Tuesday 20 October 2015

THE STIGMA OF BEING ALONE



Sitting in a very men's bar between the train station and the school, rainy Monday, big city, long train ride and the big buildings around me, that I can see through the window pass calendars with pretty naked ladies on them and beer posters, are either very modern, glassy, cold and uninviting, or brick brownstones full of stories and industrial ghosts. I haven't told many I'm here, so I have a few hours to kill over ... interesting coffee and, thankfully, not an ozone of smoke, since smokers have all been shunned out. The wifi code is 'summer night' - the barkeeper apologized they are all nostalgics here..

Full trains may be full of excellent faces - my favorite part of humans - but they are also full of fucking dumb conversations, if your iPod just happens to have better things to do than help you out. So. I write.  I've had it up to HERE with women (and men) and all of the 'Hear me out, Sally' columns that write their own questions, who go on and on about having great lives, but all their friends are already married and with kids and they are freaking out because they're still single at thirty. Or not even single, just, ALONE: they were in relationships but it didn't work out or they are in relationships, but it's not working out, what is wrong with them, what is wrong with their partners, will they ever find happiness... Just. Shut the fuck up, you losers. 
People who marry four fucking times. People who spent 30 years whining about loneliness in a relationships. People who full VOLUMES on being slaves to their kids, their jobs, their frigging Facebooks. This is why I hate people. They are an insult to the miracle of being alive.
Do you have any idea how many insanely small odds had to align for you to be breathing right now? No, because you’re stupid. Because the time that should have been spent understanding is spent getting attention you neither need nor deserve. You are already HERE. You’ve already won!
First of all, love and happiness are not the same thing. 
Marriage and happiness are not the same thing.
Kids and happiness are not the same thing.
Being properly fucked on daily basis is not the same as being happy. Even if you do it in a really fast car.
Being alone and loneliness are not the same thing.
Not even close. House, dog, god, job, hobby, car, coffee, these are not building bricks of happiness.
And they never will be unless you are able to wake up in your own head and think: I love my life. It's so fun to be me. 
The society we exist in, privileged, healthy, western society is going through an amazing transformation, one like we've never seen before. One that fifty years ago when they were still hanging black people for looking at white people too intently could not even imagine. Many other cultures dipped their toes in some of these (Greeks encouraged homosexuality, Indians admit to the third gender, Taiwan enjoys cross-dressing....) but only we are on the doorstep of simply saying: if it doesn't harm anybody, live and let live. Love and let love. How you identify yourself, how you express yourself is A GOOD thing. It is not a threat. Least of all to anyone’s peace of mind. I know several gay people who are fucking retards, but they would be emotional retards even if they were straight. I also know some really nice gay people. I think *I* am a nice gay person. I’ve never been told I am not. Nobody called me a freak because I am gay. They called me a freak because when I was in first grade, I said Earth is a planet and we all live in a galaxy. But as gay, I am a nice person. I am also a nice bisexual person. I also once happened to be a nice asaxual person of a track record of ten years, for no reason other than simply not liking screwing. Everyone was doing it, so I made some efforts to see what the fuss was about, in case I was wrong. But it wasn't for me, at a time. And I was and remain, somehow, blessed, immune to peer pressure thorough my entire existence. (To which I hope I am at a half or so.) 
I don't know any nice crossdressing or transgender people, or at all, but I think I would be a little afraid of them, because they always dress so nice and have such good style and I dress like a hobo and wear mountaineering shoes when I go to the capital... What. They're cozy. And it's raining. Blow me. No, really, blow me, I'm wet and not in a good way. It's really raining.

