PERSONAL

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Freedom, and the Chains of Chance

7 years ago2,995 words

I've finished my university exams, and now have a long summer ahead of me and I don't know what to do with it. All I can think about are relationships, and how much I've failed in that crucially important area of life.

I don't think that the exams went especially well, but oh well; they're done. Over now. I still feel quite pathetic to be focusing as much as I do on such things at this age. I should have my life sorted out but I don't. That plays on my mind all the time. Maybe a lot of people feel that way, though. I can only imagine.

I'll be going to South Korea for a month for a university summer school thing in four or five weeks, and I'm scared, entirely for social reasons. I'll be going with the one friend that I have, but I just imagine she'll get along with the others and I'll be the odd one out, as I always am, stumbling over my words or too scared to talk at all. Or my points of reference will be unaligned with theirs; their passions will be alien to me, and vice versa. There doesn't seem to be much hope of a connection. I just hope I get through the thing.

I've been learning a bit of the language, in preparation. 안녕하세요! That's some Korean. It says 'annyeonghaseyo', which is a greeting, like hello/hi/good morning/evening/afternoon or whatever. Originally, I found the script - hangul - intimidating in concept while remembering trying to learn Japanese, having to memorise hiragana, katakana, and a baffling amount of kanji that made the language feel completely inaccessible... but it turns out that hangul's actually really easy and elegant in a way that makes me envy Korea for having it! It's certainly much better than English with its bizarre spellings and innumerable mismatches between how words are written and how they sound. Hangul stacks its limited number of consonants and vowels into syllable clusters, (usually) either of the form consonant-vowel-consonant or consonant-vowel; 안, for example, is (null)-a-n, and 녕 is n-yeo-ng (the circle is used to show an 'empty slot' if at the start of the cluster, or an 'ng' sound if at the end). I find it quite interesting. My biggest concern is that many of the actual sounds aren't even used in English (the well-known r/l being an example), so I probably won't have any hope of pronouncing them correctly. Anyway, I doubt anyone is much interested in this, but I'm trying to develop a bit of interest in it myself just so then I can get myself to bother using the various online tutorials and apps I've been exploring.

But that feels like such a minor thing. As I said, all I can really focus on these days is relationships, or rather my absence of and failure at those. This isn't new - I've been this way to some degree for essentially my whole life - but it comes in waves, and now perhaps is one of the peaks.

I can't remember if I've talked about this before - maybe - but for a while now I've just been using my creative skills to try and scratch this itch, ineffectually. Wasting so much time making things I'd never show to anyone; paintings of nude women, but also personal, private 'games' where female characters just talk about their relationships so then I might somehow use that to tame my own jealousy by turning it into a kind of entertainment, or by having power over it. I mean, if some real person talks about her boyfriend, I feel cut up with envy, but if I can make some pretend girl talk about the exact same thing, perhaps I can train my mind to take a kind of interest or even pleasure in hearing such exchanges instead. It's an odd thing, hard to properly explain, and a form of emotional coping or of cognitive restructuring, which does seem to be having some effects on my perceptions and reactions... But it really is a shame that I'm wasting so much of my time on this when I should really be pursuing real relationships instead.

But I'm not because I'm scared, and because I just assume I'm not wantable. I imagine I've talked about that endlessly in the past. My time is up, I feel like; I reached the point where I should have found a partner by now, and I haven't, so I probably won't. It makes me want to die. I know that I'm not the only one so unfortunate - I've been 'reassured' with stories of people in their thirties or older who've never had a partner - but I wonder if the poor are less stressed by their poverty if they know the neighbours are poor too. It's not like that makes you any less poor, makes the unaffordable medical bills suddenly disappear.

Though social comparison is a big part of it, I suppose. I've been talking again with my only friend about her relationships, particularly the one she's been in for the past half a decade, and it's hard not to feel envious about it all. She's a shy and anxious person, yet she's had boyfriends even since she was a little child because she was interconnected with her peers in a way that I never was. It sounds as if it's a common thing for everyone in school to be messaging one another online, or at least for people to find friends-of-friends on Facebook and start connections that way; mutual friendship, finding people through other people you already know, does seem to be a key seed from which relationships can grow. This isn't news to me, but it's a reminder of how my own experiences were never like that; the first time I hugged a girl was when I was about eighteen (!), and the only ones I'd talked to at all before or around then were oceans away, and usually already in a relationship anyway. I value this one friendship I have here at university because she's the first proper female friend I've had, in person and platonically at least, but that's sad, that I've found something so simple so late. She's also my only friend in the real world, and I know I'm not going to be finding any connections of my own through her.

