Matter of the Heart

My family on my dad’s side doesn't talk much, and especially not about anything serious—like feelings. Now my mom, she does not have this problem. After growing up around people like this I guess it’s not hard to understand why I tend to not share my feelings either.

But you know, it’s weird, because inside I’m a really deep, emotional person. I hate chit chat and small talk and little gossipy things that don’t mean anything. When I’m upset, I want nothing more than to let it out. Inside I will be screaming out hoping someone will hear me. But for whatever reason, when I need to talk the most, that is when I say the least. I literally shut down and make it a point not to say anything that would cause someone to ask me how I’m feeling. It’s dumb. But I think the reason is because if someone asks me how I’m feeling, I don’t want it to be because they feel like they are suppose to ask me that. I want them to really care enough to ask me about it on their own accord. Even then though, I will make someone fight to get at what I’m really feeling, because that’s just how I am.

I often wonder, though, about how life would be if we simply told each other how we really truly feel. I was talking with one of my cousins about this at Thanksgiving, about how much our family likes to talk about feelings. But then I was like, “You know, it’s stupid that we don’t, because I bet inside we all wish we did.” And I probably am right. Everybody wants to feel close to somebody, and you don’t get that way by not telling them how you feel.

So why then do we not do it? It’s because of fear. We are afraid of being rejected for how we feel, or of being ridiculed or harassed. We’re afraid the recipient might not feel the same, and therefore not understand. In a lot of cases it could be because we think no one really cares. I know when I want to talk about my feelings is when I’m upset about something, and who wants to listen to someone complain about stuff they’re upset about? Most of the time I can’t even understand my feelings, so I’m afraid to talk to someone about them out of fear of being annoying or something.

But what if we all just grew a pair and maybe started telling each other the good things we feel, like when we care about someone. I couldn't begin to count the number of nights I've laid in bed thinking about how it would be to tell a certain girl how I feel about her, or hoping a girl would text me. But what if all those nights she was laying there thinking the same thing? Or have you laid there at night wishing you could talk to her/him about how you’re feeling about her/him or whatever else you’re feeling, but you don’t because you don’t want to seem needy or annoying to weak? Well they are humans too, they have those same feelings. Maybe those sleepless nights would cease to exist if we’d just tell each other. I know it’s crazy and will never happen, but it’s an interesting thought.

The big one that gets me is the classic: what if they died tonight and you never told them how you really care about them? I have a Word document saved on my computer titled “Things I Wish I’d Said...” that is kind my way of dealing with that, because most of the time I don’t feel it would be accepted if I told people. But I really want to. Especially when it comes to girls I like. That last part is pretty natural, I think, because like I said, we all want to be close to somebody, and that’s how you do it. I did tell a girl once, but it was after the relationship had ended. I’m still glad I did it though.

Like The Movies

One of my greatest fears is to end up with a life like my parents. They are not happy together. Things have happened over the years that have changed them in ways none of us can understand. As they grew through childhood they were shaped and formed by their parents, just as being around them has undoubtedly had a hand in shaping me. The tragedy is that in the beginning it wasn't like this. For a time it seemed there was a purpose for them to be together. But now it seems that whatever purpose there may have been has run its course.

Tonight, as they argued once more about everything the other does wrong, I chose to drown out their voices with a movie, and momentarily escape to a world where love is real. The movie was The Lucky One, one of the several Nicholas Sparks novels adapted for the silver screen. For me, movies are so much more than entertainment, they are an escape from reality.

The trouble with romantic movies like this is they create impossible standards that guys and girls expect from each other. I have heard more than one girl say they need to stop watching those kind of movies because they now have impossible standards for guys. My trouble is that they create impossible standards for me. I feel like I need to be the kind of guy I see in these movies, and I know full well I am not.

And I now feel like that is how real love is supposed to be—like it is in the movies. I do realize real life is much different, but that doesn’t change anything. Logic can’t always change what you feel inside.

So far in my life, the feelings I get watching these movies is the closest I can seem to come to love...or anything remotely like it. I have issues getting close to people, and especially girls, so I’m not sure if I’ll ever find anything more. And on nights like tonight, I’m not sure I want to.

Midnight Madness

It's about 1am right now. I should have been asleep long ago, but I am not.

I wanted to take a few minutes to jot down a couple paragraphs here, because I'm sure my enormous fan base has been missing me like crazy. It's alright everyone! I have not died in a car crash, I am still here with you to share my wit and humor and inspiration with the masses.

