The plane landed weeks ago, my baggage finally arrived...

Letting go of certain things is infinitely easier said than done. It’s amazing to me that despite all of the progress I’ve made toward getting away and branching away from things that held me back, certain hallmarks of that time can send me reeling. The mention of a band, anything that elicits a memory of that time, the truth is that as strong as I like to believe I am, I’m more fragile now than I think I’ve ever been. I’m reaching for anything solid to hold onto the only thing I find is the haunting glow of what was. I’m conflicted with myself over whether I did something wrong, if I failed, if it was my fault that everything fizzled.

Just happening over a picture is enough to leave me cringing. It’s amazing how passion can be both a blessing and a curse. My passion drove me to unparalleled lengths to profess, declare, and validate my love and affection for someone seen as so undeserving, and now it sends me into an emotional rut that borderlines depression and guilt over all the whispered wrongs. The entirety of the saga played out before my eyes and I remained stoic and unmoving as I watched the train of finality barreling down to destroy me. But I let it happen. I tried to play the martyr, hoped that my soul’s tempering in the fires of my youth would be enough to protect and see me through the crash.

I did survive, but what is it exactly that remains. I’ve still not let go completely and I’m jaded against myself for that. Part of me sees it as a weakness that I could be made to feel so small, so fragile, and so utterly vulnerable and all because of one person. To be stripped of my veneer and left exposed before the clawing eyes of my peers for them to judge, inspect, and influence.

Taken from me are the trappings of vitriol and venomous observations of those foolish enough to keep my association. I don’t know who to be angry at, myself for believing the lie, her for being so easily manipulated into dooming us before we had a chance to begin, or the cosmos for damning us to this horrific cycle of futile defiance. I swore to myself I would never love, I would never feel like I felt for her, and my conscious mind, my rational thoughts failed me completely, and I fell headlong into the damnation of my psyche by letting myself feel anything more than a passing intellectual interest for her. The human heart holds the greatest weakness possible for those that would seek a life devoid of vulnerability.

So very few in this world know what it is to truly be open and completely vulnerable to another human being; to truly open oneself up to another human being; to really trust another person. The concept is infinitely easy to reason, you ask for trust and because someone tells you things that seem to be of a personal nature, you accept that they have made an emotional investment in you. The sad reality is that trust isn’t built on the things you’re willing to say, but rather the things you can’t bring yourself to put into words. I’ll tell almost anyone about the sordid details of my youth, the abuse I endured, or the depreciation I suffered at the hands of those in a position to engender a pain for which there was no cure, but only a select few know any kind of truth or trust from me.

But here I am, I made the choice to open up and expose the soft belly beneath my armor and I ended up with a stake through my heart. I thought by ignoring it I could make it go away. I reasoned that if I felt nothing then I couldn’t hurt. I tried to fill the void with trappings that were ultimately unwanted and unfulfilling. In the end there’s nothing left except to say that I am the victim of my own machinations. It is said that we reap what we sow, but it’s near impossible for me to accept this since I endeavor to be all things to all people, go to extraneous lengths and undertake absurd endeavors in an effort to help those around me and the one point in which I invariably fail is when it comes to finding any kind of true happiness. I tried to fulfill her every need tried to always make myself available and endeavored to never say no and I have nothing to show for the endeavor. Perhaps the biggest error I made was that I tried to understand her, attempted to really get to know the person behind the witty remarks.

But people aren’t puzzles, they’re not meant to be dissected and figured out. She was never mine to understand but still I committed my mind to solving the mystery, to winning her heart and calling her my own. Now I just feel broken, unable to move forward and still mired in my own hell, searching for reasons, for understanding, for some kind of clarity to something I never fully understood to begin with. The scary part is that for perhaps the first time in my life I have no direction or inclination on how I should feel or react. The raw passion ebbs and bristles at the sides of an already battered psyche and I search for an answer that is never going to come. For me, the idea of accepting that reality is akin to rewriting the laws of gravity. But acknowledging that I am completely powerless to influence the will and whim of someone else is not only staggering but makes me feel completely impotent. A kind of stifled, listless energy that seeks a release and the best that can be found is a gasp of air every once in a while. It’s like lightning in a bottle; the energy is contained but not gone. I need to find my own release and let go of the baggage, let go of her, and find some reason other than just the pedantic ideation that life is worth living to keep pressing on in the maelstrom.

