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Blithering Heights
So a lot of people have been asking me recently why I don't date. In some cases, this is genuine curiosity, while in others it tends to be prefaced with horrible pickup lines on the order of "you look so sexy with a lawnmower; it really revs my engine." (I've been getting hit on a *lot* recently, which I mostly try to ignore.)
The reasons I tend to give are multivariate and often silly -- all of them can be argued against. But when it comes down to it, I'm pretty much screwed, so it might as well be on my own recognizance. Here's why:
1. (I'm in quite a listmaking mood today. It's weirdly obsessive-compulsive; I've been making lists of things like my favorite actors and architectural styles. I'm thinking of reorganizing my CDs and moreover my videos. Or, well, not mine, but Uncle Rex's.
(Uncle Rex owns more videos than anyone I know. I would say he has a better selection than Blockbuster. Boxes and boxes full of movies, both mainstream and rare. Herein lies the problem: you can't find anything. The videos are all haphazardly stuck in cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another, which no clear schema. This drives him as crazy as it drives me, but he's a bit more of a perfectionist than I am. [I decided a long time ago that I wouldn't be one, because I've seen what it's done to two of my parents - Uncle Rex and my dad. {They're so similar sometimes that they actually compare notes on which jokes should be used for which situations. Nobody believes me when I say this, because on the surface, they're nothing alike.} It can be absolutely debilitating. If it's not perfect, nothing gets done. You ask for something simple, and it turns into a gigantic undertaking.
([I am, of course, prone to this myself when I'm not consciously working against it. For example, I put off mailing a package to Dee because I got grandiose ideas about how the included note should be illuminated and worded. Eventually, I figured out that I was doing this and just scribbled something off the top of my head and posted the damn thing.]
(The reason I say that pefectionism is getting in the way of movie organization is that the video room has not yet been finished out, and he doesn't want to unload the movies until the shelves have been painted, because otherwise we'll never paint the shelves. It's been 3 years. I'm getting sick of it, so I figure, fuck it. He's out of town, it'll be too late by the time he gets back.
(Of course, I now have to figure out how to classify things. By director? By genre? Alphabetically? [I tend to veer away from this because, in my opinion, the alphabet is entirely arbitrary. Why the hell are the letters organized that way, anyway? It makes no sense. {Another bad pickup line, courtesy of Raine "Oh baby, if I could I would reorganize the alphabet so that I could be closer to U."}])
(Do you see why I say that footnotes are a better idea than parentheses? Let's try this again:)
1. When people fall in love with me, they get frustrated very quickly. It's their own fault, but a largely unaviodable one. When you start listing my prevailing tendencies (lists again), you quickly run up against terms like "dominant," "independent," "inscrutable," and "challenging." (I could discuss at length why I disagree with the "inscrutable," but I'm trying not to get lost in another extended sidetrack. It's all related, though. It's so difficult! My thoughts are too much like a web -- pull one string, and all the others move with it. You'd think that hypertext would help with this, but to be perfectly honest, I don't have the time to actually lay out my thought patterns. I tried once just to explain what went into one word, one name, and it took me 6 hours and I still didn't get it all out. I did a tarot reading to ask if I should start a website and actually try on a larger scale, and it basically told me that I'd get so obsessed that I'd completely withdraw from the world, and then kill myself in a few months.
([This is not the only warning that something bad is going to happen in a few months. Every reading I do or someone else does, winds up with a horrible final card. At its best, it's stagnation or betrayal. At its worst, I die. It doesn't seem to be anything I can stop, just something I can try to mitigate. Instead, I'm not worrying about it, because it seems inevitable and besides I hate self fulfilling prophesies.])
(Damnit, I've sidetracked again. You'd think that I was trying to avoid something. Again:)
1. When people fall in love with me, they get frustrated very quickly. It's their own fault, but a largely unaviodable one. When you start listing my prevailing tendencies, you quickly run up against terms like "dominant," "independent," "inscrutable," and "challenging." These are not usually said negatively; rather, they tend to occur when people try to explain what they like about me. Moreover, they are the reasons people fall in love with me.
