so many fears and so little room for them all...

The word  Pnigerophobia can apply to the fear of being smothered, but I cannot find an actual word that applies to the fear of smothering someone else (in this case, I am thinking of friendships and giving people their space) which has been very intense in me lately and not just with one person, but with almost everyone, especially people I really, really care about...

I was still awake in the middle of the night and so I picked up something light to read and was just so dismayed to see this passage in an otherwise very well-written and engaging romance novel:


Lauren's second biography had been of Peter Orlosky, the mega-nerd who had brought down the Microsoft empire with his single, non-proprietary operating system...Not only was he unmarried and childless, but Lauren was pretty damned sure he’d never even had sex. With another human being, that is. But ultimately that tidbit didn’t make it into his biography because she reckoned everyone could figure that out just by looking at or listening to Peter. She certainly didn’t need to tell them.--from the novel Madam President by Blayne Cooper and T. Novan


This kind of mean-spirited writing just floors me and is so out of place with the rest of the novel. The character thinking this is regarded as a well-respected biographer and so that alone is jarring as is that she only singles out this particular person to speculate on in such a manner. But it is her attitude about "nerds" and her assumption that you can tell whether someone is having sex based just by looking at them that is really, really disturbing (not to mention who even really thinks about this when they look at someone and what does it say about that person that she does?)

I know why this strikes such a painful chord within me. I consider myself a nerd and I know that people really do make half-assed assumptions about someone else just by what they see at first glance. Someone who is not physically 'attractive' (boy, do I dislike that word and how quick our society is to label whether someone is or is not) and not good with words (especially verbally and in social situations) is so often dismissed out of hand as not worthy of romance, love and friendship and that breaks my heart so, so much :(

And it just really rubs me the wrong way that virginity, especially in adult men, is seen as something to mock and link with being a nerd and/or a computer 'geek.'

  

Sometimes, love, especially one-way, is so not written in the stars...and you just have to wait for your heart to come back to earth :(

Talking to you (only in my head) I say,
I'm not asking for the moon...only to get over you
 or (at least) for the pain in my heart to go away.


 

I can't write poetry at all, but if I could I think maybe it would help...

This article is very interesting:

http://www.thereviewreview.net/publishing-tips/how-can-poetry-heal-us

Here's a snippet from it:

Being conscious of your limits will shield you in your descent toward the emotional journeys Diane Ackerman describes above.  All this being said, poetry, when used for expression and therapeutic purposes, can open doors to healing that were previously barred.  Another piece from the Writers’ Craft Box is a feature on the Pongo Teen Writing Project.  Reaching out to children and young adults in juvenile detention centers, homeless shelters, psychiatric hospitals, and other organizations, founder Richard Gold and his team of Pongo volunteers use a carefully constructed model to encourage written expression that will target those areas which are most affecting the youths’ circumstances (early childhood trauma, such as abuse, rape, addiction, death and violence). In a post on the Pongo site blog, entitled “Poetry Saved My Life”, (a line excerpted from a fourteen year-old’s poem), Gold writes, “I've seen that life's worst experiences can exist as strangers in us, separate, like people we don't know and don't want to know. Yet these worst experiences remain our passionate life companions.  I've seen that our emotions after life's worst experiences can be sealed in a variety of containers, some buried, or in a black hole, some that explode unexpectedly, some that exist only in the public realm, some that exist only in private, some that exist in one part of ourselves and not in others.  But I've also seen that through poetry, people can open these containers, and move their contents, these painful emotions, into new frames that are more open and repurposed for a meaningful life.”

 

note to self...

Sometimes, just doing this feels like a major accomplishment...getting up in the morning and heading out the door to where you have to go. Sleep and dreams can make nighttime such a horrible thing to face and recurring nightmares, in particular, can be a real and very painful challenge.

Sad dreams, while not always nightmares, have their own way of infusing your real world with something equally upsetting upon waking. 

I wish so, so much that we had more say in what we dreamed and that we could stop the bad ones (and sometimes the good ones that can hurt in their own ways as well) from happening...

Related articles:

http://dreamstudies.org/2010/09/02/14-tips-for-getting-rid-of-nightmares/

http://dreamstudies.org/2009/09/15/depression-ssri-and-dreams/

I saw this on a clothing website and the words just really hit home with me because there are some people in your life who are still there even when they are not...and that can be a good thing or a bad, depending on the person and how you feel about him or her.

It's a quiet voice, but it is still there and it is saying, things are going to get better...maybe not today, maybe not even tomorrow, but eventually. And eventually isn't necessarily a bad word...it really is not.

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I love this picture of Karen Carpenter. It shows a less sad, more playful side to her. I couldn't sleep the other night and watched a PBS documentary on The Carpenters and it is poignant and then there is that voice, the one that is unforgettable and unlike any before or after.

