Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #027

Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday #027 – “How To Disappear Completely”

I closed my eyes for a second at the table to somewhat steady myself, if only for a moment.  It’s not like I haven’t been here before, in fact, I go through this stuff all the time.  In an hour or two, it’ll all be over and I can just go back to living my life the way that I live it and trying to justify my strange-ass existence.

Eyes open.  “So, what’s new?  How’s work?” I ask generic entity number one.  Their eyes light up in response.  Synapses connect.  They go on to explain that yadda yadda mcyadda, they’ve been promoted, or they’ve completed X-assignment, or they’ve got a new office.  Accomplishments.  Achievements.  All on Instagram already of course, but nevertheless, I persisted and asked the questions anyway, didn’t I?  “Hey, that’s super cool,” I say in response.  “Proud of you for doing _________ (fill in the blank your own damn self), I always knew you could do it.”  Eyes closed again for a quick reset, then opened up as they shift to warm body number two – “and how about you?” I ask.  “What have you been up to?  Oh, you’ve been nominated for a couple of awards?  Amazing.  Your company is moving locations?  Ain’t that some shit!?!  Your commute is going to be twice as long now?  Jeez man, that’s tough.”  So on and so on until they’re done listing all the stuff that has happened to them since the last episode of ‘in the life of.’  I get it…it’s what people do.  Theoretically speaking, we need to talk and communicate and such, it keeps the brain sharp, though I have my suspicions that anything resembling small talk is the real root cause of our devolution.  Still, these life updates shouldn’t be considered small talk at all, right?  We should be asking questions because we genuinely care, but let’s face it – you probably don’t, and that’s the real point.

For shits and giggles we’ll say there are four people sitting at this table, and one of them is me.  You can imagine the other three are friends or family, or both, I don’t really give a flying fuck…that’s on you and your imagination to fill in the blanks.  They’re not strangers, that’s the main thing.  These are folks that are supposed to care about me just as much as I care about them, if that’s even possible.  Is that really the nature of reciprocal friendship?  Is that how family actually works?  Fuck if I know.  I only have my own experience…and that is…different than yours probably has been, to say the least.  I click the screen of my phone to check the time, and it’s only 6:37.  We got here at 6:30.  I’ve heard the updates on two people’s lives already and that sadly took all of seven minutes.  I have no idea how long this gathering will take, and it’s been immediately cringe worthy.  I take a deep breath and break the silence yet again by asking the third person what is going on with their brand-new job that they’ve gotten after switching from the last employer that either went out of business or got bought out or whatever the heck it was.  “Oh yeah?  That’s great.  It’s too bad things didn’t work out at the last place, but I’m sure they’ll work out in this one.  How could they not?  They’ve got you working for them now, and you…are…awesome!”  Smile.  Don’t forget to smile.

I have officially completed the rounds.  We now have a decent accounting of where everybody stands after all they’ve done in between the last time and now.  Not a full recollection of course; that part happens in excruciating spurts over the course of a meal and a few beers as people recall whatever the heck it was they think might be of interest to other people when it’s painfully obvious that most people have no fucking clue what that would be.  I remember vividly what it used to be like to ask these kinds of questions and sincerely care what the answers were going to be.  Time makes you jaded whether you like it or not…you can resist, but only for so long…eventually, you succumb to feeling like they matter to you more than you’ve ever mattered to them, and everything hurts.  I think we all want to matter to the people in our lives, but the reality is, friendship is primarily proximity-based and more one-sided than we’d ever like to admit.  What we really miss when people disappear from our daily life is the ability to use them as a sounding board, or a mirror to reflect that parts of ourselves we like best right back to us.

