Expectations

Wow, so frequently.  What is possessing me to write again in here?  I think it’s the anger.  It needs a better vent.  Ever since I shattered that chair, ever since I blew up at Gavin, ever since I’ve felt the urge to break some stranger’s face for being disgusting or stupid…..some guy at the club rubbing up against a girl who doesn’t want it, a guy hitting on a girl making her uncomfortable, a girl stringing a guy along…..a friend of mine acting like an idiot and being ridiculous, I’ve decided I need a better place to dispel it.  Survival venting?  I hate it, too.  I can’t stand that I have to do this.  But I guess I feel like there’s not really a way to say what I think without it being upsetting to the world at large.

It’s funny how apt the title is, since I actually had another word for what I was going to talk about that dissipated into the mists of memory right before I decided to write this.  There my expectations go again. 

I’m a loner.  It’s true. I want to defy my nature, or fulfill its actual paradox by making people feel wonderful, but I am at my best alone.  I feel better alone.  I think better alone.  I enjoy myself more, alone.  It’s sad, but true.  I think this all goes back to expectations.  I fulfill those placed on me, others do not fulfill my own.  And then eventually, through my fault and not the other, I stop fulfilling their expectations, I stop exceeding, I start being complacent and then they sense that everything has gone horribly wrong and they want to fix it, but it’s already too late. 

That is a feeling I’m becoming accustomed to.  The sudden sensation that the moment for reconciliation has slipped by and that there is no way for them to salvage what is left of our friendship, what is left of our relationship, what is left of my overwhelming love for them.  I will love them still, I just won’t go out of my way the way I used to.  I spend my nights, what few that aren’t busy with one thing or another, thinking about the fact that I am calling people and no one is calling me.  And it’s strange that everything runs hot and cold.  Either I get a call everyday or I get none at all for weeks on end with people.  Eh.  Where am I going with this all?  I’m going towards my unreal expectations of people. 

In and of that itself, I am a paradox.  I do not hold anyone to anything, because I do not wish to ask of them such things, nor do I wish to hold them to it, but there are many times where I feel that even my minor expectations are not even met.  I try so hard to deny them so that I can exist in that wonderful state of ideal reality, that fully realized version of my perfect self, but they irk me in somewhere I can’t control.  I am a prude in a lot of ways like that.  I view everything as a promise.  Timeliness is essential to me.  Back with Stephie, one of my first girlfriends, she used to play this game where she would tell me she’d call and then wait an hour to call me.  That was an hour wasted.  With my friends, waiting to see if they wanted to go to a movie I told them about that day a few hours earlier, then hearing nothing from them….I am waiting to hear.  I am always waiting to hear from people who promise they’re going to call or do something and I, like a good person, make sure that I am available for them.  And they do not think for one instant about that.  Because if they did, the guilt of making me wait would eat them alive.  It eats me alive when I’m five minutes late for a promise, it guilts me alive when I am distracted by someone rude enough to talk to me while I’m on the phone….I feel doubly guilty because I don’t want them to be angry at me, but I don’t want to turn attention away from the person on the line.

I’m a busy man.  I have two pieces to my life.  They are life and pleasure.  They are very close in definition but they vary in importance.  My pleasures are things that are of no consequence to my life.  Video games, a movie now and then, binge drinking, hanging out…..my life is writing, acting, directing and interacting with people in a meaningful sense.  I try to balance them.  Life is exhausting if I spend the entire day doing it….so I need that extra meaningless pleasure.  So I find that while I’m waiting for life to kick in on the phone, because I believe my interpersonal relationships to be deeply meaningful parts of my life, I find that my life is being wasted…..I don’t write as much as I could, I never have….because I invest so much in people, too.

Where is this going?  I guess it’s going to the constant feeling of expectations unfulfilled.  I don’t think most anyone knows how great they are in my eyes no matter how I tell them.  When I look at them, and when I think about it now, it moves me with a passion that Marie always tells me I have which makes me love her for seeing it.  I am passionate.  Always deeply passionate, a well of feeling and emotion that boils out of me that I cannot control, and it spills out my eyes and into others and I look at them with such reverence and wonder and love, that how can I help but be disappointed when they don’t call, when they fail at a small promise, an insignificant little thing.  It’s the things insignificance in and of itself that is what is so frustrating….because it wouldnt’ be hard to pick up the phone or text message the way some of my friends do to say, "At a movie," "at dinner, call later" to let me know not to wait wondering and worrying like a mother hen.

