Which Way Is Up?

So I've been closer to the idea of 'coming out' to ALL my internet geek friends, and not just the one I liked and trusted the most, leaving it to his discretion to tell others.

Then yesterday I learned that New York State overturned a proposal for gay marriage. Then today I learn the mom from Family Ties had been gay for the last 7 years. She was married three times and has five children. Quote; Baxter has also come clean to her five kids, according to People. Her 25-year-old son Peter was all smiles. He told the magazine that he "just couldn't stop smiling, because she finally figured it out."

And it's all such a mishmash. Back when I didn't dare admit that what I felt was homosexual in nature, I HATED all the gay this and gay that talk in the media. Why did we have to know all this? Why couldn't people keep it all private? It was all too scary and too close to me.

And now I almost feel the same way, even though I know what I am. Because it's still such confusing news. Clearly I think in terms of black & white. I wanted to believe that I could have these urges & attractions and still live a hetero lifestyle. Meredith Baxter did. But all this "She finally figured it out" stuff seems like I'd be doing something stupid if I tried to get with a woman. That I can't have it both ways--either it's gay or straight with no 'in-between.' EVEN THOUGH I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT PEOPLE DO LIVE BISEXUALLY. Then my state decides it shouldn't be legal for gays to be married. So it's clear that my fears of coming out are legitimate. My own state, and dozens of others, are not willing to accept gay as a legitimate, valid mode of humanity.

So here I sit. Planning to go to find the "man of my dreams" this weekend while many social signals are telling me that it's wrong to do so, and OTHER signals are telling me how awesome it would be to get a girl, meet the expectations put on me, and make a few children that will delight me forever.

Sometime life can be so ridiculous.

Shopping As A Competitor Sport

In my neighborhood, there's a bizarre standard in the bodegas that is driving me out of my nut. Now, I'm trying to be understanding of other people's culture, and I'm not going to walk three blocks to the supermarket when it's literally freezing outside and there's a "grocery" store right downstairs in my building. But you walk in there and you are no longer in America. No one is speaking English. And no one knows how to whisper or use their inside voices. Music with especially pronounced treble blaring timpani and salsa beats while you say "Excuse me," for the second time to the swarthy man with the red eyes leaning back against the soda case that holds the Diet 7UP bottles while he listens with one ear to the short round man repeating the same Dominican phrase over and over (or at least he is to my ears).

But when you finally have all the items you want, you take it to the counter and the starter's gun fires. Because little did you know it, you can only purchase your items if you are fast enough and loud enough. That's right, stupid me, I thought it was a matter of lining up along the deli case and waiting your turn. Not so! For while I put my items up, here comes the chick with her mewling brat plopping her Enfamil ahead of my Diet 7UP and declares, "Oom, let me get a pack of Black & Milds" to my slackjawed surprise. And while she is waited on, in walks a Sherman tank of a grandmother from the street (not even having shopped yet) hollering her language at the store clerk and asks for something that I can't even re-pronounce, let alone type.

Well, two is my limit. Before a third person appears and causes me to lose my religion, I interpose my body in such a way that no one puts anything up on the counter again unless we hit the streets like the Sharks and the Jets, and I pin the clerk with my eyes. In them he may read at his leisure, "I'M NEXT DUDE. WTF." And I purchase my items, and I book out, seriously considering the three-block walk next time.

I mean, really. Culture, smulture. I thought manners were a Universal language.

Here Comes Your Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown

Okay, not really, but what is your definition of "middle-aged"? Isn't it halfway between birth and death? If so, then no one knows when they're middle-aged because no one really knows when they're going to die. But if you take conservative estimates, 43 is middle-aged. And I'd much rather not be that, thank you very much.

Yet, in a little over a week, I very much will be that. Like it or lump it.

So.

What goals should I set before I turn 45?

Because really. I'm not dead. So what I'm not living in a penthouse overlooking midtown with my beautiful wife and children? I am living in NYC, overlooking a beautiful wall of trees. Soon as I get my car paid off, I'll be collecting money again. Which will make me more attractive for the Right One...

