It's In Your Head

By "Your Head" of course I mean "my head."  I really didn't want this blog to be all about my problems with girls/relationships but I can't help it, it's the thing that bothers me the most.

Me and my first world, middle class, white people problems.

Fuck me.  I'm a self involved piece of shit.  Someone please tell me to go to Hell.

I'll talk about it anyway because this blog is supposed to help me work through my stupid fucking "problems."  So I've been seeing this girl for close to a month now and it is starting to feel like a combination of two relationships I've had in the past and it's starting to freak me out and I know it shouldn't.  Especially because to remind me of both of them would be completely contradictory.  So for anyone other than myself to understand what I'm rambling about you'll need to know the back story...

So for purposes of this story I will refer to the present girl I'm seeing as CASSI, my high school/college girlfriend as ABBY, and the girl I dated over a year ago as BETH (A,B, and C chronologically).  So Cassi reminds me of Abby in how affectionate she is towards me and how fast things appear to be moving.  This week I'm staying with my parents in New Jersey for the holidays( I currently live in DC) and Cassi told me she was going to be going to a rave in Philly for New Year's Eve with her roommate. Initially I was excited because I like Philly a lot and I've been wanting to go to a rave so I said I'd go.  Then she mentions how she will need to have a place to stay while she's here and that she'd like to ride back to DC with me after coming up with her roommate.  This means she would be staying at... my parents' house where she'd meet my parents.  I don't usually tell my parents about girls I date until I've been with the girl for several months (example: my parents never knew about Beth, I'll talk about that more later).  This is moving too fast for my comfort level.  I don't know if she thought of it in this way (probably not, see title) but I'm not ready to have her meet them and vice versa.  That paired with the fact that she also told me today that she "misses seeing me" makes me feel like she wants to turn this into something really serious.  Which I have conflicting feelings about (see my previous post).  We have differing ideas of what we want to do after this year in DC.

But then when I told Cassi about how i felt about all this she responded by saying "I'm sorry I'm not trying to move anywhere- I like how we are friends right now."  Which reminds me of Beth because her and my relationship was based entirely on the fact that we both were unsure that we wanted to be in a relationship in the first place.  Which turned into me wanting a relationship because I couldn't deal with the "more than friends/less than a couple" grey area and then her ending it because she didn't want a realationship.  So I don't know if I want a serious relationship but there is a part of me that does.  And that part of me got very nervous when Cassi said that. 

In summary, what I want to do is to have my cake and eat it too.  I see only a few outcomes from this situation: 1) we become a real couple (as in boyfriend and girlfriend), 2) we continue this grey area for a while and we split up with one of us getting hurt (let's be honest it'll most likely be me), 3) we end it now and we try to continue as friends (but that never works, at least not for me).  I have mixed feelings about all of these.

I hate how I over think this shit.  I'm making problems out of esentially nothing. Right?

I'm sure glad no one reads this.

Kind of a Post- Script:
Beth also turned around and ended being in a relationship only a couple months after she and I split.  What a fucking bitch. I fucking hate her.  I hope that won me at least some simpathy.

Why do you love me?

If you have ever been asked the titular question of this post, it's possible that you've had to come up with some lame reason for your significant other.  I have recently been pondering what it means to love someone else, in a romantic sense.  Chances are that the person asking the question does not want to hear the response "because I find you very physically attractive and your facial features are very symmetrical which leads me to believe that you have good, healthy genes and I would like mate with you" or "because you're nice" or "because you're the best I can do" or "because I have self worth issues and the fact that you pay attention to me makes me feel good about myself" or "I don't know, I just do."  These all seem like poor reasons to say you "love" someone to me.  I tried to think of how we (we meaning myself) become involved in relationships that lead to feelings of "love."  The reasons I could think of were: proximity (which with the invention of the Internet is becoming increasingly less necessary), physical attraction, common interests, ability to court one another (appropriate responses in social situation), shared values, and a mutual desire for a relationship.  These all seem kind of shallow, not in a bad sense, it is just a case that these are not really things that I can see as being able to form a deep emotional connection over.  I often feel dumb for begining to form warm feelings for a girl because she's cute and likes the same music/movies as I do or because I see her everyday and we get along well.  So, within the past year or so I have been trying to only be interested in girls with a similar goals for their lives, namely the desire to move to new places for short periods of time.   I guess this falls under the shared values catagory but it has been one that I've overlooked for the most part in the past.  I guess you could say that I'm looking for a traveling companion.  But this also I find to be distracting to my desire to figure out why or if I love someone because I'm focusing on the fact that I could potentially have someone to keep me company on  my journey through life (wow, I'm sorry, that was really fucking cheesy).  Is that all love is?  A person to keep us company?  So we do not become incredibly lonely?

