Category: livin’ libido loca

I am tired of feeling this way.

I have been binge watching The Good Place. There are only four seasons and I have two or three episodes until I reach the end after deciding this past weekend to give it another chance. I watched the first season two or three times but could never stick with it for some reason. I mean this isn’t really relevant, but last night I watched an episode that featured a little movie one character had created to commemorate the relationship of two others. I got choked up and thought maybe this would be the thing that pushed me into full-blown weeping, but I kind of shut that whole thing down without my own consent.

I’m lonely.

It feels odd to say that I’m lonely when I’ve spent the last year nurturing various friendships with people who finally seem to get me. Even odder to say it after the past three months or so when I’ve been financially and emotionally supported by so many people I didn’t realize actually cared about me enough to give a shit about my well-being. I realize the majority of those “they don’t give a shit about me” feelings are coming from me and not them, but it doesn’t make them less real to me. The fictional movie within a show depicting two fictional characters in their fictional romance got to me because of the casual physical affection. They would be passing each other in hall or something and randomly exchange a kiss before continuing about their business. I miss being kissed. I miss being held. I miss being touched. I miss being in a relationship.

Then tonight I hung out with a couple of friends. I met one of the friends on a dating app about a year ago and we ended up getting naked together. I thought it was fun and, while we’ve continued to hang out over the past year and develop a fairly close friendship, there has been no indication of any continued sexual interest. Tonight they mentioned meeting up tomorrow with someone and when they said the first name, I knew immediately who they meant. I guess I live in a small city, but when I pulled up this person’s social media account, my friend confirmed that it was the same person. This person is also someone with whom I’ve met up once. I’ve been trying to pursue a friendship with them since then but finally made myself abandon these efforts this past year in the name of self-care. I can’t keep torturing myself by chasing relationships (platonic or otherwise) with people who don’t share the same level of interest.

Hearing that these two people are now meeting up with one another, I think I am crumbling. I’ve shared some of these feelings on social media before, but I’m frequently misunderstood and accused of wallowing in self-pity… but I’m genuinely confused.

Is there something about me that turns people off? I can’t figure out why I’m never the one being pursued. It doesn’t make sense why I have some really fun interactions and then the other person drops off. I always feel like I’m the back-up, the second choice, the friend who gets invited when someone else drops out at the last minute. I’m never anyone’s first thought. Especially when it comes to sex. I do have the experience of people being very enthusiastic about how attractive I am or how much they like my body, but this only ever seems to be in the context of transactional encounters where they may find me sexually appealing but don’t want to know much more about me. Then I have friendships that may have started out sexual but are now definitively platonic. It all leaves me feeling like I’m not enough. The people who are attracted to me aren’t interested in who I am as a person, and the people who like me as a person don’t want to have anything to do with me in a romantic or sexual capacity. Is there something wrong with me?

I am telling myself to be patient. I am telling myself all the time that I’m just not starting to be confident in who I am and it may take some time to find people who actually see me and also like what they see (both literally and figuratively.) I often tell myself to just focus on everything else I have going on, like acclimating to this new job, working on cleaning up my finances, continuing to focus on understanding, accepting, and loving myself… but sometimes this other need that isn’t getting met is just too loud for me to dismiss. I want to be loved. I want someone else to want to kiss me and hold me and hear about my day. I thought I’ve had that so many times, but each time it turns out they were really just into some version of me they had in their heads and when they finally got to know me, they decided I wasn’t worth it, or I wasn’t right for them. How do people find other people? How can there be so many couples smiling at me (well not at me, specifically,) from social media or from across the bar? Are they all lying to themselves about what they have? Or has everyone but me seemed to find an authentic connection with someone who gets them and wants them and also wants to fuck them?

I don’t want to be the jealous “poor me” friend. I want to be supportive when I hear about my friends pursuing other relationships. I want to be happy for them and hope they have a good time. I mean, my ideal relationship is a polyamorous one and I know that dynamic is prone to jealousy, so I’m really trying to just acknowledge the feeling and talk myself through it. I know intellectually that my friends have other friends. I even talked to my ex at length on several occasions about how people can have feelings for more than one person and that doesn’t invalidate or diminish their feelings for anyone. But inside, I want to be the favorite. I want to be adored. I want to be wanted, not just tolerated. I don’t fucking know. Maybe something is wrong with me and I just haven’t figured out what. Or maybe I have figured out what but I can’t understand why it’s a big deal.

