Between the Bars
Hi How Are You? (Please read with the same chirpy cadence as Contrapoints has been using lately.)
I'm miserable, thanks for asking.
My head is blank. My head is cluttered. I have a new appreciation for those canvases that are solid white and the value is in the time it took to paint a thousand thin layers over years with a different stroke and intention in each. My mind is cluttered with sheets of white noise. The level of transparency for any one of them is not the same, so tangled I stumble trying to avoid trampling things, treading where I shouldn't, certain I'm going to fall. Fail and fall. Fall and fail. The clutter won't make a good excuse. Does anything, really?
It's been a very long time, it feels. I should use you more often- because using you feels much less draining than using anyone else. Anything else.
It's a new year and so much has changed. So much is good. So much is better and easier and kinder. So much is clearer. So much is the same. A quiet scream that begs for attention but rejects anything it attracts. A thousand tiny deaths. The specter of the desire for one big death. So much is so the same.
I should come back to you more often because I am exhausting myself more often. The logical sequence from being personally exhausting is to be exhausting to anyone who will listen to you. I watched What We Do In The Shadows the TV series recently and I think I might be an emotional vampire. I feel like a time suck. I'm not worth the energy I'm depleting and with every apology and explanation that I should be better I drive myself into a self-fulfilling prophecy, I'm certain.
I remember performing this play. It spans years and all acts are the same. I'm alone though not, but my desire for affection is misplaced and that's what makes life so lonely. The key players change. The motivations change. The actions don't.
I remember being with Gilbert and begging for attention then refusing to believe it was genuine. The next dance was a departure that was meant to lead to a chase that never came, so the pieces are reset and we try the scene again. Of course, in this production the male lead was cheating, so the suspicions were valid, and the desire to go was valid as well, because we wouldn't have been friends if I hadn't been so bankrupt of affection.
Then there was Scott, of course. Though a new company in a new city the staging was very similar. A cheater, a love-starved buffoon, and a terrible game of breaking up to feel wanted. A thing that never came. So through a familiar slow and graceless dance I reenter and back to first position to try again. I was thinking today of one of the last things he said as the tour was coming to a close: He had forgotten he could be happy. Over eight years with me he had begun to assume that depression was his natural state, but he had found a new girl who finally reminded him he could be happy. He was miserable and he just wanted to be happy now. I was a poison setting to sleep a part of him that would be awakened by true love's kiss. A pebble in his shoe causing a constant discomfort. I was wrong.
And in both instances if began to feel that over time if I hadn't played this game because I wanted proof that someone loved me - maybe I wouldn't have become such a burden. Maybe I wouldn't have been painful enough to drain the happiness from someone. Maybe they wouldn't have left. Maybe I could settle for the largely withheld affection of self-absorbed men that I would never have been friends with if I weren't dating them.
There are new players: Ryan, Esme, Issa. A new-old love to repeat new-old habits with. More problems to worry about until they manifest through my force of unintentional will.
I like to think I'm different now. At the very least I like the people in my life. I feel a genuine affection for them and try to be a good friend because they are fantastic friends. They're so good I feel desperately inadequate. I possibly over-compensate. Every moment together is meant to be a celebration of their goodness and my eternal gratitude that they allow me in their lives. All the moments apart are long essays on my instability and outright disregard for good sense. It's in these periods that I plant the seeds for my spell.
I don't think it's easy to drive people away. It's quite a bit harder, I think, than just accepting help and care. There's a good deal of ground work to put down to wear someone out over months and years. A lot of conversations that seem like way too much information but somehow equally guarded. Revealing just enough secrets at just the right times. Letting people in seems much easier. Being truthful seems much easier. Lies need to be kept track of, after all. An override of ones own memories is hard to do, but good lies are embedded. Closing myself off seems easy, but it's just natural. Natural make up is not easy to apply...there are a thousand comics about this. Women get a lot of shit when they wear no make-up, they joke. Everyone thinks you're sick! Nature doesn't seem easy either. There's nothing easy or logical I think about a duck's corkscrew penis. I am sure you could explain why it is necessary - probably something to do with duck rape- but I will not be convinced that a corkscrew shape was the easiest thing to design, choose and evolve. Natural selection is about things being easy- but I won't accept it, I don't care.
So, it just seems so much easier to avoid the constant apologies, disparaging remarks, and insistence that I'm wrong and what I'm doing is wrong. It seems so much easier to accept someone validating my feelings the first time. It seems easier to believe someone when they proclaim my value with the same enthusiasm that I give to them.
So things are new. And things have changed. And I don't want to play this game- I don't want to hate myself and hope that people won't despite my arguments that they must. I would like to think that things are new because I have grown up, but I think the lesson was learned that no one will put up with that forever. I just don't want everyone to leave.
