In examining my life, I don't think I like who I am online, but I don't mean that the way it sounds. I am as myself as the relative anonymity of the internet allows an of us to be, but I'm such an inflated version of myself, and it's exhausting trying to live up to the real, but idealized, me that I present online. I constantly try to be funny, because that was always what I thought I had going for me, but funny isn't funny when it's forced, and it's hard to be clever in a vacuum. A joke loses 80% of its punch being told online, because the nuance of delivery isn't up to the comic, it's up to the consumer, and when you don't get the likes you think you deserve, you get a glimpse of how much of your ego is tied in to the validation of people who don't even really matter.
This doesn't scare me, necessarily, because I'm not even sure I really understand anymore what it means to have people matter to you. I feel like so much of life is performance art, and at the end of the day, why? Why should I make myself sing and dance for the pleasure of others for the pleasure of myself? It doesn't give me a sense of self, it doesn't validate or destroy any beliefs I have about myself, it does nothing but exhaust me. It's weird to undress the human experience and think that it doesn't count for anything and have that not frighten me, or make me sad. I feel quite indifferent about it. I'm losing my ability to feel connections to any kind of morality, or humanity, or immediacy because why does any of it matter? None of it does. And I don't mean in the nihilistic sense of "nothing matters", I mean in the most realistic sense of nothing matters.
I told my dad about a week ago that morality is made up, and I truly believe that morality isn't real. It's absolutely arbitrary, and fluctuates between people. I'm not sold on the idea that anything that has a cosmic, absolute truth would be that malleable on such a large scale. Of course, my father brought this to the ridiculous conclusion that I must just want to start killing people.
My dad brought a guest to the party!
Of course I don't want to, but I don't believe that the practice bears any moral weight. If I don't believe in god, believing in morality seems absolutely fucking foolish, as morality is just a by-product of religion, or at the very least, self-preservation.When asked why I bother being a vegan, I responded similarly: it's not that I think it's any morally better than not being a vegan...morals don't exist. I just don't want to consume anything that forces suffering on anything. I buy as responsibly as I can because I want to. And also, I have to live in society. I know I won't like the consequences of being a pariah for my relatively kooky ideas, so I just stay on the margins, quietly, without making a fuss.
Which is what makes it so difficult to understand why I don't talk to either of my parents anymore.
A month or so ago (yeah. I left this draft sitting for ages, as per usual), I got into a big fight with my dad, I told him he was a shit father, and that he's always been a shit father, and that I don't want him to be a part of my life at all anymore. To not call me, to not come to my graduation, to not write me. I don't want to hear anything he has to say. When my mom was here a week ago, her husband said scores of next level racist shit, I called him out for it, he threw a temper tantrum. When I told my mom he could either keep his racist opinions to himself or stay behind, she opted to stay behind with him because, "people should be allowed to be who they are, right or wrong." I told her she was complicit and full of shit, and that we should part ways because I just don't have time for that mess.
I was angry at both of them, and I felt like I have every right to be. But I'm also really ambivalent about it. I don't feel like I've really lost anything, I don't care if either of them are hurting over this, I genuinely am fine without them.
But if I think all of this shit is just weird social construct control, why bother feeling anger? In effect, my mom would be right. Moral relativism SHOULD be winning the day, because morality is false. Even understanding that, however, trips me up. Not enough to pick up the phone, or take either of them off of block, but it trips me up enough to make me think I'm being a hypocrite in my own weird vacuum of believies.
I think this is all what liquor is for.
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