The difficulty is that these traits do not a relationship make. A relationship should be balanced, cooperative, understanding, and natural. Look up the antonyms of these terms. Or, to be faster, just read the last paragraph over again, where I describe my tendencies.
So what are the options? How can someone like me work in the situation described above?
a. I can enter into an uneven relationship as the dominant partner. I *hate* this option. I cannot properly express how uncomfortable and unhappy it makes me. I dislike power games, especially when they carry over into the bedroom. (To clarify, verging into the land of Way Too Much Information, I can't stand Dominance/Submission with me on either side of the equation. Massochism, I get. Bondage, I get. The rest of it, I can see how it might be appealing for someone else, but never for me.) Too often, people ask me to run their life (and I'm not speculating, they ask me flat out) and I *hate* it. I am independent because I prize independence in myself and others. (This does not mean that I dislike bonds of family or friendship, or that I do not become deeply committed in any involvment. But to me, it's a conscious choice. I do what I do because I choose to, because I see it as valuable and rewarding, not because it's some fated unavoidable conclusion. To me, that's far more beautiful than the love that's written in the stars.) I don't like needing people, and I don't like being needed. It's too much responsibility. Besides, I'm not getting anything out of that arrangement other than stress.
b. I can subsume my personality and turn into another person; I'm quite an excellent actor. Sadly, this is what I tend to do, which is a *lot* of why I don't date. I like myself. I don't like who I turn into when I'm in a relationship. Moreover, it's not just unfair to me, it's unfair to whoever I'm with. It destroys (or at least obscures) the person they fell in love with.
(One note here: I don't exactly *lie* about who I am, I just uncomplicate it. I become more one-sided. Where I'm normally multifaceted to an astonishing degree, I only show one face. It makes things easier.)
. . .
[[I just got a telephone call from Patrick and stopped writing for about half an hour to talk to him and eat tofu manicotti. Predictably, he hit on me and thinks he may be in love with me. This is not abnormal -- Patrick is in love with the world. It's quite sweet, actually. We moved on to discussing realestate prices in Austin, the fact that his parents are dead certain he's fucking both me and Valancy, (which annoys all of us,) and weird tarot readings *he's* been getting lately, particularly whenever the question involves me. I asked him for his opinion on why everyone's hitting on me, and he said that he's been wondering about that too. Apparently, I'm giving off some kind of vibe, such that I'm literally glowing. He says he's always thought that was an expression before, but now realizes that it's not. We'll probably hang out later and watch Twin Peaks.]]
. . .
c. I can continue to act the same way in the relationship that I do outside of it. This, to me, seems the best option. As of now, nobody can handle it. People want to be important to me -- want me to love them best. I can't do that. I genuinely love everyone -- I love total strangers as much as I love my mother. This is not something I want to change, because I think it's a good way of looking at the world. Anyway, it's not enough for most people that I love them; they want to own me in some way. I've discussed this before when talking about friends. It gets much, much worse when you involve romance. And when it does involve a romantic relationship, I don't know that they're wrong to want it. I mean, that's the point, isn't it? To be special to each other, to find something there that you have with nobody else.
2. involves the whole "I don't like me in a relationship" issue. I don't. I covered that already. Let's move on.
3. I don't have time. I'm already so lost. . . I'm not producing anything, spending all my time putting out other people's brushfires before they grow to destroy my property. Ailei used a word the other day which I think is appropriate: numb.
3. (again) I don't have time. I mean this in a literal sense -- time tends to disappear around me. It's not laziness, and it's not stalling -- you look at the clock, look down, look up, and three hours have passed. Or maybe you do a thousand chores, and it's been three minutes. (No, I'm not on drugs. Sometimes I think I should be, not because I need them, but because then I'd have something to blame it on. But I hate dependence.) I'm not the only one who has noticed this -- people who spend a lot of "time" with me notice it also. It's like I suck them into my world and things start distorting for them as well. Somewhere along the line, I think I just fell outside of time. The worst was when I started losing wednesdays. The day wednesday just disappeared from my weeks for about two months. It still happens sometimes, which is why I avoid scheduling classes on wednesday.
