My Representative

As I was writing a guest post for The Unlost 2 weeks ago, the irony of ME writing about Alien-Nation smacked me in the face.  Why’s that?

My number one pet peeve: Fake-a** people.
My number one flaw: Not being my real self the majority of the time. 

A tad contradictory.  There’s the me who writes this (anonymous) blog, the me I send to work, the me who interacts with friends or family, and the me I am when I’m alone. Soooo….which me is the real me?  Any?!  All????  Won’t the real me PLEASE stand up…

Instead of being who I actually AM, I instead feel everyone else out to see who I’m dealing with.  Then, if anyone can pass my CRAZILY-high-standards-of-sincerity-test, I consider the possibility that I might not have to hide so much in front of this person.  Not right away, mind you (no chance of that), but WAAAAYYY down the line, after they have convinced me over and over that they aren’t harboring ulterior motives.  I pretend my little “screening process” is some sort of guarantee that said person won’t end up screwing me over.  And it doesn’t escape me that I’m requiring far more authenticity from others than I am offering of myself. 

In some ways this is a commentary on my personal dysfunction, which I happily (happily?) own, but moreso it’s a commentary on our society’s dysfunction.  Because I didn’t get this way by accident.  Time and again, people showed me – in a hundred thousand ways, big and small – that my REAL self wasn’t welcome at the party.  That I was TOO serious-idealistic-intense-sarcastic-fill-in-the-blank.That I was insufficiently cool-mainstream-status-quo-upholding.  That something about me (namely…..ME) was unacceptable, and I was going to be punished if I didn’t cover it up.  You step one foot outside that box, and they will chop that f**ker right off.

And so, in order to even think about how I could not feel estranged from others, I have to get my head around how I became alienated from mySELF.  From the parts of myself that I disown, not just in the company of others, but in the privacy of my own being…the not-me that I, myself, reject.  We all have this dichotomy; it’s the human condition (though of course we are convinced otherwise).  What’s even worse than being unacceptable to others…is being ashamed of your own feelings, and the mask you hide behind.  

But I think I finally figured out my M.O.

How I operate in life is "I" send my representative out to talk for me.  For demonstration's sake, let's call her Hobag, cuz I do hate the bitch, after all (plus, it’s just plain fun to say the word hobag).  Hobag is fake-me, whereas "I" am real-me.  

As words come out of my mouth, I occasionally find myself asking, WHO is this talking?  It doesn't sound like me.  Do I sound fake as fu*k?  Cuz I sure FEEL fake as fu*k.  

That's the best way I can describe what it’s like...as though I'm looking through a window into the world - out there - while "I" stay hidden deep inside.   I have thus solved the mystery of our Alien-Nation, for if I am disconnected from my SELF, how could I possibly feel connected to another human being?  How do I know that when I sit down with you, you're not sending your own hobag out to greet me?  It’s doubtful I’m ever talking to you at all!  Rather, MY representative is chatting it up with YOUR representative.  

And so, in every instance where I feel threatened for some reason or another (loosely translated: every social encounter I have), out she goes.  Public speaking?  Get out there, Hobag.  Scary group situation?  Hobag.  Work consultation?  Ho.  Chat with my friend?  Sadly, probably her, too.  The nice thing about her is that she can do stuff “I” can’t.

In complex psychological terms, the depersonalization of “feeling detached from, and as if one is an outside observer of, one's mental processes or body” falls under dissociation.  Whether we're daydreaming our workday away, numbing ourselves to deaden the emotions we don't dare allow to come out, or all-out fragmenting parts of ourselves, we all use this defense mechanism at some level.  

What it tells me is that "I" feel soooo unsafe in the world that "I" can't bear to show up.

I form words, and I hear them coming out of my lips, but I don't feel like I'm really -there- saying them.  

Sort of like I'm sitting off in the corner watching the encounter take place.  Despite the fact that I've become increasingly cognizant of the phenomenon, "I" don't seem able to shut Hobag up long enough for my real self to come out.  

