I started what I thought was going to be a great entry, got a few sentences in and now I can't get anything out. My head feels full from notes that I've taken all night and now I'm not finding any release.
I had a realization today that I am constantly waiting for the ball to drop. I am constantly waiting for good things to end and I assume that nothing can really be as great as it feels. I think this comes from growing up in a house where I was always ready and waiting for the next argument. I was always anticipating the next bad thing that was going to happen and how I was going to try and fix it or make it go away. Every morning I would wake up and try to make sure no one fought on the way to school. After school I'd rush home and again try to keep everyone calm and collected. At night I hated going to sleep before everyone else because I felt as though I had to be in constant control and make sure everyone was okay. I've been doing this for so long that I do it now without even thinking. I am always anticipating the next bad thing to happen and forgetting about what I'm doing at the time. This makes me wonder how many great moments I've missed because I've been locked in anxiety and trying to save the world.
Because I am usually waiting for the next bad thing, I make mountains out of mole hills and many times I look for problems when there are none. At this point I am trying to fix things before they are even broken and in turn breaking them myself. It really hadn't dawn on me that I do these things until earlier today and suddenly it all seemed so clear, my past, my present, and the root of this way of thinking. I think that because I grew up feeling so much anxiety now it almost feels like "home" to be standing in turmoil.
There are certain moments that I wish I could make last forever, but in concentrating on what you want to last, you miss all the great moments that come after. You can't hold onto anything, so why do I try so hard to do just that?
Over the last year I've changed a ton and grown into a man that I am more proud of. I trust myself more then I ever have before and I have more power and belief in myself. I'm on the brink of doing things that I never thought I'd ever really be able and ready to do.
Of the many changes that I see within myself one of them is how I relate and handle my "relationships" with people. A lot of things that once got to me just don't anymore, and I enjoy a lot of things that I never would have been comfortable with before. In my opinion a lot of this is because of the faith and growth I've experienced, I feel like a more secure man, a more secure person in this world. I don't feel like I live on such emotionally shaky ground and I've stopped looking to other people to make me happy. In a lot of ways I've started to not only listen to myself more but to also listen to other people as well. I've grown into more acceptance of myself and there for into accepting other people for who they really are and not what I want them to be. There is a really powerfully emotional change in yourself when you can like everything about someone even if you don't agree with everything about them.
Not too long ago, earlier today, I had someone ask me what "psycho" things I've done when seeing someone. In that moment I really had to think, but as I sit alone in my apartment thinking it becomes ridiculously funny for me to think of the many things I've done. One of my largest flaws that really loves to show it's head when I'm insecure is that I get needy. I turn into a child and want to why and how come about everything. Since I have become a more secure man I am much better at controlling these urges. As much as I would like to lie and say that the urges don't exist, that would be a lie. Part of growth and change though is realizing where you have areas that you want to work on. I don't think anyone necessarily "needs" to "change" anything about themselves, but if you want to, you have to recognize what the problem is first. Because i've let the neediness take over me in the past I've definitely found myself looking like the psycho.
In the past I used to always find myself telling people what they needed to change about themselves. I was very quick to judge and tell them everything that they needed to add up to if they expected me to stick around. What person in their right mind would want to stay with someone already measuring them up? I think i was looking for someone to pick up everything I had left off and to some how "complete" me. Essentially telling the person, I need A, B, and C, and I need you to fit into them, NOW. I type this now with a smile, mainly because over the last year I've learned that everything I thought I needed seems so irrelevant.
I'm at a point where I still have negative relationship "deal breakers" pop up and I simply take a deep breath and ground myself. If anything, I have learned from my mistakes and I'm glad that I made them to begin with. Right now I am questioning my idea of what makes a "good" relationship actually "good". Being raised in middle class mid west America I have been programed that a happy home consists of a wife, husband, cat, dog, 2 cars, and 2.5 children. I wonder now, what would really make me happy? What would make Thomas wake up every morning in a relationship and be content with it? I do believe that one of the many keys to a good relationship is making a pact with your partner, a pact based on honesty, respect, and a choice to a certain degree. Everyday is not going to be roses and sunshine. I never want to go to sleep angry at the person I am with, I don't want to wake up angry, I'd just rather talk about things and take it from there. For so long in the past I've kept things bottled up and just waited for them to explode. And they always explode, you can't keep things hidden forever, life doesn't work that way.