Fuck this. I’m going to bed. Alone.

I don’t like playing Legos in front of my boyfriend.

He stood over the dining room table surveying my various solid-colored stacks of Lego blocks for a moment and then asked, “what are you doing?”

“I’m organizing them,” I said, hoping that would be enough of an explanation, even though I knew from his tone that he thought how I was going about organizing them was strange.

My birthday was a month and a half ago and he’d gotten me a set and a half of Legos that I had, until today, not touched. I almost wrote “I haven’t given them a second thought,” but I know that’s not technically true. I’ve been thinking about them a lot. And I have been choosing not to introduce Legos into my life for the exact reason I didn’t want to talk to him any more about them. I knew what itch they were going to scratch.

“Okay…” he said, trailing off to imply he found my answer inadequate. I hate when people do this. It’s always because you answered the question they actually asked and not the question they assumed you’d know they also wanted the answer to. I don’t think it’s fair to just expect me know what you want from me, even if I have some educated guesses. So I didn’t say anything. “The question is…” he continued, “why…?”

I had been separating all of the blocks into little piles by color. Then I was going through each color and organizing them by type, stacking the ones that match onto each other so my piles became separate little towers of varying shapes and sizes. Then I started to organize them by shape and size again, taking just the towers of traditional blocks and plugging them into a base by color. His ‘why’ could have meant any number of things so I thought for a minute. He could have been asking about my ultimate plan, which is as-yet to be determine. He may have been asking about my immediate plan, which is detailed and spans the course of several days. I didn’t really want to go into all that. He might have been asking about the motivation to even come up with such a plan, which was also kind of a long explanation of how I’ve been feeling mentally exhausted from this new job and how I feel a need to do something with my body, with my hands, where the rules are inherent and I don’t have to really think too much. But the overlap between that specific need and this specific activity seemed also simple and straightforward so I just answered “because I like it.” I even thought for a minute about how, after all this thinking and analyzing, the short answer I came up with felt like the most honest I could be. What it all comes down to is this makes me happy. It does beg the question, this same question that’s always hanging around the periphery, of why this type of activity makes me happy, but honestly, all the thinking and analyzing and fucking explaining takes away from the actual doing so I just went back to organizing my Legos.

“Alright,” he continued, clearly still not satisfied. “So… Ok, what are you going to do after it’s all organized?”

He wanted my plan. He wanted to know that I’m going to organize each type of block by color and put them in rainbow order. He wanted to know that, tomorrow, I’m going to use a pdf of an inventory of all the types of Legos and a chart of all the colors to put together a database of all possible Lego parts and colors. He wanted to know that I’m going to go through all of the Legos after I’ve organized them and create an inventory of all my Legos. He wanted to know that I’m going to buy individual blocks until I have even numbers of all the colors in the different type of blocks. And probably that wouldn’t be enough because he’d then want to know why I was going to do all of that, some answer other than ‘I like it,’ and the answer is I don’t fucking know. It makes me happy. It flashes the lights in my brain. It checks the boxes. It scratches the itch I knew it was going to scratch when I’ve been thinking about whether or not I want to do this whole fucking thing for months and then he made the decision for me. They were in the house. I just had to dive in. But if he wanted to know why all that was…

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know.” I looked at him for a minute and then said, “I feel like you’re making fun of me.”

“I’m not making fun of you!” he assured me. He thought for a minute and then said “I’m going to let you do your thing.”

I know he wouldn’t intentionally mock me but I figured if I told him that it felt that way, he’d stop asking. And I needed him to stop asking because he’s not going to understand, no matter what questions he asks or how he phrases them. This is not going to make sense to him. And it’s exhausting. There’s no question he can ask that will help him understand why I’m not playing with the Legos the way he would play with the Legos. So maybe I should just play with them in private next time.

This feels awful.

I feel really shitty today. I overdrew my checking account by at least $1200. There are at least $500 in fees just from this weekend. This isn’t “sober behavior.” I feel like I’m drinking. This is the kind of shit I did. And I bought so much candy last night and made sure tog et a pail so the cashier would think I was buying it for Halloween instead of eating it all myself.

