It’s better to make decisions when your baseline emotion isn’t misery.
. . .
I’d been trying to be sincere, but I’d done it so randomly and inexpertly that it had come across as a continuation of banter, an inability to be serious.
. . .
I had plenty of love. It was, I was realizing, a callous kind of love. That seemed to be all I had to give. Anyone I was with would realize that eventually, I thought, with my feet in the water, so really the goal was to create the illusion of depth for as long as possible. Not for the sex, no. For the company. Other people were interesting, and the more privileged time you had with them the less bored you would be. They would teach you how to live, or at least entertain you while you failed to learn. And it wasn’t entirely selfish, because, to other people, you were someone else, too, someone interesting, even if you knew that you weren’t. I knew a lot of people who thought that everything they said and did was of value, worthy of broadcast on the local or national level. I was coming to understand that it was this belief itself that sustained those people’s desire for communication, rather than the actual content of what was being said. Content, now more than ever, was irrelevant.
