Enigmatic Understanding

Sometimes, the pieces just sorta fall into place.

For awhile now, I've been puzzling about my own individual standing and how it is perceived by others in areas such as:  potential romantic relationships with women, my social circle and activities of choice, even my relationships with family members and coworkers.  These thoughts, as you probably know, have been cause of more than a little consternation. 

On Tuesday, I was at open mic night with Erica and Jen and company.  Erica decided to put me on the allegorical shrink's couch.  She said that there are a few women among our group who think I have what it takes to attract a woman, but that I am dealing in surroundings where I am not meeting a potential romantic interest who is close enough to my own age.  I think that's a fair assessment, because my own intended target demographic of potential dating partners are women in their mid 30s to mid 40s.  All of my friends among Erica's crowd are mid 20s to early 30s; and, as such, just too young for me and them to be on the same page, socially.  Age is an inhibitor in that group, but a few of them, as I mentioned, see potential for me to be a good dating prospect.  Some of the qualities these young women say that I have working in my favor are a sense of style, and that I always smell nice...thank you, Old Spice!

Of course, I was in the mood to debate the notion, and take Erica's premise to task.  I told her that I was, apparently, not acceptable dating material because, by God, results matter, and I am not currently dating anyone.  Nevermind that I have not made much of an effort to extend my social connections beyond Erica's inner circle, and try to meet people closer to my own age.  To say so, would only have weakened my own self-indicting attack, and probably given Erica the upper hand in the debate.  Whenever truth gets in the way of my reasons for psychologically beating myself up, I simply choose to ignore it.  Facts, as Roanld Reagan said, are stubborn things.  So, I countered that, with all my perceived good qualities her friends mentioned, there is no aspect of me that needs to be fixed.  Nevermind that I like to psychologically beat myself up; that is just facts being stubborn again.  My theory being that women are only interested in dating men in need of fixing, which may or may not be true - I don't know - but it sounded good, and Erica bought it, too.

We kept talking about those and mostly other topics, and then later in the evening Erica offered an opinion that I have been processing since she said it.  Erica said that she thinks I feel stuck.  It resonated immediately as being mostly true.  I knew I would need to look into it further, and I have been ever since she threw it out there. 

At the beginning of this year, the areas of my life that I was looking to improve were that I wasn't dating and I didn't really have a close circle of friends to socialize with on a regular basis.  I got invited to a night out for Erica's birthday party on March 31, and from that one night made enough contacts and connections to establish a new social circle of about 25 or 30 people who are glad to see me when I go out.  I also found a group of a half dozen, or so, folks, who became friends on a much more personal level, and those folks have been the greatest blessing in my life in the last ten years.

My social skills were a bit rusty when I started to get myself back out there, but my new group of friends made re-assimilation quick, fun, and painless.  Prior to this I had largely gotten by as an introvert who made my contatcts by way of mandated exposure to classmates and coworkers.  When I stopped taking classes and my interpersonal dynamics at work changed, I had no source of or perceived need for self-initiated social moxy.  I was, and still am, proud to be an introvert.  Then today a thought occurred to me:

I'm enigmatic, but no one gets it...

By way of my current collaboration with Kerry, I am looking again at my introverted side.  I think the mistake I have been making this year was to think I needed to change that aspect of who I am in order to be liked.  I think that conundrum is what Erica was seeing when she said she thinks I feel stuck.  Erica was right!  I have been between a rock and a hard place trying to figure out how to reconcile the old me with someone who has friends.  I think I've sold my current group of friends too discerningly short.  Its possible that I can be both an introvert, and worthy of friends, companions...hell, who knows, maybe even a lover.  That maybe (and it seems a little strange for me to be thinking this about myself), just maybe, these people like me because I am different, and maybe a very special woman will, too. 

That being the case, I am going to re-incorporate some of my more introverted tendencies, but instead of brooding on them alone, I will make sure to observe the reaction and heed the input of my friends.  For the first time in my life, I have invested trust in those half dozen or so people mentioned above and in my last post.  I trust them as keenly as my own intuition.  I trust them to let me know when my own intuition is steering me wrong, 'cause sometimes enigmatism - as great as it can be - is no guarantee of an accurate view.

I am still trying to get away from the need to beat myself up.

"Secret Garden", Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. 

