2009-03-20 - 5:09 p.m.
Jack Is Selfish And Self Absorbed (2)
Continued from the entry before
After writing this I realized I should clarify that "she" is just a long time friend, and ex-roomate. She is married now and the baby is not mine.
In the back of my head, I could feel you calling.
Yet somehow I could not bother myself to turn my phone on.
For another week I was unavailable.
Because I wanted to be.
Somewhere inside you knew it too.
When you finally had me on the phone, you didn't know what to say.
You didn't sound happy.
I asked what was wrong, even though I already knew.
Part of you probably just wanted me to go away. What do you want?
Part of you felt a resentful happiness. There you are. Finally. Asshole.
The unwelcome awkwardness in your voice was startling. The horrific feeling of coming back to something forgotten and neglected. You can almost stick your fingers through it, and you know you did this. You.
You did this. By doing nothing.
It began feeling like I was having one of those recurring nightmares of discovering all these dead or dying neglected pets, that somehow I did not even know I had.
I felt a little nervous and sick.
People can only take so much.
I should know this by now.
Still I always seem to be testing their limits.
She said she had been trying to call me all week.
Monday.
Tuesday.
Wedesday.
Earlier that day, Thursday. Yeah I am back, just in time to turn my phone off for the weekend again. She hates it.
I could tell by her voice she wasn't even sure if I was her friend. At that point she was not sure if anyone was really her friend.
She said when she gets my voicemail (again) it makes her feel guilty for even trying. It is like knocking on a door that never opens. Still closed. He obviously doesn't want to talk. Yet? Anymore?
I don't know.
I don't know why I make people work so hard to be my friend.
I don't know why it is so hard for me to be a friend.
A real friend.
I can be.
But then I can be hard to deal with.
I am losing my taste for real life human contact.
It is so much easier to have online friends. Then again not always. I have hurt and lost them too. And these were some of the people I have loved the most in my reclusive miserable little life.
I am not better in real life. Believe me.
I am worse.
You are not missing anything.
For a while, she did not seem to mind or notice that I kept our contact limited to the phone. Restricted is such a controlling unfriendly word.
Anymore, I would rather talk on the phone. It is a fine substitute for face to face interaction. In fact, it is even better.
When you have someone on the phone, you have them. You have their captive attention. You become a priority to most background noise that you came before. You have a real conversation. You connect.
For the same reason, I like to go out to eat or have coffee with someone outside their home.
You have each other as amusement and entertainment.
Instead of whatever shit is on TV.
I despise sitting silently present for the sake of satisfying someone's social appetite to "see" you. There you see me. Good. Are you getting something out of this that I am not?
I admit. I don't understand. I don't get it.
I am Jack's Socially Inept Confession.
Maybe this is the result of years of being more of an internet presence than a real world one.
She craves human interaction. Physical contact. Physical presence.
I crave human conversation. Psychological contact. Mental presence.
In an ideal world, you could have both.
In her world, the two seem to be the same thing.
But not always for me. In fact, rarely.
I have not felt that way with her in a long time. Not even on the phone.
When we talk on the phone, I do not even feel like she really listens. Sometimes I am not even sure if she cares. I am not even sure why she called. I feel like she asks me questions, then waits out my answers. Answers that seem unheard and meaningless.
Even if she can parrot back what I just said, I do not feel heard.
A lot of the time, I am not. With the baby screaming in the background.
Secretly I hate her life for her. Not so secretly, I think she hates it herself some days.
I try to make her feel better. I try not to let it show that it is getting to me. Sometimes I get resentful, even jealous. I know it is immature, but I feel like this baby has come between us.
Every time she calls, there is screaming in the background.
There is screaming. The cellphone warped sounds of demented low battery baby toy music. The intermittent drunken drone of the TV.
There is the sound of her at the end of her rope as she puts down the phone for the twentieth, maybe hundreth time. Aggravated huffed sigh. Hold on. Again.
And it goes on this way.
Back and forth.
Connect. Reconnect. Connect. Reconnect.
Disconnect. (At this point I have lost anything I might have invested in the conversation. The connection we never made. It's dead.)
Goodbye. (The frustration is mutual)
Disconnect. (Hang up)
There have been so many calls like this.
There was no connection. For either of us.
Only intermittent attempts and words exchanged.
Most of the time it is impossible to have a decent conversation anymore. I do not even feel like trying. I do not want to get into anything if you are not even listening. You probably couldn't even if wanted to. Your attention is more than a little divided. I have been reduced to background noise.
There is a reason I feel like you're not listening.
You are not.
It makes me a resentful and just a little more reclusive and self absorbed. It is not important to you anyway.
Sometimes you tell me what has been going on in your life.
You need to be heard.
You need the comfort of a warm body at the other end of the line. A warm body you think of as friend. A real friend.
But sometimes that is all I feel like. A warm body named friend.
Sometimes I have to turn to myself to get what I am not getting from you.
So yeah, I don't always feel like picking up the phone.
What would I say? What could I say?
Sometimes I do not know how to handle your life. There are times I just can not deal with it.
I will never forget laying with you on your bed, almost spooning, listening to the sound of the freeway on the breeze.
I remember laying there in the dark, summer night quiet, knowing everything would change.
And it did.
Once Upon A Time In Jack's Wildest Dreams - 2009-03-30
Jack Contemplates Love And The Internet (3) - 2009-03-30
Jack Contemplates Love And The Internet (2) - 2009-03-30
Jack Contemplates Love And The Internet - 2009-03-30
