A Final Conversation

I'm at the point again where I'm thinking of signing off. I'm not sure that FP is entirely healthy anymore, if it ever was. If it was, it may have served its purpose. I've done some good writing, and played around with some voices and styles, and that has been fun. I've brought some things to the surface that I doubt I ever would have otherwise, barring a happy marriage to a devoted spouse -- and that doesn't seem to be in the cards. But I think I've been using it as an excuse to avoid meaningful communication -- you know, two-way? Like with actual humans? There's been too much of that -- avoidance. Too little of the other -- humans.

Someone invited me to Starbucks again tonight. I've had my little joke about Starbucks. Yes, it was a joke. But the invite's gotten me to thinking again, about my resistance to socializing. It's partly the lack of pretext. With bjj, there's a reason to be there, and any socializing is ancillary to it. When the bjj is done, there may be some sitting around, but it's cool-down and stretching. Then I leave. What's the point of Starbucks? Not coffee. People. I'm not comfortable with that.

That's what I've been thinking about. Nobody knows me. You think you do, but you don't. I said once in a certain context, "You can't let people know how you really are. Because then they hate you." It's very odd, because I'm not monstrous. But I make enemies. I don't care about the enemies. I care about what they do. This fact has beaten me down considerably in the past handful of years. I've just lost too much.

So here we are at Starbucks -- or where ever -- and it's about conversation. Well? How many masks do we take off? How superficial do we keep it? Is it all put-down jokes and ego? Is it me digging after truth and meaning behind the silly words, the way I've been known to do? That would get uncomfortable. People don't want to be uncomfortable. And they most certainly do not want my drama. You can't be honest, and you can't tell lies -- conversation.

But I've been using FP as a surrogate. It's masturbation -- which, if one does it too much, causes depression. Depletion of testosterone. Mood suppressing. Bet you didn't know that. Can't say, for females. It's my theory that they don't masturbate. Yes, I do have a point. FP may be enabling unsociable behavior. When I identify an unhealthy behavior, I try to alter it. All but the ones I have not strength to alter. This is a little thing. I can change it.

The trick with addiction is to substitute a healthy behavior for an unhealthy one. Nature abhors a vacuum. With what would I replace these pages? An hour once in a while of gabbing at a coffee shop? What would I have to show for that? Well. Aside from human interactions. Is that sufficient? Only as much as sex is sufficient in a way that masturbation is not. We are made to fit one another. As I have said, if it weren't for sex, we wouldn't need other people. That's not the whole of it, though. The need for each other that sex teaches us isn't the only need -- just the most powerful. It's the strong nuclear force, to the gravitational force of mere companionship. Mere companionship -- mere gravity. It holds the universe together.

I have seen the world torn asunder. It was very dramatic. I myself did not escape alive. To what end then have I been resurrected? To haunt my own crypt? To drift like a pale phantom through my own waking dream?

I found myself weeping last night, mourning the fact that I would never again love some child. How can I have a conversation about that?


J