Pogonip and Playa Dust

Saturday, July 18, 2009

The Face of a Monster

I am at a point where I'm accepting the fact that I'm going to be single for a long time, an indeterminate period of time, the time it takes to heal and find strength. These past few years have been really tough on me. I am further and further disallusioned by my own capabilities and offerings, and I have further become more frightened and distrustful because I feel overwhelmingly and consistently abandoned. I still have hopes and dreams, but they ain't going to happen any time soon. I don't think I'll be the guy who ever has the picket fences with a partner/husband by my side.

I understand that what happens is largely due to the decisions I make, and I keep finding that I continue to make poor choices. I change the choices, the circumstances and the setting, and I still find that I'm making poor decisions for myself. At this point, the choice I'm making is wallowing in my defeatism. I know that this is a pathetic and weak way out, but I just can't keep going on like this. I put too much of myself in other people. I obsess all too compulsively about all that is wrong with me and why I'm not good enough for the person whom I love instead of validating my perspective. I become too defensive and simultaneously lost. I am way too broken.

I don't want to go through this struggle anymore. It's too difficult. There are several parts to these feelings of defeatism contributing to my general state of being overwhelmed. Partially it's because I feel too fragile to deal with all the emotional stress and strain that I've been experiencing because of my indeterminate status with Soul Mate. Partially it's because of so many other previous experiences with relationships and dating within the past 5 years span (encompassing the time when the relationship with my ex tipped towards unhealthy). Partially it's because I'm still too insecure to take matters in my own hands and demand change, compromise, or conciliation, and I don't see myself as an equal, rather, I feel generally subordinate. Now this was not my soul mate's or anyone else's fault. This is my own failing. I love too much whilst simultaneously distrusting whom, why, and what I love.

What is that all about? It's about me falling in love with the mirror. Not myself, mind you, but those who remind me of my own shortcomings. I can't fix myself, so I become codependent and gravitate to others who I feel I can do a better job of taking care of, since I can't seem to take care of myself very well. It's interesting to dissect these patterns. I'm attracted to a particular type, physical type aside, I historically have fallen for people who are in some way haunted and needy themselves.

In a lot of ways, I realize that I'm attracted to men who have much the same demons as I. It's sadistically narcissistic, and overtly tragic. I know I'm innately a nurturer, and I have a healthy dose of co-dependency attached to my personality. I realize this, and I have been working on it for a long time, but my own insecurity and need to help others at my own expense (or so that I may forget my own concerns) creeps inexorably back, and it's often fully entrenched before I realize it.

Well, that's only partially true. I realize that it's happening as it's developing, I'm so caught up in the moment that I don't care - and I regret it later when I'm hurt all the more. It's not any one else's fault. It's not my Soul Mate's fault. It wasn't my ex's fault. This is undeniably me. This is my shortcoming manifested every time I emotionally connect. My own failing hurts me, and then it hurts others. This is the part that is unforgivable. I hurt others, and I hurt the most those whom I love the most.

I realize that I'm a monster.

That's the rub, I know better, but I allow myself to fall into this pattern of behavior. I allow myself to get close to people and then I hurt them. I need to stop allowing myself to get close, I can't hurt those with whom I do not connect. This is where I really need to find my strengths and develop better skills at being independent. It is my fear of being alone and it is my irrational desire to be needed that makes me seek to pair up, and pairing up is the brewing of disaster. It's not even about being more or less selfish, responsible, happy, caring, open, sensitive, etc... it's about me simply taking care of myself and respecting myself enough to be comfortable being alone so that I can't hurt those whom I love most. I can't allow myself to be psychologically driven by being needed. I can't allow myself to be driven by fear of being alone. I see that being alone is probably inevitable because of my own deep psychological scars.

It's really weird. I can't seem to take control of my own life and stand up for myself in my private life. What is it about me that caves in and desires personal relationships? I have to find that piece of me that is strong elsewhere, such as the strength I have and show in my professional life (when I'm working). There is obviously inner strength in me somewhere, and I just need to apply those skills to my private life. The problem is that I don't know what it is exactly I'm looking for, or why there is such a differential. It's so frustrating to see the dichotomy.

Perhaps I need to practice more in non-threatening situations. I could use a bit of role play to figure this out. Currently my friends (whom over the past five years I have held more and more at arms length) tell me that I'm making bad choices, but they give me precious little advice on how to make better choices. I've been ignoring their advice because I thought they were wrong. Now I see they are right, just not in the way that I think that most of them intended. I am making bad choices, not in the people I fall for, but in the fact that I'm allowing myself to be emotionally connected. Perhaps one day I will be ready for a relationship. That day is just now now. I need the confidence and the strength to love and to trust, and until I have both, I do not deserve anybody. I don't need to keep being the monster hurting those around me.

I do not need to continue to be the monster that hurt the man who I love so dearly now.

I am that monster. I did hurt him, deeply. I do not deserve him. I may never hear from him again. I am so very regretful. I love him so completely.

I need to find my own voice. My own strength. My own will. My own hope. I need to make different choices, different from all the choices I have made thusfar for myself. Only then perhaps will I be ready for love. I am not there yet. I don't have any of the pieces that I should have yet in my possession. Right now those qualities are ephemeral in me. I have no foundation. I must build one. I realize that now.

8:35 PM

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About

I'm a gay man from Reno, Nevada who now lives in the Bay Area (hopefully soon to be San Francisco). I've been blogging for a couple of years but had taken a break from writing to clear my head. I've been in two relationships lasting over the past ten years, and I'm still trying to find my own way. I'm continuously on the path towards figuring out who I really am, what I want from life, and where I'm going. It has been a tough road, but the light is getting brighter.

This blog is a work in progress. For me, the work is to continuously find the productive parts of my life and my behavior, incorporate positive changes permanently into my life, and slough off the stuff that isn't so great. I've left a career path and the city I've lived in my entire adult life for love, and now am struggling to find work and a place to settle (a victim of the economy, as so many others are). Even so, I found that I'm generally quite capable on my own, but I am still human and fallable. This blog is about gaining my confidence and owning my own life. It's about a small town gay man learning about himself in an urban city. It's about me.

This little corner is my personal space. Here I can chronicle my behavior, share my thoughts, and engage in my own conversation. Through this medium, I can share what it is that I'm thinking as life unfolds before me. I do this so that I can look back - and ultimately assess how I am really living.

WARNING: This collection of random thoughts can be explicit! Please be warned. Do not read the contents of this blog if it will offend you. If reading this blog causes you to break local laws, please leave now. By following any links or opening any page of the blog you declare under penalties of perjury that you are not a minor or in the company of a minor and are entitled to have access to material intended for mature, responsible individuals capable of making decisions about the content that they wish to read. Any further material you read will be the result of explicit action upon your part.

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