On jumping ship.

I had an encounter recently that made me angry.

It wasn't a very good reason to get angry - at least, if you don't mistake my anger for righteous anger. It wasn't really the carelessness towards something I cared about that made me angry.

I had an encounter a while back with someone who was deciding whether or not they wanted to leave the Catholic Church. I talked to them patiently about it and gently prodded and poked until it came out that they didn't believe what the Church taught because they never tried to learn why the Church teached it in the first place. I encouraged the person to "make the faith their own" and read some books or articles, they said they would "read," and we said goodnight.

Recently, the person spoke to me again. I brought it up and they said they were in the process of joining another Church. As we talked, it came out that they never did what they said they would do. They did not care about the truth. They said they still thought the Catholic Church was the Church Jesus founded, and yet they still wanted to leave because they "just wanted to be happy." They said they didn't read because they were afraid they would be convinced to stay...as if it couldn't be more clear that they were simply running away.

Well, I got angry and told them exactly how I felt about what they were doing. I suppose I wouldn't have been so hurt if it weren't for the fact that they lied. If they had said before that they had no intention of giving an equal chance to staying and going, then I would likely have had an entirely different conversation with them. As it was, though, I wasted my time on gentle encouragement and providing some of my own knowledge to try and help light their way. But really all they wanted was "Yeah, do it! Who cares what the Church has to say? It's only been around 2,000 years, they've never really thought about any of the cool heresies stuff we've revived discovered since the 60's!"

I wish this person had been as eager to learn and make informed decisions as people who had never even heard of the Catholic faith. All they wanted was to throw it away because it was too hard. They didn't want to go to confession. They didn't want to wrestle with finding what was true anymore. They just wanted to be happy. And I told them if that's what they wanted, that's what they would get. Because it's absolutely true. But people should want more than happiness. People should want greatness. And you will never be great if you do not care what is true.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for truth.

On the expression of feeling.

Emotions are a wonderful thing. It seems like everyone has them but not everyone knows what they're for.

Emotions are messengers - they are supposed to send us a message and then leave us in time. When they fester, they become a problem. Momentary anger, for instance, can spur us to the defense of something good or to correct some injustice. Lingering, festering anger leads us to vengeance. Momentary sadness can lead us to seek others or to fulfill a need, but lingering sadness can lead to self-pity, self-hatred, or self-destruction.

I am not ashamed to admit that for a man I am unusually in touch with my feelings. However, this has had its drawbacks as well, because I can't escape them sometimes. I have found healthy outlets for my feelings...but some of them were good only temporarily, or misdirected...see my last few posts if you want to know what I mean.

In the quietness of my life right now, I have returned to writing down my feelings (outside of this blog). I don't really have very many people to talk to at the moment for various reasons, so this is a good alternative. Usually when there aren't many people around anymore, I get all-consumed by my loneliness, and that hasn't happened yet in this quiet space. I feel totally OK. I would very much like to keep it that way.

So, today I wrote a poem expressing my feelings. Tonight, I will be writing a letter I won't send. Tomorrow, who knows? I might write someone an email. Or call someone - if they answer, and if I can think of someone to call.

I suppose for the average person, managing a period of quiet in one's life is probably not a struggle. Not for me. I am weak to my feelings and always have been. My Dad would shame me for crying as a boy, and my elementary school principal told me I wear my heart on my sleeve. If that's a problem then it's mine to bear for good because I haven't yet found a cure.

I am very proud of myself for my progress. At this time last year, I was really a mess from my feelings of abandonment and loneliness. Now, I simply see this for what it is. I accept that if I do not reach out to people, I cannot expect that anyone will reach out to me. I expect that when I reach out, some people may not respond. It's just a fact. For you, reader, this may seem silly but for me this is revolutionary. When everyone left where I live, and no one tried to stay in touch and I was all alone I couldn't handle it. I did not handle it...very well at all. Now I am. Now I can.

I think what also helps is that I now see myself more for who I really am...not completely, but much closer than before. I am really not that great. I am not very special. But I'm worth something and I have dignity. I am necessary and I am loved. I am not always loved by people. I am often not loved by people. But I continue to make my way in the world - the often senseless and thoughtless, sinning, ordinary human being I am has a purpose I still have to discover...some kind of way for me to be a conduit for God's glory in the world...otherwise I would not be here, I would be dead already. I am no longer pretending I know what it is.

