words hurt

Such a bummer. It turns out that no matter how good you feel about yourself, how secure you believe you are, how comfortable you are in your own skin, how resilient you believe your heart is, some people can still hurt you with their words.

As innocuous as some statements appear to be on the outside, questioning a person's judgement, their motives, their intentions, challenging their ideas, their character, their personality, and labelling them as "wrong" just plain stings. Especially when the speaker is someone valued, cherished, and dare I say, loved to a certain extent. I suppose the idea that what they're telling me is the truth in their eyes, and being as it adds to the self-loathing and insecurity I already battle with daily, hurts deeper than it would were I already not trying so hard. Am I at fault? Are my values off? Am I doomed to fail in the world of relationships? Fuck you doubt, I hate your pervasive ass.

I've tried to be very careful with my words because I'm aware of how dangerous and damaging they can be. Whether this has made me hyper-sensitive to words directed at me or not, I do not know. One thing is for sure, pain makes for strong memories, and motivations. 

Cheers.

do you like me?

I've found myself all too oft complaining that women I see and or come across and or meet in various situations "Don't give me a chance". I was thinking about that a little the other day, while at lunch, and perhaps dependent upon my mood for the day, I thought I sounded a little bit whiny. Or Whine-y. Or both. Invariably getting turned down by someone out of hand makes me wonder what it is that is wrong with me and what I can do to make myself right. Then, of course, comes the rational, unhurt me that realizes that everyone has their own preferences and there's not necessarily anything wrong with me, but that silly bitch is missing out! Not in so many words, of course. Anywho, whilst sitting in the Dominick's, which has an upstairs seating area that sits about 400 miles up, I was able to get a birds-eye view of the interactions amongst humans. As it turns out, they don't give each other much notice, much less attention, at all. Clearly this underlying assumption that people don't pay attention to, or even less notice, me

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and then

And then, one day, I wake up, feeling better. Felling more than "better"; feeling good, feeling secure, feeling worthy, feeling smarter, as if that's a feeling. It's actually quite difficult to quantify, really. Even qualitatively describing it seems insufficient, so I really won't spend a whole lot of time going through the thesaurus in my head in order to find the perfect adjectives to explain the situation.

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letter to the void

Hi, 

This is a letter I need to write, however, it is one I need to not send. If I were to write a real letter that I intend to send to tell you how much of a difference I've felt in the last week and how it was due to our conversation together I would invariably grant you with all of the credit for this change and take none for myself. Though, credit where credit is due; talking to you put myself into a perspective I hadn't yet been able to fathom. I imagine I would have eventually been able to do it myself, but the Universe decided it was time and placed you in my path for a couple of days, and with a question that would require a real look at myself. 

Because of this Universal Intervention, I am better able to see myself from then with the insight, perspective and genuine self caring I've developed over that time. It had been quite difficult to look into the past and live in my own shoes without trapping myself in the same insecurities, despairs, worries. I really didn't want to touch the times we were together, out of an unhealthy desire to leave you and the fantasy I had created around us up on the pedestal I believed would keep you safe and keep me in my place. I really didn't want to see myself as I was, a starving soul, looking for someone to feed me the love, attention and affection I so deeply craved, and so harshly punished myself for desiring. That would make me human, flawed, touchable by others. I couldn't have that.

Now, however, instead of seeing myself as a fat little tick, pathetically draining the life blood out of your heart and deserving of none of it; I am able to see a sad little boy, unaware of how to know himself, and share that with others and too afraid of everything to take the simple, yet difficult, step to make himself more. No judgment. No punishment. No blame. How different that feels. I'm not telling myself that I am "awful"; I'm not torturing myself for things I did "wrong"; I'm not blaming myself for not being "better". I was who I was back then, just as I am who I am right now, fortunately right now I am able to separate the parts of myself doubting myself, berating myself and berating myself for doubting and berating myself. I recognize them for what they are and how they helped and no longer use them because they are an artifact of a me who no longer exists. Able to look back on those times without anger at a "stupid, irresponsible boy who took everything life gave him and destroyed it, and the perfect girl who did absolutely everything right" but with sadness that two people, who were trying the best they knew how, couldn't make it work becauseof fear. Fear of getting lost, of losing themselves, of becoming something new, of actually being happy. Together. 

The time for us has passed, and I am far more comfortable with it now. Despite the initial reason for our talking, the lesson in it for me is quite obvious. I needed your presence to help me see that former me so that I could let him go; and with him, the ideas he had about himself, about the world, and about you and I. So now I can mourn him, mourn them and be me. My future, or my future lives, may contain you within them, or a version of you, but that's for the future me to work with and worry about and, hopefully, be successful no matter what that means. For now, I'm just learning how to be me, and what that means for me. 

Thank you and good luck out there!
Love always, 
Dayne

the answer to life, the universe and everything.

I've often been told, and somewhat agree with the statement that the Universe, god, budda, whatever, provides me with what I need at that particular time. Be it a person to tell me that I need a haircut, be it a cat who reminds me that petting a cat is at times soothing, be it a song that reminds me of who I am and where I'm from. Unfortunately no one tells me what this thing placed before me is for or why I need it, or when, if ever, this thing is going to be good for me. That's the trick I suppose, I cannot learn if someone just tells me the answers....

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