A New Perspective - 18Mar2012

I've had a really interesting change of perspectives lately.  I've been experiencing a lot of feelings of numbness lately.  It something that comes and goes and thankfully has been spending more time going than coming the last week.  Two things have been on my mind a lot.  One of them is friendship and the other is plans that I have for my life.

As for friendship, I've found myself over the last few weeks (arguably months) worrying over the fact that I didn't have any closer friends.  I've been thinking back to all the people I've met at college, at previous work places, at places like Journey Into Manhood and Evergreen, and wondering why I hardly ever hear from any of those people. 

I have a tendency when I think about this to first start to feel angry toward the other people.  I start to blame them for no sort of friendship forming.  Then I start to shift all the blame to myself.  I start to think that I didn't try hard enough, or that something is wrong with me.  I start to think that I was either too uninteresting or that I scared the person off.  Lately, I got a huge piece of insight into this.  I realize that one reason I was struggling with having any feelings of a close friendship is because I've been too absorbed in my own problems, faults, and struggles.  I've been very emotionally needy and draining, in my judgement.  I judge that I've been scaring away, pushing away, or simply ignoring potential friends and possibly alienating myself from existing friends.  I sometimes wonder if being too needy and demanding on past people has led to friendships either not forming, or causing other friendships to fall apart when I got disappointed with the other people.  Ultimately, I've decided that I need to take a different approach.  I need to focus more on being my own friend.  I need to get to know myself, do things with myself, and learn to enjoy my own company.  I have a feeling that will have a positive effect on my friendships with other people.

The other thing that has been bothering me is the fact that I don't have any 'big plans' for my own life.  I see other people who are ambitious in their careers, who have plans to buy houses, get married, go on trips to other places.  I sometimes wonder if there's something wrong with me to not have plans like that.  My plans typically are short term and it's usually invitations to do things with other people or things that just 'need to be done'.  I think that somehow over grown up, I've lost to ability to dream, to imagine, to have hopes about the future.  I feel like I've spent a lot of time being adrift, going along with the flow of life, and not working toward any kind of future goal.  I honestly feel apathetic about plans for the future.  I don't seem to care what will happen to me with my career.  I just live from one day to the next, without any expectations or hopes for the future.

I had an impression in church today that was very helpful to me.  Someone in Elder's Quorum was sharing how one of the General Authorities had taken some time to embrace and comfort him.  I was struck by the love that the General Authority had shown for the man.  It reminded me of the fact that God gives everyone callings to grow.  He's given to some people to lead the entire church and to others to do other things in His church.  The fact is that the calling I have is one that will help me grow.  It encourages me to interact with the other men in the ward.  It calls me to step up and be bold.  I got the impression that my purpose and goal in life should be to get back to live with Heavenly Father, and to be like Him.  My primary goal in life is not to have a great career, to visit a certain place, or to have so many friends.  My primary goal is to live like Jesus Christ, to grow in love toward to my fellow man, and to love myself as Heavenly Father loves me.  That is a purpose and goal that I feel passionately about.

So, maybe I don't have big plans for the future, maybe I don't feel like I have friends that I could call 'BFFs'.  I definitely do feel I need to have a more serious and loving relationship with myself and with my Heavenly Father.  I can see how that would extend to my relationships with everyone around me.  I feel happy to have a sense of hope and joy about the future and an increased feeling of peace in the present.  I feel more ready to face the world with all of its joys and trials.  I feel grateful to have a new perspective on life.

A Glimpse Into The Madness 27Feb2012

It's 11:30.  Normally, I'd be sound asleep by now.  Ironically, I had all the electronics and I was pleasantly reading a book and texting a friend of mine.  Oddly, our conversation stirred up some very deep, painful issues of mine.  To help me sleep, I'm going to be blogging about it here.

For the past eight months, I feel like I've been slipping slowly into a kind of madness or into a state of numbness where I don't feel anything.  I've found myself in a frenzy, moving from one activity to the other, like I was trying to run away from something.  Other times, I found me trying to bury myself in video games, or books to read, or endless Facebook updates, trying to ignore or numb away something I'd been feeling.  Sometimes I've turned to more potent numbing agents, like masturbation.  All of this to try to avoid feeling one thing.