So here I am, a splintered human being, unable to assimilate all these different personas I’ve created just to get through life.  Our individual lack of integration is causing complete societal disintegration. 

Do you have a representative (and what’s his/her name)?
Leave a comment or e-mail me:  downfromtheledge at yahoo dot com

Check out the follow-up post:
Alien-Nation, Part 2: Breaking the Habit of YOU

Follow Bri on Facebook.

1 AM

"Like" down from the ledge on Facebook

It’s 1 AM; my sleep is fucked

Inside my bed, no longer tucked

I'm squinting at this laptop’s glare

I thought I’d blog; instead I stare

Debating on which thread to start

To spew my anger? Spill my heart?

Imbue my days with some great point

But by the end they disappoint

It isn’t love or hope I find

No peace inside this grand design

You give and give and give to all

Receiving nothing great or small

Then slosh around in bitterness

You wanted more, but you got less

Then wake up, do it all again

It’s all the same by that day’s end

So you trim down your expectations

Start making accommodations

Give doubt instead of benefit

You only give back what you get

Leaving much to be desired

Find it makes you fucking tired

At least now maybe you can sleep

Rolling in a different deep

The World’s Too Effing Small.

My friends from high school married their high school boyfriends, moved into houses in the same zip codes where their parents lived, but I, I could never follow….okay, okay, that’s a Dixie Chicks song, but that doesn’t make it any less true, right down to the zip code part.  They’ve never lived on their own, much less outside of the city where they grew up, and have had but 1 single relationship with a man in their entire lives.  They’ve never known heartbreak, or independence, or all the other crap I used to wish I’d never know, either. 

This post was written in my head Saturday evening at 5 pm as my family and I sat down to dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant, only to see my ex-best-friend parade in with her husband, toddler, and infant….landing at a table 4 feet diagonal from me.  This is the kind of bullsh*t that happens to me all the time.  I can’t leave my house without being punished with a bitch former co-worker I never wanted to lay eyes on again, a former screwoff classmate who’s now rich while I’m poor, or basically any human that knew me before this day today.  I don’t want to see any of them.  I want to pretend that was all nightmares, or science-fiction-esque life memories implanted into my brain to terrorize me.  But apparently I am doomed to literally run into my past at every instance I believe I’ve outrun it. 

So there she was; the girl I went to summer camp with, the friend I watched SNL and Mystery Science Theater 3000 with until our stomachs practically broke from laughing so hard, my best friend from age 13 to 29…who I stopped speaking to three years ago. 

In all honesty, our friendship was over long before that.  When I left my fiancé at age 23, she wasn’t there for me, and I never really forgot it.  She didn’t ask me what happened, or rally support, or do basically anything you would expect a friend to do at the worst moment of your life.  When I quit my job and ended up unemployed for 4 years, she was nowhere to be found.  When the second most important relationship of my life ended, she was mysteriously absent once again.  And when I was in Nashville carrying out a plan to kill myself, she didn’t even know I was gone. 

Writing all of this makes me wonder how I still considered her my “Best Friend.”  Is it because she just always was, and I never thought to re-title her?  Or because I was maid of honor at her nuptials?  Maybe it was because I was the one she called when her baby was in the hospital with pneumonia.  I don’t know what I was hanging onto for so long, but I eventually DID let go.

I let go of the idea that she was going to one day become the friend that I needed.  The friend who would be there for me.  The friend who is there in good times…or bad times…or either, really, cuz she sucked at both.  It’s not that I didn’t give her chances.  Many.  It’s not that I didn’t tell her how I felt; this was my reward for doing that:

“The fact is, that like most adult friendships, I don't have a lot of time to give.  I'm sorry, but my job consumes 90% of my life during the school year.  What little energy I have left I have to give to my son and my husband. I feel incredibly guilty that my son spends 9 1/2 hours of his day at daycare.  I want to give him every free moment I have.  So, unfortunately, dinner every once in awhile is all I have to give.  I don't think this is all that uncommon among adult friendships.”

