Someone's broken heart, like shattered glass against my soul
...all of this could be imagined. Maybe she just doesn't like me, but is too shy too tell me. Which is really shitty, because if she didn't like me I could accept that and move on with my life. But, from what I've seen, I don't think that's the case...
From day one this girl has given me the same feeling of my cat Munchkin. Like she wants to be there, she wants to get to know me, but at any second something could be the trigger that causes her to haul ass, push away, and hide. Always, like she's one foot in and one foot out. It seems to give the impression that she's not attracted to me, but some of the things she does would indicate otherwise. So, there's a lot of mixed messages. A lot of halfhearted commitments.
So, I ask myself, "Why?" If in fact, she does like me then why does she push away sporadically? Cause, if she was consistently shooting me down then she wouldn't commit to hanging out sometimes only to shy away other times, would she? And, she definitely wouldn't have told/shown me some of the things she has. So, again...I ask myself: Why does she act like this? Honestly, I don't know. And, I dunno if I ever will get to find out. But, the way she acted yesterday is very reminiscent of who I acted right before I met Diana for the first time.
The way things shook down with D, is that we met over the internet through World of Warcraft. Eventually, one night (I think I was have drunk) I told her that I liked her and she said she liked me...like silly kids, I guess. Anyways, we talked on facebook for several months, then over the phone for several more weeks and eventually we had set something up for me to meet her at her school (about 200miles away). It was a very bold act on my part, which to an outsider could seem somewhat crazy, but I, or we, felt like we had handled things calmly and rationally enough to establish honest communication and trust.
But, there were two separate instances I had where I felt like I was slipping through the void, which is basically like an emotional vacuum. The first instance was where I conveyed my fear of rejection and how scared I was. She said she was scared too, but that rejection and fear are just a small fragment of what comes with building heartfelt relationships with others. I agreed. But after we got offline, I began to get so sick physically and emotionally.
Aside: the thing most people don't realize, or they realize but choose not to discuss publicly (which is really stupid) is the nature of emotion. That aspect of a person psyche is like a bag, every experience we have comes with some mixture of emotions that get put in the bag. The lighter more frivolous emotions surface fairly gently and quickly. Take bumping into a stranger at the mall on accident. There's no real qualms with that person, and it was an accident so I apologize and they accept it. Boom, a smooth experience with no hiccups. It was a simple and easy situation to deal with and the emotions attached were so light and passive that they usually pass through me instantaneously with little affect and little memory.
But should the experience be saturated with highly charged or intense emotions, much of the emotional residue from that experience carries so much weight that we can't simply process it all at one time. So, the experience goes into our (emotional) bag and surfaces later (based on a set of dynamics and fundamentals that is somewhat unique to the individual). Smell works in a similar fashion, when we smell something it has the potential to bring back old memories and emotions based purely on association.
That being said it is no secret that the life I have lived, since I was a child, has been filled with lots of emotional anguish and turmoil directly related to the broken interactions of people supposedly in a loving, caring, and trusting relationship (ahem, my parents primarily). So when I started to open my heart, even just a little bit, to embrace the wonderful aura and magical possibilities of being in a caring relationship (however bizarre, silly, trivial, and frivolous) with this girl, all the horrid emotional turmoil that I had suppressed or simply never had to deal with over the years came racing at me as I tried to cross the threshold from having a tightly closed off heart to being open and vulnerable (because, the whole point in being in an intimate relationship is to show someone the inner you, however that may happen).
For me, that meant experiencing a lot of fear and insecurities for a period of about three days. And, I mean a LOT of fear. So much so I dubbed the sensation 'The Terror'. It was absolute, overpowering, mind numbing, physically crippling, and there was no escape for those three days. During that time I didn't eat much, it's kinda hard to eat when you puke it up after an hour due to feelings of extremely nausea, had vivid nightmares, didn't go to class or leave my apartment for those three days, and felt or thought of nothing else. Like I said, it was pure absolute inescapable terror.
What made things even worse was that this was not a typical reaction for liking someone. So, the things I felt internally weren't really based on what was going on in my life at the time. What it seemed to be was all the horrible shit that I had repressed over the years: my worst memories as a child where my parents had hard and heavy emotional battles right before my eyes, having nobody to share and release these feelings (meaning frivolous childhood romances or females friends to share my broken heart) -or- even someone professional to help me work through these emotions, and definitely when my parents split up and my father hid inside his cave (both physically and emotionally) while my mother pretended like nothing out of the ordinary was happening all the while my whole fucking life felt like it was falling apart (There was a couple times I remember breaking down in front of friends and Ms. Fraily, she tried to comfort me some then she sent me to the counselor. These experiences were really awkward and uncomfortable).