Pain.

Working backward from right now, where I do feel the pain and the sadness.  I can see that my actions lately have made me feel like I'm slippy closer and closer toward acting out sexually with another man.  I can see that I've been putting myself into increasingly more compromising situations.  The cycle is very slow, generally every few months.  I feel like I've been getting very close to a breaking point of sorts.

The root cause? Last year I was in a very close friendship.  I shared a lot with this other man.  I struggled with having romantic feelings on and off.  I started to become very overdependent on him for getting my emotional needs met.  To make a long, painful story short, the friendship eventually fell apart and I had to distance myself from him.

Since then, I don't think I've ever fully recovered from it.  I've withdrawn and isolated my heart to being hurt further.  I've taken steps to numb myself from the pain, which only seems to make the pain feel even worse.  I've noticed that it's been difficult to feel like I have and friends, even friends that are close.  I've felt like there is no one that I can trust.  I don't even feel like I can trust myself, or my own motives.  I feel like I've been playing more and more with fire, and that eventually I'm going to get burned by it, unless I can find another solution.

Pain has been a reoccurring companion for me in my life.  I remember crying myself to sleep at nights when I was younger because I didn't feel like anyone liked me and that I didn't have any friends.  The feeling has continued with me as I've grown older.  I realize that my perceptions are horrifically tainted and twisted by the beliefs I have about myself: that I am unlovable, and not worth the notice of others.  Sadly, I've turned this belief against others.  Many times, a friendship has taken root in my heart, only to later be blasted by my anger and by my inability to love the other person.  I've often felt like my heart was a lonely, desolate place where no one else was.  Many times, it's been like Tumm has rampaged and destroyed everything, only to ultimately curl up in a ball in the center of the blast radius and go completely numb.  I honestly feel like the cycle of destruction and attempted rebirth has gone on far too long in my life.  It would be nice for a friendship to grow, become strong, and stay alive in my heart.  Sometimes I think my heart just isn't fertile enough for it.  I've always thought that friendships were hard to form.  Now I'm beginning to think I may be the difficult person to be a friend with.

The pain is often frustrating for me.  I have tried to pray many times for it to be removed.  I've even tried to surrender it.  I feel like I need to give up on both.  Neither has made the pain stop.  I find myself praying increasingly more in order to have the strength to bear the pain I've been given to bear.

At the root of the madness are number of competing and fighting ideas and desires.  On one hand, there is a part of me that so desperately wants to be loved.  On another, there is a part that wants to be free from pain and suffering and that doesn't want to hurt any more.  The part that desires freedom from pain says that in order to have love, I will have to open up and risk being hurt.  The same part decides to keep me guarded and isolate from others.  The other part cries out so desperately to feel loved that it often comes out in ways I can't control.  Sometimes that part of me starts to listen to the lie that the only way I will be loved is if I am loved sexually by another.

I can see but one path that may lead me back to sanity.  I have many safe places to embrace vulnerability and let my pain be shown.  Perhaps there, I can finally step into my pain more fully, and allow myself to feel truly loved again.

Worries - 20Feb2012

Worry is quite the interesting beast.  He's been paying me visit very often lately.  There's been a number of things that I've been worried about.  It feels like I have a huge long list of things that have been on my mind lately.

1) I'm worried that I'm in some sort of deep numbness.  I've been actually received some healthy touch lately, and I noticed it hasn't felt quite the same way.  It's almost like I'm walled off against it.  I know I may have some unprocessed trauma around it.  It isn't something I'm willing to post up here in public.  Part of this worry is that I know touch is a very important thing for me.  I still feel like I want it, yet it doesn't seem to help when I do get it.

