Not a Story

"The existential drama is a chronic low level tragedy that no one even notices- like Willy Loman although not even worth a play- maybe one of those steely cold and aimless short stories in the New Yorker about apathetic, anomic rich white people cheating on each other with other apathetic anomic white people and not even really caring much when it's discovered.

You can live your own story as best as you are able, or you can play a role in someone else's, and put most of your energy into being the person in their story that they wish they were living. When we make a deal to be the character in someone else's story that makes their (fake) life come true, we might as well go jump off a bridge.

Living your own story whether it "makes other people happy" or not (which we can't fucking do anyway no matter how hard we try) is painful because it means saying fuck you to the world to the degree that the world tries to force you to exist for others and their fantasies and their ideas of what their lives ought to be like.

The latter, being the person someone else needs you to be for their life to look like what they think it should, is the weakest sauce there is, however, and the saddest part of all is that the person for whom you are playing the role in order for their story to be true ultimately does not care about you in the least. You are merely a means to the end of them living what looks like the life they think they should live. You are only useful to the degree that you help them look good to their family and friends, and most of all, to themselves- to the degree that you are helping them live the life they think they should be living. To the degree that you are their good wife, good husband, happy householder, reliable bread winner, to the degree that you keep yourself out of sight at any and all times when revealing anything authentic about yourself would scratch that look good.

Everyone is telling a story with you in it. Even if you are one of their main characters, if you are just a fucking plot device, well, that's misery and loneliness."

I wrote that and posted it as a Facebook status last year on this date. Not sure if it originally came from this blog, or if I cross posted it here. Don't feel like going back to look. It's amusing to me that I sometimes post this heavy shit on Facebook. I still do this. The ensuing conversation last year was pretty good. Not one man said a word, which is interesting. All of the people who replied were women, all of whom aware to some degree or other of having played the role, or having asked others to. 

Things have been interesting, since my "intentionally single and unavailable" epiphany. I have several occasions a day to notice when I am trying to get the attention of women, or when I am motivated to interact with a woman in a flirtatious way. I'm in that phase of awareness where my old patterns are glaringly obvious to me. It has also become more apparent to me how much I value the friendships I have with women, with no expectation of a sexual or romantic connection. I think, like Dante, I am led by "the feminine" toward some of the best things (for him, it was heaven, but I wouldn't go that far). 

Men disappoint me regularly, except for maybe two or three. 

It snowed here last night and there was a quarter inch brightening everything up at sunrise, all that shining winter, in early spring. It has melted off now. I feel weepy and ruined today, and have no idea why. Just one of what I have recognized will be, for however long, a "bad day." Learning to accept that I have good days and bad days, or good stretches and bad stretches, and to roll with it. To be kind to myself, leave room for emotion, not try to shoehorn the feelings into a narrative. I recall that, three years ago, I had in mind a little mantra that seemed to have been delivered to me from the cosmos, which was "the story that it is not a story is not a story." It resonated at the time because I was telling all sorts of stories about the ex and her new beau. It helped me to ease off of that and to just feel my feelings and create a little bit of space. It's feeling useful again these days. 

The story that it is not a story is not a story.