Gone are the harsh words, the terse edicts, the flagrant verbal attacks, the clandestine moves of subversion and intrigue, and the tears for a love that never was. In their place is a gap, an abyss that hungers to be filled by any means necessary. That abyss is the hole she left when she went away, the love she took with her, and the part of my soul I will never get back. I could fill it with drugs, alcohol, countless vapid women, or just the ramblings of my own depraved mind, but in the end the only way to fix a wound that big is to find sutures capable of making me forget all that she was. To erase everything I thought I knew, all memory of what was and what I believed could have been. Find me the tools to mend myself and correct this broken state of mind I now harbor. Point me to the smiling shiny happy people and I will gladly become another mindless drone in the scheme of the universe, oblivious to the world around me and never more involved in it than what is within my reach. I would gladly give up the very thing that keep me grounded, useful and unique in exchange for making the wound go away, making the pain cease, and leaving me with nothing more than a fake plastic grin to wear and show to everyone that I am not as broken as I truly am.

I'd like to apologize in advance...

Okay it’s been a wee bit too long since I’ve posted anything new. Creative energies don’t translate very well when I’m borderline “walking dead”. But I’m not whining, just justifying. I’ve been in touch with most of you lately and have explained the extenuating circumstances for my lack of creative ability for this particular venue. All of that aside however let’s talk shop here for a minute. Most of the time when I do one of these I have some kind of emotional impetus that drives me to begin writing. While I have the emotional catalyst it’s highly muted given my weary and somewhat addled brain so this may come off a wee bit dry but I promise the next one will be exactly what you’ve come to expect.

I had a conversation with Aurora the other night and during our discussion (we talked about a great many things that I won’t dare repeat here) the topic came up of the way that we define relationships. Now I’m the last person to rehash old news and recycle my ideas, but she’s touched on it before, and I’ve even mentioned but never really done a piece dedicated to it. There is a dangerous social aversion casual sex. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m the last person that can bed down easily with just anyone, I’ll flirt like no other but when the bar yells last call, I’ve got my keys in my hand I’m out the door and in bed before the first tab is closed out.

But I have needs, the same as anyone else. Carnal desires and I’ve succumbed to the trappings of the flesh a couple times, but if I’m not into the person or can’t see myself eventually growing to love that person than I will do my level best to keep my flirting to a minimum and prevent the wrong idea from coming across.

Enough about my habits though. What we’re dealing with here is a tendency for people to regard flirting as a gateway of sorts and that somehow sex with that person immediately suggests, denotes, connotes, or requires some kind of deeper emotional connection. Why can’t sex just be something carnal, purely physical and nothing more? We’re sexual beings at our core. We like sex. It’s fun, feels staggeringly good (provided you have a partner with half a clue or at least that takes suggestion, or worse can give you some direction), and is great for relaxing.

But despite the wide spread whispers of one night stand abounding (because of my association with a certain man whore, I’ve been made of a great many one night stands) most of us can just never bring ourselves to have them. The connotation seems to be that if you sleep with someone without any connection or expectation of it becoming something more, than you don’t respect yourself or you’re compensating for something. Why can’t it just be that you were horny and there was someone there to fulfill your needs?

It seems that it’s almost a crime against oneself for any measure of indulgence. And this doesn’t come out of any misguided religious idealism although the major defenders of this practice will most likely sight some obscure upbringing where they were indoctrinated to see sex as something holy, sacred, and overtly valued. I’m not advocating mindless hookups or the rampant spread of countless STD’s (although it would thin the gene pool considerably) rather I’m asking for sex to be seen for what it is. It’s like eating, farting, taking a shit, or self mutilation; it’s just a physical action that you can’t do yourself. When you love the person it takes on a whole different dynamic because the emotions are there to begin with but if you see someone across a crowded bar and think, “Wow I’d love to get them back to my bed!” where’s the harm in trying? Use protection and go have some fun.

Society and years of repression have indoctrinated us into believing that sex is still a taboo to discuss in public, something you don’t mention in certain venues, or just subject matter that we shy away from. It’s sex. Not torture, not maiming, not even rape. It’s sex between two consenting adults for mutual physical gratification. You’re not finding a life partner or seeking out answers to the deepest and most profound questions in the universe, you’re getting naked and knocking your hips against someone else’s for a few hours in the hopes that you’ll achieve a biochemical release of hormones and proteins that cause euphoria and pleasure. Sorry to go so scientific but if we’re going to make any head way let’s strip away the bullshit.

