the case against friendship

mom, i’ve already promised like 6 people i’d call them. i think about it every day. i hate calling people. even if i like the person. i have nothing to say. feels like the more i give the less i am. the less i am a person who is anything or makes anything or goes anywhere and the more i am just somebody’s Good Friend. 

dad’s the same way. everybody loves him. and i mean everybody. but he’s empty. he spent his whole life giving himself away to whoever happened to be around or near him and now he has nothing and is nowhere. perpetually drunk. accumulated nothing and feels the crushing shame of American Poverty and numbs it with booze and drugs.

he may have set the world record for most “Good Friends” Made, most Drinking Buddies, but at the end of it all he has nothing and no one. and i look in the mirror and see more of him every day. i catch an awful glimpse of him in the black of my screen when i’ve been typing for too long and it gets hard to see the words. the reason it hurts so much to reject people even in the softest and kindest of ways is because i’m resisting the urge to emulate Mr. Best People Pleaser Most Popular Guy In The Room Everyone Loves Me. It’s not a good long-term social strategy. You gotta make something of yourself. I swear to god. 

you know, while i’m at it, maybe i only started writing so that i can communicate with people without feeling pathologically obligated to listening to them in return. this is how i fight back against the conditioning. and i’m aware how arrogant ignorant selfish narcissistic and insert bad guy buzzwords here this all sounds when i lay it out like this. but this is how i feel. and you probably want to know me, because you’re my mom. so here i am.