A comment online (via datalounge) about her voice maybe says it best:

"While her voice is hauntingly beautiful, there is also a genuine warmth to it as well. The kind of voice that would comfort you in your darkest hour of need."

As does this one:

"We all don't have to "love" the same artist. That being said, I thought Karen had the most beautiful alto, melancholic, perfect pronunciation of words, effortless delivery and a dynamite lower register. Her strength really."

That is why, despite all the sadness surrounding her life and the tragedy of her death that can make it hard to put on the Carpenters music at times, listening to her can still be so very, very nice.

We read to know we are not alone--C.S. Lewis

Despite thinking to myself that I can be alright with my parents not accepting me being gay, I still have these periods of intense sadness where I feel isolated and even "sick" (a word my mom uses to describe gay people) about myself. And I have no close friends who are gay I can talk about things with and who will truly understand and not think I am different because I am a woman who wants to fall in love with a woman who could love me back and with whom I could grow old. 

I once had a friend tell me he was okay with me being gay as long as I did not talk about it...as if my saying the day gay marriage became a reality in Maryland, back in 2012, that I wanted to meet someone and fall in love was somehow 'filthy' or not the same as his wanting to meet a woman and get married, a right he has always had as a straight man and that he has never had to fight for or even think about.

So, I continue to seek out fiction that can speak to me, fiction that can really, really understand that not all of us have understanding and gay friendly family and friends here in 2015:

"Despite the gains that the LGBTQ movement has made across the planet, many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and otherwise queer youth growing up feeling like they are damaged, evil, dirty, and—perhaps most traumatically—alone."--from the introduction to Heiresses Russ 2011

 

from "Ghost of a Horse Under a Chandelier": 

Zillah finds she can’t stand being in love. She gets angry. The infuriating uncertainty. The not knowing. She mutters that it’s not fair. If only she could know what Joy feels; if her thoughts were written in bubbles above her head, or spelled out in capital letters under every scene. Zillah has nothing, no proof of love. 

And as far as love itself goes, you can be gay or straight and feel like the character above...

One of the saddest things in the world is to feel, after years and years of thinking there is something wrong with your heart and that you have closed up shop for good to your emotions, you have finally met someone you could really and truly love only to realize they can never ever be someone who would or could feel the same way back. When it first happens, you tell yourself that you will get over it, that it is just a passing fancy, then when it gets stronger you still deny what you're feeling, like that guy in that 10cc song "I'm Not In Love."

But once you realize that the feelings are here to stay, that you will always like this person but (it is so obvious it goes without saying, but just in case) never ever tell her, the thing isn't (as I used to think) to throw yourself into other people, but to throw yourself, your mind, your heart and your soul into other things (volunteering, finding a new hobby, making new friends.) The heart is very stubborn and wants what it wants, but I still think there is hope for the mind...in knowledge and in realizing you still want to learn new stuff, still love your books and music, still have hope that someday your heart will follow your mind and join the land of the living.

Some people believe unrequited love is merely a result or a side effect of being afraid and/or unable to have real and lasting mutually reciprocated relationships with people who are actually interested in you and could even love you back, but I sincerely do not think that is the case. The thing about unrequited love that people who have never experienced it before may not realize is that most people would do anything to get rid of it and want to be in real and lasting mutually reciprocated relationships. 

Unrequited love is not 'cute' or a school girl crush or a Lifetime movie, it is really caring for and respecting and having genuine feelings for a wonderful person and hoping that you can emotionally move on one day and make peace with what is still in your heart, but carefully tucked away in a strong but safe corner...

 

 

"Appearance should not be mistaken for truth." That is so very true. People who talk but cannot always get their thoughts out very well may actually be secretly and painfully shy and not as idiotic as they appear, private people hiding their hurt may come across as aloof and...jerks, well, jerks may actually really be jerks, but they also may be people who just do not how else to behave. They may even do jerky things not realizing they are acting like jerks.

These are not excuses or justifications, but just the differences between how things may seem and how they actually are. I know because I think you really can just tell sometimes how someone truly sees you and I have seen the politely contained look in someone's eyes that lets me know they think I am an idiot. I know that I unintentionally can most definitely act like an idiot, but I never mean to and I think just maybe, deep down, that I am not as dumb as I feel when I am around people. It really is both weird and horrible that you can really, really like people and yet just be no good around them...

 

If all the world hated you, and believed you wicked, while your own conscience approved you, and absolved you from guilt, you would not be without friends.

I was reading a book for work and it referenced the above, without attributing it to anyone. The way the author wrote about it I knew the passage must be well-known and so I typed the words in Google and discovered they are from Jane Eyre, which I have never read.

These words jumped out at me with a vengeance because at the time I was reading them I was experiencing a huge amount of self-loathing and I have been going through this solitude lately that feels both good and bad. Good in that I cannot possibly make as many social faux pas (or worse) if I am not around others and bad because, well...after a while solitude can just feel so lonely and as the passage that follows so aptly puts it:

"No: I know I should think well of myself; but that is not enough: if others don’t love me, I would rather die than live—I cannot bear to be solitary and hated, Helen."

