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.

No more.

"NAME YOURSELF, GUNSLINGER."
"Roland of Gilead, son of Steven. Who speaks to me?"
"GILEAD IS NO MORE," the voice mused, ignoring the question. Roland looked up and saw patterns of concentric rings in the ceiling. The voice was coming from those.
"NO GUNSLINGER HAS WALKED IN-WORLD OR MID-WORLD FOR ALMOST THREE HUNDRED YEARS."
"I and my friends are the last."

I can do great things when I'm angry. I can do great things when I've had enough. Sometimes, it's the only way I can do certain things.

Six years ago, I didn't have any female friends. At least, none that were all that close, and certainly none that I really chose. Five years ago, when I graduated and came to college, I got a couple. Probably no more than two or three. Four years ago, that began to change. I actually chose a few female friends. Perhaps maybe a third of my friends were girls. Then three years ago, it was half. Two years ago, my male friends diminished significantly. Now beginning a year ago, I have really only one or two close male friends, and a bunch of female friends.

No. More.

As that pattern had changed, I considered it a fluke. I mused that the population of women in Bowling Green was skewed, and the population at St. Tom's even more increasingly skewed over the years. Of course I would have more lady friends. Right?

But no. Somehow, somewhere along the line I really began to prefer the company of women over men. And somehow, I failed to see what a problem it has caused me.

On another note, I am very sick of the kindergarten baby crap that the opposite sex has put me through as I have earnestly and honestly pursued romantic relationships over the years. I have tried lots of separation, little separation, lots of communication, no communication, high speed, low speed, NO speed, I'M DONE! I have put myself through hell trying to be the kind of man who deserves a good woman, only to discover that most women just have no clue what they want and don't deserve a guy like me. I have no qualms about saying that. I really have done a great job in pursuing relationships in an open, honest, christian manner, and I'm through with it.

From now on, I am only going to seek the friendship of my fellow men. Sure, I will hang out with women if they ask...but ONLY if they ask. That should suffice to comfort whatever female friends I still have. Furthermore, I am not even going to think about dating for as long as I feel like not thinking about it.

Why? I have many, many reasons.

1. Girls get closest to other girls, guys get closest to other guys. Here I've been, stuck in no man's land. I tried to become best friends with girls, but it would never work. I could never be as close to a girl as another girl. And all the time, I wouldn't be invited to spend time with girls because they were having girl time and I was a guy. And I wouldn't be invited to guy time because I wasn't hanging out with guys so they wouldn't think to invite me. THIS WAS A VERY, VERY LONELY EXISTENCE.
2. I have been emasculated. I think because I've hung out with girls so much, I got used to it. So did girls. I became one of the girls, instead of a guy hanging out with girls. I can only get masculinity from hanging out with guys. I want that back.
3. On a similar note, I think it's made me unattractive to women. I'm really not sure how it all works but I don't care. I still think I ought to be married someday, and something is not right about hanging out with women all the time and not getting anywhere all this time. Time to try something different.
4. Similar to number one, I have had such bad experiences with female friendships. My best friend at one point was a girl. Now, she ignores me and doesn't even have the decency to tell me why. I literally have no clue what I did. I've noticed most of my female friends are always too busy to hang out and don't really ask me to come over or anything, which sucks because a one-sided friendship isn't really a friendship at all.
5. Hanging out with guys used to be fun. It can be fun again. I remember having great times TPing and playing Mario Kart with my guy friends in high school. To this day, I laugh a lot more with the few remaining guy friends I have than with women. Women tend not to be as funny as guys. And laughing is such a cure for anything. It would be nice to bust a gut when I'm feeling down instead of talking about it with girls and just eventually realizing there is no solution and feeling worse.

So, yeah. I'm not going to talk, text, invite, or otherwise seek the company of women. If any of my friends are offended by this, then let it be so. You had your chance to seek me out, and you still do. I won't say no to hanging out with anyone, I never have and never will. But I have to do what is right for me. Even more, I have to do what is right. I am angry, and justly angry, and it is my anger that is enabling me to finally do this right thing, even though it is hard. I will have justice for myself and Christ who leads me to this. No one can stop me.

