On being broken- Falling out of love with love.

This entry is more of a diary entry really, so if you are looking for something interesting to read, this ain't it.

I'm writing this so I don't forget. I come to realisations every now and then as I navigate whatever it is I am through time and space, and I invariably forget those when I probably need them most. I'm a slow learner.

I used to be very definite- black and white. I had no tolerance for people who didn't know their own minds. You know those situations where you ask someone what they think about a thing, and they say "I don't know." Not out of ignorance of the subject matter, I mean their own thoughts about their own opinions. It just blew my mind that people could wander through life without knowing what they thought, or even why they thought it.

I have talked a lot about people being followers on here, so there's no need to continue flogging that dead horse. But I guess that's why people don't know their thoughts- they think what they think they should, and that's enough for them.

But my opinion was very strong- "It's my mind, and I alone dictate what goes in there."

I like facts a lot, they're what you would call a perennial favourite. And I felt that if something was incorrect or lacked a factual framework within which to exist, it had no business residing in my thoughts. If you asked me why I thought a thing, I could invariably relate to you a long-winded justification without really thinking about it. Because it was generally based on facts.

Now though, I'm even more lost than normal. I used to be lost, adrift in a sea of facts. Now I'm lost in a different way- because I don't know what anything is any more.

I'm not trying to be dramatic. I know a tree is still a tree, I'm not getting too caught up in the metaphysics of things. Is this Universe merely a hologram? I have to say, I don't really care. It's a theory that it is, and like all theories, you had better come up with some scientifically repeatable conclusions before I'm going to waste time and energy giving it the opportunity to rent space in my head.

I think if I were to explain it, I would say the context that I use to weigh my experiences has changed a lot, and because of this, I no longer recognize my surroundings. I used to be incredibly social, and I suffered from explosive enthusiasm. The things I loved gave me so much energy and excitement, other people regularly got caught up in it too. I miss that. And it's only now that I see how that quality of wonder, enthusiasm, of the joy than flows from loving something, how that's a really rare thing in this world.

A great example is this awesome video of Zina Lahr. She's so eccentric and just herself in it, and if you watch that video and don't feel like a light went out when she died this week, then you're more broken than I am.

I've worked a lot as a security contractor, and I think that was step one. Everything from protecting military assets and VIP's, to bouncing in clubs. I have seen and lived through a lot of situations that people shouldn't see. I've pulled other people out of situations that will haunt them for the rest of their lives, and you just do what you came to do and move on. It has changed my face, seeing the filth that people are, ruled and motivated by their basest motivations, giving in to the animal inside them.

The things I have seen people do, and the things people have tried to do to me could fill an encyclopaedia. I've had people literally try to end me, armed and unarmed. Hundreds of them over the years, mostly in groups. The look in their eyes when they attack. It doesn't frighten me, it just makes me sigh and the world starts to look more shit-coloured. 

And each encounter chips away a little, makes my eyes a little harder, my heart more distant. I have worked with a few special forces guys in the past, am friends with a couple still, and I used to wonder how they got that way. That thousand yard stare, the detachment, the resignation to hardship and harshness, but I get it now. I've got it now.

I've done stupid and terrible things in my life also, I'm not blameless. The difference I guess is, I do go away and think those things over, and I genuinely strive to improve. I learn, I grow, and I don't make excuses. I don't want to just react to things, I want to parkour my way through life. I believe in pizazz, panache, élan.

I've worked in the sex industry, and I think that was step two.

Right? Put a recovering sex addict to work in a strip club. No foreseeable issues there. For the most part I kept my dick in my pants, which is just an incredible testament to how strongly I wanted to change, and escape the misery of addiction. I'm proud of that. I gave in to temptation too, learned from it, and moved on. So it's not so much what was done to me that added to this situation I'm in, but rather more of what I saw.

And I could tell you, but it's nothing distinct or new. Just people debasing themselves for drugs or money, the using, the heartless and empty motivations, the endless lies, the viciousness, the bitching, the politics, the drama, and the denial. But it's the particulars of those things that again, took a piece of my light, that formed callouses on my heart.