I think I'm only looking at the process of falling in love, I'm really missing the type of love which comes with being with someone for a long time.  Through shared experiences and developing a sense of trust and comfort with that person.  I feel as though these can produce love but how do we get to this point?  I have developed this with many of my friends and yet I have not developed a romantic relationship with them.  Usually based on the preceived change it will bring to our dynamic as friends.  Do I worry about losing the love I share with my friends in exchange for a physical and romantic love?  I think that is a valid concern.

So, I don't think I can combine these two things and therefore I can't find a person whom I "love" in the romantic sense.  Well, I guess I'll just have to stick to empty meaningless sex.  Boohoo me.  (That's a joke, not a very funny one I must add).

Even In Dreams

Lately I've been getting close to being able to lucid dream, the ability to recognize you are in a dream and then do what ever you want in them.  But this hasn't happened through any effort of my own, during my dreams I inexplicably just become aware that I am in a dream and then shortly afterwards I wake up.  I never even get to try any of the "tells" that I'm in a dream: looking at a clock/ reading and seeing gibberish or trying to turn lights on and off and nothing happening etc.  Which might be a good thing because I sleep too much to avoid waking life as it is and if I figure out how to lucid dream I might try and spend all my time trying to do that, which probably isn't healthy. 

Often when I'm awake I also feel like I'm dreaming or in a movie.  This occurs in two ways, when there is really dramatic lighting at night I feel like the situation I was in is too eerie and visually interesting to actually be real.  The other way this happens is when I disassociate.  I can't explain how this happens but the best way I can explain the feeling is like I'm watching everything on a small television set that is on the other side of a very dark room.  I also am unable to connect with anyone and I become very withdrawn.  I have a lot of mixed feelings about when this happens to me.  It can be kind of fun because I feel as though nothing is real and I can see the world for how ridiculous it really is, I can get pretty silly during these times because I just laugh at everything.  Other times, it is just annoying because I'm like, "I don't have time for this right now."  But often times, it can be saddening because I become very isolated within myself.  I get very nihilistic when I disassociate, because nothing feels real so I feel like nothing matters.

Disassociating in combination with the fact that I day dream a lot about having conversations with people I know make it hard for me to distinguish between what happened and what I'm imagining.  So my life becomes in a way a series of dreams.  Which I haven't found to be an entirely bad thing yet.

I don't know what I'm trying to figure out right now... is it which is better living in dreams or feeling like I'm living in a dream?  That makes sense I guess.  I don't know.  I don't have an answer to which I'd prefer.  I think I'll stick with being awake.  Because that's the one I have a little more grasp on.  That's not the best reasoning for making a decision but it's the only one that makes any kind of rational sense.

Listening and Listening

I think I've come to notice that most friends/ people in general, will listen to you complain about your problems to a certain extent.  But not only that they will listen to certain problems for longer or shorter based on their level of interest.  For example, they will listen to someone talk about relationship problems because that's seen as "juicy gossip" or "drama."  The same reason many people tune into reality T.V. shows every week.  The reason for this is because, IT'S INTERESTING.  It's something you can tell someone else later.  You can talk a lot more about someone having trouble with their boyfriend or the fact they're in a fight with their best friend than you can about their insecurities. 

