Thoughts on my Day off.
Today was kind of an impromptu day off. I was supposed to be out on a field excursion with my Geo-641 class, but the teacher e-mailed a few days ago and canceled because of some family issues. I had already set up a double shift at work so that I could spend the day in class instead of my routine Saturday shift, so today basically became wide open for me to just sit around, do some things, and mostly, think.
Wolf was my dog. I can't really express that in any other way. He was mine. And, in just the same way, I was his master. I can't help but feel, in some ways, that I was a lousy master, a lousy friend there at the end. He died because he was run over by my Dad accidently because Wolf was trying to climb under Dad's car to get to where-ever I was. I haven't been wanting to admit that to myself, but there it is. The truth is that I've been keeping myself so busy, busier than what is actually necessary, in order to avoid having to deal with the emotional fallout from the breakup with Rachel, which is a different matter altogether. I just wasn't around the house to be with him, to play with him and basically just to be there. I keep thinking that, maybe, If I had tried to to climb under my dad's car to get to where ever I was. I knew he was actively trying to be around me more...trying to climb into my car whenever I had to leave, trying to get in the house, sleeping under my window...I just wasn't being a good master for him. So I've decided that, other than helping with Lucy (Rach's dog, who I helped raise and I trained), I'm not getting another dog until I calm myself back down into who I am supposed to be, and have a predictable schedule where I can spend time with it. I should know better, I spent a lot of my life sitting around alone in a house waiting for someone to get home, and heaven help me I made my dog do the same thing.
Speaking of being alone in a house, it's just being here in this awful quiet that made me think of Wolf. Dad has gone to Nonnie's place for the weekend with Zeus, so there is no one here and I'm completely and utterly alone. Aside from a few short conversations with Scott and Rachel, and going to the local Bojangles, I haven't heard another person's voice. It kind of takes me back to my childhood, where I was basically alone because my brother would spend his time alone in his room and my dad didn't get home until very late at night because that's what he is: A workaholic. I find myself wondering if this is how my life will always be.. Spending time alone just doing chores and killing my time between doing what's necessary for survival. I didn't think it would be like this, when I was with Rachel, but here it is again. Maybe that's part of why I was so desperate to make that relationship work, because I was afraid of feeling...pointless again.
I suppose it's a mistake for me to find personal meaning in trying to make someone else happy, but it's all I know, really. I've basically learned that I can't ask for help, not really, because there's none for me to have. I know, on an intellectual level, that is not true, but that knowledge doesn't fix that. So, I give people that are close to me everything I can in order to make them happy and keep them close, but I don't let anyone close to me or let them help me, which pushes them away because I think that when the time comes for me to need help from them, I won't get it and I'll be dissapointed. I know that. I can't remember the last time I asked someone if I could talk to them about something that was bothering me, or even the last time that I asked for just a hug to help me get through. God knows that I could really use both right now. But when I'm around people, I just put a pissed off look on my face and make people stay away so that they don't ask the questions that I'm desperate to answer. It's fucked up, and it's screwy, I know. And I should probably go talk to the school therapist or something, but I can't make my problems other people's business. I don't even know how.
Another thing that's been on my mind is the knowledge that I still love Rachel, but there are just too many complicating factors. For starters, she doesn't love me and is too fascinated with the shadow of another guy to actually care about my feelings. No, I know she cares in a tangental sort of way, but not in the way someone's wife or even ex-girlfriend should. It's like I'm just some guy to her, now. Another thing is that I compromised on some of my basic personality traits just to be with her. It made her feel inadequate when I would keep the house spotless like when we first started dating, so I let that slide in order to make her feel superior. She hated guns, so I put my guns away in a locked storage chest, in pieces, in the closet so that she wouldn't see it. She hated the military, so I wouldn't bring up my past with the NJROTC, or my prior plans to enlist, or my family's association with the military. And she disliked anything southern, so I didn't use my southern turns of phrase as often, and didn't argue when she didn't want to be around my family. I thought of these as concessions to having the woman I wanted. They are really tripwires for a bad relationship, and just one really should have sent me on my way. Getting back on track, I still love her and can't convince myself to stop waiting around for her. It seems like I spend my life waiting for the women in my life to turn around from walking away from me to realize that I'm still there, waiting patiently, for them. That's my track record, you see. The girl I dated in high school, Melissa, broke up with me after we graduated so that she could have fun during the summer without feeling guilty, and I waited on her for a year and a half before I moved on. I doted on Kcat for four years, nursing a crush that I knew nothing could ever come of. And now, I've spent about a year or more on Rachel in differing phases of non-commital relationship just because I thought that maybe, just maybe this time it will work. But how could it work, being built on such an formless foundation? I'm sick of it, just sick of it.
