Published on 12, July, 2020
I've come to this realisation today sat in the library of my old university that the trajectory of my life is that I will be forgotten and die alone. This is where inertia seems to be taking me. Around me I see students making friends, sharing drinks, laughing. I am forgotten. connectionless. My few friends are either distant, busy or suicidal. My family is restless and leaving me behind. I have no wife, girlfriend or children. No one shares my interests, no one gets me. No one who is available, connectable that is. All I have is my science. It's the only thing I've been able to hang on to and even that has been a huge struggle.
Even if I am successful by normal career metrics I will most likely die alone and friendless, a lonely old university 'don.' The people I thought I would grow old with when I was younger will forget me, many will not even hear of my passing when it comes. They have their wives, husbands, serious others, a few of them have 'besties' of 'bffs.' Platonic friends they seemed joined at the hip to. Evidently, they all decided that shouldn't be me. Many have just disappeared. Even their Facebook pages deleted, almost nothing to show they were ever a part of my life.
I am tired of trying to be strong. I’m tired of trying to be good and take the moral high ground. But I don’t know how to be bad and even if I did it’s too late to do me any good. Lives of selfish and destructive indulgence are a young mans game and every day my body seems to betray me a little more. For years I tried to just pretend I wasn’t getting old. That nothing had changed since I was 18 or so. I probably still will as well as I can.
No councillor can help me. No program of inner healing or self-reflection can fix this mess. I need my circumstances to change. And no body cares. How could they, they barely know I exists and when I remind them of my existence the usual reaction is to try to sideline or exclude me as quickly as possible.
I need to do something radical. To pick the nuclear option, other wise my life will spiral down the plug hole unless a deus ex machina intervenes. But I’ve no idea what the nuclear option is.
Ideas?
It occurs to me the friendships in my life all fall into essentially one of two categories. The first are like fires. They occur with people with whom I share a lot in common. Similar interests, similar sense of humour, similar passions in life. We have great fun, we have great times and we have tons of interesting conversations. Sometimes we share similar aspirations and look forward to watching each other achieve those aspirations. But almost invariably it ends with me being abandoned. The fire burns out. The things they used to find funny are now creepy or immature. Some people have described this as growing up. I prefer growing old or just growing boring. And I am a regular little firestarter; I will keep poking and trying to tend that fire trying to make it burn again. And they will walk away tired of being reminded that they’re not the person that they used to be particularly when it’s so obvious just by me existing that to some extent I am.
The second group are more like surrogate children. People with whom I have very little in common. But they’re usually hurting and in need. The relationship is an unequal one and I don’t just mean materially unequal I mean emotionally unequal. That isn’t to say that we don’t really get on or we never have fun together but it’s not quite the same. I am there to support them but they are unable to support me. These relationships tend to persist until they do something that makes them ‘unhelpable.’ Like lying to me to a point where I can’t give them the help that they tell me they need. And without that help they’re no longer so keen to hang around me. Or because They have a breakdown that basically turns their entire life into a blank page scenario and they run off and join the circus or get committed to an institution etc. That sort of thing.
There have been a few of these over the years I’ve put hours and hours and hours of energy and time into. Without expecting anything in return. Maybe that would be the nuclear option. A lot of these people are quite socially skilled, after all from time to time they try to manipulate me. Since I’m putting time into trying to help these souls out because I do genuinely care about them it would not be a bad thing for me to try and put them to work for me somehow. But for the life of me I’m not sure how. If I were to approach it bluntly and directly as a quid pro quo I think they would assume that I’m only helping them because I want something in return and that’s not it and I’m not sure that they would want my help on that basis.
Still in principle it could work. These individuals could go to the places I find it difficult to go, scout them out and be a kind of social fixer. But in practice these individuals are not particularly reliable. I mean people who tell lies and are suicidal tend not to be particularly reliable agents for getting anything done on your behalf much less building a social life.