*skiiiiirk*

I don't feel like it. And not in any doomed, depressed, o-woe-is-me way. But in a middle-aged widow's way. I mourn the passing of the Right One, and I just don't feel interested in trying to do it all over again. Only, in this case, my Right One never existed. But I feel like I've already done all the work about relationship. I've fought, I've loved, I've learned, I've grown. The only thing I didn't get out of it are children. (Or a court-order to pay child-support and alimony).

So what's the fuss? I'll enjoy your children. Your poleclimbers who are eager to teach Daddy how to do the same. Your nervous criers who need some tough Daddy love and a lollipop on the way back to school. Keep telling me those stories. Those are lullabies for someone like me. I promise, I do smile, and I feel very warmly a part of the human race when you share those with me.

But why do I not want to become a full-time participant?

Well, let's see. I still sting from the last time I trusted someone (and this was not too long ago either. I mean within the last few months). The pain is not worth the good times. The pain SUCKS. It makes me furious. Fresh, bright sparkly motes of blazing-hot want-to-kick-somebody's-ASS furious.

Because when I was in my shell, I was f^cking HAPPY. I wasn't causing any harm to anyone and I was happy. But YOU had to come along and pressure me. You had to pry your f^cking blade into the seam of the shell and pry and pry and PRY until you exposed all the sensitive parts. And you got me to trust you, and even depend on you to take care of what you exposed.

And then what did you do?

You got me all wrong. You accused me of being someone I'm totally not, and you did it just to serve yourself. You worked to make me vulnerable, layed me out for display, then kicked it all over into the sand because you wanted your own way.

I was FINE before you.

I NEVER needed you.

And now it hurts just to think of your name.

*exhale*

Readers, I don't even know who I'm writing about. There isn't anyone who honestly fits this description. Whatever I've gone through in the last few months could not possibly have earned this kind of anger. Well, not completely.

So I must assume that what I'm feeling is from transference. This fury inside is an old one. It's older than the internet.

It is, of course, unresolved anger that I bear for my mother. Textbook case. Unresolved blappity bloop. I'm a damn stereotype.

Hate that.

Suffice it to say, my shell was the thing that protected me from ... stuff. If you wanted me out of it, then you should have

TAKEN

F^CKING

CARE

OF

ME.

If you didn't want to take that responsibility--then I invite you heartily to LEAVE ME THE HELL ALONE now.

Okay, back to your regularly scheduled drama ...

My Day Job

I don't go into a lot of detail about my career because, as though I were in the CIA-- I deal with people and the nature of my work is confidential. But today I've got enough anxiety about what must be done to blog about it.

First of all, I've been WOEFULLY negligent in my day duties for the past month or so. I've been outright addicted to the internet, trying to deal with the production of the latest installment of my hobby. I don't want to go into detail, but while I was volleying comments about sexuality herein (nothing like sex talk to blow up the comment count! :-D ), I was also ironing out some details about the hobby and discovering some discouraging viewpoints and reviews about me as a person elsewhere. This would be another reason why it was so awesome that Coaster Punchman stepped in here to assist my process with words of honesty and e-mails of support. While one aspect of life was sliding down to a gloomy place, a decades-old inner conflict was getting resolution. That discourse was far more than just what I needed. It was survival.

Thanks again all.

But during that, it was like the anxiety was driving me away from my responsibilities at my day job. It was as if I couldn't focus on anything academic. The only thing I could successfully do was engage my clients in therapy. When I could focus on them, I effectively disappeared. All my issues and self-questions were gone. But when I came back to my computer and the need to do paperwork, I hit the Internet Explorer button instead of the Word button. The night job was also extremely useful too. It gave me something to do physically, instead of whittling away the evenings in endless loops of self-doubt, self-loathing, self-flagellation, or just plain old fury. And there's still nothing quite like the gratification of handing off a well-made drink and watching the customer do that orgasmic moan of pleasure. I'm usually one breath away from crooning, "Yeah, baby--you like that?"