So, all those emotions that came rising to the surface may have been triggered by something in the present, but they weren't caused by my present. So, if you can imagine, here are some normal days in downtown G'ville and externally everything seems to be going really well for me. I mean, I met a girl that was super awesome and liked me, was finishing up my Bachelor's at ECU, had met some friends with similar interest, and was working out and feeling as healthy as I ever had. But, on the inside I was an emotional wreck and incapable of functioning AT ALL.
But, eventually the feeling passed and I forced myself to move forward and push through the experience. I wonder if I woulda been strong enough if it hadn't been for listening to soo much TooL for so long (about 6yrs at this point). Cause the whole time I was going through this really fucked up emotional hurricane two particular quotes were always in my head:
From Lateralis:
"Feed my will to feel this moment,
urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace the random,
reaching out to embrace what ever may come."
And, from 46&2:
"I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be paranoid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.
I choose to live and to
Lie, kill and give and to
Die, learn and love and to
Do what it takes to step through.
...See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
46&2 are just ahead of me."
AS fucked up as it may seem, TooL has really been an emotional tool that I've used like some kind of support railing to walk through these overwhelming, terrifying, and absolutely disorienting emotional experiences. I feel truly blessed to have their works.
So back to what I was saying, while those few days could have broke me down where I would have run away I chose to move through the terror because I KNEW that what was waiting for me on the other side was something I could never imagine. Even the first time I went up there I was getting cold feet, but I told myself that if I didn't go that I would regret it for the rest of my days (heh, which is kinda what happened with this girl. I told myself that it's now or never, if I don't tell her how I feel then I never would, and I would regret it...FOREVER!!!). And, I was right! While D turned out not to be the one for me, for a whole slew of reasons really, I gained things from her that I had not experienced before or since. The good times we had, the courage I displayed (by driving up to a strange place and meeting a strange woman), and the physical play are experiences I will ALWAYS treasure. And, they were all experiences that helped me grow as an individual and an adult. Plus, they totally validated the desires in my heart and mindset and the path I choose to walk in life.
So, now we come full circle...after what happened with this girl yesterday I cannot help but see so many parallels between yesterday and when I went through the void (and 'The Terror'). Given some of the things she's told me I know she has similar emotional issues, but she's not me. I can't simply assume that she's going through the exact same feelings I was. I mean, her's may be more intense and maybe she's not confident enough or doesn't have that scaffolding I had to push through the void and face the demons head on. But, I do know this, if she keeps running away like this every time she becomes unhinged then she'll always be isolated and alone. That thought is something that makes me very sad. Especially since I feel like I can offer some emotional support and insight on the matter and share what I've learned and how I dealt with it (not that she should deal with it the way I did/do: because the way I deal with it, usually, is to smash into it head first and push the feeling as far as I can, hopefully to a point of no return so I am forced to deal with it even if it ruins some aspect of my life, because that is the only way I know how to learn how to deal with it and eventually cope with it.)
I just hate to think that she is going through something so painful and similar to what I have and knowing that unless she allows me in, there is nothing I can do to help. And, every act of unwanted support I offer could only make things worse and drive her further away. I mean, I do like the girl after all and I want to help. I want to be supportive. I feel compelled beyond reason. And I can't pretend it's not happening, so it's not like I can just close my eyes and so about my life like normal. It's a real bummer.
But, I do know this though, nothing last forever. Things do change, and hopefully that change will bring us closer together. I pray for it every awaking moment. But this is something I cannot force, it has to happen naturally and of her own free will. So, all I can do is wait it out and hopefully she'll reveal herself to me once more, but with more vigor and renewed vitality. Because while I have no idea why, I know she is worth it...
...kinda reminds me of another TooL song, The Patient:
"A groan of tedium escapes me,
startling the fearful.
Is this a test?
It has to be.
Otherwise I can’t go on.
Draining patience, drain vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire acts a little old.
But I’m still right here,
giving blood and keeping faith.
And I’m still right here.
Wait it out...
I’m gonna wait it out.
Wait it out.
If there were no rewards to reap,
no embrace to see me through,
this tedious path I’ve chosen here,
I certainly would’ve walked away, by now.
If there were no desire to heal,
The damaged and broken met along
this tedious path I’ve chosen here,
I certainly would’ve walked away, by now.
And I still may... "
That being said, I could be wrong and have imagined this whole thing or the severity of it, but based on what I've seen I highly doubt it. I mean, you don't go from being excited cause you're about to hang out with someone you like to being emotionally unhinged and hiding from the world, right?
