On Trust and Good Conversation

I don't trust people.  I don't let them in because I feel it wouldn't work.  I deeply fear being misunderstood yet it's what happens regardless.  The rest is understandings of only a part of me.

Part of it is that I don't think many are primed to listen.  It takes a while to chip away at someone so that I can learn how to speak to them and be able to guess what they understand.  Despite speaking relatively anonymously on blogs, what I really want is someone receptive.

Last night someone tried to convince me that no one like that exists and that if I don't change my hopes, I will just be miserable all my life. 

I feel the need to treat everyone differently, based on what I see of their personality.  Some of me comes through, but it's through a personalized filter so everyone knows a different me.  Maybe that's why a lot of people think I'm cool--I pick up on bits of them that many overlook.  But what that does is make me feel fragmented and alone.

Sometimes when I do try to fill in the cracks, I end up doing it with someone unwilling to listen or who just doesn't care about all those extra parts.  People can be very picky especially in the world of customizable experiences we have.  So should I say "fuck them" or continue with what I can get?

***

The top part is from a couple of months ago, back in CA.  I'm having some similar feelings now.   Right now I've got a big, swelling wish.  I want to use the word urge, but it doesn't quite fit here.  I really want someone I can dump on.  I want to have a giant Conversation (not one-sided blog post) where I can get some feedback on what's going on in my head and life and maybe even some insight.  But I locked people out for a long time, so there's a lot of context that people don't know about.  It's hard to analyze the data I'm giving people since they don't have the foundation built since I've been so fucking quiet and misleading for so long.

I can't rely on S and for most of the friends I'm close with, I'm the ear and that's hard to change once people get used to it.  I have some newer relationships growing, but I don't want to be super intense and wigged out right from the get-go.  I want someone who will listen to me start to rant, help me when I stumble, not wig out if I cry, and maybe give me a hug.

But...

But.

Things aren't always bad

I realized that I'm kind of negative here, but that's mostly because this is where I come to rant.  But I want to express the good parts of life too.

For about a week or two my boyfriend and I were kind of in a slump--always tired, stressed, and feeling pressed for time.  We weren't taking the time to really do things right.  And this lead to boredom.  We kept going through the motions, but not really getting into anything. 

Let's take sex as an example.  I'm pretty needy in that department--two times a day is best--and that takes up a lot of time.  But he was getting bored and I was getting annoyed.  More sex wasn't helping, they just ended up being rushed episodes to get it out of the way so we could sleep.  No sex wasn't helping because I'd end up feeling frustrated at everything.  We didn't have any time to do anything and what time we had together we kept messing up for each other.

Then I had too much and said we needed to talk. 

After dropping that bomb, I left to go to work, with the intention that my thoughts would stew and I would be able to express myself clearly later that night.  That didn't happen.  He texted me instead and that started a really honest conversation that spelled out what each of us were going through.  We continued later that night and everything worked out so well that for the next two days I felt unnaturally happy. 

It was amazing to get all those pent up negative feelings off our chests and to have someone listen without freaking out or getting overly upset.  It was also good to see an end.  When I'm in a funk, it is hard to ever see the end.  But knowing that stuff like this happens, I have hope for all of the time.

An Awkward Spot

That last post was kind of old, actually pretty old.  It was from this summer when I kind of feel like I had a sort of breakdown.  Thinking about it now, I've been leading myself up to it, so it wasn't actually a very big surprise.

I didn't feel like I could read people anymore because I'd slowly but surely been isolating myself from everyone.  All conversations became superficial and I stopped being able to find anything to talk to anyone about.  I felt like I could manage my feelings on my own and didn't (feel the need to / want to / trust anyone enough to) talk about anything that was really on my mind.  I think a lot of people feel that way, though.  (Saying things like that helps me belittle the idea of feelings, which makes it easier to remain a closed shell.)

I had a boyfriend for several years.  And then I broke up with him.  It wasn't as sudden as my syntax implies, though.  I'd been thinking about it for a year or two but felt unable to do anything about it.  I actually tried, once, to break it off.  But we weren't able to move and so I was stuck living with him.  He asked me to get back together and I said yes for convenience.  My plan was to get him a new roommate and then leave the situation, but things didn't work out. 

I ended up breaking up with him then later slept with a mutual friend, our roommate.  Understandibly, that caused a whole mess of drama. 

After the break-up, my ex decided to confess that he had been suicidal and depressed for months and that our roommate and I were the best people to handle the situation, to make him feel better, and banish those terrible thoughts from his head.  We did what we thought would help, but we were ignorant of the right solutions, being mere people.  It was a stressful and unpleasant situation for everybody, and lead to lots of isolation for everyone.  I know that I felt like I couldn't tell anyone about it, without incurring worry and meddlesome other people who were equally ill-equipped to deal with the situation.  So I tried to deal with it.  Roommate and I found comfort in each other.  Many nights, Ex would fall asleep on the couch early and Rommate and I would talk.  Often times late into the night. 

One of these nights, we happened upon a bottle of whisky and ended up fucking on the balcony.

That did not sit well with Ex.

(This post has become something entirely different than what I had imagined.)

During a horrible night, and after much coaxing, Ex broke Roommate's jaw. 

What followed was a combination of guilt, anger, confusion, and sexual frustration.  I had been attracted to Roommate for a while due to his personality and life-experience, but had never let on or done anything about it until that night.  And based on everything I knew about him, I wasn't expecting anything more than sex from him, but much more has evolved since then.  Despite that, we still cling to the idea of being in an open relationship.  (Funnily enough, I'm the only one who has actively done anything to uphold this title.)  I'm starting to skip parts of history to get to what's really on my mind. 

We announced to each other our desire to be in a relationship on Halloween and began to end some of the awkwardness in dealing with encroaching feelings.  But like I said, it's an open relationship.  This is my first time doing anything like this and I don't know all the rules, but I have started to notice some issues.  None of the other people I've gotten involved with want to leave it at just sex.  People have a habit of falling for me.  And I don't know how to deal with it.

So right now I'm in a relationship that was never supposed to be, but which has turned out to be quite nice.  I actually really enjoy it.  There's no such thing as perfect, but most of the time I'm having fun.  But on the other hand there is a guy from work who seems to want to be there for me in all the ways I doubt about Roommate--it's hard to believe in the emotional side of a sex-based relationship, despite when he tries to comfort me. 

I'm being rushed to leave and end my rant.  Goodnight