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

Lies, tears, then anger.

I don't often get angry, but when I know I have good reason to it's rather easy.

But anger is never first - at first I'm just sad. I'm happy about that because I think it's proper to mourn an injustice before having the anger to rectify it.

I'm angry, world, and I don't care who knows it. I've been forgotten about, discarded, ostracized, disrespected, and now...lied to. Lies, damn lies, are something I have a terrible time forgiving. There is no worse thing to treat me with than deception. Especially when that deception concerns something so close to my heart.

I think one of the wisest quotes from the Dark Tower is from one of the villains. "Only enemies tell the truth...friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of regard." I don't know who my friend is trying to gain regard from, but it's certainly not me.

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

On saying "No."

I have taken a little longer to write a new post, mostly because I've realized how little I have to say that I haven't already said.

I recently applied to give a talk at a retreat. This is one of those secret retreats I'm not allowed to give much detail about, so I'll be giving as little detail as I can while still getting to my point. I had been on this retreat only once before, and unlike most people who went on I never applied to be on team. I've even had two years longer to do it, and only now that I've come to my last chance to do so have I applied. There were multiple reasons for doing this, but I did always help the retreat in some regard without being on team. Things that you can only do by not being on team for the retreat.

Well, I was denied. They offered me a different position that didn't exist when I went on the retreat - it was created simply so that they could have a larger team and not deny so many people. I didn't take it. I said no.

I have thought about this for a few days. I've talked about it with only a few people, who all seemed to believe I was acting out of anger, jealousy, or selfishness. Or some combination of those three. I'm not surprised, it was more or less what I expected to hear. I do have a few practical reasons for not going, one of which being that I don't actually have time to do it. I would be giving up sleep and meals, and I have already had to cut back on those. Sure, I was prepared to do that to give a witness, but to do a position that I could show up with no preparation and do exactly the same? Selfish or not, I said no.

I have made an effort to not share as much about myself as I once did years ago. I did this out of a concern that I was being too attention-grabbing and making things too much about myself. This never meant, however, that I didn't want to share about myself. One thing I've always wanted to do but never asked for until now was to have a chance to talk in front of my community about the mistakes I've made and how I came out of it alive - so that maybe those lessons wouldn't be wasted on just myself. Well, I asked and they said no. And so did I, in return. Right or wrong, that's how it played out and I want to think I made the right choice.

Having something bad happen to you, like rejection, is always about trying to make the best out of a bad situation and moving on. I hate sounding like a pity party but I've been doing that for a long time now and I am sick of it. I just want something to go my way. But life doesn't work according to our demands. Very well.

In response to all of this stuff I have written about for months, I have gotten very defensive of myself. My life has curled in on itself. I feel like I need to defend myself, because I'm the only one who can. I don't have anyone else who can look out for me like I can. I don't expect those who called me selfish to understand how hurt I am, how that hurt gets compounded on top of more hurt. When you're hurt you need medicine. My medicine is saying no.

I don't expect that things should always go my way, but I can always refuse to play along with other people's demands. People don't have to respect me. But if they won't respect me, I will work on ways to better respect myself. And right now, I believe respecting myself means refusing to give up hours of time that I need so that I can heal my mind.

Maybe someday, I will have a chance to share my life with people without needing to go out of my way or whoring for attention. But that is not this day.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream of saying no.

What Lies Below.

Dreams are the mind's way of taking a nice, refreshing poop.

Last night I had a dream that bothered me a little. In the dream, someone I don't like very much trapped me in a warehouse. I played nice and asked her to let me out, while she continued to threaten me with making everyone believe I was a bad person and other things that she would never actually say but my mind knows I find horrific. Well, when she came back in to taunt me to my face, I let her know she made a mistake by promptly grappling with her. For a moment I was afraid I had messed with the wrong opponent, since I was surprised at how her size contributed to her strength, but in the end I was still able to lift her and throw her down onto the ground. This did nothing to stop her, though, and it wasn't until I brutally bent her so that one side of her face was pressed into the ground and the other into her stomach that I had truly won.

