Posts tagged with "Darren"

no man an island

Loneliness, or the fear of aban­don­ment when­ev­er I was dat­ing some­one, have been reoc­cur­ring themes since my child­hood.

I’ve nev­er regret­ted the deci­sion to cut out my par­ents for the sake of my men­tal health, but that still means I lost the only peo­ple who had a respon­si­bil­i­ty to help and accept me (as ter­ri­ble as they were at liv­ing up to that). It was a nec­es­sary but trau­mat­ic choice. Then I had a falling out with my ex-bestie, which came about after I real­ized he was­n’t the type of per­son I need­ed or want­ed in my life, and fur­ther robbed me of sta­bil­i­ty. ____ became my best friend after that (even though I was extreme­ly reluc­tant to label her as such after my expe­ri­ences), until I final­ly stood up for myself and she decid­ed she did­n’t want to be held account­able for her actions. Heather and I com­pared notes after­wards to dis­cov­er she was avoid­ing me every time I was in a cri­sis1. I’ve had a life­time of sig­nif­i­cant rela­tion­ships with emo­tion­al­ly igno­rant peo­ple who would nev­er apol­o­gize or admit that they’ve ever hurt me.

Then there’s Pat, who acknowl­edged he was a being a poor friend for not stay­ing in con­tact the last time I spoke with him. Maybe it was the fact that I was cry­ing that pres­sured him into promis­ing to call me more often. That was about sev­en years ago, and I haven’t heard from him since. I’m still mourn­ing my rela­tion­ship with Shawn for the same rea­son; a per­son who lit­er­al­ly saved my life who no longer has time for me in his. Relationships with pos­i­tive peo­ple whom I loved and looked up to, that with­ered when I stopped ini­ti­at­ing con­tact, leav­ing me with more ques­tions than answers. Relationships where I’ve done noth­ing wrong and still suf­fer a loss. Part of me can’t help but feel con­fused, and scared that any­one in my life may dis­ap­pear sim­ply cause they’ve lost inter­est.

Surviving the fall­out of each expe­ri­ence meant I came out with real­ly messed up expec­ta­tions when­ev­er it comes to oth­er peo­ple. Even now, it’s hard for me to feel safe, no mat­ter how close I am to some­one.

My first tru­ly secure rela­tion­ship — one where I could express dif­fi­cult thoughts and feel­ings with­out being blamed or aban­doned or inval­i­dat­ed — start­ed in my mid-30s with Heather2. When my depres­sion and col­i­tis kept me iso­lat­ed the last few years, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly wor­ried about being over­ly depen­dent on her. At the slight­est hint of trou­ble, it felt like my world was com­ing down because she was my world3. When I turned to oth­er peo­ple for help dur­ing my lost week­end, I soon real­ized I have a won­der­ful net­work of friends and fam­i­ly.

Continue read­ing “no man an island”…

  1. During a par­tic­u­lar­ly bad day a few years back, Heather asked her to send me a text in sup­port. She replied, “Jeff and I don’t text”. Not only was that com­plete­ly untrue, it was a real­ly shit­ty excuse for her to do noth­ing. []
  2. I’ve since learned a great deal about the qual­i­ties that make a rela­tion­ship healthy and suc­cess­ful. Consequently, my stan­dards have risen. []
  3. Part of my ven­ture into polyamor­ism is because I want to expand my sup­port net­work. I’m inter­est­ed in hav­ing more peo­ple care about me, per­haps cause I’m eter­nal­ly try­ing to fill the hole left by my par­ents. []

almost like the blues

Now in the dark world where I dwell, ugly things, and sur­pris­ing things, and some­times lit­tle won­drous things, spill out in me con­stant­ly, and I can count on noth­ing.

—A Scanner Darkly

Winter has tra­di­tion­al­ly been a dif­fi­cult time. In my youth, the hol­i­days were filled with fam­i­ly gath­er­ings where I nev­er found my place1. Then I start­ed com­ing into my own, but every­one else began spend­ing time with their sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, leav­ing me an observ­er with a sur­ro­gate fam­i­ly. Eventually, I grew the need for a con­nec­tion with peo­ple who could bet­ter under­stand the per­son I’d become, and again found myself in exile.

cat with bass guitar

This year is no dif­fer­ent. The weath­er has been par­tic­u­lar­ly pun­ish­ing, with extreme cold fronts that make any form of trav­el a lit­er­al pain. It’s a fine line between inspi­ra­tion and oppres­sion when trapped in a win­ter won­der­land. Even after a week of Darren’s com­pa­ny, along with new instru­ments and some of the stick­i­est of the icky, I haven’t been able to shake this feel­ing of lone­li­ness.

Continue read­ing “almost like the blues”…

  1. Now I real­ize that being forced to spend a night with a ran­dom assort­ment of peo­ple is a crap­shoot at best. []

make the road by walking

I can tell I’m get­ting over­whelmed cause of the mis­takes I’m mak­ing. Fruit is going bad on the counter before I have a chance to eat/cook it, a dose of med­ica­tion is for­got­ten here and there, missed pay­ments lead to inter­est fees; I’m los­ing con­trol of lit­tle details that are nor­mal­ly sim­ple mat­ters for me.

sushi

Maybe it’s cause I’m con­stant­ly try­ing to catch up. On projects I keep putting off cause of my respon­si­bil­i­ties. On life after los­ing the last two years to a depres­sion that left me cry­ing more often than not. On top of all that, I’m try­ing to jug­gle a job, a rela­tion­ship, and the ener­gy it takes for me to heal, while enjoy­ing every moment as it comes. Even though I’m in a safe and sta­ble place now, I still strug­gle to cope with how quick­ly things are chang­ing. I miss being able to record my thoughts and expe­ri­ences here, but I can’t afford the time it takes to get into that zone.1

The hard­est part is explain­ing to peo­ple why I’ve been out of touch for so long. It means going into a painful (and recent) his­to­ry, and it’s not easy to get into that emo­tion­al space, let alone think about things that are dif­fi­cult to relive, let alone open up to some­one, let alone wor­ry about how they’re going to react.