From day one this girl has given me the same feeling of my cat Munchkin. Like she wants to be there, she wants to get to know me, but at any second something could be the trigger that causes her to haul ass, push away, and hide. Always, like she's one foot in and one foot out. It seems to give the impression that she's not attracted to me, but some of the things she does would indicate otherwise. So, there's a lot of mixed messages. A lot of halfhearted commitments.
So, I ask myself, "Why?" If in fact, she does like me then why does she push away sporadically? Cause, if she was consistently shooting me down then she wouldn't commit to hanging out sometimes only to shy away other times, would she? And, she definitely wouldn't have told/shown me some of the things she has. So, again...I ask myself: Why does she act like this? Honestly, I don't know. And, I dunno if I ever will get to find out. But, the way she acted yesterday is very reminiscent of who I acted right before I met Diana for the first time.
The way things shook down with D, is that we met over the internet through World of Warcraft. Eventually, one night (I think I was have drunk) I told her that I liked her and she said she liked me...like silly kids, I guess. Anyways, we talked on facebook for several months, then over the phone for several more weeks and eventually we had set something up for me to meet her at her school (about 200miles away). It was a very bold act on my part, which to an outsider could seem somewhat crazy, but I, or we, felt like we had handled things calmly and rationally enough to establish honest communication and trust.
But, there were two separate instances I had where I felt like I was slipping through the void, which is basically like an emotional vacuum. The first instance was where I conveyed my fear of rejection and how scared I was. She said she was scared too, but that rejection and fear are just a small fragment of what comes with building heartfelt relationships with others. I agreed. But after we got offline, I began to get so sick physically and emotionally.
Aside: the thing most people don't realize, or they realize but choose not to discuss publicly (which is really stupid) is the nature of emotion. That aspect of a person psyche is like a bag, every experience we have comes with some mixture of emotions that get put in the bag. The lighter more frivolous emotions surface fairly gently and quickly. Take bumping into a stranger at the mall on accident. There's no real qualms with that person, and it was an accident so I apologize and they accept it. Boom, a smooth experience with no hiccups. It was a simple and easy situation to deal with and the emotions attached were so light and passive that they usually pass through me instantaneously with little affect and little memory.
But should the experience be saturated with highly charged or intense emotions, much of the emotional residue from that experience carries so much weight that we can't simply process it all at one time. So, the experience goes into our (emotional) bag and surfaces later (based on a set of dynamics and fundamentals that is somewhat unique to the individual). Smell works in a similar fashion, when we smell something it has the potential to bring back old memories and emotions based purely on association.
That being said it is no secret that the life I have lived, since I was a child, has been filled with lots of emotional anguish and turmoil directly related to the broken interactions of people supposedly in a loving, caring, and trusting relationship (ahem, my parents primarily). So when I started to open my heart, even just a little bit, to embrace the wonderful aura and magical possibilities of being in a caring relationship (however bizarre, silly, trivial, and frivolous) with this girl, all the horrid emotional turmoil that I had suppressed or simply never had to deal with over the years came racing at me as I tried to cross the threshold from having a tightly closed off heart to being open and vulnerable (because, the whole point in being in an intimate relationship is to show someone the inner you, however that may happen).
For me, that meant experiencing a lot of fear and insecurities for a period of about three days. And, I mean a LOT of fear. So much so I dubbed the sensation 'The Terror'. It was absolute, overpowering, mind numbing, physically crippling, and there was no escape for those three days. During that time I didn't eat much, it's kinda hard to eat when you puke it up after an hour due to feelings of extremely nausea, had vivid nightmares, didn't go to class or leave my apartment for those three days, and felt or thought of nothing else. Like I said, it was pure absolute inescapable terror.
What made things even worse was that this was not a typical reaction for liking someone. So, the things I felt internally weren't really based on what was going on in my life at the time. What it seemed to be was all the horrible shit that I had repressed over the years: my worst memories as a child where my parents had hard and heavy emotional battles right before my eyes, having nobody to share and release these feelings (meaning frivolous childhood romances or females friends to share my broken heart) -or- even someone professional to help me work through these emotions, and definitely when my parents split up and my father hid inside his cave (both physically and emotionally) while my mother pretended like nothing out of the ordinary was happening all the while my whole fucking life felt like it was falling apart (There was a couple times I remember breaking down in front of friends and Ms. Fraily, she tried to comfort me some then she sent me to the counselor. These experiences were really awkward and uncomfortable).
