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I'm also going to start adding my poetry, comics, drawings, maybe music etc. to a blog page.  I'm just doing it so I'll slowly have a place with all my artistic stuff all in one place....

It's here: http://wps999.blogspot.ca/ if anyone's interested...

Meursault

I'm pretty sure I have virtually no friends any more too.  No one ever calls, it seems.  When my Dad died, I had probably well over a hundred people tell me they would gladly go to court if I needed a character witness.  Now I am just a pariah.  When I drank, people called all the time.

Anyhow, I can't believe how badly I destabilized.  I was struggling for quite a while, but bouncing back.  That incomprehensible way things went with that woman has completely torn my feet from under me.  I have no foundation.

Anyhow.  Not sure about medication.  They are only interested in giving SSRIs (I've given almost all of them an honest try, but they are terrible for many reasons).  I don't think I could really access my emotions for several years after Effexor for 2 years.  They almost "cauterize" my emotional system, and stopping them is a years long process of reconnecting.  Either that or they offer Risperdal or Seroquel.  I am quite against both of them.  I tried Seroquel, but it just made me numb and fat and impotent.  Still, it might end up there pretty quickly.

I'm going to call the crisis line when it gets worse.  But already it's like reality is strobing and my muscles are terror, made of electrified wood.  My face feels splashed with vinegar or something.

I think that the decompression from the years of the legal stuff is a huge factor right now, but it's mostly hitting me how I've lost so many years and maybe any chance of ever finding a partner and having kids.  Cried a bit about my Dad this morning, too.  I haven't really felt any grief over all that I think.  It all just tunnelled into the trauma of that night and the ongoing threat of jail and abuse and being assaulted and caged.

Anyhow.  I am gritting my teeth with all this ATM.  I will prevail eventually, I hope, and find a more positive place.

Meursault

I sure hope my therapist isn't trying to get rid of me.  I had at least sort of held myself together for most of my life, except a couple of years in my early twenties when this all hit me that "women universally think I'm unlovable" seemed indisputable from experience, and then after the end of my relationship of 6 years with a girlfriend.  The therapist I saw right before the good therapist (who was good therapist's boss), I saw for three years, and never trusted her enough to tell about my Mom or growing up.  Every week for three years, I should have realized she wasn't someone I could trust.  Building trust with good therapist over 6 months, I finally felt I could trust her enough and started to tell her about it.  I said to myself for months as I told her in dribs and drabs "I finally found someone who can help.  I am either going to deal with this and get better, or deal with it and it will kill me.  I'm not backing off from this."

I've always known where this came from, but it was always "shut up, I don't want to hear about your mother", "I'm sure she loves you", "you're just depressed", "take pills.", "You need to just love yourself", "take CBT", "women won't be interested if they can see it's important to you", "everybody is single sometimes"....... 

But I have really been a wreck pretty much non-stop since I opened up to her.  I've not been able to feel better or contain myself very well.  Granted, with this legal *, that was an added difficulty, but I don't think this would have been much easier without it.  I jus lost OVER SIX YEARS OF MY LIFE unable to find any love because of that.  I was still youngish when that happened, now I am thoroughly middle aged.  The window to meet women of my age range who would be willing to have a kid with me has disappeared.  Arg.  It feels so desperately urgent now.  I can't go more than a few minutes without this spiralling.

Anyhow.  I'm pretty worried about my therapist.  I hope she isn't wanting to get rid of me.  I think you're right Sanmagic.  I am going to trust her, and suspend judgement on whether she is getting rid of me.  She really does seem to care and I hope she is in this with me for the long haul.  Scares the bejeezus out of me, though.

Anyhow, this whole idea of tkaing care of myself and just hiding from the world has already gone out the window.  My brain and body are just screaming at me how much of an emergency it is to get out and go find what I need.  My brain is already like a half-full jar of marbles being violently shaken.

I can't believe how badly I've fallen apart.

Sigh, anyhow, have a good day everyone.  I think I am going to need hospitalization yet today.  It's completely counter productive, and actually usually deleterious, but I don't think I have any options.