But I know what comes next, because I’ve been here so many times before.  These three people, that might even mean the world to me or have at least maybe known me for years and years, will go silent now.  I’ve asked them about them, but they won’t dare to ask about me.  If you’re self-employed like I am, I figure it only goes one of two ways…either you have people in your life that want you to succeed and are interested in every step you take to do everything you do along the way, or you have people in your life that have no idea how to ask you about your business, are uncomfortable with the idea of breaking the fourth wall, and would rather sit silently until the next conversation about something else begins.  I have lived this for the past fifteen years, and it’s fucking wild.  You start talking about jobs and work and recognition and awards and company retreats and business meetings and you laugh and you ask more questions about it all, forming a somewhat meaningful dialog that tells somebody you CARE.  I don’t get that.  I mean, as a concept, I get it.  As a reality of living my life the way I do, I don’t get that at all.  People would rather swallow a sword than open their mouth to ask me how my job is coming along.  Doesn’t matter if it’s a friend or if it’s family, hence that’s why the three people at this table are entirely generic, because in either scenario, I’m sure to not be asked about anything that I’ve been up to, ever.  Work-wise, that is.  Sure we’ll bullshit about this thing or that thing, or talk about the latest movie that we saw…something they can relate to, but that doesn’t come anywhere close to my realm of interest in life.  The more they can steer clear of talking about music, the more they don’t have to ask about my job or if anything is new and/or exciting about it lately.  Now imagine that whatever it is you’re most into in life, that the people you love most will do anything they can to avoid even bringing it up.  Good times.

I look down at the ground.  I could be proactive, and offer new information to them instead.  Do I have any?  What would they even be interested in hearing about?  They never ask any questions, so how do I know what they’d wanna know?  Shit.  I don’t.  I don’t have a clue.  Has it been that long since the last time I talked about work?  Do they even consider what I do to be work?  Like, I write about music all day long…my job is to literally sit on my ass and click play.  Do they respect me for that – or do they hate me for that?  Do they not ask me anything about what I do because they have to go to some kind of real job with real responsibilities in the real world in order to make real money to support their real lives?  Maybe.  I don’t know.  I just want to feel like somebody other than me gives a shit about anything that I do, and I’ve long forgotten what it feels like when someone truly does.  Hell, I’d absolutely take the fake small talk shit right now at this point.  Why won’t somebody just ask me how my fucking job is going?

I don’t quite remember how or when it got like this.  It happened gradually as far as I can recall.  Like, you go into business for yourself, pursuing the thing you’re most passionate about, that means the whole fucking world to you, and it fully consumes you in the greatest & worst of ways simultaneously.  Maybe I didn’t show up somewhere at times I should have.  Maybe how much I hate the phone limited my ability to communicate with the people I love.  Maybe my desire to make something out of nothing in life ended up turning me into some kind of jerk day by day and I never realized how much I changed.  When confronted with real drive and passion up close, it can scare the fucking daylights out of people – not because of what they see in you, but because it shows them something special they just don’t have.

At least that’s what I tell myself.  I have a lot of conversations with myself.  In fact, I’m having one right now.  You know, I read something somewhere recently that went on to explain the majority of the people on this planet don’t actually have an internal dialog?  That’s horrifying to me.  What makes it even stranger is when you think about the chicken and the egg of it all.  Like, if I didn’t talk to myself, I’d have no one else to talk to at all really, but really, I talk to myself because there is no one else to talk to.

Not in the way that I personally want to talk, which is pretty much anything but the surface level crap.  I will always remember the time that a family member of mine was explaining why their significant other didn’t come over to our house.  Apparently, they “didn’t want to talk about their feelings, and Jer only ever wants to talk about feelings” from what I was told, unsolicited.  I can do surface level too bro – I just think people are and should be worth more effort than that.  But shit yeah, if you wanna talk about the local sports team, or if Ben Affleck & J-Lo might make a third run at it, or what the weather might be next week, I can be a captive audience that’ll just shut the fuck up if you don’t wanna talk about how it makes you feel inside.  With each gathering around the tableside with family, or beers out with friends, I deaden myself that much more.  I disappear from the picture of my own life.  I try hard to forget it’s the life I’m leading, like I can look at it from the outside and totally understand why it doesn’t matter much.  I probably feel the same way about lawyers and their court cases, artists and their awards, or even doctors saving the lives of their patients.  It’s not that none of this matters, it’s just that it doesn’t matter to me, you see?  We can only relate to what we can relate to, and I’m absolutely sure that your world is as equally strange to me as mine is to you.  The only difference, for whatever reason, seems to be that I’m willing to try and understand yours, while you look at mine and assume you’ve got the basic gist.