Another odd phenomenon that arises is that people are attracted to me. In a magnetic sense. They don't even notice, but they'll cross empty hallways specifically to bump into me. Again, this phenomenon has been observed by people other than myself. It's mostly annoying, but it gets scary when I'm driving.
. . .
[[Another interruption: a phone call from Valancy. We talk about the coolness of Reese Witherspoon and she reconfirms that I am glowing. I say "what the hell are you talking about, I look like shit, I haven't even bathed in a week" and she says that instead I look like an actress who is *trying* to look like shit so that she won't be recognized. Goddamnit.]]
. . .
4. I still have unresolved entanglements with Thomas. I don't think I've mentioned him before -- at least not by name. I could explain, but it would take forever and really doesn't have much bearing on the conversation. The fact that I have these unresolved emotions does not particularly bother me, even though they are not ever likely to resolve. They've just been around for so long that I accept them and don't let them ruin my life. So, anyway, things are fine for me on that front. But they tend to really upset everyone else, who either a) want to kill him or b) want me to marry him as soon as possible. This makes things very difficult for anyone who tries to be romantically involved with me -- they're constantly terrified that he'll turn up on my doorstep and I'll leave them. (And I wish I could say that I was certain this wouldn't happen, because that's lame, but I don't *know*. It's complicated. I'm not getting into it now, because it makes me crazy.)
5. People get very confused about the relationship between me and Valancy. They find her threatening. Interestingly enough, she's almost always the one who they do this to, and not me. Her family, her friends, and anybody she dates tend to become very bothered very quickly. They never say anything to me, though. This happens even with our mutual friends -- it's perfectly okay that I do whatever I do, but not her.
(You'll note that I drastically broadened the applications of this phenomenon by using the word "whatever." I was born with a get out of jail free card. Social mores do not apply to me. I find this amusing and tend to exploit it.)
So, that is the short version of why I don't date. It probably has a lot of confusion and grammatical errors, but since it's a bit stream of consciousness, I'm not going to go back and re-edit it. It'll just get longer.
. . .
[[At this point, I call Valancy to say "huzzah, I am through writing! Do you want me to come get you?" but then I remember that there's something else I wanted to include that's thoroughly important. That's not why I'm writing this . . . bracket? . . . though. She flipped out when I called and was instantly like "what's wrong?!?!" This has been happening a lot. I've also gotten calls from her at odd hours where she's like "okay, you're still alive. Just checking." I could say that this has to do with the tarot readings, and that might play into it, but actually I think it's the month of July. July is a very dangerous month, and Val recognizes this. 4 days left, and she's terrfied something even worse will happen. (As you will recall paging through old journal entries, a lot has happened this month.
1. her highschool friend died, then everyone hit on her at the funeral
2. her dad has a serious condition, and he's going to be okay even though he can't eat certain foods now, but we thought for a while that it was going to be a lot worse.
3. she was accosted and nearly raped and lost faith in the majority of her friends.
4. I've been getting these weird tarot readings and continually skirt close to a nervous breakdown.
5. her mom is really depressed.)]]
. . .
6. 6. The important 6. I don't particularly *want* to date. ::laughs:: I just realized (while talking to Val) that parts of this journal entry have made it sound very "oh, woe is me, I wish to date, but I cannot love!" ::clasps hands to breast, flutters eyelids:: No, really, I'm quite happy with the situation. I am fullfilled on that front. I have plenty to occupy my thoughts, loads of friends, and plenty of fic to read if I want to feel sexy. ::laughs::
7. Also, I don't relish the idea of being tied down. As stated before, I have gypsy veins. (Yesterday, I said that maybe I would visit Mary, and Mary told me not to because if I left my house I probably wouldn't be back for weeks. This is very true.) It's exhausting as all hell -- as Thoreau says (who I usually hate) "travel is only glamorous in retrospect." As the Tao says, "if people are content, no one will ever leave her house, even though the next village is just over the hill." There's just something very appealing to me about getting in my car and *driving* and forgetting everything and not telling anyone where I'm going or when I'll be back. It never fixes any of it, though, which is why I think home is a good place for me right now, even though I need to turn up the air conditioning. ::turns up air conditioning::
Okay, now I think I'm done. Hopefully. ::looks around nervously:: Yeah.
