#shitpost from my capsule hotel | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

kado-maschine · 3 years

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How to be alone?

Everyone has problems right? Those who don't, either don't understand what the term problem means, or they are inanimate matter, but even inanimate matter has problems too because of entropy.

Anyhow, my scariest bogeyman is that at best I can't make a relationship work, and at worst I even avoid the chance of having one. Why? If I want to put it simply, fuck knows. Thing is that I'm not gonna put it simple this time, as what I have learned from fake news propagated by Russian troll armies is that everything that is simple, sensational and easy to understand is not very productive apart from having the intention to muddy the waters and serve a very select few by doing so.

Since my interest is to clarify things for my own good (and maybe help or at least entertain others), truth is the name of the game with this writing (whatever it turns out to be). If there will be no other benefits, at least I’m going to be able to cross off the mental task off my imaginary to do list.

One day, after having a rather enjoyable horse at the vet sensation, as I went to bed I had the same sensation that I was having as a child on countless occasions when I couldn't sleep or woke up randomly during the night. The bed, the sheets and most importantly the pillows felt like they are made some rigid, abrasive material, that is also disgusting. It felt like being embraced by disgust and bitterness. Normally my bed and I are best buddies, I love to sleep and I had no problem falling asleep on a beam bag in the middle of the office, during business hours. The chemistry was also supposed to help, not to deteriorate. Fast forward a few weeks while sitting on the bed and drinking a cuba made of free rum and overpriced PEPSI from the hotel's mini fridge I'm trying to figure out, when and why was I having problems with sleep before and when was I sleeping like a baby and why. In recent history, since my memory is one very slippery slope, the answer is a no, a no regarding detectable issues with my sleep. It is a no, as long as all the nights spent with gaming, night shifts or digging through obscure forums to find a track in a mix somewhere between minute 53 and 57 are not considered. Reflecting on the whole experience described above, I must have had trouble sleeping when I was a really small child and I was missing a lot. As I was growing up things got gradually better. By the time I was in high school the wardrobe have been conquered and turned into my gaming nest. The gaming room hosted my first gaming pc that I built piece by piece from a shitty Athlon that dad got screwed over by some "friend" and beloved games that kept me glued to the screen for hours on end. After the PC came my first car, job, girlfriend and slowly but surely as I moved away from my parents my own life really started to take shape. I have slept better and better. Now, armed with a mortgage, with two cars that possibly cost as much put together as a front bumper for a brand new BMW M3, two cats who are by far not the smartest but they keep me company and are cute af, two bicycles, a bunch of computers and a job that I'm grateful to have and one that fits my questionable attitude towards work, I yet again arrived to the point where the quality of my sleep is degrading faster than a space capsule entering the atmosphere, despite all the the things listed above were part of what I was dreaming of as a child and teenager/student.

Despite all of these, I'm oscillating between two states when it comes to sleep. One is the depression sleep, after taking a long hard look at my backlog that reaches to the Moon and back at least five times, taking a nap seems to be the only viable option, or multiple naps, or a humongous sleep where the only thing that can get me out of bed is the need to pee. The other one is the let's try to solve all of my problems in a purely theoretical manner, right before sleep, going over the same problems over and over, while making wild conspiracy theories about myself, because of the purely hypothetical setting. This mental kung-fu under some circumstances can turn into the above mentioned “being embraced by disgust” thing. How did I get here?

