Pheromones Part 2

Pheromones

I've been thinking about pheromones the last few days. 

Broken

I swear, there is seriously something broken in me that makes it physically impossible for me to have healthy interactions with other people. Every time I say this to anyone they say "No, you just have to try harder." But the harder I try, the worse it gets. It's like I'm just fucking invisible (and inaudible) until someone wants something or sometimes, until someone feels like bitching at somebody.

I've been trying desperately to force myself to talk to people more, in the hope that eventually I will either get better at it or find someone who I feel comfortable talking to, even if only online. Over time, I have joined quite a few vegan groups on Facebook, but I almost never actually participate in any discussions. So a few days ago, I joined this new group and decided "I'm going to participate this time!" Amazingly, I actually have been. I've been answering people's questions, and even offering a little bit of semi-personal information a couple of times. Yet, I have managed to have not one single meaningful interaction with anyone. The only interaction I have had at all was when I somehow managed to incur the wrath of one of my fellow members after offering advice to a different member who had asked about vegan cat food. 

This is why I don't talk to people; it inevitably ends in either disappointment, when I am overlooked entirely, or an increase in my level of misanthropy, when I end up involved in some sort of conflict that I never wanted. Seriously, what is it about the way I communicate that causes people to react with either utter disinterest or unwarranted hostility? 

Guess what? Not that fucking simple!

Not What You Think

I've mentioned before how I have this desire to understand what makes people act the way they do. I like to understand people. I feel like, in a lot of ways, this makes them easier to deal with. If you know why people are the way they are, and what they are thinking and feeling that causes them to behave a certain way, it makes it easier to accept the things they do without getting angry at them.

There is another side to this though that is a bit less helpful. When you understand what makes people act the way they do, you also tend to understand what you really are to those people. I feel like other people have a certain level of blissful ignorance when it comes to what others really feel about them. That's not the case for me. I know who I am to the people around me. I know what makes me valuable (or not valuable) to them.

I think people in general have this tendency to pick out certain aspects of a person and let those things represent the whole person. That's not really how people are though. We are complex creatures and can not be defined by just a few characteristics. I'm not going to get specific here, because I don't want to create any unnecessary conflict, but I think that nearly everyone I know (or ever have know) sees me as something very specific. They see me as whatever role it is that I play in their lives, or whatever trait seems most salient to them, or (sometimes) as a symbol of something that they think I represent.

I mean, I understand why this happens. We try to make sense of the things around us, even people, and I think I probably make even less sense than the average person. Because of this, the people around me just pick and choose what they want to see in me. To them, I am whatever they want me to be, and I usually play along.

Whenever I think about this topic (which is probably more often than it's healthy to think about such things) I generally find myself humming this song.

Connection

I should be alone. I'm lonely when I'm alone, but that's better than what I am when I'm with others; always faking, always angry. Because the truth is I'm always alone. I move with them, act like them, pretend to be one of them, but I'm not one of them. I don't belong in my family, in my country, anywhere. I take off my glasses when I'm in public because I think I look better that way, as if it matters what I look like. My poor vision turns them all into monsters. Their faces blurred and distorted. Are they looking at me? I can't tell. I don't know if this makes it better or worse. I feel like they are all staring at me, and yet I am invisible. I am an uneasy presence they can all sense, so they squint their eyes and try to make out what it is they feel but can't see. Everyone is looking at me, but no one sees me. I just want to be seen. One small connection. A guy holds the door for me. I thank him. He smiles. A connection. Thirty seconds, no more. I think about it for the rest of the day. How pathetic is that?

Love Letter to an Imagined Soulmate

Well here it is, the weird little thing I wrote the other day.


I know you, my love; not your name, or where you live, or what you do. I don't know what you look like, or who your parents are, or what kind of music you listen to. Something tells me that, despite all of that, I would still recognize you if we passed on the street. Because I know the truth of you, the essence that lies beneath all of those things that we think make us who we are. I know the feel of you. Though we have never touched, there are times when I swear I can feel your hands on my skin. I don't know what your face looks like, but I have felt the sense of belonging that I would experience when looking into your eyes. I have never met you, maybe I never will meet you, maybe you don't even exist, but I have felt your arms around me as I fall asleep and known that I was home.

I can't actually decide if it's a poem, or an excerpt from a story that I will probably never tell, or exactly what the title proclaims it to be. Oh well. 

Thoughts on Love Part 7: Implications

Okay, so this isn't so much Thought on Love as it is Thoughts Inspired by Thoughts on Love, but oh well. Thinking about all of this has made me realize a few things about my life and myself.

1- I am capable of Love. What I may or may not be capable of is trusting anyone to love me back. This does make me feel a bit better, though it likely won't make my life any better in the long run.