Meursault

Despite what a basket case I become with rejection and loneliness from women, I think I am otherwise pretty effective in life.  I traced the problem, took a bunch of stuff apart.  Called around for the parts I needed.  Discovered that places won't sell those parts to the general public.  Called HVAC guy I know from my small town and told him what was broken and what part I needed.  He called a supply place in the city and told them to bill him, and gave my name saying I'd be in to pick it up for him.  I have a furnace again.  I figure it would have cost me $500 if I had to get someone to come in and do it.  Instead, it was $80 and I'll have to buy that guy lunch sometime.

Phew. 

Just got settled into a warming house again.  That was potentially much worse!  Silver-lining?  I had a genuine reason for cancelling the teeth cleaning and potentially humiliating myself with crying or panic attacks.  I really don't think I could have handled that today.  Cute receptionist woman in the heating distributor place had me shaky and my brain was incapable of thought.

I think today will be a day of self care now.  Journaling and stuff.  Maybe go get chocolate or something and hide from the world.

Meursault

Thanks for the idea, Wife #2!  It took me a few seconds to understand what you were meaning, but I just got it.  I am not worried about arousal,  but panic attacks.  I have a bit of a smile about that misunderstanding!!!  Turns out, I cancelled though.  My furnace just blew up.  I went to leave, and could hear weird sounds, so I have to deal with that....

Meursault

I woke this morning to your post and the following message from someone from elsewhere who read my "Love Yourself?" post...

My experience, love is a happy accident that happens to 2 people who have some things in common, especially values. You can't make it happen, just be open to it. It seems to start with friendship. It is rare, but is there such a thing as too many friends? When it happens, both see the best in each other, and bring it out. Loving yourself doesn't seem to matter, but giving and positivity does. There is mutual respect and space. You don't have to be perfect, and PTSD is O K, as long as you do your best to recover and try not to hurt the other person. Probably best not to have both seriously ill. Helps if other person wants to understand. Let whatever is good happen, and be patient

I just started bawling, but maybe in a good way, not sure, from both of them.  Your comment made me feel very fragile bu somewhat safe.  His evoked the thought:  "YEs!  Exactly!  Love isn't self-centred enough to require self-love.  It is GIVING!"  Then I thought about how when I was a little boy and trying to give my love to my mom, and how she never wanted it or had any for me.  ANd it's the same now.  I'm wanting to give my love, but no one wants it.  And it's the same now as then: I'm being told there is something intrinsic yet ineffable about me that needs to be different to be loved.  But it didn't make sense then, and it continues to overwhelm me with confusion.  Why?  Can't you see me?  I think I'm lovable?  Now I'm completely bawling....

Now I have to head out to my bi-annual teeth cleaning and sit in a chair while the extremely attractive dental tech pushes against me and talks in chipper enthusiasm.  I have been too scared to even call and re-schedule.  I hope this isn't a humiliating disaster!

Meursault

That's great, Dee.  It sounds pretty scary and exciting!   Funny comment about the plants by the kids.  Oh well, if the plants aren't watered, maybe you could bring a new plant home when you return to grow with your new, improved life!

Meursault

Wife #2:
I cried a bit reading that.  I'm so utterly demoralized.   It's strange, though, how my feeling of safety and willingness to be vulnerable becomes so much stronger after a woman has sex with me.  I sort of have a "Well, if she had sex with me, she must accept and like me.  She must want ME"  I am luckily not so deluded I rationally believe that, but emotionally it's there.  Same with female friends.  Once I know they are for sure lesbians, or in committed relationships or whatever, I am able to feel safe around them, and then, in either of those cases, I really LOVE those same things that trigger me.  It is a spike of excitement and enjoyment of their femininity rather than terror when I hear them laugh.  I don't really understand it,  but in a way, since they won't want me sexually, they aren't going to do something that hurts me.

To strain the motorcycle analogy:  once I realize the sound is coming from a motorcycle that is on a road I can't reach, or is on the road of ME where it has shown it won't wreck the pavement, or lose control, I can enjoy the sound. 

I have met a couple of women via chatting online, and tend to do pretty well conversationally, but the first meeting is still full of terror.  I met a woman who posted she wanted to meet new people in my city last October (IIRC) and we chatted for a couple of weeks (a lot) before we tried to meet.  She cancelled on me three times, and then finally showed up.  I felt no rejection there.  When we finally mt, we hit it off pretty good.  Neither of us are interested in each other romantically, though.  She's the one I posted quite a while ago that I had a date (we both knew it was a get to know you sort of date and not necessarily a date date) with, and at the end, she got on the bus, and five minutes later texted me "Thank you for restoring my faith in humanity."  She and I are still friends.  We text several times a week.  I had her over and cooked her supper last week.  But it wasn't a date with necessarily romantic intentions, and when neither of us seemed interested, we just became friends.

