Homosapien-ity

The Friend of a good friend. The Never-met-before person. That Much Talked-About Friend.
I was that, recently, and found my faded doppleganger and some minus points for humanity along the way.

I d blame it on the talk, if I didn't know better. Beacuse it was through all that talk that the goddamn love grew. That curious kind of love lavished from second-degree association. Through it all, I had developed into a doppleganger - someone they knew. And liked.

Like a long absent old friend, I had become a phony part of their universe of connection. Over many evenings, my doppelganger had matured from a ‘good friend’s good friend they didn’t know’ to a ‘good old her’. They had laughed and nodded along their gradual journey of assimilating me from an arbit ‘her’ to “she’s so that”.

But unhappily for this warm get-together, we don’t know each other from Adam.

Facts have an uncomfortable knack of getting in the way of mediocre make-believe. And so it was... as I burst upon the scene, in-the-flesh, so to speak... with an offensive alien air.

Shockwaves.

Here I was - a trespasser on their hither-to happy, make believe perception of me. My uncalled turning up in person was blowing it. I had intruded. And caused communal unrest in this happy, warm gathering of friends.

I was almost apologetic as I watched my doppleganger slowly melt like the snowman in summer.
‘She’s so tall’ I heard them whisper. They had certainly not expected it.

An abandoned rocking chair, on its last legs stood on the balcony and I tried to hide my abnormal span behind it. I hoped it presented a less offensive length of me for scrutiny.
It didn’t.

But they were large hearted and forgiving, as we ploughed ahead and communed, the doppleganger faded away.

But thats not the point.
The point is that I m quite sick of having to experience, first hand and repeatedly, that which makes us all so hopelessly human.

It’s categorically the vilest part of what makes us people. Connection at all cost. This depraved, urgent need to form a bond – of whatever kind. I can feel those eyes searching for a fix to fasten a belief. I can hear it: ‘yeah but she’s kind of bitchy, right?’ or ‘isn’t she sweet?’

It’s not so much them or me … the shame is in its need. Its thirst. In that solely human sensation to want to connect. I can feel it sucking at me like that goddamn Under Toad.
Like garbage on the road or exhaust fumes – a reminder of the intrinsic sham in everything we do and think - of everything that is so awfully human.

It kills me.