Is Anybody Here?

Something they never tell you (probably because it goes without saying) about all those wide-eyed dreams and plans that you make as a teenager is that you have to grow up at a certain level to achieve them. I'm not talking about maturing or learning how to balance a check book. I am talking about the fact that you must physically grow up. You have to get older and your brain has to change at the chemical level typically before those schemes and plans come to fruition. Another thing that may not get as much press as it should is how lonely it is growing up.

Your friends get older just like you, and they had dreams and plans as well. Most of them will move on to achieve their goals and you will move on as well. Then the marriages start, then the kids, and before you know it you're sitting across from an old friend from high school talking about your retirement plans and feeling "totally stoked" about finally having that big supply of health insurance you've always wished for. Like a rock it hits you, you are both simply shadows of the people you used to know and love. Not depressing empty shadows that yearn for the ways things used to be, fulfilled shadows with shifted perspectives and changed mindsets. There will occasionally be the one guy that just refuses to let go of the glory days, but unless there are a group of you embracing that lunacy, he brings the party to everything you and your boring friends do and then you speak poorly of his life choices after he is gone claiming that "he'll never get his act together".

While I accept the fact that most of this is just the natural way life moves and I expected a great deal of the monotonous and unstoppable boredom that I find my life emanating, I did not expect to feel so lonely while experiencing it. I do have a wife whom I would be lost without, but we both talk often about how strange it is that we don't have many (any) friends. They are across the country, or busy living their lives and staying closer to those who are more convenient to visit. We don't have a couple, or even a single person who we can look to for comfort as we all suffer through the "dulling" of our lives. The fact of the matter is, it is damn hard to make friends as an adult. You can't just ask someone to come join you on the monkey bars. Mostly because you are nearly thirty years old and the parents around the playground are already giving you weird looks. Can you imagine if your buddy got up there too? I don't have those built in support networks or friend production facilities like classes and fraternities or singing groups. Simply put, it is just difficult to get out there in a world so fast-paced that others find it hard to just slow down enough to appreciate the comfort and company of another person.

Now I am also a product of what I like to call "the busy". I get up too early and stay in the office too late. When people ask me how I am, I usually always reply with an unproven and untested "busy". I try to seem as though I have a million people counting on me that make it impossible for me to travel or stay up past ten. And this is the way the world works now and it makes it darn hard to pin down a solid friend-base. Coupled with the fact that I have moved every two years for the last decade makes it even harder to stay connected to those I find myself caring about. So the distance fuels the busy, and before long, the days I go before calling you to catch up turn into weeks, and then months, and then the calls turn into "likes" which stand in for an "I miss you" which always comes at the worst moment.

I am mid-transition from one professional role to another and I am feeling all of these feelings quite strongly at this moment. I don't know how my parents and friends do it. They seem to make strong friendships with people who care and aren't too busy for a weekend trip to nowhere. They have found their married best buds and I couldn't be more jealous! Meanwhile my wife and I search for things to do with each other for the sixth weekend in a row and drive us further into the maddening thoughts that we may never find good friends to share our married life with. (Sweetheart if you are reading this, I love you more than life and you are all I ever need. However for your sanity you should find someone who isn't me to talk to occasionally..I'm insane)

Like I said, I accepted that fact that my life would grow a bit duller, that my friends would move on, that I would find myself hopelessly wishing for the days of college yore. I just did not anticipate such a strong feeling of being alone even when I know for a fact that I am not. So I suppose my advice at this juncture to...myself..is to get a team hobby and learn to not be so busy. I should at least work just as hard at pretending to not be busy as I do being busy. Perhaps that will open up the time for me to join a dodgeball league or something...I bet I would meet some friends doing that.

The rantings of a mad man..

I don’t like the way tears look. Regardless of who they are coming from. I have an intense urge to immediately stop what I am doing and fix it. I want to plug the leaks in your face with good feelings and comfort food. I want to fix whatever it is that has a person so overcome with emotion that their body signals others to help. It is a brief moment of fear and of terror. Even worse are the tears that you cause. Because you know that at some point you could have prevented them. At some point you were so overwhelmed with your desire to be right or prove that you could hold your own in a battle of douche-baggery that you lost sight of the emotions at play in the room, or worse yet, didn’t care. You could have thought a little harder or paused a little longer so that you could hear the emotions rising to a breaking point. Instead you pushed through the panic and the deafening sound of a spirit crying for a brief reprieve.

A few days ago I caused tears to flow and it hurts the same way every time. I wish myself back to that moment and see myself acting in a manner contrary to the way I feel and what I believe. I want to stop time, punch my shadow mirror-self in the bean bags and tell him to stop and think for a minute. BUT..instead I reacted in a moment of frustration, found an answer to my question and a solution to my problem but at the price of someone else’s feelings. Perhaps if I was more honest of a person it would curb my tendency to hold everything in until it escapes in an outburst of annoyed sarcasm. But I’m not. I am not an honest person in conversation. Which is pretty damn ironic considering that I claim to study communication as a discipline. However, I don’t often claim to be good at what I do so I suppose the logic follows pretty well. I am honest in life and aspire to be truthful in most everything I do, but as hard as I try I am not an honest person in conversation. Am I afraid of the big discussions because of the chance I have of making someone feel inadequate or underappreciated or because I am so uncomfortable with my own self that I can’t put up with a moment of true honest thinking between two acquaintances.

If you really think about it, I should be able to tell someone that they do a terrible job at something. I shouldn’t have to sugarcoat that. Chances are pretty good that they already have a clue that I might feel that way anyway. But I do sugarcoat things. I put a positive spin on it and a joke on either side of the criticism in order to soften it. I am afraid to give honest feedback because of the chance that I may come across as a sarcastic malcontented ass with little concern for a person’s self-esteem or well-being. But really, the reason I am telling you that you sucked in that moment (NOTE: “in that moment” not “sucked always and forever as a person”) is because I do care about your well-being and about your self-esteem. Likewise, you should care enough about yourself to not have to be cuddled and buttered up in order to hear that you do something poorly.

Now I am not advocating for the permission to relentlessly berate those who answer to me or to mercilessly go about destroying the self-worth of those around me. I am simply advocating for a more honest back and forth between myself and them. I want to get all of my relationships to a point where I can tell you that you suck and you can look at me with strength behind your eyes and agree, but then resolve yourself to not suck as badly tomorrow. Simple to wish for, difficult to achieve.

Despite the scene I described, I think that my relationship is still intact. However, I can’t get that moment back and really when I think about it, I believe this whole writing may be motivated out of guilt. Which brings me to my next conundrum…Why in the hell do I feel guilty that you are bad at something? And round and round we go…