I am waiting for society to stop pushing the YOU GOTSTA BE IN A RELATIONSHIP TO BE A COMPLETE PERSON bullshit. All the other stigmas are lifting. There was a time when a woman who preferred reading to cooking was considered hysterical. There was a time when a man who preferred teaching to making money was considered the black sheep of the family, the weak son. Society rejected oddballs, because those shouldn’t reproduce. Which is, of course, something everyone MUST do, otherwise there is no point of being alive at all.
I can't wait for this one to fall. Proving your worth upon a bunch of parasitic little shitheads that call you a bad parent if you don’t keel over trying to serve to their every whim. Clean after them. Feed them. Clothe them. Entertain them. Protect them. Educate them. Make sure they don’t grow up into serial killers or rapists or politicians as if you had any influence at all over biology, which you don’t. But you must. Or you’re not worth anything.
I know I am not a normal person, I am genetically distanced from wanting to reproduce, I don't like kids, I don't even like other people very much. My parents are similar, so I know that's inherited and I'm grateful. I would hate to feel bad about my choices. I know some do. Some must continue to explain themselves. I also possess a high level of whatever brings masculinity to a woman's psyche, meaning I don’t feel the need to scream to be rescued by a prince all the time. I don’t stand out like a butch Russian Olympic hammer thrower with two thick braids down my manly chest. Men used to scream feminists and suffragettes are all ugly and butch and will destroy society. Ironic bit was, nobody was happy in that society, least of all men.

I never needed anybody to make me happy. I had me. In storms, in the dark, I had me. I conquered the fucking world, on my own. Loved it, too. I've had parents and grandparents who would buy me anything I asked for and all I ever asked for were books, because my feet at the time were too small to really walk very far, over continents. I was loved. I loved back. I respected every gift. I could see their intentions were pure. I could not see how someone in the same situation could be so miserable and unfulfilled.

Because gifts, touches and smiles only get as far as the skin. You cannot shove happiness into one’s skin. Happiness has to already be inside. It’s a one-way ticket. You can’t have it if you hate the hole inside your doughnut.

When I felt like fucking I fucked. When I didn't, I didn't. When I wanted to marry, I married. When I wanted to divorce, I divorced. When I wanted to travel, I traveled. Penniless. And far. And long. But when I felt like coming back and working a normal (okay, maybe not quite so normal) job, I did so. 
Never did the fact others married, had kids and settled down concern me in the slightest. Those people never settled down - they've always BEEN settled down. And they were always really nice people. I know people who make amazing parents. I am very happy for them.

I do not allow them to whine. Do what makes you happy or shut the fuck up. Not in a thousand years dare blame someone else for your pathetic excuse of a personality. Are you alive? Than act like it. Are you Malala? A child, shot in the head for fighting for her school friends? No. Are you Stephen Hawking, sick since he was a student, and still fighting to elevate the IQ of the world? No. Are you Gandhi, a cute pervy old dude in a diaper, starving himself and smiling for peace when his countrymen are being slaughtered by millions by colonialists? No. So what the fuck is your problem? Who are you waiting for to make something of you? A comet?

Oh, I’m sorry, you’re stuck in a terrible conflict of your own heart on whether or not you should marry and have babies or should you wait for true love? Ye, right, that’s what will make you a decent human being. That there is true meaning of one’s life.

When will there be completely and utterly okay to be completely and utterly alone? And not considered like you are a mental patient or a socially unacceptable, awkward specimen for whom there is no hope? “Surely if she has no children she must be a CEO or a Nobel Prize winning scientist, otherwise, why would anyone...?”  It's already becoming acceptable, after the right to vote, the right to wear pants and the right to cross a street without a male escort, for women say fuck no to the kids. But fuck no to having to co-exist? Because nobody sane can do so, right? We consider alone-ness to be utter, almost disease-like condition, pathological loneliness. There is nothing worse than being alone. Mark Watney wasn't going to lose it from starvation as soon as he would from being away from everybody else - he was so desperate for human contact he watched bad TV shows just to feel like he belonged.

You belong in a cave if you plan to live alone. And even hermits and holy wankers atop of holy mountains only do it so that young boys and girls climb there and say 'gosh, you must be so holy to wank alone all this time'. 

