I don't know where to start, nor where to end, so I begin in the middle

I feel a need to write.   I also feel blocked from writing.   In some ways that is a good thing -- a departure from my normal tendency to come here and spill forth buckets full of unfettered and ill-considered emotional offal in an effort to unburden myself.  To simply rid myself of its weight (to limited practical effect, of course).  

I am not overwrought.  That is good.  I am not hysterical.  That is better.  I am not even sad. Which, truly, is exceptional.   

I am just increasingly resigned -- to what is -- and incrementally wistful -- about what is not to be.  Generally, just feeling empty.  Hollowed out.   Which again, may sound dire, but truly is a relief in comparison to the ridiculous hysteria of the preceding six months.

So it was a shock to me that, upon getting notification that my best friend from high school (who was recently married) and his wife are expecting their first child, I had a panic attack in the middle of the food court in which I was standing as I received the email.   The shock came, in large part, because I am happy for he and his wife, and, as such, really had very little reason to draw increasingly shallower breaths leading to light-headedness and quickly having to sit down before I passed out unexpectedly.   

But it isn't them.  It isn't even me really.  It is just a side effect of the last vestiges of one of my mental coping mechanisms being dismantled.   I had not really realized it, but in recent years, as a mental crutch, I had come to rely pretty significantly on the fact that the majority of people I went to high school and college with were not married or close to it.  In the last eighteen months, all of that has changed.  Not only does it seem that they are all married, but the vast majority of them are starting families as well.  And so I am left to deal with some difficult truths I had long been pushing aside:  The number of people in my boat is significantly smaller, and it scares me.  There is no strength in numbers anymore.  I am officially a left-over, a cast off,  a broken toy.  The odds of my fulfilling my dreams become exponentially smaller with each passing year.   Time is not on my side.  And to have come this far and to have been unable to have a grown up and healthy relationship may say a lot about the flawed partners I picked, but it says more about me.  As much as I say I want someone to love me, I have pushed away people who have shown me true and sincere affection.  It scares me.  I don't trust it.  I am much more comfortable with rejection.  Due to familiarity?  A love of martyrdom?  Like Shirley Manson, only happy when it rains?  Or simply unfamiliar with how to accept love?  I realize this because yesterday I was Facebook friended by a person who cared for me a great deal in college.  He was a sounding board and I was a rambling and narcissistic complainer.   For some reason he liked me.  He was impossibly sweet, incredibly smart, emotionally sound, universally well liked, and then (as now) ridiculously good looking.  And what did I do?  Rejected him romantically at every turn.  For three years.  Pretty stupid.   He is a married surgeon now, still ridiculously good looking, and as far as I can tell still emotionally sound and impossibly sweet (which seems a sort of funny trait for a surgeon, but perhaps that is just too many medical TV shows talking).   How did I let a person like that go?  At the time, it was easy.  There were so many others willing to treat me shoddily -- clearly, I needed to date them instead.   

A lifelong theme it seems.  

Agh!  

And now that I realize my problem (if not its solution, quite yet), as is karmically just, all of the nice guys from my past have moved on -- they are married or engaged.  They are starting to build the family life of which I can only dream.   

As the favored aphorism of one Hillary Rodham Clinton  goes:  You must bloom where you are planted.  So I must make the best of where I am.  Even if this is not the life I wanted, it can be a good one.  There may be a part of me that may always carry a sadness for what I can never have, but it does not have to be the majority of my experience.  I need to focus on giving back to others in different ways.   On moving the focus away from myself.  I have spent a great deal of time navel-gazing.  It has been -- and can be -- helpful.  But it can also be trying and frustrating and scary. I think turning outside of myself and towards trying to be a help to others would do -- at least me -- a lot of good. 

I think that would be most productive.   I need to make a plan... 

So who is the dog in this situation?

In shockingly appropos bit of luck, what happened to be on Lifetime "Television for Women" tonight as I was on the treadmill:   When Harry Met Sally.

Men and women can never be friends, you know.  Because the sex part always gets in the way. 

It is one of my favorite movies of all time.  I know 80 percent of the screenplay by heart.  I used to watch it, nearly weekly in college.   I have not seen the movie since my college graduation.

Now it has a whole different resonance.   Originally, I thought I understood, but I didn't.   Today, as opposed to twelve years ago, I am Sally's age.  Her complaints, her pain, are my own.   She seemed so high strung twelve years ago.   Today, she seems so reasonable -- like someone who just "wants things the way she wants them."  

So can I find my Harry?  Is that possible?  

I remain dubious.  And, as always,  alone.

"She smells like soup."

The title to this post is, of course (to any child of the 90's who was/is a TV addict), an obvious invocation of Chandler Bing and his issues dating.

He was alone because he was too picky.  Because he rejected a woman he claimed to like generally because, and I quote, "she smelled like soup."   

This has been one of the excuses I have co-opted for my own interminable state of singleness and solitude.  I am just too picky.  They all smell like soup.   Well, all of them except those who are arrogant and emotionally damaged and who treat me badly and leave me crying and making myself less than (and who, uncannily, generally have some sort of affiliation with the armed forces).

