This Is What I Should I Have Posted On Friday

Tonight I’m invisible. I’m a modern day American ninja. I have my sunglasses on tight, I can see you, but you can’t see me. I have my iPod on, loud enough for me to hear the music and you. I’m running through a shuffle play right now, a mix of everything from Ice T to The Troggs, making me think, every second of every song. I have a book, but, I’m standing on the train and I can’t get to it. It would have only been more camouflage anyway.
You don’t see me and I don’t want you to. Tonight I’m a fraud, a liar and an empty shell waiting for the night to fill me up. Tonight I am myself, completely and totally. I belong to myself and I am a fraud. I accept that.
I’m on my way to an AA meeting. I’m a fraud there too. I use a false name because I don’t need or want their help and I want to be able to take off the persona when I walk out the door. I am a drug addict, but that’s no one’s business but my own. That addiction is honest.
I’m fascinated by the meetings, the sharing of deep feelings that feel sanitized because no one is truly ready to admit how bad they really are. Except the mental hospital chick and she is only a shadow in the crowd of people looking to find help for something they call a disease, but sit in a room and ask God for help with. God doesn’t cure cancer. God doesn’t cure AIDS. God doesn’t even cure the common cold, so why is this disease supposedly cured by God? It seems wrong and ironic at the same time. I’m trying to decide if AA is just another form of jailhouse religion, and why this meeting doesn’t have cookies.
The meeting is over and the more I stay away from these people, the more they approach me. It’s funny. I’m here with a friend who has to be here and they ignore him. So much for the ninja. Maybe he can teach me a trick or two.
My friend and I go to dinner and I have a glass of wine, it’s the first liquid to touch my mouth today except for the water used to brush my teeth and it tastes like kisses from a slightly pretentious rock star. The wine instead of Jack type. It’s a comfortable, relaxing dinner. I needed it. I had a bad fight today and I want to forget it. I want to forget that my life is full of emotionally broken people and that their words are weapons because they are all they have left. I took a few heavy blows in this fight and another part of myself died. Parts of me have been dying regularly these days and I wonder often how much is left before I become the shattered, psychotic, broken mirror that the former love of my life is. The man who tortured me more than anyone else, because I let him. I had to see the wreckage, because I know I’ll be there one day. I’ll be there. Not with him, but I will be him. I will be dead inside and won’t be able to pull up anything except venom and bile. He is my future, he is what I will grow up to be and it doesn’t scare me anymore. It really doesn’t bother me anymore either. I’ve always been curious as to who my soul mate was, and it doesn’t surprise me that it’s someone whose soul has died. It actually makes perfect sense. He’s a few years older than me and I figure when I’m his age I will be him.
We go to a bar after dinner. It’s the type of place that you go to like you go to work. It’s a routine, a habit you’re not fond of, but there you are. It’s a bar of hatred, pain, anger, frosted over with drunken smiles. “Aren’t we having fun?” They slur this while knifing someone in the back, or maybe ruining a friendship, or a marriage. Cruelty is the currency here. You better be ready with an insult or sarcastic crack if you’re going to play here. You can’t be weak. The weak aren’t eaten here, although it would be easier, they are paraded around with their weaknesses in neon. I’m not weak. Not here, never here. I know what has happened to others and I’m not going to be them. I’m just here. Sometimes I need to drink, sometimes, I want to see people, but mostly, I’m just here because it’s what I do.
I need to be pretty here tonight. I need to be a girl. I need to be weak. I can’t be and I know it. I have to ignore those who could give me solace, exactly because they would see it for the weakness it is. I need to swallow all of it, the betrayals of the last few weeks, the pain and shame of losing so much of what I believed in over a period of days. I have to swallow the isolation and devastation of having my hero dismiss me. I have to swallow the humiliation of the fight today. I have to be a fraud. I can’t need anyone, because that need would betray those who need me and would maybe put me on the path to being human. I want to go to someone, a very particular someone, wrap my arms around him and say “Let’s go for a walk around the block. Get some air.”. I don’t though, I can’t. To do that would knock down everything I’ve built up around me. He wouldn’t get it anyway. Who would?
Today I was a fraud, and I’m just waiting for the day when I grow up and become my future. Hold on to what you have of me now, because it’s running out fast. Soon, I’ll be the person you don’t talk to anymore because you know whatever I say will hurt you. I’ll be the person you all hate. But I’ll no longer be a fraud.

