Cynicism, Romance and the Confessions of an Idiot

So I carp a lot. This isn't lost on me. And to anyone who slogs through these words, thank you for persevering and enduring. It is appreciated. This junk is all trapped in my head so being able to put it 'out there' is powerfully therapeutic. I imagine it's either entertaining, disturbing or some mix of the two for you, however.

I repeat: thank you.

I figure rather than pontificate or offer up something like life advice, perspective or whatever what I typically post might be described as, this piece is going to be more about insight into me. You know, the kind of thing that shows you why I write the things I do and why I've made the choices I did. More than usual, I'll wish you good luck getting through the morass.

I've described myself as a grudging romantic. That's not really accurate. I'm a dyed-in-the-wool romantic. I love the stuff. I still get choked up watching or reading (or writing) love stories. Love is about as close to religion as I'm going to get. In my case it really is all I need. I have lived for it and I will not be surprised if I die for -- or from -- it. I love love. I was once called a love junkie. That may well be true.

Let that sink in.

If you've read more posts than the one you're pushing through, let that sink in more.

The issue in my case was that I didn't realize until I was in my 40's (yes, you read right) that not everyone has the same idea of love. By that point I'd made the connection that not everyone knows what he or she wants. Okay, most of us don't know what we want... but we think we do. The point here is that what love is to me is not what it is for most people. I kind of wish someone had explained things to me better as a kid, but I don't know that I could have or would have heard.

(Tangent: you begin to see why the conditional tense and I are not friends.)

For me love is what I was taught. It's what I read in books and saw in movies. It's that massive thing. It's Big Love. This means it has nothing to do with reality. In fact my definition of love is divorced from worldly concerns. Love is what makes it possible for me to endure the world.

So all the times I've opined being left or hurt, the truth is that I have really never lived much in the real world. I've had jobs, paid rent, been homeless, etc., etc., but for me it's always been about love. Big Love. If there were problems in a relationship, love would be enough to see us through.

Wrong.

Love was enough to see me through.

I remember vividly the first time a woman I was with told me love isn't enough. I can even remember what I felt. All of it. How could someone say that????

Easy. It was true.

Not for me. It's still not true for me. But now I grasp that the way I see the world is not a common thing. I don't give a shit about much. Looks, money, ambition, career... pretty much meaningless to me. But openness, directness, honesty... these are sacred. Probably because they're unicorns.

It's taken me a lifetime to realize that what someone says may have no bearing on what he or she thinks, feels or believes. I know for most people that's obvious, but I am not most people. And by now you realize that I learn slowly. Sometimes I don't know if I learn at all. For much of my life, I believed what people told me. In other words I led a disillusioned life. I was disappointed, frustrated and confused. A lot. Well, I'm still those things but not for the same reasons. For a long time that disappointment, frustration and confusion brought out a cynical, sarcastic edge. I could put some of that down to going through adolescence in the 80's when cynicism and sarcasm were kind of the way, but that would be inaccurate. I wore that armor as a defense. And I ripped it off every time I ended up in a relationship.

So, yeah, I was left by most of the women in my life. No explanation and no goodbye in most cases. Like many romantics, I saw this as being done to me. I saw me as the victim. That was only true inasmuch as I was naive. I clung desperately to a belief that my view was THE view.

But as I wrote earlier, my view was just my view.

Period.

Does that mean I've embraced cynicism? Am I well and truly sarcastic now?

Quite the opposite. I'm a romantic and I'm open about it. But I don't generally have faith in humans. I just don't. I don't even like most humans. The things I see, hear and read these days hurt me. People are open with hate and hostility. I can't say that things were ever 'golden' but things are different than they were and the direction I see things going scares the hell out of me.

So why would I choose to be a romantic?

Because it's the only fucking thing that makes sense.

Once again, let that sink in.

Take a moment if you need it.

In a world that's gritty and actually uses terms like 'murder porn', where a reality TV star is president of the US, where nuclear war is actually BACK on peoples' minds as a very real possibility, I choose love.

This is not a wide-eyed, puppy love. No. It's me being brutally frank and acknowledging that most people will never see things as I do. It's holding out as a solo act unless I meet someone who actually wants to know me and not be infatuated with some concept of me. It's a part of why I stopped recording and performing music in public. It's a part of why I shaved my head. It's a part of why I'm not particularly social. I make music every day, don't want my looks to be a factor in anything and am happiest when my interactions are one-on-one.

