Apparently and Perhaps

I'm smart...apparently.

I'm nice...apparently.

I'm handsome...apparently.

So they say, so I am...apparently.

I have taken to looking frequently at my hands: what have they done, what are they doing, and what more can they do. My imagination answers with terror, as I see them spaghettify towards some black hole at some unknown distance, in time and space, away from me. Then I blink, then things return to normal. That isn't true. Physical reality overtakes metaphor, that's more like it. 

I am losing myself. The person I have been constructing, the little confidence I have built, has collapsed upon itself. Just today I criticized myself for being too hard on myself, and then declared that this is why I'm alone. I am my own Lucille Bluth (side note: I love the new season of Arrested Development). 

I have always been a really sensitive person, which seems to hinder more than help. Unfortunately, I was born into a frequently insensitive family, at least one that doesn't handle the broader spectrum of emotions very well. So I seemed to steel myself, and carried on. This has proven unhealthy, as I now have very little idea how to cope with my overbearing sensitivity. Everything seems more than it is: slights, kindnesses, so on. Eventually, everything then seems false, and I harden. (And because our hearts were hard, God gave us poetry...) 

I am excited to go to England for grad school. Apparently. But when I'm honest with myself, as I was the other day, I become scared that music has lost interest to me, and that my England trip is more of a dispassionate interest. My fight is gone. I roll over anymore, avoid arguments, keep quiet when the conversation turns disagreeing; everyone is right, except me. The reason is that it's difficult to be passionate or interested at walls, which is what I get much too often when I speak, which becomes rarer and rarer. I die a little each time I see people lose interest halfway through my sentence. According to my family I have always had to essentially yell at people not to interrupt. Now, I'm tired, and something like England, the passage to which is laid with nothing but difficulties, seems like in a different galaxy. 

So perhaps...

A friend and mentor asked me once if I liked or loved myself. Perhaps I don't. Or perhaps that isn't the right question.

I think the question is: Do I trust my friends and family? There is no perhaps here. I do not.

If I trusted my friends, I would be energetic, pursuing my ambitions, succeeding at such, have no doubts in my worth. I would be the person they say I am, instead of the "lost, lost loser" looking for more than the man that got away (so to speak). I don't know when this happened, or how, or why. When they tell me something, though, that I should read, or watch, or listen to such and such; that I am, well, what I said I am apparently; when this happens, I think, in some manner, "why should I believe you?" And I don't believe, because I put too much faith in the further opinion of others. To clarify: I have had practically no luck in my love life, and I take my loneliness as a sign that I am unworthy. Pathetic, I know, but I still spent the other night wondering why I am so hard to love that no one seems interested in me. Anyway, I become more and more terrified of hanging out with people, because I might be a Debbie Downer, but worse, that I'll just suddenly unleash everything I have just shared.

I guess this is asking for help. I don't like asking for help; perhaps because I don't like feeling like I owe people; perhaps I don't like feeling weak; but apparently, it's because I don't trust people will help me: usually when I reach out, I get fog. Also, I prefer to help, I love to help, but so many people I know are so damned independent that I have practically no outlet.

Anyway, I hope this public...collapse...has been graceful, as much so as I could manage.

Overrated

What is an overrated thing but that which has received a proportionally large amount of approvals, and which one finds undeserved? And if one finds the attention undeserved, why waste one's time? Wield your energy in creating and supporting that which you want in the world, and only rail against what you don't like out of necessity. This is not to be nice, but to be productive.

Mount St. Christian

I blue myself last night: first the explosion of anger, then the collapse into not caring anymore, at least about attracting other people. It is not often I let myself get pissed, because the lava of my wrath tends to flow wherever it can and envelope both guilty and innocent. Last night, however, I had privacy, and I furthermore banned myself from making related statuses on Facebook; so I rampaged. My rampages can seem tame, for at least two reasons: I don't get much practice, and I don't like to yell or scream (my vocal cords just don't seem to be made to do those with any ease). I tend to be like Austria here:

That'll show Germany. 

Likewise, I have a project I'm working on, John in Hell, a musicalization of Don Giovanni, into which I throw my bitterness and cynicism about people, relationships, sex and sexuality, and the like; the subject is fit for such topics, so I can at least put my feelings to good use. 

So what started me fuming? Men.

It's one thing to receive flat-out rejection, but another to be led along and then dropped and ignored. And I should have known better. I had my doubts about him from the start. Yet sense and better judgment, after a long period of denial and loneliness, is no match to a pretty face and honeyed talk. Foolishness is all the more painful when you allow yourself to fall into the eventual outcome.

Of course, I am a man myself, and I do aim at myself. A victim of the male romantic imagination, I am, whatever that is in contrast to the female one, and worse still, of the gay/bisexual male romantic imagination, particularly one which usually misses the mark because of shoddy gaydar. Ugh...kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. 

One of my constant sources of anguish is the gulf that lies between what people say about me and results: that is, I usually hear that I am "good guy," with smarts and enough looks to boot, yet...the pudding of proof is missing. "Confidence," they tell me, and I suppose that would bridge the gulf, but (knowing) persistence (hmm, is there much of a difference between persistence and confidence?) has never been a strong trait of mine, and the already flickering flame is hungry for oxygen.

While I lick those wounds, I'll feed other desires. Therefore, I give up for awhile on the romantic front. I may have repressed myself for 20 years, hiding my sexuality and not caring about (romantic) love, but at least I was productive and could focus. 

I'm done erupting. My anger never lasts for long, a good and bad thing. As a mea culpa for my bitching, a song that came to mind out of the blue.