Oh, boy.
On my coffee break at work tonight, I thought I'd go onto OkCupid. Mainly to see if Gina reactivated her profile, just out of morbid curiosity. She didn't, but I then made the mistake of looking at the messages we exchanged when we first met.
I'm .. smitten.
(sighs)
I keep using (sighs) all the time in my blog, and I don't like (sigh)ing so much, but what other way can I convey my exasperation at how I've been handling the breakup?
It's.. I love her. I love our early conversations together. I haven't checked out our texts, but I imagine I eventually will revisit them. I already plan on printing them all out and going from beginning to end.
Yeah.. I'm a glutton for punishment, it seems.
For a brief moment, I entertained the idea of doing the scarecrows on the side of the street where she drives to work, and.. I swiftly realized that I still need to make myself into the kind of man she deserves. I'm still not at that level yet, though I have the potential to be.
There's a lot I've got left to do with myself. And I'm not quite sure where I should start. When I wrote my list of things I "want" from life, I didn't think about what the first step would be for a lot of them, but after thinking about it some more, I think meditation would be a good habit to get back into.
If prayer is talking, then meditation is listening, and I need to listen. Listen hard, to whatever voice or idea comes into my mind as I sit in a quiet spot, in uninterrupted darkness and pay close attention to my feelings and thoughts.
I need to get a handle on this situation. Gina is almost exactly the kind of woman I'd want to be with, and she has the potential to become perfect in my eyes.
Looking over our early conversations, I realize that her heart and soul was on full display and.. I didn't take it seriously enough. I wish I understood this earlier, back when we were together, just how much she wanted to share her life with me. And I couldn't. I was and am, still ashamed of certain parts of what makes up the kind of man I ended up as.
That's.. vulnerability speaking. I was afraid to make myself vulnerable to her. Out of fear that if I did so, then she would be disgusted by me.
But.. that's honesty, too. She wanted an honest man, and.. I wasn't it. I hid things from her that I wanted to say. I didn't express myself clearly. I didn't.. fall in love with her as I should have, because I had my guard up. After so many bad relationships, I.. couldn't let her come through the wall I've built up around my heart. I was terrified of showing it to her.
And.. I should have. I should have sat her down and talked about myself more. I should have opened myself right up and tell her everything that is wrong with me, so that I wouldn't have to suffer the burden of the secrets that I carry.
For better, or worse. Whatever the outcome would have been.
Honesty. Openness. Courage.
I didn't exhibit these qualities while I was with her.
I just thought she was too good to be true, and something would go wrong, so I should make the effort of keeping a mask up. A false pretense.
And, I shouldn't have done that. I wouldn't want her to have done it with me.
So.. reading our messages..
(sighs) (again)
I don't know what to do. I'm toying with the scarecrow idea again. I'm thinking about anonymously mailing her a gift card to Mastermind Toys in late November, so she can get something nice for her kids on Christmas. I'd probably forge the letterhead and explain that she won a "draw" that someone had entered her into.
(sighs) (x3)
But.. those ideas aren't going to win her back. I know that already. It seems that I'm more interested in making her happy, even if I don't get credited for it.
And thinking about having her back, is a little strange. Because, as much as I want her in my life, I realize that I have to be able to live up to her expectations and.. I don't know yet if I can.
There's still things I need to do, before I'd consider myself ready.
And the worst thought, is that she likely has forgotten about me and has this entirely negative perception of who I am, and yet..
I still want to believe it's possible.
And even if I can never have kids with her, I still want to believe I'd be happy spending the rest of my life with her.
.. But..
I don't know if I would be.
And yet, she is almost exactly the kind of woman I want and need in my life.
But she doesn't want to be that woman.
So..
What do I do now?
Meditation is all I can think of. I have to.. open myself up and become receptive to what my inner voice is telling me to do. Trusting my intuition is a difficult endeavor, given how many times it appeared to have steered me wrong. But.. I'm not sure if it has. That saying "everything happens for a reason" could apply in my case. That all my mistakes and failures and experiences are all leading up to something that I'm being prepared for. Maybe Gina is a stepping stone to greater things in life. To me becoming a better person.