Crazy cat lady, right? Hansel and Gretel witch, right? Gordo the Weirdo. Because nobody normal could possibly want to be alone. Right? You must have some ghastly skin condition or something. Why else would you sleep alone? You must be a prime character in Trainwreck, a whore or ugly or, perish the thought, fat. Because if you don’t starve yourself, do yoga, spend money on nice clothes, you must be giving up on anyone ever loving you, right?

Who would CHOSE to do that? Sleep alone in a bed they chose? Wake up alone and have breakfast and a shower on their own. Walk to work alone or with the dog or meet somebody for the doggie walk and just hang out. Hang out with people you like without desperately trying to fuck them. Or try to marry people you fuck for fun. Who has coffee on their own, go to the movies alone? Eat alone. That's so.... Pathetic. Right? Not even nuns and priests are alone, they are always surrounded by people of community and they have characters from magic books in the sky to talk to. 

People freak out at the thought of social abstinence. You can't explain it when you tell someone I feel like being alone for the next five or ten years. It may change, dunno. It may not. I may be alone always. It feels comfortable and I'm happy. No, I am not in a cult. I am not screaming a political statement. My vagina is not a temple. I am not on a hunger strike of marriage because it’s now legal to marry your favorite lamp post. I'm married to me. I love myself. I love my life. Burn down my house to the ground, steal my car, hide my dog, wet my clothes. Ban all vibrators. Put me on an island. It's still fun to be me. Yes, I need dentists and I need someone to get the viruses out of my computer, but I don’t have to marry those people. There needn’t be skin between us, money is just as polite.

Biology, which we call tradition, society and so on, programs us to co-exist. That's why the greatest fear of people who feel like killing other people isn't punishment but excommunication. The instinct draws you into the crowd, safety of numbers, into the rules that make things easy in the long run. Living in a commune, such a town or a big city – which nobody is forcing you to do, there is plenty room in the countryside, believe me, makes things comfortable, clean and safe, and fast. But we are about a million years away from being co-dependent on others. I am not talking about living on the moon. Yes, I can operate a lighthouse, but I am not talking about leaving, intentionally, as a recluse. NO. NOT AWAY. The contrary. I cannot get enough of the toys and tricks modern living offers: I love social networks, blogs, art exhibitions, libraries, busy streets, full trains, winning a free bag of broccoli in my local supermarket, photographing passers-by, eating food others prepare, using tools others have designed - I am just not tied to the umbilical bungee cord that feels like I am chained to SOMEBODY ELSE when I walk out of the house and like I am being pulled back when I go home. I am able to enjoy all of that ON MY OWN. I love my friends. I make sure I see them whenever I feel like it. When it was time to fall in love and get married again, I loved that, too. I felt like it. He smells nice and is very warm. But I didn't completely undress my own self and became someone's emotional slave, addicted, tied to a room, reduced myself to a half-person when I decided to pair up. I didn't do it because I settled down. If anything, I am more me now than I was beforehand. I do not wash dishes or socks, I don't iron, I don't vacuum, fuck having kids, fuck shaving my legs in winter, I walk my own dog and I still go to the movies or coffee alone when I feel like it. I can still leave town alone. I can still wake up and my first thought is: good morning you awesome person, you, what are we going to fuck up today? I equally enjoy sex as I do masturbation. If I had to choose between sacrificing myself or my husband.... Well, okay, I would choose him because he's a better person, but that's just how I roll. I respect society and its rules to almost no exception - I would never endanger a woman with a child, would never even disrespect one. I have great hopes for humanity. I simply cannot abide people who wouldn't sustain sanity for a week if told to exist just as themselves, depending on themselves, enjoying themselves, feeling good about how complete they are.
How can you be in a relationship if you continuously wait for someone to miraculously draw you a map to your own insides? Stupidity of that just sucks balls. 


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