joeyontheguitar

An unnecessarily long rant about love, luck, and fate that I write at 4:49 in the morning

Sometimes things don’t work out.

I wish I could say this would be a light-hearted blog post — and I’m sorry if I sound pretentious when I say that — but I just have to write what I mean now. Basically, I’m tired, I’m depressed, and my life sucks. That’s the gist of it, really.

Love sucks. You know? It’s just one of life’s mysteries that doesn’t make sense and isn’t fair. You like someone, they don’t like you back. Someone likes you, you don’t like them back. How many leagues are there? No one can say for sure, but tons of people can tell you that the person you fall in love with is too often in a higher league than you. And you don’t want to settle, because you want your first one to be your one and only. Or at least that’s how I think. Maybe I’m an idiot. I can’t say I know I’m right, because I know jackshit about love, relationships, flirting, whatever. I’ve never been in a relationship, maybe because I’ve been too chickenshit to pull the trigger and ask. And I tell myself I don’t want to settle. Actually, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to settle. I don’t see the point. I’d rather be alone.

Luck sucks. I mean, seriously, people control their lives to a huge extent, but no one can sit there and tell me luck doesn’t play. Did you get to choose where you were born? To whom you were born? What kind of place you grew up in? Who you met when you were little? And how they affected you, molded you, changed your psyche and how you viewed the world?

I’d like to interject by saying it’s not my fucking fault for turning out the way I did. Growing up in a dysfunctional family in which my dad had to pal around with other women and my mom never forgiving him to this day. Is that my fault? Or is it my fault that I never got to go out to play, less because my parents didn’t let me (though, of course, they sure did stop me plenty of times) and more because my parents are fairly seclusive people themselves and aren’t go-getters in terms of building relationships with people. Is it my fault that I was never the “cool kid” in school? That I never really got the feeling that people genuinely liked me, that I was worth something?

Why are ambitious people ambitious? They’re ambitious because their lives sucked. Sure, there are exceptions, but doesn’t this make sense? People who have shitty lives early on want better lives later on. And they’re willing to be aggressive to get what they want.

Why are people calculating? Why are people fake? Maybe because they just want other people to like them. Because being a highly valued person doesn’t come naturally to them. Really, they’re shitty people to be around. Their real personalities are shitty. So they act. They calculate. They discern the most effective way to act to achieve the most productive result.

Want to know what’s the hardest part about not committing suicide? It’s telling yourself that things will get better, that things will change. And nothing gets better, and nothing changes. And telling yourself that you have to hold on, that there’s something of value in your life. You “know” your life is going to get better. You just don’t know when. And when you’ve been waiting 20 years of your life, you get pretty discouraged. But you realize that you’ve been waiting for 20 years, and you start to think that something has to be your fault.

Maybe some of it was my fault. Maybe a lot of it was my fault. Maybe fate presented me tons of opportunities that I just didn’t pounce on. Love gave me many. Like when I knew the time was absolutely right to ask Shinhee out, but didn’t. And it was never the same with her after that. Or when I should’ve asked Melissa out, but didn’t, because I was afraid of something. Or when I missed the moment with Tim. Or when I decided to play it cool by ignoring Chris for a second. And that was the second that lost him for me.

Yeah, that’s four times. You’d think I’d have learned. It’s an interesting thing about being in love. At one time in the buildup process there’s going to be one point, one magical point in time, when you both know it’s exactly the right time to act. It’s the time to tell them you like them, to ask them out, whatever. Both will be waiting with bated breath, and it will be someone’s turn to act. If that person fails to act, then it’s over. It doesn’t matter how much you want to do it over; it will never be the same. The relationship will never be the same.

I’ve been through that five times in my life. Each time, I was the one who failed to act.

I wish love weren’t so complicated (how many times have we heard that before?). But it is. It’s not fair that the more you like someone, the less you tend to talk to them, preferring to play games and be coy and whatever. Really, does that make sense? If you like someone, shouldn’t you just go up and talk to them? And it’s not fair that your heart has to be broken even when the object of your affection did nothing wrong — they just didn’t think of you the same way. It’s also not fair that someone has to fall in love with you when you don’t think of them the same way. You can’t tell them that you don’t think of them that way; you have to grin and bear it. You have to just let them like you. Because if you go up to them and tell them you don’t think of them that way, then you’re a douchebag. But your interactions with that person eventually build up to the point where they profess their love to you, and you have to turn them down. And then they’re disappointed, and then their friends think you’re a douchebag. Is that your fault?

The shitty thing is I can’t avoid sounding like a douchebag by saying this. I think I’m telling it like it is… and by doing so, I sound like an ass.

The really, really shitty thing is being in the first situation, where you like someone to the point of infatuation and they don’t feel the same way about you. Equally shitty is when you know you need to cut yourself off, when you know you need to stop being infatuated with that person because you know they don’t feel the same way and never will feel the same way. You know you need to stop thinking about them incessantly, stop stalking their Facebook page, stop hoping that they’re going to knock on your door on a random night when you’re feeling sad and then profess their love to you. So you try to stop. But you keep looking for that glimmer of hope, that little cue from that person to let you believe that there’s still a chance. It can be a shitty situation on both sides: One might be trying to not see any cues, because they don’t want to be hurt again, and the other might be trying to not give any cues, because they don’t want to build anything up again. This is, unfortunately, the way the world works. Your relationship will never be the same.

I usually present a solution after I talk about a problem, but fuck, I don’t have anything. Really. I just have problems. Remember when I was talking about fate presenting me opportunities that I didn’t pounce on? Well, I feel like my life branched out in a darker direction because of something I didn’t do. If I could pick any moment to go back to in my life… I’d go back to my freshman year. I’d go back to the day we had a Tercero game night where the entire area got together. It was during the first week of school. I got to the place, walked around, had a shitty time. Everyone else walking around was just somebody else walking around. Then someone and I saw each other in passing. We made eye contact, and both of us knew we had just looked at our best friend.

We kept walking. I never saw him again.

I cite that moment as why my time is so important to me. I’m almost in my fourth year of college, and I can’t say I’ve enjoyed it as much as I should’ve. My time is important to me because free time lets me build connections with people, something I wasn’t able to do as a kid. It’s something I wasn’t able to do while I spent my first three years hiding behind being busy in the student government as the reason I couldn’t hang out with people. There’s this kid in student government, by the way, in whom I see way too many reflections of me. His name is Aaron. He’s fucking brilliant, and he’s on his way to reaching the highest echelons of the whole damn place. But he has no friends. He says it himself. And all I want to say to him is, get out. Get out of student government and go make some goddamn friends. I know exactly what he’s doing; he’s pouring all of his time into his work and he’s thinking about how great it’ll be to advance in student government. In truth, he wants to advance in student government because he’s lonely. Power brings the illusion of having friends. Or, if not that, it lets you forget that you have none.

It’s time to end this post. And really, this should be private, but I’m going to publish it because I’m at the point where I’ve realized life is just life and there’s nothing to be afraid of. Right? Or am I wrong? I’m probably wrong, but I’m too tired to think now. So I’m going to bed. Then I’m going to wake up and keep living my life.

It’s tough, but maybe I can make it worthwhile.