Broken Doll

Sit on Santa’s Lap naughty giveaway.

There ya go.

Not great, but okay. After abandoning the whole idea of OKCupid for a year and a half, I am attempting again, for lack of better options.  I put myself out there, in the real world, but whatever new people I meet are either not interested, not interesting (in that way), or taken.  So.

Aside from the obvious trolls, messages from OKCupid make me feel obligated to respond, just in case, to cast the net wider even if I’m not really seeing the potential for this particular person. And honestly I don’t like that.  Even simple conversations suck up hours of time to conduct via email —  for someone who may or may not even be committed enough to show up for an in-person meet.  I’m committing a lot of energy for, probably, very little return.  I’d much rather let this stuff happen naturally in the course of committing my energy to the stuff I already commit it to, in public spaces, meeting people in the course of doing my art and living my life — two birds with one stone — except it apparently doesn’t work.

There is a coldness, an emptiness, to my day-to-day that isn’t filled by the stuff that crams my schedule.  I still come home to an empty house. Most often I have very little reason to leave it.  I miss the love that isn’t there.  I miss having a reason that isn’t motivated almost entirely by a need to pay the rent.

And for those who message me, who I respond to just in case, and yet it makes me uneasy because the conversation, the progress, the plan is not in my control. I didn’t select him; I have no plan, no contingencies, for how to direct him to a comfortable and safe face-to-face meeting.  If he doesn’t mention photography, the photo club is out.  If he says he’s agnostic, the spiritual groups are out.  Kink demo for a first meeting?  Possible, but hardly ideal — too loaded.  And, well, there’s not much else.

There’s no way to get completely away from the artificiality, and it makes things awkward, makes me uncomfortable, and makes me want to pull away and give up without even trying.

There’s not many good ones left… if any at all.  This should have been settled years ago.  I should have been given that chance.

I am not close to anyone, except my mother. Not even as friends. No one knows my heart.

It makes me softly sad.

The distance between me and him yawns lightyears across. I am dull and blank and feeling through thick dirty cotton. Unplugged. The more disconnected I am from the world, the more disconnected I am from myself.

My sexuality is dying and I think I will stop loving everything, anything, soon. The fire is out.

some things are worse than death.

Kinky holiday stocking.

Yeah. I remember last Yule I was begging for the light to return.

I’m still waiting.

Your result for Personality Elements Assay … Listener / Counselor

-8 Earth, 3 Air, -3 Fire and 8 Water!

You have one of the seven Water personalities. Water is the solvent that blends things together and flows through pretty much everything alive. Water personalities tend to care about the connections between people and emotions and caring. If you were a doctor, you’d care about how your patient felt.

The Listener is also the Counselor, depending on whether one is introverted or extroverted (sorry, didn’t test for which). You deeply care about people and have enough creativity and sense of right and wrong to generally figure out what is good for them. You don’t like to go out and muck with your friends’ lives personally, but might put a word into someone else’s ear to make something happen. For you it is more about knowing people than doing things.

When I left for college I believed that simply by virtue of growing up the people around me would mature and finally understand and accept me.

I spent a looooong time living in denial of the fact that it has never been true.

And in talking with Laura yesterday she wants me to walk away from the past relationships and yes, of course, so do I. But I can’t just walk away — there has to be something to walk toward. What is the next thing that comes after this? It’s clear that there’s a pattern here, but if I don’t understand why, if I can’t even ask because the people who know why they left won’t tell me, then going on as before will just give me another repeat of the same damn mess. If I knew what it was they think I did wrong, then maybe I could do something about it — if I can’t salvage the old relationships, at least I could make new ones that won’t turn on me when I need them.

So I’m thinking about it on the way home last night and the words pop into my head: “There is no next.”

And a second later I realized that was the exact same idea I’ve been struggling with all this time.

At first it was hope for Morgan, but now I learn that rather than simply needing space to sort out his own hurt, he is, apparently, actually angry at me. Again, no one will tell me why.

(The rumors trickle back to me and even the people who know me better than that don’t even bother to ask me, they just assume that yes, I did something horrible, and dump me too.)

So now the only thing keeping me alive is the fact that I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that nothing comes next. Go to sleep at night, there’s always a next morning. An absolutely miserable next morning, but it’s there nonetheless. Death is not like falling asleep simply because “there is no next,” morning never comes, and, I expect, my consciousness, my self-awareness, the whatever that is ME will cease to exist.

I can’t imagine what that’s like because “not me” has no imagination. There’s nothing to compare it to.

The irony in all this is that I rather like myself. Losing the individual entity that is ME is a hard thing to accept. The problem, of course, is that I am the only one who has an intimate understanding of me and still likes me at the same time. No man is an island, and being loved — really loved, unconditionally, for who I am — is not negotiable for me. I NEED that love. I am wired that way, and I can’t simply yank those wires out.

Loving too. Being allowed to fully love people in my life. I love as deeply and powerfully as I can hurt, but for some unfathomable reason these people see that as a pathology instead of an asset. There is no bigger WTF in all of this shit than that.

“A friend is someone who is there for you when they’d rather be anywhere else.” I don’t even need a LARGE support network. Just a few is all it would take… a few who I can be absolutely sure of, who are dependable, who truly care. And one among those who is special.

I would rather be happy than dead, but… there is no next. Even alive there is no next. It amounts to the same thing either way, except that while alive I’m still aware of how reviled and unloved and ostracized I am. While alive there is no next and it HURTS. When dead, there may be no next, but at least there’s no pain either.

Tell me to keep hoping, that there is someone out there somewhere who won’t get hysterically angry and cut me out of their lives if I happen to stand up for myself and tell them that something they did hurt my feelings and can we please talk, can you please treat me better. Who won’t start quietly backing away, shutting me out, and removing themselves from my life because I thought I could trust them enough to let them see me cry. Come on. 20 years, half a dozen different geographical locations, every single group, enclave, subculture I could find that was compatible with who I am, my interests, my soul, and I just coincidentally haven’t found a single person like that yet? Really? Then where do I find them? Am I supposed to start looking in groups of frat boys and trixies, yuppies, angry young men, suburban housewives, or any other groups that have absolutely nothing in common with me? I’ll somehow find them there? Even though I don’t even get along with people like that?

Because where else am I going to look now? What other options are there?

Or reduce me to the option of hiding myself from — lying to — my “friends,” just so I can keep them. Or be genuine, trust them, and watch them all leave, again and again and again. Invest myself, my heart, my soul, my time, and watch the entire thing collapse every couple years.

And somehow expect that it doesn’t shatter me to a point where it’s completely beyond repair.

I’ve been taking the word of my multiple therapists that there is hope, somewhere, that things can get better. I’ve been taking it on pure blind faith. But it’s been months, nothing is better, and no matter what I try, if I reach out to someone, that someone just slaps me in the face. I don’t dare say a word about how I feel. Hope is a lie. I don’t belong here, anywhere, in the world, simply because the world has decided so. The world has decided I’m WRONG. I can scream at the world that they’re wrong about me all I want… what exactly will that accomplish? I’ll still be alone.

Therapy can’t change the world. It can’t make me need love any less. I’ve been backed into this corner and the only options left leave me in misery, or lead to nothing.