Having too much time to think is a cliche, but it’s a true cliche. Without distractions, without people there to show you how stupid a fleeting thought might be, it gets messy. Your mind wanders to places you had thought you’d gotten over. Feelings you would prefer to keep your distance from, people that you’d forgotten about and were never really missing, ideas that you’d previously thrown aside as “not worth it”. Whatever that means. And, as cliches go (especially the true ones), the night is the worst time for these things.
It’s about time for a cliche, anyway.
Your life feels too literal now. Wake up, go to work (or whatever constitutes as work right now), ignore everyone else in favor of saving yourself the social interaction, go home, eat, sleep, wake up, etc. Your life lacks any sort of fantastical substance. Everything feels watery and real and dull. The vividness of late night excursions to the woods or getting drunk in a dark room with people you care about has faded away and you’re alone now. You’re alone and you’re an adult and no one ever told you that it started so soon. You’re proud of leaving on your own, of surviving on your own. Everyone is proud. But that doesn’t mean that this is what you wanted, or this is what you’re comfortable with. You’ve jumped into things you’re not ready for and never gave yourself enough time to be a stupid fucking kid. You’ve fucked like four people in your whole life and half of them didn’t even fucking count. You’ve kept yourself away, you’ve helped raise your sister because your parents are great but they’re also complete morons who have no idea what they’re doing even after two kids. You watch them living these lives that they may or may not enjoy, but they’re doing what they want. At least in one way or another. You don’t feel like you’re doing what you want. You feel like you’ve started to disintegrate and at this point you’re the sticky sugar substance at the bottom of the mug, only beginning to crystallize.
You have keys and you have rent to pay. You don’t really have friends, though, because the people who have gotten close enough have been kept expertly distanced. Just enough that they don’t feel obligated to check in, but close enough that it feels genuine somehow. You don’t want to form bonds that you can’t promise to pay for. You’re not emotionally developed for that shit. All the relationships you’ve had have been shallow and ended when you just didn’t “feel” it anymore. You don’t really know how to be with someone, not really. You haven’t fucked someone passionately or even really in any good way (there were those couple of times that you want to try again, with the lights on, with more teasing and more time to waste). You have these grand ideas for your future, a future that you’re not even really sure what to do with. You want to be able to get drunk on warm Summer nights and make out with people that make your stomach tingle. You want to sleep next to someone with the windows open and the moonlight streaming in. You want to have people to care about, but fuck. It’s hard to do that. It’s hard to keep that shit up. Friendship and love is high maintenance and your memory isn’t that great and you know you’re going to forget to feed it. To spare it the chance of starving, you prevent it from ever really fully developing.
There are people you want to call up late at night, there are moments that you know you could use to get into this commitment that you crave so much. But then you pussy out. You conveniently forget all the things you were going to say and you cut off conversations with stilted, awkward smiles and diverted attention to your cell phone.
The most genuine thing you have is your stories, your fictional worlds that you experience or write about or discover.
How do you fix it? How do you commit? Why can’t you? Why do your hands shake every time you want to reach down to hold someone else’s? Why does the fear of having something that precious make your head hurt and your body convulse? How have you survived this long in the shallows? You can’t be your own therapist. You can’t be your own friend. You can’t be your own lover. Self reliance is beautiful but it is also poison. You have to be careful. Co dependency is ugly medicine that makes you feel so good all over but then the need makes you feel disgusting. Showers can’t wash off the reliance. It makes you feel dirty.
Self reliance is freedom that kills you slowly.
You need to find a balance. You need to love. Both yourself and others. You need to conserve yourself, keep yourself safe, but you need to feel alive. You can’t have one without the other.
Find a balance.
