An awkward soul / Another person's story
Part 1: An awkward soul
With nothing to say (saying nothing). There's comfort in staying silent. No silly statements and no confrontations. Nothing to doubt and nothing to regret. And nothing to share and nothing to bond. No-one who knows and knowing no-one. It’s solace in isolation. Boring, lonesome, wasteful isolation.
It’s almost that melancholia provides protection. As if happiness is dangerous. One should merely expect to be content with one's own underperformance as a human being. Why dare to be positive and push boundaries and build things? Why dare to build anything at all when there’s no reconciling an awkward soul.
I think the truth of the matter is that while being on your own can lend itself quite naturally to questioning your place in the universe, you somehow find the perspective necessary to be comfortable enough within yourself to deal with the world, the strange people within it, and their own insecurities in turn. Everyone has their imperfections, their own individual ridiculousness.
Happy to laugh at myself and happy for you to laugh too.
Still, still. It often feels like time spent, dragging along, on the sidelines of other people’s stories. Braver people. More interesting people. People who feel like they belong and people who understand that their lives are for living. Not necessarily better people, or cleverer people. But they’ve learned how. How. How to share and enjoy and love. How to be busy. How to be idle. How to spend their days in a way in which doesn’t lead them to question their very existence.
A day spent sitting in the flat watching films and TV while doing nothing more productive than putting in a load of washing. Another meaningless, adventure-less twenty-four hours, spent alone, to add to an indefinite collection of similar days in which an equally pitiful quantity of worthy memories were created and committed. I’ll cross off the date in the diary and promise to do something, by myself, next weekend. I’ll think about thinking about things I could do and things I could build. I’ll endeavour to try to enlist the drive that once was loyal. I’ll plan to force myself to resume the gym schedule and turn the tide on expansion. I’ll examine the notion of staring at myself, face to face, facing myself, my very own self, and reminding that self to stare right back.
Part 2: Another person's story
Self-centric musings by a wannabe wordsmith are potentially interesting to a casual passer-by, who has perhaps taken a wrong turning in their hunt for some corporate website, but of course they are ultimately crafted for my own amusement. Wrapped in my own plodding story, which would make for the sort of event-less film that most people hate with a passion. I do love a slow burner, though. Especially if it ends with some super cute moment between two guys.
Watching other guys on screen with their fictional names and their fictional storylines and their fictional homosexuality is one of the things that keeps me interested in media. Never do I find myself particularly invested in a story, but I love to draw parallels with my own experiences and those of people I know. I like spotting the subtle nuances in a good piece of filmmaking that touch on under-explored aspects of real life. It somewhat serves to focus your attention on the similarity of other people's lives. The other people who you imagine are happier or more inspired. Or the people who are undoubtedly better looking or better connected. Those people. Beyond what you see is something more comfortingly normal: their stories include the same failings and the same awkward moments and they will have many more in the future. Just like you. Other people's stories are just stories, too.