Recently I've been questioning my belief on non-committed relationships. I've always thought that I was someone that could never handle something like that, I'm by far too jealous or maybe too insecure. I think instinctually as a man I want to "own" things, I want them to belong to me, but what beauty is in that? I think part of being with someone is wanting them to grow and expand, having a front seat to the beauty of a full show. Also, instinctually as a man, I/we want to have sex. It is a some what mechanical experience when emotions aren't involved, and emotions have definitely not been involved in every sexual experience I've ever had. With more then 50% percent of marriages ending, there has to be something missing? There has to be something that needs to change, what is the next evolutionary change in relationships? I wonder if now that I am more secure and more understanding of my needs and others, could I handle a change in my mind set? I'm honestly really confused with my thoughts because I've alway just had these ideas. Shouldn't a loving relationship be more based on honesty, trust, and respect then about a list of rules, things you are and are not allowed to do? How and where does one know to draw the lines? Are there no lines? I think that health would have to be a line, I wouldn't want to do anything that could harm my partner physically and/or emotionally. Is monogamy outdated?
Over the last year I've grown tremendously and because of this I am excited to see what the next year will bring as well.
I feel pressure over the top part of my chest, like a weight pressing down on my heart. My feet are aching from walking home and then to the 42nd street pier. At almost 1 am I felt the need to get out of my apartment and to walk. The only place in this city where you can leave your apartment and find silence is where the water presses against the island walls. We have to beaches in New York City, but i wish that tonight I would have been able to walk along the sand and feel waves crash against my feet.
Finding a bench at the furthest part out I sat and looked down over the edge at the unmoving water. It was peaceful like rippling glass. I wish we could see stars from the ground in New York, but for the most part they are covered by clouds or smog or the lights from building tops. I used to have access to the rooftop of my old apartment building. Sometimes at night I would go up there with beer or wine and just sit there starring up at the stars, at the clouds, listening to the horns and sirens that would fill the night. I've always wanted to make love under the stars, in the stars, with the stars.
The world only makes sense to me when I am outside at night with just my thoughts. These are usually the moments where I have the least thoughts, where I am the most at peace. As much as I love the peace of being quiet and alone, nothing compares to the peace I feel after giving a great performance. Although the two are very different they are also very much the same. Both situations leave you breathless and out of your head. I have to stop judging myself and honer my emotions more. I think it's funny that honer looks like boner when you read it quick.
I'm back.
My right arm has the shakes and it is holding sadness for me. I feel sad inside right now and my arm has decided that it wants to take care of it for me. I can feel it moving into my shoulder and my chest. My lips start to quiver and then it hits my eyes. Single tears.
Just like that the emotion is gone because I decided to fully acknowledge it and not hide it.
I don't think of myself as a sad person, but it does seem to be a lot of fuel for me creatively. Pretty much any really intense emotion seems to be fuel for me but the ones I seem to feel the most intensely are sadness, anger, happiness, and fear. Although 3 of those 4 seem like "bad" emotions, I'm learning to not put them in categories. There are no "good" and "bad" emotions. Emotions remind us that we are alive, that we are living, breathing, experiencing and human.
I'm back.
I feel tension in my feet. My toes are pointed up and waiting for me to relax them and tell them that everything is alright. It is, my feet can relax because I'm not running anywhere. I am okay with where I am, right here, right now, sitting on my couch and in this moment.
Via text message this morning my intriguing sister asked me if I was already up because I had signed onto facebook at 9am. Yes, I was awake and actually by that time throwing my laundry in to be done. She told me that her and her daughter had just gone for a morning bike ride in a thunderstorm. I could instantly picture my niece half laughing and half crying, sometimes I think she gets confused on what emotion she feels and just does both. Which isn't that far off from what I do as well. I'm finding that more and more a lot of emotions are very closely related. I'm not talking love/hate, because that is so cliche and I don't feel that way. I can envision my sister telling G (my niece), that she needs to peddle and both of them going at top speed as the rain falls. My niece would be yelling for my sister to slow down and wait for her, but be trying her hardest to keep up.
My niece is 6, and it was about that time when I started biking with my father. Sometimes both of my sisters, my father and me would all go for long rides down the back dirt roads of the town I'm from. We would ride hours and every now and then we would be able to ride along some of the main "paved" roads. Most of the time my father would stop by a lake to look for fish, stop in the woods to look for deer prints, or to talk to someone we would run into. My father can talk to anyone about anything for hours. As a kid this is torture, as an adult when we go places it is still torture. I remember many nights riding the bikes around dusk, the wind in my face as we would try to speed down hills at top speed. Every now and then trying to extend my arms out to the side to feel what it might feel like to fly.
