Not sure I should be here, but here I am
I've been monitoring LJ and popping back, a bit like an abandoned garden or house I kept an eye on the place - and suddenly there's lights on in the house and new plants in the garden.
Usually I'd give a fairly default 'welcome back!' post and then lapse back into watcher mode, wandering around the weeds and decay like I'm in the Omega Man.
Not this time...going to document how stuff like this appears to me given what's happened to me in the last decade, especially the last 2 years. And a sort of update along the way....
Thing is this makes me feel very bittersweet - to have nostalgia for something you have to feel like you belong and have warm fuzzy memories, and I'm not sure I do anymore. I'm not throwing shade at those specifically here, I mean anywhere. Podcasting, mashups, my art peers - those social contracts which were flimsy before were completely nuked by the pandemic. It stole a lot from me - including my best friend, and other groups I was involved with became weird and catty like high school.
And I'm still trying to deal with that rejection - was I ever part of it? Was I deluding myself? It feels now like that was a different person - a person who was eager to be liked and put up with a lot of bad stuff because of it; and then cycled into acting out because of course it doesn't work like that. In fact you find people hate those who want to be liked, it's a weird psychology. I didn't set boundaries and they were trampled on, then I was unhappy. Not doing that anymore.
My only real 'super-power' is to be able to remember negative - not positive - thoughts like they happened yesterday, and then like the failed empath I am, they arrive in Technicolor and I feel them all again.
This is why I find looking at old photographs hard, it's like mainlining my emotions at the time, a landmine of past shit. Bit of a problem for someone who wanted to make photography my job at one point. My brain is a file of embarassments, awkwardness, bullying, weird behaviour - some deserved (one of the things I have learned is to set some cast-iron boundaries because some people trod all over them in the past - see the whole K episode for that, which was sad but necessary for my own wellbeing) and some just my depressive tendencies playing up.
I spend far too much time trying to sift out the reality to try and not project them onto people and cause drama, but it's fucking exhausting. Especially when I learned some folx like pushing those buttons. That was not a nice realisation, I stupidly assumed people have noble intents (yeah, I know...the ideal nature of youth, I simply never thought people could be that evil).
So yeah, a lot of those things that should be warm and fuzzy now have a weird glow around them - the weird glow of 'Am I the same person? Did those people really care? What was the deal?'. This is all up in the air at the moment. I never dealt with rejection well at the best of times, but the pandemic shone a rather nasty light on who was there for me and who wasn't. And then played havoc with my mental health, rinse, repeat.
People deciding to externalise their feelings and expand them into other friend groups - maybe as a response to their own trauma? - seemed to be a thing. Class stuff as well - other 'friends' who lived in better circumstances didn't get my problem of living in a tiny flat on basically benefits, or called me a 'gatekeeper' or middle class. Yeah. Thanks for that...not. We're in this together was the mantra, but as we're learning from Boris's parties, that was a lie, and an evil one at that. There was a nasty 'I'm alright Jack' feeling during the pandemic as people went on holiday and posted photos, or showed off their nice gardens or their Lockdown Hobbies.
It fucking sucked. I drifted away from reading the news and a lot of social media like Instagram, and towards Discords and specific groups. It wasn't good for my mental health, as I knew people were showing only the 'good' side but it was toxic.
The thing with K. was the fall out of decades of him belittling any good thing that happened to me, calling any success 'bragging' and making me avoid talking about anything good that happened to me (while he was the King of his own world, his achievements especially as a friend *cough* were bragged about). It's all very manipulative, and I see the gaslighting and negging now, but I wanted to keep the peace and keep a friend of many decades.
He chose to then do one of his outbursts in front of a mutual friend online....and then I couldn't control that anymore. It had to stop because when I can't keep it 1-on-1 then it's just too hard to juggle.....the door is still open but he won't take the high road and apologise. Sad and I have grieved a lot about that in the last year, but the reality was, he stepped out of my life a long time ago, and just popped back in when it suited him. It wasn't healthy.
Reason I mention this is some of you have met him....it's not a random thing. But an example of how the pandemic seemed to accelerate the rot, and eat away from my friend group and well-being. It got easier to just accept people weren't there for me - seriously I got more support from friends in Australia and other cities rather than my own city. I am aware this thinking is not helpful in making new friends or keeping those I already have; but given the trauma I am not sure I can just let my guard down in the current climate.
Still trying to be an artist and failing; the podcast is still going but is in a funny space because not happy with it and trying to bolt live streaming via Twitch onto it again made me realise how solitary the podcast is for me now - as is all creation - an adding an audience not only makes me stressed but changes the whole thing. It's not the solution to the ennui I was feeling. Still living with John, and that's not exactly roses a lot of the time (some of the drama of the live stream was him acting up, it was very strange).
So yes, if it feels like I'm just there watching and maybe commenting but not engaging it's because I don't really want to go through another set of loss and rejection.
And a lot of historical baggage in this space which I'd rather not exhume. I miss blogging here, and I miss the community but it has to be a real one, and not me bargaining away all the problems for the sake of having a 'group'. That has ended badly in other spaces, I'd rather not go through that here too.
So yes, welcome back! I might engage, I might not, depends on how I feel and glad you are here, with the lights on and the music playing, it's better than dead - but I might be hiding in the kitchen wondering whether to go home.