Engulfed in change, at times it feels like a warming blanket falling into all the right places. Other times though it is a hole riddled tattered rag that lets the cold in. These days feel a lot like the latter with the first one within reach at least.
Sure, there are health issues and getting older, financial issues that are always the norm, and various weather changes. The kind of change I am speaking of is the life kind, the deep thoughts about here and now, where to go, and taking a snapshot to load into your memories, because this, THIS, is life. I have made more than my fair share of mistakes, I have done them sometimes aware and other times blissfully ignorant. I try to find things when they aren’t there, and shoo off even the most exacting facts that they are. So yes, as is anyone, I am my own mess, a confounding hot mix of WTF? and Gee… Thanks? I think?…
Those changes in my life I am deeply churning around right now are about friends, the meaning of them to me; The questions to myself as to why I can’t seemingly be a better one. In this recovery business a lot of things about yourself and nature(s) are pointed out, some are not, and some are just accepted. Mostly though I have found out, people would rather not take the time and would walk away, or run in some instances, from those who don’t fit, don’t adhere to their sensibilities. I am not easy to be friends with apparently, this is not a pity statement, just a matter of fact as I look back into my history as I like to do.
I have recently broken up with my best friend, at least that is what I have called him since we were very very young. I remember being about two or three and the red headed kid pulling me down the stairs as I was trying to climb up them. That was him and he has been doing that to me my entire life in looking back at it. So when a mutual friend of ours passed away too young and sudden for my liking, he didn’t tell me about it, he didn’t even have the sense or heart to call me when they were cleaning out his house, or any memorial service. That was the last straw in a long line of “who the hell is this guy anymore?” and “He has just lost his mind.” So I messaged him last month on FB because he had no number at that time. I told him that was it and don’t even try to call or come over again, we were done for good. I still feel like nothing good can come of things now, he has stepped way too far over that line into being someone else entirely.
At the same time as this is happening I also find out that an acquaintance from the program had a stroke and passed in the middle of the night. I was almost happy for the gentleman, he had lost his wife a few years back and had been lost to a degree ever since, he was home and happy now. Could I be though? I am looking at this example in front of me of my own behaviors and examining them with a manner and outlook I have never truly had before. Here, I have known one man for my entire life and could care less, and on the other hand was a person who I barely knew who elicited more emotion and sympathy than I would give the living? If I ever had some kind of belief system in a higher power, now would be a good time for me to look into that paradox.
This paradox of change, it appears on a larger scale too, with the state of societies. An unsettling cold and a welcoming warmth can spur the diseases, the festering wounds to come open again. The anti inflammatory properties of a cold shoulder, ignoring something, is not working against the painful heat from the friction. I am watching this as a train wreck paints the news for the last few cycles. Someone going 80 in a 30 zone; If this isn’t a microcosm of a macro situation, I don’t know what else is, the greatest metaphor is a true one. The blankets aren’t falling onto enough of the land to keep her warm this winter, the people are bitter and angry and looking for any kind of anchor to reality other than the occasional news story. The unease and discomfort of foundational securities going haywire is not a partisan matter; It is a human matter and a matter for free men and women everywhere to stand up to. That foundation and common ground I had lost with my best friend a case in point. I had lost my security in his ability to be an honest friend.
Change is always going to be both exciting and strange, terrifying and magnificent. It is also going to be a wrong road, a fragmented belief, a withering expectation. It will always occur, just as old friends leave you grasping at the why’s of their actions and behaviors. They will leave you as breathless as the empathy that an acquaintance’s passing, yet they will happen. As I look into my own cold areas, and the ones that need a little more attention, I wonder if anyone else is thinking about their change, their inevitable future or their unintended past? If there is one thing I am sure of as a person of these kind of sensibilities that is change on a scale we have not imagined has been happening. We are smack dab in the middle of it and have yet to ascertain the nature of it.
A dysphemism is an expression with connotations that are offensive either about the subject matter or to the audience, or both. Dysphemisms contrast with neutral or euphemistic expressions.[1] Dysphemism is sometimes motivated by feelings such as fear, distaste, hatred, and contempt. Worded simply, a dysphemism is a derogatory or unpleasant term used instead of a pleasant or neutral one, such as “loony bin” for “mental hospital”.
A friend posted a “new” word found on Facebook, it was, as I looked at it, the very definition of what I was trying to convey in parts of my pieces. A wholesale displacement of the social fabric that as much cohesive in agreement, is dysfunctional and the use of dysphemisms rampant in their disagreements. The foundations of communications, both interpersonal and digital are being rewritten daily, truth itself is not subjective, yet that is exactly what our entitled socio-economic-egoistic lives have brought about. Truth for those that wish it, or truth for those that make it. Wrapping ourselves is handkerchiefs of spite and groupthink, the herd mentality taking a strong stance in the times of virtual reality and augmented realities. There is seemingly nobody to trust, and in the best vein of repeating history, even the most informed will turn to age old tactics as Vigilantism, and dysphemisms until only the same handkerchiefs can stand each other. Might as well be wearing them out of our back pockets, in red and blue like the Crips and Bloods. That mentality not too far from reality these days now is it?
This constant change and unsettling of the sensibilities of the “we made it” and the “we want it” mindsets are going to be in a constant battle with the “we need it” aspect of society. The first two can move mountains, the third can only live in the shadow of one or the other and that shadow holds more than the peak. We are always smack dab in the middle of some kind of change, we seldom recognize it, or inspect it for what it is. We are innately aware of it, and in denial all at the same time. We treat strangers better than friends and we turn our backs on our own best interests, like forgiveness, tolerance and acceptance. We collect sides and coddle into our enclaves of truths and meanings, definitions born not of a truth of action, but of an imagination and condition that these things are malleable. The very context of our past changes with every passing rewrite of definitions, the meanings and emotions behind what defines us melts aways into doublespeak and spite. We lose the weave, we fold, we let fester at the corners, until that day we declare our lives too cold, and we cannot endure the cold and the frictions of that ever changing blanket.