Whatever Happened To Yours Truly?

I am sad.

I don't really know how to put it any other way, so I've decided that I won't be so cryptic and for once just come out and say how I'm feeling in a straight-forward manner.

So there. For anyone and everyone to read (Hi mom. I know you read this.): I am sad.

I always seem to find myself writing really late at night, when most everyone else is asleep or tending to their own devices, and I'm alone to all but drown in my thoughts and consequential emotions. Well folks, the votes are in, and survey says life has been hard lately.

Over the past couple months I've begin to realize a lot of things, things that I think I've actually known for awhile, but didn't want to admit. Collected is a short, non-comprehensive list:

Sometimes you inevitably feel alone a lot of the time. Sometimes your friends don't stab you in the back, but instead, sometimes unknowingly, infect you with a poison that makes you hurt worse and worse over time. Sometimes you feel like you're stuck in a Smashing Pumpkins song from the early 90s, trapped amidst feelings of ennui and melancholia and a strange sense that everything might actually turn out okay... but in the end you'll probably still be sad.

To avoid getting into a lot of finite details, I've been at the receiving end of a lot of broken promises lately. I have several reasons to believe that one of my closest friends recently stole money from me and possibly other people I know. I am uninspired and uninspiring. No matter how hard I work at something, someone else will always come in and change things without asking, and if the changes work, take all of the credit. I am constantly left out of the loop by most everyone, including family members. Because of some lies told to me, money is now an issue. Because money is an issue, housing is now an issue. All of my music gear has been broken, save one guitar that I rarely let out of my sight, at the hands of others. I let someone borrow my bike, and the news that it was stolen was hidden from me for weeks. All people ever want to do anymore is get inebriated. Some close friends have picked up some nasty drug habits. I buy things, and they go missing within a matter of days. Hypocrits. Hypocrits. Hypocrits.

I can't trust the people I am closest to.

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In reference to punk as a lifestyle, zinester Aaron Cometbus once said, "The excitement and conflict of it is trying to find an extreme that you can sustain. Walking right on the edge without falling off. For a lot of other people, it’s different. It’s all about getting to the edge so they can jump off, or, more often, so they can beat a hasty retreat and then brag knowingly about how they’d been there once.

I go slow and steady, and people are always passing me by, laughing about how cautious and uptight I am. Then they pass me again on their way back. I want to embrace life in all its extremes, but when the people I’m with push too far too fast, I get worried and resentful. We aren’t after the same thing after all. My road is just a shortcut for them on the way to total self-destruction, or a stopover before they turn back and settle down and stop moving at all."

These two paragraphs, first published over a decade ago, have really struck a resonance with me as of late. I used to think that my friends and I were all striving for the same thing -- a welcoming community that embraces all of its members and their talents, as well as their idiosyncrasies and quirks. Now I just feel incredibly alienated because I refuse to ingest poison into my body to either "have a good time" or cope with some unknown reality. It used to be celebrated when someone didn't feel the need to get blackout drunk to have fun, now people are just acting like everyone else. Lately I've even seen some borderline bro / misogynistic behavior from places I would never expect. Is this really what we as a community are becoming? And everyone has accepted it and moved on?

Obviously a lot of the things I said are blanket statements; there are still a lot of great people in the bunch. Things are just hard. It's difficult telling friends that they are hurting you and making decisions that are selfish and probably not that great for anyone in the grand scheme of things.

I miss ambition. I miss dreams for the sake of having dreams and trying to reach them. I miss sincerity. I'm old enough to know that life isn't a popularity contest and that trying to be cool at the expense of others isn't the key to any form of success that I want to be a part of. If that's your idea of success then you can keep it to yourself; I'd rather fail than earn success by use of such means. I'm just afraid of standing still and stagnating.

Maybe I'm just growing up, but I think what all of this really boils down to is that I miss my friends and the people that they used to be.

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To close, here are lyrics to an incredibly relevant song:

Whatever happened to yours truly? Now I'm so spun, so high strung, that I can't even sleep. I just lie in bed awake, grinding down my teeth. Get back up to go back out, and walk the same old streets, always searching, something missing, never satisfied.

Whatever happened to you? Now you laugh at how you used to care. You laugh at how you tried. You talk about how you weren't always tired all the time. You laugh at how we're going nowhere, and then you ask me why we never do anything fun anymore. Well, we're not much fun anymore.

Whatever happened to you and me? Whatever happened to our community? Do you think that we'll go down in history, or will we just be forgotten? I don't want to be forgotten; I'm so scared of being forgotten. That's my problem -- I'm so scared.

We used to say look both ways before you cross our path, now we both turn away, and there's nothing left to bridge the gap between whatever happened to us.

Do you think that it's too late to start over again? You say you're tired of having to start over again. That's your problem -- you're so tired. That's my problem -- I'm so scared that it's too late. It's too late to start over again.
~ Pinhead Gunpowder, "The Great Divide"