X Is For X-Men

Aw, Tumblr memes, I missed you.

Confession time.

I live in the city now. It’s pretty awesome. I’m across the street from both a metro stop and a vegan-friendly restaurant, a 15-minute walk from one of DC’s bar scenes, and a 20-minute commute from my office. I’m near a good bike trail, nay, a great bike trail.

The problem: I’m lonely.

I started to dress that up with lots of the adverbs and adjectives, but it’s unnecessary. Everybody, I think, knows what it’s like to feel isolated. Think back to that first semester of college, or right after that move, or right after that breakup, or anytime in middle school if you had a middle school experience like mine. You feel alone. You feel like even if you texted all your friends at once, you wouldn’t get real replies.

I’ve got neat, explainable reasons for feeling like this. I lived with a close friend for almost two years; before that, we traipsed across the globe together – DC, to South Korea, back to DC. We’re still on good terms, but our lives have gone in different directions, and it’s hard not to miss our old friendship.

I’m also living in the same neighborhood I did right at the tail end of college, when I had a close network of friends that have mostly all left the city by now. Anytime you find yourself thinking, “But back in college we were all so close,” you overlook the fact that you were close because of time and circumstance and, you know, college. You demand why you can’t just grope back into the past for something that was, by its nature, temporary. You think life now is somehow broken because it isn’t like that party where you all made sangria one of those huge gray tub containers, and then you sat up with one of them while she was sick and everyone else went to the bar, and then you both joined everyone at the bar later because college. This life doesn’t have long walks on the National Mall, smoking hookah outside an overpriced restaurant in Georgetown, having obnoxious philosophy conversations at 2am [you were all trying so hard to be so very deep]. And your apartment now feels empty, maybe a little haunted.

I’m waiting very earnestly for a Next Thing to reveal itself. In middle school, high school was the next thing. In high school, college. In college, having a real job. Then going to Korea. Then coming back. Then moving to the suburbs. Then moving back to DC as fast as humanly possible oh dear God. Now: ?

It’s not like I don’t see people. This weekend I spent a long Friday evening with a new friend I quite like. I spent Saturday with an old friend and a couple new friends. Tomorrow I’m seeing the DC-Korea-DC ex-roommate. I have a social life. It’s just that in the past year or two, I’ve started nursing this belief that life is a long, lonely road with little patches, rest stops, of companionship that are fleeting and unplanned and unable to be prolonged, and that makes me want to move into one and set up shop and stop my life at the points on the road that I like. It’s a desperate worldview.

Admitting you have a problem is the first step, right? Ignoring this loneliness, trying to pretend that things are perfect now that I’ve moved, isn’t helping me. I need to move forward. I just haven’t quite figured out which way that is yet.

On a favorite book

Use corrodes things. What works finely, precisely today is not going to work quite so well tomorrow. And when you’re past twenty-five, maybe twenty-two, things that work to make you feel like a child again need their utility heavily guarded. Each use blunts them — so use them, by all means, but do it with care.

Someday I may read a good adventure book, something alternately rollicking and bittersweet, and sigh and say, “The writing in the last third got pretty stale,” with dry eyes. If it happens, I don’t want to hang out with the person I’ll be.

Everytime I read Neverwhere, I feel gutted. That’s why I don’t do it often. It’s my favorite book, and I have to ration it. Otherwise that last moment won’t make me well up. Otherwise I’ll be waiting for that healing little sob so coldly that it won’t actually arrive. And there aren’t a lot of things in my quiet, straightforward life that give that sob license to make the trip.

Use corrodes. But I haven’t read this in a very long time, so I’m pleased to say the thing is still sharp.

It had been a glimpse into a world of adventure and imagination. And it was not true. He told himself that.

There it is.

Merry Christmas!

My family’s celebrating by browsing drudgereport.com to “find out what’s going on today.” Whatever you celebrate, I hope you’re enjoying yourselves.

Bullying & growing up

17 Things Former Bullied Kids Do A Little Bit Differently as Adults surfaced in my Facebook feed yesterday. It’s unnerving to see that much of myself in a pop psychology, emo Buzzfeed-knockoff. It was downright upsetting to realize that the same person who wrote “17 Reasons Olivia And Fitz (Olitz) Are Actually The Worst Couple Of All Time” had just told me something about myself I didn’t know.

