Decrying Gravity

Before Laura, I was convinced that my own personal path to happiness lay in having a romantic relationship.  It probably took me some time to really understand why I felt that way, and there's no doubt that social pressures at large (and my selfconsciousness over failing to "keep up with the curve") were significant.  But it was the singularly important issue in my life.  It's what I focused on, what I obsessed over, what tormented me more than I let anything else.  I so wanted to be loved, so wanted to be thoroughly accepted, so wanted to have someone who would forgive all my multitude of failings and just love me with a breadth and passion that would make up for the lack I found in my family and myself.

It was not about companionship, although that was an undeniable bonus.  It was not about physicality/sex, although that was tantalizing.  It was about esteem, it was about acceptance, it was about finding a purpose in my life since I, in and of myself, was not enough to justify living.

In short, it was unhealthy.

I came to realize that while I dated Laura (and I apologize for bringing her up so often; it was a revelatory period, what can I say?).  Laura was sweet and affectionate, but the acceptance wasn't there (significantly because there wasn't a sufficient understanding of what was there to accept).  When she left for Lollapalloza and I was a misanthropic wreck, hating my body/self as much as I hated everything else, it was clear that I was fooling myself if I thought a romantic relationship was a panacea.

There has to be a fundamental level of self-love, for lack of a better phrase.  It's something I've never had.  My body was expendable, my feelings were meant to be raked over the coals (by myself and others), and I was worthless.  I was guided not by personal desire or what felt "right" but by an abstract logic that dictated what should fit and work, what was safe and easy, not what genuinely felt appropriate.  I was meant to suffer, and I needed someone else to be happy (largely because of my involvement with them) to have vicarious joy since I was so incapable of it myself.

That's not fair or sustainable.  There is something to be said for humility, but self-abasement is a different game entirely.  I have to find a love for myself, a genuine joy of life, before I can realistically expect to be an authentic and reciprocating romantic partner.

And I'm working on that.  I'm not at a place where I can do that yet, of course.  "I am not what I am," as Iago says.  My hair is growing, but everything else is just waiting.  Infuriating, frustrating waiting.  But I suppose I've gone this far, what's another few months?

All that aside, although I've learned this lesson, it doesn't negate the desire for a romantic relationship.  I want companionship, I want that acceptance and understanding, I want that intimacy.  It's an intense desire, poignant to the point of pain at times.  A relationship fills your life in a way that nothing else can compare to.  That's not to say they're the end all, be all.  But it's undeniable, at least for me, that life is incomplete without them.

 I'm resigned to being single for the immediate future.  I don't want someone to fall in love with a person who won't (hopefully) exist in a few years' time.  And then there's the persistent dearth of viable possibilities that has plagued me since I first began to desire seven years ago.  Those are self-imposed limitations, of course.  But they are nigh-impenetrable barriers nonetheless.

So the question is, how does one make do without?  I've grown to rely on my family and friends more, of course.  Intimacy has always been difficult for me, with that cocktail of trust and low self-worth making so many of my past relationships one-sided affairs.  It's still nowhere near a substitute for what I'd want in romance.  Yet.  But I suppose I have some hope that those are walls I can continue to erode.

I've also kept quite busy, which, as covered in my previous entry, is an increasingly problematic solution.  I constantly have so much to do, so much of the time; if I was more focused, perhaps if I was more passionate, it might not be so bad.  But I cannot find much motivation, and thus fall into all too familiar patterns.

But those patterns are what I need to break.  Those walls towards platonic intimacy, those self-defeating escapist routes, those self-hating and self-denying tendencies.  Once I work on those, once I begin to become the me I need to be, then I can go back to seeking romantic fulfillment.  Unless serendipity strikes first.  I'm not holding my breath.