People never cease to amaze me, how the overwhelming majority of them have a masochistic fetish for melodrama. It scarcely seems to matter how carefully and ruthlessly I trim the fat, as it were, from those who I am willing to consider friends: I am still left with people who inject unsolicited and unwanted drama into my life. It’s worse than masochism, really, because I would actually be fine if their commitment to drama was masochistic. But there is obviously a measure of sadism in there, too, because somehow their drama is not complete until they’ve dragged the feculent carcass into my life and dropped its rotted flesh onto my lap—where, until that moment, I was happily minding my own business. Since I suffer from a mood disorder that potently marries anxiety with depression, I am really not the most ideal person to torment with such egregious garbage. It would not be so bad if they simply wanted to talk about it, to get something off their chest or cry on my shoulder. I can compartmentalize that quite effectively. But no, they want to go beyond that. They want to include me, they want to involve me, they want to bring me into their self-inflicted pain in a way that I cannot distance myself from—short of necessarily amputating yet another friendship because I know it will otherwise continue to happen in the future.

Maybe I’m the anomaly. With so very many people exhibiting this destructive trait, maybe that is what ‘normal’ actually is, making me the odd one. But it is an oddity I embrace because, unlike them, I combine my desire for peace with behavior that strives to facilitate rather than frustrate that peace. Which, again, can lead to my terminating friendships, and sometimes relationships, when they become obstacles to that general tranquility I strive to enjoy in my own life. Most people pretend to have this abhorrence for drama but I think those who are most vocal about it are those who actually possess the most concentrated fetish for it, the strongest commitment to it. I suggest that is a ‘red flag’ worth keeping an eye out for.

I tell you, living as a hermit isolated from social detritus is sometimes an attractive prospect to consider.

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