I am going to reproduce something below for your enjoyment and enlightenment. I actually do not intend to reveal the source, or its author, since I am not sure if they would have me reproduce it in this manner.
It’s no surprise that John didn’t fare well in Sydney. John is somewhat afraid of life. He doesn’t like to step outside his door. I feel guilty ragging on John, because he’s already had to endure a bucketload of shit in high school, but this is different. I was a prick early on in high school, and I took it out on John the same way Nathan took it out on me and Dennis took it out on Nathan and people like David Forbes took it out on everyone in his proximity. You know what I’m talking about – teenage insecurities expressed as bullying, clinging to the hope that however low you are on the social ladder there will be someone else lower – all completely imagined of course, which also means that it’s not bounded by reason or tempered by reality. I actually had a relatively angst-free teenagehood in retrospect, but this was more often from self-absorbed ignorance of social politics than from any sort of perception that I was winning the game. My inexplicable dickhead behaviour which shaped our early interactions, though, shows that I was indeed affected. In any case, that was a long time ago and my incessant harassment gradually developed into friendship.
I really like John. He’s unbelievably sensitive, and easily offended. He does like to be a part of whatever’s going on, but shrinks away from taking the initiative. It was so much easier in high school, when we were all throw together and no one had to take any social initiative. I guess I can relate to this because I really do feel the same – I fare well enough now socially, I think; not in being really social (because I’m not) but in being social enough for my own satisfaction – but that’s a learned skill rather than a talent. It doesn’t come naturally. Naturally, I’m like John.
John’s one of the most introspective and thoughtful people I know. He can be incredibly insightful. The flip side of this is that he’s always second-guessing himself. He also writes a lot of poetry that I rarely understand the significance of. I think his poems should include explanations, because all the imagery and motifs are usually things that a third party could never be expected to understand. And isn’t that part of why we write – to be understood?
At this point in his life, John seems to base a lot of his decisions on past disappointments both in situations and in people. There’s a handful of people I’ve had a strong impact on – John probably isn’t one of them, but he still makes me wonder – just how much power do my actions have over others? I imagine sometimes that I could, if I were patient and evil enough, drive someone almost to suicide. Or orchestrate a grand tragedy, like Shakespeare’s Iago. I’ve had a profoundly negative impact on two past lovers, and that was despite loving them!
A few things strike me about this, now, four years after it was written. Firstly it amuses me that this person identifies this kind of social awkward interaction I have, and yet cannot resolve the issue of the ‘poetry that I rarely understand the significance of.’ The two are intimately connected. I daresay had my poems came with explicit explanations the ‘bucketload of shit,’ as the author puts it, would’ve been much, much worse. The purpose was scarcely to be understood. The poetry itself acted as a valve to the pressure cooker that was my most inner thoughts. I wrote about them because in the context of the environment I found myself in I didn’t feel like I could say them out loud, for fear of lynching. That might seem comical now but at the time I wholeheartedly believed it.
Although I suppose I can understand the confusion. There was movement when people realised what I was doing. I’m not sure what exactly they thought I was doing before they discovered that I was writing, but once they did there was an interest and my status went from socially-inept loner to creative type. I appreciated the recognition. I appreciated the significance. And at times I think I did want to share, yet I always felt that doing so would yield more problems than the understanding might solve. I don’t know if that would’ve been true in hindsight. It may not have. It might’ve been that I could’ve confided in someone and everything would’ve worked out wonderfully. I don’t have the ability to know that. At times I am thankful for that, because that time of my life was marked with a sense of profound loneliness. Even when there were people around they were still only getting the “socially palatable” version of myself, and, man, I felt it. It was a choice I made at the time and I like to think I did the best I could with the knowledge and resources and life experience I had at my disposal.