I had also tried a dating site.  I was only able to meet one woman that way, and when we had our date, she was very confrontational and hostile, and I could tell she could read my nervousness and it annoyed her.  What I thought was humorous sarcastic banter from her when we were messaging, was genuine disdain for the world.  It was a very clunky date.  I also felt like there was no reprieve from being rejected, since my profile was putting me "out there" 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  IRL, at least I can somewhat feel I'm not actually being rejected when I stay at home and hide.  I've asked a couple of female friends help me write my profile, since I wasn't getting the responses I expected.  I'm definitely willing to try that again, though.  I just closed that account in the fall.

I do think there is some fine line with letting the women somehow know it is not them, but just my own weird reactions when I get too nervous or dissociative, while somehow also not coming across as completely damaged, too.

I'm feeling so damaged.  I saw my therapist today, and she, as always, was very supportive and accepting of me.  I had sent her an email over the weekend asking her to let the police know I was dead in my house though.  And later rescinded it.  I feel like such garbage.

Telling her about what happened with that woman, I recounted the details, and was bawling hysterically.  I had this wild, shaking, high pitched desperate voice, and was saying over and over "I don't understand anything!  I can't make sense of anything!!!  What is happening?  What happened?  Why did she change so much?  I'm crazy and nothing makes any sense!  HElp, I don't understand what is happening!"

Tears were actually shooting from my eyes.  Wow, was I shaking.  When I told her all the details, she helped me understand a little, I think.  The woman is in an intensive daily mental health program, and has BPD, which doesn't mean anything in and of itself, but my therapist made me see that maybe she just got scared of getting closer, or was just herself overwhelmed by the idea of dating.  She reassured me that all the things the woman said were "extremely strong" messages that she liked me and wanted to see more of me, and then, to save face or feel justified in retreating, blamed me by telling me she didn't think of it as a date, even though that was explicitly said.  My therapist reassured me how all the things I was told actually meant what I thought, and I wasn't just so crazy I didn't understand anything and the world hadn't stopped making sense.  I had shown the texting exchange the date and I had after the date to my best friend, and she said:  "You come across as pretty eager, but there's nothing in there that's weird or anything.  And she seems to be enjoying the conversation."  My therapist suggested maybe she felt too exposed by the fact that I was interested in her, and pushed me away so she didn't have to risk closeness.  Who knows, I guess.

I was holding my face and bawling and choked out "Do you see me as so bad I deserve this?!?"  and my therapist looked really gentle and sad and caring.

God, do I feel fragile how easily I was hurt by that woman.  And wow, was I interested. I don't think I've dated a woman in ten years to whom I felt such a strong sense of attraction and comfort with.  I lived with a girlfriend for a year a couple of years ago, and I was never as excited to hear what she had to say as this woman.  Then my therapist and I talked how I need to add some other therapist or group or something, since she is unable to give more than she does.  So, she is going to look around and talk to colleagues.  Part of me is scared that she is just sick of me and this is how she is getting rid of me, and of course I would be too powerless to do anything so she would stay.  But I think she means what she said.  I am almost positive. 

I asked her if she has seen problems like mine before.  And if I was the most damaged client she has ever had.  She said she has seen this sort of thing before, but never to this degree.  She said the people who have gone through all that I've gone through are usually heavily medicated, and institutionalized regularly.  She said she's never seen a client who works as hard as I do, or who goes as deeply into this stuff as I do.  It was an extremely heavy session.  I was bawling a lot.

She gave me a big long hug at the end and kind of rubbed my head and told me I was a good man, and one of the strongest and most loving people she has met.

I am exhausted.  I feel like I can start to return to the world from this Jacob's Ladder nightmare I've been in for a week.  She liked what I wrote that I linked above.

