Love?

7-30-18

I picked up crochet recently and it's been an interesting method of finding myself as far as thinking goes. Often times, my mind if a blank slate, ready for problems, ideas, or what have you, to present themselves so that I can deal with them as they come at me. I find that while I work with a crochet hook and create this pattern over and over again, my mind fills with different thoughts of its own. Little things that happen around me might trigger a response and I'm suddenly flooded by memory.

In the last couple of days, I've found myself dwelling a lot on love and it's many benefits and downfalls, as it were. I've seen a loving family, gotten to share some of my time with them and found myself broken due to it, wishing I had it, and the logical part of my mind knows that with time, I may indeed have it, or I may not, and this brings a strange sort of comfort to me.

On the other side of that coin, I've been dwelling on my past relationships, more so my previous real one, the one that I had with Chloe. I've found that there were many red flags I ignored that I should of taken into extreme consideration right out of the gate. From a guy named Ben and the things I found out they liked to do together (that never sat right even though I kept hearing nothing had gone on after we'd been dating for a while, I was later proven that it was crap,) to being called Garret on multiple occasions, the stories of many "dates" with people in the interim of our break, all while being told I was loved, to the final straw that broke the camels back, which was 2 months after we had gotten engaged, a phone call in which I was asked about the desire to have an open relationship.

In retrospect, I was stupid. I let my desire to be with someone really come between myself and happiness. There were many times in which I was miserable, hurt, or just in general felt less than worth a damn. After three years (roughly) and a proposal at Disney World, I finally reach a point where I'd had enough. It's a real joke and really, three years isn't a lot of time, but it still sucks to have wasted that time, even as small as it may of been. My nerves frayed and my heart in a weird place, I opted to end it for my own sake. I let myself dwell on it and through some foresight, I realized if I stayed in that relationship, I would of been divorced later down the road.

I realized that it came down to someone not wanting to grow up and get their shit together. They were dedicated to the idea that they didn't have it in them to commit to a relationship, and I get that some people can't, but you end up potentially stomping a path through people, and that's exactly what Chloe did. She went on to get engaged to another gentleman who she told she had no real desire to be with, but he supported her, they got a place together, and when they called it quits, he stuck around and supported her in her pursuit of another guy, who she couldn't have out of the gate because of reasons.

This isn't a witch hunt or anything of that sort. It's an idea and a brief moment of reflection. It's a note of habit that lead to multiple people being used as stepping stones in a sense. I don't want anything to come back on Chloe, in so much as that's not even her real name. That said, I needed to put this down so that I could acknowledge the pains, bruises and cuts left on my heart, and begin the process of healing, even if it's going to leave scars. I know it's left me a bitter person, and it's left my heart closed off to a lot of the world, it's left me with a perpetual scowl for all it would seem.

My hope was that I could one day have a family, a wonderful wife, a kid or two, and now I realize that, if that happens, fantastic! It may not be the case though and even though I wasted and have wasted much time in the past, even chosen the wrong partners, I still have time to find what's right and good for me. I've also learned that people have their own problems, fears, and issues that they need to deal with and need support through, and that's okay. The best people to surround yourself with are the ones who are willing to see their own issues and make the steps to change those issues.

Now I face the task of letting go of the feelings in my heart now so that I can move on from them and try to grow. So that I'm not struck by emotions at a random moment and it leaves me dumbstruck. I'm putting myself back together, piece by piece, but I've found that some sort of crem has grown around the edges and keeps them from sticking together as well. So it seems I'll be shaving off some of the extra things I've picked up. I'd really like to say I'm okay, because that's what I tell everyone, but really, I don't think I'm in the best place and I'm just so cold that it doesn't get expressed.

I'll grow and I'll heal. I will. I've put myself into so many projects where I can create, that it's a matter of time before I'm whole again. I spent so much time building these little internal walls to protect things, that now those things are suffocating, rather than being nurtured like they needed to be in the first place. I think that's my biggest regret right now is that I let myself try to hide. I should of done better, but who really knows what's best for them at the time? It's all hindsight and that's always 20/20, isn't it?

I'll end this here because it's time to go to work and I need to take a moment.

Have a good day.

Disassociation

It's an odd feeling when you're sitting there, you're okay, things are fine. You're listening to friends playing games, or just derping about, and the world is as it should be, that is to say, okay in that moment. Suddenly you feel a supreme disconnect. Things go grey, color seems to leech out of everything and in the blink of eye, you feel more like a machine, sitting there just existing. You're not emotionally tied to anything happening and you feel like you're watching everything behind a glass wall.

I think the it just happened to me. I've spent the last 2 (and a half?) hours laying in bed, thinking about this. Thinking about how I feel (or the lack of feeling I suppose,) and wondering why I just became a machine. I'm genuinely not concerned about anything, I don't have any kind of emotion to speak of floating around in my head. Now before I go too far into this, it's not depression. That is a very real thing I deal with and something I'm well versed in dealing with, it is however possible that this is a byproduct of having dealt with depression before.

When I emotionally disassociate from myself, it feels very much like something in me has just all together shut off. The vast majority of the machinery is just firing away, processes are taking place, things are getting done, but there's no one there at the control panel to make it all happen. The worker... stepped away. It's like my emotional side and my brain function independently from one another and a thick glass wall has, for whatever reason, separated them.

After the fact, it really does bother the hell out of me that I do it. It doesn't feel right that I do this. I know that I can't help it, I know that it's some kind of a defense mechanism that, if I'm honestly dwelling on, I don't want to let it go because it is useful. I just don't like the descent into this logic driven beast of a man. The image in my head right now is a man, screaming at a mirror, but the mirror is just staring blankly back at him.

I know with a little bit of time, I'll come out of this and be right as rain, but in the interim, I'm just kind of useless to everyone around me. More so, it's difficult when someone who I care very deeply for comes to me to ask if I'm okay. I've lost something at that point and not even noticed it myself when she can tell something is off with me right away just in the way I say goodbye for the evening. I don't like to make people worry about me so it's kind of a punch in the gut when it happens. Bless her, I don't want her to read this and think that I don't want her to call me out on something like this, I very much appreciate it in fact because it gave me the desire to really start trying to figure this out in the last hour.

A giant pane of glass is all that's separating me from myself and it's just such a frustrating thing to deal with that, I would like to scream, but the greater part of my brain knows it's a futile effort and it doesn't mean anything. It's literally a fight of "what's the point?"

I'm gonna stop this here and go sit out on the deck or something, watch the stars (if that's possible at the moment) maybe take in the heat wave we're under for a bit, perhaps reset my bodies thermostat so 70 degrees feels like it should.

If you read this, thank you and good night.