I wonder sometimes if people realize how little I assume they think of me. Especially people who are friendly on a superficial level. Store clerks. Business associates. People I must routinely interact with, but have no personal stake in. I am always well mannered, razor sharp to the point, and courteous. I feel like it’s my obligation to conduct my business and remove my unpalatable self from their presence as swiftly as possible, as a sort of unspoken payment and arrangement for their similar kind manners and efficiency. I can find myself liking them a great deal, but I never feel the reverse is possible. Logically I know that not everyone I run into hates me, and many of the people behaving like they care about me actually do so and aren’t just faking it, but the feeling is very seldom there.
I think it’s from being overly sensitive in general, particularly when I was younger. Having friends and caring about friends who would ditch me, or make fun of the things I thought were cool. I learned early that caring about someone doesn’t automatically mean they care back, and that it’s a trick of the brain not to be trusted. And since it’s a particularly devastating trick to play on sensitive individuals, it’s best to preemptively remove the chance for that let down.
I want to blame it on my peers, but I think it was my mother. Boomer (of course), but I still hesitate to shit all over her parenting efforts. She did better than a lot of others. And nobody is perfect. “Intermittent love” was her parental sin, paired with the idea that it had to be earned. She was very emotional, very into her own feelings and governed by them, and mostly they were angry and worn out.
She was religious, punitive, never appreciated or got along with my dad- who felt to me like the REAL heart of the home and source of calm and stability. He never got angry and took it out on us. He never hit us, even though his own dad beat him half to death all the time for no good reason.
I think about her beautiful light back when we were all young…but also this constant layer of darkness, and control issues, and resentment, and sour exasperation that I tried so hard to shove behind that light. My dad was my salvation ultimately, I think. If my mother was with someone else- someone like the creepy weirdo she is with now, it could have been different for us growing up.
I can’t put my finger on it, but I don’t trust him. There are a few categories of people that I clash with inherently- fuckboys, degenerate junkies, degenerate junky fuckboys, boomers who still don’t comprehend the existence of people other than themselves (all of them), Walking Millennial Stereotypes, Creepy Fuckin’ Weirdos, and ESPECIALLY- Salesman. Liars. Grifting manipulators. Fake listeners just waiting for a chance to talk about themselves as though anyone in the universe gives a shit about your anecdote. Nobody but you has your weird little ego alter vision of yourself to celebrate and compare your unsolicited stories to.
I get along with clerks who aren’t salesmen types, but salesmen personality type clerks and I clash like Highlander blades. The whole “heyyy BUDDYY, HURHURHUR, ohh YEeAHH THERE, we sure APPRECIATECHA. We APPRECIATECHA. Oh do “ya” “Buddy?” Do “ya” “Appreciatcha” me?
Falling Down, a true intellectual’s piece of cinema regarding the mental collapse of Man in Modernity, has one of my favorite quotes on this exact scene:
“I’m not your buddy, Rick. I just want breakfast.”
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