and that reminds me

another therapy session today. no intense display of emotions  this time. no fatalistic opinions expressed. the main focus of discussion was on this perspective of being alone and apart from the general flow of life that i expressed in this blog entry earlier in the week.

while no tears may have been shed, i did leave with a subdued mood. that feeling has persisted into this evening. i would say that the primary source of the sadness i'm feeling is a recollection that happened at about the midpoint of my session. i was sharing that my feeling of being an outsider made me question the possibility of ever connecting with someone and establishing the fulfilling relationship that i desire. as i was talking, i was reminded of the fact that michael never really understood me (this is not just my view; michael himself had shared this with me a few times during the course of our relationship).

as i shared this fact with dr. s, it then occurred to me that the very relationship that i had looked to for love, care and a sense of belonging was actually reinforcing the belief that no one would ever "get me" and that i would likely always feel alone even if i were actually in the midst of a relationship. this was not exactly the best kind of reminder to have come to mind, and as i've shared, it pretty much colored the rest of my day in a murky shade of grey. and when i think of how quickly michael has found a new relationship, it seems to just emphasize even more that i was the one that was the issue in the relationship. i was the one that didn't belong and wasn't able to be loved. and with that thought the grey fades to black.

so now i spend a quiet, lonely night. soon i will climb into my bed and likely yearn for a touch, a caress, a gentle whisper of love, a sense that i have someone that i matter to and someone who matters to me. i continue to wonder why this seems to be too much for me to ask for from life. i guess there's a reason that there were no tears during therapy today. i think i was reserving them for the evening ahead.

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.

marriage material

another evening conversation with sean, another shared thought that was more affecting upon reflection than in the initial telling. in this case it was a comment i was making about weddings, of all things. he has a trip to one coming up, and i was sharing that the great thing about getting older is that you don't have to deal with the expense of gifts and travel and any other things associated with being present for your friends when they say "i do." at my age, all of your friends are either married or have decided they don't plan on being so.

it's my next comment that has stayed with me. i shared that truth be told i didn't anticipate that i would be having a wedding of my own moving on through this next phase of life. in that statement, i wasn't referring to not having the ceremony someday but rather not entering into the kind of relationship that would prompt the need for a wedding. i had to quickly dispel the reaction that this was my being fatalistic about the idea of meeting someone special, it's more that i really don't think i'm marriage material. i think i would be happy if i could find a guy (or two) to date and enjoy his company. and when i look over my life i think i've actually deep down always been like that.

it is kind of funny that even as more and more lgbt people move toward the normative standards around relationship, i find myself not really interested in doing the same. mind you, i do support marriage equality very strongly and some years ago i was very much the kind of person for which a marital relationship was very much the goal. today my feeling is, well, not so much.

i desire companionship and love and intimacy in my life, and there are so many people who believe and espouse that the only path to those things is to be married. maybe they're right, but for me, i'm pretty determined to see if i can find a different route.

sleeping alone

this is one of those nights that i miss having someone to sleep with.

i wrote words to this effect in an online conversation with sean last night. a casual remark, i thought, expressing what at the moment was a gentle sadness that had cropped up in the hour or so before sleep. i'm not sure if it was the various online conversations with a few interesting men that day, including sean, that prompted it, but i do know that by the time i was chatting with sean, the feeling was so prevalent that i felt a need to comment on it.

i thought that the occupation of that feeling in my psyche pretty much would end then and there, but the feeling stayed with me throughout the conversation (prompting me to comment on how the emotion was stronger than i realized) and well into the night. i had a restless sleep, and i awoke this morning with the same feelings i had when i went to bed.

i have to admit that i find it bizarre that even though the amount of time i have spent sleeping alone over the course of my lifetime far exceeds the time that i had a partner, i am still acutely affected by the lack of a companion in my bed. you would think that my body would recognize the former state as the more common and the latter as the unnatural, but the reverse is true. i have always preferred such sharing and tended to sleep better with someone beside me than when alone.

naturally, my phrasing of the term having someone to sleep with refers to not just the act of sleeping but also to the physical closeness and intimacy that accompanies having a bedmate (at least from what i remember. it's been so long since i've experienced that particular aspect and i'm talking about a trend that goes back to long before michael and i broke up). for me this has probably been the most difficult aspect of being alone. it is one thing to have friends to help in feeling connected and cared for, but there is nothing like sleeping with someone else to banish the loneliness. then again, reflecting on my last several months with michael, i have to acknowledge it is very possible to share a bed with another person and feel like love and intimacy are as far away as the earth is from the moon.