Anyways:
Downsideup:  I don't think that way.  I don't want to be rescued or saved or coddled.  I want to be strong and find and earn someone's love.  I don't want a prize, I want a shared giving.  If it is saving, I ant it to be mutual.  Anything else is me being powerless, and that isn't what I want.  I want love very badly, and I think a lot of this developmental trauma makes me feel that need very acutely.  And I know no-one here can or will give me the love I want.  I'm not here for that reason.  I'm here because I feel so alone with all this, and people here seem nice, and a lot of you have gone through similar hells, and have some understanding of your own with this stuff that when I speak I don't feel so completely alien and alone and broken.  That I am understood.  And that maybe other people can see some bits in my stuff that they can use or apply or find insight into their own stuff with.

Arg.  I'm crying. Lol.

Meursault

Thanks for being supportive.  I have definitely lost it.  I knew it would be tough after the trial ended.  I knew that losing 6-7 years of my life would hit me hard.  I am having a hard time making any sense of this all.  There is a hurricane going through my head and body.

I wrote the following yesterday.  There are a few swears, and a suicide attempt description, so I thought I better just link.  It actually has helped me to make things a bit more coherent.  I think it's fairly insightful, or maybe thought-provoking.  Don't know, it's very personal, and I tried to write it as fairly entertaining prose.  I sent it to a friend who was briefly a therapist of mine (several years ago), and he asked if he could send it on to a few friends, since he thought it articulated something kind of important.  It's my thoughts on the idea of having to love oneself before being lovable.  I wrote it out in very short time, and barely any editing has occurred, except correcting some punctuation, and getting a quote right.  I started writing it as a fictional character doing exposition, but that didn't last long....  I don't know, I think it sums up what I've tried to articulate for most of my life better than I ever have before.

https://wps999.blogspot.ca/2017/03/love-yourself.html

Meursault

It's so confusing to me, because without getting that message, that I am unlovable to women, I generally DO like myself.  I think I'm pretty entertaining, and I've helped a lot of people, and I have a lot of skills and experiences that I am proud of.  I am usually pretty giving and helpful and even though I'm really afraid, I think I'm pretty brave.  I'm pretty intelligent and creative.  But then I get that message (whether I am misreading or not I guess I sometimes might be), and everything crumbles.  It's like this volcano of terror and a disintegration of any coherent sense of self.   I spent pretty much the whole of my 20s trying that CBT stuff.  I made lists and lists of positive things about myself.  Had sticky notes all over te place.  Went through a 3 month intensive social phobia group program a couple of times, and then saw the guy privately for a year after, as I worked on all that step by step stuff.  Making smaller goals, and practising them until I could function without too much panic and incompetence, and then building up to bigger goals.   It certainly had some usefulness, but it never addressed this core of things.  Positive affirmations haven't worked for me the way they seem to have for other people.  I don't know.  I diligently did that stuff daily for years.  It got me to a functional place, but there was no healing which had occurred.  That only came when I lost my virginity.  I still do some of the skills I got out of that on a daily basis.   I have spent years at a time plugging along, holding the faith that there is nothing wrong with me, and it's just faulty thinking, and trying to say positive things.  Then it eventually wears me down, and the messages have piled up from being unwanted that I am forced back to accepting it:  there is something fundamentally unlovable about me.

Sometimes, I regain my footing within a few days, and sometimes it has taken years.   I really think I have been unable to contain any of this reaction to rejection in the last two years.  I  opened up about growing up and started dealing with that in therapy, and it's like I'm permanently activated and horribly fragile.  All the legal stresses certainly made things worse.  My therapist seems to think this is all how this stuff heals, and I am going to have to go through all this stuff.  She says going through all this and processing it with her is how she can help.  She also encourages me to keep trying to meet women.  She has said something like "Relational trauma, especially developmental trauam, can only really be healed in a relationship with someone."  I THINK with this attachment based stuff, that maybe she just sits with me and lets me be vulnerable and open talking about it, as I learn that I am accepted until I actually feel like it is safe to be me around women and I won't be attacked.  I kind of think she has greater faith in my ability to handle it than I do, though.

I'm kind of thinking the confusion of what seemed to be going well, and then having that turn into some incomprehensible rejection, really triggered a lot of that traumatic stuff from when I was little.  Just terror and worthlessness and unpredictability and rejection.  And then in a panic, I was answering those messages.