And STILL I gave it one more year after THAT!!!  God, I am such a doormat.  The final straw had to do with Austin, the place I moved to in the first place because none of my friends back home gave two fu*ks about me.  At my little going-away get-together, my 2 high school friends basically invited themselves to come stay with me over Spring Break.  Come November, one backed out; whatever.  Then a month before she was set to come, my ex-bestie tells me she can’t afford the trip. 

Bulllllllllllllshit, is what I say.  $300 bucks to come stay at my apartment for free, a luxury beyond her grasp?  As she posts on Facebook about getting a mani/pedi with the friend she’s blowing thousands to go on a Hawaii couples’ vacation with, forking over hundreds to do Ferrell’s and dye her hair blond in preparation for?  The same friend she goes to midnight showings of Twilight with, you know, who couldn’t be bothered for an hour dinner with me once a year? 

And why am I still angry about this sh*t?  I haven’t seen her in 4 years, and I would have been content for it to have been much longer.  A friend-ship is like any other relation-ship: there is the person who is actually before us (who we are usually incapable of seeing), and the person we wish-want-hope would be before us.  And there comes a day of reckoning when we accept that the image is hollow. 

Her last e-mail to me stated, “Now you've decided to shut me out for whatever reason, but I feel I deserve one last communication.”  SHE deserves?  She never got that last communication. 

I don’t mind being the petty one, or the stone cold bitch; I’ll be the one with the problem.  Cuz you know what, I don’t have to sit around wondering why she doesn’t give a sh*t about me anymore, and she doesn’t have to come up with excuses to blow me off.  Win-win.

Living in Alien-Nation

Guest post at The Unlost today: Living in Alien Nation: The Disconnection of The Masses:

What are you hiding?

RIGHT NOW, in this moment, what are you shoving down inside that familiar little lockbox that no one else gets the key to?

Who are you keeping “out there,” a comfortable arm’s length away? Who’s got YOU at a safe distance, just beyond the tips of their fingers?

And I bet there’s someone you’re faking it for, too (well, not THAT kind of faking). But yeah, I’d wager there’s somebody you’re being sickeningly nice to, and it makes you want to gag. And someone you act tough around, because they sure as hell aren’t going to see you vulnerable. You probably spend half your waking hours covering up how you actually feel, speaking words that bear no resemblance to what you really think.

And so, if I don’t really know who YOU are, and you don’t get to know who I am, you might as well be a friggin’ alien to me. We’re a whole nation of aliens, covering it all up, putting on the act for each other even whilst despising it.

It’s not really that I feel compelled to reveal my deepest, darkest secrets to everyone, but moreso the relentless pressure to hide them in favor of discussing things like The Bachelorette’s choice of goobers. Never do I feel quite so alienated as after I’ve been out with friends.

“I have just now come from a party where I was its life and soul; witticisms streamed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me, but I went away— yes, the dash should be as long as the radius of the earth’s orbit ——————————— and wanted to shoot myself.“

– The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1836

If that quote hits you at ALL, you understand what I’m getting at. We go out and live it up with our friends, our smiles the very picture of connectedness, and yet we couldn’t be farther away from each other. We get back in our cars to drive home and, sh*t! There it is again, the utter alone-ness, the isolation that was supposed to have dissolved in the cocoon of camaraderie.

We feel unseen, and therefore unknown. We wanted so much more, and got so much less. We probably wouldn’t know how to construct a different experience if we tried, because the real, genuine us is buried too far beneath the appearances we must keep up.

We are the generation with 742 Facebook friends, 350 Twitter followers, 4 people who may or may not respond to an e-mail, 2 friends we grudgingly phone once in a while….and not even 1 damn person we’d dial at 3am when we’re on the bathroom floor asking the empty air why we feel so alone, so terrified, so lost.

Therese described this insane asylum we live in “where we all feel as if we’re the only ones struggling, as if we’re the only ones living a silent lie and plastering on a fake smile for the world to see,” and I can’t think of a more accurate description for it.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if we were just hiding the petty stuff. But the truth is, we’re hiding despair. And fear. “And it’s killing us all.”