So, in short, I am alone because I make bad choices, discarding good men because they "smell like soup", and because the men I do choose are assholes, in one form or another, and so it is doomed because, of course, it is "them and not me."

Except that all of this is absolute bullshit.

Don't get me wrong, it is necessary bullshit.  It is the bullshit you need to tell yourself to get through the day, to get through your life.  It is the bullshit your girlfriends have to tell you in order not to hurt your feelings and because they love you and desperately want to believe that your inability to have a relationship longer than the lifespan of a fruitfly (approximately 8 to 12 days) has nothing to do with you, and everything to do with this abstractly odious man.

And yet, again, generally, it is, in fact, all bullshit.

The truth of the matter:   It is me.  

Again:  It. is. me.

 

There is something profoundly wrong with me, and I am simply unable to put my finger on it.  I think I can try, and probably get pretty close.   But, what scares me most, is even if I can approximate it, I don't think I can change it.

For the last couple of years, I have been working on convincing myself that the reason I could not find and keep a partner in life was that I failed to be authentic when I dated.  I was so insecure and nervous that I spun-plates and completely obscured "who I really am."    

Well, here we are, approximately two years down the road from making that discovery, and the more "real" I become, the more horrifying I am to my dating prospects.  It isn't achieving authenticity that is my problem, it is that who I am, such that it is, is not in fact a very appealing package.   I need to acknowledge this hard truth, regroup and reassess.   There is something very wrong with me -- in a very fundamental sense -- despite the paper selling points I may being to the table, things that may spur initial interest.  There is a very deep and searing flaw in my personality which makes me unsuitable for dating, let alone commitment.  Even the occasional considerate and kind fellow I happen to date finds it unappealing and runs at the first opportunity.  If I don't confront this hard reality, I am going to be left with living out my greatest nightmare for the rest of my life:  being utterly alone.  I have been looking back, trying to understand if it is just revisionist history or if it is in fact true, and as near as I can figure it is my lifelong truth:  My lifelong overarching goal was to be loved.  Really, I have never had any goal other than that.   I never wanted to be anything in particular or to achieve anything in particular.   I have been successful in my life (well, by a fairly loose measure of the standard), but mostly because I feared not being successful, and I was seeking the approval (a weaker strain of love?) from others.

I feel that it is inappropriate to speak about now, because it inflicts pain on those I care about, but my life in its current definition is almost schizophrenic for me:  on one hand I can be proud that I am self-supporting and have "achieved" a respectable paper resume, on the other hand, my life is an absolute horror show.  This is exactly where I never wanted to be.   I never wanted to be old and alone.   I wanted to fall in love, and have a family, and not have to keep throwing my bruised heart out on the table to be mishandled and dropped and stepped on again and again.  It is not that strong.  I am not that strong.  

I sustain.  I endure.   I "endure" far less than others that have actually been tested -- by health issues, economic issues, crises of conscience.   I know my problems are small and petty.   I hate myself for not being able to dismiss them.   In fact, in this week of absolutely awesome inspiration, of an elation and a bonding with my fellow Americans, with absolute strangers that I did not know -- the culmination of nearly a year of wishing  and hoping, of more that two hundred years of pervasive inequality -- I was soaring on Tuesday night, and I spent my entire day walking around silently crying in corners today.

I am leaving the country on Monday and I am grateful for it. 

I need to pull myself together.  And contemplation on foreign soil seems to be just the right palliative at this moment. 

It has been suggested to me that I should get back on the anti-depressants.  Perhaps I should.  I went off of them because they made me feel like a slug and instead of feeling bad, I simply felt nothing.   It might be nice to take a holiday from feeling for a while.   But I fear letting go.

 

A good man, a seemingly honorable person has rejected me for reasons I cannot even fathom.  Well, I know it is my flaw -- I just haven't pinpointed it yet.  His response is a complete 180.  It is puzzling.  It is searingly painful.  But I keep such things to myself, as I know I am ridiculous.  It is stupid that I am so affected by someone I knew for a matter of days.  It is the ultimate demarcation of loser, and of weakness.  Of an inability to parse what is important from what is inconsequential.  When it comes to matters where my heart -- my romantic life -- is involved.  I have no ability to shield myself.   All of this hurts.   It hurts -- a sting, persistent, eventually to bruise, if not to sear.  

What is wrong with me?  Why can't I fix it?

I need to figure out what it is first.

It makes me sad to admit that I am so weak.  That shepherding my heart around this world for thirty-one years has made me so tired.   I know I generally bruise easily (I was black and blue all through my boxing bootcamp), but my heart seems to be the only part of my body that seems unable to recover.  Each bruise may lessen a bit, but it remains incorporated into the landscape.  Simultaneously indented and swollen, ever tender.   

I want to be resilient.  But I am tired.   But I cry.  And cry.  And cry. 

I know how annoyed everyone is with hearing this.   I am working on being better about my stoicism as well.  So far, I managed to avoid discussing this at all with anyone this week.  But here it has spilled out, as is my way.  