I'm still keeping a clean home. I'm still feeling.. changed. But, not as much as I would like.
I still have a ways to go.
I tried thinking of what I needed to change while at work, and I could only come up with a shortened list that needs to be expanded on.
Physical. Mental. Spiritual.
These three words make up the totality of my being. Physical gratification includes exercise, getting enough sleep and eating the right foods.
Mental gratification, involves having a positive attitude, feeling good about myself, keeping productive and organized and pursuing long-term goals with confidence.
Spiritual, is a little trickier. Meditation, visualization, prayer, mastering the art of gratitude, mindfulness and strengthening my faith are some of the ways that involve developing the connection I have with myself, and the world around me.
So.. Physical, mental and spiritual fulfillment is what I'm after.
I wrestled with the idea of sex as being a part of physical gratification, and in a way it is, but it is not absolutely necessary for me to have at the moment. As much as I would want it to be.
An orgasm is not something I should be placing such a high priority on having.
These thoughts are bringing to mind Maslow's hierarchy of needs, where he describes sex as being part of the equation. And I disagree. As awesome as sex is, there's something to be said for retaining one's sexual energy and putting it to use, rather than becoming a slave to the impulse.
That's celibacy, obviously, but it's also sexual transmutation. And having an orgasm once in a while, is a nice release, but not an absolutely needed one.
I should remind myself of this more often. Too many of my relationships had me thinking about sex, first and foremost, rather than developing a good connection with the woman I'm with. That's another thing I have to work on.
I seem to equate having sex, with validation of who I am. That if another person is willing to work at giving me an orgasm, then that must mean I am worthwhile.
That's it. I've solved this aspect of myself that has confused me for so long.
Well.. It's still tough getting over the habit of wanting sex.
Anyways, I'm rambling.
Meditation. 15 minutes of sitting inside my dark closet, with noise-cancelling headphones and some kind of ethereal sound playing, like the Solfeggio frequencies, or Tibetan Monks chanting.
I haven't tried meditation on weed, but maybe that's an idea worth considering as well.
I need to first re-establish a connection with the essence of who I am, and work at clearing out the debris in my mind so that I can better focus on the things that matter most.
My life. And the relationships I have with others.
It's easy for me to lose focus, once I'm caught in a job like the one I'm in now. Where I come home from work, tired, cranky and generally not very happy with how little free time I have.
Then again, some people work two jobs. Some people have families to take care of. Obligations. Errands. Responsibilities that I am fortunate not to be saddled with, at the moment.
So, I should be grateful for that. And willing to make the most of the little bit of time I have to spare each day.
That means.. well, I already curtailed my video game playing and movie/tv watching. I don't even read all that much anymore.
Lately, my big thing has been this blog. And I'm still surprised at how often I've been updating it. Even while working full-time, six days a week.
I'm proud of doing so, too. It's good to let my thoughts down on.. uhm, paper. Sort of. At least I'm chronicling my progress, and it's important to have a record of all this so that down the road I can look back and see if I've learned anything. And what I should be reminding myself of, so that I don't repeat the same mistakes over and over.
But, it's still tough for me to know how to be myself with someone that I would want to love. I.. understand exactly how I must be, on a deep level, but I don't have.. confidence enough in the person that I'm with, to really know who I am, and that she would embrace my insecurities and not think any less of me for having them.
I'm.. still a good man. A flea market psychic told me so. Heh.
And many others.
I wish I wrote in my blog, about some of the experiences I've had with people in the past. Like the taxi driver lady who I ended up being on friendly enough terms with that she invited me to her (lesbian) wedding.
The time I trashed my house.
The road trip I impulsively took, that had a lot of strange moments including driving my car into a ditch and then meeting this one guy I shared a campfire with, who told me about his life and then.. well, he.. thought I was.. uhm, Jesus.
