I write because I have no one else to talk to. I foolishly believe that opening one of my many personal shields to the internet is somehow therapeutic, despite the fact that no one will read it, current and future employers will think i am mentally unbalanced and/or insane, and everyone else will mock me for being under the assumption I am doing so for pity. Common sense dictates that I instead hire a psychologist or therapist and talk to them, or get on anti-psychotics. That is how we treat people today, right? Don’t attempt to understand their problems, just treat and release. No wonder people resort to other drugs, drinking, and mass shootings.

The fact is, I am on drugs, but not the kind you find in a bottle or baggie, but that which masks itself as everyday tools, hobbies, or interests. I use computers, use the internet, play video games, watch anime, collect things, and a bunch of other nerd hobbies. They’re my drugs. They’re my drugs because I can’t function without them for prolonged periods of time. I default to them when I am awake, working, not working, bored, or otherwise just existing. I don’t go out to social gatherings, I have few friends, I cannot communicate with others without a snarky comeback, some kind of sarcasm, or an inappropriate joke, because despite my impressive amount of detail and observance of people, I fail to read their actions and reactions appropriately until they are quite literally on top of me. A former colleague described me as not being able to communicate without it being some kind of internet meme. He was right, of course, but he was also the same asshole who craves control and loses his shit when he lacks that control. To be fair, I am the same way. I should have known better to try to be friendly with that.

The sad and miserable truth is I keep everyone who comes in contact with me at arm’s length from me, and tractor-trailer’s length away from my core thoughts and emotions. I know I cannot deal with people on a personal level, I already struggle to deal with my wife on a personal and intimate level, and it’s not because I don’t love her or don’t care for her, because I most certainly do, it’s because I don’t know how to communicate with feelings and emotions. I am cold, calculating, in need of tangible patterns and measures. I am data-driven, which is why I am good at what I do for a living. When servers break, they don’t tell you how they feel, or what they’re thinking about, or refuse to tell you what is going on until you meet some unspecific criteria. Computers are programmed to have places where one simply goes and finds what caused what, and from there they extrapolate an idea of what happened and fix accordingly. Sometimes it can be a little more broad than that, but a genius-level expert can do anything with a machine. These same people cannot hope to communicate with humans the same way, because humans are unpredictable, emotional, needy, and selfish. We appear to be selfless, but we’re in fact the most selfish creatures on the planet. We consume and destroy to satisfy our short existences and only have a decade at most of anything real to show for it. Some may even call us parasites on this world, and they would be right. Sure, there are better people out there than some, but they’re products of everything from natural talent to artificial presentation. I keep everyone at arm’s length because I don’t get hurt that way. When a co-worker decides that I am not worth associating with, I’m not hurt from the fallout. When a friend decides that political views are more important than being friends, I’m not hurt from the fallout. When my family decides that something else is more important to them than something of mine I consider important, I am not hurt from the fallout. I’ve spent the better part of the last half of my life compartmentalizing my feelings and emotions because that is what is expected of me. I am expected to soldier on through life, do my job, raise my family, and hope I am not killed by a gunshot, infectious disease, drunken driver, a tornado, or five-hundred-thousand other possible fates I will never know ahead of time or see coming probably. I’m supposed to value the time I have on this dust ball forging relationships with people and creating memories, all for those to melt away into ash when I am no longer functioning on this world.

That is the fear I live with on a daily basis. My job, my home, this mortgage I am applying for on a home, all of these things are worth concern, but they’re all pale in comparison to the ultimate fate of life, and that is death. I sit here and type all of this and obsessively check internet sites all day because that is how I cope with a million thoughts and rampant fear running through my brain every second. Rather than be like every other human and drink my way into obliviousness, or smoke until I have no fucking clue what is going on, I distract myself with things I enjoy to achieve the same effect. I push off having to feel anything for as long as possible. I stay up late so that I go to bed completely exhausted so as to not lay awake for four hours at night thinking about what-ifs and could-of-should-of. I made shitty decisions. I’ll make more shitty decisions. I’ll keep making shitty decisions because that is what people do. They make shitty decisions. Then they figure out how to deal with those shitty decisions. I deal with it by spending nearly every Saturday eating a bunch of bad food and watching cartoons. Reading this as you take another hit off your bong or sip of your drink and think I’m shitty? Well fuck you. I am. Irrelevant.

It’s difficult to be straightforward and abstract sometimes. I play with indirect communication and self-deprecating analysis because I don’t know how to not to. I’ve mentally conditioned myself over many years to spot when people imply things hidden in words or actions. I read between lines. I fish for information using subverted tactics. I can’t trust anyone. Trust is something that I believe to be hardened and unable to break. No human can ever match that. We rely on machines to trust other humans with our information because we know that ordinarily they cannot circumvent us without someone else pulling the strings. Humans suggest trust, and certainly want trust, but the moment the deal has been altered, they rush to preserve themselves at any cost. It’s not just our lives we protect, we protect our feelings, emotions, family, money, property, integrity, and any number of other things. We do it because we have no other choice other than to turn physically or emotionally bankrupt. To be morally bankrupt though, that is something that comes from an inability to ever trust someone on anything ever. I like to think I am not quite at that level yet, but I’ve long past the need to reserve actions based on lawful-good principles. I don’t go out of my way to break laws, and I certainly am not interested in doing things that would physically harm people, but I simply do not care about most people on this dust ball. There are billions of people. I can’t be expected to know or care about every single one. At best, I can only hope to know about the few around me and a few others I mean.

I don’t know what the future intends to hold for me. But I know what when it comes to escaping the gravity-well of the past, it’s hard. There is no future data, there is only past data, and as a person who makes a life from data, it’s hard to predict what you’re going to do with old data in the here and now. It makes me cold, emotionless, and sad. How does someone like me become someone different? Really, can someone honestly answer that? I know we all go “You should be yourself!” Well, I don’t particularly like myself, but it’s the only self I know, and I kind of have to deal with it. I appreciate the people who can look past me, or find ways to communicate with me, but I’m not going to change, I am not going to be anything else for the sake of convenience. This confuses and angers people used to getting what they want, or getting something that fits with their artificial box of expectations. If you’re one of those people, I highly suggest you don’t associate with me. Don’t lead me on, and don’t believe I will appease you. It won’t happen. If I thought I could be fixed because someone said so, I would be a charismatic movie star or stage comedian. I will always be a trench monkey for a IT company because that’s what I do, I fix things with minimal human interaction, because it suits me perfectly.

I’m tired of adapting for others in this world. The world needs to learn how to adapt to me. Because I’m selfish. Just like you.