I wish, no, I hope that I'll meet someone that just likes me for me, and has the same damn problem that I do.. That they just want to feel connected to someone by being there for them even if that person isn't there for them. I think that if I could get that, and feel for them in return, it would work.
Recently I've been thinking about serving in the military again. I figure, "Hell, I'm single, and I can be an officer, so why not?". I think that in some ways this may be an escape plan of mine for when I just can't see the life I am living going anywhere pleasant. It represents a chance to, basically, start anew. Build a life that is lightyears from the one I have now, that I can mold in the shape I want it to be. I can't help thinking that maybe that's an unhealthy reason to go into the military, but it's one of my main ones and always has been. I also think that I won't know how I measure up to my Dad, Grandfathers, and Great-Grandfathers until I have been in the military. To see what I have. I think on some level the thought scares me that I could be better than them, and I am expected to be. I already feel some trepidation at getting a Bachelors degree, which is the highest level of education anyone in my family's history has ever gotten. That is a LOT of expectation on my shouders. I feel like if I combine that degree with being an Officer in the military (just being an officer means that I'll effectively outrank anyone in my family's history as well) should be enough to prove to myself that I stand on the same ground that they did. I mean, they worked their entire lives to provide their children with just a little more opportunity than they had.. Wouldn't I be dissapointing them if I didn't surpass my father? The other thing is that, on some level, I feel like it is just my fate to be in the military, because I keep coming back to this. I can't run from this forever.
At the same time, though, I feel like enlisting in the military and trying for OCS may be me running away from my current problems so that I don't have to deal with them. I fear that if I do enlist and that is why I am doing so, I won't be happy even there because my own insecurities are inescapable. I think the only way I can get through this, to find out where my thoughts truely lie, is to just not wait on Rachel anymore. But it's so much harder for me to not want to be with her than I ever thought possible. It doesn't matter how many practice runs of conversation with her I have in my head, I just can't bring myself to tell her that she has burnt the bridge between us with this last breakup. I am hesitant to do so because what it really means is that, while she may have burnt her side, telling that will be my blowing up my side of the bridge so that I'll never be able to cross it again.
I got over Kcat by not talking to her for several years, until I simply fell out of the habit of thinking about her all the time. I feel guilty about that, because I don't think it was fair to either of us. Maybe she did or didn't deserve to know why I didn't want to talk to her, but at the very least I wasn't being much of a friend, or even acting like a man. With Rachel, I'm forced to either slowly wait for my feelings to go away so that I won't hurt so much, or just have the conversation with her that I really, really, really don't want to have.
There. I do feel better now. Maybe now I can sleep without having nightmares about all of this stuff.
Wolf was my dog. I can't really express that in any other way. He was mine. And, in just the same way, I was his master. I can't help but feel, in some ways, that I was a lousy master, a lousy friend there at the end. He died because he was run over by my Dad accidently because Wolf was trying to climb under Dad's car to get to where-ever I was. I haven't been wanting to admit that to myself, but there it is. The truth is that I've been keeping myself so busy, busier than what is actually necessary, in order to avoid having to deal with the emotional fallout from the breakup with Rachel, which is a different matter altogether. I just wasn't around the house to be with him, to play with him and basically just to be there. I keep thinking that, maybe, If I had tried to to climb under my dad's car to get to where ever I was. I knew he was actively trying to be around me more...trying to climb into my car whenever I had to leave, trying to get in the house, sleeping under my window...I just wasn't being a good master for him. So I've decided that, other than helping with Lucy (Rach's dog, who I helped raise and I trained), I'm not getting another dog until I calm myself back down into who I am supposed to be, and have a predictable schedule where I can spend time with it. I should know better, I spent a lot of my life sitting around alone in a house waiting for someone to get home, and heaven help me I made my dog do the same thing.
Speaking of being alone in a house, it's just being here in this awful quiet that made me think of Wolf. Dad has gone to Nonnie's place for the weekend with Zeus, so there is no one here and I'm completely and utterly alone. Aside from a few short conversations with Scott and Rachel, and going to the local Bojangles, I haven't heard another person's voice. It kind of takes me back to my childhood, where I was basically alone because my brother would spend his time alone in his room and my dad didn't get home until very late at night because that's what he is: A workaholic. I find myself wondering if this is how my life will always be.. Spending time alone just doing chores and killing my time between doing what's necessary for survival. I didn't think it would be like this, when I was with Rachel, but here it is again. Maybe that's part of why I was so desperate to make that relationship work, because I was afraid of feeling...pointless again.