It feels as if once you're off the social grid, so to speak, it's incredibly difficult to ever get onto it. If people look you up and see you're friendless, they'll probably not think very highly of you. You have to have friends to make friends, probably. Frustrating how that works.

She met her current partner when she was very young, and now lives with him. I envy that immensely. The thoughts that float to the surface most relate to intimacy; sex, of course, but I also wish I could just sit around naked with someone, because the feeling of openness and trust would be the most amazing thing. To be with someone who accepts - and likes! - what you are, who you don't need to be on guard around, who you can share anything with. I wonder how many people take that for granted. It sounds wonderful, anyway.

I also get frustrated by how I keep wishing I could experience such things with my friend. Not sex, but just sitting around naked, or something. Being open, trusting. But it's inappropriate, and that gets to me. It feels as if she has a resource that would brighten my life so much, but it's inaccessible to me, locked away inside a cage of thoughts, of cultural rules, of her partner's potential pain. I know clear borders must be drawn between capital-R Relationships and those that are lesser, 'just' platonic, and that stepping over them is inappropriate. But I feel it's much, much easier to look down on those who toe that line if you're already living on the better side of it. I wonder how many people, if they'd been starving for weeks, and were met by a friend holding a delicious chunk of food, would completely resist the urge to at least ask for a bite, even if they knew it wasn't theirs to ask for? It's interesting though how that doesn't work as an analogy because a friend would be expected to share their food - especially if they had plentiful quantities of it - to relieve the intense distress and deprivation of the starver, yet there's a distinct specialness to anything remotely sexual that makes it uniquely out of bounds. It makes sense evolutionarily, but it's a shame... for me, at least. She's lucky, though.

I also feel that a big part of that is just because we want what's forbidden to us. There've been experiments about it, which show that when people are explicitly deprived of an option, they want that option more than any others, sometimes even becoming aggressive in order to try and access it. Children, too, if asked to choose a toy, will choose the one that someone's already playing with, because it's not freely available to them. We want what we can't have. But when we get it, what then? I get the feeling it's not nearly as exciting as it seemed from a distance. And yet the itching urge to know that through direct experience rather than just conceptually is a potent one. A maddening one.

While I'm deeply glad to know my one friend, I also can't help resenting the fact that the only person I've connected to here at university is one of the rare few who's got a healthy relationship so deeply established so young. I feel I'm surrounded by people who are single, who'd love to experiment, but instead I only know someone with whom I can't learn the things I came here hoping most to learn. That's a thought I have to wrestle with frequently. It's all about the hand we're drawn. Like of cards, I mean. Of course. Fate. Chance.

I should find more people, of course, but fears hold me back. The fear of being unable to connect, of being unwanted. I've been planning for ages to use various dating apps and I imagine I've talked about that here more than once, but it all feels so artificial... Perhaps I'll try over the summer, though the thought that nobody would want me anyway is a big one that very much holds me back.

I think it's rooted in perfectionism. Wanting to be some kind of perfect partner, but knowing that I don't have the 'desirable masculine traits' like the ability to protect and provide that women have evolved to want. I feel like I'd be an embarrassment to anyone I'd be with, and I don't want to cause harm, so I retreat into my poisonous bubble and suffer alone rather than spreading that poison to another.

Usually. I've been contact with my ex-girlfriend - the only one I've ever had - recently. Our relationship was not a pleasant one, it would seem, and she's with a much better person now, in a much healthier place. She was telling me about some of my many faults, not maliciously, but honestly. And while I'm happy for her, it's very sigh-inducing to know that my only experience with a relationship was essentially terrible, toxic, a relief for her to be done with (though it tore me apart when it ended).