So that was my past month-plus. Now this week, I have a client who's last surviving parent has died. And we have to tell that client today. After much deliberation for the past few days, the client's sibling gave us permission. Remember, our clients are developmentally disabled. Old school definition; "Retarded."

But this specific client is a basket case about 25 weeks out of the year, in three-to-four week cycles. Screaming, crying, defiant--for no discernable reason. This client gets a notion to do nothing for weeks at a time, and you just go with it, or wear earplugs as the screams echo throughout the mountains of New Jersey. I kid you not.

So of course, during a nice 4-week run of smiles, laughs and cooperation with all the activities we provide--the client's last surviving parent ups and dies.

Goodbye client's good mood.

T-minus 1.5 hours and counting until blast-off to Screamersville. And if you hear sonic-pitched wailing emanating from the northeastern point of New Jersey, we're not killing anyone. It's just the way our client mourns death.

And mourns.

And mourns.

And mourns.

Envy me, people.

This Mental Illness Among Us

(Originally 4/20/07)

My challenge is to face the world with mental illness. No, not just my own (which again, I'm relieved to note that I don't have a disorder which needs to be treated with medication, although sometimes I feel like I do, but I have some tendencies and hurdles which have adversely affected my development). I'm referring to all the mental illness everywhere.

This morning I got hit with a double-whammy. In my beloved fangroup, a member re-exposed her ugly side and wrecked my whole morning. She gave herself permission to turn the forum into a cesspool. She railed against another member who hadn't even been the object of her initial ire. She did this in the name of defending her actions against someone else whom she called immature, and with that action, she blew her own actions out of the water. She apologized before for rash and incindiary speech but she'd never done this before, which makes me think her apologies aren't worth the 1's and 0's that they're made out of.

Then I leave my house (HAHA! "my" house.) get in my car (BWAHAHA! "MY" car) and turn on the radio to hear some guy calling in to cuss someone out, saying that he was going to catch up to someone and really give it to her good--threatening and extremely nasty. I though he was calling the radio station but they were just playing his recorded message. Turns out it was Alec Baldwin, cussing out his own daughter, who is no more than 11 or twelve. And it turns out that the recording was given by Kim Basinger, as a defense for her own side in their custody case.

WHAT AN UGLY WORLD I LIVE IN.

I spend so much time in fantasy because it tears my heart out to have to face this miserable condition we suffer from. (Yes, "we". Like me in my car, for instance, when I can't say civil things to people just because they linguered at a traffic light for 6 picaseconds longer than I would have liked them to.) I'm taking responsibility for this tenderhearted weakness I feel like I have, but it does have a root cause. When I said in an earlier post that my mother treated her patients better than she treated me, I was totally not kidding. My mother would curse me out at the drop of a hat. She'd curse anyone out. Somehow, I developed a total fetish for a woman who cussed out their man, but at the same time, a phobia when I'm on the receiving end. No, a real I-can't-be-in-a-relationship phobia. I would walk on glass to prevent an argument. I had one girlfriend who never argued with me. Her I should have married. Yet I fear I probably would have been the abuser in the relationship, because again, I'm no saint.

I know I need to get over this. I can't be giving this much power to people's words. I've sold a good twenty-five years of my life away for a peace that doesn't really exist, and it hasn't improved my life at all, because I'm still vulnerable to negativity. I still crave, puppy-like, approval and acceptance. I can still be devastated by the harsh word from a loved one.

Non-Fighting

(Originally 1/29/07)

I actually have some current, socially relevent information to impart by the way of an MSN Money article. To me, it's odd that the article is about "non-divorces" but located in the Money section of the MSN homepage. I see that their interest in the piece is because of the financial aspects of the state of being called "non-divorce", but of course what interests me is the interpersonal aspect of "non-divorce"

Namely this;

"Neither of us makes that much money, and if we had to separate, it would be a hardship for us," says Goldfarb, of Westchester County, N.Y., who works in customer service while her husband teaches high school math.

