Relationships

I stumbled onto this sharing area (?) a little while ago, but I'm not really sure what I'm doing, which's never stopped me before, so sit right back and you'll hear a tale of a fateful trip.

Relationships are a mystery to me. An unobtainable and insurmountable idea I yearn for like any person does in different ways, but for me it's like grasping at handfuls of smoke. I have an idea why this is, and that makes it even more sad to me, because I'm not a bad person or antisocial, or anything like that, although at this point I have grown older, fatter, and more undesirable than in my younger years. That doesn't really matter, because I've been given chances at meaningful and intimate relationships regardless. I am simply a stranger to the notion.

I have substance abuse problems that I recover from on a daily basis. My personality is set in such a way that if it feels good I want more, and the process is the same every time. The ride becomes hard, the brakes go out and I am just along as a spectator to the coming train wreck. When I was actively indulging my alcohol or substance desires, relationships consisted of coupling and uncoupling in a sort of dance that had nothing to do with love or emotion, or even compassion. Everybody and everything was simply a means to an end, or it/they were in my way. Today I have much more respect and love for myself and those around me. I find myself a spectator again, but only to a different set of circumstances. The past is trapped in us and we are trapped in the past...

I also suffer from other annoying mental hiccups, such as PTSD and depression. I was incarcerated for 25 years of my life in places I will never be able to leave. Overcrowding, brutality, and abuse developed and fine-tuned in some of the deepest pits of hell let loose onto the men living in those dusty, grey concrete and dirt fields. We fought wars nobody will ever care about or even know about, but they happened, and soldiers went off to die in them, over and over. We were required to lose ourselves in the politics and rules that made mincemeat out of many and scarred many others in many ways. It squeezed my mind and heart like a sponge until almost all the humanity was removed. I had two life sentences (these were non-violent crimes I can go into another time if you like... ours was the strictest 'three strikes' law in the country), and I don't know if this will make any sense to anybody, but I did not believe I was going to leave that world until I left this one, so this world disappeared to me. I let it go in the most literal & figurative ways. I survived, but I let all this go and I can't get it back.

Anyway, I did get out. The law was amended, they retried my case, gave me a sentence I had already served three times over and discharged me. Before I was thrown out of the world I was younger, believed I was strong, and had zero experience with true relationships or the sharing of emotion and intimacy. I shared my beer, or sometimes my dope, to get what I wanted. I left and came to a place where emotions were a weakness and the weak were preyed upon to feed the desires of hate & fear. I am not there, and it's okay to feel emotion, but sometimes I can't stop them. Can't turn off the thoughts. My world is lost and I live in a kind of limbo. I am inexperienced and don't feel like I fit in, and sometimes I'm not sure any of this is real. "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose."

I don't dare express a lot of the contents of my head, even if I was to find a partner willing to tolerate my ideas of love or intimacy. Those are issues in their own right. I have had a few relationships since my release, and all were disasters. I seem to be the common denominator, even though I don't see myself as totally intolerable or disgusting, or whatnot. I think I turn my partners into dope, and let my addictive behavior loose in a different way. I don't want to do this, but there it is. It feels good and I want more. I have a lot to offer. I think I do. It's probably too late in my life to figure this out and change the belief system that drives my ideas of who I am as a partner and lover. Maybe I'll come across someone who is as bent and broken as I am, only in a different way so that we each fill the other's dark places and are able to look at each other as partners.

Everyone has a story. Everyone is a story. Every single moment for every single person who ever lived or will live is only a passing thought to those who are wrapped up in themselves. I try to make a lot of my story go away and think of other's stories, but I remember everything. For some of us relationships are as foreign & unobtainable as the secret parts of a stranger's dark desires. Maybe the secrets are shared in healthy relationships, maybe the desires are sated, maybe there is none of that. Maybe we all hold some cards very, very close to the vest. I don't know, but I guess it's okay if I never do.