Want, Need & Desire

No matter how much logic I try to spin into my current situation, it always comes back to my fairly immediate intention to be part of a romantic relationship.  The lines that delineate desire versus need versus want are blurry.  I'm not sure it so much matters.

I think part of the disconnect, up 'til this point, has been the way in which I have made myself available for a romantic relationship, and really for all intimate, interpersonal relationships.  I give love, and I give it to the exclusion of taking it in return.  I don't accept reciprocation.  I emotionally spend myself on others, but I never invest in anyone.  Without too much finger-pointing or blame-gaming, I think this is because my foundational experiences were not what they should have been.

It is generally presumed that good begets good.  That may well be true in some long run, big picture knowledge or understanding; but, it doesn't always seem that way from an individual perspective.  I remember being hurt by someone close to me, then trying to fix the situation by responding with love and deference to that person.  That person's wrath increased.  That person continued to do things and say things that were hurtful.  That person nearly destroyed me.  So, I had to move onto other persons who responded positively to my expressions of love and deference.  More often than not, those people were being hurt by the same person whose meanness I eventually had to manage by way of paying the aggressor only cursory attention.  These others who received my investment of love and deference kindly needed to use all the capital that investment brought with it to sooth and heal their own emotional wounds and scars inflicted by the aggressive person.  For a very long time, my understanding was that love was to be given with the expectation of nothing in return.

For most of my childhood and adult life, the logical value of unrequited love - in every capacity - made perfect sense.  Since partnering up with Vickie in 2007, I have actively tried to fix my own thought patterns, and put my disillusionment with the treatment I have received from others in the past to rest for good.  I have made tremendous strides.  Through prayer and with God's help, I forgave all past indiscretions unconditionally.  The aggressor changed, and embraced the best within themself that they had to offer, and we have since been able to make peace.  The aggressor from my past continues to repair other relationships damaged by their past aggression. 

In establishing my own identity, my first and foremost goal from a very early age was to be not an aggressor, not mean.  On top of that, and later into my adult life, I realized that it felt good to give love freely to those who needed it.  I became a crisis manager, a fixer of situations and people broken.  I took a great deal of fulfillment and personal validation from that role.  I turned it into a career, and ultimately a lifestyle.  I never learned how to receive it back, though.  I was like a chef at a five star restaurant who lacked the social graces to dine at a table of my own setting; I''m still not sure which fork I'm supposed to use.

There have been people in life who have been so obviously good to me, in retrospect, that I have slowly learned to invest love into our mutual relationships - Jennifer Packard, Steve Jenkins, Debbie Dudley, Craig Johnson and Jack Radcliffe loved and still love me unconditionally.  It is upsetting, in a way, that the clarity for acknowledging what they have been doing for so many years has been so long in coming.  More recently, because of my work with Vickie and Kerry, I have been able to invest my love into a a few more close, personal friends in such a way that I know I can draw emotional support back from them when I need to.  My very dear friend Chelsea Romano has stepped up tremendously and makes a regular effort to try to truly understand me in a way that helps me to better understand myself.

Need is still a slippery slope for me, because I don't know how to necessarily appropriate it in relation to other kinds of feelings.  I don't know the boundaries of fairness or propriety where need is concerned.  I do have one amazingly special friend who is content to accept my expression of need.  When my whole world is topsy-turvy and everything feels like it has been turned upside down in my life - basically, when my world seems to have been totally shattered - Erica Bragg is my rock.  She is the one person that is absolutely and unquestionaly able to be relied on as an emotional point-of-reference and know that only good can come from it.  At this point, without a romantic partner in my life, I don't know where I'd find an external source of unyielding and constant reassurance that everything will always eventually be okay, were it not for Erica.

My recent experience with Ashley taught me to not try to bring a potential romantic interest too quickly into that circle of trust.  I am incredibly blessed to have professional care of Vickie and Kerry.  I feel beyond blessed by having Erica and Chelsea there to bring their sensitivity, wisdom and unwavering reliability to my journey of self-awareness.  I'm not completely sure what makes them care so much, but they make me feel like I matter.  I'm not going to question a good thing. 

Still, I imagine that it would be pretty cool to have that other person in my life who is an equal partner in every sense of the word.  That person that you instinctively know when to help, and the one who, when they say, "I've got this.", its not to tell you to back off, but just to let you know that this is an individual who has the strength and trust to invest and spend emotional need, too.

