A New Year

So it seems appropriate to talk tonight of time circling back on itself, of how I've felt this way before, or about how much or little I have accomplished this year. Or maybe it just seems appropriate to post in general. Or maybe I am just lonely. Or maybe I don't know what loneliness is.

I keep coming back to this vivid memory of me as a child at Recess. I didn't talk to the other kids, I didn't play, I didn't want to talk or play, I wanted to think and imagine. It wasn't that I didn't want friends, but I can't remember caring very much how close those friends were. I think my social criteria was met after school at home, and I just wanted to be alone for a while. But this part of the memory isn't very clear. Only the walking around looking at cement and being mostly unaware of the blur of the other kids participating in more usual Recess activities.

Sometimes I use that as a justification of my inability to make friends now. Really it's more true to my self, you know, I was forced into this idea that normal people had to have friends (it is true my mom would go on about how I should make them). Really I am just an introvert, a private thinker, a day dreamer. Really this fear of other people comes, I reassure myself, from the fact that I was not actually interested in friends, am not actually interested in friends, I just want to be an observer and a thinker with no interaction in social settings. Having been assured that making friends was so important, having no learned or natural habits with which to gain these friends, I met quickly with failure which induced fear.

Or of course the other, perhaps more truthful, theory that I have always been taught disapproval equals bad with or without reason. That my parents were happy sometimes when I was really very naughty and punishing when I was truly trying to be good. That this made me covet the mere ability to just keep people happy or more importantly (and above all else) keep people from feeling negatively toward me ever, ever, ever. That even in first grade my inability to make friends, my branding of "shy" (such an easy excuse when youre young), was a part of my personality.

And I do think it's true, sitting here alone tonight on New Year's eve, that I don't need friends and didn't need friends or more accurately not very many. I can still live a very rich and happy inner life without them. In fact sometimes friends are like a quick-fix drug for my problems, they make the symptoms of loneliness go away but they generally don't touch the sources of that pain.

In my first grade class journal I would carefully document each friend I made each day, believing of course that everyone who was nice to me was my friend. I have come to believe that the words that have come to hurt and/or affect us the most are the ones we have the most exacting definitions of in our heads as the definitions evolve through the years and take on so many different branches that we can't define the definitions any more because they are a living thing inside of us. That is what the word "friend" is to me now.

The doorway into my two closest and most shaping friendships in my childhood was, in fact, imagination. I pretended to be a bus driver when I made my first friend, and I pretended to be a superhero when I made my second. There's something about that. Something about my inability to really focus or care to focus on what is immediately in front of me. I got called "imaginative" today for perhaps the first time in many many years. Later I would turn the visual imagination to the ideological imagination to the linguistic imagination I will imagine conversations rather than faces, and even as a child the dialogue was much more important than the images in my daydreams.

And so, I feel myself alone and liking it. I sigh happily. And then... I panic. Because friends have brought me so much joy, are so interesting, the world and those who inhabit it (I have found) can be just as interesting as the ideas and words and possibilities it stuffs into my brain.

That's the thing, if I am even intelligible at this point in the discussion, that gets closer. I consider all data. Imagine all the data already in our head... I could spend eternities on what's already in mine. Given no more information I could sit and make theories and conclusions forever with what I have right now, and then I would say to the world "go on. I am ready for the next little bit." I working on the processing.

And yet, some of my brightness is that I can catch on faster than most people who catch up and surpass me later on with more understanding than I can hope for.

So I don't know. I can't make these friends... these friends I think would make me happy... these friends I hope I could make happy some day. Now, at least, does not feel like the right time. I might be too scared or I might just need the time alone or it might be both. I wonder exactly why I am scared or why I do need so much time alone right now or how I could accomplish both.

My head hurts... no really...

Engaged

Now, oh yes now, I am going to speak about being engaged.... (again).

Being engaged is pretty different the second time around. I feel the old joy and love and hope and excitement to tell everyone, but I also feel rather a bit more cautious. This all makes sense and is well and good in its own way. Perhaps this is too big and pressing of a subject for me to tackle so soon...

Ok Now a month later I will actually tackle the writing of this post... (again).

This is a cheesy faith I let myself keep. I believe or at least very strongly want to believe that one happy couple and eventually one happy family truly can exist and really does change the world.

Disclaimers aside for how very infrequently I reveal this part of me and how scared I am to show it and how aware I am that I am probably wrong and how much love has already sucked for me in the past and how much more love prolly sucks for so many of you...

I think a relationship can be a partnership. Two people can remain independent but supportive. Freedom can be maintained and even increased. The two people can open up possibilities for each other and continue a cycle of positive energy between each other that can project out to every person they meet.

Positive energy, another ill defined Hope belief. I feel there is so much negativity in the world and my life work will be to counterbalance that with as much Positive creation as I can muster. Yes, a relationship is a creation, a collaborative art piece, a dance. So hard to do well, especially with the two different artists having their own unique aesthetics and on top of that the imposed aesthetics of our society.

Think of all the different and often contrasting portrayals of love in the movies, music, books of this culture. And indeed, love varies. It is different between different people and our petty labels of "love" or even more specifically "romantic love" "friendship love" "puppy love" fall short. It is in the nature of love to remain unspeakable but to want to be shared.