And so I also don’t think they know how hard it is for me at times to continue to breathe out the wonder and see it when the errors and mistakes and problems continue to compound.  I’m not looking for angels here, I’m barely looking for good human beings….I’m just looking for people to remember to do the little things they "say" they’re going to do.  Because I’m an action person sure, but I don’t hold people to that, if they are a words person, fine…but make sure the words have meaning. 

And you know, I really hate the whole idea that you can’t talk about your ex’s.  I let anyone I’m dating talk about theirs, I may not like it, but I’ll get over it.  I may even hate the very idea of either the ex or my girlfriend’s choices, but I’ll get over it.  But I feel I can’t talk about it as much because it is so taboo.  Or maybe I just keep it to myself because I don’t like bothering others with my troubles.  That’s why I write here, to my trusted few who will listen and love and who choose to read rather than here because I’m around. 

So here goes something personal:

Most relationships that have ended for me have not been my fault but have been.  WIth Katie, she hit me, and then she missed the most important show of my life at that time, something deeply important.  And so I broke it off.  With Rachel, I was moving away to college and she was pressuring for sex and….well I couldn’t trust her even then.  So I broke it off.  With Stephie, she disappeared, which was just as well, because with the games she was playing,

I was going to break it off.  With Nancy, I failed.  Pure and simple and why I have such a soft spot for her, I failed completely.  It was entirely my fault.  With Sarah Schaefer, we just weren’t right for each other though we wanted to be.  With Jennie, she was a mess.  With Sarah Clare, it was the distance ( a draw and no one’s fault).  Etc etc. etc.

But the thing is, I know that I gave up on the relationships when they started not doing what I hoped they would.  Even though I wanted to not expect anything of them, I couldn’t help it.  I wanted tolerance and love and respect and adoration but time for myself and a laundry list of things I still to this day work hard to get out of me so that I can be selfless even more so. 

And at this point in my life, I think I’m really fucked up by people who I never actually had relationships with and some I did.  Angie screwed my brain up and my heart, because she liked me but she treated me like shit when at first I told her I liked her….and then she dated my younger brother.  I’m unfortunately too human for my own desires.  Rachel was a terrible liar.  She lied about a lot of things and was overly melodramatic and I really loved her and it ruined everything for me because I wanted to trust her but couldn’t.

Ok.  Here goes again.  A stupid excuse but something I have to get off my chest.  Rachel lied about very important things.   She lied about things that she wanted to make me feel empathy for….but the thing about lies, to me….the thing about huge lies…..is that when I find out I’ve believed someone when they were lying, about anything…I feel stupid.  REALLY stupid.  And I hate that feeling because I feel like there are the intangible spirits of my entire life watching over my shoulder ready to cackle at me for screwing up, for being a fool.  Everytime I made a mistake I was ridiculed in school…when my opinion was unpopular I was ridiculed…..when I said something wrong I was ridiculed…..it was because I insisted I was smart and because I was…..and they wanted to make me feel bad. 

So when I am lied to, even on accident, I feel like an idiot because to this day I still choose to believe.  There is a dark part of my nature that doesn’t believe at all, it is the part made up both of the scars of my younger days and the very essence of what gave me those scars….I called it the self-preserver….the kind of thought that says you should look out for yourself and fuck other people, even the ones you want to care about.  It has one many a battle in my mind and what’s scary is that I generally feel better when I listen to it.  Humanity is failing me and I am failing it. 

So now, at the current moment of my life, I have a hard time NOT burning bridges.  I have a hard time loving someone and at the same time knowing that if I do not fufill their expectations they will cut me loose or become unsettled and restless meanwhile MY expectations are either ignored or belittled.  I have a hard time trusting anyone anymore….so when I do, it’s all the more upsetting when the dark side of my nature is right.

When will everything settle into the right mold?  I don’t think I know.  It’s so easy when I’m alone, because then everything is right…I know where I am headed and what my life is going to be like.  I just wonder who is going to be with me and how that will affect everything…..alone I could do everything I wanted, but I don’t want to be alone, without people, without someone…..but everytime I think about the people I know…..most of them at least…..I wonder if they will help or hinder me. 

We’ll see I guess.