Now I mentioned that when you love the person it’s a whole different situation, and it is. Having sex with someone you care about is done as much for mutual carnal pleasure as it is for emotional closeness. You open yourself up emotionally to your partner and really let your innermost feelings come out. You trust completely (or you should) and you’re able to achieve the heights of pleasure. It brings two people closer together by providing a physical expression of the emotional connection that is already shared. It is for this reason that I believe the term “making love” is still applicable to this instance of sex because it holds a deeper meaning.

Now carnal, drunken “you look great after 9 shots” sex is entirely different from what I mentioned above. A casual bar hook up is done for no other reason than to get yours, you don’t have to please your partner, you don’t have to last long, and there’s no obligation of anything beyond that one instance of animalistic pleasure. It’s the ultimate win-win. You get to feel incredible and ideally there should be no guilt involved.

But like so many other things, society complicates and contrives things which only becomes a perpetuating cycle. Casual sex is seen as a complete taboo unless you are willing to acknowledge that you lack self respect, and in order to find the joy and rapture that comes with sex you willingly get involved with someone that you might not really value emotionally. It’s a sickness that is perpetuated by society and really, what purpose does it serve. Casual consensual sex does not obligate a relationship in the same way that a relationship doesn’t require sex, but it sure helps!

Detox

I am an addict. Pure and simple. I don’t pop pills, I don’t drink copious and unsafe amounts of alcohol, I would be so lucky to have such a simple and run of the mill addiction. Instead I’m hopelessly devoted to my own misery. I have an innate and inescapable need to be miserable because I know of no other way to validate my existence. Before I met Nicole I spent twenty-one years being miserable and then she came along and I clung to the happiness I had when I was with her to such an extent that I willed myself to ignore the horrific treatment I endured at her hands. I was so blinded to the utterly disgusting treatment that I actually indoctrinated myself into believing that I was happy.

But the fairy tale ended. She moved away and I was left alone, or I should have been. Now here’s where I break one of my own rules. I’ve tried being civil and courteous to the mystery woman mentioned so often in previous posts so much so that I’ve refused to name her and taken great strides to avoid doing so. However as she is far too busy to even acknowledge my texts, phone calls, or anything else, I see no reason to continue the charade of niceties. So I’m taking off the kid gloves and whatever will be, will be.

To truly tell the story properly we need to turn the clocks back a bit longer than just Nicole. All the way back to 2003. In August of that year I embarked upon my first real relationship and I couldn’t have been happier. Despite warnings against it I blindly moved forward and tried to revel in what I had finally attained. Well what I couldn’t see but everyone else could was that the relationship was a bit one sided in terms of treatment. To her credit I won’t name her, and I certainly don’t hold a grudge. Neither one of us really knew what we were doing. But when it ended in April of 2004 I was crushed, my entire world had come crashing down in a singular instant, and the topper was that she broke up with me via email. Classy I know.

So as most people know I mired away in my hell and spent the next year and a half pining away for something that wasn’t going to happen but still hoping that we could reconcile and return to what we had. In hindsight I can see that in truth I was just feeding an addiction. So when the time finally came that I achieved the closure I needed on it and I was able to move on I first dabbled briefly with a girl named Rose. Things went reasonably well for about two weeks, we met a party where she asked to borrow someone’s pants and ever eager to be wild and crazy in those days I jumped at the chance. So she borrowed my pants, and we bonded, and things kind of moved for a bit. Then she got flakey and the initial attraction broke down. So I took my leave and let it go.

Then came Erica. A truly pointed thorn in my side. She was pretty and coveted by many but in all honesty she was the ultimate tease. The clincher came when she called me one afternoon to proudly tell me that she had slept with my best friend. I took the news in stride and bore no ill will to him as she had been pushing my patience quite far the entire time I’d known her. So again I was ignorant of how badly I was feeding my addiction and I simply moved on.

My next foray came when a mutual friend introduced me to a girl that I was quite taken with and she seemed at least reasonably open to the idea. So we talked, we flirted, we even went out once. The entire time I doted, I analyzed, and I put myself out time and again to make her happy. Then suddenly she just disappeared. No phone calls, no texts, no emails, no IM, just dead silence. So I figured she’d gotten bored and moved on. A week later, I wound up slovenly drunk at a party held in my honor and by the end of the night I had attached myself to girl that couldn’t have been more trouble if she tried. She fervently sought out a firm relationship with an intensity that would have scared a rabid wombat but I foolishly tried to play the middle ground. The first girl returned after her absence and acted as though nothing were wrong.