I suppose it's a mistake for me to find personal meaning in trying to make someone else happy, but it's all I know, really. I've basically learned that I can't ask for help, not really, because there's none for me to have. I know, on an intellectual level, that is not true, but that knowledge doesn't fix that. So, I give people that are close to me everything I can in order to make them happy and keep them close, but I don't let anyone close to me or let them help me, which pushes them away because I think that when the time comes for me to need help from them, I won't get it and I'll be dissapointed. I know that. I can't remember the last time I asked someone if I could talk to them about something that was bothering me, or even the last time that I asked for just a hug to help me get through. God knows that I could really use both right now. But when I'm around people, I just put a pissed off look on my face and make people stay away so that they don't ask the questions that I'm desperate to answer. It's fucked up, and it's screwy, I know. And I should probably go talk to the school therapist or something, but I can't make my problems other people's business. I don't even know how.
Another thing that's been on my mind is the knowledge that I still love Rachel, but there are just too many complicating factors. For starters, she doesn't love me and is too fascinated with the shadow of another guy to actually care about my feelings. No, I know she cares in a tangental sort of way, but not in the way someone's wife or even ex-girlfriend should. It's like I'm just some guy to her, now. Another thing is that I compromised on some of my basic personality traits just to be with her. It made her feel inadequate when I would keep the house spotless like when we first started dating, so I let that slide in order to make her feel superior. She hated guns, so I put my guns away in a locked storage chest, in pieces, in the closet so that she wouldn't see it. She hated the military, so I wouldn't bring up my past with the NJROTC, or my prior plans to enlist, or my family's association with the military. And she disliked anything southern, so I didn't use my southern turns of phrase as often, and didn't argue when she didn't want to be around my family. I thought of these as concessions to having the woman I wanted. They are really tripwires for a bad relationship, and just one really should have sent me on my way. Getting back on track, I still love her and can't convince myself to stop waiting around for her. It seems like I spend my life waiting for the women in my life to turn around from walking away from me to realize that I'm still there, waiting patiently, for them. That's my track record, you see. The girl I dated in high school, Melissa, broke up with me after we graduated so that she could have fun during the summer without feeling guilty, and I waited on her for a year and a half before I moved on. I doted on Kcat for four years, nursing a crush that I knew nothing could ever come of. And now, I've spent about a year or more on Rachel in differing phases of non-commital relationship just because I thought that maybe, just maybe this time it will work. But how could it work, being built on such an formless foundation? I'm sick of it, just sick of it.
I wish, no, I hope that I'll meet someone that just likes me for me, and has the same damn problem that I do.. That they just want to feel connected to someone by being there for them even if that person isn't there for them. I think that if I could get that, and feel for them in return, it would work.
Recently I've been thinking about serving in the military again. I figure, "Hell, I'm single, and I can be an officer, so why not?". I think that in some ways this may be an escape plan of mine for when I just can't see the life I am living going anywhere pleasant. It represents a chance to, basically, start anew. Build a life that is lightyears from the one I have now, that I can mold in the shape I want it to be. I can't help thinking that maybe that's an unhealthy reason to go into the military, but it's one of my main ones and always has been. I also think that I won't know how I measure up to my Dad, Grandfathers, and Great-Grandfathers until I have been in the military. To see what I have. I think on some level the thought scares me that I could be better than them, and I am expected to be. I already feel some trepidation at getting a Bachelors degree, which is the highest level of education anyone in my family's history has ever gotten. That is a LOT of expectation on my shouders. I feel like if I combine that degree with being an Officer in the military (just being an officer means that I'll effectively outrank anyone in my family's history as well) should be enough to prove to myself that I stand on the same ground that they did. I mean, they worked their entire lives to provide their children with just a little more opportunity than they had.. Wouldn't I be dissapointing them if I didn't surpass my father? The other thing is that, on some level, I feel like it is just my fate to be in the military, because I keep coming back to this. I can't run from this forever.
At the same time, though, I feel like enlisting in the military and trying for OCS may be me running away from my current problems so that I don't have to deal with them. I fear that if I do enlist and that is why I am doing so, I won't be happy even there because my own insecurities are inescapable. I think the only way I can get through this, to find out where my thoughts truely lie, is to just not wait on Rachel anymore. But it's so much harder for me to not want to be with her than I ever thought possible. It doesn't matter how many practice runs of conversation with her I have in my head, I just can't bring myself to tell her that she has burnt the bridge between us with this last breakup. I am hesitant to do so because what it really means is that, while she may have burnt her side, telling that will be my blowing up my side of the bridge so that I'll never be able to cross it again.
I got over Kcat by not talking to her for several years, until I simply fell out of the habit of thinking about her all the time. I feel guilty about that, because I don't think it was fair to either of us. Maybe she did or didn't deserve to know why I didn't want to talk to her, but at the very least I wasn't being much of a friend, or even acting like a man. With Rachel, I'm forced to either slowly wait for my feelings to go away so that I won't hurt so much, or just have the conversation with her that I really, really, really don't want to have.
There. I do feel better now. Maybe now I can sleep without having nightmares about all of this stuff.