Bunny, baby. I really, really want to read your book. Would you finish the fuck up, PLEASE!

I'm not sure if you've read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Liquid-Modernity-Zygmunt-Bauman/dp/0745624103/ref=sr_1_7/104-0867691-7520712?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193659310&sr=1-7

but I think you might like it. It does mention most of the issues you talk about in your post. I found it very interesting. Bauman wrote a bunch of other books with "Liquid" in the title, but I think this one is the best of the bunch.

Love your writing, especially your rants.

"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."

I sat down on my couch and didn't get up for a year, from this exact thing. But I couldn't ever express it as clearly as you just did. You're an incredible woman; I hope you never doubt that.

And no, I don't like it when you're a mess. It makes me sad, imagining you so down. If I could I'd come over with a casserole and french braid your pigtails. Since I can't do that I'll just say this: Be well, Bunny. Try to get out of that bed today, you'll be glad you did.

A good friend of mine once said that you know who you are when you are alone and the lights are off... I'm sure he was quoting someone else, but the meaning is no less clear. Forget about everyone else. What they do, what they say, whatever. What you have done with your life is more important than the plastic people who everyone else seems to fawn over. You put yourself out there in the most sincere way possible. You don't do it through a publicist or through lawyers. And people like you for that. For who you are.

I don't believe that the allure to your blog is when you are a mess. I think the allure to your site is your honesty in any situation and the fact that you share these things with the world. And, of course, the fact that you have an interesting life doesn't hurt. :-)

Keep being you and to Hell with whatever else is going on.

By far the most honest thing I've read in a while. Good to know someone else out there thinks about things like I do!

Bunny -

Nothing embarrassing here, nor are you making an ass of yourself. I do think the MTV generation of which we both are a part is vapid and values a lot of the wrong things, but there are a lot of folks who see that and dislike it. You aren't the only one who is disgusted/frustrated by the close-minded and selfish; I hope knowing that helps a bit.

I'd love to marry you, buy unless we move to Utah where I can take you as a second wife, I'll just have to adopt you...

I love your writing, and the person you are. You have to be one of the most interesting bloggers around. I only wished that you lived closer, so that I could actually meet you in person.

I'm sending you good Karma. I agree with so much of what you say.

cheers Bunny!

Yes, BunBun, that's a shitty fucking coward acting in a shitty fucking way.

No, our generation isn't as fucked up as you think it is, but sometimes we're so mired in our surroundings that it feels that way.

And I love your writing regardless of your mental "status" at time of said post.

People talk smack because their own lives are less than stellar, they're jealous or both.

Fuck her--not literally, darlin'--and keep being you.

I do agree. Dishonesty and betrayal seem to be the trends in recent generations.

That is one of the most well thought out pieces I have ever read on this blog (not to mention anywhere else).
But to answer your question, your friends a piece of shit and you shouldn't allow her actions to upset you. While it affects you in ways that are hardly fair, you seem to have already moved on. At least mentally, since you've taken the time to post this blog.
Keep your head up. I'm sure you have plenty of good friends, who, while misguided and probably closely associated with the narcissist archetype you've portrayed, would never lash out at you like your former friend and in turn would do anything for you.
Anyhow, really looking forward to the book. Your writing is intensely personal and that's one of the reasons we all find it so appealing.

Nothing I've ever read up until this point has ever rang so true.

"we have the emotional toolbox we've inherited from our Boomer parents--an empty box."

I read that multiple times. I have been wondering over and over why this generation sucks so badly, and that sentence really summed it up.

Wow, that is a level of honesty that I find quite refreshing. If more people took the time to be more self-reflective, this world we live in wouldn't be so shitty half the time. You nailed it, Bunny.

Excellent, lovely flow in this. For some reason, reminds me of Naked Lunch. Not in the content, but in how I read it.

Content was good too though.

Well said. I can't help but feel like my parents' generation was a catastrophic failure. And now I'm growing up in a social system that has absolutely no interest in teaching me how to cope with life, much less how to be a man. I had to learn everything important that I know from scratch, on my own, with absolutely no fucking support whatsoever. Am I bitter about it? No. They didn't fail on purpose. And I'm a better person for the struggle. I see people in my own generation condemning themselves to stupidity simply out of a lack of any desire to be anything real - everyone would rather someone just walk up to them and give them everything. And people fuck with each other, and betray each other. There are knives sticking our of backs in every direction. And I don't like it.

So I'm going to go out there and change it all. Bunny, you can't get depressed - you just can't. You're far too real for that.

Who is Heidi Montag?

I've been trying to find the proper words to convey how I've been feeling the last couple of months and you've summed it up perfectly. I've been stuck trying to figure out what's 'real' and what's not for the last couple of months myself and frankly, I haven't made much headway.

The only words of encouragement I can think of is to just keep going. Sooner or later we all figure it out on our own time. At least I hope we do.