Guys would say to me in the strip clubs "You have the best job in the world", they were so blind. They saw me surrounded by naked girls, having access to the dressing rooms, to the private rooms. They didn't know I didn't look below the neckline. They saw the girls flirt with me and they thought it was real. They thought I was getting laid every night, and while that was possible, I wouldn't have touched 99.99% of them with someone else's cock. And those that I did experience... honestly? Boring. Sad. A waste of time. There is no glamour in that world, and if you think there is, I feel sorry for you.

I wouldn't go back in for any amount of money, and I never go to strip clubs for any other reason. I celebrate every day away from that scene, but the damage has already been done. To see so many people go through that machine, and to know that nobody ever comes out the same, no matter what they say... I couldn't just shut that out. There is nothing good about it.

And I guess it's the fact that we generally let things continue on this way, that so completely breaks me? Where are the families, support, and education to stop guys from wanting to go to strip clubs in the first place, or for girls to ever think that it's an option? To stop people from mindlessly drinking themselves into oblivion for fun, and then wondering why they are in jail, hospital, or dying?

These are simple things... but we know Governments aren't really interested in change, they want things to stay the same, to get paid, to get a cosy sinecure when they leave politics, it's all about money. It always was.

And we also know that people don't think about whether making a baby is a responsible choice. Do you have the money, the guaranteed money to raise and look after that child, potentially for the rest of its natural life? Do you have a disease or issue that you can directly pass to your child, or that it could take on environmentally (ie: depression)? Are you honestly fit to have a child? 

That last one is a big one, because we all know a lot of people out there simply should not breed, but to them, they have the same right to as anyone else, and no one has the right to tell them otherwise. So there's no reasonable way to enforce what we all know should be enforced. A child shouldn't be a right, it just shouldn't. Because the cost to society and the child itself is too great if your judgement is off. I shouldn't have been born, and that's just a fact. I'm a depressed, physically broken person whose life doesn't benefit anyone. This world should and could be infinitely better, but we let all the wrong people make decisions, and we let the blindest among us drive the car.

Have you ever seen those people on Instagram, who, every picture they post, is them? Like in a world full of infinite colours, cultures, discoveries and mysteries; the most amazing thing they can think of, the thing they want the world to see the most, is frame after frame of them doing duck face?! 

So I guess what I'm saying is, in amongst all of this crazy, thoughtless, and greedy mess; a thoughtful person could be excused for feeling remote, depressed, and suspicious. That's the part that makes sense.

Here's the part that doesn't...

I've been struggling recently with honesty. What I mean by that, isn't that I struggle with compulsively lying, no wait, actually, it is, and I do.

I have been lying to myself constantly, and so intensely subtly, for years. 

People, when we meet, and we get around to the subject of age, almost always say that I don't look like I'm 42. I am.

I've heard this so often, I developed this weird way of looking at life. I look late 20's/early 30's, so in a way, I can live the last 10 years all over again! I bought myself an extra decade of (relative) youth! 

What a crock of shit. And why should that even matter? (See: Societies obsessional worship of youth for profit). Why can't being 42 be ok?

So I believed these people, and bought in to the concept I haven't aged in the last 10 years, and long story short- it's wrong. 

Here's me 10 years ago:

 

Apart from the optical illusion my barely-there eyebrows create when shot from this angle, all-in-all, a fresh faced 32 year old who hasn't turned grey yet.

Here's now:

















 

Yup.

The top photo I found when digging through an old hard drive, I'd forgotten it existed. And when I saw how much I have aged over the last 10 years, all those platitudes and compliments from other people went straight out the window. All of a sudden there was no denying the state of my visage, because the evidence was right there in front of me.

Another thing happened, where I stupidly uploaded a pic onto a site that uses algorithms  to determine how closely, your physical geometry conforms to the 'Golden Ratio', or to put it bluntly to say if you're attractive or not. Despite having had relationships and sexual encounters with all of the stereotypes men fantasise about in private, in numbers that most men can again only dream of, and all without being rich or powerful; I assumed heretofore that I was doing ok...

 















 

...WRONG.

As you can see, according to the template, my eyes and lips are in the right place (although my eyes are kinda squinty compared to the anime-wide-eyed view of perfection, and I have a lopsided mouth), but my nose is far too big. That I could live with, if it weren't for the fact that I have a tiny face on an enormous head. Look at that chin and forehead- they are positively monstrous.

