at the root of me

it seems to be the week that evening chats with sean prompt some thought that ends up being the subject of a blog topic the next day. the funny thing is that the thought in focus today was prompted by my telling sean about yesterday's entry. as i was sharing my "i don't think i'm marriage material" reflections, it occurred to me that here was yet another time i seemed to be out of synch with societal norms and expectations. instead of feeling like an emboldened iconoclast, however, i actually felt tired and sad. it appears that this one simple thought tapped deep into my psyche into what i think is at the root of much of my emotional pain (and if not that root well down the trunk of the tree) -- it's this feeling that has persisted all of my life that i am an outsider to all things about this world, and, as i put it last night, there is a weariness that comes from "being a square peg trying to fit in the world's round hole."

in just about every aspect of life, i have felt that i don't belong -- from family to school to work settings to social gatherings to religion to perspectives on life -- in each and every one i have felt like the proverbial "stranger in a strange land." as a result, from up until i was in my mid-30's, i think my focus was trying my very best to assimilate. no matter how different i felt, i was going to live my life in a way that completely fulfilled the expectations of others. that approach really didn't work so well for me as i realized that despite my best efforts i couldn't escape the feeling that instead of feeling more a part of the world around me i was losing any sense of who i really was and what i really wanted from life.

since that time the approach has been to just be true to myself (i think that this new perspective emerged at the same time i came out as gay is not coincidental) and really to be the best me that i can be. that perspective has served me fairly well, but as most of us have experienced, old habits die very, very hard, lingering well past their expiration date. as such i feel i spent most of my relationship with michael driven by the very same "try to please and be who he wants me to be" attitude that existed in the previous stage of my life's journey. that did stop with the first break-up and is probably why we never really were able to make it work after that. we tried, but my need to be true to me always resurfaced. and being true to me meant not being in a fundamentally dysfunctional relationship.

and while the break with michael was certainly the right move to make, i find myself now back in this all too familiar place of feeling out of synch and apart from what feels like the normative flow of life. perhaps it goes without expressing, but it's not really all that great place to be mostly because it leaves me with a feeling that there is no place for me, and there will be no one for me to know and love in this world. in short, being apart means being alone.

i think what's even worse about being in this space is i'm not really clear what happens from here. i've mentioned before that while i am not necessarily fatalistic about my life improving in terms of finding meaningful, enriching relationships with men, i can't exactly say i'm overly optimistic about it either.

what has been helpful about being reminded of this long standing dynamic in my life is that i have a clear sense of what is really at work in affecting my emotional state and overall outlook on life and knowing, as they say, is half the battle. what's also helpful is that i know what will be a key focus of my next appointment with dr. s. tomorrow. it should be an interesting conversation, and i'll do my best to remember to comment on here what transpired.