Please Pardon the Following Psychobabble Dump

Sometimes (now among them, in case you couldn't otherwise have figured it out-- that is to say, if you're a thickie) I stop to think about all the opportunities I've been given in life, all the advantages I've received, everything that's fallen into my lap, and I marvel at what a pathetic show I've made of this life. Lonely, underemployed, rudderless... and nobody but myself to blame. If I had two ounces of confidence or ambition to rub together (what a shitty metaphor! how does one rub confidence against ambition? what would happen? one can presume a(n entirely metaphorical, of course) spark, but what if they just scrape each other's top layer off? I suppose that's more likely for self-loathing and sloth, which I have in (metaphorical) spades

{is this amusing anyone but me, and even that only for this exact moment because I'll read it later and hate myself even more for being such a self-involved and linguistically over-indulgent twat?}

and which seem to produce only a blubbering farting sound when rubbed together) I'd have taken the privileged upbringing, the loving and supportive family (overbearing father and ineffectual mother notwithstanding), the modicum of talent and intelligence, the overall health and good looks, and all the lucky breaks and made... well, shit... what the fuck would I make? If I could have anything what would it be?

I guess here we have found the problem. Lack of goals, meet lack of ambition... or is that just the face of a mirror?

And what has spurred this latest round of caustic introspection? What else? A night out drinking, realizing that even in a tiny scene in a tiny town I'm surrounded by attractive women and yet I haven't even smooched anyone since October. Some of them even seem (seeeeeeeem) interested in me, but it also seems that I am entirely incapable of capitalizing on this, I have no clue how to proceed. Others seem entirely oblivious to me, and I have no more clue how to present myself to them.

Why is romantic failure always for me a reminder of my overall failure? For about as long as I can remember love has been the thing that has seemed furthest from my grasp. I had it for all of seven months in '98 and I thought everything was all right forever, and that very blindness lead to my losing it.

Late in April the following year I was very depressed. Probably the most depressed I've ever been. I regularly considered killing myself, absolutely convinced that things would never get better. At my lowest point, a voice of reason asked whether I could be so certain that this was so, and I decided to give my life a year to get better. Some patient sector of my brain suggested ten, so we split the difference and decided on five.

I was walking home from the bus stop in Auburndale, MA. I stopped in the middle of the street, pulled out a pen and paper, and scribbled down APRIL 30, 2004. If by that point my life had shown me nothing better, I could feel free to end it.

When that day came I was too busy moving into my new place to even note its passing. But I'm free to guzzle cyanide now if such is my fancy. Have the past five years shown me that things can get better? Well, they're certainly not as bad as they were then, so that's one answer. But it all... the unexamined life, it has been said, is not worth living. The overexamined life simply feels so.

So is finding love, the unattainable grail of my life, really the answer? Or maybe I just hope to forget all my missteps and failures in the embrace of another. Or maybe the one thing you feel unable to have will always seem like the answer. Possibly that's why I sabotage every opportunity: to avoid the inevitable disappointment of love's actuality.

But those seven months... what I remember the most is just how EASY it all felt, how much of a relief it was to discover that loving someone who actually loved you back was no big deal. The Big Deal came clamping down again only in its absense.

Of course I can track the whole thing down to inexperience, which is so often self-perpetuating... due to its root causes: fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of the unknown. The Self Help books say that all these causes can be traced back to one original Cause, that being SHAME.

So, I have ammunition here for the next time someone accuses me of having no shame. BITE ME!

I was telling someone earlier tonight that the reason I so often seem misanthropic (to some, aloof to others) at first is that my first reaction when I meet someone new is to assume that they dislike me. I often continue to assume this until they clearly demonstrate otherwise. So to avoid their judgment, or possibly to avoid leaving myself open to attack, I close myself off. Present nothing of myself, just silence or some false front-- the job, the music, the sad clown. Pretend to be invisible and hope it becomes true (then feel weird and alienated when it essentially does).

This whole thing has no culmination. There is no revelation or breakthrough to be found, just yet another cycling through of all the things I spend too much time thinking about and not enough time actually trying to change. Because I don't know how to change them. And because I'd be exposed to the possibility of real failure if I ever got past them.
- posted by Bob @ 3:20 AM