Often if I try to talk to anybody about being depressed or being insecure they will tell me I'm being "emo" or that it isn't a big deal or to just kinda get over it and that I'm being ridiculous.  But in my opinion, these are the problems which effect us more.  They could even be the underlying cause of the more interesting problems.  No one wants to hear about my self worth issues but they are exactly the reason why I have been in almost non-stop relationships since high school.  And since I don't really get to talk about it with anyone, I never get to the root of the problem and the cycle continues.  But what can I expect, my friends aren't therapists and I wouldn't want them to be.  So that's why I have this blog, so I can talk over my problems with myself, in a public space.

Hmm...If I wrote about my drama with other people would my blog get more views?

The Future

The other day after I finished taking a piss I glanced into the toilet and noticed that it was filled with blood.  Naturally being concerned about my urine being a dark red color from the amount of blood I went to the clinic.  The doctor there told me that I passed a very small kidney stone, which was surprising because it didn't hurt at all.  He went on to tell me that the cause for the kidney stone was probably genetics, which makes sense because my dad gets kidney stones from time to time. 

So it made me think that I can look forward to moments of intense pain through out the rest of my life probably.  Which made me reflect on a fear (more like a concern) I have of living in extreme agony.  I'm not afraid of death because at least in death pain ends, but living in pain is something I would prefer to avoid.  I wondered if a life in agony (not necessarily my situation, but a more extreme situation) was really worth living.  Especially if  it had to do with a genetic disorder.  Because if you look at life from an evolutionary standpoint, the reason we exist is to mate and pass on our genetics to our children and other future generations and if I had serious, genetic health problems I feel as though I wouldn't want to pass on that suffering to my children.  Like on top of the kidney stones the other great genes I have to pass on to my potential children include: high cholesterol/ blood pressure, acid reflux, depression (if that truly is genetic, I'm not entirely convinced of that, but regardless), baldness, asthma.  These don't seem like much, but together these have given me a lot of grief and distress.  I feel like I don't want to have kids because I don't want to subject them to all the things I suffer from.  I essentially want to eugenics myself, if that makes any sense.

That's a pretty sad thought.  Then I just felt like that had no reason for living if I was to take my genetics off the market and based on the other issues I've mentioned in my previous posts with my issues with closeness with other people.  But I've never wanted to have kids so this shouldn't be as troubling a thought as it has become.  Maybe I want to have kids.  It would give meaning to my life, taking care of another living thing.  But giving that child my health problems just so I can give myslef meaning is more than a little selfish.  Because not only will they have avoidable suffering but their existance is completely based on my own insecurities with myself which means that those insecurities will spill over to them which will cause them further suffering which will continue the cycle.  Maybe I should just adopt, try to give a child who doesn't have love in their life some stability and a person who cares about them, to make the best of a bad situation to benefit both of us.  Or I could just get a cat.

Ease of wanting that which you can't have.

I recently watched the film Brief Interviews with Hideous Men based on the David Foster Wallace book of the same name.  In the movie, there are two waitor/ busboy charactors who discuss what women want from a man.  This discussion made me ponder the same theme.  I initially considered their argumaent that what women want was at odds with itself (to not need men but also want a passionate man) but then I decided that women could not be put into a catagory and say they all want this or that.  But if you were to take a large cross section of women I thought that a good number of them would want exactly what I would want from a woman.  That is someone who I get along with, treats me with respect, aknowledges my need for individuality and is caring, blah blah blah... 

The point I'm to get to here is that in thinking about the fact that women would want the same thing from a man as I would from a woman made me question what I really wanted.  And I realized I don't really know what I want.  Making everything I've said thus far in this post a load of bullshit (well, I'm pretty full of shit so that isn't so surprising).  I often think I know what I want but it often happens to be (what) at odds with itself.  Since I often go through bouts of depression I want a girl who can comfort me and talk me off the ledge, so to speak. But this means I just want/need a therapist.  I also want a girl who is independent but I'm incredibly insecure which makes me pretty needy.  This also conflicts with my desire for personal space, and my relatively recent desire to not be in a relationship. 

