messages

so i had a phone message from michael last night. i also had an email from him when i awoke this morning. he shared news about his mother, the dog, work and his new dating relationship. he wrote that he thought "breaking the silence" that has existed between us (about three months) was a sign of his being ready to move on to the next phase of our "relationship/friendship."

i wrote back. shared where i am. wished him well.

he stated that he hoped his news of dating someone new did not hurt me. i told him it did. i shared that it was good that he had someone and that i doubt i will ever have love in my life.

these were not good ways to end or begin a day. my mood is on shaky ground even as i type this.

it's been a week

not much to say tonight other than to comment that this has been one of the more challenging week i've had of late. lots of emotional struggle. concerns about my health. a very full agenda of activity at work (i didn't leave until 7:30 this evening -- that's from a 6:30 a.m. start).

right now i'm feeling fatigued on all fronts -- physical, mental, and emotional (hence the reason for a relatively short entry this evening). the quietness and isolation of my life seems particularly acute at this moment. there continues to be a heaviness heart that permeates my soul and i continue to question what exactly is all of this (my life) about.

i think questions like that mean it's definitely time to go to bed.

unsettled and uncertain

i'm in a weird space this morning. i can only describe it as being on the edge of emotion. i keep feeling as if i'm just going to start crying at a moment's notice, and at alternate moments i feel ready either to jump out of my skin or crawl into a hole and pull the dirt over me.

i'm sure it doesn't help that i've slept a grand total of four hours a night every night since monday. it's probably not calming my nerves that i have an early afternoon appointment for a heart test to see if my persistently high cholesterol (now on lipitor as of this week, oh joy) has caused any damage. it could be i'm still adjusting my new antidepressant medication. whatever it is i really wish it would stop.

it could also be that i did end up having a chat with s.r. last night. well, from my end it was more of an emotional outpouring. it was odd in that i was in this space of almost dreading hearing from him and at the same time worrying even more that i wouldn't. had i revealed too much in what i shared? had i pushed his tolerance of my craziness too far for him to remain engaged in our new friendship? and yet at the same time, questioning what i was doing remaining involved in a relationship that made me feel so unsettled and uncertain.

well, the familiar text chime sounded and as soon as i saw it was him with a friendly "happy hump day" greeting, i just lost it and started bawling. i could tell it was my heart revealing to me that no matter how challenging, for good or bad to my long-term sanity, i really valued his friendship and wanted us to remain in each other's lives.

and then out came all of these words, thoughts and feelings. interestingly enough, it turns out he had not read the message or the blog yet. so i gave him a quick rundown of the topics. i did apologize for letting my fears and insecurities get the best of me. i also acknowledged that they're still very much present and palpable. that i really don't feel like i fit in his life. and that of course engendered more tears on my part.

and so here i sit, at the beginning of another day of "executiving," a little tired and a little crazed, wondering if anything will start to make sense. will i ever feel well and whole? will i ever be happy and loved? i think it's going to be one long ass day. 

an explanation on (what feels like) the ending of a fledgling friendship

what you see in the entry preceding this one is the messy breaking through of pain and hurt. and while dealing with the complicated dynamics of my new friendship with s.r. may have been the precipitator of the outpouring, it is not the sole cause. clearly the brokenness that has resulted from other hurtful, problematic relationships throughout my life has found their manifestation in the collection of words and phrases below. still, i feel a need to address this specific situation at this time.

so, what caused this specific display of raw emotion to burst forth at this particular time you may ask. well, my mid-day entry yesterday should provide some hint as to my emotional state on the day (it actually got a little better, allowing me to end the day fine; however, that respite was brief, as my mood plunged greatly upon getting home that evening).

i should pause to explain that since my recent entries that have also been focused on the struggles i am having in the friendship with s.r. (found here, here, and here), i haven't really received any acknowledgment from him about them, save one comment to the effect of, "awe (sic) (smiley face emoticon here) -- that makes me wanna cry!" on a further aside, i have expressed to him experiencing some confusion about the smiley face. still haven't gotten any insight from him into that either). now he has been busy with life stuff (work, visit from parents, etc.). i get that. but i had hoped when we did have the opportunity for an online chat, we could at least discuss it for a bit.

so last night, as is the case every night, i had no sense of when or, even more so, if i would have any contact with s.r. he appears in the moment in the form of a text on my phone, with a chime signalling his entry, or with a skype instant message "blip", each message usually beginning with some casual, breezy "hey, hey," (which is kind of nice in that my life is anything but casual or breezy these days). well, last night the skype im "blip" with the aforementioned usual greeting came in about 8:30. after inquiring after how my day was ("rough" was my response), he indicated that he was feeling kind of down. when i inquired why, he stated it was a long story. i shared i had the time if he was willing to share more. he wasn't, except that he did share that it was related to a friend and that he hoped the problem would "self-correct." and at that particular moment, it was if i could see, hear and feel a metaphorical door into his life slam in my face.