2) Related to item 1, I noticed that my emotions have been very muted lately, especially ones related to bonding and connection with other people: feeling loved, happiness, peace.  I have felt some strong feelings of happiness, peace, and anger.  Sadness seems to be oddly absent.  I think the last time few times I remember feeling strong emotions was at the therapist and when I was at the temple.  This could possibly be a by-product of being sick.  Or it could just be a pattern of me detaching from myself.

3) The big worry in my sights right now is a medical test that I am having this week.  I can't remember if I posted about the chest pains I've had while working out, or sometimes even while resting.  I performed a heart stress test, and my heart is fine.  The doctor said it was probably heartburn, so I've been taking a medication for that.  Still, the pain has persisted, along with other strange things.  I can feel food get 'stuck' in my esophagus. Sometimes my throat will seize up, or go into painful spasms.  So, I'm going to get an EGD.

An EGD, or esophagogastroduodenoscopy, is basically where they stick a camera down the person's thraot.  I've never had one before, but I've had plenty of horrifying fantasies about it since I first heard of it.  I was feeling very nervous and terrified when I first heard about it.  Oddly, it's isn't so bad since I learned they will put me under some form of anesthesia.  The big worry about it now is paying for it.  I don't have money problems frequently, but when I do, it usually causes me to panic.  Oddly, I feel very detached from the feeling of panic, but I still find myself trying to calculate how much the procedure will cost and how I'm going to pay for it.

4) On top of all of this, I keep finding myself engaged in what I call 'deviant' behavior.  It can be anything from fantasizing about a man, obsessing over them, finding myself looking for triggering pictures, avoiding people that I feel attracted to, or trying to hide myself from the world.  It's basically a set of unhealthy behaviors that lead me to not feeling connected with the people around me.   This deviant behavior is paired with an obsession over friendship and not feeling like I'm close to anyone.

When I take an honest look, I think all of these things I'm worried about are connected.  The fear and worry over the procedure could be shorting out my feelings.  That makes me feel like I'm not close to anyone, and leads me to seek that out.  Because my feelings aren't working properly, I don't feel like I'm connected and I'm driven to the unhealthy behaviors to try to feel something.  Sadly, I'm not quite sure how to break out of the cycle.  Thankfully, I have a visit with my therapist tomorrow.  Hopefully he can help me sort out parts of it.

I would also appreciate your prayers for the procedure this Wednesday.  I'm going to need all the help and assurance I can get.  Thank you.

Paths Laden With Fog

I've been coming to learn, or more accurately re-learn, a few things about myself lately.  Recently, I've been feeling pretty desperate for connection with other men.  Granted, I've been talking and reaching out more than normal.  I've even told a number of my friends about me, just in case they weren't following this blog.  The desperation still wasn't being alleviated.  There's a few simple facts that seem to contribute to this.

First off, my primary love language is touch (If you are unfamiliar with what a 'love language' is, see The 5 Love Languages site, it's also a book).  Because of that, my primary way of feeling and expressing love toward other people is through touch, and this very much focused around men, with very few exceptions for women, most of whom are in my family.  Most of the time, the expression has very little to do with lust or sexual desire.  Sometimes it's a simple expression that I like the person or value them as a friend.  Nothing more and nothing less.

This gets obviously frustrated by some aspects of American culture.  In my perception, we're not a very touchy-feely sort of people, at least out in public.  The same seems to be true when I visit church.  In my home ward (by home I mean parent's ward), the people are very good at shaking hands.  The last singles ward I was in, and this current ward don't seem to be very good at that, and I'm far too shy to even initiate that kind of contact.

Anyways, I was starting to feel desperate for some kind of physical contact with a man.  I can look back now and see how crazy I was, because I have a whole group of friends that are willing to give appropriate, safe, and bonding touch with me.  I told myself all sorts of lies to keep myself from asking them.  It led me to seeking the safe, appropriate sort of touch in a very dangerous environment.