I've seen people being happier while having a lot less. What is that they have and I do not possess? Intimacy, I guess by the power of exclusion. Of course I could just short this whole thing before it gets off the ground, as a self-proclaimed good capitalist. I could say that If I can make enough money, someone will fake it for me for the financial benefit and as long as this someone does the thing right and tricks to my brain, I couldn't give less a of a fuck, or could I? Anyhow, with my current work ethic of extracting as much resources as possible form as little invested work as possible puts a cap on my earnings that limits my financial possibilities to roadside STD intimacy. Shut up! - screams the humanist from somewhere between repressed emotions and avoided social responsibilities. You have to make things work, otherwise you're just treating the symptoms, but the root cause remains and will re-surface over and over again - he continues. Now, call me Susan and you know the rest... A multitude of attempts were made to solve this mess, so I kept failing in various ways. Yes, my now my mantra is "failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, success, failure, failure, success". Despite this attitude, one can only take so many failures before feeling exhausted and gets worse at the task on hand because of said tiredness and fails even more. People also tend to tell me that I need to learn to be happy alone. Please, shut the fuck up. Despite my shitposting, which i find genuinely funny, good and somewhat toxic way of escapism, I can be happy when I'm alone. Just to bring one example to the table, the road to this very hotel room where I'm writing this whatever right now, took me through one of the twistiest mountain passes that gets you outside of the Carpathian basin, the road goes through the city of Cheia (BV) and it has dozens upon dozens of hairpins one after another and miles upon miles of narrow, twisty roads with a bunch of elevation changes. My right foot just couldn’t care about fuel consumption. With my tires squealing in almost every corner and I was laughing loudly in the car, spanking the dash and shouting "ohh yea" while I could let the steering wheel loose for a few seconds. Dancing alone in the living room when the track of the week or month hits out of the blue, or when the right people at the right party are found to have "deep" conversations about whatever stupid topics that our brain soaking in whatever cocktail finds to be fit for purpose. The thing is, if one spent somewhere in the neighbourhood of six years trying all the gizmos and distractions of the modern society to make him or herself be happy without intimacy and succeeded to some extent, but at the same time realized that hundreds of thousands of years of evolutional biology and al the workflows tied into it cannot be cheated in a lifespan, what are the limits for being happy alone?

I have reached a point where the things that cause me unconditional pleasure are getting very complicated, time consuming, expensive or dangerous, like buying car parts, pushing transportation devices to their limits, gambling with bs crypto currencies or trying to learn skills with a heck of a learning curve, not to mention experimenting with chemically induced changes in my brain activity. I have also reached a point where it gets harder and harder to trick my biology. The ape says reproduce, while this in the modern era where global warming is prevalent and innocent eyed orphans are making t-shirts in Bangladesh for next to nothing in a sweatshop, while China’s rivers deliver more plastic to the oceans than water kind world makes no sense. I could at least fool the ape with just having someone around and occasionally making love or engaging in other forms of intimacy. At least the thresholds would be closer and it would be a lot simpler to fool the inner ape and the hormone levels wouldn't need to filled up with lies that much. Besides the raw biological teardown, having someone around as a partner where the positive interactions outweigh the negative ones could be the basis of a symbiosis between two humans.

If some intimacy / sex / company would help, why I’m not having any? - the question poses. In theory, the ins and outs have been mapped out. It all started, as it mostly does, during childhood. The marriage of my parents went totally south when my sister was born and I had 4 years, so my long term memory just started working. This meant that my memory had no part of seeing a single act of intimacy of my primary caregivers towards each other, just shouting, aside from my grandmother and my favourite aunt giving me a hug sometimes. It was a real battle zone where a few hours without shouting were far and few between. This and a lot of other shit that my parents were haunted by, courtesy of their own pasts gave me exactly zero knowledge on how to read woman. I’m basically fucking blind. Even if I was any good at maths I would loose count of the occasions when someone told me, “Look at that girl / woman, how she’s looking at us / you” and I had to ask where to look, in terms of general direction, not to mention the ability to pick up small signs. How do I see the sign, if a year or so have passed since we ’been together and I didn’t know the eye colour of my first girlfriend. Sounds surprising right? Well, when batshit crazy is considered normal for the first 20 years of your life, climbing out of that perspective has quite a learning curve. If that learning curve weren’t damn steep enough as is, add a stupid decision to it, and be very disciplined about that stupid decision for years, and the shitstorm will be near perfect. But I come back to the near perfection of the shitstorm in a bit.

