskey turns my stomach sour. I try to write, and the words are wooden and difficult to string together. I pretend that a few Instagram likes from strangers is enough to fill me up. I buy things on Amazon to decorate a house that harbors no guests, and tell myself that I need these things when in reality, I am just substituting material things for human interaction. When there are no little red 1's or 2's attached to my little Facebook icon, I ask myself, ‘What did you expect?’ I am not sad. I am stuck. I have been sad before, and I have been stuck before, and it never lasts forever.
Hear me, I am not perfect.
I have been angry at people I care about, I have left them in their time of need because I felt as if I had nothing left to give anyone else. I am far from innocent. I have flaked, I have made excuses. I have lost my temper. I have been accused of being Miss High & Mighty, and in return, I have been told to rot in hell and to go fuck myself. I've been called disloyal. I have been jealous, I have coveted. I have been a hypocrite, being angry and hurt over people distancing themselves when I have been doing the same thing-for different reasons, mind you, but hey, apples and oranges. I am human, and therefore riddled with flaws, whether by my design or by nature. I am under no illusion that things will magically change, that all will be as it was before, because a lot of the things that happened in the past few years, especially in this political climate, made it nearly impossible to wipe the slate clean. I delete a lot of my statuses, I think twice before I comment. My cameras get dusty on the shelf, and there have been times when I visit a cemetery to shed all of this, only to sit down on the nearest bench and wonder why the fuck do you bother? I shut down Satori because my heart cannot follow it anymore, and I tell myself that it is just the way life goes; you lose a lot along the way. I have gained a lot of insight, and that alone is worth all of this. Friendship is a two way street and sometimes that street is lined with potholes filled with good intentions, but potholes all the same. We want to believe that we can press Pause on all of our friendships/relationships until we are ready to deal with them, and it doesn’t work that way.
I know I said I wasn't great at beginnings, but endings aren't really my friends either. Maybe it is time to let go. Maybe most of it is my fault, or time's fault, or social media's fault (most likely all three) but I am trying to find the resolve to fix it, at least the parts that look salvageable. The hard part is knocking over this fucking bell jar. The hardest part is finding out who wants to.
TL;DR I have social issues.
I’d also like to point out that some of the things I pointed out come from my own experience, but there’s some things in there that come from the words and perceived actions of others,. Like I said, I am not trying to play a victim, since I’ve done/thought some of these things myself. I’m not trying to assign blame, either. Life, uh, gets in the way.
In other news, my weekend was quite interesting-filled with dinosaurs (good movie) new vacuum cleaners (adulthood joys are both simple and weird), bad cake (I tried and I failed)Harry Potter, and out of the blue home renovations. Lacey came over and we drank (or rather, Sid and I drank and she just filled up her shot glasses halfway with syrupy water) and watched Deathly Hallows. On Sunday we swam with Scott at the gym, discussed Star Wars and people who believe other people's ridiculous stories without investigating them thoroughly, and ate at Theo's Pizza, which was pretty good, even if we didn't get a Hasselhoff table number. Dragged the boys through Ulta, then I drug them to the cemetery, and then we drove down Broadway where all of the Zulu and Rex kings live. Went to a really cool record shop called the Mushroom and got a GWTW poster (Gone With The Wind to you) and then promptly came home and lounged around, sunburnt and exhausted. I am very grateful that all I have to do is get through today (Mondays are usually easy at the gym) and tomorrow, and Wednesday we are off, Thursday is my early day, and Fridays are usually a breeze. Weather says it might rain but no one listens to the weather in Louisiana unless Jim Cantore shows up. I am in serious need of a beach day. I do not know what I'm doing for the 4th but I'm sure it involves multiple baths and eating ham out of a deli bag at 3am.
Things coming up: Riley's 4th birthday @ the end of July, and something else at the end of the month which will be interesting, to say the least. Then there's Sid's birthday, and the possibility of Aladdin at the Saenger, which I hope I can get tickets for.
There are many reasons to keep going on.
I just have to keep reminding myself of them.