Enough is Enough?

Music: Love Battery, "Nebraska"

I'm in much better spirits than I was last week, although I went from sad to mad today; kind of in a bad mood, but by comparison, anger is a welcome relief from grief.

People wear me out sometimes. I lead with my heart, if not with my chin, and I think I feel that my exuberance can carry the day in any situation. But it can't. Energy wanes, hopes fade, ambitions dim, regrets pile up like bones on a battlefield. It's frustrating.

At some point, you grow up -- you realize you simply can't have and do everything you want to do; you have to pick and choose. It's a very American kind of conundrum. I want it all. I want it now. I can't have it all -- hell, I can't even have most of it. All I get is some. If I'm very lucky.

I'm very loyal to what friends I have; is there such thing as being too loyal? It's not in my nature to give up on somebody. That, to me, would feel like a betrayal. So I end up in situations where I'm better friends to people than they are to me, and in the position of, what, exactly? Not being friends anymore? Or just tossing my pride by the wayside and being The Good Friend(tm) without expectation of reciprocity?

I have no answer. I'm very much all-or-nothing; I can't be a sorta friend with somebody. If I'm your friend, I stick by you -- to me, that's inherent in my conception of friendship. It's because there's something about you that I consider worthwhile. Maybe there are a lot of things about you. I've never thought about it systematically, like what my cutoff point is.

Perhaps, at heart, it's also a desire to be loved -- also a very American problem. We want everybody to like us, to love us, and when they don't, we get pissed at them, blame them. That's our foreign policy in a nutshell, really.

Then again, how do you really know a friend is your friend? Everything's pinned on trust, I guess. No trust, no friendship. Simple as that.

I don't know how famous actors and other celebrities deal with it. Like, do they rely on family and what friends they had before they got famous? How could you trust a newcomer on the scene, somebody who wanted to befriend you? Could you trust them? Then again, a celebrity would have so much social hand on anybody, probably only another celebrity could hope to be an actual friend to them -- sort of like how fashion models marry rock stars, for example.

If I were famous, I'd probably be reclusive, just because it's hard for me to trust people; I'm a natural critic and I'm usually likely to see the very worst in a situation or in a person (and I'm usually right about them, too, if I've actually studied them), and inclined to be influenced by that view.

In general, I'm open and affable, quick to laugh -- easy for somebody to befriend, at least up to a point. But beyond that point, it's like there's a definite wall I have to broader intimacy. I'm easy to get to know, and hard to understand.

Blah blah blah.