TheBunnyBlog.com - October 29, 2007

Sometimes I think my life has been a movie, in which characters played my friends and family, characters that were cast in specific roles so as to keep up appearances and a demeanor befitting a certain upstate New Yorkian, poor-but-valiant Irish upbringing. Characters that were actors--thus empty--and conjured their emotions. "I love you, Bunny," said my family, channeling Terms of Endearment, in one breath, while they judge me with the next. You suck. "I adore you. You mean so much to me," said my friends, channeling Sex and the City, and trying not to remember they fucked my boyfriend. It's all faked to be sufficiently humble, as if real feelings are too prideful. How can one afford to have an emotion? Pig.

But is this a staving off of pain, or is this the coming tsunami of narcissism I often write about?

Bear with me. This is experimental.

Our grandfathers come home from world war two. They have made the world safe for democracy. They have pulled their bretheren from jungles/forests/trenches--both dead and alive. They have killed and suffered in a way we cannot fathom. They have medals and dead eyes. They have crumbling edifices and violent constructs in their heads--dead friends, dead foes, dead hearts, dead heads, and alcohol takes the pain away. The wives don't ask questions. They stopped asking questions when they were ten--the market crashed--and they had to quit school and get jobs to supplement the family income, filing documents in the case of my parternal history. Cutting hair in the case of my maternal history.

And so what is my family history, then? Crisis that isn't felt. It is the silent bearing, but never coping from the effects of war and crisis. And I am not unique, for my grandfathers fought with others, and my grandmothers toiled with others. Neither were alone in struggle. Strife is the history of my generation and yours.

And so I think my parents' lives were a bit empty. There was an emotional vacuity in the post-war home, starting with dad, validated by mom, and there--within that certain "emptiness"--is the birth of the scourge. Can anyone remember from history classes--aside from the late roman aristocracy and the bourgeoisie during the reign of the Louis the 14th--a time during which the general population--the MIDDLE CLASS--of a country was so piggish, overly-entitled and arrogant as the Boomer generation, or the children of the vacuous? How is their "LOOK AT ME, GODDAMMIT" free-love, get-money, religious right behavior not suggestive of an early emotional abandonment? And vacuity bred more vacuity.

Today, we have their spawn. Their Kardashians. We have their Tila Tequilas--talentless shitheads cutting albums, hiring PR, posing head-left in four hundred myspace.com pics in various outfits, clinging to D-list celebs and calling themselves "socially relevant" and "opinion makers." We have their empty offspring, and what do their empty offspring make? What will Sean Preston Federline be like?

ME. ME. ME. Is the cry of our generation. FUCKING ME!

And what's sick about this, is that narcissism is a debilitating mental illness, a DSMIV classified illness akin to sociopathy we half struggle with/half flirt with. It's as "desired" as bulimia in the "fat sorority"--it aint pretty, but it helps, and then one day you have holey teeth and throat cancer. To deal with a narcissist is to dance with the devil--trust me--but no one in America seems to care about consequences. Morality is passé, and consequences are to be outsourced. Shark eyes are hot. If you're not lifeless enough in your myspace avatar, you can always photoshop the morality and humanity right out with a few quick steps, the brightness/contrast filter and some of the cloning stamp. Google is God. Meaning is over. The Hills is real. "Republican" politicians tax and spend like trophy wives; "Liberal" politicians run for president on seventh grade platforms: "If you vote for me it's mandatory health care for everyone and grape soda in the drinking fountain, yay!" Singers can't sing. Dancers can't dance. The computer makes it believable: It's magic, whee!

But life is still life, and pain is still pain. And we're still ugly and at war again and feeling none of it. Our heads are up Heidi Montag's plastic assring, and we have the emotional toolbox we've inherited from our Boomer parents--an empty box. Hammers with no nails. Bolts with no screws. Nothing to make anything fantastic with--though the notion that we must-WE MUST!--make something truly transcendent--OR WE ARE INFERIOR--never leaves us, for we grew up in the home of the emotionally vacuous. Where there is a wont of affection, there is the idea that a mythic status will heal wound it made.

And a refusal isn't possible. Self-acceptance isn't possible. We are never good enough, my generation.

Perhaps I'm being dramatic. I'm prone to it, you know it, but I can't help shaking this notion that everyone I am fitted to be friends with is a self-serving, self righteous shitprick, not out of self indulgence, but narcissism, a clinical suffering.

That said, my best friend of twenty-four years did recently betray me, smearing my good name around my home town instead of dealing with her own mental problems. To her credit, I am pretty open about being "alternative." Not to her credit--I do not accept money for lesbian sex. I was pretty rocked by her accusations; I won't lie. I had grown apart from this girl in interests, but she was still my heart, and I couldn't conceive of her ever doing me wrong, despite the fact that she grew up in an intensely vacuous house--her grandfather parachuted into the battle of Normandy; her mother does more pills than Elvis.

I've been pretty depressed. No shit. Can't pick my face up off the pillow depressed. I don't know how to deal with it. I don't know what to think of anyone in my life anymore, and it makes me question my personal relationships in a way I didn't think I would have to.

Or do I have to? Is this just a shitty person, acting in a shitty way?

I don't know why I wrote this. But then, I think one of the great strengths of my blog is that I often write from my srote, when I'm drunk or stoned, and will probably be embarrassed by such a show of emotion eventually. It's those times that people understand. It's that kind of honesty in combination with anonymity that you appreciate. You guys get this right? You like it when I'm a mess. You love it when I make an ass of myself. You often feel like you're the last good, moral person on earth, that acting in favor of morality, reason and good faith is passé? That our generation is a sham, personal responsibility and honesty are outdated, and people aren't fucking real?

If you do feel like this, can we get married and move to a very, very secluded place?

Posted by The Bunny at 3:00 AM