I’m still embarrassed about last night. I’m not embarrassed or upset that I was late and couldn’t pay. it’s that I thought they were kidding and acted like that. Then Steven yelled at me and told me to make friends. Why is it so hard for me? But then again, it has only been two weeks. I don’t know. It’s just felt like he found the thing I was sensitive about and yelled about it in front of everyone. And my sponsor… I wanted him to comfort me and talk about the feelings. He did help me figure out why I was so upset. So, that’s good. But I just felt like he was delighting in my pain in a sadistic way and that hurt.

But the money. FUCK! That’s not even including my rent check! That’s going to bounce and I don’t know what to do. I should… I can’t go back and undo any of these choices. I can just try to fix it. Maybe I should ask for Evan’s help? Is that part of his job?

I also feel ashamed about the sec I had. I would rather have been playing volleyball. Why am I all of a sudden so focused on having sex? Is that the same as eating and spending money? Do I want sex or just friends? Is it even important to figure out my motivations or should I just stop because it’s making me feel crappy? Or do I feel crappy for a stupid reason, like my internalized homophobia or religious upbringing? Or was it just that it was bad sex? We definitely were not a match.

I took a risk.

I am feeling really guilty and ashamed right now and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s this money thing and how I’m basically robbing Citizen’s Bank. It’s more like a loan though. A really costly loan I don’t plan on paying back for a long time. If it’s not that, I don’t know what it could be. Just that I haven’t eaten today? I don’t know. I was going through pictures earlier of the PROUD Community on MFConnect. Well, I opened exactly two and the second one had Matt S in it and I came really close to crying. It’s extremely frustrating not to be able to identify the source of my feelings. And I keep thinking of how Steve brought up Asperger’s. That makes me feel like I’m impaired and, in fact, that’s what he’s suggesting. And it’s true. Otherwise I wouldn’t be going to therapy or writing in this damn journal in the first place. But to have someone acknowledge that really hurts my ego. Even if it’s someone who’s supposed to really know me better than anyone. I’ve also been thinking of last time when he said I am oblivious to social cues. I don’t think that’s true. In fact, I think I relate to other people a lot better than he gives me credit for. It’s getting emotionally invested or intimate that’s the problem. Ugh. But I guess I should at least start doing things I’m scared of. Like asking Jim (the “faggot”) on a date. Rejection scares me. Initiative scares me. I just want to benefit from other people’s risks.

I asked Him on a date. I was so nervous. What if he just wanted to be friends? What if he was offended? What if it was presumptuous? And what if he didn’t think I was attractive and then we’re both in an awkward position of him having to reject me and me being rejected… but he said yes! Actually, he said that it would be great! I have butterflies. Maybe that comes from uncertainty and relief. I was nervous and then I wasn’t. Anyway, I feel butterflies and we’re going on a date Saturday. I mean Tuesday. Tuesday.

shape up or ship out.

