The Blues Don't Bother Me

 If you're wonderin' what's all the noise/ I'm in the back room with the girls and boys

We're discussin' the blues and they don't seem to see

The blues is all I play/ The blues don't bother me...

We've all heard that story about how you boil a frog to death. You can't just drop Mr. Frog into a pot that's at full boil cuz the frog will just jump out. You have to put Mr. Frog into lukewarm water, slowly increasing the temperature and letting him get acclimated until the temperature is high enough to boil his ass. No big changes. Kill him comfort and familiarity. 

I can relate.

If you were to chart out my emotions on a graph, you wouldn't see a wide range of variation. I'm rarely extremely happy and I'm also rarely very sad. My foundation emotion is pretty even. But things have to be either unbelievably exciting or unbelievably catastrophic for me to lose my shit. 

For the most part, my mood is pretty low. Like if I was cast as Eeyore in a play or something, I wouldn't have to do much acting. I'd just have to be. Sure, that may seem miserable to you and sometimes I wish I was more of a ray of sunshine. But it's comfortable. I'm used to it. 

Getting too far away from my foundational emotion is extremely unnerving to me. I used to think being comfortable with my depression was a good thing. Now, I'm starting to not be too sure...

When I was a little boy sittin' on my papa's knee

I couldn't have been no older than two or three

He said "I am a bluesman. You're gonna take after me"

The blues is my companion/ The blues don't bother me

I recently reconnected with a friend from high school who I haven't really communicated with in like twenty-five years. I know we all sit around and shoot the shit about the good old days from time to time but talking to this dude has been really illuminating for me. Not only did I misunderstand so much about my friendships and my perceptions of the people around me back in the day, but it would appear my emotional and psychological problems go back farther than I ever realized.

As life has rolled on, I have, slowly yet extremely effectively, allowed myself to get so used to being sad and alone that anything else feels uncomfortable to the point where I either can't function or have to take multiple days afterward to decompress. That feels normal to me but more and more, I'm getting suspicious that this shit ain't all that normal. Happiness, connection and all that ice-cream-and-puppy-dogs shit shouldn't be so unsettling. 

It's almost as if I don't know how to exist if I can't be depressed...

When I go to bed at night I throw on a record or two

If I didn't have these blues I wouldn't know what to do

I need them to soothe me, to ease my misery

The blues is my companion. They don't bother me...

So... What to do when you reach the (correct) conclusion that how you feel all the time, and what you feel most comfortable feeling, is causing you to withdraw, avoid social situations (even with your nearest and dearest) as completely as possible and wither into a shell of your best self...

Well, the obvious answer is to push yourself to go out. Unfortunately, that leads directly to the second issue: No one has time for me anymore. I used to go out and play D&D but then COVID hit and my group stopped getting together. When they started getting together again, I was never invited. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it made me reluctant to get involved with another group. And considering how much trouble I have getting along with people, finding a new group was a really unappealing prospect.

Other friends have gone in new career directions and don't have much free time. Still other friends have family issues that have eaten deeply into the time they're available to hang out. And maybe, just maybe, I'm not all that much fun to have around and COVID isolation and all that shit gave them a convenient excuse to ditch me. I mean, it's not like I've never been ditched before.

So today, I find myself alone, waiting to hear back from contacts for potential stories and thinking about Matt "Guitar" Murphy. Not only is he a key player in my favorite movie of all time, The Blues Brothers, but he also wrote and recorded The Blues Don't Bother Me, the lyrics of which I've used as the headers to each section of this post.

I'm thinking about how comfortable Murphy has gotten with the blues, to the point where he'd be clueless as to how to function without them. Yeah, I know he's talking about music but I can identify with being so comfortable with your state of being that the mere thought of changing things terrifies you to the point of being petrified. Misery may love company but what it loves most is just to be left the fuck alone.

And I'm wondering how I ever convinced myself that being like this was acceptable. Also, wondering how to get out of this pit when I'm totally certain any effort I make will fail. Maybe the first step is to get into a healthier headspace where slight failures don't cause me to fold like an origami swan. 

If I ever excavate an answer, you'll know. Cuz I'll be right there in your face, telling you all about it.