#Chrismus

Last night during rehearsal for a show I’m doing which opens soon, I mentioned to a cast member that one of our 2-show days is my birthday. She asked what my favorite candy is, and I told her, no, no, don’t do that. Then she said she was going to get me a card, and I said I didn’t want that either. I wrote this down and gave it to her at the end of rehearsal:

I don’t need presents from people on my birthday.
I need presence of people...in my life...all year.
That’s the real meaning of Chris-mus.

On facebook I’ve made several #Chrismus posts. And like those posts, my note to that cast member was kind of jokey. But it’s also true. The whole point of my Chrismus (a.k.a. Chris-giving or Chris-vember? – you know, my birth month) posts is to maybe get some people to spend a little time with me. It’s an unusual bit of optimism on my part.

(If you regularly read all facebook my posts or maybe some of these blogs, you’ll know this already.) I don’t have people in my life – people that I spend time with, or even people who I regularly talk with. I realized a few days ago that I don’t even speak out loud very much. I talk a little in rehearsal, more if I’m the music director and it’s a music rehearsal. I might talk a little bit with the teacher in dance classes, two days a week. But otherwise, the most speaking I do is when I talk out loud to myself sometimes, at home or in my car. There’s literally no other person(s) around that I can talk to, or listen to, or just be in the same place.

(By the way, if you actually know me, and you’re ever around me at a rehearsal, etc., and I seem to overshare about whatever is going on in my life, that’s why – I literally have no one to talk to about stuff.)

So this #Chrismus thing is an admittedly likely-to-fail attempt to raise awareness of me in the minds of people who sort of know me.

Maybe you don’t want to know me better. I realize that I probably come off as a weird and miserable person sometimes. But you can help me with that. On my actual birthday, I don’t love getting a lot of “happy birthday” wishes. I’ve posted about it before. The jist is that hearing from a bunch of people who I never really talk to, or spend time with, or barely even know, makes me feel bad, not good. So, instead of birthday wishes, if you want me to feel less depressed, less miserable, less alone, initiate an actual conversation with me, about...I don’t know, anything? Or better yet, meet me for coffee. Or lunch. Or come over to my place and hang out for a little while. Or invite me to yours. Or for a walk in a park. Or schedule a photo shoot (no, it doesn’t have to be nude). But not just ON my birthday – any time. Maybe we’ll along well, and become actual friends, not just acquaintances who only see each other when we do a show together.

Perhaps you’re thinking, “Hey, Chris, why don’t you make an effort to get to know people, instead of expecting them to do it?” Well, this is an attempt to do that. My past attempts have largely failed. Many people seem uninterested in actual friendship which requires interaction, or, more likely, people are just so busy, busy, busy.

What I desperately need in my life, and have greatly failed at, is people who not only want to be friends with me, but who are also willing to make the effort it takes be friends with me.

I'm awkward

 

My lack of social interaction is a problem that feeds itself, it reinforces itself. 

I don’t interact much with people. When I do, I tend to feel awkward, and the awkwardness makes me not want to interact with people. It often succeeds in making me not interact with people. So that when I do interact, I’m “out of practice” at it. And that probably makes me feel even more awkward than I already would have felt.

Similarly, I don’t know people very well. I don’t talk to people much, so I don’t get to know them, and I don’t know much about them. Then when I see people in a social situation, I don’t have anything to say to them, so I don’t talk to them. Often, in the moment, I don’t even think about going over to people to even say hello. It just doesn’t occur to me until, possibly, sometime later.

It’s not that I don’t want to be friends with people. I do (well, maybe not all people). But I don’t feel like I’m good enough friends with people to really just go over and to talk to them. Mainly because I just don’t have much to say. I guess I’m just really boring.

Occasionally, when I’ve talked about this with people, they’ve told me that I don’t seem that awkward. I guess I’ve fooled some people. Yay? But I definitely feel it. So much so that I can’t imagine anyone thinking of me as socially competent. At best, I assume people think I’m just not very friendly.

Sometimes I DO talk to people and (at least at first) don’t feel super awkward. But it seems like (when I think back on it later) I just say a lot about whatever is going on in my life, even when it has nothing to do with that person and the nature of our relationship or the situation we’re in at that moment. In those instances, I probably seem desperate to talk, or maybe seem like I just overshare. (And, of course, that makes me feel awkward in hindsight.)

Have you experienced either of these things with me? How do I seem to you when we’ve interacted in some social setting?

Olive Branch refused, and How you make a cynic

Sometimes in a relationship between two humans, one of them will do something that hurts the other. It may not be on purpose, not meant to hurt the other... well, hopefully not. But it happens. In making decisions for one’s own welfare or protection or comfort, one hurts the other. 

That one may not realize this hurt. Or they may. Or they may not realize the extent of the injury. One can, in fact, basically kill the relationship without realizing it. Not being the injury party, the one simply doesn’t notice the change. And meanwhile the injured other is hyper-aware of the change. 

