I am not very good with emotions, and as I get older I can’t see that improving.
The tricky thing about life is that it means interacting with other human beings—our parents, our siblings, our extended family, friends, lovers, spouses and so on.
All of which is a bit of a fucker, quite frankly.
Underneath my renegade playboy bravado I am hugely sensitive. By that, I mean that I am sensitive about rejection, about people not liking me, about slights and insults and so on.
But equally, I find praise very difficult to take, and even having people feel positive towards me is difficult, since my instinct is that I don’t deserve it
In fact, in a perverse way I prefer it when people don’t treat me well. That is painful, but it is at least familiar.
I am a survivor above all else, and I know how to get by.
The alcoholic or addict, it is often said in recovery circles, has both very low self-esteem and a huge ego simultaneously. Analysing myself, I can say that that this is certainly true for me.
What this has meant over time is that I have pushed away people who have ostensibly cared about me, and I have also (as I grew stronger and learned to protect myself) pushed away those who would do me harm. And in doing the latter I’ve probably exiled a few who in fact did not have bad intentions.
A core component of the addictive character is the avoidance of feelings at all costs. Because feelings, after all, are troublesome things that disturb our peace of mind.
The reason the alcoholic drinks constantly, or the heroin user seeks continual oblivion through the needle, is because both wish to control the weather in their heads. And although the side-effects of drink and drug abuse are not pleasant, in the moment when you are intoxicated you feel the benefit of having escaped reality, albeit momentarily.
Pleasure
But even beyond drink and drugs, much of my life has been spent in search of the shallows, in an effort to escape feelings. I fell in love with music as a teenager—not just the darker, more introspective stuff like Morrissey, but synthetic pop like Kylie Minogue, Jason Donovan and others who came out of the Stock, Aitken and Waterman stable in the 80s and 90s.
Later I got into techno and house music, and electronic music—this machine-produced sound—seemed the perfect antidote to having to feel anything.
Well, the robots who produced it had no feelings and its purpose was to accompany MDMA-taking, itself a nullifying act.
I loved the artificial—artificial music, artificial venues such as night clubs, places—like Las Vegas—created entirely for pleasure. And I still do. I even love the atmosphere of high-end department stores like Selfridges or Harrods in London, these palaces of consumerism without natural light where everything is controlled—the lighting, the temperature, the smell, the ambience, the layout—to make the customer feel good and want to spend money.
(I also love the duty-free sections in airports for the same reason.)
My instinct, then, has been to seek refuge from the emotional in the terrain of the emotionless—places where commerce is conducted, or where bright lights and loud music drown out thought and deep feeling.
And as I go on, that desire for refuge increases rather than decreases. Think, after all of a marriage. Think of the many feelings that grow—good and bad—over the course of a partnership lasting decades.
And consider childbirth. Now, we are not only deep into the realm of emotion—the physical also comes into play. Another person’s body and all that that entails. The blood, the sweat, the pain, the deep, animalistic nature of birth—birth, for fuck’s sake.
How many galaxies outside my comfort zone does such a thing exist?
And so throughout my life I’ve sought (consciously and unconsciously) to maintain shallowness—an Oscar Wilde quip here, a fancy outfit there, and the destruction of all ‘intimate’ relationships throughout.
It doesn’t help that I am not optimistic about the human condition. But here I am, forging the path while others fall around me. Carrying the flag for ‘not too much feeling’, ‘not too much intimacy’, and ‘not too much reality’.
Until one day I will reach the summit, force the flagpole into the ground, take a look at the view—and then drop down dead.
I wonder if it will all have been worth it?
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