On Lip Service

.:On Lip Service:.

There’s a lesson to be learned here somewhere, and I guess it would be this...

... don’t ever believe everything people tell you, no matter how highly you think of them.

It’s really easy to talk about connections and knowing the other person in a way “like never before®” and that said connection is one-in-a-billion, and how all of this would be very hard to ever find again. It’s really easy to say those things because in the end, they’re really just words. One can say them, forget about them, and just ignore everything when things don’t really pan out as one expected.

Thing is, when you’re the kind of person who only ever says what they mean, when you say the same thing, it actually takes on a lot of meaning to you. This is all well and good, until you begin to pin the same expectations on other people, and that’s when you get shocked that hey, maybe it was really just you who felt that way about it.

I’ve always put a lot of stock in friendship, which is why it boggles my mind what happened the past couple of days to me. This, coupled with the fact that I’ve been saying for the past few weeks how this time, it’s gonna be “different,” really does do quite a number on me. The more things I wish were actually different, the more I realize that they’re even more the same. And it’s really one thing to be turned down and rebuffed – I mean, that’s totally normal, but for bridges to be burned over it? Whatever happened to all this “wavelength” and “connection” brouhaha that’s been spouted the past couple of weeks, then? Were they all lies?

I would like to think they weren’t lies. I would like to think that they were merely vestigial gestures whose meaning wasn’t really contemplated, and just said to make sense of the moment. A lie implies that there was a malicious intent or some kind of sinister motive afoot, but perhaps, it would be imprudent to assume that of another person, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to see that perhaps, those words just came just because. No rhyme or reason, just a matter of making small talk and conversation without any regard for the consequences. I mean, why bother with the consequences? You have to be an OC nut who remembers conversations relentlessly for you to... oh, wait.

As a mentalist, one of the skills we have honed is to discover the sincerity of a person. Unfortunately, as a guy whose judgment is undoubtedly clouded in the face of someone he’s attracted to, his guard drops down faster than a lead balloon, and he ends up being surprised by things that, if it didn’t happen to him directly, he would have seen and even predicted a mile away.

Empathy isn’t really a special power, after all. Anyone’s capable of getting it. Unfortunately, when one’s personal biases get in the way, one is willing to overlook a couple of things just because it’s more convenient to turn the other way than to actually face the facts.

And the fact is: people say things they don’t mean. All the time. And holding them to these words could only lead to heartache and disappointment in the end. And in the end, even if it’s unfair that you have to play detective when you’ve been nothing but up front in contrast, you only have yourself to blame if you fell for everything that was said hook, line, and sinker.

I doubt you’d ever be reading this. But though I’ve already apologized to you and you’ve decided to ignore that, I want you to know I’ve still forgiven you, regardless. Though you may never ask for it. I can’t help but regret that things had to turn out this way, though, all because only one of us decided to be honest with the other from the start.

For now, I’d rather walk away with my dignity intact and the knowledge that in this world, words really are only words.