so we dialogued a bit more, and it became clear that the hoped for discussion on what i had written and shared with him previously about the pain/struggle i was experiencing related to our (what at least i've believed to be) friendship was not going to happen. and there appeared slammed door number two.

after a bit more discussion, he indicated that he was going to leave the conversation (and might be back) to fold laundry (now something you should also know is that i'd estimate about 85% of the time when s.r. leaves one of our chats, he doesn't come back later. sometimes i don't even get an "i'm leaving" during the conversation. they will just end with my making a point or a question that just hangs out in the ether to eventually evaporate to nothingness -- kind of like what my soul has been doing of late).

now i'm aware that i should have seen in his statement that he felt an urgency to get that particular household chore completed and perhaps he also didn't want any more reflection on his problem with his friend and hoped a routine chore would help distract him.  i likely should have seen that. and that is obviously what i saw with my mind. what i felt in my heart was, "i'd rather go do this mundane chore than to spend any time connecting with you clarus." i suppose it could have been worse. he could have told me that he had just painted a wall and wanted to make sure it was drying properly. anyway, cue slamming door into s.r.'s life number three.

the reason that the preceding words i did write entry begins with "i'm not really sure what to say" is because i was just stunned. i had been so hoping for a conversation that would address what i had been experiencing or, barring that, would at least provide some meaningful dialogue. and well that didn't happen. what happened instead was me attempting to be a friend and trying to share in and support him in any emotional pain he was experiencing. an attempt that for whatever reason was rejected. and then the conversation was over literally as soon as it started. i was, well, again, stunned.

the thing about skype im though is that you can still send messages even if the other person is not sitting at the other end. i've done this previously with s.r. i have no idea which, if any, of those messages he's actually read; but i've done it to at least finish a thought or express additional related ones (it should be clear right now that i have a strong need for closure in all matters of life -- tasks, conversations and yes, relationships). what you can't see in the entry is that there was about fifteen minutes of agonizing hurt between the conclusion of writing the first sentence and the beginning of the writing of the second. and i just kept writing -- not steadily but over a period of about 30 minutes or so i wrote, going wherever my ever widening heart break directed me.

so, does this mean that i want the friendship to end? i hope it's clear in what i wrote in the last entry, which must rank as one of the single most painful entries i've ever written over the five plus years of this blog (right there with "there are moments"), the answer is assuredly no. unfortunately, these days in particular, what i want and what will be continue to seem to be very different (almost diametrically opposed) things.

i intentionally chose the word "fledgling" in the title of this entry to describe the friendship because new relationships of any type do have the freshness and hopefulness of a new born animal. but in the same way they can be fragile and under certain harsh conditions they can either fail to thrive or be easily injured and die.

to use another metaphor, the situation i'm in right now feels very much like the child who is fascinated by the hot stove and places his hand on it and is burned. the pain and shock of that experience most likely will and should give the child pause to perform that act again, let alone repeatedly.

i by no means think ill of s.r. he is a good man doing the best job he can to live out his life in a way that supports the people he loves and the values he believes in. there are also complications that are created about the specific circumstances of our relationship (an example of which is i'm not even entirely confident that i know his actual full name) that i have not and will likely not ever detail even here. suffice it to say though that those circumstances, when combined with my current raw (and admittedly fragile at times) emotional state, create a dynamic very much akin to the hot stove. the pain i've expressed in all of the entries around this relationship to date are obviously my processing of the experience of feeling "burned."

and so my "goodbye" was literally my way of performing a basic instinctual reaction of fleeing the pain. but rather than flee i wish there were a way to figure out how to turn off the heat. but i can't do it alone and my lack of insight into how s.r. feels (and, in many ways, who he is) makes me uncertain (actually doubtful) that i have a willing partner in what it will take to do so. to restate a thought from that much referred to last entry, "i just don't understand what it is i'm supposed to want from life anymore."

