engaged

I knew it was coming. I just had no idea how to protect myself. Let it happen and hope for the best. I didn't know when, but yeah, it turns out that would be yesterday. She just got engaged. 

She hasn't been training much at all for a long time now. I suspected why. I thought I just missed rolling with her. Maybe. So, why does this symbolic ritual matter so much? Nothing has changed- she hasn't been training anyhow. I never knew if she might come back to it at some point. She still might. 

But I don't want to roll with her now. I don't want to see her. All the fond memories I have suddenly become painful, because of this symbolic ritual that allegedly doesn't mean much to me. This would seem to imply that I don't just miss rolling with her. I really have been hanging on to some hope. I really have been in love with her.

For how many years? It happened gradually but it goes back before the pandemic. Every time I went to the gym, looking around as soon as I walked in the door, hoping to see her there. Maybe we'd get to train together. Training was the only way I knew how to connect with people, and I wanted so badly to connect with her.

It's not fair. I desperately want normal healthy experiences, and instead my engagement with the world just gets all twisted into this creepy bullshit that I never asked for and wasn't looking for. I want to meet someone appropriate for me that I feel this way about, but that's not possible, because I'm like rain man. I'm not going to feel this way about someone appropriate for me.

I'm not going to enjoy the company of someone who's as much of a loser as I am, unless they're a loser in a matching way, which is to say, like nobody I've ever met to date of any cohort. She's probably not going to come walking into the gym one day. I'd have to meet and reject lots of women if I were going to proactively try looking for her. That is to say, dating. It's not that hard to meet people online, but I can't deal with the realities of it. It makes me feel like a terrible person. So, my situation seems hopeless.

Instead, I try to get what I can from the life I have, and it's fucking brutal. Disappointment, frustration, anxiety, only to eventually get eviscerated. I hate myself so much. Why? Because I can't attract someone like her. I'm not sure what else even matters in life. I don't know why I'm like this; why I feel that way. I don't know what to do about it. 

I lack emotional regulation. This does not mean that I can't control my behavior or control how I express my emotions. It means that what's going on inside my head is brutal regardless. I want to feel a torrent of something positive for a change, for someone receptive to it, but I've known since I was a kid that I might be fucked in that regard. I'm not like other people. 

What does that mean? It doesn't seem to so abstract anymore. Being around people as much as I have been, it's become pretty straight forward. Twice exceptional, some call it; being disabled and gifted. While I'm far from being the only one, people are disabled in different ways. Gifted in different ways. What we appreciate and what we tolerate has to match. We have to enjoy each other's company, but most people make me feel like I'd rather be alone.

I enjoyed her company like no one else I've ever known. 

The last time we spoke, a few weeks ago, I came as close to shooting my shot as I'd ever come. I felt good about getting it off my chest, in my carefully defused sort of way. She was telling me about how she doesn't plan on doing any more competing. I said she had a really good run. I told her that I admired her. I admired how hard she trained, and how well she did. I told her she had a knack for teaching. I conveyed how much I liked her, in the most harmless way possible. 

For eight years, she was the most positive thing in my life. The closest I came to looking forward to something, in a life where I never look forward to much of anything. Now I just want to scrub her existence from my brain, because this hurts like hell.

To be more normal under these circumstances would be to drink myself to death. Somehow, I just keep pushing forward instead, going nowhere. I don't know how this will play out. How quickly will I recover? Will it fester and abscess or will I just get over it? Every time life fucks me over, it changes me. It damages me. It further undermines my ability to feel anything good ever again.

what am i

When we think of who we are, what defines us, implicit in that is the concept of objectivity. Who are we really, undistorted, free of subjective bias, delusion, and deception.

But what is objectivity in relation to identity? The natural universe doesn't have all these values we attribute to everything. Are we pretty, or smart, or interesting? Those concepts don't exist objectively. Everything that constitutes identity is subjective. Who do I think I am, who do you think I am, who do they think we are. 

When we are concerned with objectively defining ourselves, I suspect that underlying that is the concern for what others think of us. Other viewpoints, consensus, these can make the subjective seem more objective, but identity is still a lot of arbitrary and relative nonsense that only exists in the human mind, ours or theirs. Do I really care if I'm interesting or do I just want someone pretty to think I'm interesting?

cerebral

I have a fraught relationship with reality. I have never looked forward to going anywhere or doing anything. Except as a child, maybe. I looked forward to going to video arcades, gaming shops and comic book stores. A theme of escapism developing early. "Reality is boring," I'd say.

It's a common mistake to take the things we think too seriously. We don't know what's going on, especially as kids. Our brains have evolved to compensate by taking stupid guesses and moving on. Why did I feel that reality was boring? This probably had less to do with me thinking about it wrong, and more to do with my lived experiences feeling that way. I wasn't connecting with the world.

What I've been through not only being external, but also internal. Not just what's happening to me, but how I experienced it due to the particulars of how my brain works, followed by an array of consequences. I was unhappy a lot. I was sensitive and often overwhelmed. Lonely, alienated and isolated. I was very imaginative with an extensive inner life; the most fundamental sort of escapism.

This naturally leads to failures when it comes to actually dealing with the reality I'd spend all my time avoiding. It would be a bad plan, if it were simply a matter of thinking about it all wrong. To say that I never look forward to going anywhere is pretty extreme though. What I do feel is a barrage of anxiety to fight my way through, when I have to go anywhere or do anything, leaving the peace and safety of my apartment. Reality is hard for me.

I've had to learn all sorts of coping strategies and ways of getting myself out and doing things anyhow. They don't always work, but it's been a massive improvement. I'm usually happier for getting myself out and around people, but I feel like I dissociate my way through a lot of it. It's stressful. I try my best and fail a lot. My ego has been pulverized into oblivion. I'm constantly recovering from burnout, and I don't even do that much. The longing to just stay home all the time never seems to go away, because this is just how my brain works. These are logical consequences.

It's been hard facing that I really am disabled. That's why my life is like this. I've always been like this. I don't handle reality very well. I'm struggling to function as best I can in spite of this demonstrably crippling disability that can be traced back throughout my entire life.

I've spent most of my life inside my own head, where I had a much more flattering take on the whole situation. I've come to realize that people do not have much faith in me, because they can discern some of this, and they don't trust me to handle reality. It has been terribly unflattering to realize how others perceive me and that they're not entirely wrong.

I desperately want a pretty girl to tell me they are wrong. It's a nice fantasy, right? I think about what I want a lot. Actually do anything though? Reality is a lot less nice for me, for all these converging reasons, internal, external, and consequential.

I never look forward to going literally anywhere. Can you even imagine that? What does that alone do to a person's ability to be a functional motivated human being?