So before I forget, I must say this: what I love most about a blog such as this is that here I am free to express the hurt and frustrations I have without any hesitation of what people may think. There is freedom in anonymity; it's refreshing. On facebook (and most other situations I find myself in ) I can't say what I'm really feeling because I don't want to be that guy that's always depressed and sad and complaining about life, because I hate those people. I hate whiners, and I hate the "whoa is me" mentality altogether. So I sure as heck better not BE one of those people. As a result, I hold back. I keep it inside. But here...I don't have to. Now if only time wasn't in such high demand so I could regularly come here to vent....*sigh*. Oh, woah is me!

Missing You

Dear friend,

I can’t believe it’s been ten months since we went out separate ways. It seems like it’s been forever.

I’m sitting here in class right now, not paying too much attention. I can remember the days when I would sit here in class counting down the minutes until you would wake up cause I was so anxious to get your “good morning J” texts.

There are so many things I miss about you; so many things I’m sure I will never find in another human. It scares me to think I may never want to be with someone as badly as I wanted to be with you. Sometimes I still cry my eyes out because I know being with you will never happen.

I know you told me once that you don’t think I’m capable of being crazy about someone like you wanted someone to be crazy about you. I want you to know, though, I may not be the type to paint your name on a water tower, or scream out that I love you in the middle of a crowded restaurant, but I was and still am crazy about you. It’s been ten months since the last time we were together with the hope of a future, and there is not a day that goes by, hardly an hour even, that I am not thinking about you and missing you. You still haunt my dreams from time to time. You are in every song that comes on the radio. I still have my favorite text message from you in my inbox, and there are 12 voicemails from you that I don’t have the heart to erase.

So, you see, even though you’re as good as gone, you are still everywhere. I’m afraid I will be forever haunted by the memory of what we shared for such a short time, and by the pain of knowing I’m not the one you want.

I know you have moved on and found love now, and I sincerely hope he’s good to you and for you in every way. Because if there is anyone on this earth that deserves to have a fairy tale love story, it is you. And not that it matters much now, but I want you to know there is almost nothing I wouldn’t have given to have been that man for you.

Please take care of yourself wherever you are. And though I’m now just a fading memory from a past best forgotten, I hope you won’t forget about me, and that I love you. I realize I never had your whole heart, but at the very least I hope there is a small corner of it somewhere that will forever belong to me. As it looks right now, you will forever have all of mine.

Take care. I wish you the best of everything. And goodbye.

Heartbroken

While facebook does a good job connecting you with the lives of people you want to be connected with, I have come to learn the reverse is also true. What used to be a person I wanted to be connected with forever has now become someone I'd rather forget. But I don't have the balls to unfriend her--I care about her too much. I already have her blocked, but that doesn't always do it.

Thanks to facebook, even though I'm 600 miles away from her, she broke my heart again. She didn't even say a word. You see, the problem is that I love her. But she doesn't love me. There was a time when we use to be pretty important in each other's lives. Things didn't work out, though. She's gone her own way now. She has moved on from whatever it was we had pretty easily. I, on the other hand, have not. Tonight I caught a glimpse of her profile picture which is her with her new boyfriend. That's where facebook let me down.

The thought of her with some other guy has always been enough to make me want to puke. But seeing it for real almost made me puke. My heart stops, my stomach clenches in knots, and I struggle to breathe. It's sickening. It's disgusting. And it makes me cry every time.

I wanted nothing more than to be that guy sitting next to her, holding her hand. But one day she realized I wasn't what she wanted. And overnight I went from everything to nothing.

She messed me up. She didn't try to or want to, I know that. But it is what it is. I've had a really hard time recovering from it all. I sometimes wonder if I ever will.

I feel like what I struggle with the most is the doubt it all caused. I have a hard time imagining ever being good enough for anyone now. And if someone ever does find me good enough, I have a hard time believing they will be anything like she was. She was and is the most incredible girl I've ever known. I should think positive and be happy that, at least for a while, I was important to her, and she at least thought about me as a possibility. But that's just not real. It will always hurt because in the end, what I am and who I am isn't what she wanted. Why would anyone else think differently?

In Hindsight...

            It’s been six months since my relationship with a certain someone ended. Still not a day goes by, hardly an hour even, that I don’t think about her. It’s impossible not to when seemingly everything around me somehow finds a way to remind me of her and what we had.

            She’s moved on now—I know that. She’s made sure to let me know that. What I will never understand is how quickly she seemed to move on...almost like what we had never even happened. So many times I’ve wanted to talk to her about it; to ask her what I did wrong, and what she really thought of me, what I meant to her. But I can’t. Because I know she would honestly tell me. And I’m afraid of what her answer might be.

To quote her favorite TV show, Grey’s Anatomy, “...as human beings, sometimes it's better to stay in the dark, because in the dark there may be fear, but there is also hope.” I don’t mean to say that I still hope she might change her mind about me, though a small part of me certainly does. What I do mean to say is I think I’d rather hold on to the hope that she really did care about me like I cared about her. So I will never ask.

