Ruby feels all

I am not independent enough. I base too much of my self worth on how I perceive the way others perceive me. Did you follow that? In other words, I have interactions with people and based on those interactions I understand the way people perceive me based solely on my own interpretation - nothing terribly factual. I need to cut out the male confusions in my life. It always ends up being that I don't feel loved or desired because I am always the one chasing them. I chase and I chase and I fall flat on my face, embarassed and defeated and still lonely and feeling worthless.

I have to end this. I hope I can dig deep enough to find the strength to end this cycle. I need to be free from relationships. I need to be able to create my own self-worth and let others have their own lives. I cannot push myself upon someone and try to convince them that I am special and wonderful and would lay down and die for them. They have to see that on their own. And I am sure they do. So in reality, I need to be self-assured enough to see that I am important to them even when they don't say a word. I need to be okay without feeling the constant touch of someone else. I need to be able to complete my own life by myself before I can expect anyone else to be good enough to share my life with me.

The crux of the situation

I find myself in this rock/hard place situation where I cannot quite kick this funk I have going on, but I am not really unhappy. My life has been such smooth sailing, and I don't really want a tragedy, but maybe if I had a real reason to be sad it would be a good thing for me to experience. I have never known what it is like to be without a love interest since I was 9 years old. People reading this can balk all you want about the age, but that is when my first boyfriend came into the picture and since then I have not had a single moment without one. Just because I have had boyfriends out the wazoo, doesn't mean that I am dependent on men, in fact I find that despite my having a boyfriend, I make all my own decisions and continue to live my life despite of them. I think it would be hard for me to not have a boyfriend. Even now, if I were to be single, I could have another boyfriend right where I am - he's all lined up. And when I go back home, I could wrangle myself yet another boyfriend. I am good at long distance - although I do have some mild issues with not cheating. I continue to stand justified in my stance that cheating should be something understood by both parties as the ability to learn about new people and explore new things before the big, "I do." I wonder if I would still have such trouble with the whole thing if it wasn't for the sex.

So, do I tell you that I have slept with someone else? That I have thrown away our pact to be each other's first because I fell in love with someone else. Do I tell you that every time I tried to break up with you it was for someone else, but you always fought so hard to make me stay. I am afraid you will bore me. I am afraid that I do not respect you the way that I should. I am afraid of being honest with you about this, but frankly it's my get out of jail free card. I know you well enough to know that if I tell you everything that has happened it will completely ruin us. Even if you somehow find it in your heart to stay with me (which I seriously doubt) you will never forgive me and never trust me again. If you were more open minded, I would tell you. And you are open minded when it comes to everyone except me. I will just have to fit as much life as I can into the short time before you and I get married.

I am worried about seeing him again because I still love him. I am worried that I will have sex with him and that all the luck I have had sleeping with him, without protection and NOT getting herpes will have run out. Especially now that I know what the consequences are, that is just playing with fire. And if I do plan to stay with you; how can I sleep with him again, get herpes as my punishment and then expect to explain that phenomenon to you? You do not deserve me. I wish that when I told you that you would probe a bit more. I wish you would probe at all about anything. You is so complacent and even-keeled.

I really don't know what to do and talking to my Mom tonight is the closet I will ever get to telling anyone from that world the truth. I wish I could have a heart to heart with my Mom, but I cannot. Maybe I should talk to L. I will write her a letter and see what she has to say about the whole thing. I need to find a mother figure that isn't my mother. My mom has such proud thoughts of me and such high expectations. I need to talk to an adult, grown woman who I know will love me unconditionally and not think I have betrayed her by telling her this information. I am so confused. I wonder if I could talk to L or C about it. I will test the waters and see what's up. Maybe Aunt K is another good option, but I have to be sure that nothing ever reaches my mother. I wonder if CJ would know what to do or if talking to him would be like talking to any other of my friends. I need a wise opinion from someone who has lived a full life. I need to know that I am not making a mistake by marrying you and keeping my young life a secret.

You're bugging me

I do not want to be in a relationship. I am not so delusional that I think I don't need anyone, but I do not want a significant other. I want my family, my parents and my siblings. I want to spend a lot of time and energy working on a better life with them; understanding them and loving them. I do not want to put that kind of energy into a boyfriend.