My arena of last resort.   

I am sure my comment trolls will eviscerate me for it -- and in their defense, they are right, I am dour and self-pitying in this format, and it is indeed tiresome.   

But again, this is my forum of last resort.   The niceties and tempering, even comments are all used up in interacting with the outside world.   This is my safe place to dump my sadness.  To try to make sense of it.  To try to off-load it.  

It does not lead to very pleasant reading, but, my hope is, it leads to more pleasant living... for me at least.

This will be, however, a post without a conclusion, as I don't have any answers here.   I have only my painfully flawed self.  My only company for the long haul.

And perhaps that is the answer.   But the acceptance of that brutal reality is something that eludes me.   

Fingers Crossed

For various reasons both political and personal.   

Hope.  

Change.  

Commitment.

Equality.  

Acceptance.

Love.  

Possibility to Become Reality? 

BELIEVE.

Counting Sheep

I should have been asleep two hours ago.   I will pay for that tomorrow.   Yet still, I cannot sleep. Generally I know why.   Having fallen victim to the stomach flu which left me bedridden for three days, and relying heavily on Nyquil to sleep through the achiness, I think my body is now confused into thinking it has created such a stockpile of sleep that it no longer needs to resort to such a lazy state of being.  I would go back to the Nyquil, but I have to be up at 5:15 am for my boxing bootcamp and Ny-sleep will never allow that to happen.  I do have the most vivid and wonderfully odd dreams with Nyquil though.  Or maybe they just seem vivid and odd because I am able to remember them -- if only for a moment -- as I am generally not able to do otherwise.  As is the case with much of my waking life, my vivid Ny-dreams seem to center on men.  No they aren't Ny-rotic,  well, not by standard definitions.  Okay, that sounds bad too.  They are not weirdly kinky or anything to that effect.   In truth, they are not sexual at all.  Typically they tend to play themselves out as mise en scenes of the truly mundane:  starting a day getting ready for work,  meeting up for a family event,  preparing dinner, deciding on what movie to go to,  watching a ballgame from the right field bleachers,  taking a call between client meetings.  The only constant is that they involve me interacting with a (different, though plucked from real life) man who is my presumable life partner of some sort and who is interacting with me in what I imagine is the standard loving way that a partner does in these mundane activities.   Yes, it is true, my wildest and most erotic fantasies center around being perfectly boring, normal, standard and barely-if-even-remotely-first base sexual.  (Side note:  I realize at this moment that, even after 31 years of life, I am not entirely sure what "first base" really means.  I am assuming at the time of this writing that it involves making out but with no hands involved, but I am not sure that is quite right.  Anyway, my mundane fantasies all involve a lot of hand holding, hugging and cuddling, sweet kisses, and absolutely no removal of clothing).  I suppose that it stands to reason that we tend to fetishize the unknown and the taboo, and, as such, domestic bliss would qualify as such in my life.  This is not actually a segue into my feeling sorry for myself.  Truly.  In fact, this is just an effort to clear my head so that I can actually sleep so I don't get hit in the face again tomorrow morning because I am not paying attention to the punch combinations that were called for sparring (yes, that has happened on more than one occasion).  But I think this is a segue -- if not a great one -- to a point I have been meaning to touch on, and will probably want to revisit in a more coherent way, in the future: For me, and for every one of my siblings (and there are 4 of them, so this observation, if slightly less than statistically significant, is at least slightly more than anecdotal) emotional affection is something for which we would do anything.   I don't mean "boil your bunny" type anything, but rather a more personally emotionally perilous "anything".   We are so taken with the fact that someone would profess to love us or be romantically emotionally invested enough that we lose all sense of perspective and immediately hand the other person all of the emotional power in the relationship (or faux-relationship, such that it is).  And there we all are: powerless and addicted to the affirmation from the other person, and then when things go south, as they inevitably always do, the pain sears and resonates and echoes,  far deeper and for far longer than it ought to do.   As we are all fairly different people, and as my oldest brother (who lived with us only starting in his teens and who was functionally an only child before that time) seems to suffer the least from this phenomenon, I can only venture to guess that this is a symptom of having grown up in a household devoid of emotional affection.  I *know* my parents love us, but I never *felt* it.   I know my parents did not love each other, and I saw it (and still see it) every day.  And we always saw everyone's frustrations and tension seep out and slosh around, infusing everything.   Still happens to this day.  It is why going home is very taxing.   Again this is ineloquent, and it is probably doing a disservice as it sells short all that my parents did for us, and our own roles in allowing this to be our lot in life.   As I have said here before, and as I say here now, if only as a placeholder, my parents did their best given their lot in life, and it is amazing what they were able to accomplish and all that they gave us even when times were so tough.  Their actions were expressions of love.  I recognize and celebrate that.  I realize now, however, that should I ever be blessed with children, that kids aren't so good with nuance -- especially in the midst of turbulent times, they need to hear things loud and clear:  I love you,  I love you, I love you, work hard, be respectful, and you are wonderful just as you are.   Otherwise they spend the rest of their lives simultaneously craving and doubting those very words.