I logged in to okc briefly tonight for the first time in weeks. Where has the time gone? It wasn’t moving, although that made the first couple weeks of the month pretty busy. I suppose my mind has been elsewhere the last couple of weeks. That interview with Peck I linked to earlier was interesting. There was a paragraph where he talked about being happy about “losing [his] libido”. For some reason I have this memory stuck in my head of my mom talking about how she didn’t understand what people saw in porn. Personally, I’d be happy to be able to turn off my sexual needs most of the time, especially when I’m not seeing anyone.

So impotence was almost a blessing? “I went to my doctor and told him I’d lost most of my libido and I said: ‘Don’t you dare do anything about it. It feels much more like a healing to me than a disease.’ It was a monkey off my back. I have a distrustful attitude toward the gonads, as you can tell.”

My dad used to say when I was growing up that we have two heads to think with; and one of them makes terrible decisions. I think it’s true, and my distrust of my sexual desires manipulating me is a major factor in choices I make. I would go so far as to think I’m responsible enough that I’m thinking about specific consequences like kids, disease, hurting peoples feelings or anything, I’m just generally of the opinion that the nethers are never up to any good.

You know what I like more? Liking girls. I feel giddy like I’m still a teenager sometimes; maybe I’m just getting around to being giddy like a teenager, since when I was a teenager I spent so much time listening to people patronize me with stories of how life will be different for me when I’m older. Of course it’ll be different, bah. But crushes always blur my ability to figure out what people are thinking, I think, and I develop a neurosis that I’m overbearing, albeit not in a forceful way, but mostly giving too much attention. And even now that I’m “older”, folk generally don’t seem to know how to do deal with and communicate with me.

I’ve always assumed that people are making too many assumptions about me. Like the dude at the fancy thai place today that wanted to know which construction site I was working at today (likely the hoodie and unkempt facial hair I suppose), but on an emotional/communication level, that they just can’t talk to me because I’m to thick and woodsy to get it. Is it learned reaction? A generation of guys not getting it has taught a habit of not trying anymore? I think right now it’s more likely that most the people I know just don’t actually communicate that much on that level. But I go back and forth, from assuming people judge me not as someone as emotional as am, as caught up in feel good cuteness, snuggling in late and crying to sweet movie scenes, to that people think all of that is something not to be cherished, that it’s some kind of sign that I’m not a reliable provider (of cave and fire).

As I spend more nights of my life thinking, my conclusions about myself have been accumulating. While my patience and acceptance seem to have remained stable, if not grown from recognizing more of my own short comings, the things that I expect from people have been coming to the forefront. It’s odd to think that I have expectations of people, because I’m rarely asking anything of anyone, but it seems lately I have been, only with the actual asking part. I wonder if that is fair, but I don’t feel concerned about it at the moment. I roll through a few situations in my mind over the last six months where people have given me shit and ponder how much of it I’m responsible for.

We’re coming up on two years since I burned out on life and rerolled, three years since I started life anew on another coast. I’ve had many conversations about how moving doesn’t fix any personal problems, but the changes have really helped make evident the patterns that I put myself in. Most commonly the cause of suffering in the last three years has been not having the vision to how much the situations I am in are affecting me emotionally and lacking the will to put my foot down and do something about it.

Too often have I trusted others to do what’s best for me because they’ve expressed that they are putting me first. I’m very weary of that sort of statement now. I’m not smart enough to attribute such things to a character disorder on their part, but I’m keen to believe that all the same. I’ve had a sort of rule of thumb in the back of my mind most my life but it’s been one of those sayings that is easier to know than to really understand in an “actions speak louder than words” sort of way. The idea is that you shouldn’t be doing things that you unspoken expectations of some return on. That is, don’t do someone’s dishes expecting them to do yours without agreement, as you’re only going to become resentful and there’s few paths out of that place. Recent readings have suggested that finding yourself in that place is entirely your own fault and responsibility because it’s how you feel and expect, not what is being done to you that is the problem. I’m inclined to agree as I hear a lot of folks these days spend most of their time talking about how hard their lives are. Quite obviously these are the more dramatic people I know, and I’m finding myself more and more attracted to those people who are generally lacking concern with such hassles.

And they’re out there too, so there isn’t a whole lot of reason to put up with burden of people who are trying convince me of their own burdens. Anyhow, it’s getting late and that’s a good place to stop.