I had a friend difficult to reach. No social media. A phone he never answered.

I didn't know his real name so I couldn't look up his address. My sole string to him was

email

.

Wouldn't go as far as to say he liked email, but he used it. Never remember him praising it or anything, but for his personality using it is something. Sometimes we wouldn't email at all for months at a time. Some people when they go quiet they're onto something good... they're not contacting you because they're busy living.

Others, well you know. So sometimes when he'd go silent on me I'd already pretty much think he's not in a good place, maybe good professionally and good if you were to see that he's traveling around and having fun in the way we imagine others to judge us. But on the inside I knew he would always email me back if he was in a good state.

I'd think that one thing. Though I would feel two things inside me. First I'd feel sad that they were in a slump. I would feel that real quick and then for a bit longer I would feel a bit of pleasure in knowing that they were suffering. I'd think to myself, good they fucking deserve it.

I am at my core very egotistical. If someone is doing well I want to know that I did something to help them get there. If not, then my mind immediately begins imagining why their current good is not that good at all, and how I should just drop them from my life. Or if they're not doing well I immediately want to try boosting them up, so that I can feel better about it later.

Looking back at my relationships this all makes so much sense. I don't know why it took so long for me to know this about myself though.

It's tough to realize things that we don't want to see. I would've gone to my grave not realizing this point about myself had I still valued being someone who was judged as morally good. But somewhere along the line I stopped caring about being seen as good. 

Stopped caring is a poor phrase. Makes it sound like I dropped the outlook one day just for the hell of it. But it was more like beating an addiction. 

One day a long time ago I finally said to myself, in a whisper when nobody was listening, my desire to be liked by others and judged as a good person is toxic.

And then nothing about my life changed for years. I even forgot about the whisper for weeks until in a quiet moment it came back to me. remember what you said?

But like I said, no change for years, but during that time a lot of back and forth. A lot of realizing how toxic my need to be judged a certain way was with a whole lot of hanging on. Just hanging on to how good it feels to be judged by someone in that shiny, good way. What would life be without that even? is what I questioned in my quiet times?

Then one day I ran into my friend. Out on the street for all matters! He had come to visit me.