Barbed: Sweet Words for the Lonely
People always have things to say about my being single.
“You’ll find someone soon!”
“It’ll happen when you least expect it.”
“You’re lucky, you don’t have to put up with _____.”
“God has a plan for you.”
They think they’re helping, but they aren’t. They don’t know. It’s also different than when they tell this to their friends that have just gotten out of a relationship. I’ve never had one and I long ago passed the age where you’re supposed to have at least some semblance of an idea of what goes into dating. The older I get, the more difficult it is. The more I’m supposed to know, and the stranger it is that I don’t.
I won’t meet someone soon. I don’t go out. I don’t talk to people. I have the same group of friends I’ve had since I was 12. I can barely hold a conversation with the person at the checkout, so how am I supposed to meet someone and start dating? And when you expect to die alone, how can you possibly expect it less?
The people that say I’m lucky because I don’t have to put up with whatever bullshit relationship issue they choose are just fucking morons. They don’t know what it’s like to be alone like I am. When they look at being single, what they see is the freedom to do what they want without anyone to hold them accountable. They think of the annoying things that their partner does. They don’t think of the pain that comes with it, the crushing emotional and spiritual pain. They don’t remember all of the small things their partner does; the small comforting touches, the kind looks, or the intimacy that they share. They aren’t thinking about what it’s like looking at their bed and knowing that, for the X00th day straight, they get to share it with nobody. They also do not realize that when they are alone, they have touches and lovers to remember; that I have none of those small comforts. When I close my eyes and think of the women I have loved, I have to remember that not a goddamned one of them felt the same for me, that I have continually sought woman that want nothing to do with me.
And, finally… God did have a plan for me and I’m pretty sure I fucked it away 9 years ago. I know what it was, and I fucking ran. I hated Him and I told Him to take His plan and fuck off. I wasn’t going to do what He wanted after all He had let happen to me. I was angry, and spiteful, and a stupid fucking child. I made my biggest mistake for petty grievances and I’ve suffered the consequences. It’s not rational, I know, but in spite of all I have seen and learned, I can’t shake my faith in a Higher Power. I know all of the logical reasoning against a Higher Power, but there’s still that voice at the back of my mind that says “But what if you’re wrong?”, and so I believe, even if I can’t yet bring myself to live it. And if I believe, then I have to accept that He has plans, and that there are pros and cons to following them. I can’t dwell on the what-ifs, but I can see where the path diverged.
Finding Truths in Broken Places: Attempting to Move Forward With My Life
I don’t write the long insightful posts anymore. I want to, but it’s not in me right now. I start them, but I never finish them because, oftentimes, they are just rehashings of the same things I’ve written about, which is not productive. Because of this, i have spent the last few months in a particularly introverted and introspective phase. I have been looking at all of this stuff, and I have been trying to deal with it.
Why do I need love? Why do I love those that will not love me? Why does this all hurt me so much? What can I do to change it?
I have also dealt with some of this in less than ideal ways. I mildly latched onto someone from my own history, whom I have known for years but has always just been around. Again, I knew nothing would come of it, but I felt that I needed someone to having feelings for, because I was hurting inside. There were a couple of very drunken nights were I found truth at the expense of what little dignity I had left. I pissed her off and creeped her out, but I think part of why it was her is because I knew that things would work out in the end, that they would go back to their old, awkward ways once I worked my shit out. And they are almost back there.
In the past few weeks I have finally, truly found that I am not ready. I saw it before, but I never understood it or knew it. It was always something abstract, but now it is concrete. I am still broken on a fundamental level. I still cannot love myself, not even a little. I actually quite actively hate who and what I am. I want it all to be different.
I also found that my attachment to women that will not love me comes from my unhappiness. I want, more than anything, to be happy. The reason I look to a relationship is because the only times in my life that I can remember being happy is when I had someone I cared for. My life outside of those scant few incidences is mired in depression, self-loathing, sadness, and anger. I have lived with depression all of my life, but the happy moments were those when I had someone. In them, I could find the love I can not show myself, even if they did not love me. I could see my love reflected in them, and I could be happy.
But this is not healthy for me. It is hiding from the issues. I’ve never dealt with my depression, just survived it as best I could, even when I almost could not. It has pervaded my life and run it for many years. I have put it off and tried to hide it at every turn. I don’t have a way to deal with it yet, but at least I am now aware of this.
