Daedalus

You Live What You Learn

I'm not at all sure where my life goes from here.

I'm 43.  I have no family of my own, save the three cats.  I have no prospects for any kind of close relationships.

In my experiences, thus far, the cost / benefit ratio, of close relationships does not come out in favor of the benefits.  The relationships in which I was raised, my folks's and my grandfolks's, weren't even close to equal partnerships.  One of the two participants was a serious drain on the other.  In two out of these three cases, the persons involved didn't/don't even really LIKE each other.  The only things keeping those marriages together were/are familial, social, and religious pressures.  It would have been MUCH better for EVERYONE involved, if they had spit up.  But as they all were/are extremely conservative, devout, practicing Lutherans, this is/was impossible.

The idea of coming home to that, every day, sounded and still sounds like someone's twisted idea of hell.

My sisters, and my aunt, and my mom's brother, and my cousin, from the-outside-looking-in at least, seem to be faring much better.  On a nerdy, intellectual, level I can accept the possibility that good familial relationships are possible.  But as I wasn't raised in those environs, I can only hypothesize that what they have is real, and then ponder what it must be like for them and their kids.  And when I do these ponderings, and come up with the idea that it's all pretty good, I vacillate between grief and rage over the my childhood wasteland.  It is not a happy time.

I remember, ten years ago, resigning myself to the concept that I'd be a bachelor for the rest of my life.  I was OK with that, then.  As it turns out, I got by by amusing myself with the idea of changing my mind if/when some attractive young woman crossed my path.

Now, at middle age, I no longer have those daydreams, those fantasies, to keep me going.  When the 29-year-olds are too young to be seriously considered as potential life -- or sex -- partners, you are shit-outta-luck.

Don't forget the Hang-glider

As I look back on my childhood, I can build a reasonable case for self-pity.  One of my past therapists in one of his few cogent pronouncements,  noted  "You have a lot to be depressed about." Yes, at an early age I was a very unsupported victim of powers and circumstances far beyond my control.  Yes, these events shaped my emotional habits.  And yes, it was pretty awful.   And yes, I do fall into self-pity on a regular basis.

There are triggers.  There are things that can set me off.  There's a cauldron of rage simmering just beneath the surface.  And as this anger really has no where to go, there are some pretty good depressive spells.  That's just how I am, right now, October 11, 2009.

I can't change what all happened.  I can't change the past.  It seems the best I can do is cope. (Homage to Arrested Development:  "...cope, not change.  Directly opposite, not the same.)

And it's very hard to shake the reality that, on the level that I desperately crave, no one seriously gives a fuck -- nor can they.  They have their lives to live.  They have their own rows to hoe.  (Trusting any help offered is a whole 'nother level of grief here.)  These are my personal crosses to bear.

I am so flippin' alone.

Here's to hoping that the St. Johns Wort kicks in soon.  (ETA 1 to 3 more weeks.)

***Flash of potential insight!  I'm fixin' to move at the end of next July  -- to detach from familiar environs and support systems, to leave (perhaps forever) what is familiar and occasionally comfortable to me, to venture off into the unknown and potentially unpleasant,  to make a jump into a place where I have no pre-established support systems.  This may account for my up-tightness.   I'm heading off to complete my associates degree at a state college just north of the northwestern Pennsylvania border, after which I'll return to the capitol city of this state (directly south of Montana), where I've never lived before and where I have only two acquaintances, to begin work on my surveying license.  I've never made such a blind leap before -- unless you count my jump to school for the first two semesters, but that was only for a spell.  I have the personal history to show that such leaps are often accompanied by emotional turmoil.

Well, Hell.  If that's the problem, let's get to work on the solution.  Time to start building a network in the capitol.

Light a Match, If You Have To

Roughly paraphrasing DUNE, "Beginnings are especially delicate times.  Great care must be taken to ensure that the balances are correct."

So now, I begin (anew) this blog. 

My intent is to use this forum as a diary, as a sounding board, as a place to rant, as a forum to air past insults and abuses (imagined or otherwise), and as a place to let my paranoid/nutso side run amok within in the faux-safety of this quasi-anonymous, yet very public, medium.  In short, this blog is my $5.00/month substitute for real therapy.

"What a surprise -- a self-absorbed, head-completely-shoved-up-his-ass, inane, irrelevant, conflicted, narcissistic, author.  You don't see many of those out on the web, do you?"  I can see the eyeballs rolling up into people's heads and hear the Archie Bunker mutterings of, "Oh, Geeze..."  And frankly, I agree.  I wouldn't read these pages any more than I'd run into a small public restroom right after someone dumps a serious shit. (BTW, I'm really backed up.)

So, if this blog is not your kind of thing, I'll completely understand.  I won't tell you to f-off or anything unkind like that, I'll only suggest that you go and read something else -- or better yet, turn off the computer, leave the house, and enjoy a real life.

But if you do decide to hang out here, I recommend that you invest in several cases of kitchen matches or in a couple of drums of aerosol air freshener.

This'll probably get ugly from time to time.