I think many times earlier in my blog, I felt I knew my purpose...and that vision led me to despair because I wasn't getting engaged, I wasn't getting a job, I wasn't growing deeper in friendship with certain people, and I wasn't getting anywhere near what I felt my purpose was. Now I know better. I do not assume I know what the future holds, nor do I look ahead. Oh, yes, sometimes I get little fantasies about what I hope will happen. But I try not to entertain them. I am only planning what I absolutely have to plan...because at any moment, God may blow my plans to smithereens and lead me off in a different, wonderful direction.

Who am I? I'm just me. Where am I going, and what's waiting for me there? I really don't know. How do I feel? Just fine.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream of true expression.

On insincerity.

People need to figure out what a lie is.

A lie is intentionally saying something false. A lie is making promises you can't - or won't - keep. A lie is saying something you don't mean.

I get a lot of lies from people who really mean well. But they're really not doing well at all. Consider someone who says something nice but doesn't mean it at all - where does that leave the person receiving that lie? It is only delaying the day when they finally say "Well, I guess that person never meant what they said at all." Which hurts more than just saying the harsh truth up front.

I can finally admit that I am not well-liked by the majority of people. That's it, that's the bare facts. I hardly care anymore. How do I know this? It comes in actions, not words. At the end of the day, people can say all kinds of nice things to me and having nothing to back it up. I like that they don't want to hurt my feelings by telling me they find me absolutely boring and uninteresting, but if I'm boring and uninteresting, I really don't mind knowing, rather than having to figure it out for myself.

Really, the people who are reading this blog right now hardly need told any of this, and I anticipate that this little rant is going to cost me a sit-down with one of my few true friends. Thank you, but no! You should know I mean none of you. It is the others from whom I hear a lot of nicey-nice talk but demonstrate constantly their insincerity.

I'm a grown man now. I'm really not demonstrating that very well right now, writing a rant on the Internet like a teenager and all, but if people understood this is the only real platform I am allowed unlimited expression of my feelings where they can be "heard" maybe I can be allowed a little indulgence. Still, I am a grown man. I can handle someone telling me they'd rather not be my friend. That doesn't hurt me as much as it hurts to be led to believe I have many friends, when in reality I do not.

I want true friendships, virtuous friendships, sincere and involved friendships. I don't want to hear from people that I am something to them I am not. The reality of that grievous lie comes out the first time I see them again, when people are around and they can't even look me in the eye and say "hello." That doesn't sound like friendship at all to me. Oh no.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for sincerity.

"You go on."

"Death, but not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct. May I be brutally frank? You go on."

The frank, bitter, but thankfully (and finally) truthful comments of a friend(?) have led me to question my writing of this blog. What real purpose does it serve? I am quite sure I don't know, and don't really want to know. Yes, I do write of my feelings and share them on the Internet, of all places. The real question is, is it the right thing to do to write these posts? I am not positive I have any way of knowing that right now, and quite frankly I suspect it doesn't really matter whether I do or do not. The content matters.

So the content of this post is about going on. Really, I have settled into a sort of complacency with my place in life right now. Ultimately, it is a healthy, spiritual complacency. Deep down, though, I feel I miss some of the romanticism I used to espouse, however unhealthily I managed it. Life was more exciting when I let myself have expectations. Now that I have none, it seems that I just go on.

I'm not saying this is such a bad thing, considering that how things turned out when I let myself get excited about things that were ultimately not guaranteed and even improbable. There's nothing wrong with getting a little romantic about the future, so long as it doesn't get in the way of you doing the right thing in the present moment. I think that was my problem, all along. I've solved the problem by destroying the romanticism, not by just centering myself on the present.

As I write this, I suspect maybe I'm going too far. I feel as though I do have a reasonable amount of hope for happy endings in my future, but it's not quite the same flavor as the experiences I used to have in less sane times of my life. For now though, I'll leave my musing at that.

What is really pressing on my mind at the moment is friendship. I have spent so great a deal of time on this topic in the past four years or so that I am not sure what else I can say about it, but this: that I am now quite sure that friendships are not chosen, but born. They live and die, they can become sick or strong. I really wish I had come to this conclusion in another way, but recent experiences prove this fact to me, and I suppose I should be grateful.

