The Fear Of Being Discovered.

Not too long ago, I had someone ask me how I felt about them reading my eyes.  That might not make much sense, so let me explain.  I believe, rightly or wrongly I don’t know, that you can tell volumes about a person simply by looking them in the eye.  I call that eye reading, and I know of several other people who do the same.  But it’s more profound than that, there’s more to it than that.  I don’t know how to explain it, but I can say that the ability is not something that everyone possesses.  And there are comparatively few people who can read me.  I think the person who was asking, in this case, can, but that is the matter for another entry.  When they asked me how I felt about it, I was left with a terrible panic I’ve not felt for a long time, and it brought back something very poignant about all my ‘terrible relationship stories’ that are so prevalent on my diary.

First, so I can clarify, from the time that I got dumped at prom all those years ago, it has been far more likely that I have been the dumper than the dumpee, much to my chagrin.  So don’t believe me if I sound like I’m whining because I’ve been mistreated.  There was a time in my life where I could have said that and it would have been the truth.  That time is not now.  Since the end of my junior year of high school, I have bailed out on more relationships and potential relationships than I was the one being bailed on.  So if you think you hear me saying that I’ve been mistreated recently, I give you permission to call me on it–it’s a flat untruth.

Alright, now to the real purpose of the entry.  (I’m looking forward to this new 30K character limit.)  Before I get to it, I want to give you an example, so you’ll have something to look at as you read.  As I’ve written before, after I graduated high school, I met a girl a few years older than me who I started a relationship with.  She was patient and kind and great in every way I can imagine.  She came from a family who loved Jesus, and she was a solid a woman as I have ever met (and I know some great women).  In the entry I linked above, the girl I’m talking about is the one I’ve so charmingly labeled MISTAKE #3 on that entry.  That’s a misnomer.  It wasn’t a mistake.  That was one of the most mistake-free decisions I’ve ever made.  And that was the problem.

If you’ve been reading my diary long enough, you know that I have some pretty serious self-image issues that I struggle with.  If such a thing is possible, and apparently it is, I have both an enormous ego and approximately zero self-image simultaneously.  I don’t know how that dynamic tension works in me, but honestly, I think it would take a team of trained therapists, counselors and shrinks to figure out.  At any rate, whenever I get close to being in a relationship, you see this come into play.

This is where this gets tricky to explain, but I’ll do the best I can.  I have the overwhelming desire, be it ego or whatever, to get into relationships with these spectacular women.  And I mean that in all seriousness.  In the last five years, every single woman I’ve been interested in is a woman that I would place in the top 1% of the coolest chicks I’ve ever known.  That might be an ego thing, I don’t know.  Another part of it might be that on some level, I think that I am in the top 1% of guys on some level I don’t want to admit (laugh with me, please at that ridiculousness of that claim).  Alright, now that I’ve said that, understand the opposite side of me in how that plays out.  Ultimately, I conclude that though the only women I am interested in are these incredible, amazing, dynamic women, none of them could possibly want me, because of something they probably don’t know about me.  I’m not sure what that is, exactly, but somehow, I imagine it is this horrible thing that if anyone ever saw, they would shun me and ignore me forever.  Are you following this so far?  I simultaneously believe that I deserve, on some level, to be with these spectacular chicks.  At the same time, I also believe that I am not worthy to kiss the hem of their garments, and if any of them every really got to know me, that they wouldn’t even look me in the face, much less want to be in a relationship with me.  What it creates is a scenario that looks something like this:

I get very interested in such and such a woman.  I build the situation up in my mind, and think of every possible reason why this might work.  I go through this big long process of how I might reveal myself to them, win their affection, etc, etc.  Finally, the moment comes, and I reveal myself, and I can’t make myself go through with exposing myself the entire way, to fully invite them into my life in a real and tangible way, and instead, I simply make the confession process a way for me to get out of it.  I say my peace, I assume that there isn’t a way they could possibly be interested in a bum like me, and I move on.

In the example I gave earlier, after spending time with the girl’s family, I realized that I had no pedigree to compare to what I perceived in their family.  It’s not that I don’t love my family and where I came from, but it’s kind of like I didn’t belong in that world.  I figured a day would come when the girl would find out that I had drinking and cursing issues, and that there was something very dark about me, and she would leave me as soon as she got the knowledge.  The possibility that she might have wanted to stay with me after finding out seemed (and still seems) impossible to me.  Oh me of little faith.  (And yes, this is another place my pessimism rears it’s ugly head.)  And even if she was willing to deal with my issues, I’m committed to dealing with my family, one part of which is almost exclusively alcoholic, and I didn’t figure that anyone would be willing to take that either.  In short, I assumed that no one wanted to live the life that I feel I have to live, and I haven’t even bothered to put enough faith in people to ask them before I call it impossible and go back to my lonely room.

So, to sum this up, I don’t get into relationships because I believe that any girl I could be interested in would not want to deal with the secret baggage I carry, even though I have no idea what that baggage might be, or when or how it would even manifest itself.  In short, I believe that everything people say is good about me is only their response to the part I project, and that if anyone ever saw the real me, they’d be so disgusted they’d never talk to me again.  Shame?  Yeah.  Agony?  Yeah.  Loneliness?  You don’t even have the first idea.  It wasn’t because I wanted to be single that I resigned myself to being alone and self-dependent, it was because I was more comfortable with that than the possibility of someone finding out something about me they couldn’t take once they were already committed to me in one way or another.  I push people away.  I hide things from people.  And I built an entire rule structure around the beliefs to make sure that no one got close enough t