Until that person comes along, I'm blessed and content, but still definitely looking...

"When I Need You", Leo Sayer.

Mattering Matters

Kerry (my therapist) worked through some stuff with me on Tuesday that brought me to the root cause of why I feel as badly as I do as often as I do:  I don't feel like I matter.  Now, there are reasons this is the way I feel, and at least as many reasons why I should probably not feel that way, but Kerry got down to the root cause of my depression.  Kerry has been an awesome therapist, especially considering that I was not at all happy to have to find anyone other than Vickie to provide that type of collaborative relationship.  I've hit the jackpot twice!

Now, when I say I feel like I don't matter, that is all I men.  That is how I feel.  I am blessed and grateful to have nice people - both family and friends - in my life.  In fact, all glory to God, I am blessed in abundance!  But Kerry and I got talking about a situation when I took a modest dinner to a friend.  Kerry thought it was a wonderful gesture because it would make the recipient feel like they mattered.  That phraseology feel like they mattered immediately and very obviously resonated within me.  I knew that was the feeling I had been lacking.  Over and above needing a date or a romantic partner, I have never really felt as though I have mattered, simply for the sake that everyone should matter...without condition.  My sense of mattering has almost always been attached to some kind of expectation of me.  They want me around 'cause I say nice things, or they need me here to manage their crises.  I have always believed that in order to matter, I had to provide some function or service.  I matter at work 'cause they need a warm body behind the console for eight hours, that kind of thing.

Kerry took our session several minutes over limit and into the next scheduled session, in fact.  She dimed me into the writings of a guy named Daniel Siegel.  I immediately downloaded his book Mindsight via the Kindle app on my phone.  Just the introduction of the book has begun to clue me into ways of the mind working (and ways to rework it) that I had never considered.  This all happened because Kerry listened to every word I said.  Kerry pointed me in a direction wherein I have already been able to avail myself of greater clarity into my own thoughts and feelings.  The basic principle of what I have read so far in Siegel's book is to know and put into practice the difference between BEING any given way and FEELING that way.  Just because I feel sad, doesn't mean I am sad.  Just because I feel like a loser doesn't mean I am a loser.  Siegel seems to advance that BEING and FEELING are two completely different things.  Those of you who have followed my blog recently probably can understand how freeing this kind of knowledge is for me.  In fact, I told a very dear friend tonight that this may get me to a point where I quit throwing myself under the bus.  I said it won't happen overnight, but that I'm already moving to a new corner where the bus doesn't come by as frequently.  I need to let up on myself.  I've been in self-attack mode for way too long.  If a woman doesn't want to date me, or some people don't want me in their social group, its probably just their need for something different, and not something wrong with who I am.  I think more people than not will probably like who I am just fine.

I also got another book entitled Party of One:  the Loners' Manifesto by Anneli Rufus.  This book honors the choices and ways of being for people like me who are more introverted.  I am at a bit of a crossroads right now trying to figure out the best course for myself going forward, and the knowledge I am drawing from both of these books, I'm sure, will help tremendously. 

I am at a crossroads because I am finding that I am not fulfilled by only going to this bar and that for open mic night.  I do kinda miss going to MaGerk's on Tuesday night for trivia, but still, its a bar.  While bars are great, they are not my target environment for some of the goals of my social agenda.  I need to add more options to my social repertoire.  I need to get involved in some kind of activity that challenges me and pushes my boundaries a little bit more.

I am also discovering that some things I believed about myself are not true at all.  For instance, I believed I needed to be in a committed romantic relationship.  I don't need that, I want that.  I need to find a way to realize that I do, in fact, matter, and probably have mattered, unconditionally, to more people than I realized.  I think that until I get a good handle on the latter, there is absolutely no sense in trying to incorporate the former.  Relationships need to flourish in a psychologically healthy environment; I've seen too many potentially good ones go bad the other way.

I have even gotten my head around the confusion of feeling need for a person whom I thought it was inappropriate to feel that need for.  Now, I understand that feeling of need was there because that wonderful, special other person "saw" the healthy me that I couldn't seem to see for myself.  That person also would not abide my self destructive categorizations of who I am as a person.  Even when my argument for being a loser was "rock solid", this person simply rejected it and walked away.  I am happy and proud, and so very blessed and appreciative to be able to need this person in my life, and to count on them to be there for me, even when I'm not there for myself.  There are friends, there are lovers, there are confidants.  Then, there are some individuals who come along in life who are so entirely special that no label is adequate to capture the meaning and importance of who they are.  That person for me is beyond amazing!