Some friendships...well, they just go on too. So many of my own are going on in a way that makes me wonder whether I really have any at all. Why would I say such a thing, you might ask. Well, I feel as though there is really only one person in this world who knows who I really am. And I recently found out someone I trusted has secretly harbored an animosity of sorts to knowing who I really am. A repulsion, perhaps, is a more accurate term. No matter how I describe it, of course, this person would deny it. But I hear through double-speak, and it doesn't fool me.

I must say I know he was right on one account: I was a hypocrite...on one occasion. I complained that it sometimes bothers me that no one seems to really want to ask me about myself, and most of the time now when I spend time with people they dominate the conversation. I clarified that most of the time I don't mind - because I truly want to know people better. Well, I screwed up by doing that exact thing to him. However, that doesn't erase the fact I really would have liked to gotten to know him better...and really, that one time...that one time...I really needed someone to listen to me.

I don't want my friendships to stagnate. Now I have made both mistakes - I have been all the way the dominant person, and now I have been the submissive listener too. I want friendships where both people get to know each other better...not a friendship that stagnates. I want friendships that are honest - not like the friend mentioned who would have made me guess to the uttermost end that all along he was unhappy with me, instead of telling me.

I am certainly more grateful now for the friendships I have that I have clearly not chosen...because those are becoming my best friendships...to those friends reading, you know who you are.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for full, exciting friendships.

Riddles in the dark.

It's been a long and dangerous road these past few weeks.

Finding my own balance in the midst of the tricky social situation around me has been a challenge - one that I feel I've met well (I feel good). What do I mean? Well, I could certainly be wrong, but I feel as though there are quite a few strong emotions one way or another that people are desperately keeping to themselves.

I could be deceiving myself, but I think I have a certain people sense that helps me pick up on less obvious clues that other people miss. And, well...it seems every day I get the feeling that someone has made a slight change in behavior. Sometimes it's something that I'm certain has no significance other than an "off day"...other times, people are just acting plain ODD.

The surest sign that "something is up" with someone is to simply look for a change in behavior that can't be explained away and is persistent. This sort of combination of inductive and deductive reasoning from observing my friends has served me well...just the other day a friend told me I have a habit of being able to tell how he feels even if he's trying to hide it.

So, where is this going, you might ask? I shall tell you. I think it has something to do with the fact that there are very few single men around here, that there are a LOT of single women, and with the fact that there have been a lot of romantic engagements. And the fact that most of my friends these days are girls (I didn't do that on purpose, it just kind of happened). It's just a proposition, I don't really know anything for sure, but from what I do know of how people have been acting, well...I really can't explain such odd behavior away, and this is how the puzzle pieces seem to fit...to me.

Don't worry, I shan't let it go to my head. After all, I really feel like there's only one girl I know who knows the real me, and she's basically next in line to get engaged. Fat chance there. So if I'm right, all it means is that there are a lot of girls who are infatuated with someone who technically doesn't exist (not me).

Like I've said before, I'm really fine where I am. Maybe I'll want to move on and date someday soon, but certainly not for a while. So what is someone like me to do? Hide. HIDE! Or not...after all, that would be acting on a guess. They're just riddles in the dark, and so perhaps I should simply continue acting like I don't know anything...because I really don't.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for truth in the light.

Preoccupations and lies.

Again, many things have changed emotionally since my last post.

I'm fine now. In fact, I started to get a lot better only shortly after my last post. Why? Honestly, I think it was all the video games. Video games, for reasons I can't explain, seem to numb all my social senses, including loneliness. I should probably elaborate, but that's a subject for another post.

Lately I've noticed that my thoughts haven't been moving from one thing to another as I would like but recurring over the same thoughts over and over. It's become more of a preoccupation rather than a "thought stream" if you will. Mostly, I seem to be preoccupied with thoughts of my family, and a person.

A conversation with a friend today led me to understand that I do hide things from time to time. I typically characterize myself as someone who is very open and honest, but during conversation with this friend I realized that I was hiding something - for a good reason, and I was quick to explain why I had to not reveal something. Still, I couldn't help but notice that I almost didn't catch that was what I was doing...I was so sure that I was an open person that I didn't realize I actually don't share everything...just most things. Anything that is convenient for me to share, I do. And that is the vast majority of things I want to share...but I do have secrets. And I also have things that I shouldn't share, because they would damage myself or another person, or can't, because they are other people's secrets...but I digress.