When I was a preteen I would spend 1 week a year at a church camp. I was a dorky kid and for the most part that week was spent being teased and made fun of for being different. My family didn't have a ton of money, so my clothing was never as new or brand name as the other kids, I didn't want to play sports, and I spent most of that week trying to be invisible. Out of the many weeks I spent at that camp I can really only think of two times that I actually had a good time. One of them being woken up in the middle of the night, and my cabin being taken outside to play games. One of the things we did was run across a field in the open cold night. I ran as if the world was falling apart at my feet, my hands flying out to my sides, my legs kicking so fast that I forgot I was moving at all. This is what flying was supposed to feel like. With my eyes closed I could see and feel my body lifting off the ground, I was rising above the trees that lined the field, my toes brushing past the tops of the leaves, I was above the world looking down. Eventually you have to open your eyes and the world collides with you again. The world will always collide with you again, it is unavoidable.
In an acting class I am currently taking we are learning about allowing your body to have full emotions and not cutting them off. We have learned that when you decide you only want to feel an emotion up to a 5 (for example, on a scale of 1-10), then you are not only cutting all that emotion off, but all of your emotions. You can't expect to only feel certain emotions to one degree and feel others higher. As an artist I love to feel things, even when they are shitty, because it makes me feel alive. I'm not saying that everything either needs to feel like a win or a lose, a birth or a death, but what's the point in stopping yourself from feeling anything?
In this life time I believe that I am here to have all my dreams come true, to fall in love and to learn to be happy. I am here to enjoy all the simple little moments and be content with the things I have.
I may never be able to run across a field with my arms out and lift off the ground, but I will fly.
"I want to be naked running through the streets I want to invite this so called chaos that you'd think I dare not be I want to be weightless flying through the air I want to drop all these limitations at the shoes upon my feet" -Alanis Morissette 'so-called chaos'
I feel broken and unfixable. Today is one of those days where I find myself asking, "why" and question after question floods my busy mind. I can't relax and I'm not sure what's beating more, my heart, my head, or me on myself. My chest is rising and falling but each breath seems to come slower then the last. I'm aching inside and I don't know how to make it rest and pass. I try to be honest and open, as much as I possibly can, but every time I have this fear of falling fast. My mind is a jumbled mess that I don't know how to begin to unravel, I'm stuck in this mind filled with unrequited babble.
I feel like damaged goods. I feel like damaged goods. I feel like damaged goods.
In December the last of my grandmothers passed away. In June my family is gathering over the graves of my grandfather and my uncle, both of which I never met, to spread her ashes. Someone asked me the other day if that was what my grandma wanted, and I can only assume yes, I never asked. I am thinking this is my fathers idea, or that she had told him. I do believe that it is what my grandma would have wanted, or does want. Often I've wondered if the spirits of loved ones stay with us, or when you're dead are you just dead? Gone. I don't feel my grandma here at all, I've never gotten a cold breeze or had something fly in front of my face to let me know she is with me. one might think that this is sad, but I actually find that it makes me smile. My grandma spent a large chunk of her life alone, as she wanted. So, why would she want to stay after her death? I do believe that she is somewhere better, or at least some place where she isn't carrying the pain she once did anymore.
With this gathering my semi-estranged aunt will also be making her return to my home town. We have been keeping in touch a bit over the last six months or so, but before that there were years that passed with not as much as a phone call. I was very happy to receive a phone call from her on my birthday, the best gift I was given this year. That and a camera phone photo of my fish Margaret that one of my friends has been taking care of for me. Earlier this week I had a great conversation with someone that I'm very much enjoying getting to know and at one point we were speaking about family and the tension that is carried between members of the same clan over time. For years I spent energy distancing myself from my family and only over the past few years have I really put the extra effort into getting to know them. It is one of the best things I've ever done. I don't know exactly what it was that was holding us apart but maybe sometimes you just need space? It started in high school when I got my first car and lasted until just two years or so ago. Now one of my sisters is my best friend but it takes work and effort to really mend a broken bridge. The relationships that I have with my family now are awesome, I wish i could have had the same ones growing up but then maybe it wouldn't have been so easy for me to leave home. Over the last few months I've been trying to call my aunt every do often just to check in and at first it was awkward, but now it's much easier. To get a phone call from her on my birthday almost made me cry. I really am someone that loves the little things in life. As much as I want a huge house as an adult, I'd rather have a smaller one filled with love. Yes, I realize how corny that sounds but I'm kind of a corny guy.
