RESOLVED

I find myself inexplicably sad. Well, not inexplicably. I could probably give you a really good rundown of all the reasons I'm sad today. Most of them are ridiculous. Which is why I'm not going to provide such a rundown. It's really, really silly of me to be sad about the things that are currently making me want to cry.

So, instead, a resolution. I know it's not New Year's. But I have a resolution to make. And really, we ought to start self-improvement campaigns whenever we realize what we need to do, not only at some date chosen for us by an arbitrarily imposed calendar.

Today, for now, for the next five years: I will not be a selfish mess.

I will probably continue to be a mess, because, um, well. Hi. Have you met me? I'm a mess. I am flaky, and pretty unrepentant about it. I deliberately choose to dedicate my brain space to things like that perfect turn of phrase that I constructed while ten-keying four days worth of sales and reports into a spreadsheet. I remember those words instead of the parking ticket I have to pay, or your birthday.

I am hypocritical, because when other people flake on me the way I flake all the time, I am always crushed.

I am crazy. My emotions operate on a series of mountainous hairpin turns, and I will go from sad to happy and back again faster than a ball volleys at the French Open. (Is it the French Open going on right now? Or the US Open? Whatever. I like French tennis with their old-school clay courts.)

But I will try not to be a selfish mess, which means trying really hard not to let my unreasonable expectations get the best of me. It means realizing when my hurt is valid and when it's not, and only sharing when it's valid. And keeping it to myself when it's not. Because it's really pretty selfish to be dumping on people all the time when the problem is actually within yourself. It's really pretty selfish to be demanding other people's time and attention and energy when you don't really have any claim to them. It's really pretty selfish to monopolize someone, anyone, a whole host of someones and anyones and make sure that all that's thought about and cared about is you.

That's pretty selfish.

I am resolved not to do that. Anymore. I have resolved this in the past, and done fairly well at it, but then I got lazy, and sloppy, and here I am, crazier than I ever was. The problem with this kind of attention-seeking crazy is that it's a self-perpetuating cycle. You become absolutely addicted to the attention. You become downright dependent upon knowing someone is always looking, always reading, always caring.

It is no one's job to take care of you. More properly, it is no one's job to take care of me.

And I am resolved not to try and make it anyone's job.

Here's to emotional self-sufficiency. (I'm going to need a lot of whiskey this winter.) (Just kidding.)

On Loneliness

Everyone gets lonely. Everyone. I don't care how introverted or even downright misanthropic you are, at some point, you will get lonely. You will long for the sympathetic touch of another person. You will want someone to listen to you, and understand.

This is the basic problem with being single: the loneliness. Loneliness leads people to do some pretty dumb shit. I should know; I do most of it. Because I suffer from one of the more acute cases of lonely-ass known to man. I am always lonely. It's a permanent condition. There is always something going on in some part of my brain that would like to be shared, and there is never anyone to share it with.

Mostly, I deal with this by blogging. And overusing social media to epic proportions. (I've more or less got my facebook feed under control, but Twitter still occasionally ends up looking like an emo kid threw up all over it. I can't help it. It's a sickness.)

Sometimes I send drunken emails to my friends in the middle of the night.

Sometimes I compose drunken emails to loves past and then don't send them in the middle of the night. This is occasionally funny the next morning, but more often than not it's cringe-inducing. I can get really intense when I'm drunk. It's terribly inappropriate.

A side issue in all this is that I have very British sensibilities. By which I mean, very World War II-era British sensibilities. I'm an endurer. I find actually asking for things to be unspeakably vulgar. Ditto on talking about sex, or feelings. I prefer silence to most things. I think life would be way less complicated if you didn't kiss anyone unless you thought you could probably marry them. Also if people would stick out there commitments just a little better. Also if people could still fall in love through absence.

(I've often wondered if Jim didn't abandon me because he thought he was getting an American girl, and instead I turned out to be just like all the girls on his side of the pond after all. Loss of exoticism and all that.)

I also have the British terror of vulnerability. I don't cry in front of people. Ever. And when other people cry in front of me, I am usually uncomfortable. I would love to be one of those people that can offer just the right amount of sympathy and comfort and make people feel better, but the reality is that as much as I want to help, I am usually too awkward to actually do so. I'm a bungler. And I'm horrid at asking for things.

Being of such staid and constrained philosophies in the modern American world is HARD. I mean, for fucks' sake. It's ridiculous how hard it is to live under these archaic ideas of decorum when everyone around you is hooking up and confessionally blogging about their sexploits and talking about feelings all the damn time. It's a constant feeling of letting your friends down because you can't commiserate. It's living in a permanent state of offense and horror at the world around you.

And it's an unending series of heartbreaks. You get to the point where you start being bitchy to people that might like you just to forestall what you absolutely know must be coming. That's a terrible excuse for being mean to someone, but it's true.

(So hey, if I'm mean to you, it probably means I like you. Just FYI.)

A lot of this grows from this outdated notion that confuses physical arousal with romantic love. I absolutely am one of the few people left in the world that are burdened to labor under this inability to separate the two. When I kiss someone, I fall in love with them. When I'm attracted to someone, I confuse it with being in love.

I thought that I should go celibate for awhile, until I figure out how to separate physical reactions from emotional ones, but I get lonely. I'm not very good at being alone, despite having been single for more of my adult life than I've been in relationshps. Abd most of those relationships have been bad, because it takes to little to attach me and I am so very eager to please that... well, you do the math.

So. Where was I going? I forget.

Loneliness. Loneliness is the crux of just about every problem I face. Terrible affliction.