As an interesting aside, I notice a pattern that emerges when I feel like my touch need isn't getting met.  I start to get the crazy notion that people will start spontaneously offering the kind of touch that I need or want.  I start to drop into a childlike state, where I expect the people around me to know what my needs are.  I basically tend to regress.  When my need isn't met (which happens very often because I'm not asking for help to get them met), I start to slip into a state of defensive detachment.  I get angry, and I feel lonely.  In an attempt to escape the pain of not having the need met, I seek out 'numbing agents' of sorts.  I turn to video games generally.  The sort of lull and trance they put me in provides a false sense of peace and comfort, yet always lead me to a sense of emptiness and loneliness.  When that isn't enough, I turn to stronger 'numbing agents': masturbation and pornography.  Like video games, they leave with a more profound feeling of emptiness and numbness.  In this state of numbness, I'm even less likely to ask for what I need.  It's a vicious downward spiral.

At my support group this week, I managed to touch both the pain and the feeling of emptiness and detachment.  It's amazing how familiar both of them feel.  I'm often not even conscious of it.  The detachment feels warm, familiar, old, and oddly peaceful.  Yet it also feels like I'm all alone in a dark room with no one else there.  The room is empty and vast.

As I discussed this at my support group, I realized that detachment and numbness is a choice I make.  It's a choice that leads me down a road that ends up with me curled up in a ball trying to shut everything else out.  It leads me to somewhere dark, lonely, yet safe.  As I talked, I also realized there were other paths.  There are other choices.  There are many different people to ask for help from.  All of the roads were covered in fog.  I couldn't determine their outcome.  The path to numbness, however, was quite clear.  I know where it would lead me.  I've taken it so many times, that the outcome is sure.

That aside, at support group I also recalled the last time I felt like I wanted some touch, specifically, I wanted to be held.  It was when I was having a talk with my dad about this blog post.  Forgive me other blog readers, but I'd like to address my dad personally.  Feel free to read as well!

Dad, I think you may remember the last time we got together and chatted about a blog post I had made, one about some past shameful lies I'd been believing for years.  Wow, this is hard, tears are already in my eyes.  I remember as we talked that I one point, I simply wanted you to reach out your arms and cradle me, and comfort me.  When I realized that, I almost immediately started to belittle/demean/talk down to myself about it.  'Why would an adult want to be held? I should be independent.  I shouldn't need this.  I shouldn't want this.'  Despite what I said, the desire was still there.  The pain was still there.  I wanted to connect.  I wanted to connect like a child would connect with his father.  I wanted to be held by you.  Yet, like a child, I found myself powerless to ask for what I wanted.  I found myself incapable of expressing the words.  Maybe because I was starting to feel, live, and act from a very young state, perhaps before I could even talk.  I've always wondered why I've struggled to connect with you.  I know I've been defensively detached from both you and Mom.  I'm starting to wonder if the problem and solution lie somewhere in the desire to be held by you, dad.  I somehow want to go back to where the defensive detachment started, attach, instead of detaching, and start unraveling years of me detaching myself from you.  Honestly, I feel afraid to ask for what I want.  I honestly don't know how you would take it, or even if you know how to hold me.  I don't even know how long it would take, or even if it would take more than one time of it happening.  There are many, many years of detachment.  Many years of me isolating myself from you.  I still think we can bridge the gap and heal this.  Honestly, the path is laden with fog.  All I know for now is there is a desire for me to be held by you.

Thank you for indulging me readers.  I feel nearly overcome inside with the sadness and the pain.  When I was a child, I didn't know what I needed.  I obviously felt a need to be safe, so I started to withdraw from my parents.  I honestly have no idea where it started.  All I know is that it worked at the time, and now, it isn't working as an adult.  To be withdrawn and detached from the people around me, means I can continue to be safe, but also broken, hurt, lonely, and ultimately, empty.  It also means that I defend myself from others attempts to truly love me.  It also extends to and disrupts my relationship with God.

The future paths are laden with fog.  I could continue to take the one familiar path, that leads me to loneliness.  I think it's time to start taking one of the fog laden ones and push through to see what's on the other side of the fog.

Oh, and a personal request.  If you know me, in person, I would definitely appreciate more hugs!  However that looks for you.

Thank you for reading.