brooding-vamp

[brooding-vamp]

You know a moment is important when it is making your mind go numb with beauty.

Friedrich Nietzsche

[brooding-vamp]

To The Men I Have Loved Only in Moonlight

The way in which I love scares me. It is a paradox, and a paradox I fear.

To the world in my head, love is either value-based or psychological. Either I fall in love when a person represents something valuable or ideal to me, or I fall in love because through them that I recognize myself.

Here is the paradox: are they valuable to me due to narcissistic mirroring, or by valuing them I learn to better value myself? Worse, in love, have I absorbed parts of them, or upon seeing them, I have seen myself more clearly?

To remain self-sufficient and protected, I have a practice: any desire can be self-fulfilled through inner work and evolution. I won’t love again because I refuse to torture myself in constant uncertainty until I learn why I love. I contemplate this because what intrigues me in mankind is so specialized, nuanced, and rare that I can practically study it and pick it apart. My peculiar taste in men defines my entire philosophy on physiology:

You can read the grit of a man based on the sharp lines and roughness of his face and the thickness or sturdiness of his body. Unique features symbolize unique attributes. Test a man until he breaks. Find the ones who don’t break but turn the game around. Those who aren’t jostled, but soften, listen.

I don’t know if I became the very men I have cared for, or if they simply activated me through our secret similitude. I was raised to believe love to be something transcendent and selfless… but my experience proves otherwise. The disillusionment is depressing almost.

Juniper jumped ship. I was haunted by his fossilized traces and disappearance. The intensity of my fear of vulnerability was only outmatched by his, and that is why he left first. I become an anxious attachee in the face of an avoidant. But the chasing merely masks my true, inner avoidance of attachment. I saw him as my match.

Kurt Cobain was another example of my love of avoidants. Their absence allowed me to avoid real intimacy. He was the first boy I ever caught feelings for, but it resulted in deep depression.

Things changed when I joined the Army. Before I left for training, I pursued an intellectual, detached connection with a socialist wrestler. I perceived him to be my opposite.

At BCT, I met the Perfectionist. In AIT, I met Jaguar. Little crushes. Yet I was enamored by the Perfectionist’s neurotic need for cleanliness and things to be just-so. The Jaguar was my physical and socially dominant match. This is when Skold entered the picture and took over everything. His sensitivity to my thoughts and moods contrasted my cold ambitions and search for strength. I dated him for two years. Codependence. Fusion. The years following our breakup and on-again-off-again emotional bond, I was scared that I caught his demon. Our 4-year farce. I couldn’t ever date again because I couldn’t take it seriously after that. I enjoyed male attention too much. Did I become like him or was I always so affected by his presence because of secret similitude? Is that why it stung so bad? Or maybe he only activated new, untouched planes in me. We confronted everything in each other. Witnessed it all crumble.

Within that time span, there was the man who told me the story about the two wolves. Eccentric, a loner, whiskey-drinking, hyper, and would socially-isolate himself by saying outlandish, provoking things. I liked that about him. It was something I could match. I would reel him back in.

I dreamt often of Blue throughout the years, of his deep-set, dark eyes. My masculine soul mirror. He outmatches me in elusiveness. He who will never fully meet me in the light. In dreams, he appears as a sick man or he meets me in the deep: underwater, underground, on distant roads, he grabs me from behind only because he knows I’ll say no. There is relief in my no. In waking life, I am helplessly magnetized by those eyes, but it feels something other than love… Just like all these men. Something more potent.

The Greek has soft-looking skin. He boxes. He likes to make people insecure. I admire this; I do the same back. I feel guilty. I challenge him. Once drunk I tell him I see him; he softens before me forever after. Why? Why does he sit with me and talk and listen and talk and listen more? I am not his girl. But the Greek feels significant to me.

Why does Blue show up in my dreams so much?

Why does Jay look at me in that disarming way as if he is in love with me? Why would he hold me like that? I have spent years to personally assure the two of remain strangers… Why don’t we act like it in those silences?

Why would Two-Wolves stick with me and give me his gift? Why did he praise me? I was just a kid.