I never feel like I am crazy or stupid when I am talking to Bob. We both try to start with the assumption that the beauty we see in each other has some kind of wise and worthwhile creator behind it. I try to express what I see, Bob is less inclined to try and put the unspeakable into words. So maybe part of this positive energy is more specifically beauty... putting beauty into the world as a piece of art should be the noble aspiration of any relationship.

Some things I have confused relationships for in the past: a support group, a fortress, a promise, a mutual understanding, a game, a battlefield, a painkiller.

I am not sure I know where I am going with this, and really this is hard for me to talk about at all. It is hard for me to talk about because I am so scared that I am wrong or that you will see how wrong I am and think I am foolish. Always so friggin aware of what people might think.

This is what I know... I am taking a chance even though I am scared. I am letting myself become engaged, wrapped up in something complex, fascinated by it. I am hoping. I am trying to believe, to have some faith.

It is amazing how much better as a person I have become. The very idea that someone has put this faith in me, loves me, boosts me up and makes me become so much more. It is like in my past relationships I have enjoyed the beauty of the art created but felt like a secondary artist to the other in the relationship. All I needed to know was that I am the one making a lot of that beauty, and my artistic expression and side of me in general thrives now. Always this impetus to create with a decreasing concern for how useful what I create is. Beauty, positive energy, but also a structure to hold all this. The form, the useful structure, will follow as in my poetry. I am not sure I am being clear. I don't usually put all this into words.

I know the last time I was engaged there was the same hope the same dream of more positive energy a lot of faith in what the relationship could do. That faith was misplaced. Now I am aiming for faith in what beauty Bob and I can create. Some days it is very hard for me to believe, especially since I was so wrong in the past. It was a big blow to my pride as well as my heart when that relationship ended. In a way I guess I just want/wanted to prove that this can be done, and that might lead me to rush and push for it too much. I have so many weaknesses, and I no longer think any relationship is enough to make me strong, hold me up. I know some days I won't be strong. But every time I get off track I notice how much Bob still admires and wants the best for me and I allow myself to get caught up in all the awesome power and beauty and potential I see in him and we begin to thrive again.

*Blushes* I feel like I have just revealed a lot.

Carry On

I have gained so much, and I have lost so little this year. What I have lost was more important (to me) than usual, and hurt me more intensely. What I have gained was vital, and has brought me profound joy.

Would it hurt me to tell you that I would not wish this life on anybody? Would I seem arrogant if I told you I wish everybody could be as happy as I am right now?

This year was not enough to turn a die-hard Ayn Rand fan into a Marxist, but it was enough to make me often feel that all in all I might be better off giving up on the whole morality/livelihood issue all together. I sometimes feel I am not cut out to be the strong super person I have come to hold as the most worthy, ideal, and therefore desirable. Yes, I might do quite nicely collecting teddy bears and chit chatting about the weather to my wise but sufficiently empty-headed midwestern girlfriends. Maybe once in a while I could mush on about true love ( I am engaged (again) (to a new guy) (to Bob) btw). Maybe I could allow myself things like lengthy arrogant speeches about how really everybody is a very good person really, and the world just might be heading toward some kind of utopian existence. Once in a while when I really needed someone, maybe I could ask for help instead of apologizing. And my dreams and goals could be "stay-at-home-mom" without a glance at the floor. Maybe just once I could just stop caring what people thought. Stop trying day in and out to figure things out, think them through, discover some truth, make some progress. Maybe this whole thinking thing is overrated.

Or maybe that wouldn't be me.

I have only allowed myself to really trust that one or two people might like me. I don't want to believe a lie. That's the fear that I am chased by always. I would rather never believe anything than believe a lie. Proud, scared, driven by a complicated mesh of moral standards I push on; and, if I truly like anything about myself in even my darkest hours, it is that I stay true to whatever this thing is that has been or I have always tried to make "me".

Bungle

The post in which Hope blargles about nothing in particular.

Oh these last few months. Some of you are probably wondering about these last few months. My arrogant side and my self-hatred have been battling it out. So far my arrogant side is taking a surprising lead, but my self-hatred comes out strong after a good night's sleep and kicks my ass. Yes, I have spent afternoons banging my head on walls and evenings at work feeling light headed and getting bloody noses. I have tried to quit my job and failed and been glad for it. Many times my job is the most relaxing and enjoyable part of my day, even if I get bored of it after the first four hours and count the minutes until I get to leave for the next four hours.

Oh, and there have been moments of brilliance. I have made poetries, thought they were awesome, read them over and over for the contact high, grown weary of them, heard them read by others, hated them, and started over.

I didn't really feel like October happened, and November was only mildly better. December is off to a good start. I go to Vermont soonish.

I have been forced to realize that I am still hurt from things of the past, and that those things are still controlling some aspects of my life. I have tried to trust more again, and mostly failed.

I have felt like the world has failed me and I have failed it.

My Christmas tree is up. I welcome the chance to celebrate love and hope for mankind.

I have not been well in the head or heart.

You should call me or see me or hug me or love me.

I know I haven't been reaching out very much or responding to your reaching out to me. I am soul tired. Whenever I need people most is when I am most afraid to need or fulfill need.