  1. I’m try­ing to accept that it’s okay to wait before writ­ing about cer­tain ideas. It took me sev­en years before I could fig­ure out how to write about my mom, and that meant a lot of grow­ing before I could under­stand the whole sit­u­a­tion and final­ly put the sub­ject to rest. There’s so much more I still have to say, about things both good and bad. It’s just hard to get used to the idea that this will become a jour­nal of the past instead of a diary of the present. []

slow plays and hybrid strains

Darren stopped by for a stay on the way to Montreal for his first mul­ti-day hol­dem tour­na­ment. The first and last nights end­ed up being the only ones we had to our­selves. Otherwise, it was a mix of friends and strangers, sati­vas and inci­das, com­ing and going through the house each day. I’m glad he was along for the ride, even though I’m always up far too late when we’re togeth­er, and it’s get­ting hard­er on my body as I get old­er.

Theros draft

Theros draft at my place on release day. I walked away with 1st, but it was off a missed rules call (by me) in my match against Shawn, one that would have made a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence on the tiebreak­er. I’ll always remem­ber the night I won Xenagos and a Thoughtseize (which cov­ers both my entry fee along with Darren’s), but the vic­to­ry will for­ev­er be taint­ed.

It’s feels like I’m a dif­fer­ent per­son, liv­ing a dif­fer­ent life, every time we hang out. The dis­tance between us means the change we expe­ri­ence is always sig­nif­i­cant enough to notice. This time my rela­tion­ships have changed the most cause I’ve start­ed com­part­men­tal­iz­ing peo­ple, appre­ci­at­ing them for their strengths instead of expect­ing every­one to live up to some lofty set of expec­ta­tions. My needs have always been the same, but I’m get­ting bet­ter at mak­ing sure they’re met after final­ly fig­ur­ing out what they are. I’m also bet­ter at read­ing peo­ple, detect­ing under­tone, and under­stand­ing social inter­ac­tions, thanks to Shawn’s exper­tise rub­bing off on me.

In terms of self-improve­ment, I’m try­ing to be more under­stand­ing of the world at large, while reduc­ing my hate and increas­ing my patience. I’ve also start­ed to ana­lyze and resolve the trig­gers that keep me from being the per­son I was meant to be. The strug­gles I used to have only a few years ago seem so ado­les­cent in com­par­i­son to the things I’m work­ing on now. My pri­or­i­ties have matured, or I’ve grown in ways that have made old issues obso­lete.

I’d nev­er have real­ized any of this if Darren had­n’t showed up to pull me so far out of my reg­u­lar life that I lost track of what day it was and the women I’d loved and the feel­ing of cold. I learn as much about myself as I do about him when we’re catch­ing up.

not ready to stop

I take care of this moment by tak­ing care of myself. That means nour­ish­ing my sense of well-being by spend­ing time with peo­ple who:

  • con­nect with me on an inti­mate lev­el
  • give me their full atten­tion and com­mand mine at the same time
  • under­stand and val­i­date what I’m going through

Normally, the goal is to use the pos­i­tive expe­ri­ences from these rela­tion­ships to buffer my emo­tion­al resilience when things get rough, but right now I’m just try­ing to get to the point most peo­ple con­sid­er nor­mal.

It helps when peo­ple make me things like this. I had a Google search box as my brows­er start page for as long as I can remem­ber, until pre­sent­ed with this board full of hap­pi­ness, where every update is rel­e­vant to my inter­ests. Tiana and Genevieve secret­ly col­lect­ed cats for months before giv­ing it to me just because, and some­how there were 91 fol­low­ers before I even made a Pinterest account to fol­low this name­sake board. These are peo­ple who tru­ly under­stand me, and make me feel con­nect­ed even when I’m not with them. This is what I need more of in my life.

sitting in a cafe

We’ll get there some­day, cuz.

I’ve also been reach­ing into my past and search­ing for clo­sure, whether that means giv­ing or receiv­ing for­give­ness. It’s hum­bling to own up to my role in some­one’s pain with­out mak­ing excus­es or lay­ing blame to pro­tect my pride, but being able to do so has giv­en me more amour de soi. Mistakes will be made on my jour­ney, but it does­n’t mean I’m a bad per­son, and it won’t stop me from becom­ing bet­ter.

Seeking res­o­lu­tion does­n’t always end well though. I’m try­ing to under­stand each response as a mes­sage about the true nature of some­one’s role in my life, with­out being caught up in anger. It’s so much eas­i­er to for­give or accept some­one when I start to under­stand their real­i­ty, even if they’ve hurt me rather unde­serv­ing­ly. I final­ly feel like I’m get­ting a han­dle on my inter­ac­tions with peo­ple, instead of con­stant­ly being at the whim of their behav­iour.

dog by the door

It’s been a peri­od of such tremen­dous growth in myself and devel­op­ment in my rela­tion­ships that it feels like I’ve been giv­en a reprieve. I’ve been work­ing on all the lit­tle things I said I’d take care of when I was bet­ter, one day at a time. Just know­ing that I’m improv­ing in some small way is often enough to keep me going by itself.

I still occa­sion­al­ly get caught up on the idea that I need to be per­fect before start­ing down a new path, but Lisa always reminds me that the per­son I am already isn’t so bad. Growing is a grad­ual and life­long process. I can do the best with the per­son I am, and that’ll always be good enough.