On All the Pretty Girls That Don't Like Me

Saturday, July 19, 2008

It is past midnight, and I am sitting alone in my room, listening to All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone by Explosions in the Sky.  They always come up with the best titles for their work.  When they were recording this album, they said that they were trying to write an album that sounded like the feeling of being alone.  I think they did a pretty good job.  Listening to "The Birth and Death of the Day" puts a picture in my head of the sun coming up and going down over Atlanta like a time-lapse film.  One of my favorite things about post-rock is the way that it really interacts with the listener--the music pulls up personal pictures and feelings in a way that lyric-driven music is very rarely able.  Good post-rock is able to bypass all the awful, awkward words (and all the pretense that so easily sneaks in with them) and go straight to where you feel things in your heart.

I'm listening to this album because, for various reasons, I've been thinking a bit today about being alone, and how good and how awful it is at the same time.  I've been thinking about the great freedom of making decisions without affecting many others, and growing in whatever direction you like; and the cold loneliness of having no one to talk to, and of going days without being touched.

I have never been in a relationship.  I was in love once, but I never had the nerve to tell her; and anyway, it would not have worked out.  Now and again over the past few years I've been interested in a girl, or a girl has been interested in me; but mostly it hasn't been mutual, and the one time that it was, I screwed it up before it went anywhere (but not before I found out that I have "amazing" eyes.  Yes, "amazing."  That's a quote. That's got to count for something, right?).  My bad luck (or tactlessness, if you want to be a prick about it) combined with the fact that I was home schooled and spent most of my teenage years sitting in my room puts me in what must be a truly miniscule demographic of American boys that have legally purchased alcohol before they have kissed a girl.  This used to cause me a great deal of grief, because I accepted it as a statement on my worth as a person; but it really doesn't bother me much, these days.  The conclusion that I've come to is that girls are just people, like everyone else (granted, they're people with pretty faces and some fun extra parts, but they are people all the same), and that it's not the place of any person to decide whether or not any other person is valuable.  God, faced with the choice of giving or withholding existence from us, decided on the former; I conclude from this that we are all worthwhile, and that we ought to be decent to one another (even to girls who have an unreasonable preference for really good-looking guys that treat them like garbage that leads them to reject any moderately good-looking guy that would treat them very well if they'd just give him a chance).  All of this is to say that the topic of amorous relationships is not one in which I am well-versed; thus, I will not speculate on it very much.

On the other hand, my resumé in solitude is one with which only the most antisocial of hermits could compete.  I doubt very many American teenagers have been literally friendless; but I was.  And for no less than four years--from the time my family moved to Florida when I was 13 to the time that I left when I was 17.  You know, just all the years that most American kids are making friends and talking to girls and doing all the other things that build those "social skills" that everyone is always saying are so valuable.  They were very dark years; I struggled with depression the entire time, and I'm not sure I'll ever completely recover from taking such a long "time out" from life.  But they were not entirely without benefit.  One of the good things about being alone is that you're not distracted; I was able to really think through a lot of issues that I think a lot of adults never even get around to.  Being alone built in me a reflective habit that has been indispensable in making me the person that I am, and that I would not likely have developed if I had had a "normal" adolescence.  And besides, if I'd had a social life, I never would have been able to fill the entire Sphere Grid with every character in Final Fantasy X--and a life without a perfect FFX save file is no life at all.

So what can I say to bring all this together to some kind of conclusion?  I'm an odd individual.  I know it better than anyone else.  There are a lot of conversations that I have to just sit out because of the difference between my past and the pasts of most other people.  There are a lot of walls between me and others that don't seem to hinder anyone else.  And I'd love to say that I wouldn't have it any other way; but that would be trite, and not entirely true.  In fact, there's a lot in my past that I might change, given the chance.  But when it comes to it, the life I've lived has made me the person that I am; and I kind of like the person that I am.  He's a decent guy, that person, and he has a pretty epic beard.