Adult Relationships -
Am I fortunate to have too many of them? Why does it feel like a curse? I spend most of my time sorting out how to make everyone else happy, and not enough time for my own happiness, my wife's happiness, my parents... Is the rest bullshit? Or do we all feel this way, and I'm moping around for no reason at all.
I have this project, that project, our project, their project, creative friends, work friends, Los Angeles friends, Los Angeles family, Atlanta friends, Orlando Friends, Childhood Friends, Parents, Distant Family, A Wife, Cats, Gaming Friends, Movie Friends... I'm not on Social Media, the thought of keeping up with that makes me sick. The amount of pressure to be liked, TO LIKE. To appease everyone, about everything, about nothing. To have an opinion suppressed with utter judgment, based on a couple of words, of a specific, singular thought. Cell phones are the same, a running thread of the entire history of a friendship, most of which now completely live there. I just looked at my phone, I couldn't count how many contacts I have, I can only tell you how many seconds it took to swipe through them alphabetically. 10 seconds. That doesn't sound like a lot, but perhaps 30 contacts per second will change your mind. That's an estimation, of course, but scrolling through my messages (texts) I have more messages from companies than I do people, and I'd say on average I'm MAYBE talking to 20 people on a monthly basis. Do the math according to my estimation - that's a blink of an eye, 1/10th of a thumb scroll. That's just on my phone, my direct line of contact. Then there's, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever-the-fuck Tik-Tok is... thousands of contacts. Thousands of people I do not know, thousands of people I do not care to know. So why do they exist in my life? Are we supposed to have this many “friends”? Are we supposed to live our lives enslaved to a micro-population that lives in the palm of our hands? I would hope not. But, how else do we prove our existence? Is your existence enough for you? The more I distance myself from these lines of communication, the more I start to believe that this is the only line of communication, that we've lost ownership of the most basic human right, that nothing matters, and that I don't matter. Is this the curse I was talking about? Or again, is it just me? I hope not. I hope you all feel this way.