April 13, 2021

This was my letter from my best friend, Mike...

Betty, I need to block you from my phone messages for a while.  At this point it's more than I can handle listening to without it stressing me out daily.  

Wow.  I seriously need to improve.  

I'm not a good person right now I guess.  And there is like enormous room for improvement.  I broke my word to him when we agreed to be friends: that is it is my job to put a smile on his face.  

I failed at that more than I succeeded at it.  

So I just have to figure out how to be a better person, how to be better somehow.

I think there are things that I don't see about myself just simply because I'm cocky.  Simply because I tell myself that's who I am take it or leave it.  

Maybe I can use this year to really work on that aspect of myself, the aspect of being a more positive influence genuinely.  

I asked Mike to give me one year to get myself together to make myself a better person worthy of his friendship.

I am the atrocity that my mom made.

The cognitively brutal truthsayer.  The unflinching and ruthless purveyor of logic.  

But we're not at war.  

And Mike was my friend.

My problem is that I impign my concept of truthfulness upon the world

There's karma.

There is an eye for an eye.

If that is my foundation then it needs to be different.

I'm not sure that I could possibly be different. I am made this way by my biology and my childhood and everything that I know.

So how do you become something that you are not?

Sam Harris says that there's no free will. We are biological creatures and that is our genetic makeup.  Our marching orders were given at birth.  Our fate was outlined the day that we were born.  I'm not sure how to transgress that.  I'm not sure how to impign upon that.  I'm not sure how to will a nicer Betty into existence.  

The only thing that I know is that Mike is right.  And now it's really up to me to try with all my being with every fiber of strength that I can muster to be someone who's capable of being a good friend.

I'm not broken.  I am emboldened.  I am resolved.  

I think Mike kept telling me to let go of my past. I think I was clinging so hard to it. So now I have the job of finding peace. That's such a sucky ass job that I do not want.  I don't want to let go all the ways that I was wronged in the world.  I'm perfectly happy with my shell.  

This is the universe having my back. This is the universe forcing me to be more of a person than I ever wanted to be. But now I do. Now it is everything to me.

I don't think that I can suffer the loss of a best friend without making structural changes to myself.  Because I don't want that to happen again.  I want to be worthy of friendship.