Twenty-seven years is a long time to wait for something but when you want something badly enough, you are willing to wait. There are times when you do so patiently and other times where the agony of a dream unrealized beats you down and rips you apart. Twenty-seven years is the amount of time that I waited to find love. In retrospect, I seemed to be floating apathetically through life, giving myself over to whatever vices struck my fancy with a lethargic complacency. I tried to give myself meaning by seeking to convince myself that I was happy alone. My cyclic need to improve myself for no one other than myself came and went and came again. I was convinced that I liked who I was, that should I ever find someone to love, we would be two wholes coupled together. I see now that I was not whole but incomplete, trying to put myself together with whatever I could find, every solution fitting the void like a square peg in a round hole. Maybe the problem was that I got so used to trying that I don’t know how to accept the fact that I don’t have to try anymore. Though it’s not yet even been three months since I found this man, I can see clearly that I would have no trouble spending the rest of my life with him and that scares me a little. Or at least I think it does. I can’t find anything else with which to justify the unconscious efforts I have spent in the last two weeks alone trying to scare him away. Certainly I thought about my future before but it was always just that – the future. I could continue with my wanton hemorrhage of money and unchecked affinity for alcohol always telling myself that someday I would grow up and live responsibly. Only that day was never today and every day that passed brought me no closer to tomorrow. Am I scared? Part of me is jubilant that finally I have a reason to become the person I always said I would be. The other part of me looks upon all these vices with a sense of nostalgic inability to let go. I know there are things that I would ask him to give up but he doesn’t seem to be afraid. He says confidently that I’m worth more than all of that. Of course he’d like to have his cake and eat it too but, if pressed, he has admitted, in no uncertain terms, that he wants me. I don’t know if it’s just that I have lived so uncompromisingly for so long but I can’t seem to muster the ease with which he tells me that I’m all he needs now to do the same. Logically I know that he is worth it. I want to be able to leave it all behind and welcome a new and improved version of myself but the practical application of that theory seems to elude me. When we’re together I blame him for all of this. We never yell but I can be so cruel. And once I’m satisfied that I’ve bruised him sufficiently, I immediately regret it and realize that it’s my fault, my problem, my consistent need for drama. I want to get off the roller coaster and just coast but for some reason I just keep dragging him back on with me. Times like these when I’m alone and thinking it through I think that hearing him say that he’s had enough scares me more than my petty desires to give up my youth. So why can’t I just grow up? People are always hesitant to believe the wisdom garnered from the experiences of others but the things that they say about love are true. It makes you crazy. It’s made me crazy. (Crazier than I was before.) But for all of the ups and downs and fights about nothing I wouldn’t trade it for the world. And try as I may, he is still here loving me in spite of everything. I’m not delusional; I know I’m speaking as though we’ve been together for years rather than barely a quarter of one. But that’s how I know it’s real. The reason that I’ve never had a long term relationship is that I always know right away that it’s destined to fail. I’ve never dated a guy I saw myself marrying. But this time it’s different. I’m more convinced of that with every passing day. If I can just keep the crazy to a minimum, my life has changed dramatically and for the better. This is happier than I have ever been.

on the outside unable to look anywhere but in.

I find the clarity with which I can envision solutions to the problems of others quite the enigma when it seems that I am incapable of utilizing such insight to enhance my own life. How is it that I can meet someone and seemingly know all about them, who they are, what motivates them and what will make them cry in a matter of minutes and, after all of these years, I still can’t seem to figure out what it is that makes me tick?

Why am I feeling this way? I won’t go into the gory details because it’s something I’ve discussed at length in posts past, but this feeling remains. I thought I had diagnosed and thus eradicated the problem with the epiphany that these feelings I have stem not from earnest sincerity and storybook romance but from loneliness and desperation. Evidently, this is not true. Or maybe it is…

Not having suffered any relationship for longer than six months, I am somehow able to talk to friends about theirs and give them mind-boggling advice as though I were a psychic reading their cards with mystifying blind accuracy. I see my single friends and I think “this is exactly why you’re single. If you were to just change X, Y and Z, you would be engaged in no time.” Yet, I’m still unable to find that for myself. What’s my problem?

Within the past couple of weeks I was finally at a place where I could admit publicly the emotions that have made my life both miserable and exciting for almost an entire year. There have been tears and childish tantrums and finally I had found the root of this mania. I was able to say “I thought that I felt this way but really I was misconstruing these other emotions. The lies that I’ve told myself all of this time have only existed because of this situation I’m in.” So why, after such brutal self-honesty and heartfelt confessions, am I still finding myself the victim of these same old hang-ups? How do I still find myself believing what I know to be mistruths?

I guess the idea of “self” will always be a mystery. To me, everyone else will always be two-dimensional and transparent. Perhaps it’s comforting to cling to the idea that I am special and more complex than everyone else in the world when in all likelihood, I am just as predictable. Maybe I subscribe to the lies I tell myself, remaining selectively ignorant, because a world where we were all the same would be a world in which I couldn’t bear to exist.

Doing the right things for the wrong reasons.

