04.18.05 - 11:53 p.m.

How do you know when someone is telling you something like the truth - maybe not the whole truth, but some sufficiently honest approximation of it so as to be trustworthy, or at least � oh, god, everyone doesn't have to be trustworthy, but couldn't people be a little more fucking forthright about their agendas? How do you know when someone � personally, professionally, a little bit of fucking both � is simply engaged in the usual bullshit approximation of the truth that has precisely nothing to do with the actual truth and ever-so-much to do getting along, day-to-day, or � worse � getting something from you that you don't really mean to give.

I am not the sort of person who maintains a false pride in my own "honesty" -- usually no more than cover for being a complete bitch. Similarly, I am not the sort of person who thinks that everyone has to be completely honest in everything they do. There are times for discretion, and there are times for shake-your-assness, and overall, I personally prefer discretion to the loud shaking-of-asses. I prefer basic pleasantries exchanged with a certain sang-froid to nastiness, although general avoidance is even better under most circumstances.

People should let go of things, most things, should not take certain things personally, should be nicer to each other and more forgiving of individual faults. Abso-fucking-lutely. I believe this. On the other hand, I lose patience with people who keep trying to plow the same furrowed ground, which is, well, so often, almost everyone, including me. Me, I'm working to stop doing that, to figure out where I go wrong and fix it, goddamnit, rather than repeating the same idiocies. Mistakes are okay: mistakes happen everyday, and some accidents are happy ones. Idiocies are less okay, and should be sorted out, managed when chronic, and stopped where possible. I have plenty of idiocies - including an absurd inability to start something, all fucking ready, when I really do want to start it, and a certain stand-offishness.

What the hell is happening? Who knew what fucking when? I can't begin to figure out what is some partial lie and what is some partial truth, when someone is fishing for information and when someone is genuinely reassuring me of (well, I didn't know what) something. And of course, this is all fucking D--'s fault, ultimately. It started there, and I thought it was over and done with, but nothing is ever over and done with. I thought - my god - that we were okay, and I settled into a routine and was happy with it, as such things go.

I'll be fine. It'll be fine. Another year, and this will be a memory. If I can get through another year, I'll be fine: and I can get through another year, I have no doubt about that. The conflict, however, between my (very) divided loyalties and the obvious necessity of self-preservation is driving me just a bit batty right now. Why do people, adult people, behave like such fucking children? Why can't we start from the basic position of enlightened self-interested modified by cautious courtesy and sometimes-generousity as some sort of default framework within which people build their selves and structure their dealings with others?

I want Karma to be a real thing and not something with which we comfort our crazy selves when people are being fucking nasty to us. I want people to have actual epiphanies and think about how they treat other people and be fucking troubled when they act like big wankers. I want to believe in a fucking world where otherwise intelligent people do not play these awful games with each other's lives, because I DO NOT THINK that I can live in the world that is the opposite of that world, full of poison and caustic bile and weird agendas and hidden fucking conversational shoals. Jesus, this isn't even a crisis of idealism. It's a fucking crisis of fucking enlightened self-fucking interest and basic decency.

I wish I wish I wish I believed in the sort of god that gets other people all hot and bothered: the retributive god, the old man who goes around teaching people specific lessons by inflicting leprosy or poverty or male pattern baldness on their figurative (and literal - heh) heads, and keeps some cosmic checkbook in your very own name: good versus bad, moderately bad versus really, really fucking bad, and the like. I wish I believed in the wheel of fate, or reincarnation, or blah blah blah, or anything else that purports to offer a degree of justice or balance to an otherwise unbalanced and unjust world.

I will never forget that I am lucky lucky lucky, and I won't give up a basic belief in whatever - the importance of decency, if not its general dispersal among the population at large (and many of my close acquaintances) - I'm lamenting the lack of here, but I would be luckier if I were deluded enough to believe that old what goes around comes around, crap.

Because it doesn't.

Because it never fucking does.