All of this leads me to the knowledge and true understanding that a relationship will not solve anything for me, nor is it likely to be particularly healthy for me at this time. Knowing that does not make the pain of it less, but at least I know it. I still have the needs and desires, but now I can understand when they are misplaced and, more importantly, why. I still have no desire greater than a relationship, but I know that I need to put it away for now, until I’m in a better place. I don’t really want to though. It’s like giving up on your dreams. It fucking sucks.
So, now, I try to accept my current reality and figure out how best to deal with it; to fix it. I don’t know how, or even if I can fix what is wrong with me, but I have to try. There is a distinct possibility that the condition is permanent, and that I will never have what it is I desire most, but I have to try and put off that fear and focus on doing what I can. I have no plan. I have no idea of where to start. I just know I must.
Insomnia, Redux: Counting Bodies Like Sheep, to the Rhythm of the War Drums
I haven’t been sleeping well for 2-3 weeks now. Insomnia is a common enough theme in my life, but I always loathe it. When it sets in, I have trouble accomplishing much of anything. I can function enough to get things done that need to be done, but I struggle with all else.
When my insomnia kicks into high gear, I have trouble staying awake when I need to be and am wide awake when I lie down in bed. Most days I lay down between 2 and 3 PM (as I work nights), but I typically end up lying there, awake and thinking, until at least 5, sometimes 6 or even 7. When I lie down, my mind seems to start churning and thinking on things and it keeps me awake. I can’t stop it, though I’ve heard a thousand ways to ‘cure’ my insomnia. None of them have worked. It is a lifetime affliction for me.
The severity of it right now is due to depression, which is another thing I can’t help. I’ve tried to ignore it for a bit, but all of my signs are there: insomnia, lack of desire, seeing people less, I haven’t been writing or drawing as much, and my diet has gotten worse. Although, I don’t think this will be a big depression. It always shows up eventually, but it always goes away too. I wish it didn’t though. I wish there was something I could do to keep it away. I wish that I could finally have a period of sustained happiness without caveat. Happiness is always tempered by eventual depression and the depression usually eats up whatever happiness that I had.
I just want to scream and tear shit up. I do not like being like this, depressed. I hate it. All I can think about now is all that is wrong in my life. I’m still alone. I have a job, but it barely pays my bills. I have friends, but I can’t see them often because of my schedule. I have art and writing, but it doesn’t pay any bills.
Honestly, I feel like the worst adult ever. I know I’m not, but I don’t even kind of have my hit together. I have a job, but I’m still poor as fuck. I barely make enough to cover my bills each month, let alone save for things like a car or a place of my own. There’s no apparent room for moving up at my job and every 12 months, I have to take 3 months off and reapply if I want to keep doing it. I love this job, but it isn’t enough. The problem is, I have no idea what else I could do. I just don’t know. Add to that a mountain of debt from college, a credit card, medical bills and a couple other bills I couldn’t pay because I have been poor as hell my entire adult life. I’m in a massive hole and I don’t know if I can get out. I’m paying on stuff, but it means that I have little to no money left for myself. And to round it all off, I’m still alone. And not just alone, but eternally alone. So alone that I have never actually had anyone in a decade.
I think what gets me down most is seeing others go through hardships and then come out better on the other side. We all go through some shit, it’s inevitable. The problem I see in my life is… I never come out the other side. I might get a couple months where things appear to be better, but eventually it turns back around and goes back to being the same ole shitty life. When your life plays out like that and you watch others go on to have such great lives in spite of having gone through the wringer, it hurts. I do not wish bad on them, I just wish that things would get better for me. I wish I knew how to make things better. I’ve helped a lot of people through their tough times, but there are only a few that have been around for mine.
I need to find a way to get past all of this though. I just don’t know how. I don’t want to do it alone, but I don’t think I get a choice in that.
In the end, it was all that I needed
No matter what comes from this trip, I had to take it. If I hadn’t, I would have always wondered. I never could’ve let go and moved on. Until we met in person, I could not truly know that friendship was all there was. A part of me knew and understood that, but that deep longing inside of me could never accept it through any means other than directly seeing it.
I’ll not say it doesn’t hurt, it does. Unlike the past times though, this will not hold me back. If anything, it is motivation to find someone that wants more than friendship from me. I’ve been in this place before, but never like this. This time, I can accept that friendship is where it ends. I am at peace with that. All too often the only thing wanted of me was friendship, and it always hurt me to the core. This time, the pain is not so deep, it is in losing something I never had. It is ‘Oh, well, it kinda sucks that I can’t have it, but I never had it in the first place so I can’t be too upset about it’. It’s like buying a lotto ticket. When you buy it, you hope, and you dream and you imagine all of the amazing things you’ll buy, but then the time comes and you see that you did not win. It hurts when you see that you didn’t win, but only for a moment. The moment quickly passes and you realize that you did not lose anything, you just did not gain anything either. You are in the same place you were before.