Why did Skold worship me as, in his words, his goddess and proceed to burn me as he told me he loves me?

Why would Jaguar, harsh women, and aloof men in power, momentarily transport into another world to unexpectedly clean me up in the times I was suddenly vacant?

Why did the socialist wrestler pursue women like objects, but respected our intellectual intimacy to never dare disrespect me?

Why did K.C. engage me despite the constant nagging and contempt his friends held in reservoir for me? In confused hushed whispers into ears, he persisted.

Why would Juniper intoxicate me with so much warmth and intelligence right before he dies once again? Why does my presence hurt him still? Why do I bleed all over him?

This is the list of men I have loved, cared for, and felt bound to in some way. But as I have found out, intense people don’t get with intense people. We don’t date each other. We revel in deep moments for a moment. Strings of moments. That’s all. Runs too deep. No one really goes away forever. We haven’t learned how to handle anything. Their pain is their identity. A bunch of paranoid masochists. Skold and the Greek tell me later how solace can be sought in milder, homier women. Juniper and Blue opt out of dating entirely. The socialist wrestler never joined the military; his lifestyle seems to have likely resumed and worsened. Jaguar is a dad now.

I am attracted to men with a tragic backstory. I am not like them in that my family was never broken, deceased, cruel. But we are the same. Pain in youth enlightens the mind so quickly with depth, complexity, and intelligence that it is almost beautiful.

So, which is it? Do I love them for their values, their geniuses, their darknesses, their ability to relate and understand me? Do I love them because I grow obsessed when I see myself in another, or in that maybe they help me see myself? When is love not this act of self-obsession? The need to feel seen, heard, felt, understood; the want to fill the void or silence. I rebuke it! I choose to provide for myself. I don’t need ego-validation. Love is to consume others in order to complete oneself. A hunger. An addictive belly. If drugged enough long enough in mild doses of lonesomeness, parenthood, mediocre sex (or in a sexless marriage), I’m told the intensity goes away. The intense man is placated; happiness is to be found in peace, he says.

I made a promise to myself to never see life as limited to two choices as Achilles did, nor to ever become the everyday man, as Nietzsche names it. But is this not me, the same me from the start, running away from the vulnerability of deep human connections? Neither have I found a method to temper madness/love. But unlike my brethren in soul, I won’t cave.

I will return to mankind when I can come up with a different line of logic for the purpose or secret behind love and having a partner. I am still searching.

Thought challenges: What is unearned love, and what makes it possible or true, if it is true? What is love for an animal? If I were to face a replica of myself, would I love her obsessively, distastefully? Would we feel as one? What is to say of co-creators: people who inspire one another in beauty, presence, or prose?

Maybe two healed intense people can conjoin and keep the flame alive. Maybe I ought to define love on my own terms instead of wiles, trances, and following instinctive trails. I equate divinity/god with the higher self or a broader, higher, universal consciousness. Maybe love is whenever one feels both their higher self and the other person’s higher self. To steady, to witness, to listen, to coexist, to feel it all. Mutual stability in intensity… When neither can walk away, neither takes from the other in order to gain. When two face fear. When two overcome.

[brooding-vamp]

My full christened name translates to “radiance in awakened woods.” Though laurelled once as blue nymph, the Dark Lady, multifaceted, “like dark glitter,” an arrow, I am, too, told how my art matches my presence, that my music taste fits the mold. I gleam under such piercing compliments, only to shutter away again.

I have made the mistake before to show myself clearly in daylight to anyone who does not share my vision or will. I almost can't help it anymore.

[brooding-vamp]

American Beauty Film

I just finished watching American Beauty. I ought to focus more on the beauty in this world, in the little things, too. Make a list each day. Meditate on these focal points. In turn, (I have noticed that) how I remember the past determines who I believe myself to be in the present. If I begin to record in my journals the beautiful things, overtime it will be the beautiful things that will come to define me.

[brooding-vamp]

I posit two axioms and evaluate myself under them at the end of each day:

(i) any desire can be fulfilled through internal work, (ii) in order to never be corrupted, you can only focus on winning today. 