And so blah blah blah, somebody saw a new movie.  Blah blah blah, somebody bought a new house, or a car, or a Bic lighter that never flicked to a flame once and they couldn’t get a refund for it…I don’t know, I probably tuned out.  The conversations keep going, starting and stopping, but the odds of anybody going deep or saying anything substantial is second to none.  We’ll laugh, we’ll say things we won’t remember, and we’ll move on, because that’s what people do.  They go right back to living their lives the way that they live them, they don’t apologize for it, and nor should they.  We don’t owe anybody an insight into our lives, and we shouldn’t expect anyone to offer any either – but can you imagine what we could accomplish if we had the opportunity to share more of ourselves with each other?  That’s where you get competition WITH someone, not against.  It’s where encouragement comes from.  It’s where the motivation to succeed is needed.  Without that, it’s all on your own shoulders & the weight of it all could easily crush a person right where they stand – trust me on that, because I’m speaking from experience.

Life has balance.  Life is reciprocal.  You get what you give, by choice, or by force.  I used to be so much more sensitive about whether people gave the slightest shit about what I do…it used to matter to me.  I’ve become comforted in the ether of the unknown.  I am warmed by the numbness & by the obscurity.  I have disappeared from the picture of my own life, and perhaps the background is now better for it.  I don’t crave real conversations like I used to, because that energy would be sorely wasted, would it not?  They say it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.  I call bullshit on that.  It’s not the things we love most in our lives that kill us; it’s the fucking extravagant pain of the absence of them.

Shit.  How long have I been spaced out at this table for?  I look around to the faces of the other three human beings in front of me and it doesn’t seem like it was long enough to faze them, they’re still smiling, talking, laughing the night away, and good on them.  I mean, it’d be nice if they noticed that I was switched off for however long I was just a moment ago, but it is definitely not expected.  Maybe life wasn’t meant to be so complex.  Maybe talking about your feelings is completely pointless.  Maybe our accomplishments aren’t anything other than another thing that helps us pass some more time as we continue to avoid the conversation surrounding our existence, and how we fucking got here in the first place!  Maybe I should just chill out.  Maybe I just need to remind myself that when I look at that picture without me, I still have the privilege of knowing exactly what it looked like, when I used to be included.

Wash, rinse, repeat.  I will go through these motions, and I will enjoy them, because even if I’m the only person on Earth to understand why I live the life I lead or what it means to me, isn’t that still worth it?  Eyes closed.  Think.  Breathe.  Anxiety is a motherfucker.  Eyes open.  Everyone’s gone.  It’s just me at the table, alone, leaving me wondering if they were ever really here, or if I was the only one to show up.  Did they need to be real?  Is a lack of connection any more meaningful if it’s real, or does it still suck?  Have we ever been a part of each other’s lives – or have we somehow imagined a bond that has never existed?  I feel like the answers to these questions should be clearer, but what else can you expect from someone that has disappeared from the picture of their own life?  I’m so clear I’m see-through at this point.  A part of the atmosphere.  A part of the nothing.  A part of the everything.  A part of me.  A part of you.  A part of what’s known.  A part of what can never be known.  A part of what is, what will be, and what never was.

A part of the experience…and nothing more.

Thank you for reading this week’s edition of Twisted Thoughts And Thoughtful Truths On Thursday from Jer @ SBS – catch up on the rest, or read your favorites again anytime you like by clicking here!