I seem to rely on guilt a lot to hopefully get what I want. This isn't a good thing at all, but I can understand why it would develop. If when you're little, before your mind forms, the only way you're able to get fed or cared for is to show that you're distressed, then you're going to be programmed at your core to believe that showing distress leads to needs being met. Someone whose needs were met anyway, who didn't need to show distress, would develop more adaptively, healthily. But even now I find myself trying to get people to feel bad for me so then they might actually care about me at all. What I should really be doing is becoming admirable, someone who others look up to and want to be around, rather than inspiring negativity to relieve my own pain. But the kind of mental reprogramming required for that isn't something that can be done with the flip of a switch.

I analyse the psychology behind all this, why I was like I was, am like I am. An unpleasant childhood, my set of personality traits... Inexperience. Much as we can't create a masterpiece the first time we pick up a brush, it stands to reason that our first relationships - where we've yet to learn the delicate dance of navigating another's nuances - would be fraught with mistakes and pain... But I haven't had the experiences to allow me to learn how to do them right. It's why I envy my friend's early experiences so much; not because teenage relationships are wonderful - it sounds like they aren't - but because each of them lays a foundation for something more stable and healthy to be built on further along the journey. I feel that even if I found someone now, I wouldn't know how to cope with it, and I don't exactly have abundant time to experiment and learn and fail and grow.

But I know I'm just trapped in thoughts, and my thoughts about what relationships might be like don't exactly reflect the lazy lounging and farting and chatting about chocolate and laundry or whatever that makes up something more real, more human. The little mundanities, the imperfections. I've built a cathedral in my mind out of faulty beliefs, and I know it's very much a figment, distorted, but I've trapped myself inside, and reality seems more like the distant dream than this mental realm, which is all I really know.

I don't know if I'm even making sense anymore. I keep trying to think myself out of a situation caused by excessive thinking; like trying to put out a forest fire with a flamethrower. And yet my reaction to that is to try and think my way out of thinking my way out of my situation. Makes sense. Will work. Surely.

I'll be having my brain scanned again on Monday, to see if the tumour's grown. I've had brain surgery more times than I've had sex in the last half a decade. Other people get partners, I get a brain tumour. Such are the whims of Lady Luck. Those are thoughts that keep coming up again and again. What a life. Anyway, I keep morbidly hoping it's grown so then I'll have an excuse to say that's enough, I'm tired of this, the deck I've been dealt is too poor to continue. It's best to just quit. It's an intensely appealing thought. Quitting. But I know I should resist it. For some reason. Probably.

It's interesting that my friend speaks of suicide and wishing she'd never been born despite apparently having everything I'd ever want. Says a lot about human nature, I think. Is anyone happy, really?

Anyway. I feel so frustratingly fettered by fate. Some of us just get better experiences or more culturally-compatible qualities than others; our potential for success or happiness is determined from the start and along the way by factors outside our control. We meet others by chance, and maybe for one of us that random hand of cards will contain a soulmate, for another a tormentor or deadly disease. Life and happiness are about interpreting the cards we've dealt in a way that tells a story we like... I know that. We have the choice, for example, to see solitude as freedom from obligations or stressors, or to see it as tormenting loneliness. It's not what happens to us that affects how we feel, but how we react to it. How we choose to react to it.

Though I do wonder how true that is. Whether those who say and live by such things already have their needs mostly met anyway so it's easier for them to say that. I wonder if they could be so ~enlightened~ about it all if they were literally starved of food. Maybe some people could be. But they probably have better discipline and different desires to me. Their lives must have shaped them in such a way as to actually want that, perhaps. I don't know.

But yes. Relationships. If you have one, you're lucky. I don't, and probably won't ever, and that makes me want to die. I should do something about it. But my fears hold me back. I should work on those. Maybe. That was the point of this blog, after all. Taming the mind. I'm working on it. It's a slow process.

I feel like I should do something like get a part-time job over the summer, or do some creative project... but it's hard to focus on anything when all I can think about is this social starvation, much as you'd struggle to write a report if you hadn't eaten in days and your leg had just been bitten off by a swarm of confused centipedes.

People have commented several times to me in the past about how I post things that are quite open, intriguingly so, or for which they're in some sense grateful... I suppose the only reason I do this is because I feel so cut off from others; perhaps I wouldn't have the confidence - or the need - to write such things if I knew people I knew in person would read my words. But since I am alone, I may as well post this. I wonder what I'll think of it in the future, if I even have one of those.