Axiom (i) protects against any form of collectivism and in turn promotes individuation. Axiom (ii) applies to any addiction in general: just get through today; one moment at a time. It makes for a strong mind. Passivity is the true culprit.

The only times I have been corrupted was when I was in a long-term relationship or when I began to count the days.

Solitude is the medicine one takes to preserve oneself.

[brooding-vamp]

Dangerous guys are ones that tell you how he's a good man, say he believes chivalry is not dead, inform you he's a big advocate for women's rights. Maybe they think saying these things will convince me. Maybe they say it to subtly hint at how we women owe them something now in return. Strong female presence makes them uncomfortable. Men have it ingrained in them that in being the larger sex (on average) they are owed some kind of awe or respect from women.

Of course, I've done taboo things to mix up the power dynamics and make myself appear the villain, and oh how some eat that up to justify their corrupt behavior.

[brooding-vamp]

A Story I Won't Retell

I was with him for two years. Despite some periods of silence, our emotional relationship continued for nearly two years after that.

(Do you have any idea how codependent a taboo, socially unacceptable, or deviant relationship makes two people? How inflicting pain fuses bodies together? No, of course you don't.)

A reason for why I am closed off to the world is because it has been reinforced that I have one of those stories people are either unable to understand, don't care to understand, or are too scared to understand. I don't judge harshly at their dissonance; I shrug my shoulders, and I live on… I move on. I won't try at it again, why would I? It's a part of my story. What's it to me that people know or understand it? Nothing.

I am positively overwhelmed by the number of people that want to connect with me. Though, a part of the test is how people react to my writing.

A lot of how I view the world is made up of secret projections.

[brooding-vamp]

My Happy Tolerance to Ache

As I am deep into the second half of the luteal phase, it is likely I will continue to be ratio silent until the new moon is past (coincidentally).

I am my father’s daughter: I store tension deep within my shoulders and neck. For the two years that I have been added-sugar-free, my body has not experienced an inflammation attack. This went hand-in-hand with increased emotional regulation and the release of cancerous thoughts over the years. That does not mean I go about my day-to-day life completely pain-free. I have built up a hell of a tolerance though.

My mom booked me a massage a few days ago. I had intended to follow through with the idea for many, many months. I am knot-prone. I had been living with, as I assumed, a huge knot deep within my left shoulder blade. It ached in everything I did, but pain does not hold much significance to me at this point, so I assumed through enough stretching, time, and rolling on a tennis ball, it would go away. Or maybe I’d forget about it.

I asked the masseuse how bad it is. She laughs. I was knotted everywhere. She was surprised I hadn’t come in sooner or that I lacked headaches.

I have admitted this to other women that the one good thing about a man are their strong hands for massages. Then the other woman usually tells me how her man doesn’t give massages or can’t give good ones. Eyes widen in shock.

It is almost weird rolling my shoulders back and not feeling a restrictive ache and pinch. I think we evolved as a species to give each other massages, comb one another’s hair, e.g. groom like our fellow primates.

My mother could be described as someone extremely independent, consistent, friendly, reliable, and unsentimental: she shows her love through action and presence, not necessarily through traditional affection. My father is a Kierkegaardian mirror of that, except with presents and quality time.

My proneness to bodily pain is inherited from my dad (Sápmi), but my ability to ignore it is from my mom (the Irish). Two harsh environments. Sometimes I wonder if my body would have matured differently or if I would have survived past a certain age if I were raised in the places my genes were adapted for. Though, it is pain and dreary weather that makes good literature.

[brooding-vamp]

My Archetypical Structure

I once broke down my personality by its archetypes and colors into something simplified: a mere shadow representation, but entirely useful to me. The center is a white sphere symbolizing purity of thought, intention, and soul.

The sphere surrounding the core was divided into three parts: red, yellow, and blue. The blood symbolizes red, the sunflowers symbolize yellow, and nymph for blue.