It is hard to remember this in the moment, but 99 percent of the time, other people's actions and behaviors ultimately have nothing to do with you. Even when their behaviors are directed at you, they are the result of that person's internal struggles, machinations, secret feelings, and so on. And really, what can you do about that?

As far as questioning your choices in friends, I don't think that's such a bad idea sometimes. It doesn't make you a bad person if you realize that some of the people with whom you've surrounded yourself are actually bad for you. It makes you a smart, self aware person.

As for the pop culture references you mentioned, it's probably best to avoid all that whenever humanly possible, because it's not real. Not at all. In 10 years, nobody will remember any of those people you mentioned in your blog. They are people of no consequence. They are the human version of filler that is added to low-end dog food-- mechanically separated beef by-products.

I am probably a bit older than the generation you speak of-- 37-- but I know what you mean. Not everyone is like that, though. There are plenty of people living real lives-- falling in love, raising children successfully, making their dreams come true, helping others, and so on--without the help of a reality show or fake breasts. I still believe those people far outnumber the people you refer to in your blog.

So it's the Baby Boomers fault? I was born between '46 and '64 and my toolbox never has had shit in it. Or maybe, more correctly, ALL it's ever had in it is shit. Though both options suck, I hope I've left my son with an empty toolbox he can fill up with his own tools instead of one that's full of shit.
I don't think yours is as empty as you think. You're a brilliant girl. Life's just a bitch sometimes.
Hang in there.

Please marry me. Let's go off somewhere and write and make love and be crazy together. We can kill the TV, live on the beach or the mountains or wherever.

I've thought these thoughts many a time. I tend to ask myself, what have I grown up into. Let's be afraid together.

I've thought these thoughts many a time. I tend to ask myself, what have I grown up into. Let's be afraid together.

Bunny, I've been reading your blog for quite some time now. This is probably the most insightful, honest, poignant thing that you have ever written. It really makes a lot of sense and I have had similar thoughts regarding my own age group. I'm only 21 so my opinion probably doesn't matter, but, for what it's worth, I'm somewhat grateful that I'm not alone in my fears of emptiness.

Also, you deserve better friends. Keep writing well. :)

I don't know what to say, and this is just my little old opinion, so take it for what it's worth, but I really think you have to hit the bottom before it can get really good. Sure, some people live their lives in the middle, finding their highs and lows through artificial means... Hitting rock bottom seems like the hardest thing in the world-- I've been there. Eight months ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. It was my rock bottom. I was able to see myself and others for what we really are, and I made some changes based on that. Life is too short, too good, and too beautiful and amazing to be brought down by the bad in people-- You will make it too, just look for the good and the true beauty.

I've had this simmilar reflection on my friends - and I think I worked it out.

I don't have normal friends. I have at best, a few normal acquaintances. And even those normal acquaintances are pretty eccentric. They can tell you every component in an F1 ferrari race entrant, but can barely muster up enough manual dexterity to put together lego. They can recite every word of every television production Joss Wheydon has ever been in some way involved with. They know the touring dates of every 1980's hair metal reunion tour from 1997 to the present.

And those are my relatively speaking, normal and well adjusted acquaintances who aren't eccentric enough to keep my interest long enough to be real friends. Who aren't out there enough to trust with the details of my own eccentricities because I think they'd probably freak.

The rest of my friends are fundamentally fucking cracked. Parties at my house could well be mistaken for a mass escape from a therapeutic care facility that engages in highly experimental practices on their patients. If you put together a psych history profile for a group of my friends, you'd think it was the precursor of a trial program for some sort of radical personality reprogramming treatment.

Those people are my friends because they're interesting. Because they can safely 'get' why I'm interesting without being overly threatened. They're all fundamentally fucked up in really demented ways - but they function enough to continue in society and find weirdo's like themselves to associate with safely, at least for the most part.

Maybe I'm over projecting. I know I'm probably narcissistic enough to extrapolate my own issues onto your circumstances - but it's always seemed to me that you and I had circles of friends with a lot in common. I've even speculated that we find our friends based on the same princple - the idea that people who are good and fucked up will understand. Or at least won't be freak out by our eccentricities.

The price I know I've always had to pay for my selection of friends is that they're unpredictable. Like fractured pottery under pressure, sometimes the pressure isn't enough to break them. sometimes what's inside holds against the external pressures. And sometimes, they go to pieces and nobody knows where the fuck those pieces are going. Least of all the person who just broke.

I think at a generational level there is certainly a difference between ourselves and our parents. A trust and an inclination to help. A willingness to ignore fears that our parents would never have ignored. I think we see the good in strangers far more easily then our parents did. And in an otherwise empty emotional toolbox - that might well be our greatest strength.