After a time, that other’s pain may subside, and the other may want to explore the remnants of that relationship, in the hope that there may be something left, something salvageable, some ember, some flicker of life left. Just maybe there’s a change to rebuild – not the same relationship that was. That’s probably impossible. There will always be...scars...leftover weak-spots, perhaps. 

Nonetheless, that other once valued that relationship and decides to initiate contact, to extend a metaphorical olive branch. Sadly, the one whose actions caused this relationship-death may be unaware that the other still has this injury. And, sadly, this one may simply reject the overture entirely. Perhaps this one doesn’t fully understand what happened, how hurt the other felt. Or perhaps this one doesn’t care. 

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That becomes a little cumbersome to write not using “you” or “he or she” or other such pronouns. 

Anyway... 

That happened to me, earlier this year. And for some reason it came to mind while I was out taking a walk this evening. Someone had basically killed our relationship about a year before, and didn’t seem to realize it. We weren’t best friends or anything, but there are so few people to whom I honestly feel a connection that when I lose one of them, it’s so very obvious and I feel it deeply. 

But I wrote this person a few months ago and said that I still had these negative feelings. But I was trying to see if there was something there to salvage. This person’s reply was that they had not understood the extent of that “injury”, but that they only want to be around people that like them and make them feel happy. 

Now, this person isn’t dumb, but maybe they just didn’t get what I was saying. I don’t know. I’ve thought about writing them again to clarify that I was hoping to maybe reestablish some kind of friendship. Or maybe I should just take them at their word. 

There was another relationship of mine that “ended” similarly. But in this case, it’s definitely un-reparable, as the other person – who actually went out of his way to cut me off professionally, though, to me it felt very personal, and indicative of a personal weakness – that other person died. Yeah. So... No repairing that relationship. Actually, he got sick, and it became clear he was going to die (though, of course, no one used that word – but that’s another rant: our culture’s fear of and lack of relationship with death) “everybody” started eulogizing him. I just wanted it to be done; I wanted to stop seeing his name and face and all that. 

Then, after he died, everybody continued saying wonderful things about him, and meanwhile, my thought when I hear his name is, “Yeah, fuck him.” 

So that relationship is literally done. And I think it had some influence on my thoughts about this other relationship I was talking about before. Maybe it got me thinking that I don’t really want to go through whatever short span of life I still have with these limbo-relationships. Of course I don’t want that. But I have difficulty maintaining a relationship with someone who has hurt me. 

I’m actually very sensitive. Anyone reading this who really knows me would be aware of a certain cynicism and bitterness in me. But it’s mostly there for protection. I was a shy, scared kid, and maybe I still am. But I’m definitely an idealist whose hopes and expectations for people and society and the world have been crushed over and over. I have all these strong feelings – not strong in the sense that they can withstand a lot of injury or pressure, but strong in that there’s a lot of it and it can be extreme and just take over. So I protect myself with my cynicism and perhaps my aloofness. Of course, then when I do get brave (or just fed up with the severe loneliness) and I open up and let some emotion out people back off, or worse, they just step all over those emotions – all over me. And I try to pull whatever’s left of those feelings back inside my shell and nurse them. 

No wonder. God, that’s exactly how you make a cynic: find an intelligent, romantic idealist and crush them. 

Man, I have issues.

not my friends

So, I was just looking at what I’ve posted here so far in My Blog o’ Rants, and it’s not especially full of rants. That’s probably a good thing. Well…here is a little bit of a rant.

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I've been watching a show on netflix which has a character who reminds me of someone. The show is The Following. The person I’m reminded of is a former boss of mine—Cathy McNeela. There’s an actress in the show—Annie Parisse—who looks a bit like her…a very attractive lady. There’ve been a few other actresses who have reminded me of her. The one that most comes to mind is Christine Rose, who was in Heroes.

I started to post this on facebook, where I might’ve “tagged” Cathy…except that she, like many others, unfriended me some time ago.

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The past few weeks, I’ve considered unfriending a few people. I haven’t done it. It’s not as though they are posting things I don’t like or they’re making me feel uncomfortable. In fact, it seems to be the opposite.

A little while back someone posted on my facebook wall, “Can you just try not being a dick or disgusting for once?” I was not aware of this disgusting &/or dick-ish-ness. I said as much, and she followed up with, “You always are. Every time you comment on my page I get messages that say ‘did you see what chris wrote this time?’ So, maybe just stop.”

I found that odd. I mean, what grade of junior high school are we in? (Gasp) “O-M-G, you guys!” So, if I’m always being a dick/disgusting, and I don’t realize it, I’m not sure how I’m supposed to not be that way.

And another “friend” deleted some comment I had made on a post—I don’t even recall what it was, but it wasn’t anything I especially thought was delete-worthy.

The thing is, neither of those individuals are truly my friends. They’re basically just people I happen to know because they’re friends with other people I know (some of whom may be my friends). 

Anyway, I’ve hidden those two people from my facebook news feed, and put them in the list of people to whom I do not post most things. It’s the only way I figured I can avoid being offensive when I’m just acting normally.