I feel like I cannot really write about these words more, or truly know them, without also knowing the full context and more about Jane Eyre. The words are so haunting me that I went into the Kindle store and just downloaded it for free.

I hope to get to it after I finish a book that I have been purposely taking my time with because it has so much to say and I think that it may really help me embrace solitude better without embracing the self-loathing. It really is a wonderful book:

 




 

This is such good advice. Sometimes, when we really want something to be a certain way, our heart can almost make us think it is that way but, in the end, that is neither practical nor very good nor fair to anyone involved. Things that cannot be changed just are the way they are and accepting that is crucial to a healthy well being and state of mind...easier said than done, but something I really, really want to work on in my life...

I wish more than anything this were possible. I have long wished this could be so and have always found this to be one of my favorite Proverbs. My mother, if she knew, would be so happy that I have been reading the Bible tonight. It is so weird how sometimes, because of things I have read and heard from strangers and from people in my own life, that I feel like I do not have the right to be both gay and Christian.

Wanting to guard my heart would be the same no matter whether I was gay or not. I have been struggling in my feelings now for a few years on and then things recently grew more complicated when I started getting attached, in a different way, to a different person while also still feeling how I do about the first person.

There are so many ways to care about someone and still get hurt because you got too attached and they did not. It can be romantic or platonic, familial or work-related, no matter what the context, letting your heart open up to friendship or love is still risking getting hurt very painfully and I do not think you have to be cynical to believe that.

But wishing you had better guarded your heart only after your heart got too attached is like trying to put the toothpaste back in the tube after it has popped out or closing the barn door after the horse has already fled.

I do not know why, exactly, but I find it kind of sad-funny that the very book that has been used to vilify and hate gay people is the very book that is comforting me right now.



 New International Version
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it.
New Living Translation
Guard your heart above all else, for it determines the course of your life.
English Standard Version
Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.
New American Standard Bible
Watch over your heart with all diligence, For from it flow the springs of life.
King James Bible
Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.
Holman Christian Standard Bible
Guard your heart above all else, for it is the source of life.
International Standard Version
Above everything else guard your heart, because from it flow the springs of life.
NET Bible
Guard your heart with all vigilance, for from it are the sources of life.
Aramaic Bible in Plain English
Keep your heart with all caution because from it is the outgoing of life.
GOD'S WORD® Translation
Guard your heart more than anything else, because the source of your life flows from it.
JPS Tanakh 1917
Above all that thou guardest keep thy heart; For out of it are the issues of life.
New American Standard 1977
Watch over your heart with all diligence,
            For from it flow the springs of life.

For many reasons, I have not dated in a long, long time but when I used to and certain topics would come up in conversation, the other person would often be bewildered (or worse, horrified) that I felt waiting was important. So when I read this article, so, so much of it speaking to me, the relief was almost intensely overwhelming...and even though I no longer date nor plan to, I still feel this immense relief and less freakish and alone for having some of the views I have as a single and celibate lesbian:

 
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/11/gay-waiting-for-marriage/414984/


After I read this article I did some online searching and I discovered that there are more women than I thought that feel this way...and the advent and legalization of gay marriage in our country has made this even more apparent and an actual reality. There would have been a time (there was a time) when people (including other gay people) would have looked at someone sideways and with great skepticism over wanting to wait for marriage.

Articles like the one above and others I found are nice for me because they comfort me that I am not only the 'old-fashioned' lesbian out there, something a friend of mine once told me was an oxymoron. Because of certain circumstances in my life I have just always known that I would most likely end up single for all of my life.

Even so, just knowing that there are other people out there like me, people who value love above all other aspects of being gay or lesbian, well, that just makes me somehow feel a lot less alone...even if I really do never met the woman with whom I want to spend the rest of my life.

https://www.yahoo.com/health/some-gay-couples-putting-off-sex-until-after-205248087.html

I am not a big fan of Madonna herself, though I really like a lot of her music. I do think her quote below is so very true and something to hold on tightly when you are struggling.

When it comes to worrying someone has stopped liking you, there is insecurity and then there is instinct. Maybe your anxiety and worries are false and simply just feeding your concern that someone no longer wants to be in a friendship or maybe there are subtle but still very real signs that just about break your heart. I do not think even the most quiet shifts in tone and how someone once communicated with you and no longer quite does the same way are to be ignored. You hope so, so, so very much that you are wrong and yet you worry. A friendship that has come to mean so much to you is not something you want to lose nor that you want to even think about losing :(

I always, always silently tell myself that I will not get attached to someone and yet I do, anyway. I think The Wizard of Oz was so right when he told the Tin Man he did not know how lucky he was not to have a heart...