I do not want to have to compete for affection with another person, or a television show, or a video game, or his mother. I do not want to convince someone how good I am. I don't want to be convinced by someone how good they are. I loathe hearing about sports. I despise having an important conversation and then months later discovering what I said didn't matter. I don't want to think about in-laws and planning a wedding I cannot afford.

Stop trying to nail me down because I can see right through you.

I want to make her head implode

Oh my G-d. She makes me look like such a fool. Well, I allow it to happen to myself because of how much I love him, but for right now I want to embrace my anger and let my blood boil a bit. I can be rational about it later. Besides none of you know me anyway, so what does it matter how I express myself to you?

For three years in college, I loved him. I thought he was brilliant and dark from the moment I met him, and I took the roller coaster ride he was offering. I was intrigued by his apparent lack of concern for other people and his cold and isolating nature. I quickly fell in love, though I wouldn't say it out loud for three years. We fought hard on so many things, moral ambiguities, political beliefs, differing opinions about the direction the club we belonged to should take. We made up hard as well. The passion was intense. I was his confidant, the one person in his life he would trust and divulge all - which means I also would get the news no girl wants to hear. He wouldn't date me, he wouldn't be my boyfriend. He told me when other girls came along, he talked to me about his relationships and why they would never work. In the end, we were together. We were inseparable, spent every night together, shared every moment, embarrassment with one another. Still not my boyfriend.

I graduated and moved away. He called me everyday. I moved to a new time zone, in a big plane, where the telephone was no longer an option. He called me everyday (on the computer now). Enter new girl. Spiteful, manipulative, rotten, competative, and altogether completely unknowing about him. She has effectively put a firm end to the friendship he and I had. She is the only person in this world that could convince him to lie to me, to keep secrets.

I feel like an insignificant and trivial person. The confidence I had in our friendship and unspoken love for one another makes me feel like a fool. I have been rejected before, I have been lead along only then to be rejected before. It is that I voluntarily gave up my control to him - I put my heart in his hands only to have her break it.

Honest feelings on secrets

Is keeping secrets wrong? And does it need to be qualified, "what secret? from whom?" before you can answer the question?

Secrets are borne of many things - embarrassment, guilt, concern for another's feelings, concern for your own reputation. I guess it could be argued that some secrets are petty and it is silly to spend the energy keeping them. However who are you, (who am I for that matter) to decide what it petty and what is significant for someone else? Shouldn't we have the tolerance and feign understand enough to allow someone else to keep any secret they choose? There is so much judgment and condescension in this life that I don't blame anyone for keeping any secret they choose!

Of course this whole post is a direct reflection of my own life and the fact that I keep secrets. I keep big secrets and little secrets, but depending on who you are in my life, I keep no secrets. But to be honest, I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't keep any secrets. Secrets are what help us to remain a little isolated and a little independent when it feels like everyone around us has advice on something.

I would argue that having secrets actually makes other aspect of your life that much more transparent. I refrain from using the word honest because the fact that you keep a secret does not make you less honest. To be lacking in honesty is to tell lies; to keep a secret is to remain quiet.

Secrets would not be so necessary if people actually wanted to hear everything all the time. I leave you with this question...When you say, "I rather you tell me everything, even if you think it might hurt me. There is nothing you can say that would make me love you less." You need to think long and hard if you truly mean it. If you don't, telling someone that and then turning your back on them is more cruel then them keeping the secret in the first place.

My favorite dream

"I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous; that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream." - Louisa May Alcott

Cliche to start a post with a quote? Yes. Normally I care, but today I don't. As a normal person, I have put quite a bit of thought into, "what is my dream life?" I don't have a plan - people usually think I have my life in order. I have snippets, and most of the time, they don't really seem to gel and fit into just one life. I'm not clinical, but I am sure I have split personalities. Sometimes my desires for two things are so strong, I feel myself splitting and tearing in half.

I want to be a famous singer, I want to make a lot of money, I want to be a mother of three children, I want to go back to graduate school, I want to wear a suit and be in charge of a company, I want to own a community theatre, I want to be the principal of a school, I want to be dictator of the world, I want to disappear in a crowd and have no one know my name, I want to read every famous book ever written, I want to write for a big literary magazine, I want my life philosophy to be studied in colleges all over the world, I want to die young, I want to live past 100, I want to be skinny, I want to like running, I want to travel around the whole world, and I want to sit on the couch and watch movies and sleep all day.

