I'm NOT paranoid. Why does EVERYONE think that?!?

Too much of anything is really never a good thing. We all know this from experience. The “thing” in question determines what quantity isn’t enough and what is too much but you know when you’re hungry and you know when you’re full.

For me there are a lot of things where I’ve wrung out the last drop and there is a hollow, empty, echoing void. In direct proportion to this I have had more than my fill of several negative consequences. There are certain corollaries in this life. There are inverse relationships. I really can’t quantify their measure but I can qualify their significance. I am beginning to feel as if my life is playing out like a lost episode of The Twilight Zone. Somewhere, Rod Serling, is directing the daily monotony of my life.

Mr. Serling loved to explore what the consequences would be for people if they were to get their greatest yearnings and wishes. These secret longings usually involved being left undisturbed or to be able to replace a weakness in their character with a perceived strength and so on. His work employed a lot of reflection on the realization that people generally were better off where they were. The irony, in my case, is that I was already extremely content with where I was. I was aware that I had fundamental work to do on some areas that adversely affected my family and I don’t believe I was blind to my faults. Just, generally, life was really good. So, because of that safe life and content existence I never had the compulsion to change direction or reinvent myself. I liked me – which, based on my tenaciously clinging to a now very distant past, tells me I still like me; that me that was in cruise control in the family mini-van.

Unfortunately, that min-van ran out of gas a long time ago. The wife and kids thumbed a ride out of my life, the bank repossessed the mini-van, and that highway was diverted and all traffic rerouted far, far away from me.

Now, I’m that creepy hitchhiker guy that everyone is uncomfortable around. According to surveys I actually represent the majority of people in my economic circle and age group. There are a whole lot of people single or single by divorce, starting new careers, starting over in their forties. We must all be behaving the same as well, for the most part, as I do not come into contact with such folks. I do have myself in a hermit-like lifestyle. Admittedly, that isn’t conducive to a thriving social life. But it goes back to that satisfied feeling with which I used to be so familiar. I’m not at all interested in a diet of fast food relationships and junk food get-togethers. I want to be able to sit around a table and drink in the company and the atmosphere. I want to be able to slow down and enjoy the experience. No one has time for that. I require too much attention. I’ve got too much to get out of my system and to work through for most people’s palates. When you have time – lots of time, but not much else – you get your fill of hearing your own thoughts in a hurry. I may be more lucid than at any other time in my life. So what? No one cares. Now, to recognize and accept that no one cares would cripple anyone. When all you have is time to review that rejection over and over again it’s torturous. And the excuses that those who make time to care for you have are all legitimate. They are actively participating in living. Those excuses and pre-occupations are also their protection against contemplating the pain someone such as me is experiencing. No one likes to hear cries of pain. But, when you are the one in pain you are going to cry out involuntarily regardless of how unpleasant that may be to others. So rather than tell me to shut up, people don’t tell me anything at all. In fact, they just stop visiting, stop calling, stop answering my emails – just . . . STOP . . . being a part of my life.

So, what is the opposite of paranoia? Because no matter how much some wish to shrug off my observations or down-play the severity of some action’s affect on my well-being, I am not imagining. Right now, I am the biggest buzz kill on the planet. I enter a conversation and people stop talking. I go to dinner or a movie, alone, and people rootch around uncomfortably in their seats. I tell someone what I am really thinking or feeling or experiencing and they stop contacting me. I write a blog and no one acknowledges it. I join a discussion in someone else’s blog and I kill the participation like water on a lit match. I am endeavoring to reach out and beyond myself and circumstances to reconnect with a larger representation of humanity. If my methods are awkward or offensive one might expect even that would be addressed by someone. What I do not want to declare, despite the evidence, is that I’m seeking humanity and no one has any. There is no other conclusion. A beggar will find more than one person to extend themselves and contribute. A prisoner can find amnesty. The convicted may still hope for mercy. I am not afforded any of these things. Go ahead – look ME in the eyes: Selfish bastards . . . Liars . . . Cowards, all.