Smell the flowers?

I just got back from my first professional sporting event ever in Florida :) My best friend Sue took me to see the Tampa Bay Lightning hockey team play the Atlanta Thrashers for my birthday.
It’s weird… it’s not like I’m terribly old I suppose, but this year, for the first time ever, I am actually kind of dreading my birthday. I guess it kind of reminds me about how I’ve really not lost any weight since last year… 8 lbs. I’ve furthered my career a whole lot but honestly, I’ve not stopped to smell the flowers at all. Tonight I realized how much there really is to do in Tampa and how I’ve lived right near there for like 2 years and I’ve seriously only been there once recreationally (the other times were airport trips.)
Right now I’m watching “Dark City” from 1998 starring Jennifer Connolly and Kiefer Sutherland. I hadn’t heard of it until I haphazardly came across it on netflix. I’m not sure how I did, but I did. It came out the year before the Matrix and it seems to possibly have influenced it a bit… it’s a weird ass movie. I’m about 20 min in and I like it so far.
That’s about all I have to report right now. I’m always really busy and pretty lonely…

An Understanding.

Understanding.

Communication is such an amazing concept.  The free flow of ideas from one brain to another.

However, for communication to occur, two elements are compulsory:

1) A communicator who has a message s/he wants to convey.

2) A receiver who has a common form of communication with the speaker *AND* wants to receive the message.

Communication occurs in so many ways.  Language is not the only common form of communication.  Think of all the ways you can send messages to people. 

Speak. Yell. Sing. Call. Dance. Glare. Punch. Whisper. Gesture. Hug. Text. Sign. Touch. Gaze. Shake hands. Blink. Wave. E-mail. Kiss. Play the violin…

The list goes on!  While the list of ways to attempt to create a message is virtually infinite, achieving meaningful communication or “an understanding” is a much more miraculous task.

Especially for me…but not for lack of effort.  I am often told I am “too intense,” “overstimulating” or “just too much to handle.”  Who knows.

I am always searching for ways to create an understanding with someone.  As trite as it sounds, I feel horribly misunderstood.  I am a loyal warrior of my own existance cast into a world of people too busy to breathe.  People who look at you as if you are a child molester if you smile at them in Walgreens.  I can speak for periods of time to people and no matter how much I analyze what is being said internally before I say it, the faces I see responding to me look vacant, bored, confused.

I am not plain, usual, or average.  I am not what is expected.  Instead of intrigue or curiosity, my odd comments and strange ways are usually met by fear.

Occasionally, there are glimmers of hope.  Just glimmers.  My day is made if someone takes the initiative to say more than “hi” to me.  Yesterday in the elevator a young man said “Hey look, the certificate’s expired.  Nice work.”  He snickered gesturing at the certificate on the wall smiling at me as if he wanted my reaction.  I live in those small moments of feeling like my opinion is wanted.  I live for the split seconds of time when I see another human face looking at mine with a look of excitement to see me.  I feel these times are so few and far between that my sense of belonging is a withering bag of bones on life support.

The irony of all of this is that this is the only thing wrong with my life.  I absolutely LOVE everything else that is going on.  I have MANY blessings. 1) I adore my job.  2) I am happy to be studying Special Education: Behavior Disorders for my Master’s degree at USF.  3) My relationship with my Dad doesn’t suck anymore.  4) My sister and I made up and are beginning to rekindle the great friendship we once had.  5) Over the last 4 years I have lost about 90 lbs and I am over half way to my goal.  6) I realized that drinking alcohol doesn’t work for me and I have been sober since September 27.  7) I go to AA meetings with regularity and they help me learn and cope.  8) I am happy to have the health insurance I have which allows me to see doctors regularly and take care of my health. 9) While my debt is not going down, I can pay all my bills each month (barely)

Yet, despite all these wonderful blessings, I feel amiss.  Something is wrong.  Each day I wake elated to go to the job I love but by the time the day is over and it is time for me to go to bed, I am so miserable about my utter lack of meaningful human interaction that I am nearly suicidal.

The worst part of all of this is that the one person that should be reading this won’t.  (So why don’t you tell him yourself in person?)  I have and he still won’t try to fix the situation.

As each week passes, my hopes of normal relationships with others outside my family dies slowly, excruciatingly.  I wish I had the cure.  I wish I knew what to do. 

I suppose all I can do is be grateful for what I have, take one day at a time, think through my choices, and wait.

Star Wars

“It looks like the straight talk express lost a wheel on that one…”

- Barack Obama during his debate with John McCain on Tuesday, October 7, 2008

 

Oh, politics… how they make simultaneously confuse, frustrate, and yet give false hope.  The debate was pretty funny.  It never ceases to amaze me how the candidates manage to completely elude the question, hence defeating the entire purpose of the “town hall” setting of the meeting.

I would like to think that Barack Obama will win the election, however, even if he does, I often feel our country is so far in trouble, it’s going to take years to regain ourselves.  Our education and healthcare systems are deplorable and yet all of our money is going over to fight a war that is a huge mistake.

I feel very fortunate to have the job I have.  I love what I am doing and while I am in mass amounts of debt, I make enough to scrape by.

Honestly, the only real problem with my life is that I feel so disconnected.  I feel like I am an alien from a far off galaxy visiting earth.  It’s so damn trite I know but I feel so lonely and misunderstood.  I don’t have many friends and I feel like most people see me as really weird and/or annoying.  The problem is I don’t think that I am and I don’t want to change for anybody but this causes me to be alienated and makes me miserable.

I guess what gets me through each day is the love of my job and knowing that I’m helping kids make progress…but still I am lonely.  I may not be alone, but I feel more lonely than I’ve ever felt.  As a child I didn’t understand how someone could feel lonely in a room of people.  Now that I am 25, I often feel lonely in a crowded mall or driving down the road in traffic.  I lack real human interaction.  Something meaningful.  Something more than “Hi.”  I need love in the worst way but in our society looking for love is only something “losers” do.

I wish more than anything that I had someone to spend my life with.  Someone who would want to discuss/playfully debate/argue music and movies with me.  Someone who would dance with me and not care if he or she is a shitty dancer.  Someone who loves animals as much as I do.  Someone who has a weird distinctive personality.  Someone who has passion about his or her career.  Someone who likes the outdoors and/or swimming.  Someone who doesn’t have a desire to do drugs or alcohol regardless of his or her past.  Someone who finds me interesting and sexy.  This person would be my ideal.  Perhaps I set my standards too high, because it seems that this person does not exist.

Until the day comes when this person lands in my life, should that day ever come, I suppose I will continue to live through the times when Gene Kelly or Rita Hayworth have a romantic moment on my TV screen.