The next layer was purple, green, and orange. Purple, the combination of blue (nymph) and red (blood) resulted in power, royalty, the Siren; Green, yellow and blue, the nymph with sunflowers, resulted in the wild, good girl in the woods gathering flowers, friending and treating animals, gardening; and orange is the combination of yellow (sunflowers) and red (blood) which resulted in the lynx: gold, strong libido/energy, independence.

The layer after that is brown, representing life, roots, home with bears and trees and all that grounds me.

The final layer is a cube and is black. This is where Overlord, a dragonoid, resides for all she represents to me: castles, goth, walls, danger, the balance of chaos and order, anger, control, etc. She is who protects the entirety of the system and life below.

The subconscious and collective unconscious exist once outside of this cube-encompassing-spheres diagram.

(On deployment, I broke myself up into little pieces to see what I was made up of. The dismantling process was catastrophic, but I learned more about myself in 11 months than one learns in 11 years).

[brooding-vamp]

Odysseus as a Woman

It has occurred to me that one of my gifts is myth-building. A visionary mind partly un-tapped into. I can create a mythology or a dream landscape that can inspire others, but I choose to not do this because it is exhausting, and I fear another V. situation happening again where a man falls in love in the planes instead of in the present.

I don’t want to be idolized, worshipped, demonized, or depended on. His mythology fell apart, so I built him a new one. It was on him that he couldn’t live up to it. He attacked mine.

I fear weak men, so I remain sheltered in my head. I have been stern about remaining closed up until someone who is my match can be trustworthy enough for me to open the gates again. But is this even feasible?

Maybe so many other people are closed up like me, and it takes one just strong person to inspire the strength back.

Am I to be that person?

[brooding-vamp]

God, an Herbivore Predator?

My orange cat tore into the leg of a teenage rabbit yesterday. I drove to the wildlife refuge center. Mom washed the blood away by the time I got home. I trimmed the cat’s nails.

Watching pain in an innocent creature is a harrowing experience. I always think, what if that was me and the cat, god? What if god chooses to crush me like an ant; but since he doesn’t, why should I?

I can’t help but put myself in its shoes in those moments of death and dying: the ultimate anxiety, the acceptance of death, the adrenaline lying to you.

I can’t kill bugs because I can instead open the window and let it out. I tell others how I’m a vegetarian for no reason except that meat and fish taste too plain for me, but maybe that is not true.

My beliefs don’t place animals in a hierarchy: all life is valuable and precious.

Death should be reserved for desperate times: only take what is needed and give back once you are done. It is unfair.

[brooding-vamp]

My Interior Dreamscape

Where do I go from here? My heart dwells in a constant ache whenever I return from the hinterlands. I am a difficult person to get close to. I could be likened to an emotional masochist: drag me through the depths of strife and abysmal wreckage, and only then will a splinter form in my heart for momentary open passage. It aches like this until it closes again. Misty volcanic ash blots out the sky, the warmth of the atmosphere, a crystalline red center. There’s a narrow window in which a person needs to make it through. Then come the Trials. A maze-like interior castle densely filled with notes and intricate designs; I store everything meticulously. This is home. The center of the maze is a clearing consisting of an isle and a long passage connecting the castle’s interior walls to the center. Ceaseless dark water hugs the isle below. This is an access point.

I have spent the past two days frail, collapsing into sweet repose, mending, combating a lack of appetite, writing to thinking to writing again. The door opened due to the performance of a ritual: hubris, exile, endless wandering in the plains, the appearance of friendlies or dark apparitions, the test, then ecstatic deliverance. But now the hinges begin to tighten once more. Will I return to my reclusion? I can’t change who I am, so I remold my psychoid’s landscape to fit a newly chosen fate.

I process life in terms of mythology, symbols, psychology. My search for ideals and equals means people must serve an artistic function. It’s partly destructive, partly vain, but genius. It is a search for those who embody symbols that react violently to mine. Mythic magnetization constitutes a meaningful occurrence. I assign spiritual weight to all dealings and yawn in the absence of tension. Storyline resonance, not mere intellectual equivalence.

