It's been a while since I've written a blog, and that's
unfortunate. I'm still alive. I'm still writing off and on, working on new
material. Sometimes, I'm able to convince myself that no one cares and no one
reads my writing, despite the numbers Smashwords shows me. That's its own emo
blog full of tears and self-pity and I just don't have the energy to write it,
so let's focus on good things. I'm too old for the kind of intense negativity
that fills me with angst at the worst times and drives people away. What a
mouthful of words. Luckily, this is typa-typa land.
I left OkCupid behind, probably for good. I've realized that
being on there for friendship is like going on Grindr for relationships. People
do it, but let's face it, even people who do that have in the back of their
mind that they might just want to meet and fuck. Otherwise, why would they have
chosen Grindr? There are plenty of respectable dating sites that aren't hookup
sites.
I suppose that's how I approached OkCupid. I convinced
myself for a long time that I was only looking for friendship because every
time I thought I met someone on there and finally told someone, anyone, about
it, it was over and I had to go right back and say "just kidding,
guys." Sometimes there are greener pastures to graze in, and mine is brown
from urine. Sometimes, my crazy is just more than my profile let on (which
amazes me, since I kind of bled into the about me box to make it as crazy as
possible. It's funny what people take as a joke). I don't change for people
anymore. No one should have to. If you're a horrible person, it's no one's
place to decide you ought not be horrible. Maybe that's me. Maybe I'm actually
a really horrible person. But you know, I'm actually kind of okay with that,
because I have no idea how to change it.
As a boyfriend, I've found myself to be someone I would
never date. I've found myself to be clingy and yet aggressively avoidant. I've
found myself to be intensely shaming and quick to lie and mostly able to keep
up a glossy if obnoxiously apologetic sheen over the fact that most of the time
I feel very small emotions unless provoked. It's a selfish state of being that
no one else ought to be subjected to, but it works well for me. I'm done
apologizing, though. At least for things I can't change. I have no capacity to
be a cork for someone else's leaking, flooding soul. I'm useless in that
respect. I am terminally alone, and it's an easier disease to live with than
anything else I suffer from.
I once met a guy in Cincinnati, and he knows who he is. I
like to tell myself I wasn't looking for a relationship when I met him in
Metamora for Canal Days, but the initial distance I was able to keep up via
text melted away in person. He was and is a nice guy, and I hate to think that
I'm just an impulsive mistake he probably wishes he could redo as something
less intense if at all. I don't know what it is about the emptiness of being
human that makes people seek one another so desperately and yet so choosily.
You'd better look just like your profile pictures, be fit, have some kind of
solid direction in life and love who you are or trust me, someone else will,
and those qualities are a lot more attractive than a sad man-boy riddled with
crippling self-doubt and low self-esteem, a sock of a person with no muscle
tone and no real plan for the next five years, which is exactly what I am. People, gay men in particular, believe that they are entitled to a hard-bodied,
masculine, intelligent, self-confident-but-no-the-cheating-type Adonis who
smiles at their every word and tells them they're amazing. I don't know what to
tell them. Those types are in short supply outside of romantic comedies.
There's plenty more guys like me out there to disappoint them, I guess. I hope
he finds what he's looking for among the rubble. I have a bad habit of turning
people into weapons and using them to hurt myself. Sometimes I realize I'm
doing it and sometimes I'm a gaping mess before I realize where all the blood
is coming from. It's a very teenage way to approach a relationship, and I've
not been a teenager for over eleven years. I'm not surprised anymore when the
other person turns out to be just as damaged as me. What surprises me is that
they deny it.
I'm not actually bitter. I know it sounds like I am, but
maybe bitter is the wrong word for it. In today's world of delusional hippie
happiness and new age unwashed organic bullshit, a little healthy self-loathing
counts against you. It's pretty unfortunate. I don't hate myself. I just know
I'm not what everyone's looking for, even though just looking at some of my
profile pictures you'd think I was. Those pictures are the product of simple
photo enhancing apps where I smooth my pores and brighten my eyes and make them
pop. The reality is just as grainy as reality has every right to be.
I realized quite recently, like in the last few months, that
I deserve to be comfortable, single or not. I deserve to be able to have my own
apartment and explore the freeways of this nation with my sheet metal
companion, Angela T. Vanmobile. I deserve to be able to enter into voluntary
aspects of this fucked up life on my own terms, relationships being the biggest
and most important of these aspects. If I don't want one, I need to spend my
time alone enjoying it, and if that means playing video games and working in a
call center, then so be it. It's not thrilling, but it's familiar.
Sometimes I wonder if my mom would be proud of the person
I've become. I know she would have said she was. My dad says he is when he
decides to comment on it, but I don't see much for a parent to be proud of,
especially compared to my older and more successful older brother Eric. The guy
started a chain of hugely successful fine dining establishments. I write dark
little stories about the end of the world and occasionally read my poetry aloud
to strangers. If we're judging purely by that comparison, I am pretty
miniscule. All parents say they're proud of their kids at some point, but in a
lot of ways it's the same as any other relationship. The human reality is that I
am flawed, and I don't need anyone to be proud of me unless I'm proud of
myself. Even then, it's optional. What's important is that I'm proud of myself,
and I'm getting there.
I guess if you asked me to describe myself in one word a
month ago, it would have been sad. Two weeks ago, it would have been
disappointed. I've had a lot of cool things happening, including a trip to
Chicago and a career change, and I suppose now the word would be okay. I'm okay
right now. I'm having fun in my life, and I have no expectations of anyone,
only of myself.
This year, I expect to be able to go from okay to happy
without relying on anyone else to do it. That's called co-dependency, and I'm
not about that life. I have never been someone who's afraid to be alone. I was
alone for years and I was happier than I'd ever been.
I don't know how to end this blog. I guess the moral here is
that I'm making resolutions this year, and I'm forgiving all the guys I disappointed,
because I was just a much to blame. I'm not saying I plan to change, but I'm
saying I get it. Some I'm still friends with, some I haven't talked to in
years. If there were ever a damaged individual needing a warning label, it's
me. I don't know, maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. Maybe it's like the
explicit content stickers they used to put on CDs. Maybe it's a little
embarrassing, or maybe it commands respect. Either way, I wear it, even if
people over the years have failed to read it. In my opinion, that's better than
being a fucked up mess in secret and exploding into an emo, twisted mess after
the claws are already in.
I'm not in this world to be a ready-made suburban partner
for someone. It's an appealing idea, but I'm much too unstable. I'm not an
idealist anymore. I'd rather sit in an apartment and know that in the confines
of my own space I am accepted than invade someone else's and know that my profile
pictures have more self-esteem than I do. People tell me I'm hard on myself,
but I like to think of it as cautious optimism with a healthy dose of the kind
of reality millennials rarely have. I refuse to one of those people, confident
and stupid and empty, riding along on a sea of selfies toward a headstone in
the distance, too busy keep everyone informed of my life to actually live it.
I forgive the universe also for making me this way. I can't
say the same for the people who have to interact with me, but I'd like to think
they like me the way I am. Most importantly, I forgive myself for not being
good enough for myself or my exes or my parents or anyone else, because I
wasn't put here to be good enough. I was put here to do something with my life,
and that's what I intend to do.
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