Is it me or do people just come with standard issue mental health problems these days?
I was talking with a friend the other day and she told me “Babe, I think I am going to try being by myself for one full year. No friends, no romantic attachments, no sex, nothing. Travel somewhere far away, where I don’t speak the language so I can just go out to the shops and get what I need once a week and just exist without the pressure of having to relate with another human being.”
I wish I could tell you that I talked her out of it. Instead I said “When you come back, can you give me directions to wherever that place is and watch the kids for me while I take my turn dropping off the face of the earth.”
We humans have always been a selfish lot. No news there. Self preservation means different things to different people but it hardly ever involves giving more of yourself, rather it’s a constant race to find who can give the least and take the most.
At work, its give 1020% and then when you are burnt out, mix the ashes with water and give some more.
In relationships, its even worse. Nobody comes to the dating game ready to bare all and hopefully find someone who will bare their all to you as well so you can both pick up each others pieces and head to the nearest store to buy super glue and make a project out of helping each other stick your pieces back together.
No of course not. That would involve emotion and vulnerability and the swallowing of pride and the laying down of ego and the giving up of control and telling the truth. Too many pills to swallow in one dose, never mind the fact that the disease that is ravaging your heart and mind never takes a day off and is about to take your life.
These days people don’t want a partner, they want a Father Confessor. Someone who will remain on the other side of the veil, largely unseen and unheard, to listen to their every grouse and hurt and pain and bullshit excuse and nod in agreement while saying absolutely nothing except “Oh it wasn’t your fault, everything will be ok.” A robot that has no issues of their own and has no need to unburden their own soul and only lives to provide absolution at the end of every session in the form of great sex or money or continued unspoken assent to being endlessly used, abused and taken advantage of.
This is what dating in your 40’s mostly has to offer. Broken people who are in love with their issues and only seek companionship for their misery and drama.
I am taking a break. I am going to drink a cold bottle of Heineken and go to bed. And if I am lucky, I will wake up in Wakanda.