Empty Nights

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

3:21am

It’s another one of those can’t sleep kind of nights, where all you do is lay there and think about all the things you didn’t have time to think about during the day, and all the things you try your best to not think about at night. For whatever reason, there are nights like tonight when all that stuff comes bubbling to the surface and your mind isn’t tired enough to push past the thoughts, and you are left with no other choice than to face them.

I won’t bore you with a run-down of all the nonsense that’s been spinning around in my head for the last two hours. Instead I want to focus on one thing I stumbled upon that I felt was kind of profound.

Maybe it’s just me, but as a single guy I find that most nights I lie here thinking about girls before finally drifting off to sleep. For a long time it was just one girl that I thought of, but the time has come to try and move on from that, so I do my best to ignore her and focus on others. I was sort of doing that tonight. The girl I began thinking about is one that I’ve thought of before. I knew her a long time ago when we were both kids. I kind of liked her back then, but my family moved away and I forgot about her for close to ten years.

I started thinking about what it would be like to—you know—“be with her”. I tried to imagine how I would feel lying there close to her, feeling her body against mine. What would she smell like? What would we talk about? Would I even enjoy it? She is a very nice looking girl, so I have no doubt the man in me would be attracted to her and would enjoy the physical feelings that go along with that kind of situation. But based on past experience, I’m not so sure the experience would leave me completely satisfied.

There was a time not too long ago, while I was at a very low point in my life, that I spent a night  with a girl that I really didn’t know very well. When I say I was “with her”, I don’t mean we slept together. We did get familiar, but that was the extent of it. While it was nice in some respects, I’m not sure I’d do it again. I wasn’t comfortable, and nothing about it felt right. I can’t say for sure if I’d feel the same way with this other girl or not.

Compared to a lot of guys my age I have been with very few girls—only three. And even then, while I’ve gone pretty far with a couple of them, I’ve never been all the way. The first two were girls I had gotten to know on a personal level. I had grown to care about them deeply for who they were and not just how they looked on the outside, and so being with them like that meant something. But the last one was something I would undo if I could. Now it is another lesson learned.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that just sleeping with a girl—even a beautiful one—isn’t what I want. What I’ve found is that more than anything I want to be emotionally connected to someone before having any sort of intimate relationship with them, because the intimacy is what I crave above all else. And no matter what she may look like, how rich her family is, how good she smells, or what she might say to me, unless she is someone I care about, it wouldn’t mean a thing.

Feelings

It’s times like now that I feel like I’m a broken person, caught and tangled in a web that is not my own, doing what I can to get by, and in doing so, living for everyone but myself. It’s an interesting thing because I do not have any major responsibilities. I have no job or family to keep me busy or to attend to. I have my parents. I feel a responsibility to help them with issues that they’ve gotten themselves into since I am living in their house now. But it’s a responsibility I don’t want. At this age I want to do what I want to do. Even with all this time I have I feel unable to do that though.

Twenty minutes ago my mom came into the room to talk about my plan for this next year. As she always seems to do, she chose the wrong moment—literally as I was just getting up to go work on something. She comes in with her annoying glass of zip-fizz and wants to sit down. That’s never a good thing with her. If she sits down it will be a while before she or you will leave. Even when she doesn’t sit it can be a while. But this time she sat.

I simply do not know why I react the way I do with her. But when she comes in and sits down like that I get irritated. And unfortunately I can’t hide it or pretend that I’m fine. So the irritation comes out in my voice.

I suppose it’s because I’m selfish. To be honest I feel like everyone is to some degree. Whether or not I’m worse than others, I can’t say. Anyway, I didn’t want to talk right then, and so my answers were short and simple, and the frustration could be easily heard. In all of three or four minutes after she’d sat down I’d managed to piss her off enough that she broke my pencil, stormed out of the room, jumped in her car, and sped off.

I try to make myself feel better by reminding myself that I’m not like that with everyone—just my mom it seems like. But is that entirely true? Or is it that I hide how I really am from the rest of the world and my mom, since she has a relationship with me unlike everyone else, receives the bitter side of my true self? I try to justify myself by pushing the blame off onto her—that if she wasn’t like she is I wouldn’t react the way I do, but that can’t be the cause. I must be at fault as well, and because of that I feel broken.

Like everyone else in the world, I want to have a romantic relationship with someone. I want a girlfriend and eventually a wife someday. But the older I get, and the more I realize how I am with my mom, I’m afraid it might be best to avoid that. I don’t think I’m capable of a healthy relationship anymore. I don’t know how else to describe it other than I’m broken.

If I were to talk to my mom about it she would talk my ear off about how you have to communicate with your partner, and then she’d tell me to read this and this book about it to understand it, which is exactly true. But she just over does it. In all honesty, I don’t like talking to my mom about anything serious. I think there are some people in this world that you just simply don’t jive with, and I feel like my mom is one of those. She is an incredible person with a superhuman strength sometimes, but the way she and I are doesn’t mix well. I like to do my own thing, and she likes to give her opinion on how it should be done or what should be done. And if it’s something she has already done then she has a hard time standing back and letting you just do it. She can’t comprehend how someone would want to disregard the advice of someone who’s been there already in lieu of figuring it out on their own. But that’s how I am. I don’t want people’s help usually.

Now that I say that, I realize there isn’t any real middle ground. If you want me to do something you either have to tell me explicitly how you want me to do it, or shut up, stand back, and let me do it my own way. It’s weird, and it can’t be good. My mom likes to have it done her way. And she can’t just give a quick little bit of direction either. If she’s giving “guidance,” it’s usually in the form of a full blown lecture on how to do it. And for me, coming from her, that never works.