Sounds like an exaggeration…but it’s not. People die of alienation. I almost did.

So, start by being more real than you were yesterday. Keep up with what’s really going on with your friends, instead of the Kardashians. Quit telling everyone you’re fine, and start telling them you can’t fake it anymore. Maybe they can’t, either.

“Tell your truth. You never know who you’ll set free.”

Check out these follow-up posts: "My Representative"
& "AlienNation, Part 2: Breaking the Habit of YOU."

Have your own story?  E-mail me: downfromtheledge at yahoo dot com

Trail of Thoughts

A 60 year-old man with a thick gray mustache skateboarded by me on the trail this afternoon.

I thought to myself that this was more bizarre than the ferret I saw on the trail yesterday, which turned out to be a mink.

Then I realized that I was walking my cat, so who the f*ck am I to judge an elderly skateboarder.

Then I contemplated how walking my cat was more acceptable when I lived in the city whose motto is, “Keep Austin weird.”

Then I thought about how there’s cool-weird and there’s weird-weird, and pretended not to know which category catwalking would fall into.

Then I remembered telling my best friend in Austin that I was going to start a “PussyWalkers” Meetup group and join together with fellow freaks who push their pussies around.

Then I recalled actually starting an American Idol Meetup group at Mangia Pizza in downtown Austin and having only my 2 friends and one plump old lady named Turtle show up.

Then I recollected how this Meetup group led to me being interviewed by Nic Ciccone of Fox News Austin.

Then I cringed at what a mega-dork I was (am) and vowed to never appear on camera again. 

Then I asked myself why I continually do super-nerdish things despite knowing that they’re uncool.

Then I wondered if I would have more friends if I didn’t walk my cat.

Then I remembered that my friends still sucked even when I didn’t have a cat to walk.

Then I remembered that I got a cat because some new-agey chiropractor lady put colored sunglasses on me and told me that if I was lonely I should get a kitten.

Then I recalled thinking that this was the most expensive retarded advice anyone could give an abandoned unemployed suicidal person.

Then I realized that my pussy is still here with me, and not one person from the past 4-odd years of my life is still around.

Then I decided that I should hate that rich chiro bitch a little less. 

Then I wondered why I spent 40 minutes straining my eyes, unable to see sh*t on this laptop outside just so I could sit on my new chaise lounge. 

Then I told someone off in a really catty way and wondered if that made me a pussy. 

Then I decided that my cat is the only egotistical pussy I have to accept dealing with.

And then I decided this would be my last post written at a fourth-grade level. 

Is it better to have sucky friends, or no friends at all?

Right now I have a "chat" open on Facebook with a "friend" I have known for years, but never been all that close with.  I think I figured out why today.  It started with a feeling that I was asking-asking-asking too many questions; how's this?  How's that?  I just read through our entire interaction, which consists of me asking or commenting about something in her life.  At no point can I draw the conclusion that she is interested in anything going on in my life.  Not that there's much, but that's not the point! 

I find this pattern often in my life, and it irritates me.  Part of me wants to personalize it and assume, damn, I am the boring-est person on the planet; no one ever asks me how I'M doing!  However, I've spent my life as an observer, and concluded that - for MOST people - that stupid Toby Keith song is overly on-target: "Wanna talk about ME wanna talk about -I- wanna talk about NUMBER ONE..." 

And, really:  If I weren't so concerned about myself, I wouldn't feel so slighted...right? 

I'm USED to my life being about other people.  I grew up being the family toilet, on which everyone else dumps their proverbial crap.  I know all too well the feeling of people taking all you have to give, and handing nothing back.  And I think I've written a time or two about how fed up I am with that role.  It's so entrenched in my personality (and my gender?) that I don't know how *not* to focus on what others need and want...and yet that little voice that asks, "What about me?" is not completely suffocated.  Yet. 