The reasons I tend to give are multivariate and often silly -- all of them can be argued against. But when it comes down to it, I'm pretty much screwed, so it might as well be on my own recognizance. Here's why:
1. (I'm in quite a listmaking mood today. It's weirdly obsessive-compulsive; I've been making lists of things like my favorite actors and architectural styles. I'm thinking of reorganizing my CDs and moreover my videos. Or, well, not mine, but Uncle Rex's.
(Uncle Rex owns more videos than anyone I know. I would say he has a better selection than Blockbuster. Boxes and boxes full of movies, both mainstream and rare. Herein lies the problem: you can't find anything. The videos are all haphazardly stuck in cardboard boxes stacked on top of one another, which no clear schema. This drives him as crazy as it drives me, but he's a bit more of a perfectionist than I am. [I decided a long time ago that I wouldn't be one, because I've seen what it's done to two of my parents - Uncle Rex and my dad. {They're so similar sometimes that they actually compare notes on which jokes should be used for which situations. Nobody believes me when I say this, because on the surface, they're nothing alike.} It can be absolutely debilitating. If it's not perfect, nothing gets done. You ask for something simple, and it turns into a gigantic undertaking.
([I am, of course, prone to this myself when I'm not consciously working against it. For example, I put off mailing a package to Dee because I got grandiose ideas about how the included note should be illuminated and worded. Eventually, I figured out that I was doing this and just scribbled something off the top of my head and posted the damn thing.]
(The reason I say that pefectionism is getting in the way of movie organization is that the video room has not yet been finished out, and he doesn't want to unload the movies until the shelves have been painted, because otherwise we'll never paint the shelves. It's been 3 years. I'm getting sick of it, so I figure, fuck it. He's out of town, it'll be too late by the time he gets back.
(Of course, I now have to figure out how to classify things. By director? By genre? Alphabetically? [I tend to veer away from this because, in my opinion, the alphabet is entirely arbitrary. Why the hell are the letters organized that way, anyway? It makes no sense. {Another bad pickup line, courtesy of Raine "Oh baby, if I could I would reorganize the alphabet so that I could be closer to U."}])
(Do you see why I say that footnotes are a better idea than parentheses? Let's try this again:)
1. When people fall in love with me, they get frustrated very quickly. It's their own fault, but a largely unaviodable one. When you start listing my prevailing tendencies (lists again), you quickly run up against terms like "dominant," "independent," "inscrutable," and "challenging." (I could discuss at length why I disagree with the "inscrutable," but I'm trying not to get lost in another extended sidetrack. It's all related, though. It's so difficult! My thoughts are too much like a web -- pull one string, and all the others move with it. You'd think that hypertext would help with this, but to be perfectly honest, I don't have the time to actually lay out my thought patterns. I tried once just to explain what went into one word, one name, and it took me 6 hours and I still didn't get it all out. I did a tarot reading to ask if I should start a website and actually try on a larger scale, and it basically told me that I'd get so obsessed that I'd completely withdraw from the world, and then kill myself in a few months.
([This is not the only warning that something bad is going to happen in a few months. Every reading I do or someone else does, winds up with a horrible final card. At its best, it's stagnation or betrayal. At its worst, I die. It doesn't seem to be anything I can stop, just something I can try to mitigate. Instead, I'm not worrying about it, because it seems inevitable and besides I hate self fulfilling prophesies.])
(Damnit, I've sidetracked again. You'd think that I was trying to avoid something. Again:)
1. When people fall in love with me, they get frustrated very quickly. It's their own fault, but a largely unaviodable one. When you start listing my prevailing tendencies, you quickly run up against terms like "dominant," "independent," "inscrutable," and "challenging." These are not usually said negatively; rather, they tend to occur when people try to explain what they like about me. Moreover, they are the reasons people fall in love with me.
The difficulty is that these traits do not a relationship make. A relationship should be balanced, cooperative, understanding, and natural. Look up the antonyms of these terms. Or, to be faster, just read the last paragraph over again, where I describe my tendencies.