2- If I am ever going to find anyone who genuinely cares about me, I am going to have to stop trying to prove that I am worthwhile and wait to see who will believe that I am anyway.

3- I have to learn to judge my own feelings by this same standard. I have a tendency to try to make my emotions make logical sense and that simply isn't how human emotions work. I need to remember that.

4- I feel infinitely better about things when I understand them, even if it makes no practical difference for me in real life. This is especially true of things about my own thought processes. I HATE not understanding exactly how I feel or why I feel that way. I think this was one of the last subjects that I still didn't have a good handle on, until now.

5- (I think) I am going to go back to school next fall. No matter how much I may hate so many aspects of college, Psychology really does fascinate me. I feel like maybe I actually could make some kind of difference in the world if I can manage to finish my degree.

Mayhap I will be a school counselor. It worked for Buffy.

Well, it sort of did. 

Thoughts on Love Part 5: The Crichton to My Aeryn

Sorry, I just couldn't get through this series of posts about Love without talking about my favorite fictional couple. Over the years, I have found so many characters that I have connected with, related to, rooted for, fallen for, and mourned over. I don't think I have ever  found a couple whose relationship I was more invested in than Crichton and Aeryn though. Normally, I just don't care all that much if Person A and Person B get together or not. Since we started season one of Farscape though, I have been dying to know if Crichton and Aeryn ever get their shit together. Obviously, one reason for this is that, as I mentioned before, Aeryn is basically me. If she can find Love then maybe there is hope for me yet. After I started thinking about my own definition of Love, I realized that the other reason I care so much what happens to them is that they fit so perfectly with what I believe Love to be. Throughout most of the series, Aeryn is cold, angry, lost, and emotionally-stunted (much like someone else we all know) but Crichton still always wants to be around her anyway. He never tries to change her; he never expects her to be anything other than what she is. The only thing he ever really demands of her is that she admit that she loves him back, and even when she won't he still wants to spend all of his time with her. The really beautiful part is that, over time, he does end up changing her. By accepting her and loving her for exactly what she is, he makes her better that she ever was before, without changing the root of who she is. I guess my point here is, I need my own Crichton.

Thoughts on Love Part 4: Perspective

Once I realized what it was about the way the animals behaved towards me that bothered me so much, I started to realize that this same issue has been my biggest problem in all of my relationships throughout my life. I have never really felt that I had anyone who I could count on to WANT to be around me no matter what. I have a few who I know would be there for me if I really needed them, but I hate feeling like it would be because they had to be. So I end up regarding most of my relationships as transactions. "As long as I have something to offer, they will want to be around me." I'm sure that in some cases this is all in my head, but I know for a fact that in some cases it is not. Back when I was at WVU, I used to do everything I possibly could to make myself useful to my group of friends, because I knew that it was what I did for them that made them want to spend time with me. Shockingly, I lost touch with them after I left school. Go figure. It's not that they were bad people or anything. None of them ever set out to use me. I just didn't have whatever it would have taken for them to want to be around me just for myself. Most of the time, I think even the people who care for me the most still wish that I could be something other than what I am. This is a large part of the reason I am always trying to tone down my emotions when I'm around other people. If they knew how I really felt, it would be more than they would want to deal with.

That's right, there are still more of these. I think I may have gone a bit overboard. 

I Almost Forgot

If you're wondering why this post is so late, it's because Hughsnet is terrible! Anyway, I just realized that I almost forgot to tell you all what happened with that guy I was talking to from Vegan Passions. Remember, first I said he was kind of a dick? Then I said maybe he wasn't so bad? Well, I was right the first time.

Any of you who have ever exchanged emails with me probably know that sometimes I don't get back to you right away. In fact, sometimes it take me for-fucking-ever to return emails. It's nothing personal; sometimes I get busy, sometimes my internet sucks, sometimes I actually forget, mostly I just get stressed out. I don't know why returning emails stresses me out, but it does. Anyway, apparently this guy just could not handle that. I took two days to write back to him and he wrote me an exceptionally snotty email "thanking" me for wasting his time. So yeah, that was fun.

It turns out I should have used this picture when I talked about him before. Because Ruby was way more evil than Meg. 

Maybe I'm Being Unreasonable?

Remember the whole online dating thing? Well, I have been talking to this one guy for around two weeks now, and he seemed pretty cool. Yesterday, he gave me his real email address (as opposed to the one through Vegan Passions). I was actually really happy about it, because I felt like that meant that things were progressing. So I emailed him and was all excited waiting for him to email me back. Then, the first official email I get from him makes me think "Yeah, this is not going to go anywhere." He is a self-proclaimed "music snob" which is fine, as long as he doesn't act all condescending about my taste in music, which he kind of did. Another thing that pissed me off  in this email was that he asked me if I was finished with school. Which, as you all know, I'm not. However, I am 26 so most people would assume that I am either finished with college or that I didn't go. The fact that he asked about it kind of made me feel like what he really wanted to ask was "So you're not really planning on being a cashier forever, right?" And I hope I don't end up being a cashier forever, but if I do, I would hope that he would be able to respect me anyway. I don't really feel like he would. Also, I feel comfortable bitching about him here because, despite the fact that I mentioned my writing at least twice, he didn't ask about it. If I met someone I was interested in and I found out that they wrote a blog, I would be dying to read it and find out how their mind works. Not him.

