Tag Archives: drama

The Fine Line: Part 1

When we examine others, we tend to categorize them in a plethora of ways. It just happens. As a matter of fact, it’s probably instinctual. However, I’ve noticed a dramatic change in this categorization behavior through the years, and it is brutal and vicious.

I admit, this ‘dramatic change’ could be totally perceived from my own world view…maybe it’s the people I meet or where I have been deposited in the social realm or maybe I just never noticed it before.

My personal theory is that people have become nothing more than a commodity with the rise of technology.
Think about it:
Want to talk to random people? Try Facebook!
Need a friend? Girlfriendsocial.com will help you with that.
Need a romance? Take your pick! Match.com, eHarmony.com, pof.com, etc.
Need to just get laid? OkCupid.com OR, for that extra scary experience, try Craigslist!
Oh, what’s that? You just want to see a random guy masturbating? Then allow me to introduce you to Chat Roulette, my friend!

Come on up! Don’t be scared! Just fill in these neat blanks here, enter your credit card information (if applicable), and we’ll provide you with more people than you can shake a stick at! And you haven’t even heard the best part: You can be totally shallow and set your standards accordingly. You can pass up on a person because their eyebrows are too thin, or they look paunchy in an outfit, or they aren’t vegan…WITHOUT SAYING A FUCKING WORD to them, EVER! And since you’re at home on your computer as opposed to any normal social situation, your friends can’t tell you just how shallow you are!
IT’S PERFECT!

People and relationships are being sold on a daily basis online, and whether or not you are alright with this or participate in this, that is your choice. I respect that because I don’t believe in oppression. You can do whatever you want as long as it doesn’t directly involve me.
That being said, I am postulating that this whole buy-sell attitude that is running rampant on these websites is harmful to human relationships.
Why? Because this attitude seems to have generalized across nearly all platforms, and has leaked into the physical world, and is influencing the way many people operate in interpersonal communications and categorization.

Just in case you’ve missed the ‘subtle’ hints I’ve made, I should spell out my feelings for you:
I HATE IT.

I hate it because I feel it being acted out on me…ALL THE TIME.

I don’t want to be seen by my relationship status or lack thereof; I don’t want to be seen as a woman; I don’t want to be seen as a fucking category!

I want to be seen as a person.
A WHOLE person.
And I’m not.

I would like to shift the focus to the dating aspect of this topic.
Whenever I speak to people, especially men, it’s so obvious to me that they’re making checks on their mental checklist with every sentence that comes out of me; it’s in their eyes, their twitches, their entire faces…but there’s nothing I can do about it.
Then, granted I meet their checklist requirements, if I hold a deep, cathartic, and enjoyable conversation and they know or assume I’m not in a relationship, they tend to shift into the romance gear and begin pursuing me…AGGRESSIVELY.

If the man I’m speaking with is attached, he’ll talk to me again.
And again.
And again.
Until I get the inevitable phone call where he reveals that he’s having an emotional crisis because he doesn’t know how to be friends with a woman.

It’s enough to make me want to slam my head on a wall.

These conversations…they aren’t romantic or sexual or even sexually charged. They’re about life and our own personal journeys. Jesus, if I hopped into bed with every person I’ve had a truly awesome conversation with, I…
Hmm…I don’t even know how to finish that sentence. I guess I would’ve sexed a LOT of people.

Why is listening to somebody or being listened to tantamount to flirting?
Why is making a girl laugh the equivalent to her communicating that she wants to be more than friends?
Why is it that we can hardly ever make somebody feel a bit less lonely without trying to ‘get together’ with them?

Maybe it’s because it’s not the norm to just sit down and talk with people anymore. Maybe…maybe we feel so painfully normal that acting painfully normal is the only way to make ourselves feel safe and loved and accepted, and therefore, we just don’t talk about the deeper feelings…and when you don’t talk about them, you begin not to think about them anymore.
Maybe we don’t even try to look at people as they are, and more try to figure out what they can do for us.

It could be that this isn’t even a discussion about categorization at all; maybe, it’s about assessing and managing intent. And if the subject actually is intent, well…I’m completely fucked.
I’m fucked because I don’t have any intentions for strangers. I don’t see a stranger from across the room and intend to have sex with him or date him or trip him in the parking lot, and (as I understand it) most people do have intent toward everybody they approach. I typically don’t try to pursue anything or anybody (except animals, so I can pet them), relying mainly on the natural rhythm of things, and if I hear a good spot to jump in for a solo or a duet, I do so.

It’s kind of a big problem, though, as the people I tend to meet can’t comprehend the idea, let alone the reality, of a person with no intentions. At the same time, it is equally confounded in my perspective to have my intentions assessed (usually inaccurately) or to be assessed by another, then unfairly placed.

The Trouble with Tulips

I’d say that most people I know maintain their friendships the way a gardener maintains pansies or roses:

If a pansy should begin to wilt, stick it in the sun and throw some water on it, and it will perk right back up.
Roses, though…they’re different. They need constant attention, lots of sunlight, pruning, et cetra, but if the gardener is consistently paying mind, the payoff is fantastic.

