Community of Loss

Things are bad. 

I am tired of pretending. 

There is no doubt in my mind.

It is hard when about 5 people you know are having a swell life and everyone fucking else is not. Life is always hard. People have to die, that is a part of life, people will always lose people they care about. But in this life you can lose people you care about before death and that is the saddest of all. 

We spend our short amount of time here judging and sometimes avoiding people we care about. Sometimes we avoid them because they hurt us or lie to us. We need to learn to see their vulnerability. We need to understand that when people lash out and hurt us it is because someone or something is hurting them. 

People don’t feel good from hurting other people. You have to be loving to other people to get the oxytocin chemical flowing so people should be good at that. But when someone never learned how to do that and can’t make the oxytocin sometimes they learn to rely on other brain chemicals that have a similar effect. Or other ways to get chemicals in our brain that feel like love. Drugs that effect our dopamine and serotonin are common in legal and illegal forms. 

People fall in love with anger because anger gives you an adrenaline rush. I know it well. Now that feeling gives me intense anxiety. I know the momentary feeling of power for tearing down another human beings emotional core. A damaging blow to their energy. In the long run you will wind up wasting all your own energy. 

You can only focus on love or hate at any given moment. Most people can’t have angry emotions and loving at the same time, you are in a constant balancing act between one and the other. But we also have a choice in some of this. Most of it is learned behavior. You can learn to be angry and judgmental towards others and give yourself that adrenaline rush. But you can also learn to love. 

It takes two to tango though and so many people live in worlds of anger that they don’t even know they are filling in the void with something other than the love drug. So many people taking pain killers. Or antidipresants, benzos, stimulants, food, exercise, any obsession you can name because they are lacking in love. That is what people want, connectedness, community. 

Where does my skin stop exactly and the air begin? 

We are mostly water, but we are mostly nothing as well. 

It’s all how you look at things. 

How we look at things isn’t something we are born with, we learn it all from other people. None of us are alone no matter how alone we feel sometimes. Those of us that thrive do so because we have community, whether we choose to see its existence or not. Many a privileged person doesn’t see how the people they know from where and whom they were born to directly effects their lucky lifestyle. For some it was the time they were born in, certain generations had more free government programs available to them in the start of adulthood than others. 

We are all in debt. 

Everyone is working as hard as possible. 

Humans need recreation and connection and cooperation. We can not thrive and accomplish to our maximum potential when we push ourselves too hard. We will burn out, there is no perfect. This culture just replaces the burnt out worker with another to waste away. 

It is so much nicer to want to understand or help everyone you meet. I notice I need my space from people a lot. I take on their feelings. Their insecurities becomes mine. I am not an insecure person. I tend to feel very intensely the emotions of the person I am with, which is why I only like to go out sometimes. 

I have always been prone to completely zoning out to the point I no longer hear or see what is going on in a room, I’d say this happens the most when I am reading and writing, phone and Alphasmart3000 included. I grew up with quite and extensive family as an only child. I had many cousins on two sides of a family with many different aunts and uncles as parents.  I know what it means to belong to a community of people, someone accepted me as one of them at some point, even as weird as I am. 

As I’ve gotten older I’ve had to lengthen distances between people I care about and myself, because I can’t directly help them. Being myself even bothers them when all I want to do is to connect with people. I want to know everyone’s story. The internet is perfect for me, all the information about someone’s life journey without all the feeling their emotions involved. So I can get to know far more people that closely. It has been an invaluable tool. 

I’ve always made these very personal one-on-one connections with people. I am not big on hanging out in crowds. I always wind up off to the side talking to one other person. Do we all do that? 

It feels weird when I talk to a group of people. So many emotions going on. I find I turn into a clown and make jokes and fill any uncomfortable silences. I hate uncomfortable silences. It took me a long time to learn to talk just enough that people feel comfortable and have a lot to say back so that they will tell you their story. 

I never realized how much growing up in and working in a hair salon shaped who I was until I wasn’t there for a long time. How many things seemed normal, shaping how people appear, never talking about subjects that offend, always being ready to entertain people. 

Things were so intense I am completely burnt out. There are a lot of things hair stylists are privy to that not everyone is. How society is doing, what kind of personal image insecurities everyone has, what they watch on T.V. even though everyone pretends they don’t watch much T.V. 

A friend and I noticed that the other day, how frequently people say they do not watch much T.V. And yet you know millions of people are watching T.V. We have statistics about it. It is on. They may watch movies or sports but there are commercials and it is media and there are advertising dollars in the show and it is in everyone’s living room. If you don’t have a T.V. you probably have the internet, you can get a second hand T.V. for cheap and free DVDs from the library and dirt cheap VHS from any second hand store. Everyone uses and experiences entertainment and recreation. 

Stop judging other peoples choices of how they spend their free time from work and their money, those are not your choices to make for them. The only thing you owe other people is love and sometimes forgiveness but always support. Even if you can’t be around someone because their suffering will only drag you both down they have to know you are rooting for them. 

Everyone has to make it on our own. We have to pick ourselves up and do it. No one can do it for us. But the only people who can do it are those of us with love and support from other people. We have to know that someone believes in us. Anyone really, once you find one your community will always expand. 

It makes me sad when someone hates me, even if I don’t need them in my life at all. It hurts me when people I don’t even see anymore judge me. I don’t know why and I know it shouldn’t. So I personally believe it is hurting all of us. 

Who doesn’t have someone in their life telling them that they are not good enough? Boss, spouse, mom, dad, brother, sister, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, lovers? Everyone is being judged by someone they care about. 

It is the silent suffering under this weight of financial burden and debt that rests on every one of us. If you are lucky enough to have not have a misstep of loans or credit or illness yet be prepared because almost no one gets out of this sick sad world the way it is without some sort of loss worse than the natural course of death humans were so accustomed to for so long. Many people leave without passing on their wisdom and what they have learned to others. 

We should be sharing as we go. Lessons are experienced time and time again until they are learned. This goes for individuals and as a culture.

“The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
- George Orwell