First of all, how about that first girlfriend and the stupid decision? I think I might have been 18yo when I had my first kiss and I was 19yo when I met my first girlfriend. I would have never ended up her boyfriend if I wasn’t drunk on a particular party and were just kissed by another girl who was into me boosting my morale, the cherry on the top of the cake being that I knew from a friend of my sister that my would be ex was into me. All these factors played into the hand of a relationship that lasted two and a half years and could have been a major leaping stone for me. She looked gorgeous and a chemistry was spot on. We learned things together and I learned how and where and when to touch a woman. Since I was still in the grasp of the narrow conservative (small rural town, what do you expect?) mindset I did and said a bunch of things I’m not proud of. Hopefully she learnt more from those lessons as much as I did or even more. So, why wasn’t this relationship the bridge between my loneliness and the ability to have functioning relationships? Why instead of being a leaping stone I stumbled and fell into a ditch head first?

When it ended, the feeling was so shitty, that the most logical conclusion to my very simplistic mind was to avoid feeling like that again altogether, therefore becoming cold and distant become the primary guidelines. Six years of loneliness ensued. Going without sex, kissing anyone or hugging could be easily measured in moths or even a year. Months have passed between occasional one night stands, where the hunter was determined or drunk enough to not to care about my cluelessness, or the hunted was drunk enough to not to be totally unapproachable or clueless or both. Even if they were looking to turn the one night stand into multiple nights or maybe a relationship, due to the long stretches of loneliness and due to the weird sexual expectations that arose during said long stretches of nothingness, I felt so weird and ashamed of myself, that I turned down further invitations and couldn’t bring myself to talk to them. Basically, from their perspective, I had sex with them, than I disappeared in the ether. I have managed to show myself in a successful a-hole kind a way, while I felt like the most unlucky, ugly and talentless piece of shit (now that’s what I call “an achievement”).

Despite the fact that I found myself highly repulsive for a long time, hiding behind sunglasses and foundation I had enough self confidence to let woman try. And boy oh boy, they did try. Those who were more desperate were more determined, while those who had multiple choices open had a look, maybe had some fun and than left seeing the vast cluster of insecurities behind the sketchy façade that looked enticing from a distance, but fell apart upon closer inspection. People told me that I was good looking and I should have a girlfriend and I truly believed for years that they were only saying this to save face. Now, looking back, I’m starting to realize that I’m not ugly, I might even be good looking by some metrics. This realization came as the memory lane of old pictures was revisited again and again. Upon closer inspection all the woman around me, hugging me, giving me kisses on photos became evident. It is one thing that I couldn’t capitalize on any of that, but I realized, how lucky am I that genetics favoured me. Elsewise, if the gene pool wouldn’t have been kind to me at least in this department, I would be the most neglected man, considering my social and dating skills. Or the lack thereof, to be more precise. One thing to be grateful for.

Before this realization occurred, I shit you not, I had to realize first, that the policy I applied after I broke up with my first girlfriend was seriously affecting me. It was like one of those cases, when a temporary workaround is put in place for something, everyone forgets about it, than it causes a major shitstorm in the long run when something breaks down the line, messing up a forgotten but needed dependency. Before this realization life went by casually in a perfect state of cognitive dissonance, by not willing to open up for anyone, not willing to pay attention to anyone’s feelings and yet craving intimacy and blaming the world for not providing any.

So ok, during the time it took for the realization to kick in some amazing woman drifted away. ”What do you do now, you dumb fucking bitch?” - asks one part of the brain. “Well, you stand up, use less swearwords, or edit them out later and keep moving on hoping that each failure at least landed some useful experience points that can be used as a solid base for improvement.” - says the other. So this is how the journey of relationship 101 and emotion handling begun.

Phase 1. Trying to establish a relationship, but being emotionally unavailable.

There’s was a girl who added me on facebook after after a party and somehow I managed to puzzle the picture together. She was there, she saw me playing music, she liked me and she tried to reach out. We have started talking, we have started going out and we kept going out without me doing any advances for 3 moths, when she finally had enough and invited me over to her place to watch Narcos. That night was followed by a relationship that lasted approx two months when she kicked me out, calling me insensitive and unable to care for her emotionally. She was totally right.