In all seriousness, I'm not actually that bothered, but it did come as a surprise to me, because I have lived behind this face my whole life, and no one ever told me my geometry was off. I simply didn't know I had a big nose on a tiny face.

So why am I telling you this?

Because it made me confront the fact that I'm not only not attractive, but that I am actually unattractive. And why should that matter?

Because that realisation has made me think a lot about spending the rest of my life alone.

 I used to do a lot of things. My dear friends ask me "Is there anything you can't do?", and I think that's pretty nifty. I'm not going to list them, you're just going to have to trust me. I have had periods of fame (which I don't rate) and popularity (which the desperate loser in me does rate), and over the last few years I have seen that popularity and relevance fade.

I know there are things that I could do to get noticed again, and so far I have avoided any motivation for doing them. It shouldn't be important, so I don't give it any effort. But it does hurt, which is pathetic. All of the thousands of people who used to be inspired/entertained/whatever by me, the vast majority of whom I don't in any way respect, or whose thoughts I couldn't care less about; I somehow grieve for their attention.

Or maybe it's more to do with relevance. I came from absolute poverty. So when I got my first taste of popularity, of people speaking positively about me or my artistic output, it made me feel like I was on top of my own personal mountain. Far from that feeling of being alone and hungry and desperate for money, instead being celebrated. Mattering.

But again, why should I care about being relevant to the masses? I can't stand them! I struggle to find one single person on this planet worth respecting, who manages to think and be distinct from the steaming pile of human waste that has found itself dumped into this world without the guidance or discipline to conduct itself properly.

That's harsh, but it's how I see it.

So I've been disappearing from culture. I don't see myself in society pages, on posters, or on TV any more. People don't talk about me, I'm almost forgotten. And it is that way because I allow it. I don't strive any more because I have no one left to impress. It sounds weird, but I guess I only do things because I love to do them now, as opposed to the endless hours I used to pour into doing things to make people go "wow!"

When you're active within culture, people want to meet you, and relationships are pretty easy to instigate. Friendships and otherwise. People within culture love feeling relevant by associating with other people from within culture. Even when you have a tiny face on a big head, apparently.

Now that I don't dance in those circles any more, and I'm not 'special', my opportunities to instigate relationships have evaporated to a drop in the ocean of what once was. Which makes me analyze those who do put their hands up for my romantic attention. I have no idea why these women decide they want me, but one thing has become painfully obvious to me since my last relationship almost 3 years ago- I don't want them.

And I just don't understand it.

I am incapable of trusting anyone, and if there's any love left in me, I can't find it.

I did date someone for a couple of weeks, a few months ago. It came and went so fast it rates as nothing more than a lesson. But that was the last time I felt enjoyment from being with someone. By that I mean, talking, hanging out; as well as intimate moments. And it's not that I'm broken-hearted over that experience, because as I say, it was over before I had the chance to trust her or develop any kind of deeper appreciation. She's just the last person I was able to enjoy being around.

When that ended, I figured I'd just get back on the horse, so to speak. So I spent time with a revolving door of women, none of whom I could bring myself to see again. I didn't sleep with any of them, I knew as soon as I met them that I wouldn't be able to feel anything. And I'm not the kind of heartless monster I used to be, that would sleep with them anyway. Something had changed, and that something was me.

I was bored. I was disconnected. I could see the end so I didn't bother with a beginning.

Each one of these women was physically perfect, to my sense of aesthetics. In the past, physical desire alone would have been enough to make me put up with years of bullshit from any one of them. If you're in your 20's or 30's guys, you know what I mean. But I don't have time any more.

And I could see the games, and all of the denial in them that they were blissfully unaware of. I could tell when they lied. I was annoyed by their contradictions, put off by their lack of individuality or critical thought. I was bored by the things they adored, and I realised there's just no one else out there like me in female form.

Yes, there are women who think similarly in areas of politics or sociology, but are do they tick the other boxes? Are they honest, intelligent, full of character, ethical, respectful, faithful?
 
