Construct of Connection

(This started a brain dump, then kind of got away from me. Let’s be generous and refer to it as a rough draft.)

With minimal effort the word “we” can take on mammoth proportions. Seriously - for two little letters it can really fuck a guy up.

The problem lies in its misleading simplicity. It’s uttered hundreds of times a day - thousands probably - without a thought and used to count any amount of persons from a few to a few billion. But it’s never more dangerous than when referring to the real loneliest number: two.

Before I continue I’ll admit that this one is going to be a downer. It’ll probably sound either pity inducing or pathetic. I don’t meant it sound either way but I’ll leave the ultimate interpretation to you.

Growing up I was always told by well meaning (but totally off base) adults that when I grew up I would find that one person who turns me from a single, meandering man into a complete human with a capacity for everything larger than himself. Once I met that special someone my life would change forever and only for the good.

They really should have mentioned the bad.

They should have also mentioned the importance of me before we.

I’ve always wondered, or at least since I got sober, how my life might be different if I knew who “me” was before my head was filled with “we”. In a rather insidious but smiling way I was indoctrinated into a cult that didn’t allow single members. I won’t pretend I would have made exclusively positive choices were I to have walked a solitary path. Hell, I know for a fact I wouldn’t have. I’m a bad idea factory, for Christ’s sake! But decisions made alone normally differ from those made by committee, if only a committee of two. It makes sense. Once you are forced to take someone else’s feelings, thoughts, and attitudes into consideration the idea of free will kind of goes sailing out the widow.

I’ve spent a majority of my life trying to find this elusive version of “we” that I was promised as a kid. I’ve only just recently gotten to the “me” - at around forty years of age. But even now that “we” is gnawing at the back of my mind regardless of my continuing attempt to ignore it.

Let’s take stock:

Would I have started to drink if I was “me”? Probably. But not at age nine and just trying, as I realized later, to impress a neighborhood kid I looked up to.

Would I have started to use drugs if I was “me”? I honestly do not think so. Every pill I took at the beginning (and every line and bump I snorted and joint I inhaled, for that matter) was because of the other people in my life and my inability to capture the construct of connection.

Would I have made so many questionable choices in women if I was “me”? No. Absolutely not. The only thing I had less of an idea about than what I wanted in another person was what I needed from one. And that’s all ignoring the fact I didn’t know who I was.

Sitting here thinking back over all the mistakes and successes (a roughly 3:1 ratio by my count) I’d have to admit that I wouldn’t go back and change anything. I know it all turns out and I have a vague idea of where I’m going, or at the very least where I’m trying to point my life, so I’ll make do with the today I’ve laid out for myself.

Ultimately I drank, used, and made horrid relationship decisions alone and of my own accord. That was all me. I learned more than fifteen years ago that taking responsibility is important and the more it stings the more necessary it usually is. Well, my life has stung like a son of a bitch!

So where were you while we were - I was - getting high? Knowing me, you were right there, right next to me. I was just too fucked up to notice.

Thanks for sticking it out.