And I don't advocate these choices for anyone. Not for a soul. I choose a solitary life because it makes it easier for me to function. It strips away illusions and simultaneously allows me to spend more time in a world I prefer. The fiction I write is not happy or sappy. But there's humor and affection mixed with the carnage and chaos. My characters live as I would if I had their opportunities or if the world I spread on those pages was the one I wake to daily.

We aren't built to be alone. Not biologically and not sociologically. But most of us aren't built to love the way I do. I've written that I don't know how to fall out of love. That's true. I'm still in love with everyone I've ever loved, but since most of them have cut me out of their lives it makes no difference. I don't hear from them and I rarely see them. Having left social media for the most part, I don't even hear about them anymore. Not really. And I doubt given the chance I would ever be with any of them again. Trust is gone. But I do love them. I always will. And I'll continue to hope for the best for them. It's strange and hurtful to me that the friendships had to end, particularly with no explanation or saying goodbye, but that's life. It just is.

So, yeah, I'll still pen the harder edged comments but now you know that beneath the armor, under the scarred surface, I'm a marshmallow. I'm goopy and sugary. An idiot.

But you know what? Love is all I need. Having felt Big Love, even having lost it a few times, I'll take love over the alternative. I salute those who can live in the real world. They have my undying admiration. But my wiring is different and even if I could change it, I don't think I would. Sometimes the thought of feeling less or hurting less is appealing, but then I think I wouldn't mute the colors of my world. Not if there's a choice.

So I'll take the loss and the derision. The pain is a badge of honor, in a weird way. I may never be with anyone again. But I can live honestly, even if it's as a fringe dweller.

This is not abandoning hope but is actually embracing it. And for someone who lived most of his life as a pessimist, that's saying something.

If life has taught me anything it's that the unexpected is far more commonplace than I ever think. Half a century down and I'm still here. That's something, too.

I'll take that and rise to meet whatever's ahead for me.

Bring it on.

Digital Emancipation and That Kind of Thing

I don't like to threaten. It feels childish, like I'm taking a position on the playground, drawing a line in the sand. Instead I'd rather just state my intent, giving plenty of notice and follow through. So before I shut down my primary social media profile today, I wrote about it there more than a week ago. Throughout the week, even though almost no one saw it, I posted it so that anyone who might see would not be blindsided. Yesterday afternoon I noticed a post from someone I know about people making empty threats about closing their accounts, essentially browbeating them as cowards.

It was all the reassurance I needed to fire up the computer this morning and turn my back on what's become, for lack of a better term, the gauntlet. 

When I first meandered into social media, it was nascent. News boards and forum groups. But it was growing fast into something else. It still is. But back then, more than 15 years ago, my life was different and I was a different person. I wanted attention and I had a career in music to promote. My marriage was breaking down. I spent more time on the road and playing in clubs when I was in town than I did with friends or loved ones. Feeling something like validation in the form of 'likes' and even flirtation fed into that craving. Fostering virtual friendships and seeing the number of followers rise was more than pleasant; it was satisfying. It meant something to me that I had more than 25,000 profiles following mine on MySpace before I left that site. It was no less exciting watching as I quickly maxed out the number of 'friends' I could have on Facebook and having to open a second profile, a music page.

But my life has changed and so have I. The need and desire to take 'breaks' from virtual reality became a bigger thing. The last time I did it lasted years. For the last month I have done a little experiment. Every Monday morning before I left home, I'd open Facebook and scroll through my feed. Each week it took longer to find something I wanted to see. Last week, after an hour of looking, I gave up. What wasn't openly hostile was depressing. Painting politics in black and white or sharing video footage of cruelty to animals. Emojis depicting laughing uproariously were the only commentary and captioning of cell phone captured celebrations of human stupidity. Memes had become more popular than the construction of sentences or coherent thoughts. The only way to have any exchange with actual friends was in private messaging or risk incurring derision from others who've decided that public 'conversation' is really an invitation to be mocked. Or worse.

Again, I don't want this to read like I'm taking a superior position or that I'm slamming social media. I'm not. In fact, I still belong to a few sites. But the reasons I go to them now are not what they were in the past. It's rare that I'm seeking anything more than some momentary diversion or distraction. To do that in some places is like walking onto a shooting range wearing a target. 

It's taken me a long time to build a life that I like. I'll take that over what I generally see online now. I'm too old to decipher the changing vernacular, to decode a language I don't really want to understand. If it's a place you enjoy, I hope you continue to. You'll find me in the world of matter these days, not in the online soap opera and feud factory. 

Except of course that I posted this online.