You tend to have trouble with other people, don't you?
By valentin | Updated 05/18/26(Mon)00:50:21
You tend to have trouble with other people, don't you?
You've spent a lot of time thinking about why that is. It's not that you're unlikeable, or ugly, or anything like that; in fact, for most of your post-adolescent life, you've had to avoid making friends. "Had," of course, being quite a generous use of that word to use, there. It makes me sound like such a princess, doesn't it? Oh, woe is me, I'm too great; won't someone take pity on the poor man with too many opportunities to make friends.
You disgust me sometimes. You think if you say it yourself, someone else won't? Idiot.
But - it's a fact. I do this thing where I go out of my way to ingratiate myself with people, often successfully, then immediately push them away if they like me back too much. It's a sort of shit test. It's also the reaction of a child when they see themselves in the funhouse mirror for the first time. You're me - well, you're what I could be. You're how someone else might see me, through a different lens, in the way that I'm someone else seeing you. You are my reflection and you are reflecting. How do I know that you don't see me as a monster? How do I know that I don't see me as a monster through your eyes? How do you know that I know that neither of us is seeing the other as a monster, and forcing a perfect smile as my or your brain paints big fucking red flag symbols on your baggy eyes, your unshaven face, your wrinkly hair, and your unfashionable shoes?
>friends with bavi traiiler dude
no
Today a man told me a terrible story. He told me about a girl he was in love with when he was in the military, who loved him too, and to whom he was engaged. He told me that he wasn't able to really love her in the way that he wanted because he was too angry at himself, and too undeserving of it. He ended the story by telling me that, before they could get married, she was raped and killed herself less than a week afterwards.
He could only express the enormity of what it meant to him in galactic terms; their love was orbiting galaxies, binary stars, black holes that approached, but never quite met, as they swirled through the expanse of space. For him, her soul was the Sun, and his the moon - a reflection of her was the entirety of him. That's how small he was in the face of that love. And he looked at me with wild, desperate eyes, mouth contorting as he told me this, rocking back in his chair, crossing and uncrossing his arms, throwing his hands up into the air and then crashing them back down onto his legs. He wanted desperately for me to understand, and I did, and it hurt. He was writing a story about this - this is what I was helping him with - except he wanted to change the ending. He wanted the characters to get married and live happily ever after and have no less than three kids in the epilogue. The tragedy of it, the real tragedy, is that it doesn't matter. The story won't change; but even more than that, the story isn't good. His writing isn't good. No one would care to read it, and no one who did would care in a way that would help him. The amateurish writing of this man, which is so incrediby far from the reality he is trying to put outside himself, would grace the trashcan of any publisher he sent it to, because amateurish writing is what they would see.
They would be wrong - they would be seeing and throwing away a grand and swirling part of him, of that person, of that human, which he carries inside himself and expresses imperfectly to people like me, who can or will do nothing to help. I will forget this day, his story, his name, his face, and, finally, the man himself. It isn't my problem and trying to help him would hurt me. That tear in his soul, for all its terrible beauty, and by which I was almost sucked inside in the heat of the moment, is a speck of dust on the tapestry of my existence. It is inconsequential. It does not matter. When he dies, it won't matter to anyone at all.
It is the same for the wounds I carry in me, and for anyone else. Our souls are tattered things. We do not die because we get old - we die because there are no more holes to punch into the essence of what we are, of what we see ourselves to be. We are born whole and spend every moment after that having parts of ourself stripped away. We lose our innocence, our friends, our health, our bodies, our minds, and we live with that knowledge before it occurs. We are subjected to this necessarily and without consent. We judge and discard those who do not stay useful, funny, attractive, or desirable, in the face of it. We leave people behind so that we can struggle onwards for another blink in the universal eye of the passage of time, so that we are not dragged down with them. And that makes me incredibly sad, but I do not let it consume me, and I tell no one, and I ask no one for their understanding, because I do not want to be left behind like that man is, was, and will be. Because I am only as good as I appear and if I appear unwell I will be entirely alone and that will kill me even faster. Because I've learned that lesson already and more than once. And that is what it is and nothing more than that, so I keep my distance, so that I am not left and so that I do not leave - all of which I've had quite enough of, thank you very much.
One time you picked up a homeless man, drunk, and he was so disgusted by the state of your car that he made you pull over and clean it before you shared crystal meth and wrecked in a ditch.
You told him you were planning on killing yourself. He said that if you drove him to San Francisco, he would inject you with a syringe of nicotine that he (unexplainedly) carried around in his backpack. He said that this would be a fast and painless way to go; you wouldn't feel a thing unless it was Satan's pitchfork in your ass.
