The problem with caring

Two months ago I was in Downtown Pasadena for an open mic event, the first ever I have taken part in. At the time I was towards the tail end of a minor bout with depression that featured a stress diet driving me below 140 pounds for the first time since I was a teenager. Aided by a day-old buzzcut, I don’t think there is any other way to put it: I looked gaunt.

Searching for any type of catharsis I opened my three-or-so-minute-long performance with a random thought that occurred to me a couple weeks prior in the middle of playing a five year-old video game while I was high:

I can only be indifferent towards those I don’t see any difference in.

That was it. It didn’t (and doesn’t) mean anything beyond what it literally states, but I tickled my own internal critic with the turn of phrase. My foundation is in writing longform, not poetry and certainly not in a format that tends to be conducive to very much success in an open mic setting. I was clearly outside of my comfort zone. But that line I opened with, it was everything. It says everything that needed to be said that night.

I think the point as it relates to tonight, where I can actually expand, and not be confined to one-liners, is that the act and the art of caring about other people is an incredible problem for me that I have never learned how to reconcile. I can only be indifferent towards those I don’t see any difference in, which is really to say that all the time I am indifferent towards almost everybody. That isn’t a slight on humanity; I have lots of that. I take care of everyone I can whenever I can. But to care, to really care, is a major issue for me.

There are natural reactions our bodies execute subconsciously whenever somebody leans in to listen, or care, about what we are saying. If we are sitting down, it makes us, generally speaking, want to back up. That is probably why ninety percent of the time I have my right leg crossed over resting on my left leg, leaning back. Because that tends to bring people in. If I were to be one to hunch over, and lean in, it would make the opposite party sit back. These are things that can’t be helped.

And it’s apropos of nothing, really, but inevitably it is how caring works. There have been very few times in my life when I have cared for another person in a use-it-or-lose-it drop everything and be there physically emotionally spiritually or just for the fuck of it sense. Actively I have been aware that caring so much is ironically what made it harder for them to care back, for I leaned in too hard and in some way forced them to lean back as a response. It acts as sort of the ultimate catch-22, which I have only realized at a later date, here, in retrospect.

Because once I have stopped caring about somebody, I am back to getting everything I want — in a way. My lack of care brings everyone else in. There is nothing I can offer in terms of the way I look or the way I say what I say or the way I do what I do that won’t make the opposite parties adore me. I can do no wrong simply by not having to care. I lean back, and they lean in.

It’s been very informative for me to see how this dynamic works from the opposite end. I truly believed the remedy for my hard-to-explain depression was to get back out there and prove myself again to the animal kingdom that I had every intention of turning my back on forever, but what I’ve learned is I have only created more webs to untangle myself from. I don’t want to hurt anybody, and I forgot what it was like to walk and talk and act with such indifference. I only bring pain and heartache in the same way I can’t help breathing.

So this is the new dilemma. It’s the opposite of caring too much and turning off what I cared about. Instead it is caring too little and turning on what I don’t care about, which I for some reason didn’t recognize when I was young and in a similar state of mind.

Everything always comes back to that Chuck Klosterman quote, or one of them, I should say, which I can only paraphrase since it’s been so long. He once said something about how every relationship is a power struggle, and the one in control is the one who loves the other less. I knew it meant something tragic and grave when I underlined it in the book my ex-girlfriend sent me from across the country when I was in Virginia and she was back home in California, and the fact that I still remember it and can still recite it — to some degree, anyway — only reiterates its meaning. It’s the realest shit, honestly. I have only ever loved those who do not love me back, at least not in the same way, and those who have loved me have not received the same in return.

And that’s me. That’s why I think there is a good chance I will be single in every practical way for the rest of my life. I was not built to be anybody’s friend, or for anybody else to be mine. I wish that could be the case, that I could be friends with those on both ends of my paradigm, I just don’t have it in me. Because every relationship is a power struggle and my ratio to being in power compared to being out of power rests very comfortably on my end.

Earlier I mentioned that I am back to getting everything I want. I am, and I’m not. Because caring is like a drug. It’s so rare. Once you are in it there is nothing you can do. You have no choice. It drives all your thoughts, it affects your appetite, it controls through a lack of control your sleep, it consumes your days, and your nights, and everything else in between. It makes you hate and love every single thing. It makes everything personal, all the time. It makes everything about you.

And you can’t see it. You can never see it while it’s happening. It’s only in moments like these, when everything is gone, that you are able to see things clearly. That’s the real irony.