I was that kid everyone hated in elementary school. I was dorky and too smart and too enthusiastic and too friendly without having actual social skills, and I was in a tiny Christian fundamentalist school where difference stuck out like a sore thumb. Kindergarten was rough because I didn’t make any friends. First grade was rough because a girl [I backspaced several words I prefer over “girl” because she might have been horrible, but she was also a kid] transferred in and decided that if she made me her punching bag, people wouldn’t notice that they also hated her. Most of the other kids piled on.

I spent most of my childhood getting called “retard” at least a few times a week. I’ve blocked most of it out, leaving me with random images – walking into the locker room in sixth grade to see a teacher’s daughter fake-scrubbing the toilet with my hair brush, getting told how I always looked like shit even when I tried, getting told how stupid I was, getting perpetual eye rolls when I spoke, having nowhere to sit at lunch except by myself, having teachers get upset that I “wouldn’t” sit with other kids.

It makes an impression. I remember feeling helpless and scared of what new thing would get said today. With less than fifteen people in your grade, it matters when almost every one of those people takes pleasure in berating you, when not a single one likes you.

The [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] girl transferred when I was in middle school. A few others transferred at the end of that year. Things started to calm down; I still didn’t have friends, but at least I didn’t have tormentors. I transferred to public school [hallelujah] in 11th grade and started figuring out who I was. College was pretty good, as college experiences go. I moved to DC and made plenty of friends. You’d think that I’d be over it by now.

I’m not.

As an adult, I’m stupidly combative when I feel taken advantage of. I have an inability to handle certain situations gracefully. Problems with Comcast? Try FLYING OFF THE HANDLE because otherwise they’ll know they can just walk all over you [sidenote: of course they can, that’s how Comcast works]. Insurance claim issues? Have anxiety for two hours because everything is going to go wrong they are going to take all your money and you are going to be helpless, and then to get on the phone and act like a bitch to prove you’re not scared of them. Concierge telling you that your completely packed ten-foot U-haul truck is too tall to fit into the loading dock? Snap at her about how she should tell people that even the smallest U-haul truck is too big for the loading dock when they call in advance to say they are going to get a U-haul today and ask if there will be problems.

I read that over and thought, “Damn, I sound like a piece of work.” I am. I know you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. But when I feel backed into a corner, I can never quite figure out where the honey is. It sets off a fight or flight instinct, a gut-level panic I can’t explain, and I don’t like who I become in the moment.

#15 from that list: “Having to ‘take crap’ from anyone or anything is like re-living bad memories from your childhood. And you will almost always refuse to do it, no matter the consequences.”

It had never occurred to me why I did that – or, honestly, a couple other things from the list. Maybe, after realizing this, next time I can take a few deep breaths; remember the person I’m talking to is doing a job [however badly or rudely]; remind myself that I’m an adult now, not some scared elementary school kid; and keep my voice level and polite while I address a problem.

Or maybe I’ll spend a few minutes internet stalking that girl, determine that I make twice her salary, smirk like that means I’ve won something, and stay the way I am because I’m not sure how to change.

Hopefully they’re not mutually exclusive, because I might be 75% done with the bad one already.

Man, I love the city.

I’m moved into the new apartment, by which I mean I have keys, an air mattress, some towels, a rug, and an assortment of pets. You know, the essentials. Forgot clothes and food, but don’t worry, I totally remembered two decorative pillows from the couch I don’t have.

I’m basically a toddler on the packing spectrum: low skills, high satisfaction with my ability to do dumb-looking things.

5by5kevin-deactivated20171116 asked: Where you been at?

I hope you’re ready for this super-interesting answer: Living in suburbia and working! Aww yeah.

I run a web development department now and love it enough to work like crazy to be good at it. It’s all fun and games until you’re off work for 7 days straight and start twitching and asking your rabbits whether they’d like to scrum.*

I’ve also been biking, though less so since the last move in February. I did about 25 miles Thursday a] to celebrate moving back into the city, b] to bike down to the new neighborhood and see how the trails were around there, c] to deal with my first solo Thanksgiving after a series of misadventures led to me spending it alone. It’s the first step of research for my new book, There Are No Problems Endorphins Can’t Solve, Except How Much People Want to Punch You When You Talk About Endorphins. 

Lastly, I discovered Hulu and Netflix. So I’m basically cut off from society in any sort of productive way now.

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*It’s a development thing. Don’t look at me like that.

Askbox is open.