Things have been strange lately. One would think that this new tension between us, the fact that we haven’t seen each other, the fact you though I was mad, the way you stop responding to texts and emails, the way I’ve been blowing you off… One would think these things would make me care about you less, think about you less, but it seems the more I try not to think of you, the more you haunt me. Been going to the gym lately and eating better. It’s only this week, sure, but I already feel better. For some reason I just keep thinking that maybe this will get you, make you see that I’m someone you could be with. This weekend is Valentine’s Day. I’m trying to pretend there’s no him and that you won’t be with him on Sunday but it seems trying only makes it harder. Maybe it’s better that I don’t see you as often anymore, now that he‘s here more often and you don’t pretend you’re single so much these days. Clearly “out of sight, out of mind” hasn’t really been my luck, but who knows? Maybe with time.

It’s so hard. I don’t know how this can work. The last thing in the world I want is to lose you as a friend but the longer we go on like this, the more painful it is. Perhaps I’m being dramatic but before I met you, I didn’t know that I could cry. I used to think about that, actually, lying in bed awake at night picturing deaths of loved ones, colossal failures, traumatizing heartbreaks, and my eyes remained dry. And since you, almost anything can set me off. Guess I’ll keep going to the gym, awaken those endorphins. Maybe you’ll look different to me in a month or two.

Trying to get over him. Kind of.

I really tried. Last night, I tried to pretend it didn’t bother me that he was there. I tried to pretend I didn’t care about you and that I’m just thrilled with him. Somehow I feel that, for all my trying, it was still a pretty awkward experience. I don’t like this any more than you do. Don’t you think I want to be over you? I wish I weren’t me, sometimes this lonely fat kid who can’t help but fall in love with his friends because there are so few people that legitimately care. But, God, I want you so badly.

Happy New Year.

What a way to ring in the new year, sitting on the floor in the middle of party bawling like a baby. Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the pot. Or maybe it was the way you looked at me when we danced or the way you hugged me and leaned back to speak but kept us connected at the waist. As you all were leaving, he confronted me about not liking him. What was I supposed to say? “Liking you is pretty difficult when I’m love with your boyfriend”? So, I told him he was wrong, contending that I don’t know him well enough to have an opinion one way or the other. Then I waited for you to leave, collapsed on the floor and cried for the first time in years, feeling more and more feeling with each tear. Happy New Year.

Goals for 2010

So… 2009 is almost over. People keep talking about how great 2010 is going to be. But I think they say those things every year. A new year is a new beginning, a change to get right all the things you messed up the year before. Somehow I don’t look at it that way. The passage of time doesn’t change who we are. It doesn’t change anything. The world is another year older. We’re all aging by the day and change doesn’t just happen overnight. This used to be my favorite time of year. I’ve always loved Christmas and New Years. There was always something magical about this last week or so of the year, but it’s been a long time since I’ve felt that way.

I’m sad all the time. The advancement of yet another year doesn’t absolve me of my shortcomings, nor does it rectify all of my wrong-doings. Seeing my family for Christmas was painful. I feel so guilty about everything. My parents are still paying off loans for the degree I never finished. Seeing my little brothers excel in school makes me wish I had it to do over again. I feel like I’ve wasted these twenty-six years, living for myself with nothing to show for it. My family was homeless and I didn’t help. I ignored them because of how it made me feel. I wish I could take it back. I wish they didn’t know I was gay. That is pretty much killing my dad. He thinks I’m going to hell and he blames himself for not being around when I was young. He keeps telling me I have unresolved anger at him. That makes me feel even more guilty. I tried telling him that my homosexuality has nothing to do with him and that he just feels guilty for how he’s lived his life. The anger he thinks I have is his guilt that he is transferring to me. The fact that he thought he was having a heart attack doesn’t help. His new awareness of his mortality makes him crave resolution. For that, I feel guilt and pain and regret. It’s no way to live.

Maybe on some level, this explains why I feel the way I feel about you. A serious relationship would definitely assert my “lifestyle.” So instead of going that route and forcing my parents to come to terms with this, with me, I find myself falling for guys I know will never return my affection. If I’m honest with myself, I know that you’re never going to feel that way about me. I wanted to think that we were getting together more frequently because you wanted to see me, because on some level you want me, but now I see that perhaps it’s just been a while since I’ve tried to drunkenly confess my love for you so now you feel safe.

You said maybe I wouldn’t feel so sad if I wrote out goals for the new year. Well, this is what I want to accomplish: