Sunday, August 18, 2013

The good, the bad, and the ugly

I've been MIA from bloggerville for longer than I had realized. I have only one excuse and that's work. Or at least a sad and sorry attempt to work, while trying to entertain a nine year old boy at the same time. Sales are down because they are always down in the summer and I'm frantically and shamelessly self promoting on every doll site I know of. Luckily it's working. At least to the point where I'm able to keep my head above water. 

When I haven't been working I've spent time with friends, heard some fun music, listened to my child hum every movie theme song he knows, organized thousands of Legos, visited an overly priced Fair, laughed, cried, been overwhelmed, and at peace, and then utterly confused again. I've been busy. 

It's about ten minutes till one (am) now and I'm wide awake on my second beer, in hopes that maybe I'll be able to sleep. It hasn't been looking promising. I drink three or four sips, and then head out to smoke, hoping I don't run into a skunk or a bear. I come back in. Go pee. Take a few more sips, and so on. This is my last ditch attempt at some kind of sleep. The Brain Dump. 

I recently bought This is How by Augusten Burroughs. I've only just started reading it, but from what I can gather it's a somewhat realistic/ no bullshit/ sarcastic/ and blunt form of a self help book. The second Chapter is "How to feel like shit". And I guess that's why I'm here now. To feel like shit. Because I feel like shit. 

The reason I feel like shit tonight is because of the R word. Relationships. Or relationship, I guess, seeing how I only have one. I don't have any insight tonight, only questions. Not questions that I really expect anyone to answer, although I would welcome any answers if they exist. Questions like, why do things change? Why do they have to? What do you do when the other person has lost interest, and yet swears that they haven't. What do you do when they insist everything you think or feel is wrong, yet offer up no proof or reassurance in their actions? What do you do when the other person, who was almost obsessed with you at one point, stops listening or caring about anything you have to say? What do you do when sex, which was at the very least once a day dwindles to once a week, and you find yourself questioning whether you are actually the man or the woman in the relationship. What do you do when you've been around the block enough times to know where this ends, and yet you don't want to let yourself believe it's happening again? How do you communicate any of this to someone who is so closed to open communication?

No answers. Only questions. A friend of mine recently said she heard a relationship should only take up about 20% of your life. I don't know how I feel about that. To me, that seems more like a fuck buddy, not someone you share your life with. Perhaps I just require too much. I don't consider myself high maintenance. I don't need your money or things or to be wined and dined. I do need sex, which I realize isn't always the case with all women. However, I am not all women. I also need an intimate and emotional connection when I'm in a relationship in order to really enjoy that sex and in order to want to stay in that relationship. All of the questions above tend to break that connection and I wind up wide awake, drinking beer, and blogging when I should be sleeping peacefully and dreaming about whatever it is peacefully sleeping people dream about.

I don't necessarily consider myself insecure either. At least when it comes to a relationship and what I have to offer. I also don't consider not trusting you to be insecurity, after you've broken my trust. That is simply a consequence. I'm sure every man on the planet would disagree. Doesn't matter. It's the truth. 

So, that is where I am tonight. Perhaps a little more specific than I have been in the past. It could be the beer, but I doubt it. I think I'm just tired of not being able to say what I feel, as honestly and openly as I used to. Augusten's How to Feel Like Shit, stomps all over the bullshit of positive affirmations and the lies we tell ourselves, and instead encourages the act of actually feeling your shit. The shit that's real. 

I know I'm worthy. I know what I'm good at. I know I deserve to be loved and respected and listened to. I don't have to remind myself of that, because ultimately it isn't going to solve any of my problems. Identifying what I'm actually feeling ( which is difficult at best for me) is the only real way to get anywhere. 

So what am I feeling? Rejected. Attention starved. Insignificant. Unwanted. 

It's not pretty to see it in writing. 

In addition, I feel confused, and because I've been down this road before, I also feel a little hopeless. Doomed, even. To always end up in this place no matter how many times I start over. 

It makes me doubt my own ability and my own knowledge of what a relationship is or should be. Perhaps it really is all me. Maybe I can only be truly happy in those beginning stages when everything is so overly new and intense.

I really don't know, and I somehow doubt I will find out tonight.

Brain dump complete.

Back to my beer, and one more smoke.