I have no idea about what signals I send off, I suppose.  I have asked several female friends, and they laugh when I ask if I have a creep vibe.  Apparently I don't at all.   I have been told that I can come across as too eager.  But also told I am too aloof.  And my best friend has told me she thinks I seem easy to hurt, so maybe women don't want to get involved because they know they would feel like they're kicking a puppy (I'm guessing there).  She has been in my presence a few times when I've asked women out.  She said I come across as hopeful, a bit nervous, but fairly open and like I am fairly confident.

About the freezing around attractive women.  That's something that I try to figure out all the time.  It is very urgent and acute.  I've tried to work my way through understanding what's happening with this with both my therapist, and the EMDR therapist I saw last year.  They both see it like this:  I am frightened, as I normally am, but then arousal signals due to being attracted get all caught up in a terror response, and escalate.  I'm triggered by the very fact that they are women, and then there is also a fear of rejection, judgement and humiliation.  When I was younger, I shook like crazy, but now I just freeze right up so I don't show how afraid I am and risk ridicule.  Inside, my thoughts are just incoherent streaks of lightning, and my body feels like exploding as I keep myself from just running screaming.  Then I start to feel all distant and stunned and foggy.  My brain is gone.  I was telling the EMDR therapist about falling to pieces in a coffee shop, where a couple of girls were being all boisterous and laughing, and how every time they burst out laughing it hit me like a shovel to the face.  I actually jumped out of my seat at one point.  She said: "Do you see how attractive women are a trigger to you for your trauma history in exactly the same way a car backfiring is to a Vietnam vet?"  (Or close to that.)  That makes quite a bit of sense to me, especially how it's worse when the women are laughing.  As my Mom would be going off on me in a world filling rage, saying how I should be killed or sodomized or castrated or whatever, my sisters often danced around laughing at me and teasing me.  What did I do then?  I didn't back down, but I remained completely still, so it wouldn't escalate.  I see the parallel there....

I've known women who have had similar experiences with kind of specific things like that, like falling to pieces hearing guys horsing around and making sports cheer sounds.  I don't really understand what is happening yet with that stuff, it is still too incoherent for me to really remain present when it is happening, but I can sort of see how my therapist's interpretation makes some sense.  Both she, and my friend who is a therapist have pointed out how those bodily signals of arousal often get mixed up in panic.  Now I think it has happened so much, I have a terrible conditioned response.

Meursault

Yeah, Sanmagic, I have asked....

"I just don't see you that way."  [What way?  Then why did you go on a date with me?]
"I'm not really wanting to date." [Then why did you go on a date with me?]
"I just wanted sex." [At least that's straightforward.  'I only cared about your genitalia'.  Belittling, but at least it's honest.]
"I think you are awesome as a friend." [That doesn't say anything, and actually confuses me.  I also want you as a friend.  I want more though.]
"You're not my type."  [I can sort of see that.]
"You're super nice, and I would only hurt you."  [I'm okay with that.  Then hurt me.]
"You're one of my best friends and I love you.  I don't want to ruin that."  [And now it's ruined.]
"I would eat you alive."  [I'm good with that.]

I don't know.  There are a lot of "sort of" things, but very little that actually addresses things.  Mostly they just boil down to 'I don't feel that way about you.'  That doesn't really help me understand.  My best friend, J, tells me I look completely frozen when I'm around women iI find attractive, and she says she can walk into a place and tell in a half second glance that there is a woman I find attractive because I am frozen in terror.   She also says that she can only tell that because she knows me so well.   Most people tell me they are surprised when I tell them I have social anxiety.  So I don't know.

I have usually been able to compartmentalize that rejection and take it for what it is in most individual cases, but not always, and I am getting worse with it though.  Since I opened up with my therapist about growing up, I can't contain this very well.

I don't think I'm "owed" an explanation, but I think it is kind of vicious to not give one.  She told me she was glad I asked her out.  And then....  for no reason I can understand, I am rejected. I was being explicitly told how much she was liking our date, and then explicitly rejected.  I don't understand, and that is very crazy-making.

