Here's the deal. Basically, I've come to a realisation about what I am that I'm none too pleased with, but am attempting to wrap my head around it anyway. Bear with me, I just want to get it on metaphorical paper.
So the large group of people I will loosely call my 'friendship group' have, for the past several years, always been a pretty out there bunch. I've tended to gravitate towards the kooks, the crazies, the amusing, the bold, the entertaining - basically the abnormal and the incredible. Which is wonderful, because I get to experience a lot of awesome views on the world and have a blast with these people, and I'm grateful for being able to be around them because, as I've said, they are so different and awesome and I love it.
But there is a slight problem with hanging around with these sorts of people. They tend to be introspective, sometimes not too sure of themselves, always open to new ideas, slightly apprehensive and difficult to read - and quite a lot of them have been boys. And quite a lot of them have been/are attractive.
I'm sure you can see where this is going.
For quite a few years now, I've found myself in situations where - well, you know what, let's make a list:
- Been cloistered with numerous 'straight' boys, whose natural curiousity and perhaps subconcious urgings have led them to lead me on to quite an impressive degree, but at the same time giving them plenty of room to back out whenever the room takes them, leaving me frustrated.
- Been in relationships with people who have only just 'come out' - often not even letting everyone know that they are, indeed, interested in boys, and who have got cold feet. This has happened in three relationships, the most damaging of which was my most recent one, in which the best that could be said is that he had the decency to end the experiment a week into the relationship, thus wounding me only greivously, not fatally.
- Endless, endless, ENDLESS drunken, fumbling feelups, kisses and subtle touching.
- The ridiculous habit I have of falling for anyone who shows even the remotest affection for me, which is tied in to a recent develepment I have only just learnt of.
And I'm surrounded by people who can fuel this addiction, with their hands and their words and their curiousity and their emotional decay, and I have been for years, and I've gone with it because, hey, I get my fix, right? And at times I've even deluded myself - no, that's not accurate. At times I have even fallen for them completely, allowed myself to form a deep-seated emotional attachment to that which feeds me, and why not? I may as well. Better to like them then loathe them.
And lying there, drunk or sober, alone with one or surrounded by several, addiction being sated on a large scale or a small scale, there's that little nagging voice in the back of my head that reminds me the one undeniable fact; that every relationship, every fumbling grope, every kiss, every meaningful look and every casual screw means next to nothing to them. That I am, have always been and will always be nothing more than an amusing experiment, the oddity, the faggot. The one with the addiction, easily manipulated, prudent and silent and fun while it lasts.
If we are to pour on the melodrama, it makes me doubt whether I'll ever be loved by anyone properly.
Still, twas an interesting observation when running through my head, and I failed at getting it onto the page, but I'm glad it's out.
1 comment:
It can be an interesting thing, really, to realise what you are addicted to. And I do not mean physical substances - as you say, you can be easily addicted to physical contact. I often wake to find myself wrapped around my girlfriend, acres of bed abandoned behind me to lie with her in the veritable final inches of mattress before the plummet to the floor.
I have been reading recently - and attempting to put into practice - a book called "The Warrior Athlete", by gold medal winner and gymnastics coach Dan Millman. It's an old copy, and I believe he renamed it we he re-released a few years back, but my point (insofar as I ever have one) is that he urged his athletes to experiment with self-denial. When they think "Man, I NEED a beer after that day at work!" they should then deny themselves that beer. When the thought process is "What a hard day's work, I WANT a beer," then they can indulge freely.
By changing the way we act and speak by changing the very thought processes that drives them, his athletes were able to push themselves further - "I don't NEED to stop, I only WANT to" - and went on to often Olympic levels of success.
Bruce Lee once described his training methodology as training to exhaustion, then applying emotional pressure to go beyond his limit. I believe the quote was something like "I envisaged a man with a gun to my mother's head, and he would kill her unless I did one more repetiton." He made himself NEED to continue beyond his physical limitation. And this is (part of) why he is a legend to this day.
Experimenting with Millman's concepts in my own life is not an easy task - especially if you've never attempted to examine your own thought processes before, while they are happening.
"If we are to pour on the melodrama, it makes me doubt whether I'll ever be loved by anyone properly."
I think all I can do for that is to repeat what I told a friend over a decade ago, when he discovered his fiance of three years had cheated on him and their relationship was breaking up rather painfully.
"You lived before her - you were a complete person before her. She never made you whole, you were whole all the time. You don't NEED her - you never did. She f*cked your life up? F*ck her right back - by moving on, and living your life to the full without her."
He went out the next day, bought the new convertible he'd wanted for years, found a much hotter (and more faithful) girlfriend within a couple of months and - last I heard - was living happily ever after.
The point I'm trying to make here is that you don't need anyone other than yourself to be a complete person - looking to others to complete yourself always ends in heartbreak.
When you love, love unconditionally. If my girlfriend left me today, I would grieve for the loss of our potential future together, not because she left. But I would also be glad for the good times we had. I don't expect her to love me forever - but I hope that she will.
I probably rambling by now - you may or may not have noticed, as it's hardly unusual for me - so I'll leave it there.
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