So, all those emotions that came rising to the surface may have been triggered by something in the present, but they weren't caused by my present. So, if you can imagine, here are some normal days in downtown G'ville and externally everything seems to be going really well for me. I mean, I met a girl that was super awesome and liked me, was finishing up my Bachelor's at ECU, had met some friends with similar interest, and was working out and feeling as healthy as I ever had. But, on the inside I was an emotional wreck and incapable of functioning AT ALL.
But, eventually the feeling passed and I forced myself to move forward and push through the experience. I wonder if I woulda been strong enough if it hadn't been for listening to soo much TooL for so long (about 6yrs at this point). Cause the whole time I was going through this really fucked up emotional hurricane two particular quotes were always in my head:
From Lateralis:
"Feed my will to feel this moment,
urging me to cross the line.
Reaching out to embrace the random,
reaching out to embrace what ever may come."
And, from 46&2:
"I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be paranoid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.
I choose to live and to
Lie, kill and give and to
Die, learn and love and to
Do what it takes to step through.
...See my shadow changing,
Stretching up and over me.
Soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way
By stepping through my shadow,
Coming out the other side.
46&2 are just ahead of me."
AS fucked up as it may seem, TooL has really been an emotional tool that I've used like some kind of support railing to walk through these overwhelming, terrifying, and absolutely disorienting emotional experiences. I feel truly blessed to have their works.
So back to what I was saying, while those few days could have broke me down where I would have run away I chose to move through the terror because I KNEW that what was waiting for me on the other side was something I could never imagine. Even the first time I went up there I was getting cold feet, but I told myself that if I didn't go that I would regret it for the rest of my days (heh, which is kinda what happened with this girl. I told myself that it's now or never, if I don't tell her how I feel then I never would, and I would regret it...FOREVER!!!). And, I was right! While D turned out not to be the one for me, for a whole slew of reasons really, I gained things from her that I had not experienced before or since. The good times we had, the courage I displayed (by driving up to a strange place and meeting a strange woman), and the physical play are experiences I will ALWAYS treasure. And, they were all experiences that helped me grow as an individual and an adult. Plus, they totally validated the desires in my heart and mindset and the path I choose to walk in life.
So, now we come full circle...after what happened with this girl yesterday I cannot help but see so many parallels between yesterday and when I went through the void (and 'The Terror'). Given some of the things she's told me I know she has similar emotional issues, but she's not me. I can't simply assume that she's going through the exact same feelings I was. I mean, her's may be more intense and maybe she's not confident enough or doesn't have that scaffolding I had to push through the void and face the demons head on. But, I do know this, if she keeps running away like this every time she becomes unhinged then she'll always be isolated and alone. That thought is something that makes me very sad. Especially since I feel like I can offer some emotional support and insight on the matter and share what I've learned and how I dealt with it (not that she should deal with it the way I did/do: because the way I deal with it, usually, is to smash into it head first and push the feeling as far as I can, hopefully to a point of no return so I am forced to deal with it even if it ruins some aspect of my life, because that is the only way I know how to learn how to deal with it and eventually cope with it.)
I just hate to think that she is going through something so painful and similar to what I have and knowing that unless she allows me in, there is nothing I can do to help. And, every act of unwanted support I offer could only make things worse and drive her further away. I mean, I do like the girl after all and I want to help. I want to be supportive. I feel compelled beyond reason. And I can't pretend it's not happening, so it's not like I can just close my eyes and so about my life like normal. It's a real bummer.
But, I do know this though, nothing last forever. Things do change, and hopefully that change will bring us closer together. I pray for it every awaking moment. But this is something I cannot force, it has to happen naturally and of her own free will. So, all I can do is wait it out and hopefully she'll reveal herself to me once more, but with more vigor and renewed vitality. Because while I have no idea why, I know she is worth it...
...kinda reminds me of another TooL song, The Patient:
"A groan of tedium escapes me,
startling the fearful.
Is this a test?
It has to be.
Otherwise I can’t go on.
Draining patience, drain vitality.
This paranoid, paralyzed vampire acts a little old.
But I’m still right here,
giving blood and keeping faith.
And I’m still right here.
Wait it out...
I’m gonna wait it out.
Wait it out.
If there were no rewards to reap,
no embrace to see me through,
this tedious path I’ve chosen here,
I certainly would’ve walked away, by now.
If there were no desire to heal,
The damaged and broken met along
this tedious path I’ve chosen here,
I certainly would’ve walked away, by now.
And I still may... "
That being said, I could be wrong and have imagined this whole thing or the severity of it, but based on what I've seen I highly doubt it. I mean, you don't go from being excited cause you're about to hang out with someone you like to being emotionally unhinged and hiding from the world, right?