Friday, December 24th, 2021, 00:27

Mood: Restless

Pat and Siren are both asleep and have been for a while so here I am, once again, insomniac. I once read from Kathy Averill that her son Micheal "Eyedea" Larsen died from a combination of sleeping pills, not because he was addicted to drugs, but because he was an insomniac who just really desperately wanted to sleep--and so he just took a bunch of pills or mixed booze and pills, and that's what killed him. I saw Eyedea about eight months before he died--he and DJ Abilities were touring and made it to Madison, and I think I kinda freaked him out by reaching in for a sneak hug--and he looked rough asf. Like, "Bro, are you good?" rough. Plus his partner at the time, who goes by Manchita and used to rap with Lizzo in GRRRL PRTY, did say in 2015 that he had been addicted to heroin before he passed away. So who knows? Heroin had really started to get to be a bad problem in the Upper Midwest back then. That was pre-all my friends dying from it, but post-all my friends getting hooked on it. Morose segway. Anyway, I really related to the narrative of just not being able to sleep, ever, and needing something to help me cross that threshold.

I remember, it was around this time in 2011, and I had gotten off work and was unable to sleep. Back then, I was in that bad positive feedback loop I think a lot of alcoholics are in, where you use booze to sleep but the booze makes it harder to sleep, and so you just need more and more booze to even put your head on the pillow. I logged onto Facebook, and this was back when you could see if people were online but it really hadn't become the monster it is today as far as features go. I noticed a ton of friends from back home in Wisconsin were online, and I thought to myself, "All my friends are here!" In September of that year, Sam and I had moved to the Indiana side of the Louisville, Kentucky area. We were both working 60+ hours a week, easily, and we hadn't really put any effort towards making friends. We would just work our long-ass shifts, go to the liquor store, and come home with our money and our booze. Sometimes we'd hang out with our two friends who owned the horse and goat farm we were renting a house on, but mostly we kept to ourselves. It was genuinely one of the unhappiest times of my life. I am thankful to remember very little of it, but for some reason this memory stands out to me particularly.

I think maybe it's because I have become no better at getting to sleep nor any better at seeking connection with other human beings than I was back then. I can blame my circumstances all I want and I do. The mania and the depression make it hard to sleep, just for different reasons. I blame Muncie a lot for siphoning most its people into either the working poor or the substance use disordered, and infrastructurally leaving us without much of a social network. I've lived here since 2012 and I feel like I have tons of acquaintances but few real close friends here, and my newfound insistence on eschewing Webs 2 and 3 have only added to the difficulty. It's weird to live somewhere where I used to be well-known in the community, then gradually descended into the quicksand of social oblivion over the last few years. Covid didn't help, for a million reasons. But ultimately I have to blame myself, because I have had plenty of opportunity to reach out and seek connection with people, but can't seem to make it any further than the "yeah dude for sure let's hang out soon!" milestone without that tinny voice in the back of my head telling me "They only said they'd hang out with you because they feel sorry for you. Just give up." And then, same as I did in 2011, I retreat into my dragon's den--only this time, instead of booze, I have, like, yarn and subscription services lmao because I'm almost 30 now and boring.

I guess I'm writing this on my public blog for two reasons. One, I gotta get it out on paper, because writing is how I have always organized my thoughts. Two, I want to make it clear to anyone from Muncie--or Terre Haute, Indy, Louisville, Madison, Murfreesboro, or anywhere else I've stopped by a lot--that I don't avoid you because I don't like you or don't want to be friends with you. That stuff's just a big tough front I put on to avoid dealing with my real issues, which is that I have fundamentally not changed very much sinceI was a preteen. I have for decades now been this scared girl with blue hair and zero social skills. I remember back home in Madison, this dude Simon told my on-and-off boyfriend at the time that he considered me "socially intimidating". My boyfriend just laughed at him, "Are you kidding? Erica doesn't have any social skills!" Well, he was right. I have grown accustomed for most of my life to the dull ache of loneliness, and learned to prefer it to the acute sting of rejection. I hope nobody thinks I am snobby or deliberately avoidant. I have met so many wonderful people over the years, and I am so disappointed in myself that the only way so far I have learned to stay in contact with any of them is to make status updates on Facebook.

I think my goal for 2022 will be to learn how to not just seek out but really maintain connection with people without relying on social media, especially Facebook, as a crutch. I need to learn how to compliment people from a genuine place. This is hard for me not because I don't mean my compliments--like I said, I've met so many people here that are irrevocably wonderful--but because I tend to just think my compliments are horrible and will never be believed. Before I give a compliment, there's always a barrage of doubts: "They're gonna think you're lying. Nobody will believe you. You're so creepy, stop complimenting. Why are you trying so hard to be liked?" I want to overcome all these doubts and learn how to make friends again. For the longest time, I relied on being a musician to do that for me--but, after I quit music, I realized that music was too a crutch I used to avoid seeking truly meaningful connections with people. I had become a wind-up doll that people consumed content from. I was just as lonely then as I am now, despite having tons of people at my disposal for entertainment, just as I had been at theirs.

Well, wow, I didn't manage for all this to come tumbling out of me at this late hour. I guess I needed to get it out! Thank you if you have made it this far. Really.