Oh, what am I to do?

I have no idea why; I can’t even focus on a movie for five minutes let alone focus and carry on a conversation with others; I decided to download the Tinder app and I was kind of surprised that I sort of like the interface. I don’t remember liking it at all the last time I tried it briefly. Writing a little profile helped me figure out how to describe myself in very few words. Most of the people who like your ‘profile’ don’t even show up visibly because you haven’t liked theirs or haven’t found it yet and you haven’t paid them anything. I do want to try reaching out more and take more risks but the kind of risks that won’t leave me feeling more worn out. I have no idea where to begin and I don’t know about this app but at least on the surface it does seem less superficial than it did to me years ago. I noticed that in general the people I feel like I’d feel most comfortable getting to know tend to be into things like horror movies and Halloween even though I don’t watch a whole lot of horror movies when I’m alone.

Somebody matched to me and it kind if relaxed me because I remember her picture and her relaxing me when I first saw it, like if I were in a better place (and I never seem to be) I feel just from her picture that she might be a cool person to get to know. Like immediately relaxing and an energy that seems it would be easy to open up to… and then she also liked my profile, but then, hmmm, when two of her five listed interests are pork and fishing… LOL. The other three were great though… even though one of them is picnicking! … not that I mind that people are omnivores or like to fish, but it is surprising she liked me considering that vegan cooking was one of mine. If she said she was looking for friends I might be a lot less reluctant to reach out but she lists that she is looking for a serious monogamous relationship. I just want real connections and to let things go how they go.

I don’t know how to talk to people when the only thing they are looking for is a relationship. I guess just be real and chat in a friendly way if it comes to that? Hmm, I wonder if she read my profile or just swiped. In this picture she is smiling with her hand on one of shelves and shelves of mortar and pestle. I don’t know why I should feel so relaxed by this ‘match’ but I kind of do, and at least it feels like the transmission of a real smile, maybe that is what is so relaxing about it. I am getting myself into spaces where it is hard to feel kindness anywhere despite sooo much being offered to me just in having a place to stay right now. I just meditate and try to recall experiences of feeling really loved but recent circumstances really messed me up and I can’t, I feel all alone, and alienated, and paranoid and scared and judgmental of myself for feeling paranoid and scared.

I am surprised at something so basic as a Tinder match. It’s hard to believe lately that everything happens for a reason but I will go with that: mortar and pestle, that is what I got a friend I met on Open Diary for her wedding so many years ago. Mortar and pestle is kind of relaxing to me too and… at the time her energy was just really grounding to me and it felt like a felt sense of belonging. Maybe I made that unconscious association the moment I saw the picture but this person’s energy feels grounding in a sort of similar way. It kind of reminded me, oh, that is how I want to connect with people, that is how I feel when I am at my best and comfortable in my own skin.

I want to be more gentle with myself and gentler and more grounded in my sense of relatedness to others. It has been way too easy to freak out and lose myself but I don’t want to do that anymore. Anyway, if I responded I might have to explain that I am not actuvelu looking for any kind of relationship and really just want friends with smiles like that to hang out with and besides I am itching to leave town and get out of this state and maybe even the country. So, I might not…

But the truth is I am so heartbroken (and I want to be gentle and honest with myself and others about that) and so lonely. I don’t know when or how a real connection is going to happen for me and I don’t know whether to trust that it will. And yet I am remarkably calmer and more centered than I was before I saw this match on the app.

My emotions will probably continue to be a roller coaster for a long time, a little calmness and self-love followed by a little inner freak out and self-loathing that feels like it will never end. I don’t know how to get iver the stuff that’s happened to me. I don’t know how to get over the stuff I fear I did to someone else. I don’t know when these feelings that I will never be able to forgive myself so I might as well jump off a mountain or something and put myself out of my misery will end. I had so much faith, too much faith, in the power of saying what you need to say and letting the words fall out; I was not discerning, and I feel like sharing too much ended up hurting me in ways I could never have imagined, even if that is mostly pain I am inflicting on myself.

I am wondering if telling the truth about my experience, self-intimacy, expression, has the power to heal me anymore, or maybe I have put myself under a hex and I will be tongue tied forever as far as saying anything real about my life and my heart… I don’t know what has the power to heal me. I want to forgive myself and others and live in gratitude; other than that I don’t know. I wish I had someone to share with who will listen with care about how I feel like I have failed at living life. People keep complimenting my vulnerability though. I don’t feel like I am vulnerable. I don’t know if the most important things for me to say to make space within myself can ever be said, and if they can, can I find friends to share them with? Since last night I have been getting little glimpses of my heart that is beyond the painful coverings over, and it tells me (though I so resist believing it) that following it and attempting to express what I find there is still an antidote to the fear.

Kasey Musgraves’ refrain “follow your arrow wherever it points” has been on my mind as I write this and over the last few days too. I just don’t know if I have maybe run out of arrows. I wish for confirmation that I am just human and not broken but oh how lately it has felt that I just can’t do anything right. My mother likes that song. More and more I am trusting that she didn’t mean to hurt me, but her husband, I know he did, and it is so alienating that I will never be able to convince my mother of that fact. If she only knew what he recorded for the hospital that abused me, but there is.no way she would ever believe me; and if she only knew what I went through, but she keeps forgetting and saying over and again that I need to find out why I feel so sad and scared… but I keep attempting to tell her why. I need is to figure out how to feel better. But how?

I keep coming across the concept of ‘parental alienation’ the last few days when just looking for stuff on alienation por lo general, and it might sort of fit: I think my mother’s husband, and who knows who else, may be subtly sabotaging my trust in my mother, making me believe she must hate me… and oh, I hate to believe that if that is his cruel intention all along. It is not explicit ‘parental alienation’, but he did it through the hospital, among other things, in subtle ways that if my mother *does* love me (as she is trying harder and harder to convince me if lately) she certainly dioes not know that he means to sabotage our relationship and my trust in her… and in life… but right now I feel that is what is happening, and honestly, to let him take my mother away from me? So painful and confusing. It is like unspoken parental alienation where one parent never knows the other means to set the child against them. It made me fear as far as having no idea who or what I can trust, took away the little sense if ground I had left.

Last night I dreamed President Biden took me to my very own room and I got to spend a night sleeping at the White House! The president was supposed to meet up with me again but I got totally lost in all sorts if strange rooms — like a beer room? — that you would never think to find at the White House. I got lost and despite a certain sense of quaintness in my dream it was really, really huge… especially from the inside!

The other day I despaired thinking about the Thoreau quote my Open Diary friend shared with me when she so generously bought me a subscription after friends were being mean to me: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” But I feel like I built castles in the air, and lost all my work (and my diaries to boot) and my castles thave crumbled along with my heart and I don’t know how to put foundations under them. It feels too late to put down a foundation over the sand castles I feel like I so tragically crushed with my own two hands… oh, what am I to do?