Monthly Archives: May 2009

The Truth Hurts

Some peo­ple are hurt by the things I say here. But I make no judg­ment; I only speak the truth, sup­port­ed by the facts. So if some­one is a stalk­er who blames her prob­lems on the object of her atten­tions, or treats her son like a trained ani­mal, or decides to charge friends and room­mates for rides to the gro­cery store, and I doc­u­ment it here, I’m not the one who’s embar­rass­ing them. They do that enough for them­selves.

It’s like a doc­u­men­tary about the Holocaust. The film­mak­ers don’t need to offer an opin­ion that con­demns it. The footage and tes­ti­mo­ni­als speak for them­selves.

Sometimes, the peo­ple who don’t like what I have to say are so delu­sion­al that they sup­ply their own real­i­ties, per­haps because they don’t want to be at fault.

They don’t real­ize it’s the truth that hurts, not me.

Boxer Briefs

Boxer briefs

She bought me these box­er briefs. Calvin Klein, body cut, light­weight cot­ton con­struc­tion.

Until then, all the under­wear I had were plaid XS box­ers from The Gap that I could only find online, or XXL from Gap Kids, dec­o­rat­ed with rock­ets, and bas­ket­balls, and skiers. I did­n’t think she’d find any­thing else that would work on my small frame.

So this is my first pair of box­er briefs, and they fit. My sexy under­wear, she would call them. I guess it’s hard to find my oth­er under­wear sexy when it’s meant for those 7–14.

Five Year Timestamp, Revisited

On the last entry, my Uncle Joe post­ed this com­ment:

You’ve changed a lot. More mature, more sta­ble, more tol­er­ant. 5 years back, you paid more atten­tion to your appear­ance, now you care more about what you do, what you observe. Now you’re a bit slop­py :)…and I like that. Your spend­ing habit is so much dif­fer­ent.

I don’t know what caused all that…work expe­ri­ence? Parents’ divorce? Love life? Tai Chi and Taoism?

The caus­es of my changes were too big to cov­er in the small box, so I said I’d cov­er them in their own entry. Here goes.

Therapy

One of the sig­nif­i­cant things my ther­a­pist helped me with was the abil­i­ty to not sweat the small stuff. It took a few thought records for me to real­ize that there are things out of my con­trol. I used to be real­ly moody, where if a small detail did­n’t go right, I’d get real­ly grumpy. Now that does­n’t any­more, although I do occa­sion­al­ly have to remind myself of this idea, as it’s not a com­plete­ly nat­ur­al reac­tion (yet). This is prob­a­bly what Uncle Joe noticed as me being “slop­py”, as I’ve stopped wor­ry­ing about things going wrong, so a bit more care­free when it comes to details. Even Bronwen said she’s noticed the change.

I also had inti­ma­cy issues, where I’d push my girl­friends away if they got too close. I’ve since learned to let some­one in, even if it means it may hurt me in the end, and there’s a great com­fort to be had in know­ing this. In fig­ur­ing out what went wrong, and being giv­en the hope that my future rela­tion­ships won’t end due to my old inti­ma­cy issues, which I’m sure was buried in my sub­con­scious before.

Taoism

Taoism has giv­en me the same rough mind­set as ther­a­py, in terms of let­ting go of the lit­tle things that don’t go my way. But it was­n’t just due to the fact that things are out of my con­trol, but also the idea that things don’t real­ly mat­ter. I’m still work­ing on oth­er tenets, like spon­tane­ity and wu wei, but what I’ve been able to under­stand and apply so far has helped a lot.

When I’m hav­ing a bad day, I can go to the Tao Te Ching, find a verse that’s appro­pri­ate to my sit­u­a­tion, and for some rea­son my heart finds such con­tent­ment in the words. Perhaps it’s even more than the indi­vid­ual tenets, and the fact that I now have some­thing to believe in that brings com­fort, sta­bil­i­ty, and hap­pi­ness. A non-reli­gious opi­ate, if you will.

Relationships

Having been through two good rela­tion­ships with two good peo­ple, espe­cial­ly with the mem­o­ries I have now, has giv­en me a lot of sat­is­fac­tion. Sure, they may have end­ed, but I nev­er thought I’d be in a good rela­tion­ship, prob­a­bly because of my child­hood with my par­ents, along with con­fi­dence issues. I think some peo­ple go their whole lives with­out ever hav­ing the sort of love that I did, or being able to expe­ri­ence the same won­der­ful­ly inti­mate moments. This has giv­en me a con­tent­ment I would­n’t be able to find any­where else.