Being Light Enough To Float

We must be light. Wisp light.

Because we have these threads shooting out from where our hearts are with tiny little grapnels at the end that sink into different things. A job, a relationship, a house, a goal, a purpose. They tether us. Because without these threads, we would float away.

Up and up and up into the sky, into the beyond sky, which isn’t higher than the sky, it’s just adjacent to it. We’d float and scatter like dandelion wisps. White and fast at the start, taken away by a rude little breeze, but then slow and dreamy. One becomes many through the parts that drift away.

Is that why we have children, one of the strongest tethers there is? Because without an equivalently strong tether, we’d want to float away? Evolution knows, biology knows, all of them know what happens if the grapnels rust and break, or if the thread themselves snap. The mind knows, why do you think it fights the silence so viciously? Why does it want to occupy itself all day long? The threads, the hooks, the inconvenience and abject terror of floating away. There is only one brief to the basic system of a being: survive, and ensure your species survives. Hence the chemistry within reflects that motive in everything we do. But what about those whose chemistry has changed? The outliers.

I feel a little existential today for several reasons. One being stuck in a job that is the equivalent of a hamster running on a wheel, except the hamster has more going for it than I do. Second, a message from an ex-best friend (yea, that’s a term) who threw shade at me for ensuring she stays an ex-best friend. And it’s never nice to be have sudden shade thrown at you and not be able to duck. So yes, oh and also, would this be a story of true sorrow without some mommy issues thrown in? Yes, those too.

Things feel floaty. Grapnels weak, threads stretched taut. My mind is aiming for something to sink into. Hasn’t found it yet.

Anxious Social Butterfly

Stepping out of the house for me has always been a low-key anxious affair. There is a world full of possibilities of people hurting me or my loved ones, or on a good day, the possibility of an unpleasant encounter with human beings. Human beings are…hard to be around. Of course there are much better days where I almost forget this potential. But those are fewer.

Funny thing is you wouldn’t know this from my demeanour. I can strike up a conversation with strangers, speak for a while with people I’ve just met, and can even go out and party with a group where most are friends of friends. Well, in the pre-Corona times of course, actually, a little before that. My patience for humanity has dwindled over time.

It’s the lack of control I suppose. Human beings are random variables, like my Dad says children are unguided missiles, but I think people are unguided missiles. How am I to relax in such a world? And I know it sounds like the most warped view of the world because good things happen on a second by second basis every day too. But then, I do step out because of that. I do enjoy the world because of that. I just don’t enjoy it as well because of the other things. Can one enjoy and not enjoy at the same time? Interesting, must follow that little thought at some point.

I realised stepping out in Corona times though, is a whole heightened anxiety explosion – I mean human beings still stay with their deadly potential to fuck it all up, but now they can do it through a virus! And it can be done by marginally intelligent people too, no longer are the dumb ones the sole torchbearers of destruction. I mean I ought to be on the first SpaceX Shuttle to Pluto. Or better, rest of humanity.

I have all the makings of a cat lady. Except, I love to travel, and am more a dog person. When I travel as well I don’t want too many people, I try not to go in peak tourist season if possible. I want to either go alone (still a to-do) or with people I trust. Sigh. When will I be able to travel again?

The Lull

As you can see, this post is added to a whole new category called Crash and Burn. This will have content from my dating life.

Honestly, just day before I was feeling pretty good about my committed foray onto dating apps. I was talking to some decent guys, and even talking to the ones where the conversation was as interesting as counting from 1 – 10. I was confident that this was an experiment that was going to work and it was all sparkles and disco lights.

Then the downhill arrived yesterday onwards. Honestly, I went from cruising on a billion dollar yacht sipping champagne while grooving like in a rap video, to holding onto a log in a storm filled ocean, trying not to drown. I have all these chats. So many chats.

*I type up a witty line meant for laughs*

*he laughs*

*oh wow, he at least gets my sense of humour*

*then he says a few things, I say a few things*

And we arrive at “The Lull”. What the heck do I do about that? I actually took the initiative to break the lull this time, earlier I would not and just leave them there. But this time, I promised myself I wouldn’t do that. So I try to break it and what do I get? Nothing.

Honestly at this point I’m beginning to doubt myself. Am I typing gibberish while I’m thinking it’s English? Do I think I’m witty or funny and I’m not? Am I un-dateable? What is happening? It wasn’t this bad when I tried this shit back in 2018-2019. Did something change and people became even more intolerable? Or did I?

I have already set my expectations to “go with the flow” and “let’s see what happens” two settings I want to catapult into outer space where they can float away and never return. What more? Do I expect one good conversation to emerge from like a hundred bad ones.

Oh my God, this is utterly depressing, it’s like watching an interminable line of ants walking for the rest of your life. Or watching Kim Kardashian crying on loop forever. And some of the men seemed intelligent and coherent, and then after a couple of messages in which there was hardly anything to even judge someone by, there are no questions or carrying forward of the conversation. It’s like we are unable to connect as people through chat windows. Like we are groping in the dark and our fingers slip over everything, every person, every object, we can’t catch onto anything. It’s air we’re grasping at, trying to steady ourselves with, trying to shield ourselves with.

This experiment is already making me miserable and worse, making me doubt whether I am good enough or not. And I know the answer isn’t important because the question itself shouldn’t exist. There is no quantifying a person, it’s about who clicks and who doesn’t but the number of chats is making me crazy. I don’t know how to do this. There was a reason I’d given up on this.

Collisions

We keep trying to collide, crash into people in some way. Even when we’re far apart, wrapped up in the million things that make up the coziness of routine. But we’re seeking connection, even when we’re not. What futile gene is responsible for this widespread fallacy in our code? We are meant to learn how to handle aloneness, and yet all we do is search for someone to fill the gaps. The gaps in our conversations, in our daily timeline, in our thoughts so we don’t face the inevitability that is our mortality.

If you’re wondering what has thrown me headfirst into this mood – dating apps – the biggest cesspool of human despair with a great profile picture and a snazzy write-up. And that’s where all the good ends. I may be going for hyperbole but honestly, these apps make me go to my wit’s end and then jump from there into despair. However, this time, it’s different, this isn’t a negotiation, I promised myself I’d come with an open mind to these apps and if nothing else, get enough and more content to write about.

It’s not the douches, those are still rare for me, seeing as I’m just starting out. It’s the way you cannot connect with this interface, with this premise, you have to go against every real instinct of meeting a person normally – keep a scale to measure them against, gauge their words in a cup, and ultimately for what? Sigh. I am just sad that my world has whittled down to a tiny screen if I want to meet new people, forget dating, I mean even friends, or just human beings. I’m not even a crazy extrovert but there is too little humanity here, makes me feel like stuffing fistfuls of sand in my mouth.

I just want to…remove the screens, in every sense of the word.