I haven't liked people much the last few days. Not for any particular reason individually, but as a whole they have either disappointed or angered me significantly the last many hours. So I stay away because that is the easiest thing to do. I crawl into my little cocoon of solitude and you stay out. Stay out.
Here's the thing about people. I don't typically turn to a lot of people to talk to mostly because I like to solve problems on my own. I do enough thinking that I look at everything six ways from Sunday. Is it good to get other people's perspective? Of course. Do I want it when I'm already agitated? F*ck no. Stay out. I've talked a lot about the fact already that I don't have many friends because I don't like dealing with everything else that comes along with it. When I commit to something, I really commit and in my many years of experience there are not many people out there willing to do the same. Fair-weather friends if you will, so I've avoided wasting time on a lot of people because frankly, I'm not a huge fan of disappointment and I also take a lot of things personally. So be it. It is a cynical view of people but I've spent most of my years being friends with guys because they are better at being a friend. Now I'm getting to a point in my life where it is difficult to make friends with guys my age because their wives or girlfriends don't see it as appropriate. No one is trying to steal your man, ladies. Plus I just don't really know how to interact with women in social settings because of my cynical view of them. Sorry.
Here's the other thing about people. They disappoint you. They are really good at disappointing you. That is a fact of life that I don't like to ponder often because I feel that I am very choosy about who I lend myself to and I try to choose people that are loyal and trustworthy. People are still people, and they are very flawed, myself included. So when those few people that I bring into my circle disrupt that slow, easy rhythm that I try to surround myself with, it takes a very long time for me to regain that rhythm. If the disruption is large enough, it will set the whole record off track and may even restart the song. In the meantime you start to wonder if it's time for a new album, one with less scratches. There is a very large part of me that wants to put that record into the 'donate' pile, that wonders why I even owned that record in the first place, that wonders why that record even came to have a place on my top playlist, etc.
It is not a secret that I sometimes fantasize about picking up and leaving town, like a vagabond. It is always an option. It is never a good option but there is always a potential for it to be on a list of ways to solve a problem. Or run away from a problem, I suppose. It has a lot to do with being a coward and a little to do with the fantasy of being disconnected. Being connected can burn you, hard. And no matter how many times someone tells me that I need people, I will argue with that. I don't want to need people, not one bit. And I am stubborn, and I am flawed. I don't want people to see that. After they do I just want to shut them out. I can rationalize cutting them out completely. I have rationalized it. Especially when I'm finding it difficult to recall the last time there was a truly positive interaction. And maybe that is my fault because all of the interactions were viewed as negative or just menial. It's hard to not view them that way when you are regarded as an afterthought. When you spend so much effort and time building up, encouraging and supporting a person and as soon as something positive happens they run away happily to celebrate with someone else. And then when you are struggling and are in need of similar support or even a distraction, it is seen as a chore or an inconvenience because now their schedule is much more full of easy, peaceful things. And then you feel as small and as insignificant as that laughable gesture of time that they offered because you guilted them into it. And then you just turn angry and toxic and feel bothered by the most minuscule thing that they do. Those things build up and up. Implosion. Irrational decision to cut them out and now we're back trying to get that slow and easy rhythm to return for the sake of your own sanity.
That record is not going to play quite the same, there will always be that little scratch that shrieks when the needle hits it. It doesn't necessarily mean you throw out the record, you just learn to live with the flaw.
Something about friendships that can make a 27 year old feel like she's 15 again. You expect these things not to happen as you get older but relationships are just that. And people are people.