Happy New Year~
I'm miserable, thanks for asking.
My head is blank. My head is cluttered. I have a new appreciation for those canvases that are solid white and the value is in the time it took to paint a thousand thin layers over years with a different stroke and intention in each. My mind is cluttered with sheets of white noise. The level of transparency for any one of them is not the same, so tangled I stumble trying to avoid trampling things, treading where I shouldn't, certain I'm going to fall. Fail and fall. Fall and fail. The clutter won't make a good excuse. Does anything, really?
It's been a very long time, it feels. I should use you more often- because using you feels much less draining than using anyone else. Anything else.
It's a new year and so much has changed. So much is good. So much is better and easier and kinder. So much is clearer. So much is the same. A quiet scream that begs for attention but rejects anything it attracts. A thousand tiny deaths. The specter of the desire for one big death. So much is so the same.
I should come back to you more often because I am exhausting myself more often. The logical sequence from being personally exhausting is to be exhausting to anyone who will listen to you. I watched What We Do In The Shadows the TV series recently and I think I might be an emotional vampire. I feel like a time suck. I'm not worth the energy I'm depleting and with every apology and explanation that I should be better I drive myself into a self-fulfilling prophecy, I'm certain.
I remember performing this play. It spans years and all acts are the same. I'm alone though not, but my desire for affection is misplaced and that's what makes life so lonely. The key players change. The motivations change. The actions don't.
I remember being with Gilbert and begging for attention then refusing to believe it was genuine. The next dance was a departure that was meant to lead to a chase that never came, so the pieces are reset and we try the scene again. Of course, in this production the male lead was cheating, so the suspicions were valid, and the desire to go was valid as well, because we wouldn't have been friends if I hadn't been so bankrupt of affection.
Then there was Scott, of course. Though a new company in a new city the staging was very similar. A cheater, a love-starved buffoon, and a terrible game of breaking up to feel wanted. A thing that never came. So through a familiar slow and graceless dance I reenter and back to first position to try again. I was thinking today of one of the last things he said as the tour was coming to a close: He had forgotten he could be happy. Over eight years with me he had begun to assume that depression was his natural state, but he had found a new girl who finally reminded him he could be happy. He was miserable and he just wanted to be happy now. I was a poison setting to sleep a part of him that would be awakened by true love's kiss. A pebble in his shoe causing a constant discomfort. I was wrong.
And in both instances if began to feel that over time if I hadn't played this game because I wanted proof that someone loved me - maybe I wouldn't have become such a burden. Maybe I wouldn't have been painful enough to drain the happiness from someone. Maybe they wouldn't have left. Maybe I could settle for the largely withheld affection of self-absorbed men that I would never have been friends with if I weren't dating them.
There are new players: Ryan, Esme, Issa. A new-old love to repeat new-old habits with. More problems to worry about until they manifest through my force of unintentional will.
I like to think I'm different now. At the very least I like the people in my life. I feel a genuine affection for them and try to be a good friend because they are fantastic friends. They're so good I feel desperately inadequate. I possibly over-compensate. Every moment together is meant to be a celebration of their goodness and my eternal gratitude that they allow me in their lives. All the moments apart are long essays on my instability and outright disregard for good sense. It's in these periods that I plant the seeds for my spell.
I don't think it's easy to drive people away. It's quite a bit harder, I think, than just accepting help and care. There's a good deal of ground work to put down to wear someone out over months and years. A lot of conversations that seem like way too much information but somehow equally guarded. Revealing just enough secrets at just the right times. Letting people in seems much easier. Being truthful seems much easier. Lies need to be kept track of, after all. An override of ones own memories is hard to do, but good lies are embedded. Closing myself off seems easy, but it's just natural. Natural make up is not easy to apply...there are a thousand comics about this. Women get a lot of shit when they wear no make-up, they joke. Everyone thinks you're sick! Nature doesn't seem easy either. There's nothing easy or logical I think about a duck's corkscrew penis. I am sure you could explain why it is necessary - probably something to do with duck rape- but I will not be convinced that a corkscrew shape was the easiest thing to design, choose and evolve. Natural selection is about things being easy- but I won't accept it, I don't care.
So, it just seems so much easier to avoid the constant apologies, disparaging remarks, and insistence that I'm wrong and what I'm doing is wrong. It seems so much easier to accept someone validating my feelings the first time. It seems easier to believe someone when they proclaim my value with the same enthusiasm that I give to them.
So things are new. And things have changed. And I don't want to play this game- I don't want to hate myself and hope that people won't despite my arguments that they must. I would like to think that things are new because I have grown up, but I think the lesson was learned that no one will put up with that forever. I just don't want everyone to leave.
Happy New Year~
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