Burdened by debt, the pull of familiar inertia, and the weight of accumulated products birthed in the service of long aborted projects, a good friend of mine feels inescapably trapped in his carpeted basement sublet that's adorned and populated by technological gadgets and virtual enhancements.
As an adult, I sat there in the passenger seat of my mother's car while she quickly ran into Wal-Mart to grab something or other that was a pressing need, perhaps some powdered creamer, a pint of ice cream, a light bulb. I had just spent the large part of a week psychologically checked out around my friends, completely and utterly uninterested in pretty much everything they said, all of their banal though deeply sincere interests. I begin wondering why I am always in these situations, enduring things I can’t stand.
I have, many times, sat with clients in the counseling center as they list off all the problems and issues they have with everyone in their life: their annoying roommate, their tyrannical parents, the job that they hate, the boredom that deteriorates their routinized life. Often I respond that all of the everyone and everything that they can't stand isn't in the room with us, that they are, that I am, and I ask them to pay attention to the ways in which they may contribute to the ongoing misery they are experiencing. This isn't about blame, it's about noticing the ways in which we are complicit in our myriad mutilations.
Every time I feign interest in some sort of bullshit that my friend emits about Facebook, I allow the conversation to continue. Every time I don't stand up for my soul in the face of ongoing boredom and resignation I allow a perpetuation of the dismal situation. Every time I get on the bus and go to school I affirm my continuing submission to the machinations of the University, the degradation of grades, the abasement of listening to the hot air of professors who return to the bourgeoisie accoutrements that are strewn all over their homes, so many corpses that signify their resignation. Despite the fact that they may lecture about mysticism, insurrection, and deconstruction they have been worked over, placated by products and the prestige of tenure. The logic of prison seeps from their overpaid mouths.
Another friend takes a phone call as he drives me around in his car---it's his girlfriend, they can't stand each other. When he hangs up the phone I ask him matter of factly why the fuck he continues this thing that they both hate. He says that he doesn't want to be alone, that this is better than having nobody and I am shocked by his frank speech. I recognize that what he considers a "must" can be understood as a choice that he continues making so as to not feel the crush of loneliness that accompanies singledom for so many people. He chooses, over and over, consents to the stupid fights, the endless choreography of argument in a certain sense---this is his contribution, his investment in not responding otherwise, the lesser of two evils, to be sure.
I am not oblivious enough to act like all of our investments are conscious investments---many of our investments have genesis beyond our awareness, in some unspoken attachment to the world, we are often blindly pushed. At the same time, consciously or not, we continue to produce our capitulation, we allow it to happen, not in some cheap sense of calculation and choice, but in all the ways that continually don't act into the world otherwise, all of the ways we bear the dull hum of homeostasis instead of being seduced by the allure of bifurcation and alterity.
Instead of saying that I'm dying and drowning and bored, I choke on my singularity, I work myself over to become complicit, not say the thing that might break the game that I'm caught up in. In short, I wither on the inside instead of speaking up, trying to do something differently. My crawling into the barren space of psychological secrecy is how I protect myself from not saying or doing something that alters the world in one way or another, makes something else happen. My psychic deadness is my way of not contributing, a way of saving myself and others, a way of perpetuating the tyranny of normalcy at the expense of myself, surely, and quite possibly others as well---the beauty and joy of a dynamic relationship. When I hide, I affirm security instead of an ethic of action, a confrontation with making something else happen.
For my friend to leave the inertia of his present situation the action itself is clear---he gets in his car, fills up his gas tank, and figures it all out as he goes. For my friend stuck in a miserable relationship, ending that relationship could potentially be as straightforward as saying the words: "We're both dead people when we're together. You don't want to be with me and I don't want to be with you. We should break up."
I am, in no way, saying that once these actions are taken, these words are spoken, that what ensues will be easy---there is no assurance of ease in choosing to do something differently. My friend caught in the trap of home will surely have to confront the logic of itinerancy, become learned in the methods of movement, of leaving behind his home and security. My other friend that is seized by a shit relationship will be forced to stare at the abyss of loneliness that has perpetually placed him in less than vitalizing relationships. And finally, if I wish to feel differently, I must stop blaming the world around me, judging it as a fucked-up something or other, acting like I am unable to engage it in a way that doesn't reproduce psychic deadness that pushes me against the borders of psychosis and sometimes over the edge. I can respond differently. I contribute to my servitude over and over again.
Unearthing the implicit ways we are invested in creating the oppression of normalcy isn't easy at all. We can cleave with others and explore in action. Often we will find that the cruelty we experience is systematically enforced by despotic systems that profit and gain power through scaring the shit out of us, brutalizing our bodies, and mystifying our abuse. I am not saying anything is easy and I’m certainly not victim blaming or trying to diminish the difference in struggles that each one of us faces---but acting otherwise, getting some sort of understanding, comes with risk, the trepidation that often accompanies experimentation. We continually produce the shit relationships we inhabit. That doesn't mean that we're to blame, don't mistake me, but that we can act otherwise, that there is potentially more freedom than we know in every moment. How can we support one another in our otherwise-actions, our experimental gestures? How can we wrestle ourselves out of our ongoing domination to make something else happen?