I later googled it - he was lying. Nicotine overdose is apparently equivalent to having panic heart attacks until you sweat and seize to death. I still think about it whenever I smoke; in an odd way, I feel betrayed. Even more betrayed than by the fact that he stole all 200 some-odd dollars that I had stashed in my center console, before he ran away from the car and the ditch. The money, I get - but you'd really do that to me?
You're very lucky to be alive and not in jail.
You moved in with your best friend's parents for a while, after the No2 and the first real "oh shit, I can't do this" moment with The Girl. You've known him since highschool. There was no prior warning; you told no one what you were up to, as you texted her some lame goodbye and closed your bank accounts, or even as you loaded everything you owned and took it to the dump, paying sixty-five dollars for the privilege of discarding all of the things that you'd held on to for the prior 24 years.
The Dutchman said that he hoped you enjoyed your new adventure. That it was normal for a guy your age to get a wild hair and skip town, start anew somewhere else. Said he'd done it himself.
What he meant was that he saw himself in me. He was right, too; we understood each other. I didn't say it, and he didn't say it, but it was communicated, nonetheless.
He even gave me back my security deposit, though it was clearly stated in the lease that this would not happen under these circumstances.
So you washed up on your best friend's parents' doorstep, destitute, hung over, and filthy, and they invited you inside to stay a while.
Your best friend was living there, too, in a trailer outside the house. He ceded the guest bedroom to you after the two of you shared a few bitterly cold, space-heated, (honestly quite endearing) weeks out there; said he didn't mind being outside.
So you moved in with his parents, and he slept outside in the cold. They were Mormons, so there was something of a impetus to this - Mormon Jesus approves of charity just as much as the regular one - but they also seemed to enjoy your company. They had you eat dinner with them. They would discuss righteousness, current events, the local theater scene, and psychology. They would ask you for your opinions and you, hiding your trembling hands, would do your damnedest to respond intelligently, and they would listen to your words and politely ignore the fear in your eyes.
They had teenage daughters that they entrusted you to be around, implicitly. They invited you to watch movies with them - you saw La La Land and Whiplash that way, and loved them both.
You went to church with them on more than one occasion. You once saw the Father cry - actually cry, openly - as he discussed the history of his church's racism in a group of no more than 11 people, one of which was you, and another of which was your best friend.
You got a job through a temp agency within 3 weeks of moving in. You bottled specialty lotions and oils. Less than 3 weeks after that, they told you that you were a hard worker, and that you were more than welcome to stay on as a full-time hire once your contract expired.
You and your best friend played Elden Ring on his couch, and walked to the gas station together at night, and he'd stand outside, tolerating the cold and your cancer fumes, to ask about your day and talk about his. One day, you got an email.
Oh so help me god,
The comedown from you is dreadful, but who could blame me; you were addicting. I find myself wishing for moments that we can never have again, moments when the world went quiet, and everything that mattered was the way your hand felt in mine, the way your laugh echoed in the spaces between us. The memories of you haunt me, literally. I long for the sound of your voice, it grounded me, the way it would wrap around me with its peaceful embrace. There is an ache within me, one that grows with each passing day, as if my very soul is reaching for you — endlessly. Selfishly, I want you to come back. Selfishly, I need help understanding why I had to be washed away from you? Tell me why you felt leaving me was for the best? What broke my heart the most was how easy you made it seem to be without me and for so long. I miss you in a way that feels both beautiful and unbearable, a yearning that pulses through every part of me, reminding me of what once was and what is now lost. Lucky I am to of [sic] experienced something so indescribable.
I know there are parts of you that you hide, that you wish you could erase or make disappear. But I want you to know this: the pieces of you that you find reprehensible, the ones you feel are unworthy of love or acceptance — those are the parts I cherished most. (to me you are all that in a bag of chips) I carry with me the best parts of you, the ones I will forever search for in others, hoping to catch a glimpse of that elusive magic that existed between us. Such qualities that spoke to the very core of me.. It was in the way you saw the world, with such intensity and complexity, and how you shared pieces of yourself even when you were scared to. The way you held the smallest moments with such reverence, how you made the mundane feel extraordinary. Even in your darkest hours, there was a part of you that shone through — raw, unguarded, and so preciously gentle. Because, for all our differences, there is something so irreplaceable about you. Even if I never find it again, I will keep looking, and I will always be grateful for having known it at all. I couldn’t imagine how far i’d go to get you back. My love for you is IMMUTABLE! I know I couldn’t effectively try to plead your return; mostly because you showed me that love doesn’t have to be manipulated. I appreciate you, I’ve accomplished so much in such a short amount of time; not for you, but because of you. So thank you. By the way I would like my fucking nail file back, i’m kidding it’s not my most prized possession and my address is not the same anymore;) A letter could do, but a call is what I actually desire, V. This may seem like a lot but it’s doesn’t even come close to covering all of what I need to say. You know where to find me and how to reach me. Similar to my previous email, I do not expect a reply. Going forward, I miss you dearly and I wish you all the best.