You Know Where You Are? You're In The Jungle Baby!

As I think everyone knows, I live in a very small world. My circle of friends is small, my circle of people who think they're my friend is sadly large, but basically, I am never very difficult to find. I'm just difficult to reach.
The place where I tend to hang out most Friday nights is laughingly called "high school with beer". That's not quite right, we had beer in high school and we still weren't this childish. It's a bar where most people have been hanging out forever, newcomers are noticed because they are just so rare and pretty much everyone wants to be king of the mountain.
I've written posts from the top and bottom of this mountain and I don't care much either way if I'm looking up or down, but for a lot of people, it's a huge deal. Everyone wants to be king. King of darts, king of pool, king of antisocial behavior (no, I'm not kidding), king of the jukebox, king of whatever. They just want to be king. It's a little minitown that every move is immediately sent on the grapevine, plans to hurt people are openly and cheerfully discussed and nothing you do or say is ignored.
The worst of it all is the male/female relations. All the guys are pigs and all the girls are sluts, or something like that. I've had in the past, and am having now, problems with simple basic friendships. If you are a girl, single, married or indifferent and you hang out with someone, talking, playing darts or pools or whatever, you are automatically sleeping with them. The most recent is with a friend I have known for longer than I've been going to this place and longer than I've known most of the people in my life these days. Is he an attractive guy? Absolutely. Is he a nice guy? Yeah. Is he smart and great to talk to? Without a doubt. Are we more than friends? Nope. Am I having to stop and think before I talk to him in public? Sadly, yes. Are there entire parts of the grapevine devoted to are we or aren't we? Yep. Is that as creepy and obtrusive as it seems? 100%.
So, to stop asking questions and sum stuff up, I have a friend with whom I would love to have a real friendship with, as I do with other people of the opposite sex, but it seems to becoming an impossibility. I don't care what people think, but if my friends care, then I have to respect them and their feelings.
In a place where everything is on display and if nothing is going on, it gets invented, it's amazing that any friendships survive. Yeah, while it's true that a lot of the male/female relationships at this place include cheating on a spouse or significant other, it's not always the case. Sometimes, it's just two people trying to carry on a conversation or a game of darts without being bothered. It's a bar right? People go there to relax and unwind and shed some of the problems of their day. But if the simple act of friendship is going to be hideously misconstrued, why bother?
I'm not going to wear the good guy badge here and claim that there is never any flirtiness or physical contact, but it's all harmless to everyone INVOLVED. There is no running off to Tijuana or Vegas or a cheap motel somewhere, and again, to the people INVOLVED, that's clear. But, if you're not involved, why should it matter? Most...ok all of my friends are male and there is a level of touchy feely with all of them. Some more than others, some less, no biggie. there's no misrepresentation or lies, it's just what it is.
I guess the point that I'm trying to make, is that while I'm little miss self reliant, I'm aware that there is a rumor mill and that there are people in there that aren't as headstrong as I am and actually care what others think. I just don't feel that I need to choose my friends based on what other people think. Maybe I should stop hanging out with my male friends and go drink cosmos in some high class lounge after shopping all day for shoes with the girls. Ok, I considered suicide writing that line, never gonna happen. I like my friends and I like being with them and talking with them and maybe having a friendship that doesn't have to be carried out on the grapevines of the world. Close friends are really hard to find, and what sex they are shouldn't matter. Every single one of my close friends is male and I wouldn't have it any other way. They may all be BBS, but I care for all of them. The point of all of this is... (wow..I feel like Doogie Howser) actually, i think i made my point.

later-
me