I also want a girl who is like me.  Which has it's own good and aspects to it.  She'll be fun (in my opinion of coarse), and she'll find the world to be fucked up and somewhat meaningless (that sounds like a bad thing but not to me, it's hard to explain).  But she'll also come with all the stuff I mentioned above.  So, we'll have two depressive, insecure, nihilistic people who want to make a deep emotional connection with one another but are too afraid to commit.  I'm setting myself up for failure is what it's starting to sound like.

Another thing that doesn't help my search for a girl who I could potentially "spend my life with" is that I often fall for girls who I know it would be a terrible idea to try and be in a relationship with.  My prime example right now is my roommate.  She is beautiful.  So I don't blame myself for being attracted to her but she and I don't really have much in common and there are aspects about her, were I to be in a relationship with her, I would find unbearable.  Needless to say she isn't exactly my type and I'm not hers either.  I tell myself this, far more often than I should have to.  As I mentioned in my pervious post, I'm currently in an abondance of girls who are interested in me and I would think that this could be enough to distract me from my roommate (she has even encouraged me to and offered to help me hookup with some of these girls) but I still find myself trying to flirt with or just admiring her. I'm pathetic and a little creepy, I know.  Another fine example of this is that I often fall for girls who are geographically very far away from me.  And based on my previous experience with long distance relationships, that is not a road I want to go down again.  I'm currently in a not relationship with a girl I went to college with who still lives back in NJ.  She just got out of a relationship and has expressed to me that she doesn't want to get into another relationship and I told her how I felt.  But that hasn't stopped us from chating via through Facebook and text message several times a week.  And I'm actively trying to not get too close to her by trying to spend time with other girls.

The conclussion I've come to with all this is that the reason I covet what I can't have is because it's the safe thing for me to do.  By falling for girls I know I shouldn't or don't want to be with I avoid the chance of getting hurt by a girl whom I think I could actually make a relationship work with.  I'm just taking the easy way out.  Which I hate doing but it's all I'm comfortable doing at this point in my life because I know, or I feel as though, I won't be in DC forever and if were I to try and take a relationship on the road would create a number of problems that I also don't want to deal with.

As things come together, they always fall apart

So, to try and explain how I've come to my most recent internal conflict I should explain that I have never been the kind of guy who could get any girl he wanted.  That's not to say I have trouble with women (eg talking to them or dating or otherwise).  I'm just not what you'd call a ladies man.  Because I'm awkward (I'm pretty OK with that and this is a little irrelevant to the story).  Anyway, I've recently become, for lack of a better term, "Hot Shit."  By that I mean that there are a number of girls who have been showing quite a bit of interest in me lately.  This really isn't the problem, it's actually doing wonders for my self esteem, but actually the reason behind why I've been trying to entertain all these ladies simultaneously.  The reason behind this coincidentally happens to be the same reason, I think, why I move around so much.  I believe it is because since I was young I've faced a lot of feelings of abandonment and heartbreak after a break up or in the case of friends, they decide they don't want to be around me any more.

I have until recently been somewhat of a serial monogamist, where shortly after one relationship ended, I would find another girl to fill the loneliness void.  And this put me in a cycle of depression and happiness (break up followed by the excitement of a new relationship and so on).  This time last year was the middle of my last pseudo- relationship, which lasted for about three months.  The three months we spent together were amazing, I often thought she was the girl version of me.  But the prevailing problem that ultimately caused the relationship to fail was that she, like I currently, does not want to be in a relationship (thus the use of "pseudo-realtionship").  When we finally got to the point to where we realized that we wanted different things and the other wasn't going to change we called it quits.  I then spent the next 4 months being depressed and nihilistic and generally no fun to hang out with.  When I came to recognize the pattern I was in, I decided to take some time off from relationships so I could try and find a way to make myself happy.  Which I found in the lifestyle of being nomadic which I had already begun not much earlier.

The thing that originally troubled me when I started to live nomadically I couldn't figure out if was running to something or from it.  I know now that I'm running from it.