Moving on, I drop a comment on some meme posted by one of the girls I met at the University a few years ago. She replies to my comment, I reply to hers, the discussion moves to chat. After a couple of days she tells me that she is coming home from abroad and we shall meet. I agree. The meeting happens, other things happen, we get along really well, meet two more times and consider ourselves to be in a long distance relationship. She’s very enthusiastic, wants to communicate with me, she’s being cute and I’m still 100% emotionally unavailable. When I finally decide to visit her, after dragging the topic for months, she cuts me loose. Rightfully so. Off course, I delete her from social media, and decide that whatever, I’ll make enough money so someone will stay with me for that, even if I’m an emotional iceberg laced with titanium (un-fucking-penetrable). What an utterly crappy response to being rejected, says captain hindsight.

Phase 2. Overflow.

Next up, wasted on party (but in a mildly good way) and another girl who remembers me from a festival that took place years ago initiates a conversation and I end up hanging out with her and all of her girlfriends. We party, we talk, we decide to go to an after at their place. Due to administrative reasons when I get there only one of them is there, so we start talking. Meanwhile people are arriving, chemicals are wearing off and kicking in, dynamics change. Finally everyone gives in and we sleep together. The next day (because the next days always counts from the moment when you wake up) we talk, have a long walk, I unload a mental excel of pros and cons about myself to her since honesty can only be good (later on my psychologist tells me the contrary, since what I do is scary and things should be let to unravel by themselves) and I leave town. After my short city break is over we decide to meet and she’s over at my place before I could blink. We start hanging out more and more. Even If I have the tendency to make the same mistakes over and over again, just to be sure that they are mistakes and I have mastered the recipe, this time I knew that I have to open myself up. The theoretical part was ok, as the plan was to move slowly and open myself up step by step over an extended period of time. Unfortunately the gap between theory and practice sometimes can accommodate a few light years in between, so all of the emotions that I managed to bottle up over the years managed to get out after only a few careful steps. She had her own problems, I had mine and they didn’t make a good combination, but a rather unfortunate one. Disregarding the fact that I have tried to invest emotionally, I still couldn’t care for her emotional needs. The whole thing blew up in my face, basically. Being blind to anything that is less obvious than she suddenly turning to me in the middle of the night and saying, “I have to go home”, and having the alarm of something is not right going off is not the hallmark of being ready for a relationship. Another part of the lecture was that revealing rating systems to woman about woman is a double edged ice cream that mostly licks back instead of being licked. For those who don’t view the world from an engineering / mathematical (call it as you fancy) perspective, there are people out there who measure and categorize everything. This in a relation means that the relevant parameters like, looks, intelligence (or the lack thereof), like mindedness, biological match, size of the cultural gap (if applies), financial and social situation are all measured on a scale and the weighted average tells if the other person is a match or not, and how good a match it is. Unfolding this information in my situation turned out to be a major no-no. Based on the very narrow sample, I was convinced that this is how it is and I should never again reveal my rating system ever again. Luckily, lately a friend of mine told me that his girlfriend appreciated this kind of approach, so the analytics based way of thinking is not my mental dead end, only it has to be used after a lot of observation and in the right situation with the right people as the “target audience” seems to be quite small. By the time we got to the point of me revealing my rating system, red flags were flying all over. Thing is red flags are easy to miss even with experience not to mention barely having any. When you add that up to the fact that you need a planetary alignment that occurs every 5000 years to be able to get close to someone, you also finally manage to let your guard down and you know that giving up on things is generally considered bad and dedication is king, those red flags are rendered inexistent in the quantum soup of thoughts. All of the above combined leads to the materialization of one very specific dynamic in attachment theory, where the anxious one is trying to get closer and to invest more in general, while the avoidant is getting further and further away, creating a situation where both feel frustrated. Fast forward a little (as the whole thing lasted two months), she cuts me loose and I have no clue how to deal with the tsunami of the emotions that are now very much on the surface and the pink cloud that acted as a distraction is gone and the withdrawal starts to kick in. A downward spiral begins that ends with being so desperate to escape the sensation of a panic attack being one mental “block” away that I start taking random meds and drinking, because at one point they have to override my emotions. I don’t want to kill myself per se, but I made peace with the thought that if I need to die to escape that state of mind, I’m fine with it.