And then, the 30km walk I took afterwards. At night. With a clear, starry sky guiding my way.
So many random experiences that I haven't taken the time to jot down.
I feel like some of the most important parts of my life, have been dismissed and forgotten about. Even though I remember them, I just don't think of them often enough.
And maybe I should be. Because maybe I'll be able to draw some conclusions if I think about them a bit more. Maybe I'll see my destiny hidden in them. Maybe I can chart out all the strange coincidences I've had, and fortify my faith with knowing that at the right time, the right thing happens to me, right when I need it.
That's an important thing for me to remind myself about. But, I've.. relegated most of these experiences to the back of my mind, where they wander around like hazy ghosts, in need of more definition and clarity.
Thin wisps of memory, demanding to be acknowledged and brought back into the forefront of my mind.
Jail, particularly. Ten years ago, I was in the Remand centre for a night. And it really was an.. experience that I'll never forget. But I have yet to write about.
"Anyone want some hot dick?" some random guy shouts out, while I laid in the top bunk of a bed in a room with around 30 different people who were there for one reason or another. The plexiglass guard booth. The guy showering and giving me the eye and then trying to go alpha-male on me, which I had to stand up against.
The way I'd make eye contact with everyone there, despite the advice I heard about not meeting the eyes of any of the inmates. I had to play the psycho. Otherwise I'd have been taken advantaged of.
And.. it worked. I survived that experience. And I haven't even discussed all the other stuff that went on in that one night.
Crawling out from the holding room, trying to leave.. Hearing.. Now this part is weird, but in this holding cell.. "drunk tank" I suppose you could call it, they were piping in sounds of people grunting and groaning in pain. I'm serious. I don't think I was imagining it, but over the loudspeaker, it sounded like someone was getting hit and it was a very suspicious tactic, as I imagine it was done so that the truly "crazy" people there, would imagine that they were hearing voices in their heads, and it would be then easier to weed them out once they start acting up because of it.
That's my theory, anyways. I had a psychiatrist who came into this holding cell where there was maybe.. 8 or 9 of us there, and he sat down next to me, trying to get a sense of who I am.
I stuck with my gut, and basically played it straight. No fear. Made mention of the sounds I heard, and pretended like it was weird, but not a big deal.
I knew he was a psychiatrist. He was dressed like one, and pretended not to be. He was in and out of that cell in only a few minutes, so.. obviously not an inmate.
I joked with the other female mental-health assessment officer, later on, and knew I had to stay calm and collected and strong.
Anyways.. that's a story I need to write about someday.
I have so many stories like that, but I can't tell anyone all of them. I'd be ashamed of myself if I did, and they.. the other person would think less of me, maybe.
I don't know. But I know I don't really want to see what the other person's reaction would be, to some of the things that happened in my life.
(shrugs) .. but if I'm with a woman that deserves to be loved by me, and is willing to love me?
I should tell her everything.
And let her decide whether or not I'm worth being with.
Because, I don't want to be a used-car salesman holding back some of the things that he knows is wrong with the car he's attempting to sell to a potential buyer.
No. I need to be honest with the ones I love. No matter what.
But when I think about it, I wouldn't tell my mom many of my stories either. And I love her. But I also have the sense enough to know that these admissions, is not going to be putting me into a better light. It's not going to have anyone respect me. Or understand who I am.
Because, even after all these years, I still don't quite understand myself.
I'm cynical and I'm naive. I'm hopeful and I'm hopeless.
I'm.. inconsistent. With certain people, I behave in certain ways. To some, I'm smart and witty and perceptive and charming. To others, I'm probably thought of as an idiot with social anxiety issues.
It all depends on who I come into contact with.
I don't get why that is. I think I'm too.. malleable, maybe.
And also.. I figured out the word I was searching for a few days ago.
Distorted. I'm less distorted these days.
But, I still have plenty of room to improve.
And, so...
I will try.
Time to sleep.
