Betrayal

I usually think spinning a yarn on this blog that was spun during a casual bit of conversation is a bit like cheating. I consider it cheating because I kinda want everything to be sprung from here, at this blog; with this blog in mind. This is ground zero, this is the kiln. Bringing in something from the outside seems a bit disingenuous, contrived and ultimately not spontaneous. Though I don't really see much of a difference between having a conversation with myself and someone else. I figure I would've happened upon this thread eventually. In fact, my brother visited earlier today and cracked open a calculus book and it got me thinking. I was thinking about the conversation I had with my friend. I was thinking about mathematics.

I'm a treacherous whore. I say so because I've abandoned mathematics. It used to be my life. The whole of that world, science, I thought was going to be my life. It just was. We got along so well. When I was in college I majored in Applied Mathematics and fantasized about playing around with Astrophysics. I thought that's where it was. But it wasn't. And I feel guilty about that. Not about shifting focus, but about letting that go. Letting go of that relationship.

I'm a numbers guy. At least I used to be. I just had a knack for that game, the game of mathematics. I got it at a very young age, like a duck to water. It made sense to me in a way that nothing else ever did. And y'know, I'm an odd duck... I haven't really ever found a way to get along with people in the way that most people do. I wouldn't want to paint the wrong picture though. I had friends growing up, but the best relationships never turned out great. Between kindergarten and sixth grade I had four friends who I felt were... whom I considered my very best friends at the time. Each of them up and left without any warning whatsoever. They moved. Which was very odd. It never affected me at the time, but in hindsight I think a lot of who I am has to do with the way those friendships "ended". Y'know, as a kid you sorta just adapt... you go with the flow.

When my best friend from kindergarten left I just developed a friendship with someone else who happened to up and leave by the beginning of second grade. Then the next left during the end of third grade and finally my last "best friend" left at the end of elementary school. It literally happened the same way. No warnings, no goodbyes, no closure. It was just boom, boom, boom, boom. But I didn't think anything of it at the time. Not till much later... how fucked up that was. This trusting and abandonment. I have to imagine that it was drilled into my psyche that building a friendship and developing trust in others only led to... nothing. The nature of it, this closeness and then sudden departure, shaped the way I took to people. Which was very warily.

Again, I don't wanna paint the wrong picture. I had friends. I had people I could trust, my family most of all. I had a primer for the way relationships should be. As a result of all this madness I trust my family more than anything in this world. I'd die for those people and know they'd do the same for me. There's a complicit trust there. The weakening on the one end strengthened what I had at the other end, at home. I've always felt like I've never needed anything else. Anyone else. So I had friends afterward, but... they never developed in the way that proper friendships should. I regressed and kept people at a distance. I imagine my introversion is all tied up with this mess. So I had friends, just not the best of friends. I wouldn't say I didn't trust them... but I never put it past them to leave me. Underlying it all is this... jaded cynicism. I see the worst in people. I expect it. And having that in my mind means it's very hard for me to trust new people. And having the sort of past I do also means having this... this profound aptitude for excision. Having no closure from something like that, again and again, only leaves you with the option to cope, adapt, deal, etc. There's no other choice. You can't fix that. You can't undo the past. You have to move on, you have to. So you deaden that part of yourself to go on. And it means a lot to feel that way about the earliest structures in your social development. Being able to die there, at zero point, means you can die elsewhere. So I've this ability to become them, to leave without a second thought. To excise people I care about. Though, that's maybe a bit disingenuous... If I truly cared, I wouldn't be able to do so... but caring means trusting and I don't do that. But even when I do, I can still do it... I can still cut people out. It's not healthy, to be sure, but it's just the nature of the beast... it's how I've been trained. I'm working on it. ;)

So, aside from my family, I've always felt alone. Well maybe not alone. I'd say, aside from my family, I've never been able to understand people. I don't know... I don't know why what happened happened. There's no end. There are no answers and only questions. There's only this profound insecurity. That it's me and my fault. That I'm not worth knowing or being around. That there's something wrong with me. It's the only place you end up at. And so we come back to the numbers. It's them that I turned to. I never felt wrong with them, in fact I was never more right, more special. I got it in ways that my classmates never did. It felt good, being able to understand something... to make sense of something... to know you could trust in something... to be able to know and see something for what it is. It was always there, constant and unchanging. I could see things. I could access this place... this center that I only wish I could with others. It was magic, it was voodoo. It was another complicit trust and understanding. And that just doesn't come. Everyone doesn't have it, but I did. I was special. And I've always felt horrible about letting that go. Because it doesn't just happen to anyone. It's a blessing and you're lucky if you can be in a place to accept something that you can fully understand and make sense of and feel safe with. It's nothing to treat carelessly.

I wouldn't say it's a full betrayal, though. I just learned to access that place in something else, in my art. Art as a whole became something else. And really, going on about that would mean having to go on about my brother and I can't really do that now (not because I can't, but because this is becoming a lengthy post :P ). It just means enough right now to say that I'm sorry about what happened. All of it. Most of all, not turning my back... but losing out on having something special. Because I don't know that I could ever access that place quite the same way with science that I can with art. And now that I think about it, I honestly don't think it matters much anyway. To me, they're one in the same. Art's as much a science as Science is an art. And needing to cling to something thats never changing doesn't sit with me quite well. Life is change. Hunting for that thing in numbers that I should in people is doing more of a disservice to me than anything else. It's too easy. Too hopeless. Too pathetic. Too sad. Too lonely. Ultimately, that would be the great betrayal. And I don't want to become that, become them. The Betrayers. Because I have before and it doesn't amount to anything. It means more to me than anything in this world to be committed to something, to someone. To be loyal. To be devoted.


Joey, The Devoted Satellite.