Luckily since I’m an attention whore, I’m not doing this in total silence and even if I’m not being totally upfront about it, my friends and people who are not my friends but are nice people and just care realize that something is off and rush in to help. Their intentions are really good, however, most of them are not experts and just share their best practices. Five or six best practices in, one is confused as fekk. This confusion is that finally pushes me through the barrier to seek professional help. Luck was by my side as I found a psychologist I could work with from the get go. As we were moving forward with therapy I was still trying to resuscitate a very dead relationship. The contrast between my interactions with the therapist and my ex were miles apart. While I was still rowing the waters “make her feel sorry for me” and told her how I tried to get my overboiling emotions in check, scaring her tremendously, creating a mess of emotions for both of us, the how's and whys and the to-dos were very clear during therapy. At one point the psychologist said that “You see the situation very clearly, you are also very conscious about what you did and what are the possible ramifications of your actions and you also have a plan as to how to fix them, why are you here?” My answer was simple: “While I’m in a state of rest, where I’m not being cornered by my own emotions all is clear, however, once shit hits the fan, all of the logic that was nicely put together goes out of the window and I start acting borderline crazy”.

As the therapy sessions flew by and the links to my ex started to fade, things ere starting to stabilize. All that was left is what I call “light general depression”. Light general depression is exactly what its name stands for. It doesn’t contain joy (apart from chain-smoking, watching tons of YouTube videos about video games and cars, binge eating pizza and ice cream and drinking herculean amounts of rum), existing feels bad and pointless, but it is not terrible, there are no big ups and downs and existence in this state can go on for extended periods time. As one of these days passed by as experienced from the warm hug of an unnecessarily long bath I randomly texted a friend to see what is she up to. She was hanging out by herself, drinking and asked me if I wanted to join, so I did. By the time I got there another woman was at the table. Nothing special, we introduced ourselves and carried on drinking. I did not find this new addition to my pool of acquaintances physically attractive, that under normal circumstances could have been a trigger, however she was very intriguing. As the alcohol levels in our blood gained an ever larger foothold, the discussion suddenly turned into one of those that go down the rabbit hole of serious emotions and life experiences. I love these discussions (hence the experience, wink wink), they are the bread and butter of why am I socializing. It is almost pointless to say that as the discussion turned into the two of us going on a philosophical rampage about depression and explaining the how’s and why’s to anyone around us the spark went off. Finally, as the night came to a close and everyone said their goodbyes only the two of us were left walking the through the streets bursting with nightlife telling more and more intimate stories about ourselves. As we reached her place and said goodbye I got stuck in the mental loop of what to do after a meeting and discussion like this. Luckily she promptly bypassed the situation by shaking my hand and telling me something along the lines of “till next time”. The next day the temptation was simply irresistible not to stalk her online. By the time I got a glimpse of her through her profile her friend request already landed safely.