Though, in this trip, I did gain. I gained knowledge, of myself and of the situation. I cannot be unhappy about that. I learned that I have a voice, I had just been cowed into not using it over many years of being ignored by most around me. My voice is still small, but it is there and it is growing. I’ll stretch it and grow it from here on out. I do not need to fear what may happen if I act and voice things. Instead, I can just deal with what happens when I do. The pain of dealing with it is far lesser than the pain of always wondering what the fuck would have happened had I raised my voice and declared myself.
Internalizing everything is what drove me to such dark places in the past. To avoid them, I have to be open and honest, though that is no easy task. Talking is not something my family has ever done. We always asked about how our days were and how things in general were going, but we never sat down and talked about the shit we’d gone through. I never talked about cutting myself or wanting to die. We didn’t even talk about my mother’s mental issues. We never talked about my dad or my sister’s issues. We just acted the part of the slightly dysfunctional but largely happy family. I had a great childhood in the confines of my family (school and elsewhere are several other blogs entirely), but I don’t know that I was really prepared for the world at large. I think I was given all the tools I needed, but I was never shown how to use them.
My dad is an amazing thinker, a brilliant person, and so very inventive. He always has answers and he always finds solutions. My mother is a very loving and compassionate woman. She is also the rock for anyone that needs it. My sister is the most driven and hardworking person I’ve ever met. She has created a life path for herself that will lead her to incredible things. From them all, I learned strength, compassion, humility, and love. I also learned to to think for myself, to be me at all times. I learned that no matter what, you take care of those you love, and I learned how to be a strong person, even if I lost that knowledge for a time.
Without this trip, I do not think I could have really seen all that. I knew I had strength, but I did not realize just how strong I was. This trip has allowed me to see myself more clearly. I had to go away for a bit to find myself. I am many of the things I knew myself to be at one point, but I had lost them all. I had had some stolen from me through pain and fear, while others I hid from myself so that I might avoid pain and fear. However, I have found these things again. I see now that they were not figments of my imagination, but things that were lost and needed to be found.
I have also learned from this trip that there are things I need to let go of. Things I have held onto for many, many years that were killing me. I need not fear pain. Pain is inevitable. I cannot stave it off. It will find me at some point. The thing I needed to learn is that it does not matter. I do not need to let it hold me down any longer. I need to deal with it and move past it rather than try to avoid it. Avoiding it causes it to come back for many, many years. If I deal with it, it will be but a moment, and then it will be gone.
Another thing I have learned is that I need to leave Oregon. Though I have spent this entire trip at my friend’s house, I can feel just how much more at home I am in a large city. It is no longer an idea that I should leave Eugene, it is an imperative. If I want to make any big change in my life, it has to start with leaving Oregon. I will always love Eugene, but it is far too small for me. In being where I am this week, and looking back on Eugene, it is much the same as when I look back on my depression. Where I am now is brighter and clearer, while where I was is so dark and cluttered. Eugene kept me safe through everything, but in order to become myself, I need to leave it and find a new place to call home.
In the end, the trip is nothing like what played through my head, but it is everything it needed to be. It is closure and it is new doors. This trip is the time away I needed to find what it was that mattered. This was a centering point and it will allow me go even further than I thought I would. It was… perfect. I foresee that this will be a catalyst to a much better version of myself.
I am sure I will talk more about this trip in the future, but it will always be done in the anonymous. Where I went and who I was with is only important to myself and that person. For the world at large, knowing that I went is enough.
A Most Welcome and Enjoyable Temporary Hiatus
I want to write tonight. I don’t really have a strong urge to say much, I just feel like I should. I’m probably going to be away from this for the next week. In about 2 hours, I leave to go on a trip. I’m excited for it, but I fear I have placed too much on it. I had expectations and hopes for a time, but as the day has come closer those have fallen away. All I can think of now is the moment I get there. I’m excited for that moment, but I fear getting hurt. I seem to be really good at finding things that will hurt me and then diving head first into them.
In truth, I have little to say. Mostly, I just wanted to write to say that I would be away and this may be the last post for a little while. I don’t expect to do much writing while on my trip, though it’s always possible as I will have the comp with me for work. Adieu, I will see you on the other side with new eyes and new ideas.
– Jeremiah
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