Fourteen years in The Midlands followed by five years in The East has left me with this dumb amalgamation of several dumb accents that now makes up the dialect and my idiolect I'm probably stuck with for life, and it's so effing dumb.
I don't often think back further than is necessary - like, there's no need to dwell on my childhood and early adolescence unless it's relevant to what I'm doing or saying at the time, so I don't. Is this anomalous behaviour? I don't get it, is it normal for people to relay words said and people met and time spent in their heads, over and over, until the memory warps into a crude approximation of reality? Because that's what happens whenever I can't stop thinking about something/someone, and it just feels like setting myself up for disappointment. So, I prefer not to think about what's happened before, because while I have lived a relatively privileged life so far, the things that jump out to me when I think back are the unhappiest of times - and on the odd occasion when I'm reminded of something good - like earlier today, when I passed by a bus stop where I used to meet this guy I was once close with, I thought about how we used to go into town, and talk for ages, and shop, and drink smoothies, etc etc - and that was nice, in a way, to think about. But the guy and I are not friends anymore. We're less than strangers, and I cannot think of him without remembering how we stopped being friends. So obviously - obviously - I don't think about him. He is forgotten. Erased. I think I'm lucky, like that, that I can forget, and do forget, so I can get on with being distracted by my current failings and how they will impact my future.
Now I worry that I am cold. Is it right, to go Ctrl-Alt-Del on things that I don't want to think about? I mean - I'm talking about people - not just "the twat who spread rumours" and "the bitch who lied about me", because in this three-dimensional world in which we live, the twats and bitches that we hate so much have entire lives distinct from our own, and even if they are twats and bitches, is it really okay, even ethical, to just erase them from your canvas?
On the one hand, is it not akin to forsaking the lessons you learned from them, when you choose to forget how you know that people who bitch to you are the ones most likely to bitch about you? Is it not then possible to end up with a set of morals and precepts you just kind of have, with no greater idea as to how you got them, no memory of evidence to back them up, justify your decisions, develop your personality and your persona?
On the other hand, who the fuck cares. Forget them. You don't need them. Move on. Chop chop, we haven't got all day.
As afraid as I am of change, sometimes I think that moving on is what I'm best at. Forget what's past, what you don't need to know.
Of course, then I end up insulting a lot of people - but for crying out loud. Yes, I forgot your birthday. Why? Because it wasn't fucking relevant. It's nothing personal, I just didn't need to know. Fuckin' sorry.
I don't know. People, man. They're wacky. When I say that my cat is my best friend, I'm not joking as much as everyone seems to think I am. He doesn't have an agenda, he just wants his belly rubbed. I wish people could be that straightforward. In stories, the most "interesting" characters are the ones with labyrinthine backstories and thousands of utterly unique quirks that make them into this romanticised kind of complicated, and so people want to be complicated and misunderstood - but it's so, so exhausting, trying to keep up with people like that.
Maybe I wasn't meant to have friendly, platonic relations. I'll flit from fuckbuddy to fuckbuddy, and I'll acquire an extensive collection of cats, and I'll live alone with my cats, and then I'll die alone and they can eat me, if they want.
This blog post took an unexpected turn. Forgive the self-absorption, again. Please