These dates would call me and internally I'd be screaming for them to stop talking, to get away from them. They would try to kiss me and I'd shudder. Then they would try to hurt me because I didn't want to meet again, and I'd sigh again and add them to the list of girls who are too self-centred and supposedly important that they couldn't just show some dignity and walk away clean.

Being vengeful is so pathetically ugly. Hating someone because they can't love you is just sad.

I'm too weird, too definite and inflexible, too analytical, and not attractive enough to make that worth anyone's while. And worst of all- I just can't find the part of me that used to know how to love any more.

I have isolated myself, closing the door on people entirely. My public face is distant, unwelcoming. I don't do social. I have turned into my Mum, who moved to the country and stopped bothering with men more than 15 years ago.

I never used to understand it, and even used to fear it, but now I get it. She's so sick of games, lies, being used, being thrown away, being disrespected and hurt because she put her heart in the hands of self-serving, greedy and insecure human beings. She took her life into her own hands and said "I'm going to have peace now, away from all the drama and subterfuge of human interaction." And she never regretted a minute of it.

I just have to take a minute to fully absorb just how much strength that takes.

My greatest fear used to be fading away and being alone, and I'm guaranteeing both through my actions every day. I don't fear those things any more- I feel like fading away from a fucked up and ridiculous world of celebrity and money and using people is like a rush of fresh air to someone trapped in the bowels of a sunken ship. And being alone, to hear the breeze through the trees, to appreciate the rain falling, and the peacefulness of solitude; how could I not have yearned for that sooner?

 More and more I have focused on the thought of buying some land out in the country, building my shipping container house on it, filling it with animals and off-grid energy, and just appreciating life for a change. A sea change they call it I think? Or a tree change? I was walking down an isolated back street today with a giant gum tree on it, no cars, no people. And I had to stop and just watch it as the breeze blew through it. The sound it made was so appealing to me, it was just crazy. It reinforced just how necessary it feels to get out of this ridiculous tiny pretentious city that is packed full of greedy, ugly, brainless people.

I feel like I finally have a path worked out. That that is my future. I don't need love, and to be honest I just don't believe in it. All of the confusion has lifted.

And then I saw this story.

I'm not sure how long the link will stay active, but to summarise, it's about a lady called Naomi who since age 4, has suffered through paraplegia; and more recently, with a life-threatening lung condition. She needs a wheelchair for mobility, and has to be professionally monitored throughout her sleep in case she dies. She has been married for 7 years to her husband Paul, here they are together:

 

Now it's really easy for us to mentally distance ourselves from paraplegics and very sick people, to somehow think of them as not as human as us. It sounds horrible, but we do this for survival and to avoid confronting the horror that it could happen to us.

But listening to Naomi Clarke, you are immediately struck with her eloquence, intelligence, and warmth, and her humanity is thrust squarely and firmly before your full attention. She is a brave and wonderful woman, and when I saw her and Paul together, I cried my eyes out.

Wait, where did these feelings come from?

I didn't cry because she is fighting health issues, I cried at the beauty of two people who love each other so much, at the fact that love is a real thing that happens to people, and it happens to people who, at least socially, are a lot more different and in some ways confronting/challenging than I am.

I cried that Paul was prepared to quit his job to care for his wife, to sacrifice whatever personal goals and desires he may have had to invest in a life shared with the person he adores.

I cried that two beautiful people had found each other and are making it work, even though it is so far from what we hold ideal, or convenient. It isn't glamorous, it isn't easy. But when you see them smile, you ENVY THEM.

And suddenly, the thought of living without that in my life fills me with so much sadness again. Because while there are truly beautiful and real people out there, I am simply too damaged to ever be close to them.

I know context colours experience, we all do. And I know security and strip clubs throw colours into my life I don't want to see any more, so it's time to change scenery to someplace more positive. I need to follow the things that make me happy because I love them, to focus on the positive and learn to smile more. 

One thing I know about love- it appears when it wants to, and not a second before. So there's no point looking, or thinking about it. The point right now, is to focus on edifying things, on good things, and engaging with the joy that is out there, instead of the darkness.

If love finds me again, then that would be miraculous.

And if it doesn't, then I've lived among the things that matter, surrounded myself with peace and positivity where possible, and concentrated on the things that matter.

And that's all you can do.


This is knifey, from 'the internet'.