So what are the options? How can someone like me work in the situation described above?
a. I can enter into an uneven relationship as the dominant partner. I *hate* this option. I cannot properly express how uncomfortable and unhappy it makes me. I dislike power games, especially when they carry over into the bedroom. (To clarify, verging into the land of Way Too Much Information, I can't stand Dominance/Submission with me on either side of the equation. Massochism, I get. Bondage, I get. The rest of it, I can see how it might be appealing for someone else, but never for me.) Too often, people ask me to run their life (and I'm not speculating, they ask me flat out) and I *hate* it. I am independent because I prize independence in myself and others. (This does not mean that I dislike bonds of family or friendship, or that I do not become deeply committed in any involvment. But to me, it's a conscious choice. I do what I do because I choose to, because I see it as valuable and rewarding, not because it's some fated unavoidable conclusion. To me, that's far more beautiful than the love that's written in the stars.) I don't like needing people, and I don't like being needed. It's too much responsibility. Besides, I'm not getting anything out of that arrangement other than stress.
b. I can subsume my personality and turn into another person; I'm quite an excellent actor. Sadly, this is what I tend to do, which is a *lot* of why I don't date. I like myself. I don't like who I turn into when I'm in a relationship. Moreover, it's not just unfair to me, it's unfair to whoever I'm with. It destroys (or at least obscures) the person they fell in love with.
(One note here: I don't exactly *lie* about who I am, I just uncomplicate it. I become more one-sided. Where I'm normally multifaceted to an astonishing degree, I only show one face. It makes things easier.)
. . .
[[I just got a telephone call from Patrick and stopped writing for about half an hour to talk to him and eat tofu manicotti. Predictably, he hit on me and thinks he may be in love with me. This is not abnormal -- Patrick is in love with the world. It's quite sweet, actually. We moved on to discussing realestate prices in Austin, the fact that his parents are dead certain he's fucking both me and Valancy, (which annoys all of us,) and weird tarot readings *he's* been getting lately, particularly whenever the question involves me. I asked him for his opinion on why everyone's hitting on me, and he said that he's been wondering about that too. Apparently, I'm giving off some kind of vibe, such that I'm literally glowing. He says he's always thought that was an expression before, but now realizes that it's not. We'll probably hang out later and watch Twin Peaks.]]
. . .
c. I can continue to act the same way in the relationship that I do outside of it. This, to me, seems the best option. As of now, nobody can handle it. People want to be important to me -- want me to love them best. I can't do that. I genuinely love everyone -- I love total strangers as much as I love my mother. This is not something I want to change, because I think it's a good way of looking at the world. Anyway, it's not enough for most people that I love them; they want to own me in some way. I've discussed this before when talking about friends. It gets much, much worse when you involve romance. And when it does involve a romantic relationship, I don't know that they're wrong to want it. I mean, that's the point, isn't it? To be special to each other, to find something there that you have with nobody else.
2. involves the whole "I don't like me in a relationship" issue. I don't. I covered that already. Let's move on.
3. I don't have time. I'm already so lost. . . I'm not producing anything, spending all my time putting out other people's brushfires before they grow to destroy my property. Ailei used a word the other day which I think is appropriate: numb.
3. (again) I don't have time. I mean this in a literal sense -- time tends to disappear around me. It's not laziness, and it's not stalling -- you look at the clock, look down, look up, and three hours have passed. Or maybe you do a thousand chores, and it's been three minutes. (No, I'm not on drugs. Sometimes I think I should be, not because I need them, but because then I'd have something to blame it on. But I hate dependence.) I'm not the only one who has noticed this -- people who spend a lot of "time" with me notice it also. It's like I suck them into my world and things start distorting for them as well. Somewhere along the line, I think I just fell outside of time. The worst was when I started losing wednesdays. The day wednesday just disappeared from my weeks for about two months. It still happens sometimes, which is why I avoid scheduling classes on wednesday.
Another odd phenomenon that arises is that people are attracted to me. In a magnetic sense. They don't even notice, but they'll cross empty hallways specifically to bump into me. Again, this phenomenon has been observed by people other than myself. It's mostly annoying, but it gets scary when I'm driving.