The problem with this is that it is extremely hard to keep in contact with all my old friends whom I also find happiness. But I recently came to the conclusion that they may be the thing that I'm running away from.  After I graduated high school all of my friends stopped trying to hangout with me mostly because of the fact that I don't drink and they were all starting to get more into it.  I spent the rest of that summer and the next year extremely depressed because I had felt abandoned by the people who I considered friends.  This past summer when I was driving back to New Jersey from spending a year out on the west coast I stopped in Wisconsin to visit one of my best friends from college.  When I saw him I was extremely excited because I hadn't seen him since I had dropped him off back at his parents' home in LA on our roadtrip after we graduated college, a year earlier.  He on the other hand was very calm and stand off-ish, which is pretty normal for him, but I'd still would've liked a little more of a reaction (I mean he and I did live together for four years).  I felt pretty let down and neglected (that's as close as I can get to explaining how I felt).  Part of the reason I was so excited to see him was I had just spent the year in a National Service program and I had been through some really trying times (amongst them being the before mentioned pseudo-relationship) and it was just nice to see a familiar face.  So then I moved on.  I returned to my home state where I saw some more old college friends and my family.  And they would ask me about about my year on the west coast.  As I would try my best to explain all great and terrible things that had happened I could see on their faces that they had either stopped listening or would have prefered to heard an "It was great."  Those who did actually want to hear about it couldn't relate to what I was going through but it would be naive to expect them to understand.  This left me feeling extremely isolated (which from talking to my friends I had made over the previous year seemed to be the general concensous).  So, I did what I always do, I moved again.  This time to Washington D.C.  But before I even moved there I was of the opinion, and still am, that I will not be spending more then a year in DC before I move again, considering my job that I have there only lasts that long.

I thus put a time limit on any relationships a might develope during that time (friends or otherwise).  And this is where I recently came to the conclusion that I am running away from my friends.  I believe that because I am affraid of being hurt by the friends I am going to make/made that I will leave them first, end the friendship on my own terms.  So that I do not get hurt by them leaving me or by letting me down.  This way I'm keeping them at a distance.  I'm doing this same thing with the girls I'm "dating," where I keep them all at a distance and hang out with them all around the same time to force myself from getting to close with any one of them.  I'm afaird of getting hurt, so I maintain a somewhat shallow relationship with everyone to prevent getting hurt by them.

This is where my internal crisis lies.  I really enjoy spending time with my friends and having meaningful relationships but I also enjoy moving to new places and getting to know those places well and meeting new people and making new friends.

Do I continue my nomadic life or do I settle down and try to maintain long term relationships with people?

Each of these has it's draw backs:
I could either live a life where I can't form lasting relationships
or
one where I won't feel like I'm living my life to it's full potential by getting a lot of experiences and getting to see so many different places

Can I do both?
Which one will make me happier?
Which one do I feel will give my life better meaning?
How am I to decide?

Returning Home

I've recently returned to my hometown in New Jersey after spending the better part of a year on the west coast and I believe I'm experiencing what is referred to as "reverse culture shock."  I have been finding it hard to relate to my old friends and vice versa.  It is just that so much has happened in that one year that I can't really express how my life has changed in a short enough story that it will keep their interest and actually continue to listen to my stories. 

The other day I went to a party where I saw a number of kids who used to hang out with and I was nervous to see them as I drove there.  I was initially nervous because I was thinking about how I was going to be seeing a bunch of people who I wasn't really close with, but who i enjoyed spending time with, and I was worried that it might get awkward if I couldn't relate to all the things they were talking about and end up not really a part of the party.  The aspect that I thought would be most awkward about this was the fact that I could relate to these people in the past and that if I couldn't anymore I would feel out of place.  But I came to a realization before I arrived:
The fact that I have had all these experiences and they in turn have been through a lot throughout that same length of time means that both they and I are now completely different people than the ones we knew a year ago.  Thus, I wasn't going to a party filled with people I kind of knew, I was going to a party with complete strangers.

And I found comfort in this.