Some of these things could happen to the same person. But many of them are in direct conflict with one another. I think Louisa had it so figured out! Pick something and just push with all your might until you reach the finish. I wonder if she felt conflicted at all? Sometimes I curse being American (only in a very limited, non-serious sense) because my whole life has been about choice and having any option at my finger tips. I don't even have a rich, over-powering family with a legacy and a life plan mapped out for me.

My favorite dream is the one I have about being really old, sitting on a porch at my vacation home on a lake talking with my daughter and granddaughter about their lives and their own dreams.

Friendship

An interesting series of occurrences in my life recently...I have been asked by five separate people in my life if I would consider moving in with them or moving close to them. They live in five separate places. All of a sudden no one can live their lives without me near? Everyone wants me to be their roommate, live next door, travel with them all over the world, hold their secrets. I had given up on being that girl. I tried all through high school and all through college to be that person to everyone - the confidant, the best friend, the girlfriend, the supportive one, the advice giver, the honest one. I wanted to be the, "I can't live without you in my life," friend. And I was rejected. So I gave up and I became that person to myself.

I have begun to make decisions for my life not based upon the happiness of someone else, but upon my own happiness. This was the best move I have ever made for myself, but like anyone recovering from a pathological debilitation of worrying about everyone around her (sometimes even strangers), I am very susceptible to the perception of being "needed." I am on the cusp of something dangerous because if I oblige and move near even one of these people then my progress on the relationship with myself is for naught.

It has gotten me thinking however, what role have I/do I currently play in the lives of these people and where does the need for my physical presence emanate? I have been far removed from all the people in my life for about a year now - completely by choice. I picked up and I moved where I knew no one would follow. It wasn't a secret that I was leaving, nor that I had been considering it for a long time.

I hate cliche; has the drought of my personage caused affection to well up within the emotional cores of these distant friends? To be honest I am surprised. I didn't expect to be missed or needed in my absence and due to that, I have not allowed myself to miss them. I care about their general well-being and that they are alive. Beyond that, they can take care of themselves and the details just aren't important as they once used to be.

How many friends are we really supposed to have? And what is the sell by date of a friendship? Is there any circumstance where a friendship is meant to last forever? When we try to reconnect with old friends, are we really just looking for some validation; an affirmation that we won't be forgotten? And where is the line between realism and cynicism when it comes to not seeing the benefit in catching up with old friends?

I told everyone I was leaving, maybe I just won't tell them that I am coming back.

First sight

I miss Grandpa a lot right now. There is an older gentleman on the train with what appears to be his daughter and his wife. He is in a wheelchair and only has the use of one hand. He is wearing a beige jacket with snaps at the cuff. He wants to change the snaps to make the cuffs tighter, but he is having trouble making the snaps work by himself. He is nudging his daughter for help, but she shrugs him away, refuses to help. The man waits a moment and attempts the snaps again by himself. Again he nudges for help. I want to run over and help him. I want to show him attention and kindness. I wish I could speak to him and know his story. He struggles and after continued trying, succeeds in properly snapping his jacket cuffs. I wonder if he notices me as I notice him. can he see my tears the way I see his struggle?

I was asked today of my perception of the Japanese people and society. I lied when I responded. I have been taught in my American society to seek to understand and accept difference; to care for and show compassion to those seeking help. We are taught to be independent and non-conformist. In Japan, if you are not the same, then you are wrong. This is the perception I am unable to share honestly.

I will strive for my entire life to show compassion for those seeking help. To seek help is incredibly noble, and that nobility deserves respect. Every person has a story that is worth knowing. My grandfather was a wonderful man, and lived many years in solitude. My youth inhibited me and my shyness caused me to be wholly unaware of the life he led and many of the stories he had to tell.

Death is something I cannot understand. I will never be okay with it. I will never forget the feeling of my grandfather's fading hand in mine. I was in the room, I felt him leave this world and for that I will always be thankful.

Human feelings and compassion are complex thoughts with undefinable parameters. I do not need to defend to you my sincere desire to show people love and attention. People walking into my life deserve my attention sincerely. I seek only to learn and complete their lives with a small piece of my own. I am the lucky one to know the people I do, they make me a better person.

My thoughts are complicated and difficult to put on paper, but if I never seek to understand then it is my failing.