Loneliness

"The worst loneliness is not to be comfortable with yourself."

A friend brought this quote attributed to Mark Twain to my attention several days ago. And I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

Part of it is I've known several people to whom this applies. I've watched them fear spending even a few hours alone with themselves. It's as if they fear some voice in their head won't be drowned out by the sounds of others. It isn't limited by gender or age.

They go to extremes to not be forced into listening to that internal sound. Quite often, I've seen it lead them to substance abuse. They seek out places where they know there will be other people, and in the time between being away from their jobs and being asleep, they've often targeted bars as their only reliable safe haven. And constantly being in the bar usually meant consuming the products. They're quite often the first ones there for happy hour. And they don't leave until they've passed the point of caring about whatever drove them there in the first place.

Sometimes those same people find the time of day to be a constraint. Weekends can be the worst for them because they find they can't spend a full 18 hours in a bar. They try movies to be around others and fill the blank spaces. But there are only so many movies a weekend one can absorb.

I find these same people don't know themselves very well. Maybe that's obvious because if you're afraid to face the screaming in your head, you never get to the normal conversation with yourself that leads to understanding.

It's possible that's exactly what they want, to be avoid the introduction to themselves. Because there always seems to be this hint they don't like themselves very well. It all becomes a recipe for a very sour life. Those who don't like themselves don't like to be alone. So they go to bars where the liquor helps them forget they don't like themselves. The two factors together make them drink to abuse. Which doesn't make themselves any better and still hasn't done a thing about the sound in their head.

Ah, but the thoughts haven't just been judgemental. Because Mr. Twain was glancing at me too.

It isn't that I don't like to be alone. Sometimes I crave it and force it. I right out disappear. And I've been told by some that I have an ability to be in a room filled with people and be alone. I can put up a shell that puts anyone around on the outside.

But I also seem addicted to others. Sooner or later, I need stimulus, contact, input and connection. Maybe I see too much of myself, don't like enough of it, and need to drown it out just like those I've observed. Maybe it's just a human condition, the pack mentality of the human being. Maybe I need reinforcement in that I'm alright and somebody does like me.

I try to make a balance. I insist I be alone and look myself in the eye so I can develop a comfort with myself. I call it facing my demons. If I see them and they're taking over, I try remediation. I just have to force myself to not just see the brightly colored weaknesses in me and look through to the greys that are the good parts. Then I need to count up the two categories and make sure the less vibrants outnumber the look-at-me factors.

Sometimes I'm lonely. Sometimes I'm uncomfortable with myself. But I have to consciously ensure I don't carry loneliness just because I don't like me. I have to fix me if that's true. And that's a better cure for loneliness than hiding in a bar with strangers.

Baptism

I should have known it was coming. After all, it's about to rain.

It's an odd historically accurate fact. Whenever I set my heart aflame to see if I can destroy it, storms come. Not just gentle showers like some bad country song, but tropical depression-crack-the-lightening-pounding-downpour storm.

I've tried to think of it as some type of baptism, washing away the pain of the just passed sins and giving me a new start. But that's not me. I keep bits and pieces of everyone, good and bad. I have been fortunate enough over the last few years to use those keepsakes as learning tools, what to repeat and what to let go.

But most recently I went back to old reactive habits. I felt-acted-thought. That means if my feelings were irrational, I acted irrationally and only then thought through the realities. I had learned to rearrange, to feel-think-act. I guess somewhere inside me there's a real disorder that instinctively changes that.

It's hard for people outside to deal with the "act" in the middle instead of end. They don't understand what's coming at them. The more I try to explain, the more insane it turns. Sooner or later, their only remaining move is to just leave.

You'd think I'd recognize it in the middle of it. But I guess that's part of the insanity that grows. Internal blindness.

But the outcome is crystal clear. And is always followed by the storms. Maybe it's the storms that slap me in the head and make me pay attention. There was one time when I traveled to a coast and was caught in a storm of a century that turned angry at the coastline and traveled back up my path to flood my home area. It was immediately after I'd gone overwhelming.

I've spent the last weekend in that insanity. I've made a mess of something that was simple and important. It all went on when the first front gently came through, forced Texas summer to surrender its dominance and turned the air crisp for a few hours each morning and evening. But last night was when I set it all afire. And awoke to warnings a tropical storm was bearing down on me with buckets of rain.

For the next few days, I'll be trapped. Both in by the weather and my actions. They will be in my face. There will be nowhere to run. I'll try to use one to make me clean again. But there are some sins with which you just have to look in the eye and live.

Fear of feelings

Men get accused of being emotionally cloaked. Usually by women. But my experience is, no one really wants to know.
There are lots of kinds of writing. Some used to vent, some hoped for publication, some to let something personal out. Most people draw lines with their expression. They choose the size of their audience based on the content. Often how well you know some people and trust them helps limit the size of the chosen audience. It can come down just to what they can handle.
I had one writer coach me that "you don't want to let them see you go to the bathroom." Her point was there the general reading public has one comfort level, those who know you may have a greater level. It's often up to the writer to know their readership and provide only appropriate fodder.
One of those defining lines seems to be emotion. Just as there are many types of general writing, there are sub-genres of emotional writing. There is just finding the right way to express others' emotion. There is helping others "re-feel" something, to tap into what may be dormant. There is expressing emotional contact between two people. And just expressing your own emotion.
The boundaries can cross. For example, in this blog, I've expressed deep emotion about losing a friend. But discovered others had similar feelings from similar experiences, and my personal expression brought them back to those.
But I've also learned that something about our culture makes many of us, maybe most of us, uncomfortable facing many emotions. Not just our own, but those shared or raw.
I find this especially true when I share anything rhythmic or rhyming, call it poetry or lyrics. Somewhat because of copyright laws, and somewhat because I find those types of things more personal, I don't post them on this writing outlet. But if something comes out I personally like, I'll sometimes share it one on one.
What's funny to me is how uncomfortable that makes so many people because they take it personally. If there's a reference to a hair or eye color, for example, the blonde or green-eyed automatically think it's about them. And the state of our relationship may not call for expressions of current or past emotional ties. So, they squirm. If not disappear.
That's most interesting because my most recent string of personal ties has been pretty limited. So I compile, take the feelings for one and another and put them together, one verse may be about one person, the chorus about another.
But there are those that are completely about one person or one experience. I used to practice the philosophy that if someone caused something to be created, it was in part theirs and they deserved to see it.
But despite constant conversations throughout my life that included requests of "just be honest with me" or "don't be afraid to express yourself," that isn't how life works. People think they want to know. They don't.
Maybe it's our society that makes us afraid of feelings. But even those who are societal rebels have blanched at my emotional honesty. Maybe it's that there's so little honest expression, it's the unexpected that can't be dealt with. Or maybe we're just a repressed, withdrawn, afraid bunch of people.
I don't want to be that pessimistic. But I want to respect others' boundaries. I want to be honest with them. I don't want to chase them away.
So there's an entire world of words out there just waiting for their father to die. Because only when no one has to look the holder of the expressed emotions in the eye do those who earned them feel comfortable with them.
I wish I knew how people feel about me. I wish they knew how I feel about them. But when we go from a superficial shout to an honest whisper, it seems no one wants to listen.