This profile may contain Mildly Adult content.
Sometimes lost
About Me About Me
I came by way of the experience project. My visit here, however, is motivated by desire to shed the reactions I have to negative--or shall I say, challenging--events that occur in my life. It didn't always seem to be this way.
Growing up, I was more organized, somewhat focused and practicing my passions. I was already an odd duck; what other high schooler gardens and landscapes the grounds of his home (a two family rental)? I played along to cassettes on my cheap little drum set in the basement--never jamming with anyone else, or joining the school band. I read books, nothing too studious. Mostly choose your own adventure books, and later, S.E. Hinton stuff. In junior high, I'd skip lunch period to sequester myself in a study carrel with a Dukane filmstrip viewer projector watching strips about NASA and astronomy. I suppose I wanted to escape from very early on.
Somehow though, I felt in control of my life despite my parents being divorced when I was ten. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have coped by being so solitary, or by eating multiple bowls of cereal when I got home from school while watching afternoon cartoons. Instead I would have did my homework, and studied becoming a better than C student. I suppose such coping, rather than the landscaping, drum playing, reading introvert (but healthy) I was, I became more into quick fixes, like the cereal and cartoon thing.
Of course I outgrew cereal and cartoons in adolescence, trading them in for Playboys, Penthouse, masturbation and later, smoking, and when my social network fell apart after leaving college (which I somehow got into) I turned to drugs.
This only child that realized in his late twenties--thanks to recovering from drugs--that the relationship with his mother was codependent, perhaps even emotionally incestuous, needed to change. I moved across country. I maintained a certain respect and stayed in contact with my martyr, fear based mother, but the distance made the relationship healthier. Dad, was another story.
It still amazes me that they were even together. Dad, Ayn Rand fanatic, maintained the "selfishness as virtue" philosophy. I analyze that strange coupling that, on good days, makes me think I'm a miracle--like those plants you see growing out of cooled and hardened lava flows, or a couple of rungs down from the immaculate conception. On bad days, I'm simply a mistake.
Loneliness, ironically, has been a killer. What happened to that healthy, naturally introverted constitution that once was? I'm currently dealing with the recent death of my dad. Mom died last year, and being an only child orphan, despite my 40 something age, is still difficult. Maybe it's that I reached out to my dad to try to improve our strained relationship (to measured results), or that he was my final parental loss, but the loneliness of being in an unfamiliar city, with out my social network back home, dealing with an estate that had no will etc. is, as I said in the beginning of this lengthy anecdote, challenging.
I've been suffering from depression that seemed to be brought on by an abusive wife. Fortunately I'm divorced, though I have a daughter that I haven't seen in five years, thanks to said wife. I haven't been able to find a career track job since (finally) graduating from college in 2009. Taking stock of the positives, I'm now in a healthy relationship, have a men's group that I'm involved in, and do freelance work when it presents itself.
Anyway, today is a challenge--mostly thanks to loneliness. I struggle to face the challenges due to formative unhealthy coping mechanisms. I want the introvert kid back!
Growing up, I was more organized, somewhat focused and practicing my passions. I was already an odd duck; what other high schooler gardens and landscapes the grounds of his home (a two family rental)? I played along to cassettes on my cheap little drum set in the basement--never jamming with anyone else, or joining the school band. I read books, nothing too studious. Mostly choose your own adventure books, and later, S.E. Hinton stuff. In junior high, I'd skip lunch period to sequester myself in a study carrel with a Dukane filmstrip viewer projector watching strips about NASA and astronomy. I suppose I wanted to escape from very early on.
Somehow though, I felt in control of my life despite my parents being divorced when I was ten. If I knew then what I know now, I wouldn't have coped by being so solitary, or by eating multiple bowls of cereal when I got home from school while watching afternoon cartoons. Instead I would have did my homework, and studied becoming a better than C student. I suppose such coping, rather than the landscaping, drum playing, reading introvert (but healthy) I was, I became more into quick fixes, like the cereal and cartoon thing.
Of course I outgrew cereal and cartoons in adolescence, trading them in for Playboys, Penthouse, masturbation and later, smoking, and when my social network fell apart after leaving college (which I somehow got into) I turned to drugs.
This only child that realized in his late twenties--thanks to recovering from drugs--that the relationship with his mother was codependent, perhaps even emotionally incestuous, needed to change. I moved across country. I maintained a certain respect and stayed in contact with my martyr, fear based mother, but the distance made the relationship healthier. Dad, was another story.
It still amazes me that they were even together. Dad, Ayn Rand fanatic, maintained the "selfishness as virtue" philosophy. I analyze that strange coupling that, on good days, makes me think I'm a miracle--like those plants you see growing out of cooled and hardened lava flows, or a couple of rungs down from the immaculate conception. On bad days, I'm simply a mistake.
Loneliness, ironically, has been a killer. What happened to that healthy, naturally introverted constitution that once was? I'm currently dealing with the recent death of my dad. Mom died last year, and being an only child orphan, despite my 40 something age, is still difficult. Maybe it's that I reached out to my dad to try to improve our strained relationship (to measured results), or that he was my final parental loss, but the loneliness of being in an unfamiliar city, with out my social network back home, dealing with an estate that had no will etc. is, as I said in the beginning of this lengthy anecdote, challenging.
I've been suffering from depression that seemed to be brought on by an abusive wife. Fortunately I'm divorced, though I have a daughter that I haven't seen in five years, thanks to said wife. I haven't been able to find a career track job since (finally) graduating from college in 2009. Taking stock of the positives, I'm now in a healthy relationship, have a men's group that I'm involved in, and do freelance work when it presents itself.
Anyway, today is a challenge--mostly thanks to loneliness. I struggle to face the challenges due to formative unhealthy coping mechanisms. I want the introvert kid back!