The couple come from different socio-economic backgrounds and fought "like cats and dogs" when their daughter and son -- now 22 and 18, respectively -- were in high school, she says. Goldfarb grew up middle class and wanted the children to take college-prep courses and attend top-ranked private universities. Her husband, from a lower-income background, didn't see the need and insisted they take classes at the less-prestigious City University of New York.

Goldfarb decided divorce wasn't a good idea (emphasis mine) because split households would further the problem. "I didn't want him to influence the children," she says. "I felt if we were to stay married, I'd have more control. I could monitor what he was saying."

Though the outcome was a compromise -- their daughter attended a city college but their son is enrolled in a private school outside Boston -- the battle wounds remain. Divorce, however, isn't in the picture.

"We do love each other -- it's just not as deep of a love that we had before," Goldfarb says. "We are really, really good friends. And we trust each other. We're probably both scared to find new partners. (emphasis mine)"

At this point, the pair, both in their 50s, "are sticking together," she says. "It's not that severe of a case where we need to change our lives."

From what I've heard, this is not a state of "non-divorce". This is a normal marriage. She says they love each other, they are really really good friends, they trust each other, and their disagreement about the children (which ended in a compromise) is not that severe of a case for divorce. Then, duh? To quote Carly Simon; "well that's the way I've always heard it should be".

Possibly the article is published under Money becase it's poorly written where the interpesonal is concerned. Or possibly the twentysomethings of today have a much different opinion on how their marriages should be. But I think every twentysomethings of every age had different ideas. I can't tell you how many times I've heard and read that 'it's not always hearts and flowers', and 'staying married takes work'. Personally, whatever lies ahead of me is going to take some very active maintenance on my part. This I know. It, in fact, is what makes me the most nervous about wanting to get married. But not being married, or at least, not being in an intimate loving relationship is becoming more and more of a problem for my mental health.

This weekend I had an exercize in the 'work' of maintaining a relationship. The backstory is this; for the last few weeks I've been getting some resistance concerning my favorite project; the audio drama. It has revived my sense of self and restored my faith in my skills. It fulfills my dreams and brought me into a relationship with my hero. It also provided lots of happiness for at least a dozen other people. All good. So every time I get some resistance from other agents who are not as invested as I am, or do not share the same taste that I do, I just want to tell them, "Alright already. Just go away and let me have my fun. It isn't hurting you, is it? Or do you just like pissing on other people's dreams?" Once I formulate that thought, then I want to go for the jugular. I want to insult the critic's character, I want to condemn their motives, I want to defeat this foe.

Okay, with that in mind, I go to play D&D with my friends this weekend. Two of my friends, listed in my Hero posts, in fact, are quite argumentative. And foul-tempered. They were friends long before I ever met them and this is their history together. They fondly remember a time when they got in a fistfight with each other. That is so not like me. But these two guys would fight a buzzsaw.

I suppose they are heroes of mine because they have qualities that I wish I had more of, which are 1) raging masculinity and 2) aggressive, take-charge personalities. But I admire these things from afar. I do not admire them when they are used against me. Which they seemed almost constantly to do during the game. So I came to a point where I told one of them, "If you don't like it, you have other options." Which he completed by saying, "Oh you mean I don't have to play? Well, you're right!" He did keep playing, but I could tell that it hurt his feelings. Which made me feel bad. So by the end of the session I asked him if he was planning to play next session, and although we were back to smiles he said, "Give me some incentive." So I told him, "The incentive is that I really do want you to play, and that I'm sorry I said that." Well, that's when the buubble of tension broke, and the cloud he had hidden under was totally gone.