So is it possible to be a giver and not attract takers?  Do takers ever stop sucking the life force out of you, and realize all you've done for them, suddenly overtaken with appreciation and a desire to return in kind?  Ummm....doubtful.  So how does the person who continually sets up this pattern change the dynamic of their relationships without changing their nature?  (That is, for those of us who aren't Mother Theresa, and don't give 100% selflessly.)

I have to recognize how I'm setting it up this way.  The fact that I hate talking about myself means I inherently choose to focus on others to deflect being the center of attention.  There are also a great many topics I'd rather not disclose on, so people probably learn quickly not to ask.  It's also difficult for people when you're not in a relationship - or seeking one - to withhold asking about your love life.  Everyone wants to know who you're dating, for how long, if you're getting married, then when, how many kids you'll have once you do, and so on till Kingdom Come.  So if that's not a focus in your life, they may feel at a loss as to what to talk to you about.  I get it.  Sometimes I wonder what I would ask myself about if I were anybody else. I could see how it might be difficult.  But there are also a thousand neutral subjects you can talk to any stranger about....if you choose to make an effort. 

And so, because she is doing what the rest of humankind does every hour of every day, I will try not to fault my friend for her egotism.  If I start to think about all the ways in which (the few friends I have left) fail to give a sh*t about me, I'll get into the mentality I was in a few years ago.  I moved across the friggin' country because no one in my life seemed to give a crap that I existed.  I stopped speaking to people who never seemed to have the time of day for me, like they did for their married friends or their rich friends or their cool friends...or whatever magical quality I imagined those people possessing which made them a more appealing companion than me. 

Because I can't *get* more from others, I try to *need* less.  And because it's really kind of impossible to need less than any other human being does, I settle for expecting less and squashing my own needs.  Or covering them up.  Or substituting things that really don't fill the void of what we're supposed to be getting from other people. 

"I expect more, but I get less."  (Says my grandpa the other day, in the nursing home)
"Well, maybe you should try expecting less, and you'll get more!"  (Responds my dad)

Therein lies the answer to all life's problems, methinks.

Life is pain, and other life lessons from House.

"LIFE is pain!  I wake up every morning, I'm in pain.  I go to work in pain.  You know how many times I wanted to just give up, how many times I've thought about ending it?"  -- Dr. Gregory House

It's not common for me to cry when I watch House, but something about that scene last Monday shook me in its familiarity.  I've had that rage for the greater part of four years.  Truly, you don't know what pain will do to you until it seizes hold of your life. 

But what enrages House in this scene is not his own despair, rather the notion that his cancer-stricken best friend is entitled to resign himself to death.  Which begs the question, whose life is it?  Do we owe our suffering to the people around us, if it means they can keep us around for their own benefit? 

There are certainly days (and weeks, and years) that I wasn't sticking around for my own sake, which implies that a part of me DOES feel obligated to endure my own circumstances to prevent the heartbreak of my loved ones.  Intellectually, however, I'm not sure that we owe anybody anything. 

The show's upcoming termination sucks.  Our society needed his character.  The endless drip of self-affirmative "Think Positive" -esque books and shows and slogans has dulled us into fake-a** shells.  Seems kind of backwards that ultra-positivity is cultivating sickness.  We don't even know WHAT we feel anymore, because we're not ALLOWED to feel it.  Give me some cynicism, sarcasm, and pessimism any day over plastered-on smiles. 

I remember when Jon Stewart had Barbara Ehrenreich on The Daily Show to discuss her book, "Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America."  Ehrenreich scoffs at how you can't even get away with 'negativity' if you have cancer ... it's so true!  People will demand hope of you, with an insistence that you don't wallow, but rather remain ever-optimistic, with a mind-over-matter mentality.  So really, your average, ordinary breed of daily whining is intolerable. 

I know I definitely feel that my actual emotions are not acceptable to others.  If they were, I probably wouldn't have to write them here.  I probably wouldn't have to write a blog about suicide, because I probably wouldn't have become suicidal in the first place.  And I probably wouldn't have to write, period, because society would instead endorse open communication that accepts, rather than denies, all that is part of the human experience.