In June I will be traveling back to my home town to let the final pieces of my grandma find the Earth for one last time. Every time I think of her I think of The Price is Right with a smile and of course my favorite game Plenko (I probably spelled that wrong). I think of her huge dog Madison, mystery novels, how she hated mice and my sister chasing her around the yard with a dead mouse. I have no idea what her favorite food was but I know her favorite candy was chocolate covered cherries and the cookies that come in the blue tin. Her skin was soft and felt like paper to the touch, cotton candy swirls of white hair and country western movies blaring from the tv.
If I was to die tonight and given the option of stay or go, I would stay, but who would I choose to follow? I've always been one to enjoy watching people, I've always been a voyeur.
I feel anxiety in my stomach And that's awesome I feel pain in my heart And that's awesome I feel a tickle in my throat And that's awesome I feel a tingle in my hands And that's awesome I feel a grin on my face And that's awesome I feel a smile on my face And that's awesome I feel a lightness in my stomach And that's awesome I feel a laugh jumping out of my mouth And that's awesome I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders And that's awesome I feel calm in my nerves And that's awesome I feel empowered through my body And that's awesome. I'm back.
I'm not sure how the time line of my life flows. I see images as if I'm watching a scene in front of my face where a strobe-light flashes only allowing me to see portions at a time. Each image is a memory, a story, but I'm not sure how they flow together or in what order they run. From the ages of 5 and 15 everything seems like a streak of color. A blur. I know there are events, but I might as well simply write them on pieces of paper and tack them to a line with my eyes close. Whatever order they happened to line up in may as well be the truth.
I've been trying to write about my childhood and my parents divorce. I simply see images and hear noises in my head. I remember a line of dialogue or I see a toy I once had and hear something in the distance. At times it feels like I'm wondering down a dark hallway and desperately trying to find a light switch. Every now and then when I was growing up we would lose electricity in the house. Instantly everything would go black and silent. I used to be terrified of silence and now I embrace it openly. Whenever the power would go out I'd be instantly dropped into a pool of anxiety, fear, I'd freeze and instantly start crying. When the lights would come back I'd run around the house as if a murder had been committed and I had to find the culprit. Even as a child I felt like I could easily be in control of everything, I was directing the flow of the world and any mishap on my watch was my fault.
After my parents divorce I stopped playing because I was afraid that any time I left a room things would happen that I couldn't control. I hated leaving my sisters in the same room as my mom without me because I knew how angry they were. I hated to be in the car because I had this irrational fear that someone was going to get angry, grab the wheel and plow the car off the road into the deep ditches that lined the roads around our house.
At a young age I learned to live with this feeling of constant anxiety. There was a period a few years ago where I basically stopped eating because sitting at a table brought back too many arguments in my head. Even eating now at times makes me sick.
The only guidance I can remember getting growing was "give it to God". As if any problem in the world could simply be prayed about and all would be taken care of. I wonder why God never took my anxiety or let me know everything was going to be ok. It's funny, everything really does end up being ok.
Sometimes I still feel like the child standing in the dark waiting for the lights to come on. Most of the time now I'm able to find the switch though and nothing makes the lights come back on like silence.
In this week I have been told that my writing is narcissistic and by another told that I write with my heart on my sleeve. I am both, locked in my head and constantly thinking along with being very open and I do wear my heart on my sleeve. Until recently I would have never admitted that I do such a thing, but I'm not sure why. What in my head tells me that doing so is a negative thing. Why do I choose to have such a rough exterior. Simply put, one could say that I am willing, but scared, only willing to a point.
In a recent conversation with a friend over mexican food, I was asked by to say "You have a great relationship, why can't I, why can't I find someone too?" Granted, there are circumstances that surround this conversation that I'm unable to really talk about at this time, but I didn't want to say it. I did end up saying it, bluntly, emotionless, lifeless. My fear was that someone would see this and think that I am weak, unable to take care of myself, needy. Why am I afraid to admit that I would actually like to be in a relationship? What is it that clicks in my head and makes me equate a want of someone else in my life to share things with and weakness? I don't feel as though I NEED someone, but what if I did? Would that also make me weak?
In relationships, I like the quiet moments, I like cuddling. I enjoy moments where things don't need to be said. I enjoy saturday nights watching horror movies, eating popcorn and I love to eat at Dallas BBQ. One day I would like a house with a white picket fence, children, a backyard with a tree house and family dinners. I hate to admit it because I feel as though I could have anything in the world that I want, but I actually want the "American Dream", or rather, my dream.
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