Questioning

I'm just like everyone else, sometimes. I want to be shown affection. I want to be wanted. This is something that seems to be suppressed. Therapy and self-help books all try to point people away from love and romance. We're supposed to be good alone, and to sometimes get to "lick the spoon" of love.

Yes, I did use that metaphor intentionally.

Is it any wonder that I feel the same? It's been a long time since I felt affection. Years. More than I'd like to say. The offers given to me leave me cold and hopeless, though. The people that I have met have been the opposite of the kind of people I want in my life. From someone who flat-out told me "the blacks were better off when they were slaves" to a person who told me he wanted "to pull out all our troops, and turn the Middle East to glass."

I am pickier than that. I must not be bombarded by this shit. I can't even entertain why people think someone who unashamedly claims the "liberal" label would want to listen to the shit they spew. And that killed any spark that might have blossomed. Yes, I would rather be alone than deal with that kind of bullshit. I was downright  grossed out by them, after such words left their lips.

But is it really so hard to accept  that I'd like to know love, again? Not a desperate, anyone-will-do love, either. Not manipulation, not pretend love to get sex, not something worse, but love.

What about this desire turns the people I talk to tell me I shouldn't think of love? Is there something so wrong with me that they feel they must deter me from talking about wanting love?

I just don't understand.

Repeat

The vast portion of my writing is done in private now. I give some of it to places where I don't associate this identity. I haven't stopped, at all. The work I've been doing is very self-centered. All of my sentences seem to start with "I" and they go dark, most of the time.

This is a place I wanted to let people keep tabs on me. This was where I wanted to show parts of me that are real, as well. Over the years, I was often rewarded with messages from those who felt that I was expressing things that they felt, and that made them feel less alone. It was nice to know I wasn't alone, as well.

Lately, though, everything seems unsecured. It's hard to know how much is paranoia and how much is really happening. When you have someone seem to answer things you said in private conversations, repeatedly, you begin to wonder if some people need some new damned hobbies. Glad to know I'm still so interesting. It would be nice to interest people for good reasons, instead.

This has been dragging me into a pretty bad place, I admit. I haven't succumbed to it, yet. My head and my heart do hurt to know there are few people I can actually count on, in my life. It wears on me. Here I am, though, still aimlessly pushing through the septic tank of my life. It'd be nice to move on from this, now. I have, so many times. It gets old. I feel like a toddler. "I don't wanna do this all over again. I don't wanna go through all this, again."

I want to make a fort and dream about the stars, instead.

It's been nine years since the last time I had to start from scratch. Seven years before that, something else made a massive crater in my life. I got two whole extra years between major upheavals. Of course, it took everything I had to get through the one nine years ago. It took a year and four months from the day of separation to the court decree. Then it took another three years to stabilize. The organization that has helped me get my footing is still backing me. I don't think I'd have survived without their help.

Now, I'd like to have a place to call my own. While I feel surveilled by people who use their religion as a tribal pack and not a foundation of ethics, I will remain here. It is the one backup I have, at the moment. After all, I've got a few months until my son starts college, and a few years before the other one flies the nest.

I have looked back on older journals. The place I was at nine to eight and a half years ago was far worse than anywhere I've been lately. It's good to know how far I've come. Sometimes it feels like this point here is the worst one ever. It is not, though. I am struggling sometimes, but not like then. Nothing like then. It just gets old to keep going through this.