She left town for a few weeks (if I’d be religious or into spiritual stuff, I’d say there’s a link to the previous relationship, luckily I am not, life is just hugely random), but we agreed that I would take her to party when she comes back, since she haven’t been to one since her son was born. Meanwhile I also found out that she had what she described as a “sort of boyfriend”. While all of this was unravelling my brain dripping with curiosity kicked me into higher and higher gears as my taste of the unusual and complicated got ever more triggered. Finally the day of the party came and it was the best party I ever attended where I didn’t like the music at all. We really connected. Looking back at that level of connection, I couldn’t tell if we were really alike in some terms and hugely different in others, or she is just simply darn good at showing what people would like to see. A few days later she invited me to watch a movie, we watched the whole movie without me totally being unable to do any advances, again, unless we finally decided to sleep. Things happened. That night was the starting point of a journey that lasted 7 months and included lots of love, lots of desperation, living together with ex boyfriends, handling a spoiled 4 year old boy, discussing and trying to come to terms with a father that got lost in the ether, lots of calculated action combined with a shit-ton of impulsivity and lot more. What I learned in this relationship about trauma, falling victim of compensating for trauma, overusing resources without considering the future, keeping something useless and counterproductive in your life just because it makes you feel superior, utterly useless - clueless and spoiled people, the consequences of being inconsistent in a child’s education hopefully could fill pages on its own, If I managed to learn something. All of this is still just scratching the surface. The full and detailed version of said list serves material for more writings as this paragraph could go on for dozens of pages, but it won’t to avoid further side-tracking. Also, some of these lessons still need processing time for the sake of being able to paint a picture that is more accurate rather than soaked with emotions. What is certain is that at least one writing (if not more) about overprotective parents running the risk of handicapping their children, involuntary hostage taking and kindness as a useless perk if not accompanied by other skills will come at one point. With the this pitch out of the way, let’s get back to the relationship itself. To put it simply, there was this man, dressed in black from head to toe, wearing black nail polish occasionally, being a strong proponent for nihilism and putting himself at risk for the excitement of being exposed to risk while also testing all sorts of limits because an “engineer” has to know the limits, right? During the course of a few months this man had a child seat in the back of his car, learned how to micromanage educational failures by measuring, not just feeling and truly cared for the wellbeing of a few people. He had the impression that he found his place in a world where he previously tried to fill the void by proving the pointlessness of life through reckless (and very fun) activities. Thrusters were set to 110% as the pink fog of “this is it, we have to commit and do this” descended on the brain cells locked in a hormone fuelled frenzy. Finally I experienced a Christmas where I felt happy and loved instead of trying to avoid conflict and hating the world in general.

While I was working on getting myself involved in a hot, crazy mess, thrusters 110% on, I happened to stay at my former flatmate’s parents for two days. I love going there, not just because it served as a perfect base for a weekend of partying, but it is one of those places where a family functions in a symbiosis, not co-dependence. Very-very-very fucking important difference. I love to see how people interact with one another when the main driving force is not fear, but understanding, where attachment comes from the light, not darkness. Even now it makes me to slightly tear up to know, that family can be good, not something to avoid as much as possible, if handled properly. Sights like these give hope. Anyhow, before this detour gets too big, I had good chat with my ex flatmate’s mom where she told me “Kado, don’t look for woman who fit you best, look for someone simple who is capable to learn”. Objectively speaking, this was the best advice I ever received about dating. Worry not, this will not be left unexplained, jut not right now.

So with this advice in mind, the weekend ended and the quest of getting myself deeper into the murky waters of chronic co-dependence was back. As the first few months of the relation flew by and we went from low profile affair to we’re together now and everyone should know about it, more and more details emerged of an ex that could only commit to a relationship when the imminent loss of her partner is present. It also became clear that his incompetence serves as his major attraction, since a man that is kind, but lacks any purpose and logic to derive any said purpose is highly desirable for an ego that cherishes being superior. It became evident how this dynamic eroded seven or so years of the than “woman of my dreams” into a quagmire. My nativity was strong enough to redirect the previously mentioned thrusters to pull her out of the quagmire by the power of micromanagement. The end result hovering in the distance was that my help could propel her to regain traction. As soon as she will be in a better place and I can get just a bit more of those tiny glimpses of her former happy self, we’ll be on track to create what we referred to as a “power couple”. However, one thing that flew under my radar and finally led to the demise of this premise was an important conclusion drawn after years of being a cog in the corporate machine. Never give 100%, maybe at the beginning, but not even then. Not to talk about 110%, as no person can operate on those levels for months on end, unless driven by amphetamines or coke, but that will take an even higher price in the longer run. If one still decides to go down this path, burnout will be just around the corner. When said burnout meets with someone who needs therapy rather than relationships, shit will go down. Empathy will run out after the same mistake leads to the same crisis for the zillionth time, emotional attachment generates fear in conjunction with each re-occurring crisis and “the you shouldn’t do this, you should do that” tone prevails. The thing is, if I look at my ability to get very cruel, cold and calculating when feeling emotionally cornered as gift or as a curse, it doesn’t matter, it still happens. Detailing to a mother how others managed to solve something with relative ease that she couldn’t or barely could and that she should do this and that, in that situation is a major no-no. I think when it comes about parenting, egos flight higher than Icarus. As one of the cornerstones of empathy is to try to put yourself in the shoes of others, I tired imagining how it could feel like if someone, dunnoh, attacked me because I can’t do maths for shit, or that I have a tendency to abandon my plans. In conclusion, the grey matter sitting inside this skull that is producing these lines might just feel comfortable when it comes to shedding ego. Whit our dynamics auto optimizing themselves to counteract one another in a pretty toxic way, the inevitable happened. We agreed that we can’t understand one another no more, therefore it was time to break up.