I swear, it seems like every person who ever shows an interest in me, is only interested in me in theory. When I actually start talking about myself they zone out, which is really weird in this case because I basically outlined my entire personality on my profile. It kind of makes me wonder if he even bothered to read the damn thing.

Get it? Because she seemed really nice and like she was really interested in Sam, then it turned out that she was actually a demon. (Unfair?) 

You're a Little Late

It's really goofy how life works sometimes. Whatever you're waiting around for never seems to happen, but if you decide that you don't give a shit about it anymore and start waiting for something else, (BAM!) there's that other thing all of a sudden. Kind of like how no one ever asks you out unless you're already dating somebody, or how you can't ever get a job unless you already have a job.

You know how I said I was doing the whole online dating thing? Well, it was basically a fucking disaster. I kept checking my email all the time, just hoping that someone (who wasn't creepy and three times my age) would contact me. Well, it just wasn't happening, so I said "fuck it!" and tried to forget about the whole thing. Then a couple of days ago, I found this shop  and wanted to buy the whole fucking place! I managed to limit myself to three or four things though. One of them was a bottle of perfume and I was fairly certain it was vegan, but I wanted to make 100% sure before I bought it. So I wrote to them and asked them about it. Being the crazy person that I am, I was super excited to buy all the amazing stuff I found so I was VERY anxious for them to write me back. So naturally, I checked my email about 800 times yesterday, just hoping for a response from the shop. Well guess what? They never did write to me. Guess who did write to me? Two different guys from Vegan Passions. TWO! And they both seem decent. All this time I've been driving myself crazy just hoping to hear anything from anyone, and now that I basically gave up on it and stared driving myself crazy over something else, now I get two!

I am The Girl Who Waited......and then got the thing she wasn't waiting for anymore. 

Epitaph

For the sake of the planet and all of the beings who inhabit her, I really hope that humans get their shit together soon. I feel like there is a good chance that we're on a direct path for our own destruction and if we don't make some changes soon, we are going to ruin everything for everyone. For my own sake though, I sometimes hope that they just go ahead and burn it all down. The things is I just don't feel, and never really have felt, that I was built for this world. I sometimes think that I might thrive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I sometimes think that a good struggle for survival might be just what I need.

Mayhap there is a weird depressing poem in here somewhere? 

Also, the title/image are Dollhouse reference, just so you know. 

I Try to Be My Fucking Best, Okay?

I think I am going to try going back to writing in the mornings for a while. You see, Goodwill completely drains me of any and all inspiration, enthusiasm, and energy that I might have had. So, by the time I get home, I am in no state to come up with anything intelligent or entertaining to say.

Annnnnnnyway, you know how I said I've been doing the whole (stupid, frustrating, infuriating, futile) online dating thing? Well, I talked back and forth a couple of times with this one guy. He seemed a little better than some of the others. He was talking about how exciting his life had been; he'd been to this place, and that place, and done all of these things. When I wrote back I was actually trying to be sort of flirty, but I obviously failed. I said something to the effect of "It sounds like you've had a pretty exciting life. I don't feel like I've had nearly enough excitement in my life." He wrote me back this absurdly long message with all of this cliched bullshit about how the important thing is to just be yourself, and just let things happen the way they are going to, and don't have too many ideas about what your life is supposed to be, and just being a good person is enough. I swear, I've heard this same fucking speech from about thirty different people. Every time I say anything about my life being boring and devoid of meaning, this is what I get. And I'm sorry people, but it is complete and utter bullshit. Life is not about just letting whatever happens happen, and being a good person is not enough. It's about doing things, making things happen, trying to be the best that we can. If we're not going to change anything or accomplish anything then what's the fucking point?