-the biggest pain your ass You'd forgotten about that, hadn't you? Obviously she had your email. You fucking retard.
It was nearly Christmas, and that was a good enough excuse. You told your best friend, and your best friend's parents, that you were going to go see your parents and would return afterwards. It was a good lie, because it was partially true; you had, in fact, come to something like terms with your mother, and you were indeed going to go see her.
But even then I knew that I wouldn't be coming back. I just had the wrong idea of why that would be.
You made sure to pack all of your things up nicely, you washed the sheets you'd been ejaculating on, and you even had one of the daughters come in to check everything before you left, so that they would understand just how important it was to you that you left their home in as much the same state you found it as is possible per physics.
She was annoyed at this, which made you sad for reasons you still can't adequately explain.
You explained to your boss at work that you appreciated their time and money, but that you would not be returning. They asked why and you made something up.
You forgot to give them their keycard back, you bastard. The HR lady asked for it, SPECIFICALLY, when she gave it to you. You bastard. Christmas was nice. I put in extra effort because I knew how bad I'd fucked up, and I didn't want to fight. They gave me everything they had and I gave them nothing in return, except, I think, a somewhat nice regionally-styled lighter that I picked up at a rest stop along the way.
I drove all the way back to the town where my best friend lived - more to kill time, than anything else. I told him I was coming back, I'd be there any day, never fear. I deliberately took more stops to sleep than were necessary, and I stayed both drunk and high the entire time. I spent a few nights in a shitty motel where the TV didn't work, and drank moonshine, eating the fruit at the bottom of the jar to stay just drunk enough for about three days.
But finally, you arrived back to the town. Your best friend knew something was up, but you lied to him well, and stove him off. You still wanted the escape route, didn't you? The option.
I knew where I was going - the big bridge. The same one from highschool, under which my friends and I would smoke weed and cigars, and hit on each other, and laugh. I parked a little ways off from it, walked onto it, and looked down.
I counted the seconds it would take to get to the bottom. I turned around and walked back to the car.
It was windy; I walked to the bridge. The sky was blue, and the metal guard rail was cold. I counted the seconds it would take to get to the bottom. I went back to the car.
I sat, white knuckling the steering wheel, a cigarette in my mouth. I stared blankly at the little dirt hill in front of me. Deliberately, I pried my hands off the steering wheel. I opened the door, slowly, praying that no more tourists came - I had aborted my last attempt because a family parked next to me. I closed the car door, gently, as if someone would hear me, and deliberately walked in a causal gait about 30 yards to the bridge. I stepped onto it, walked a little ways off from the side, and looked over. It was windy; it gave me vertigo. The metal railing was ice cold. Below me - an expanse of sharp-tipped trees, jagged rocks, and a long, glittering river. The sun was just starting to go down. There was little fog. It was gorgeous.
I tried to get myself to jump. I abused myself; whispered insults and invectives and pleas, to be DONE with this. To be FINISHED with this mess, for the love of god. It's only 9 seconds. 9 seconds, in 24 years, out of a possible one hundred. I counted it down in my head. I imagined how the wind would feel as I tumbled off the side, probably awkwardly, spinning deliriously, unable to scream into the wind that would be forcing its way into my mouth, my eyes burning. I imagined hitting the water and somehow surviving. I imagined being impaled on the tip of a pine tree, being eaten by ants as my rancid guts spilled down the bark, with no one even knowing I was there.
I went back to the car.
As it turns out - the reason that your best friend decided to sleep in the trailer is that he was secretly getting high, the entire time. He didn't tell you because he was afraid you'd rat on him.
You were doing the same thing. Both of you, one inside, one outside, secretly hitting weed vapes under the noses of his Mormon parents and sisters, going out to see one another, both of you too stoned to notice how stoned the other one was.
He told you that a year or two later. It was and is funny - but you also couldn't help but notice how distorted his view of you, and your view of him, had become, since those halcyon highschool days. How little you really knew each other, that you could both hide that so well; and yet, how similar the two of you were in doing it.
I blocked his number, his dad's number, his mom's number, my mom's number, my dad's number, his sisters' numbers, and deleted my email, and then I drove away from the bridge, in the opposite direction of his house. and that's all. thanks for reading my blog!
Your fortune: Good Luck >>12956950
please don't insult me with reddit filenames!!
pick a good 4chen image to hurt my feelings with instead. here, you can borrow this one, but i want it back!
Anonymous is a reporter from /s4s/