In order to minimize the pain a full communication lockdown went in effect to add another twist to the Covid-19 lockdown. This combined with making a few new friends while doubling down on substance abuse spiced with getting into relapse territory with other woman got me ticking along. I think it is pointless to say that this mechanism used for calming emotions wasn’t the best. First, natural coping mechanisms were obliterated even before getting a theoretical shape, not to talk about trying them and maybe getting some experience, second, these coping mechanisms took their own toll on my body and psyche and third, they crumbled in the very moment when my ex reached out to me to normalize our relation as two human beings who happen to know one another. It only took a few hours for the stream of emotions to turn into whirlpool of anger and darkness where my criminal mind flourishes. And boy do I have a criminal mind. When the going gets rough it isn’t like I can’t control myself and start shouting, and throwing things around. No-no, it’s not like that at all, but it is like making plans, evil plans, plans that would make a drug cartel hitman nod in approval. The way these “solutions” from the dark end of the spectrum interact with checks and balances look like: “what I would say of a totally unrelated person who does that” or “what were the consequences if my plans were revealed and such”. This time, all these impulses distilled in ever more frequent and strategic use of creating constructive ambiguity by selectively revealing secrets and manipulation. The cherry on the top was put in place when she reached out to me when she tried to re-establish post breakup communication, consisting in grabbing all sorts of dark echoes that race through my mind, amplifying them and revealing them to her in order to make sure that she’ll be convinced that I’m a horrible, dangerous and aggressive person underneath, therefore she’ll never attempt to communicate with me, ever. It wasn’t nice, at all, but it was violence free apart from me running my mouth and it worked, for a while.

So far so good, the plan worked great. I made friends with new people, both offline and online and I had a few who were interested in me and maybe still are (as you might have noticed so far, can’t really tell). The plan was to get some mileage into the game and get more experience points and to learn, for which diversity is essential. There was a week where I had 4 dates, with 2 happening on the very same day. Result? Let’s not call it a total fucking bummer, but let’s go with a “valuable lesson”, ok? Why? One person stood out and everybody else faded into the shadows of absolute zero interest.

People who intrigue me are the ones that I feel a longing for. These are the people who have my instant and unconditional support as soon as they ask, these are the people I’m paying attention to and these are the people that I use as examples to follow in certain walks of life. So, there was one date who stood out and baaam, just like that, interest for anyone else vanished like lines from a broken phone screen at a rave. This one person turned out to be someone who exploits life just as I do, or even to a greater extent when the conditions are set. She likes adrenaline, playing around with thoughts not being afraid to be cut by some rough edges, going fast, views substances as mere tools, not like something good or bad and last but not least, she is the best looking, besides ticking a few other boxes. Did all the positives yielded a relationship or even a one night stand? Absolutely not. Was this a problem? Maybe from the perspective of my reproductive instincts, but from any other perspectives, it was interesting at worst and beneficiary at best. There are a bunch of people who tell good and bad Tinder date stories, however I haven’t heard a single one up to date that could match the level of renovate a bathroom on a tinder date. The bathroom turned out to be something both of us are showing with pride and I have learned about the ins and outs of tiling. It was also refreshing to see when a relationship between two people is based more in rational thinking than dragged by emotions, as it was the perfect contrast for my ex girlfriend who basically managed to turn a life of success into a quagmire by giving the executive powers to her unhinged emotions.