Lately, my friendships, seem to be the most comparable to the gardener and the tulip:

The gardener plants a bulb, spring comes around, and the plant grows extremely fast. The petals look strong and vibrant, and the colors are bright and happy.
However…
Just when the gardener has gotten used to seeing these beautiful flowers everyday, the petals fall off and they’re left with nothing but the green stems. No matter what the gardener does, that tulip has a shelf-life of a couple of days and there’s no way to extend it. They pop up very quickly, and just as quickly, they disappear.

What a bitch.

My ‘tulip’ friendships began around the time I was 26 or so.
I never really had much trouble making friends in the past, but as I got older, it got increasingly difficult for me to find new friendships with staying power. The friends we make in college move away, people have babies, priorities change, and then we’re left in this late-20s rut. Gone are the days of striking up a conversation with the person smoking outside of a building at school between classes or lab partners. Co-workers are sometimes far too different to form a real relationship with outside of the workplace. So, how does one make friends with people in this semi-isolated state?

I was able to find that ‘rare gem,’ that wonderful stranger I found by happenstance a few times, and form a friendship with them over the last four years. About 90% of the relationships have died, and one is currently dying on the table, seemingly unresponsive to any attempt at resuscitation by my hand, or mouth, in this case.

When this first started happening, it really hurt me. To be blunt, it sucks to think of how nonchalant people are when it comes to dropping another person out of their lives. I’ve always seen every person I’ve ever known as a one-of-a-kind original…something that simply cannot be replaced. It’s always been a damn near inconceivable notion for me to just drop a relationship, as I believe there are ways of working our issues out. And there will be issues, as almost no two individuals will never have a misunderstanding or fight of some kind during their relationship. Nevertheless, people will loosen their grips on those with whom they have even the smallest of conflict.
The other issue I have are people who I get along very well with, who are too busy to include me in their lives. This usually happens with people who have children, and I have yet to find a way to break through this barrier.
Either way, I felt like the others were to blame.

After some reflection, I was able to break out of blaming and ‘victim mode,’ and tried to think critically about my role in these tulip friendships. Could I honestly be completely innocent? Could it really be that everybody else in the world is a perpetrator, just waiting to hurt me?
Cue panic:
It IS me! It MUST be! If it were just one or two people who this happened with, then maybe I just found a few bad eggs, but it just keeps on happening! What if this is it? What if I never make any friends ever again? Is this my life? Oh my God…I’m a completely dysfunctional person! I’m too stand-offish! My standards are WAY too high! Nobody will ever care about me the way I care about them!
I’M FUCKED.

Once I calmed down, I thought about the last few friendships that the petals had fallen off of, one of them being a girl who lived a few minutes away from me.
Before she had a job, we spent lots of time together, but after she found full-time employment, every time I asked her if she wanted to get together (like on my birthday), she’d be busy, but she’d call me every two weeks or so at around 9:00 pm, on a weeknight, drunk, telling me to come over. She’d somehow make time for other people, was constantly throwing parties for her other friends…hell, I even helped her make Jell-o shots for a party to which I wasn’t invited, but I couldn’t manage to plan anything with her. She would do these things, then proceed to call me her best friend. I just couldn’t take the mind-fuck of it all, and I had to walk away from it. But, I tried, oh lord, did I try to make it work with this woman because I cared so much about her. Even now, I’m worried about whether or not she’s eating right or drinking too much or if her marriage is alright.
I had a choice to make: Hurt myself and endure, or hurt myself and stop more pain from happening?
I chose the latter.

Pain like that makes you want to go outside and dig up every single fucking tulip bulb in your yard. I swear, sometimes, I just want to hide, to run away, to stop trying anymore: To be frank, there are times I actually do.
Why even bother anymore? What’s the point? Everything turns to shit, nothing lasts, and people don’t genuinely care about each other. All they care about are people who can provide them with money or sex, and no matter how much of yourself you give to them, you will always be second fiddle to them. A throw away…do you want to be a throw away? No; you’d rather be alone.

So, what does it all mean to somebody like me?
What IS the point?

The point is that these people have taught me so many valuable lessons. Sometimes, they were to blame for the deterioration of the relationship, and sometimes, I was. Sometimes, the petals just fell off, naturally. Either way, there were always lessons for me.

Even though I was hurt by my friend, we had some really good and meaningful conversations and provided each other with the intimacy of a close friendship (for at least part of the relationship, anyway). She was there for me for a particularly trying time in my life, and if she hadn’t been, it would’ve been even harder. Most of all, though, she taught me that I do have the strength to walk away from a relationship when it’s hurting more than enriching me, and that is something I didn’t know I was capable of before.

I still want roses, though.
Hell, I’ll even take pansies. I think they’re both a lot prettier than tulips (and smell better, too).
However, the tulip isn’t all bad. The sight of the tulip signals the ending of the cold, lonely winter, and inspires the hope of warmer weather to come…the kind of weather in which roses thrive.