I did what is still considered both the smartest and the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. I told girl #1 about my dealings with girl #2 and asked for some time to get things straight because I had assumed the worse during girl #1’s absence. This action was met with unrivalled hostility and almost cost me two friendships in the process. By the time the dust settled I had no one, I was miserable, and I was fairly jaded.

Four months went by and the misery of my job kept me contented until I met Kristen. As loathe as I am to admit it, she first caught my attention when I noticed her picture on a friend’s MySpace. I made friends with her and figured nothing would come of it. She came into the store I worked at and made every man’s jaw drop as she walked in.

For the next four months I did everything I could to win her affection and make her notice me. Everything from text messages in the morning to dropping whatever I was doing to meet her every beck and call. Finally at the advice of a friend I gathered my courage and told her how I felt. She was flattered but explained that she just didn’t see me that way. So crestfallen I retreated again but very briefly. A quick slew of interests came and went in a span of only a handful of months. Lisa, Kathleen, Kat, Neha, Stacey, Allyson, and Samantha all between September and December. While I didn’t sleep with any of them, there was more than casual flirting and a couple dates.

Now we come to the meat of our story. 2007 promised many things for me. The first year of me being 21, new job prospects, and a consolidation of friendships as well as what was to be a degree. Six days into the year everything fell apart. I met Nicole at the Brass when I showed up wearing a Halloween costume and the night began the whirlwind romance. Nicole got married we kept seeing each other and I could never bring myself to just walk away. She was feeding my addiction in a very sick and morbid way. So for two and a half years I pined away hoping for something more and hoping that if I suffered just long enough I’d be blessed enough to have her for my own. But I suffered needlessly and all to feed an addiction.

When the bubble burst and she told me she was moving I wasn’t just crestfallen, I was heartbroken. I couldn’t imagine a worse fate. I’ve seen things in my life too damning and horrific to describe in any kind of detail, but the only thing that truly struck a bolt of fear into my heart was the notion of losing her. I had lost myself to what I had become while I was with her and the only thing that mattered was seeing her. The irony is that by the end, I was so filled with scorn and maliciousness that I couldn’t imagine why I’d ever loved her, and in truth I questioned if I ever really had loved her. The last time I saw her she looked nothing like she had the first night we met. She hadn’t aged gracefully, and the stress of us had ravaged her once gorgeous features. Her eyes had become deep and sunken, her face was wrinkled and weathered from too much smoking, and her smile had gone from beautifully radiant to slightly dull and uninviting. She held me close but her fingers felt like white-hot pokers digging into my flesh and searing my skin.

The final time I saw her I tried to seduce her, she managed to ressit but not without a considerable effort. I remained cold and callous through most of her visit but I broke my composure when she told me that she wanted me to take a chance and let in someone else should I ever find someone that I could love. She basically was asking me to invalidate every admission and expression of love I’d ever made to her by being willing to just accept a replacement. I wept freely and accepted that she was leaving. The trick to this is that only a matter of hours later I’d be hanging out with my new interest, Jessica. While she sported a steely and cold demeanor that made me think her interest in me was less than I’d been led to believe, the night went off reasonably well. The next two weeks continued well enough with our mutual interest seeming to grow and deepen.

Fast forward a month and she’s not returning my calls, ignoring my texts, and seems to have disappeared. I still don’t know why she decided to go bat shit crazy and begin ignoring me. Oh well, her loss. I tried being cordial and courteous but I got nothing in return. She couldn’t even be bothered to adhere to the offer of friendship that she put out. I know she’ll read this and I’ll end up with a massive backlash of some kind about how I don’t know everything, or how I’m wrong, or something to effect of me being out of line, but it’s hard to be factual when I know nothing. And since this is more or less my own private domain I can say what I want so long as there’s no defamation of character.

Suffice to say that I’ve reached my crossroads and while this piece, unlike all the others, has not been written in a single sitting, I have in fact found my catharsis and survived my detox. So I’m better. I’ve bled out what needed to be bled out, I’ve reached level ground again emotionally and I’m ready to move on with life. I’d like to extend big thanks to Aurora for listening to my whiny ass, give big hugs to Nikki for constantly telling me I deserve better and can have better, and anyone else that endured my ramblings during any ordeal mentioned above.