words i did write

i'm not really sure what to say
or maybe it's more i'm not sure how to word this
it's just with every encounter it feels that i really don't fit in your life
i've really wanted to but i just don't
i'm not sure where or if i fit anywhere anymore
i was just re-reading my blog entry from last night and the same emotions are here again
i've just been so wrong about so many things it seems
i had hoped we would be friends
but as with so many things these days my hope is in short supply
and i feel foolish for hoping
and trusting
and believing that maybe at least one good thing could happen for me
i didn't think it was asking for much but i guess i was wrong
you know how there's this lyric in the song tapes
i am too exhausting to be loved, a volatile chemical best to be quarantined and cut off
that's how i feel you, everyone must feel about me
and i think about you seeing this and thinking that you really don't need this particularly when you've got whatever is going on with your friend
i just don't understand what it is i'm supposed to want from life anymore
but clearly a friendship with you is not one of those things
goodbye s

bottoming out

i'm having one of those days. it may be a result of my waking up at around 2:30 a.m. and not really ever getting back to sleep. it may be due to the fact that i'm still getting adjusted to the new anti-depressant medication i'm taking. it may be due to the pacing of work of late. it may be because i have to do a mid-year performance review for a direct report in which i have to share (again) that his performance is not meeting expectations. it may be because i'm still struggling with the news of michael's new relationship and the dynamics of a particular relationship the combination of which seem to have brought many of my latent fears and sense of brokenness to the surface. whatever the reason, i am not feeling at all good at this moment.

my heart is so full and heavy with pain, it feeels as if it's about to rip out of my chest onto my desk surface. my eyes feel like they can barely contain the flood that is building up behind them, and in fact, small streams of tears are managing to find their way out. my head feels as if its ready to explode from the constant barrage of information, decisions, problems, and challenges it is attempting to process. and on top of that i have a runny nose.

so i have about 30 minutes to pull myself together before i have to participate in yet another meeting. i thought maybe taking this bit of time out to do a blog entry and get all of this emotion out would help. i'm not sure that it really has. i'm not sure if anything really can help me at this point.

just another opportunity

what happens when all you start seeing in an individual is just another opportunity to get hurt all over again? do you keep moving forward in the vain hope that you will be proven wrong or do you stop engaging before the painful dismissal that you believe is inevitable takes place? which is the least painful course of action because at this point it doesn't look like i'm going to emerge without further scarring to my soul? and will the pain result from blind neglect or willful disregard followed by sudden abandonment?

daily greetings that have characterized every day for many months now look like a foolish exercise done by a naive and needy me with the belief being that connections, bonds of friendship were being forged when instead it was likely a mild amusement on his part at best or an annoyance to be endured at worst. and yet the practice has stopped not through intention or neglect but through the sheer loss of will to believe that a hoped for friendship was there on the other side. another loss, another loss.

when do the relationships with men that bring love and healing come to my life? or am i either so unworthy or damaged to even warrant that as a desire let alone an expectation.

what i do know is that my ambien has kicked in big time. now is my time to sleep and take bets on whether i sleep long or short and have dreams sweet or stressful. i think i know where things are going to end.

me alone with memories and the questions of how i got here in the first place behind me.

paper thin

last night i received a message from a friend in which he encouraged me that my life circumstances would get better. he is by no means the first and only person that has passed on such encouragement. this weekend alone i received at least two other similar encouragements, one from another friend and the other from my doctor.

this morning i woke up with the recognition that as each day goes by how much "thinner" this reassurance is getting and how much heavier my doubt grows. this phenomenon is close to the point that i feel the former will not be able to bear the weight of the latter and is about to tear right through it, leaving more emotional devastation in its wake.

it doesn't help that i seem to be in a pattern of reminding myself of how many "it will get better" scenarios i've experienced over the last close to half a century. like a salmon swimming upstream, i am strenuously moving through a tide of "remember when that situation or life development was supposed to be the 'get better' or that one or that one." in fact, when i look over the landscape of all the "get betters" that upon further reflections really morphed to "as bad if not worse" situations (and yes, i do include my recently departed relationship in this category), i am ever more discouraged.

if i sound a bit fatalistic then you are indeed perceptive. i would make attempts to allay any concerns this might raise for you, but it appears that part of this little emotional dance i've been doing includes a great deal of apathy as well. i will share that hope is welcome to "cut in" at any time. unfortunately, he seems to be preoccupied with other partners at the present time.

better living through chemistry? not yet

the next time my doctor makes a suggestion about changing my psychotropic meds, i hope i come back to this entry before i agree to do so. it's not so much that i wish to dissuade my future self from making said changes, i just want him to be aware of what he's in for. thus far, i've experienced headaches, dizziness, hot flashes, and worst of all, even deeper moments of depression to the point of feeling like i would do almost anything to escape the pain.

i know this is the drill. i experienced the same symptoms when i started on the medicine i was taking previously. eventually, i got adjusted and found that particular drug to be quite helpful. i would like to say that i am confident that this will be the case this time. i would even like to say i'm hopeful but hope has been in short supply these days (actually, i think i'm pretty much running on empty in that category). let's not forget that's at least part of the reason i'm going through all of this in the first place.