This knowledge of my preoccupations coupled with my realization about my secrets led me to think about lying.  Lying, I believe, is less about making up a convincing story or creating something that isn't true but more about concealing what is true. When you lie your goal is not to create a fine tale but to do whatever possible to hide the truth. Should you tell a lie, you care less about what they believe so long as it's not the truth that you seek to hide. For instance, you don't care if your parents believe the dog knocked over the lamp or the tooth fairy, so long as they don't know it is you who actually broke the lamp.

Well, I sometimes forget about this, but I'm a really good liar. You kind of need to be a good liar to even hope to be a counselor...not because you lie to your patients (never, ever) but because sometimes you must conceal a truth that would be harmful for your client to hear (such as, you not liking them). I used to lie a lot, before following God a little more closely. At one time I was so good at it, I hid something very obvious for an entire summer without getting caught.

These days there is not much use for that skill, besides keeping a poker face from time to time and "picking my battles" when I would really like to say a truth that the world is not quite ready for.

Getting back to preoccupations, in a roundabout way (as you can see by the lengthy explanation above) I discovered that even though I can lie/conceal truth to other people I simply cannot do so to myself. My preoccupations reveal something to me I do not wish to believe. What that is...I am concealing for now. Sorry, but it's not really all that important to this blog post anyway. What I mean to say is, I have tried to lie even to myself, but failed...and I doubt it will ever be possible to lie to myself without regressing to a less self-aware state.

Anyone who reads these posts will notice I am a holistic person. My solitary boast: I have done a really good job of learning about myself and how my mind works. That said, such self-knowledge has made it impossible for me to not know something about myself of which I'd rather remain unaware. Like I said, I've been preoccupied with my family and with a person. At this point, my actions on these thoughts are all up to me, but I cannot avoid what these preoccupations reveal to me about my feelings...revelations that would be more helpful if they were hidden...at least, at this point, I believe they would. Maybe I would be more susceptible to doing something stupid if they were there and I was unaware of them.

Time will tell.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for truth of thought.

A mysterious silence.

I've actually written two blog posts since my last one, but I've deleted both of them. They were just not material for sharing.

Since then my mind has quieted a bit. The anger and personal issues I'd expressed in those writings are now mysteriously quiet. Usually I'm very well in-touch with my feelings and have lots of opinions about them. Now, I mostly feel numb.

"Then darkness took me; and I strayed out of thought and time, and I wandered far on roads that I will not tell," says Gandalf of his apparent death at the hands of the Balrog. I suppose even the strongest of us have only so much they can take before everything sort of...resets. And that's what I feel has happened to me.

I seem to be accepting or at least resigned to my friendship/relationship difficulties. I seem to be not thinking about my issues with Counseling ethics. I move on...I just go. And that's not like me. I live life actively, meaning, I think about it and consider where I'm going. I don't just...endure like this.

But that's what I'm doing now. I'm just going on.

Life goes on as I see people I love slip through my hands, people feign my friendship and those who seek to understand me understand less and less of me.

I suppose the best thing I can do for myself now is reflect on what I don't understand. I suppose when you're not reflecting on what's going on, the only way to not be stagnant is to reflect on your reflections. These are mine:

Things I don't understand

1. How a good friend whom I love a lot can so easily avoid my honest attempts to reach out and help
2. How people I've known who are so good and pure could be corrupted so completely
3. How people can seek pleasure so adamantly without realizing this means they obviously haven't found it
4. How so many of my friendships could have looked to last forever when they really only lasted a short time
5. How so many people can ignore what I'm trying to say because they'd rather remain the same than face the truth
6. How tolerance can be taught to be a higher value than human dignity
7. How people can seek something so strongly and reject it when it shows itself
8. How manhood can go from something so wonderful as courage, dignity, honor, and integrity, to being an ideal based on physical characteristics and sexual promiscuity
9. How women can be so easily seduced by an ideal based on seeing themselves as only free if they love anyone but themselves
10. How fallacies and false ideals can become true when they become fashionable, and the truth can be equated with hatred as soon as it becomes unpopular

An image of courage and dignity

 There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to think and understand.