Not So Famous…

There have been many times when I’ve sat down, typed out a few sentences, and just said “Hang it all, why bother?”  Canceled the post, and just closed my browser.  I’ve got drafts saved that are good pieces, which I feel are worth reading, but I know I won’t finish them.  Won’t even re-read them.  Am I depressed?  I don’t know. I don’t see how I could be.  Am I angry?  Undoubtedly, but what’s the point?  Fatalistic?  Well, what will be will be, so you be the judge.

There have been a couple incidents recently that have caused me to wonder why in the heck I bother. I’m not even going to go into detail, though I desperately want to.  Suffice it to say at this point that I’m more inclined to just say “Screw it” and go about work, home, sleep, etc. Relatively quietly. There’s still the desire to just freaking let it all out here and now.  Say exactly how I feel and why. Point fingers, pound my fists on the podium.  The whole dictator speech thing is very appealing.  But I won’t. I’ll speak in generalities, instead.

I could talk about honesty, and how people claim to want it…but really, really don’t.  I could talk about fidelity and how people swear up and down that they’ll remain faithful…until they don’t want to be anymore. I could talk about friendship, and what I thought it meant to the people I have been closest to…and how deluded I apparently was. I could talk about parenthood, but I can’t deal with the smug smiles of those who think they know everything about what everyone else is going through.

Ultimately, all of this stuff I could talk about but won’t has brought me to a different understanding of reality, and it’s an ugly one.  It’s one I really don’t want any part of.  I’m sick of the wax nose of social encounters. When it’s melted by honesty, people get offended.  I’m sick of protestations of friendship until they just don’t care anymore. Because I still care, for what it’s worth. I’m supposed to raise Iain to value friendship and honesty, but am I supposed to share with him the truth that almost no one cares about these things?  That, in fact, honesty is offensive to most people, and friendship is only important to most insofar as it’s convenient?  Should I let him figure that out himself, tempering his heart in the forge of reality? Should I just let him experience that pain?

I’m not asking for advice. I tell myself I won’t speak up; won’t be honest. I tell myself I won’t seek friendship. I am privy to the knowledge of reality, and I still inflict myself with wounds that almost heal before they’re ripped open afresh. I can tell Iain about life, and I will.  But if he’s anything like me with regards to his social nature, he’ll stick his hand in the fire again and again.  Maybe because he hopes that he’ll find someone for whom friendship is more than a convenience, to be discarded when it is too much trouble, or when his friends just don’t care anymore.  Maybe he’ll hope to find someone who is refreshed by honesty and not someone who seeks to have their ears tickled so as to avoid the truth. And maybe I will hurt along with my son as he learns about the nature of reality…set him  up a blog so he can write when he doesn’t know what else to do; when he feels he has no human to sit and talk to.

What else can I do, but be honest to him, since I value that?  What else can I do but tell him that “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends”? However, I fear that his true discoveries of these things will be as painful as mine.

Nothing is as bad as it could be.  It’s not as though I don’t have friends.  It’s not as though I don’t have people I can speak honestly to. My wife is my best friend, and someone with whom I can always be honest, and who is honest with me. I have friends, and you’re probably reading this and wondering what the heck I’m talking about.  Just being a little melancholy is all.  Most of you know something of which I speak. Really, I just needed to write something.  I’ve not NEEDED to write something in a long time, and I don’t know whether I feel better or not…whether I’ll delete this one in the morning as well…

Maybe, though, I’ll keep it up.

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