Posts tagged with "reflection"

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (In The Car)

When I was young, the only affec­tion my par­ents ever showed for each oth­er was occa­sion­al­ly (maybe five times ever) hold­ing hands in the car. They nev­er kissed, nev­er hugged, nev­er said “I love you”. Aside from sit­ting down to eat din­ner, their lives were com­plete­ly sep­a­rate. They would­n’t even sleep in the same room.

Now that I have a car, hold­ing hands while dri­ving has come to define a rela­tion­ship for me. I leave my right hand on the shifter, tap­ping it to the beat of my music, but I always have this urge to hold some­one’s hand, as if it’s some strange ide­al I’ve nev­er been able to expe­ri­ence.

Home Free

Thumbnail: Darren outside
Thumbnail: Tazo Berryblossom white tea
Thumbnail: Sausages, egg, and toast
Thumbnail: Dexter
Thumbnail: Bubble tea parlour
Thumbnail: Bubble tea
Thumbnail: Cigars
Thumbnail: Korean soup
Thumbnail: Dexter the cat in window
Thumbnail: Mall people
Thumbnail: Tempura roll
Thumbnail: Teriyaki beef
Thumbnail: Sliced orange
 

I left when the sun was set­ting. Along the way, the road stretched out infi­nite­ly before me, as if to say that I can always get away, and there is always more to go. The tree line danced and waved across the hori­zon, even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­pear­ing with the sun. Then the lines of red and white in each direc­tion guid­ed me all the way to Darren’s house.

In it are lit­tle things from the house I grew up in — some can­dles here, some cab­i­nets there — that my par­ents did­n’t want after the divorce. So strange to see innocu­ous objects from my child­hood in a dif­fer­ent set­ting.

It was the first time we’ve been com­plete­ly sober togeth­er since we were kids. No alco­hol, no weed.

I found out a cou­ple things I would­n’t have known oth­er­wise:

  • My dad start­ed dat­ing some­one. He is cur­rent­ly sin­gle again.
  • He has a dance floor at his house and a nice car. This is typ­i­cal of my dad, who loves his toys.
  • My moth­er is still inse­cure.
  • My par­ents still see each oth­er, but not alone. The cur­rent social rule among the group of par­ents, is that you can’t invite one to a par­ty with­out invit­ing the oth­er.

A week­end of sweet indul­gence, late nights, and inti­mate con­ver­sa­tion. No one under­stands my rela­tion­ships the way Darren does, because we both share these quixot­ic ideas about love. It was so com­fort­ing to be able to express myself on these things with­out hav­ing to explain my under­ly­ing feel­ings, as if some­one could tru­ly under­stand me, espe­cial­ly impor­tant in this cur­rent phase of my life.

It made me real­ize that home isn’t where the par­ents are, some­thing I used to believe1. It’s an idea.

A com­fort­ing place you can go to get away, where you’re com­plete­ly accept­ed for who you are.

  1. I’m not sure exact­ly when I stopped believ­ing this, but it was prob­a­bly some­where between the time my par­ents got divorced and I stopped talk­ing to my mom. [↩]

Lysergic Bliss

u.make.me.happy

There’s a ten­der­ness that reach­es deep with­in me, and bur­geons forth to paint the world an intox­i­cat­ing spec­trum.

It’s a world where every song is a jour­ney, every chord is more dul­cet than the last, and I don’t want to, I need to dance.

It’s not a sim­ple feel­ing. There’s so much to con­sid­er — new real­iza­tions, unfa­mil­iar ter­ri­to­ry, ques­tions of fate, unre­solved pro­pri­eties, inevitable change — that it’s all a mix of emo­tions unlike any­thing I’ve ever expe­ri­enced. But who says that life has to be sim­ple? All I know for sure is that I love her, even if she doesn’t love me the same way.

And for now, I’ll wear this smile like my heart on my sleeve.

Psychoanalytic Reflections 05

Sometimes I come out of a ses­sion feel­ing great. Sometimes I come out feel­ing like a mon­ster, like some hor­ri­ble, fucked-up per­son.

During my first ses­sion, my ther­a­pist not­ed that this was a mutu­al process. It was­n’t as if he was going to sur­gi­cal­ly remove an issue with me, it would take the both of us work­ing togeth­er, with a pro­gres­sive effort from me.

That’s what I’m doing now. I’m deter­mined to fix myself.

Dependence

  • I have a gen­er­al feel­ing of incom­pe­tence, which leads to a lack of trust in my own judg­ments. As a result, I have a very dif­fi­cult time mak­ing deci­sions because I’m par­a­lyzed by the fact that I may make the wrong one.
    • I can trace this back from my child­hood to my ear­ly twen­ties when my par­ents were over­bear­ing and would nev­er let me make any of my own deci­sions. In fact, they would make most of my deci­sions for me, includ­ing sig­nif­i­cant ones, like my pro­gram of study in uni­ver­si­ty.
  • The result is that I tend to ask peo­ple for advice on every­thing, although I’m depen­dent on Pat the most. This is because Pat is so smart and expe­ri­enced, and has nev­er, ever let me down. What I’ve come to real­ize, how­ev­er, is that Pat is so smart because he’s already made his mis­takes.
  • This was linked to my anx­i­ety, where I felt like I could­n’t han­dle any­thing on my own.
  • I’ve been try­ing to fix this is to keep in mind that it’s not the end of the world if I make a mis­take, and that some­times, mak­ing mis­takes is the only way to learn.

Unrelenting Standards revisited

  • I real­ized that I tend to have unre­lent­ing stan­dards when it comes to life in gen­er­al, but espe­cial­ly in my writ­ing, pho­tog­ra­phy, or art because I feel like this is the only way I will ever dis­tin­guish myself and be worth some­thing. I feel like if I’m not the best, then I’m worth­less. As a result, it’s dif­fi­cult for me to enjoy my life, even some­thing as sim­ple as sit­ting down and watch­ing a movie.
    • The roots of this are more dif­fi­cult to trace than I ini­tial­ly thought. While my par­ents were a tremen­dous influ­ence in terms of mak­ing me feel like their love was con­di­tion­al, I believe a large part of this life­trap has to do with me mak­ing up for my emo­tion­al depri­va­tion by fill­ing my deep­er empti­ness with suc­cess.
  • Even when I do some­thing that I know I should be proud of and sat­is­fied, I feel like there’s always anoth­er thing to do, anoth­er lev­el to reach. While this fuels my self-improve­ment and has got­ten me to where I am now, I’ve come to real­ize that there’s an imbal­ance between the effort and the pay­off. I work too hard for too lit­tle enjoy­ment.
  • I may real­ize this, but it’s a hard habit to break. I have a feel­ing that I’ll need to fix my emo­tion­al depri­va­tion at the same time to do so.

The Idea of Love

While my moth­er always made it a point to stay involved in my life (to a fault), it was nev­er because she loved me. She’s not some­one who’s emo­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent enough to under­stand what love is.

She just loved the idea of a son, some­thing “nor­mal” peo­ple have.

Which is why she tries to cling to me so des­per­ate­ly, even when I try so vehe­ment­ly to avoid her. It’s the same way that some men or women only love the idea of mar­riage, instead of their spous­es. They’re rela­tion­ships based on all the wrong rea­sons.

Realizing this has made me won­der; did I ever actu­al­ly love my girl­friends, or did I just love the idea of love?