I'm pretty sure I wasn't being at all coercive.  I asked her if she wanted to go out again.  And she enthusiastically said yes, and then she was asking me what nights I was free, and we settled on a night we were both free, and she told me she was really glad she came out, and I told her me too, and I was really looking forward to seeing her again.  And she gave me a hug,  Then she texted me several times when she got home, talking.  Then she texted "we'll chat tomorrow" the day before date #2, Then said she'll take a raincheck because she's on her period, and then two days later I texted asking her if she was up for going out early in the week.  And she responded that she wasn't interested and she didn't consider it a date, and sorry if I misunderstood.  Despite the fact that during our initial banter, I said "Yeah, I guess I am.  Now I'm nervous, but yeah, I'm asking you on a date.'

Anyways.  I think this is going to take me quite a bit of time to deal with.  Probably several months.  I did untild damage in my personal life over the last couple of days.  I really doubt I have any friends anymore.  I think I must clearly be insane, because what was happening was not at all what I thought was happening.  I don't understand what she was doing in telling me that stuff...  She was actively letting me know she was interested and enjoying herself, and then BAM a complete change.

I'm also not sure about the "love yourself"  thing.  Why?  as far as I can tell most people don't love themselves and still have relationships.  If I need to do that before someone wants me, I'm screwed, and the quicker I die the better.

Meursault

Don't know.  I'm still in a terrible place.  I think yeah, this is a really hard emotional flashback.  I think I am dissociating quite badly.  I can remember the last few days, but it doesn't seem like they exist.  My body feels like it is falling endlessly in space.

Anyhow.  I'm pretty ashamed of what I posted, and am sorry for what I said.  It really is very unfair, and it isn't something I even mean. 

I have just been in a non-stop wailing panic for days, and my mind has been like a pail of marbles in a paint shaker.

It was this desperate panicked neediness.  I can see pretty clearly what I was doing.  My Mom was a very politcal radical feminist growing up, and I think I just lost it with this sort of thinking:  The woman rejected me, and the agony and pain of it was overwhelming...  So I just started flailing around trying to do anything I could to change who I am so maybe I will be lovable.  So I basically utterly capitulated to my mom's messages thrashing around hoping that then I'd be lovable:  "Yes I am a monster.  I am subhuman garbage and deserve to die.  You are completely right about me.  I accept this.  I will be that way.  NOW CAN I BE LOVED?"  "I utterly accept defeat and will be whatever you tell me I am so I can become lovable."   I unfortunately articulated how desperately and completely I was willing to give up, and what that looked like from my home life to stop being attacked.

Pretty ugly, I guess.  Anyhow, I'm really sorry, and it was very unfair to all the people here who have been nothing but supportive.   

One comment  on Mourning Dove's post:  I don't think I am entitled to anything, nor owed anything.  That doesn't mean I think it's kind or fair to not articulate to someone why they are being rejected.  I think it's kind of cruel to just reject someone and leave them soul searching, over and over, why they are being rejected, completely in a vacuum.  I think that's extremely mean.  I also don't think I generally am very angry at women.  Sometimes, yeah, but not normally.  Normally I marvel at the women I meet.  I am excited to hear about their thoughts/opinions/lives, and generally find people (especially women) pretty awesome.  My therapist tells me I automatically assume women are right and I am wrong far too often.  It's of course unfair to assume women are all of some monolithic hive mind, but I think when you've spent almost half a century being rejected for anything other than friendship or sex, and never being told WHY you are being rejected, it's natural to assume it must be for the same reasons, and since it is so consistent, those reasons must be pretty obvious, but I'm just left with an endless sense of terror and brokenness, and no one thinks I'm worth enough to even be told what is so obvious.  As far as prostitution goes, I have no problem with it.  I think it should be legal.  I see no problem with someone who is willing to give comfort and affection for money. 

Anyhow, I was very unfair in what I posted.  I'm sorry.

Meursault

I'm so mad, why won't women in my life AT THE VERY LEAST tell me what is so bad about me they don't want me.  I stopped that sexual assault a couple of weeks ago.  I will never step up with that sort of thing again.  "Eff you, sister" and walk on by will be me response.  If im not even worth telling what I'm doing wrong. , then to * with it.  I will spend my time getting drunk and paying for prostitutes.  I wasn't the one that lost faith first.

Update:  I walked away fromthat and thought: "How many times have I done this?  12?  Way too low.  30?  way too high.  maybe 17 to 20 times.  Eff that.  I now am never coming back here. because women hate me so much and I will cheer them getting what they deserve.  I don't understand what makes me such a mionster that guys who sheat one their wives/girlfrinds. hit them, yell at them, laugh at them, are better than me.  I'm not even a weirdo.  I'm, reallly not.  Eff this.  I hope everyone suffers badly.  You all certainly made me.  And for no reason  And nobody would even tell me, so i could change.  Its a sick world and I hate it.  I am absolutely shattering.  And I hate it all. 

