Turning 40

 I'm turning 38 in less than two weeks and I have realized that I don't know who I am as a person.

I bet if I went through all my old writing that would be a through line. Just a miserable person who doesn't know what they're doing. And maybe that's normal for a lot of people. Maybe there's not a lot distinctively wrong with that being the way someone lives if they're not actively making life worse for others.

I watched Half Man recently and I was horrified - I thought right after watching it that I was not the intended audience. A story about repression and violence? A story about how masculinity and self hatred can eat away at a person and make them complex villains? It felt like the kind of thing that needed to be critical viewing for the men who are tuned into the manosphere - but as a queer person of color who identifies as nonbinary now, I shouldn't have had to watch two people be so cruel to each other. It's not like I thought it was bad art. It's not like I thought there was no nuance or didn't understand that the ending was the only clear ending. It was just the exact opposite of Heated Rivalry. And I guess I'm too much of a baby at this point, nearly 40 years old, to deal with a story of internalized violence becoming externalized violence. I long to escape brutality.

I long to escape myself as always.

So I guess the story really was something that could resonate.

A story about absolutely miserable people senselessly spreading their misery like a disease resonates. The story of men who made so much about their own isolated feelings of inadequacy doesn't feel so different from the way that I've conducted most of my life.

As I have gotten older I have stopped reading and writing and creating. I don't know if I realized how isolating that has been. I don't know if I realized how isolating I have become. 

I've thought a lot about how people show up for other people. People trust people who are consistent. People trust people that aren't just screaming into the void and pretending to have the best intentions. I think? So I have very limited expectations for people trusting me, and I trust very few people in kind. I probably don't really trust anyone if I think hard enough about it.

That's pretty unfair because so many people have shown up for me in my life. So why do I always feel so alone?

I should feel like I'm a part of things because of the things I attend and the way I try to participate - but it all feels like a performance. Every acknowledgement feels like a con. Everything but anger and sadness feels like a lie. 

It's so humiliating to be this old and this dysfunctional even though I logically know that I'm not the only person who feels this way. I know even among the people I interact with most often, the people I should consider my friends, that other people feel this way. But internal logic can't keep me from feeling like I'm the only one. No one else could ever know the way that this feels - because I'm so special in my misery.

I think the worst part about it is that I've become active in comment sections. 

I think that's how I know that I've reached a level of loneliness that I hadn't touched before. Even if I have been frustratedly groaning at the void my whole life with my whole heart, I knew I could say it to someone and get a reaction. The worst part of being 40 years old is that no one wants to react anymore. 

We're all so tired.

The only reliable reaction is my own intrusive thoughts.

I don't even know how to end this, which I guess is the story of my life.