Yet there is a secondary type of mythic relationship: guidance. I have done it a few times—crafted personalized mythologies for others, ones that could lean against mine until their inner landscape developed to survive on its own. Though, my periodic isolation has everything to do with my refusal to do that anymore. (I cannot lead as long as I continue to refuse to guide).

I recreate my own myth, my own internal hero’s journey. The obstacle: in developed countries where we work every day to mitigate suffering, is there an arena left for people to mature into a larger-than-life status? Sure, there is something to be said about remaining human via kindness, small acts of strength, self-awareness, but I think I want something bigger. We join the military to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, to willingly be traumatized, to learn how to embrace suffering through the cultivation of bodily and mental strength. Call it masochism (or patriotism), but an enduring direction is better than their lack of. Nay, now we lose sight of it. Strip meaning away from a person’s toil if you want to weaken him to the point of instability or numb automation.

I have a severe love-hate relationship with the Army. The Army is of the few institutions left with a set of values to live by; it has a long-standing history of building up America’s finest men and women through leadership, character, and endurance development. The military openly uses dark psychology, historical strategy, and carefully pushing all physiological limits to breed a unified force. The problem is how current leadership on every rung of the ladder is clearly dumbfounded on what exactly is the meaning of our current mission. The fall of religion and the open-mindedness of Americans towards controversial, hip, foreign ideas have placed us in a vacuum. Though this is not me advocating against pacifism.

Further, it explains my deployment madness: 1) I felt there was no meaning to my travail (leaders futilely struggled to pacify me), 2) I grew fatalistic, 3) I compromised myself by going against my better judgment, and 4) I emotionally regressed and let unhealthy people be my surrogate mother and father.

In a similar vein, I have grown frustrated with the fitness industry. It’s the outlet every person with a protagonistic impulse takes in this modern world, but it’s largely perverted. Modern uses for extreme fitness: intimidation, health, increase sexual market value, sublimation of wild instincts. What I’m saying is I crave a more useful survival application to my muscles and endurance.

The hardest endeavor of today is that we would have to absurdly choose to be heroes, though no one really needs to be one anymore.

[brooding-vamp]

The Quieting of Screams

I really want to emphasize how much better I have been feeling ever since I started taking more time to myself.

The order of events: quit my internship, mom came home, started to not pack a lunch so I could go home and eat my mom’s food and not waste an hour eating lunch with people, only at school as long as necessary so no more long walks or lollygagging, stopped texting back and made it clear online I want minimal texts, bought headphones so I could listen to my audiobooks on the bus and when I am walking, reevaluated my philosophical foundations and rediscovered the importance of seeing there is an objective reality with existence as primary (not consciousness), stopped dressing up and doing my makeup all the time, stopped caring so much about being pretty to people who don’t even talk to me, and decided to stop unnecessarily smiling at people after a bad drill.

My intellectual pursuits and less socialization have been revitalizing me after all these years (since May 2021). I really did believe my ex-boyfriend knew better than me, so I allowed myself to consider other philosophic possibilities and personality modes. I considered the possibility that I “need other people,” that I “need to be liked” in order to get want I want.

In all reality, it made me hate myself and my life because people often don’t like me and I saw that if to get “B” I need “A,” then all is hopeless because I was incompetent. In fact, I am not incompetent. I can be strong, persistent, useful, respected, etc., when I obey my own conscience.

My conscience had been screaming for years to rid my life of my ex-boyfriend, then it screamed to be alone all the time, and other demands followed.

Sometimes I fear I may become too independent and never let another person into my life again… but my experience show how interesting people only showed up in my life when I was in that ultra-independent mode; this contrasts to how frustrated, restless, and empty I’ve been these past few years as someone hyper-fixated on beauty, power, likeability, and whatever.

Back to the roots because before my ex, I knew better, but now I know all too well the dangers of trusting a thing outside of oneself more than you trust yourself.

I yearn to be a Spartan woman.

[brooding-vamp]

To Awaken in Water

I initially passed out on the floor of my room with a cat snuggling up at my face. When I finally pulled myself off the carpet, my hips ached. But as I awoke throughout the night, I kept finding myself sleeping on my stomach; my neck ached. The body feels comfort when the belly is hidden, something perinatal.