It’s hard to imagine her with someone else now, and honestly, I try my best not to. But she most definitely is. Her facebook picture is one of her and him. I didn’t mean to see it, but I did. Inevitably, I find myself comparing myself to him—even though I know nothing about him. I think about what it was about me she didn’t like, and what it is he might have that I don’t. It isn’t just him that I do that with, though. There are guys I meet at school, or random people I come into contact with that make me think, “That’s probably the kind of guy she wants.” I look at them and what they are; I see that what they are is what I’m not. It’s discouraging. It’s depressing. It damages my already weakened confidence.

Today I was thinking about something I said to her one night before she left to go home. I kissed her on the fore head, hugged her, and said, “I’m glad I met you.” At the time I meant it with everything I had. Now, I’m not so sure. I don’t feel like a better person for having known her. If anything I feel damaged by it. She didn’t leave me with much to hang on to. There were things she told me that cut deep. I can’t believe she meant any harm by saying them, she was just being honest...that’s how she is—brutally honest. Still, they hurt me. And now, six months later, I still lay here in bed at night wondering if what she said is true.

She told me once that she can’t imagine me ever being crazy about someone. That was one thing she wanted—someone to be crazy about her, and I guess I didn’t satisfy that. As much as it scares me, I sometimes think she’s right. Though I want it more than anything, it’s hard to imagine me finding someone that could make me feel that way. Just the idea of me loving someone like that is as foreign as France. I’m not sure I even know how.

They say to love someone, you must first love yourself. I’d say for the most part I like myself, but to say I love myself, especially now, after she revealed all these things she didn’t love for me to dwell on, is a stretch. I try to fight it, but all too often I find myself thinking that I am unlovable. I know I have qualities that a girl might like, but I also think the ones I lack are some of the most important. And for a girl that I could fall crazy in love with to come along and see past my faults, to want to hang around long enough to melt through my cold exterior and find those good qualities seems like a dream that will forever stay a dream.

I don’t know if the love I dream about having one day even exists. At this point, all I can do is hope for the best.

Looking Back

     The date is now Saturday, September 15, 2012. The date I began my last post was March 6, 2011. Clearly, a lot of time has gone by between then and now, taking with it something like 533 days worth of experiences and emotions.

     In the beginning I had every intention of documenting this journey on a regular basis. As I re-read some of my previous posts I can almost feel again the excitement I had from those early days. I had a sense of purpose then, I had a mission, and my plan was to write down the feelings, emotions, and experiences along the way with the ultimate goal of turning it all into a book.

     But as plans often do, it failed. Life got in the way I guess. Those little daily tasks that absorb so much of life and never seem to go away began taking up the few hours I had left each night after working. During the days I got so caught up in actually doing the things I was suppose to be writing about that I never did get around to writing about them. Before long days turned into weeks, weeks into months, and... you get the picture. Pretty soon a year was gone.

     I guess in the beginning I did actually try to write about things. The only problem is it was never in one place. I had a little journal going on my computer, and there was a notebook in the farmhouse I’d stop to write in if I got too overwhelmed to do anything else, and some nights I’d end up writing in my actual journal. As time went along, though, I began writing less and less, and eventually not at all.

     When I think about it, it was sort of foolish to think I could keep up the routine of writing about everything to begin with. To routinely do anything you don’t have to do requires a lot of discipline. Even brushing your teeth, which takes two minutes at the most, and most of us much less than that, doesn’t get done every day. And there are other factors involved as well.

     For me, writing is a labor filled activity. The thoughts I have in my head require time and effort to get transferred into words in a way I’m even halfway satisfied with, and here on the farm time seems to be in limited supply. There are always a hundred other things I could or should be doing, so taking the time I need to write about things rarely gets put at the top of the list.

     Furthermore, I’ve found my creativity and ability to focus seem to disappear when I’m surrounded by disorder. For example, any time I sit down to start doing a bunch of homework, that’s when I decide it’s time to clean my room, not that I’m trying to procrastinate doing the work but because I can’t focus on doing it if the room is cluttered. To say that this farm is disorderly is what they call an understatement. It’s a junkyard in some areas and a landfill in others. I can’t help but believe that has impacted my desire to write. I have realized that I’ve felt little inspiration to write anything since coming here. And even if I do, I rarely get any further than the first couple paragraphs before giving up.

     Something inside me has changed, though. I’ve missed writing. I’ve missed seeing the words as they appear in front of me, and I’ve missed the experience of creating something and watching it grow into something uniquely beautiful. I don’t want my experience here to fade away into nothing, and I think I’m ready to do something about it.