With this newfound knowledge about myself and my inner processes, there are bound to be some changes.  I will probably start to re-embrace some of my more solitary pursuits, like photography, and not be so caught up in trying to change to be a social butrerfly.  Maybe instead of trying to morph into some kind of socially graceful butterfly that I'm not, I can create respect within myself and others for the warm-and-fuzzy caterpillar that I am - one who is less forcedly gregarious and perhaps a bit more casually austere, but who loves people in his own unique way.

"The Heart of the Matter", Don Henley.

Invisible Touch

I went out for coffee and a bite after work.  I usually stop by the diner on Saturday to hang out and talk with Erica 'til closing time.  It has become a Saturday night ritual, of sorts.

There were a bunch of young high school kids at the diner, say 9th-11th grade, all dressed up in their fineries, having obviously just come from their homecoming dance.  They were having a blast!  I wondered to myself what they must be thinking about their present moment and their future on this particular evening.  I was also wondering why young boys ever think bold, brightly colored shirts look good with a suit, but I digress.  I tried to turn the clock back a quarter century and put myself in their shoes.  I wanted to reconnect with my thoughts and feelings from that time in my life.  I looked at the crowd of young people, but could not identify with any individual among them.  At first, I was puzzled by my lack of being able to identify with the kids in their mid-teens.  I mean, I was in my mid-teens once; there's no route to becoming 41 years old, other than to have been there.  I contemplated my place (in a different time) among them, and then it hit me.  I identified most strongly with the kid who wasn't there.  I knew there must be at least one kid who was in that same spot, somewhere else alone and wanting to feel included but didn't, and I felt sad.

I feel like I've spent alot of my life "not there".  I feel like I've never really fit in almost anywhere I tried to go.  Those few who have accepted me are those onto whom I've imposed need .  There are not many people who just want to be in my company. Although I get out frequently, it is because I work myself into situations where I don't particularly belong.  I can get over on people for awhile; but, eventually, most of my friends and all of my social circles fall away.  Then there are the romantic interests who seem to ferret out my lack of acceptablilty in short order.  There are a few, very special individuals who truly care about me - Erica and Jack and the Jenkins clan come easily to mind - but, I don't think there are many people who like me or consider my company particularly enjoyable as any matter of regular course.

There are the dating situations and attempts at dating situations.  In the last month, I have had two women - Ashley and Susan - decide that it is better to be without someone than to have to spend any of their romantic/dating/social capital on me.  Not having a date, it seems, is a better choice than being stuck with me.  Its not that I'm going about things the same way, then expecting a different result.  That, as we all know, is the very definition of insanity.  I am trying to present my best self (I've lost 50 pounds; I've polished my look) to be available for dating, and women are still taking a pass universally, it seems.  That makes me wonder what bad trait it is that I have, or which good one I lack, that sends up the red flag that screams "LOSER!".  I hate myself because of it.

The dynamics of my current social situation seem to be changing, and I have recently reached out in desperation to Erica to make sure she doesn't leave with the rest of the crowd, most of whom seem to be figuring out that it is better to keep their distance from this social pariah.  I want very badly to not be a loser, but it seems that it is no easier for me to change that about myself than it would be for a leopard to change his spots.  Eventually, everyone takes a pass on me,

Things are what they are, and I am able to accept that on face value.  What confuses me is that I try to be a good person.  I try to make sure I am everything people say a good dating prospect shold be.  I broadcast my availability as good company, and even a good, listening friend.  Over the past weekend, I was not able to find one person to spend time with on either Friday or Sunday (which happened to be my "Friday") evenings.  Erica was a captive audience on Saturday.  I don't lament these issues while I'm out (that's what the blog is for), and I'm definitely not a "Debbie Downer" in social situations.  I can negotiate the ebb and flow of general banter as well as anyone else.  So, why is it that no one really wants to make time to get to understand me? 

I'm confused.  I'm hurting.  I'm sad.  I'm at a point where I'm ready to just say, "Fuck it!".

"You Don't Know Me", Ray Charles & Diana Krall.