I dreamt of water and learning to hold my breath until soon it felt like I could breathe the water. Lying under magnitudes of layers, watching my own long hair float around me and spiral, admiring a fluorescence of light muffled above. This is peace: to be alive in places other people would drown in. Someone I used to admire dives down to join me. He holds me and expresses desire, but I gently unclip him: “no," I say. Though my body may have desires, a logos-driven life discerns and only wants that which will move me, change me, or transcend me further into the deep. Maybe that is why I have been putting a distance between me and everything in need of reevaluation. Those who do not contribute to my one calling and one vision, I simply do not have the energy or patience anymore.

In waking life, I have stopped giving unwarranted smiles away, I slither away to eat lunch alone, and I am pleased when a whole day passes without receiving a personalized text.

I am resetting the system. I don’t like the parts of my personality I caricatured for college, work, drill so that I may become bite-sized and consumptive.

I am a joke, an amusement, a wild-child (a child).

I give and receive nothing of substance in return. And so, I grow more avoidant each day, and with that, less hopeful, more reclusive, more self-sufficient. I become impenetrable, “jaded,” though I am blissful in the solitude.

The vision has never been clearer in this capacity because people are as manipulative as I am: they infect spaces and influence pathologies and hormones. It must be inferred that given my current avoidant and placatable states, others have power over me. Thus, I retreat until I can be born again in a few months’ time.

[brooding-vamp]

The Ascension and Descent of Beauty

It has occurred to me that competing using beauty is futile in attracting a quality mate.

There’re so many pretty girls out there, and the game is rigged with the prevalence of porn, social media, dating apps, AND plastic surgery.

I’m saying, no one can win the beauty game. Plus, the more women focus on external beauty, the more shallow men are allowed to get.

Beauty does not get a man to stay, beauty does not strengthen a relationship, neither does it necessarily make for great sex. This is why I’ve stopped dressing up and doing my hair to an inordinate level because I’ve realized the futility of chasing beauty.

Yes, sure, it is important to look put-together and first impressions and all that. But I am bored. And I scare people off, which is great.

I often tell myself that I’m single because I’m not beautiful enough, but that is illogical and self-destructive and leads nowhere. Internal friction uses this insecurity against me to keep me from complete confidence and assertiveness… as if beauty has anything to do with gaining respect and getting what one wants.

Think of all the male tycoons… they were not supermodels. And think of Kate Mulgrew, all the president’s wives, Ayn Rand, Queens, famous female artists (not singers though). They have a natural kind of beauty, but not a “perfection” or flawless kind, or the kind men can easily objectify. It has more to do with their ambition, tact, how they hold themselves, the substance of mind, and ability to fly solo if need be. They didn’t need a man. I never ever want to try to deliberately “attract a man” ever again. That is pathetic, degrading, and will only lose my faith in men even more.

Yes, attraction matters, but it means nothing in finding a suitable mate because there are plenty of good-looking, fit, wealthy guys out there, but few to none who could entertain, stimulate, and challenge me.

[brooding-vamp]

Fifty Ways to Shade a Man

I crave the experienced, willful, confident man who has a force equal or greater to mine. I am to better my skills, presence, presentation. I was explaining to H. last night that a part of me feels incomplete and missing when I don’t have a dominating man in my life to confine me, comfort me, take control of me. I am physically, emotionally, spiritually incapable of feeling anything towards another man who is less powerful than I am. I couldn’t lower my standards even if I wanted to. I just do not respect or lust for a weaker man, even if he is buff, moderately intelligent, and educated. Maybe that makes me fucked up in the brain, but it is truly the one and only thing my brain responds to (so far) in men. I am a control freak; I do not give up control unless forced to. And that is the way I like it. Psychological r*pe. The unshakable, undeniable, mastered man. One who sees, commands. Active and responding. A giver, a provider. Action over idealization and theory. I am Ayn Rand’s prodigy and protégée.

[brooding-vamp]

Open Confessions

February 26, 2025.

Accidentally discovered how unpleasant I am? How particular, controlling, specific, nuanced? Tell myself I can’t help it, I’m weird, I’m gifted, I’m doomed.