Sorry if anyone gets wound up about this.  I didn't mean it that way.  But I am absolutely done with being a lauhable piece of unlovable garbage.. being told I'm worth something, by women who are willing to have a life with, and kids with, guys who treat them like garbage.  I have held the faith that women in my life aren't just a bunch of masochists for 45 years.  That's over.  I hate everyone.


I wont be back.

Meursault.

Was doing pretty good.  But I have to admit.  Women utterly frustrate and confuse. me.  I had that date last Sunday.  It was awesome, neither of us had an awkward moment.  we sat around and talked for almost SIX hours.  I asked if she wanted to do something during the week, and she said "#@$#@$@# yeah!"  So We set up another date, and I texted her briefly a couple of times.  Didn't want to be too pushy or invasive.  They I texted her the day before and she said "we'll chat tomorrow".  So I say "Sounds good"  Text her the next day and she says she's on her period and will take a rain check.  So I say "That sucks, I was really looking forward to seeing you again.  Maybe on the weekend or something."  So I text her this morning, asking if she is free early in the week, and she doesn't get back to me.  I am going back to getting drunk all day every day from now on, and if necessary, getting at least a minimal amount of affection via prostitutes.  This is *, and I have no idea what's so wrong with me.  Clearly there is something though.  I give up.  And no one will even tell me what is so bad about me why they don't want me so I could actually change it.  It's a sick game and I can't take this any more.  I wish I had the strength to just kill myself.  Ugh.

I am shaking so badly I have to hold my head to read my computer screen.  Ugh.

Update:  A friend whom I've known since I was four or five texted laughing about me being home alone Saturday night, and I have completely blown up at him and he is now out of my life.  I hate this world.  I think it's pretty clear if I treated women like crap, I would have considerably better chance of women actually wanting me.  I'm off to get drunk.

Meursault

I had all but given up, for several years.  I started going up into the sub-arctic on extended canoe or kayak trips by myself.  Shorter 14 day ones at first, and now they are usually well over a month.  It made me change and want to try again.  Things kind of went to crap after that, but they are impreoving again.  Not exactly available to everyone, but it's actually cheaper than staying home for the longer ones.  I don't know, I think finding some way to see even a small part of the natural world, especially alone, even for a few days, can help a lot.  I didn't notice the changes myself until doing it for a few years, but even after the first time, friends all said I was a different person.

I'm in my mid-forties, and I still harbour the hope to be an artist.  I don't know if it will ever happen, but art is one of those things that doesn't have such a time limit on it. 

Your rooster picture is really good.  I would want that on a shirt!

For therapy, I think you can't really improve without that honesty.  The problem is most therapists aren't particularly good, and it takes a lot of time to build trust.  I was seeing my therapist for about six or seven months before I even mentioned my Mom.  Then when I somehow felt "Ok!  I THINK I can trust you!"  I started actively taking steps and still am in that process.  She knows pretty much every detail of my life, but there is more trusting to come!  I went in every week, actively choosing to share what had come to me to try to tell her, that I was too scared to tell.  I did that week after week, and left in a wreck, spending the week terrified of going back to face her expected ridicule or rage.  It was a necessary part of it for me.  Before that, I was just talking with people and no healing was happening.  It was just helping with stabilization.  I think I'm still in the early stages, and I started seeing her about 2 years ago, with a six month hiatus.

Mostly there isn't any set technique or method, and we try different things at different times, and drop them and pick them up based on her assessment and my willingness.  The healing is coming in the actual dynamic of the relationship with her.   I had been trying to find someone to help, on and off, since I was 18, and was 42 when I finally found someone.

I don't know, maybe not helpful, but I don't think (for me at least) the actual style or modality of therapy matters so much as finding someone  with whom you can just BE, say whatever is momentarily relevant,  and be treated with love, gentleness, care, and respect.   A therapist with really good boundaries, open-mindedness, and acceptance.  I suspect she and I will move on to more structured things when she and I both think I'm ready.

Meursault