(Mis)Adventures in Online Dating

Today I decided, once again, to try VeggieConnection. In case you didn't guess, it's a dating site geared toward vegetarians and vegans. Sounds like a great idea, yeah? Not really. I first signed up in 2009 and since then I have tried it for anywhere from a day to upwards of a month, gotten fed up with it, hidden my account and sworn never to return, maybe four or five times. In the short expanse of time that I have actually used my account, I have managed to have some remarkably unfortunate experiences. First, I spent several days talking to this guy from California who ended up flipping out on me because we were IMing and I took too long to respond, so he accused me of talking to another guy while I was talking to him. To be fair, I was talking to someone else at the same time, but it was a friend. Also, it was none of his fucking business one way or the other. Then, there was a guy from Texas who gave up on me after I didn't want to fly there and stay with him after only knowing each other for a few days. The worst one though, I think, was the guy I emailed back and forth multiple times a day for several weeks. We seemed to have a lot in common, and I really liked him. He eventually came to see me, as he was passing through to visit a friend. We had the worlds most awkward double-date with my sister and her boyfriend, he slept in my bed and I slept on the couch, we had some polite conversation before he left the next morning, then I never heard from him again. Anyway, today, I'm scrolling through the profiles and what do I see? A vegan from....get this....Lawrence Kansas! It has to be a sign of some sort, right? So I click on his profile and it has almost no information on it. Then I happen to notice that, in the section where you can check the boxes for the different ethnicities you are interested in, he has checked all of them except "African decent/Black". Guess what VeggieConnection, if I wanted to meet racist assholes I could do that right here in good old Mannington WV. Seriously, why does that section even exist? What possible reason can someone have for not wanting to date a particular race than that he or she is a racist asshole?

They Passed Down All the Roads Long Ago

You know what, every once in a while, we actually get some fairly interesting people in the Fairmont Goodwill. When this happens, it makes me think that maybe, just maybe, I'm not entirely doomed after all. Not that I'm saying necessarily that the interesting people I am referring to have anything in common with me (although, sometimes it seems that they might) but the simple fact that they exist in this place make me think that there is a chance that other people like me exist here too. I mean you never know.

Sometimes I am tempted to ask these people if they have seen others like me. 

Flirting Fail

I kind of got flirted with today, so that was sort of nice. I went out to eat with my mom, my sister, and my sister's boyfriend. By the way, when I say "went out to eat" with them, I mean sat at the table with them and watched them eat. Always nice and awkward. Anyway, the waiter started asking me about my tattoo, the vegan one with all the animals. First he asked if he could see it, then where I got it done, then he told me how nice it looked, then he asked me if I get a lot of compliments on it, then if anyone ever says anything negative when they see it. Then he said something like "the only thing missing is a picture of me." I just kind of laughed, thinking he was just being weird. Then he was like, "No I mean people call me cabrito. It means baby goat." I have no idea why they call him that, but the whole thing was pretty cool actually. Of course I, being the awkward and utterly socially inept person that I am, tried to be charming but I'm pretty sure I just looked at him like this.

Plus, I still sound like shit because of the stupid cold.

Look Into My Eyes......... or, Better Yet, Don't

There are certain things in life that, no matter how hard I try, I just don't think I will ever be any good at. Unfortunately, some of these things are just normal, basic, human things. One of them is eye contact. Supposedly, it is one of the best ways (possible the only way) to make a connection with someone. It is this incredibly important things in our society and I just can't do it. When I try to, I just end up looking the other person in the eye for about half a second and then freaking out and looking everywhere in the room except at them.

When I try to make eye contact with someone, I feel like fucking Hypnotoad. 

Moving Day

Today I helped my (younger) sister and her boyfriend get furniture moved into their new apartment. Almost everyone I went to school with, and most of the people my sister went to school with are married and have multiple children, meanwhile I am perpetually single, living with my dad and just went back to my old minimum wage job. I wouldn't even mind all of that if I had traded society's idea of "successful" for a life full of excitement and adventure. I would be totally okay with being single and broke forever if I was having fun with it, or doing things that I felt were important, or going interesting places, or having incredible experiences. Unfortunately I pretty much just traded society's idea of "successful" for my own idea of "pathetic". "Oh, you have a house and a husband and three kids? Well, I.... ummmm write a blog."

Shape Shifter

I change. Constantly, dramatically, irrevocably. I am always developing new habits, new looks, new tastes. I become new people, different people. I am always searching for the person I want to be, the person I was born to be. When I was a kid, back in elementary school, we had to write a paper about someone we wished we could be. I wrote that I just wanted to be myself. I guess my self-esteem was a little higher back then. The truth is, there's still no one particular person I would want to trade places with. Instead I sneak around and pluck little pieces off of other people and keep them for myself, fitting myself together like a puzzle made up of the stolen bits of those I admire. A word here, a walk there, a smile, a gesture; absorbing them all and making them my own. Sometimes, though, I wonder who I do this for. Why do I go through all this trouble of constructing a new person over and over? Am I really doing it for myself or am I just hoping that someday I'll become someone that will appeal to some imagined soul-mate? Do I try on a thousand different faces hoping to find one that properly fits my skull or am I just looking for one that shines bright enough to guide the right person to me?

First poem in a while. Don't judge it too harshly. Normally I go through a lengthy editing process, but I just wrote this one on the spot.