"You will let me out. You will never speak to me again." I said to her, as her face turned bright, cherry red and the pain showed very clearly on her face. I felt a pang of guilt at seeing how hurt she was, but I reminded myself of her attempt to trap and defame me before letting her off the ground. She quickly went to fulfill my demands, letting me out and sobbing as people began to ask her what was wrong...while I slinked off elsewhere to think about the lack of foresight that could get me an assault charge and whether her entrapment was good enough for a self-defense defense. Then I woke up, relieved.

What does this mean? Well, besides the obvious fact that I still have a lot of messed up dreams, it means to me that I have a lot of anger to take out. Mostly when I'm impatient, frustrated, or angry, I let out a little steam by slipping out a few curse words or having an angry expression, but apparently this isn't enough. I'm very angry about certain things that keep happening to me, which I need not repeat lest my readership that may already be annoyed at all my emo posts (sorry! It's really my one guilty internet emo thing) consider this one the final straw.

Problem is, what do I do about it, anyway? I can't exactly actually go punching people, now. I used to like to throw a softball in the air and hit it as far as I could, and run after it...Over and over until I was too tired to be angry. Now that seems...silly. And probably won't keep working.

If you have any ideas...let me know.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for peaceful dreams.

The Hardest Part.

And the hardest part was letting go, not taking part...Was the hardest part...

http://youtu.be/6Dod1zQuleM

Every once in a while, I'll find a song that I really like. It just...fits. It makes sense for me to play this song and like it. This is that song.

I do not like writing posts like this. I know that people perceive writing like this as passive-aggressive and overly emotional. Too much information. It helps me to have an easily accessible chronicle of thoughts throughout the years. That is enough reason for me to indulge myself. I don't expect people to understand, least of all those closest to me - family, friends, etc. That said, I will move on.

This song for me is about futility. In the past half year I have felt defeated. The hardest part about about it is  having to let go. I always want to be more like Vegeta from Dragon Ball Z. "NO! I WILL NOT BE DEFEATED!" But it's easier when all you need to do is train and get stronger and then try to punch the bad guy again. This is different.

My last post chronicles my feelings about people well enough for one to understand the importance of family, friends, and even acquaintances to me. This post is more about the effects of the futility in trying to achieve some sense of sentiment among those I know.

It seems more often than not my relations to other people involves more letting go of rather than taking part in their lives. Often I feel this is the hardest part of my life...as goes the song. I just have to swallow my pride, swallow my anger/sadness (I could feel it go down...bittersweet I could taste in my mouth).

It is utterly futile for me...always...in trying to have some semblance of constant support in my life. But I have no choice but to accept it. Life has to go on. If it is true that in a year, I will move far away and no longer have any friends, so be it. I had a dating relationship and that failed. I tried to have another and that is failing and will fail again, I'm sure. I am beaten. It is useless (Oh and I, I wish that I could work it out). Just the utter uselessness of all my efforts to change the way my relationships go. Nothing ever changes. That's the hardest part.

But I know that there really is no changing other people. I harp on this time and again: no one owes me anything. If people don't want to believe that their surface level understanding of their friends is not enough, then nothing I can say or do will change that (Everything I do, it just comes undone). If people would much rather be out of my company than reciprocate my friendship, then they will have that (You really broke my heart). I'm tired of begging people to be my friend anyway. Watching as they live their perfectly happy lives without me in it. That is their right and I have no reason to be offended. But yet I am, and I hate it.

It's just God and me. Always (You're silver lining the clouds). But "it is not good for man to be alone." I have real friends, it is true...but they are so few. Most of the time it is just a matter of waiting until the next time I may see them again.

Now, my only motivation in continuing thus is to simply be the kind of person who does the things I do. I go to mass because I want to be the kind of person who goes to mass, not because I want to. I go to class and do my schoolwork because I want to be the kind of person who works even though they don't feel like it. I continue to (try) being charitable and loving to people I am angry at because I want to be the kind of person who is charitable and loving to people he feels have done him wrong. Nothing I do...do I do it because I feel it will actually change my circumstances (I wonder what it's all about).

There it is. I know this is probably a bad idea to put this on the Internet but I just don't care. I am doing what I want to do.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for an easy part.

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.