Passing thoughts

Staring at a blank screen, cursor flashing, and my mind is just as blank. I’m not where I want to be. Emotionally, physically, career-wise; I just feel lost and disappointed in myself. Like, you could be better than this, you know? You could be doing so much more than this, be more, write more, and feel more. Everything always just starts to feel forced: the smiles, the writing, the laughter.

I want to like him and then I second guess myself. Am I doing that thing that I do again? The over-analyzing the other person because I’m holding them up to that standard, comparing them to him up there on the pedestal? You can’t do that – I tell myself – they’re not the same; they’ll never be the same. So what if he doesn’t make you laugh? So what if you don’t have butterflies in your stomach when you’re kissing? So what? You’re still having a good time, so – what?

Everyone here makes me feel insecure. Everyone is a better writer than me, established better in their careers, has more connections, more notches on their resume, bylines to show for it. I’m a fucking great writer, aren’t I? Why can’t I do that shit? Why can’t anyone seem to see how great I am? Everyone here is more athletic than me, going to the gym every day, running marathons, being active. Why am I just so lazy about it all? Where is the fire I can light under my ass to get me to really want to get out there and bust my ass for it? I feel like everyone my age it doing more than I am and I can’t just seem to get it together.

I keep telling myself I’ll try more, harder, to be better. But then I just get to a screen and everything goes blank. I don’t want to do anything about it. I am stagnant.

I know I can, I know I can, I know I can. But I can’t.

I’m preoccupied at the thought of the future, of not wanting to be here, of him. 

Emmett. 

Of wanting to be with him; like he is the key to make the rest of these pieces fall into place. If he were with me, I would be happy. And then we could go somewhere and live together and be happy together. He would inspire me and motivate me and encourage me. Because he gets me – he gets what I’m about and what I do and what I want to do, where I want to be – because we’re so much the same.

I read through his blog the other day and cried. The way he writes makes me so envious, it’s so beautiful and poetic. His entries are sporadic just like mine. Sometimes they are epic novels and sometimes they are short stories. Sometimes they make a difference and sometimes they are just random thoughts. I want to write my story with him, write the story of our future together.

I hate everything else I have to say. It all seems so trivial. The world is so much bigger than we all are and why make a mountain out of our anthills of problems?

I hate my novel because I hate that it feels phony; I can’t convey all these thoughts of loss of a loved one since I’ve never really lost someone I loved. I based the idea on my loss of him but he never really went away, and he was never really mine to begin with. That’s why it’s so terrible. That’s why I have an ending that was just a cheater’s way out since I couldn’t figure out how to end it since things were never ended. It doesn’t even make any sense and it’s just cheap filler. It’s like when you eat something that makes you feel terrible and bloated right after but then you’re starving again a few hours later. Or if you ate something expensive or something that you hoped would taste great but was bland and flavorless, and you felt guilty about it, about how you were so excited for it and then hated it but you still had to pretend to like it anyway.

To be honest - I’m worried that’s how our relationship would be. Bland and flavorless, even though we hoped it would be mind-blowing.

Doing it Wrong

As I sit around and look at all the people around me, I can't help but feel like I'm doing this whole  life thing wrong. Everyone is in relationships (happy or unhappy relationships - regardless, they have someone special in the life), moving in together, getting married, having babies. People are in their careers, advancing to better jobs, giving up the old bullshit for the new awesomeness. And where am I? I'm stuck here - living alone, being alone, being miserable in my thankless job. It's not for lack of trying. I've put out more resumes than I can recall, and while last year there were a slew of promising interviews, this year remains nothing but silence. 

So what am I doing wrong?

I've been trying to like Philadelphia, really I have. And I've been trying to date and give people the benefit of the doubt. But the more nothing goes the way I see it going for others, I really have to wonder if maybe it's really just me. I'm what's wrong in this equation. I have dreams and principles and goals set for myself and my future that I'm not willing to compromise - is that really so wrong? There are things that I feel in my heart and my gut that I know are right - things that I know that I can do, tasks that I can legitimately accomplish - but nothing is propelling my life into motion; the pieces to the puzzle just always seem to be missing.

I am rapidly approaching 30 and with it brings along this wide-eyed sense of panic and anxiety. I don't know where I wanna go or who I wanna be or what I wanna do. Every day I'm on to a new thought or idea or city or state or country; I could move to X and do Y. I don't have a problem picking up and starting over - it's the part that happens after I get there that's going to be difficult. All I really want is to just be happy. To wake up in the morning and not hate where I am or where I'm going, what I have to do or who I have to see. Do people really have that? Do people really, genuinely, truly wake up in the morning loving every single little aspect of their lives? To not have regrets that they wish they had gone here, done this, tried that. To not have all this fear of moving forward to the exciting and new because they are too scare to let go of the past, the safe, the familiar.

Friends in long term relationships are moving in together, trying to find the perfect living spaces in which to combine all their things, posting the totally cool, quirky wall art of that thing they both like. Or the pictures of their fridge covered in pictures of that trip they once took. Well, I tried that whole "living together" thing once and it didn't go so well, and the thought of putting that much of myself on the line, the merging of things, even if I know in my heart that this other person would never do me wrong, still feels unnerving and makes me break out into a cold sweat of sharing an apartment with anything bigger then a ladybug.

