My blood pumps slowly, congealed into black sludge. My heart, nevertheless, throttles on with a fury, pumping faster and beating harder.
I hate this. I hate that I’ve gotten to this place from the calm, contented one I had before, and I hate that it was inevitable, that I should have seen it coming, that I did, but looked away, and let myself forget.
But some things, once broken, can’t be mended.
And I hate that too, because no matter what that kind of total loss is always too sudden, always too soon. Because no matter how muddied or tarnished or deserving of destruction, such things always shine once they’re locked away in memories, exiled from the future.
”The best parts of this have come and gone”
I’m in denial. Sometimes blatant, the bargaining kind. Other times just the plain old pretend it didn’t happen and act cheerful kind.
Then I’m angry, then I’m sad, and everyone knows the story, and I don’t know if it’s a crime or consolation that my pain is so boring and ordinary.
…
I think what really gets to me is how much I gave up to keep this going. How I thought the answer was me changing, how I thought it was my fault, how much it hurt to keep trying to take it all on myself.
Once upon a time I was so sure of myself. I trusted my own judgement, even with other people screaming in my face. If I thought I knew better I usually did, and if I didn’t I wasn’t afraid to admit it.
I don’t really know when or why I started second guessing myself. I think at the end it wasn’t something big and exciting. No big moment where my confidence was shattered, no big mistake my hubris led me into.
I think I just got tired, and bored. It’s hard to keep fighting everyone, even if you’re right. It’s hard to keep pushing people away, because being right makes you an asshole. Life is cruel, as is the truth. It’s bitter medicine, and no one wants it until the pain is worse. Many people, they’d rather stay sick.
I guess I wanted to find out if my life would be different, if there was something I was missing. All those people can’t be wrong, right? All that fucking logic.
I guess it was, for a little while? I stopped telling people what I thought, just thought about it. Slowly the thoughts faded to the background, certainly there but easily overlooked. Occasionally the dam would break, when I thought I was somewhere I could talk freely, finally. But I was working on suppressing that too.
It was going okay. I was slowly suffocating part of myself. Slowly and quietly, so I didn’t even realize it was missing.
…
And yeah, my life was different. I was unhappy, of course, but it was different. My unhappiness was just this thing happening, and I couldn’t look at it or why it was happening, or doing anything useful to fix it. I could just run, but there was some comfort there, because everyone else was running too.
With few exceptions my life has been largely painted in shades of unhappiness. But I found meaning there, I found comfort, and with few exceptions I can say easily I never hated my life.
But I’ve been getting there lately. And looking back I honestly can’t tell you why I let myself. Of course I didn’t notice the link between keeping my mouth shut and my thoughts getting quieter. But I don’t know why I started in the first place. I guess because all my friends were doing it, if we’re being honest. I never thought of myself as that kind of person, but that doesn’t always matter. Sometimes we find ourselves being the people we’re not, I suppose.
…
These people were such a big part of my life, and a lot of the time I’ve spent with them feels like a mistake.
Which, you know, sucks.
It’s hard, though. I didn’t have anyone else. I could play up the tragic loner card and say that that’s because being true to yourself means being alone, and it’s not like there isn’t any truth there. But really I just never had much luck finding the right people.
I wonder how much of that was the social anxiety, and how much was just not having good ideas about the kind of people I’d actually like. Growing up I didn’t really have a model for what a good friendship was supposed to be like. Good relationship in general, really. Partly because I had way too many rough edges to be able to work in one anyway. I was friends with broken, fucked up people because they were the only people I could connect to.
It was funny how all the people assumed me and him were these close friends who had each other’s backs. We were outsiders to the larger social circle of our class, but we’d been sticking together for so long. Obviously we were this scrappy duo who looked out for each other in mutual weirdness or something.
Except that’s the kind of whitewashed bullshit you see in movies and TV. Really, broken people just hurt each other and don’t know how to deal with it, so it gets worse and worse.
And I’ve carried around these friendships for so long, but I don’t know if I’m that person anymore.
Don’t get me wrong, I know how to play those games still. The power-plays, the passive aggression, all the things to say to make it hurt in a way they can’t argue out of.
But I don’t want to. I have a choice now. I grew.
I just thought that they’d grow with me, that things would get better for all of us. I thought if I kept trying, they would too.
I know, obviously that’s naive wishful thinking. I still surprise myself by being just a sickening optimist sometimes.
Or really I just didn’t want to admit that changing would mean losing them too.
But here I am.
I could have just kept going on with it. They want to deal with this even less than I do. Everyone would probably be happier if I just forgot it and moved on, probably even me, for a while.
But I just can’t.
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