. . .
[[Another interruption: a phone call from Valancy. We talk about the coolness of Reese Witherspoon and she reconfirms that I am glowing. I say "what the hell are you talking about, I look like shit, I haven't even bathed in a week" and she says that instead I look like an actress who is *trying* to look like shit so that she won't be recognized. Goddamnit.]]
. . .
4. I still have unresolved entanglements with Thomas. I don't think I've mentioned him before -- at least not by name. I could explain, but it would take forever and really doesn't have much bearing on the conversation. The fact that I have these unresolved emotions does not particularly bother me, even though they are not ever likely to resolve. They've just been around for so long that I accept them and don't let them ruin my life. So, anyway, things are fine for me on that front. But they tend to really upset everyone else, who either a) want to kill him or b) want me to marry him as soon as possible. This makes things very difficult for anyone who tries to be romantically involved with me -- they're constantly terrified that he'll turn up on my doorstep and I'll leave them. (And I wish I could say that I was certain this wouldn't happen, because that's lame, but I don't *know*. It's complicated. I'm not getting into it now, because it makes me crazy.)
5. People get very confused about the relationship between me and Valancy. They find her threatening. Interestingly enough, she's almost always the one who they do this to, and not me. Her family, her friends, and anybody she dates tend to become very bothered very quickly. They never say anything to me, though. This happens even with our mutual friends -- it's perfectly okay that I do whatever I do, but not her.
(You'll note that I drastically broadened the applications of this phenomenon by using the word "whatever." I was born with a get out of jail free card. Social mores do not apply to me. I find this amusing and tend to exploit it.)
So, that is the short version of why I don't date. It probably has a lot of confusion and grammatical errors, but since it's a bit stream of consciousness, I'm not going to go back and re-edit it. It'll just get longer.
. . .
[[At this point, I call Valancy to say "huzzah, I am through writing! Do you want me to come get you?" but then I remember that there's something else I wanted to include that's thoroughly important. That's not why I'm writing this . . . bracket? . . . though. She flipped out when I called and was instantly like "what's wrong?!?!" This has been happening a lot. I've also gotten calls from her at odd hours where she's like "okay, you're still alive. Just checking." I could say that this has to do with the tarot readings, and that might play into it, but actually I think it's the month of July. July is a very dangerous month, and Val recognizes this. 4 days left, and she's terrfied something even worse will happen. (As you will recall paging through old journal entries, a lot has happened this month.
1. her highschool friend died, then everyone hit on her at the funeral
2. her dad has a serious condition, and he's going to be okay even though he can't eat certain foods now, but we thought for a while that it was going to be a lot worse.
3. she was accosted and nearly raped and lost faith in the majority of her friends.
4. I've been getting these weird tarot readings and continually skirt close to a nervous breakdown.
5. her mom is really depressed.)]]
. . .
6. 6. The important 6. I don't particularly *want* to date. ::laughs:: I just realized (while talking to Val) that parts of this journal entry have made it sound very "oh, woe is me, I wish to date, but I cannot love!" ::clasps hands to breast, flutters eyelids:: No, really, I'm quite happy with the situation. I am fullfilled on that front. I have plenty to occupy my thoughts, loads of friends, and plenty of fic to read if I want to feel sexy. ::laughs::
7. Also, I don't relish the idea of being tied down. As stated before, I have gypsy veins. (Yesterday, I said that maybe I would visit Mary, and Mary told me not to because if I left my house I probably wouldn't be back for weeks. This is very true.) It's exhausting as all hell -- as Thoreau says (who I usually hate) "travel is only glamorous in retrospect." As the Tao says, "if people are content, no one will ever leave her house, even though the next village is just over the hill." There's just something very appealing to me about getting in my car and *driving* and forgetting everything and not telling anyone where I'm going or when I'll be back. It never fixes any of it, though, which is why I think home is a good place for me right now, even though I need to turn up the air conditioning. ::turns up air conditioning::
Okay, now I think I'm done. Hopefully. ::looks around nervously:: Yeah.