As friends marry and have babies and post pictures of said babies on social media sites, I feel these little twinges of the hetero-normative pulling and prodding. "Find a husband, have a baby - happy wife, happy life." Being married, pregnant, raising children? These are not the ideals I see for myself, and ultimately it becomes my cross to bear as I see others finding happiness in these simple milestones and wonder if maybe, I just compromised my own beliefs, that I could find that happiness too. 

But I know I won't. I would never be happy just trying to fit the mold. I know I'm going to be amazing one day. I'm bound for glory. But can it just hurry up and get here already? Because I'm really starting to get worried that I'm fucking it up.

Til Death do Us....

Commitment-phobia may seem like an urban myth to some and to others, a line that men use as the main reason that they don’t want to be in a serious relationship. According to Wikipedia, “Commitment-phobia is often most strongly apparent in romantic life. Generally, commitment-phobic people claim that they are eager to find a lasting romantic attachment and get married, yet they fail to find appropriate partners and maintain long lasting connections. Ironically, in these romantic relationships, the commitment-phobic partner craves what he/she fears most: love and connection. This paradoxical craving for a frightening reality leads to a confusing and destructive pattern of seduction and rejection. The results are emotionally devastating.” To be quite honest, I believe that this is as much a true and real phobia as being afraid of Clowns or the number 13. (Coulrophobia and Triskaidekaphobia, respectfully; I guess the closest thing in existence, according to The Phobia List [http://phobialist.com/] anyway, would be Gamophobia, or the Fear of Marriage.)

I have in recent months come to realize that I may or may not be a commitment-phobe. I really enjoy the thought of spending time with someone in a romantic relationship, but much like swimming too far out in the ocean, I feel like I will get to a point where I start flailing my arms and try to head back to shore. With several failed relationships under my belt, I think it’s only safe to say that I have a series of trust issues that therapists in years to come will have a field day with. Once I hit the 2 years mark in a relationship, things start to take a turn for the worse and I’m looking for an escape route. I’m afraid that if I find someone that really makes me happy and who I make really happy and we enjoy each others company, that once I hit that milestone, I’m going to panic and run. Which pretty much rules out marriage – and I already have an inherent fear of that.

With so many marriages going sour in the world around me, what hope is there that this archaic institution actually works and serves a valuable purpose in one’s life? And those who do remain married, how does their happiness rate now once the inevitable “newlywed period” ends? I guess that leads to the other part of the Wikipedia article, which says “The key to understanding commitment-phobia is recognizing that such behavior is rooted in fear—fear of lost options or fear of making poor decisions. The commitment-phobic mind sees decisions as permanent, opening the possibility of being caged or trapped forever with no means of escape” I suppose there are people who are happily married, who don’t cheat on their partners, who live to tell the tale so to speak, to prove that it’s possible to get that fairy tale ending. Is it healthy that I should view marriage as a form of imprisonment? Probably not, but people cheat, people lie, people fight, and people get bored. Wouldn’t you be afraid of these things too? (And not even of your partner committing any of those things, but of yourself being the one to falter.) Here you are, bound by this marriage contract, death do you part and all that jazz and you just wake up one morning ten years later and look over at that lump of flesh in bed next to you and think, “My god, what I am doing here, with them, when I could be doing XYZ-else?”

I have friends that are obsessed with marriage, which is probably a thinly-veiled obsession with having a wedding, really. (Actually, it’s probably societal norms being forced on girls from a young age that leads to this obsession with weddings – and those same norms that equate being married with the big Cinderella wedding to begin with.) What’s the big hoopla? You love a person so much you want to spend the rest of your life with them (at least that's how you feel now, anyway). Who says you need to get married to feel that way? Who says you need to spend $150 a plate on some crappy catering hall food and another couple hundred on tacky wedding favors, a local cover band, and a dress you’ll wear one day in your life in order to feel that way? Just live. Just be. My friend complained that she still didn’t have a ring on her finger; I told her what is this, 1940? You want to be married so bad, ask him. Is there a law that says he needs to ask you and that you need a ring to be married? No – City Hall just wants x amount of money for the marriage license and they’ll marry you right there on the spot. Boom! Done! You’re married! Happy now? Has anything really changed? (Except your name if you’ve decided to) No – You’re still the same two people, except you are now legally bound to each other as man and wife for the rest of your lives.

I’m not knocking marriage, so please don’t take what I’m saying the wrong way. I’m just saying it works for some people obviously, but I don’t think that I’m one of them. Is this due to my commitment-phobia? Yes, more than likely. Is marriage something you have to work at every day? This is what I hear from people. Relationships in general are work though, too. Except obviously, a relationship is more open-ended and there’s less paperwork and legal ramifications involved if you decide to end it later on down the road. Would I be a potential “Runaway Bride”? Probably, but I’d also probably be that person who, five years into a relationship where you are living together and merging itunes libraries with the other person and sharing toothbrushes, would pack a bag in the middle of the night, and leave an “I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore” post-it on the nightstand. Honestly, I just want someone who makes me happy (and not want to strangle them) and someone who I make happy (and doesn’t cheat on me or treat me like crap) and we’re both happy making each other happy and living our lives and not worrying about anniversaries or wedding invitations or anything other than just living day to day, in the moment. (And to make it past the two year itch)