I can't imagine my parents generation meeting strangers from the internet on the scale that my generation does. I know that notice board meetings occurred in the 80's - in small groups and dingy locations among the perverse and lonely. But The willingness of strangers to gather and befriend each other, to meet virtual unknowns at almost random restraunts in foreign cities just to talk - and the trust that serial killers would have better things to do then post on message boards is I think a strength that no other generation has ever had.

Simply by being a citizen of the internet - I have experienced kindness from strangers that I had only ever read about being directed towards soldiers in wartime. I have met, eaten and drank with, stayed with and loved people I had never met before.

Our generation isn't completely without hope. We're just a bit fucked up. We're eccentric in choosing our preferred flavor of narccicism, we flock like sheep to the largest and most uniform counter culture group of subversives we can find in a struggle to be unique. But we have the means to build on what we have.

Brilliant and provocative. As always.

Yay for new posts!

I must say, I agree very strongly with you on a lot of the things you said; I can certainly emphathise with having cruel, arrogant and self-absorbed users for friends, as well as the whole "Am I the only person left who gives a fuck?" thing...but one point struck me wrong.

Although they may have contributed to it, I hate the mentality of blaming people's problems on their parents. Maybe what you said about the Baby Boomers is true, I don't know (my own parents don't seem that way, though they certainly have problems of their own) but I don't think you can just pass it off as them passing on their problems to their kids. That seems to be very much the kind of idea the more narcissistic Gen-Xers and -Yers have - everything is my god-given right, and nothing is my fault.

Just because one generation is morally bankrupt doesn't mean their offspring needs to be, they need to take responsibility for their own flaws. The good news is, if people wanted to, they have the power to change. Big IF, though.

I think more people should be like their parents and quite striving to be so different. Values don't exist anymore. And most people probably don't care if they aren't doing anything with their vapid lives. People will only buy into ambition nowadays if it has a Chanel logo on it.

Bunny for president... of something... Alabama! We're not doing anything with this state. Mine as well give it to someone!

I had the smae problem when my best friend of 8 years dropped our friendship because a guy asked her to marry her. I'm so sorry. It does get better. Also I think about her all the time still, I miss her.

"[A]ssholes are just that,... assholes, and whether or not they dick you over, it has little if anything to do with you, your worth and your judgment."
A certain bunny wrote that (slightly edited) a while back, and it's one of my favorite quotes. Hang in there!

I love the thinking Bunny, I've read every post you've put up and never commented but I felt the need to. I think a lot of the same thoughts often, but there is a problem. What can be done about it. What good is it the be last good, moral person on earth if we can't change anything. We should be spending our time trying to do something about it. I hope you putting this post up will make others think what can be done to change it. How do we get rid of the super skinny models that tell girls you must look like this. How do we get back to valuing people for their worth as a human, for their deeds, not for how much money they inheritted from daddy and how much cock they suck? Seriously, what can we do. Something has to change, or our kids will write this same blog, but only more jaded and more depressed.

Great work on the post. I think there is a lot more you can do with any number of threads you started there.

As far as you being depressed about words said by someone you have known a long time that are untrue, dwelling on it is to fall into their trap. Want to feel transcendant: be indifferent to those who wrong you in this way. Concentrate on yourself and your own path. Above you refer to people self interested parties in a negative light. Instead, embrace it. Be selfish. Selfish does not mean at anyone else's expense. Simply said, be rational and embrace the things you want the most.

Wow. Thanks for that. I agree, but I can't shake the feeling that its going to break soon, and we are all going to crawl out of our own asses.....maybe its just wishful thinking.

Anyway. Thanks.

That's beautiful writing, Bunny. I wonder about how philosophical you're getting though. I mean, I guess if you're a real hardcore philosopher, I could understand how you'd think so many people are selfish, insipid assholes. But most of the people around here, in New Hampshire, aren't like that. Where do you live? Your bad experiences with people and depression could have something to do with your location. I don't know. I know sometimes when I get depressed I think things are way worse than they really are. But I do agree with a lot of what you say. You're really a beautiful writer.

Love ya,

Franky

Wow, you really nailed it on the head with this post! I wish I had something insightful or witty to say, but alas I do not. I'm distracted watching "I Love New York 2",...........what was I talking about?

oh hunny. you may be frustrated about whether or not people are real because YOU LIVE IN L.A.

come to seattle, ill make you Gorgonzola mashed potatoes with roasted hazelnuts, and we can knit some sweet sweater dresses and have pillow fights. plus, i know a killer hot springs. we can get naked and soak. yummay!

Ever had the feeling someone just writes down exactly what is going through your head? That was a perfectly transcribed version of everything I have been thinking for the past few years. Glad to see I'm not the only one.

Ever had the feeling someone just writes down exactly what is going through your head? That was a perfectly transcribed version of everything I have been thinking for the past few years. Glad to see I'm not the only one.