What have we learned?

When a bunch of things fail to be turned into happy factories, let it be hedonism, creativity, hard work, sport or other kinds of hobbies, all kick in the feeling of “geez, I did that, but the I have to get to the next level to evade boredom and constantly levelling up is hard work” so doing literally anything gets turned into a chore. Shitting and washing ass can feel like a chore, just like hanging out with friends can so one inevitably pulls out the good old question of “is my brain just unable to make the happy stuff and if so, what’s the purpose of living?”. After talking with quite a few people who contemplated suicide, or people who lost a loved one to suicide, one thing was clear from the get go, I will not hang myself. Based on the frequency of suicide by hanging I can only conclude that people either have a huge imbalance between being emotionally driven or just simply being very sick and incapable of any rational thought. Why? Death by suffocation combined with the rupture of the spinal cord sounds like the worst thing ever. On the other hand, driving into a solid concrete wall at any speed near 100 km/h is guaranteed death. Driving into a solid wall at 200 km/h is massive overkill and it could be proven as an accident which could make lives for relatives easier if tricky life insurance policies are in place. Finances aside, there are other policies in place for reasons like seeing the misery of those who get left behind to live and let all the people who I consider idiots to outlive me. Like seriously, if some have been labelled as idiots by some metrics of mine and they outlive me, it means that my metrics and the logic based on those metrics was flawed, proven by my very demise.

So yea, what do you do when relationships don’t work out, you can’t seem to obtain them and self destruction is also off the table? Well, since we’re all caged to some degree due to the pandemic and I already raised my alcohol tolerance to stellar levels, it was the damn time to get myself busy. To really dig into my job and to force myself to do tasks that I have just passed to someone saying I can’t hack it, to start reading stuff, to start learning stuff to start exercising and most important of all, to create routines. Routines are awesome. If nothing makes sense, at least that nothing is done on a regular basis and the very fact that nothing amounts to anything if done on a daily basis is kind of a feet and gives a chance to dopamine production.

I have also learned that having sex after a hiatus of 10 months doesn’t improve things as much as I thought, which is good, because it also means that things do not degrade a lot from prolonged abstinence.

Where to now? I guess I’ll just try focusing on myself rather than trying to please others by forcing myself into the “normie puzzle”. I’ll leave myself open for options, since it would be rather counterproductive to Sméagol hiss away anyone who tries to approach me, but it might happen nonetheless.

And one last bit before I cut this writing short at the 11th or so page... If you’re interested in me, do something. Playing the get hard card just plain simply won’t work. If I don’t get any feedback like in a 50-50 distribution style I’ll feel discouraged and move on. I’m also plain stupid when it comes to decoding slight hints (as I’ve hinted at multiple times in this text). Be blunt about it, otherwise it might go totally unnoticed. Last but not least, if you’re not interested, please don’t fekking smile at me and more importantly don’t touch me. I know, theoretically that people can be nice with one another without wanting more, but it doesn’t work for me. If you do that, I’ll reach out to spend more time together, you’ll gonna reject me and I’m going to throw you on the pile failed attempts that is getting ever more poisonous and has a high chance of totally wrecking my mood by the time someone genuinely interested would come about.

I might also try to get more disciplined since it took me more than five months to throw up these characters. I sincerely hope that I wasted your time in a way that some part of what I wrote resonates with you, maybe helps you or you found it amusing at least. Peace out.

Update: some things have changed since I wrote this piece, I got new pieces of information and the story of my craziest adventure got a healthy boost. However, if I were to re-write and edit this text in accordance to all those things, it is highly possible that it would never come out. As one of my favourite hot rod builder puts it “Lower your expectations until you reach your goals”.

#relationships #depression #learning #development #desperatio #hope #lessons

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