That's what I figure being married is going to be like. It will take work. And, gads, when I tell you work, I mean it was WORK. Up until I said what I said, he was driving me CRAZY. I literally wanted to throw everything down and just storm out of the room. I wanted to scream, "Shut up! What the hell!? Why the eff are you playing this game if all you want to do is argue with me?! TRUST me!! I'm not running this game to hurt or confuse or to defeat you personally!! I'm running the game so we can have a good time here?!! DaMN!!" But my friend is a fighter. He approaches life like one big battleground. Every thing he faces is a foe to conquer. It makes him seem hella cool, and hella macho, but it's exhausting. I wouldn't want to be like that all the time, but I could use concentrated doses of it every now and again. (although I think I'm much more of a fighter than I want to admit)
So after I did say my little bit, and hurt his feelings, then it was tense and still bad. For the next few hours I had to divide my brain into the 'running the game' section, the 'worry about my friend' section, and the 'don't run away from the game, keeping playing--be a man!' section, until I finally found a way to apologize.

Non-fighting takes WORK.

But being lonely is not a good alternative, so I guess this is what its all about.

So that's all right then.

How Many Times Have I Started A New Post?

(Originally March 2 2006)

For the last two months, I've been adjusting to my new job and trying to find my place in the world again. There have been a few bumps along the way, namely provided by My Benefactor. He's a lot more unstable than I'd hoped, and there was one fine night that I was ready to leave...but had nowhere obvious to go. I have other friends who would put me up in an emergency, but I wanted to change my residence permanently.

It was a revisit with my historic struggles with interpersonal relationships. See, you just can't yell and curse at me. You can't get unglued and go for my character. Coming up with all sorts of criticisms and condemnations of me as a person integrally.

My Benefactor also has interpersonal relationship struggles, so if anyone will spill awful things out his mouth with no two thoughts about how he'll make a person feel, it's him. That's why he was eager to invite me into his home. I was an instant friend. Or so he thought.

So here we are, me trying to get a set of wheels under me as soon as possible, and him making sacrifices to help me do that. Unfortunately, I was rushing him and making suggestions that make him uncomfortable. I wanted him to risk just giving me the one car before I legalized it in my name, while he legalized the other that he had already bought, thus eliminating the need to share (which of course meant me driving him 30 miles to work, so I could have it for the day, and then me picking him up after my day was over). He evidently liked the company, but I just wanted to be done with 12 hour days.

So after I pick him up on the day in question, I have to drive him around to accomplish some tasks he needed, and out comes dashing a kid on a bike into the middle of the dark street. Well My Benefactor freaks out, screaming literally, and although I stopped and did not hit the little idiot on the bike, Benefactor's screaming went on and on into abuse. Calls me a terrible driver. Curses a bluestreak. Tells me my judgment is always bad. Tells me I had to be crazy asking him for what I was asking him. Tells me he felt safer driving while he was drunk than driving with me. And this he says after a full day of sobriety, so he has me pull over so he can get a bottle of whatever.

The content of the words I look back nw and see that they were not so bad. The screaming and cursing, however, I cannot describe. I only know that I was a teenager again at that moment, and it wasn't a dry drunk screaming at me, but my bipolar mother or my drunk father. And that's who it always becomes, whenever I'm getting cussed out. I've had at least one ex- tell me that "I'm not your mother" whenever she saw me shutting down, but nothing inside ME knew that. Emotionally, I'm just gone.

Well, days later, I found the guts enough to tell this to my benefactor. This didn't change his mind or anything, but it did stop his abuse cycle, which he had continued into the next day because he mistook my withdrawal and silence for rejection. Why I know his mind hadn't changed? Because he insisted that he hadn't been abusive. Yeah, okay. Cursing someone out isn't abusive. It's fun, actually? I didn't try to convince him. I only defended myself.

And things haven't been the same since. He invites me to hang with him in NYC to see plays. I don't want to go. He invites me to dinner. No thanks, I just ate. He didn't trust me as a driver? I no longer trust him as a friend. I would rather grind broken glass into my eyes than give him another opportunity to catch me out there like that again.

Well, eventually, I got the car legalized in my name and whatnot. He got his own car finally. He goes his way for days and days, and I play City of Heroes and go to Barnes & Nobles. I frankly don't care what happens between Benefactor and me from here on out. It's me alone again that I'm concerned about.

I'm comfortable again when I'm alone. And again, being alone is getting me nowhere.