Why am I so unpleasant at times? It makes people dislike me. I have a "need" to control the AC, the car controls, tv remote, furnishings, restaurant we're going out to, groceries, trips, position in bed, music that plays, etc. It would seem that I care more about my preferences than about others', group cohesion, or agreeableness. Why can't I pretend to look like I'm pleasant for just a few moments? But I'm not pleasant? I don't get along with most people upon spending too much time with them; they start to annoy me. I've been learning recently how to tune out, mentally hide away, or find ways to be by myself and my animals.

Okay, I need to see through this. Life is a game, everything is. Maybe true love exists out there, maybe I can do better than this, but humans operate under a very complex mess of hormones, instincts, power dynamics, and psychology. I need to get my head in order and see that the game ends well.

Facts:

I’m highly particular, territorial, and independent. I have strong preferences, a clear vision of how I want things to be, and little patience. Sometimes it comes off as unpleasant to people who value ease, flexibility, and social harmony. But I value individuality and control.

I don’t mesh well right away. I secretly dislike a lot of people, but I am able to get myself to forget or bury it for a time. Often, this can be done if I opt out and withdraw into myself. I can't simply force myself to play along in social settings. When I recognize my incompatibility, I am okay avoiding unnecessary conflict. Then again, I am somewhat unpracticed in long-term collaborative environments. I have low tolerance for the messiness of human dynamics and get frustrated when control is shared. I'm either all in or all out.

I resist authority and external impositions often. I trust my own decisions over group consensus or leader’s directives any day of the week. This makes me a frustrating soldier and subordinate. An insubordinate subordinate (because my mind goes: "we know who the real subordinate is"... see the problem?).

Yes, this is not socially acceptable to postulate, but there is the probability I score into the category that comes after “gifted." I have little patience for suboptimal ways of being and thinking. I care about big-picture thinking, pattern recognition, tying many ideas and fields together. Meanwhile, a person lost in the details annoys me. I blame my lack of interest on their lack of depth and darkness... but that verges on blatant narcissism. Maybe I need to give people space and time to sprout. Though... I can not pretend: there is something I clearly have that others lack in the faculties. Maybe it's more of a general artistic and philosophic deficiency in modern society.

I have heightened sensory processing which makes me feel as if this need to have control over my space and conditions is not some whimsical preference, but a necessity. I feel overstimulated and impulsive when things are not “just right.” Or maybe it's autism. Ha. Ha.

I am hyper-independent.

I become emotionally volatile and "difficult" for others to handle in close relationships. But I'm stable, avoidant, and rather happy when unpaired.

I score high on extroversion: lots of social energy when in the right atmosphere, but I lack softness. I am assertive and expressive. In social settings, I crave social dominance, complex engagement, and stimulation, not social harmony or friendliness. Around women that I want to impress, I become overly friendly to the point it exhausts me causing further avoidance.

I score very low on agreeableness. Uncompromising and individualistic. I don’t prioritize social harmony, group cohesion, or emotional appeasement. I have to continuously practice putting myself in others' shoes. Others’ feelings don’t dictate my decisions. I value honesty, efficiency, and control over niceness. I really only ever clash with people who expect kindness, diplomacy, or deference.

High conscientiousness explains my strive towards discipline and control. Intolerant of laziness, inefficiency, and incompetence, while not detail orientated, I am perfectionistic and organized when it comes to myself and my wants.

My high openness drives me toward intellectual depth and complexity. I seek novelty, often question reality, and engage in abstract thought. I love philosophy, literature, and unconventional perspectives.

Surprise, surprise, I score low on emotional stability. My emotions are strong, unpredictable, and overwhelming at times (unless I avoid provoking situations and numb out). Over the past few months, I’ve been learning techniques and self-talk tools to manage them better and direct my energy. Meditation has been critical. I work on bursts of passion and sometimes struggle with impulse control in emotional situations. My emotional intensity rubs people the wrong way. But I have been undergoing tremendous improvement on a nerve level.

My emotional volatility mixed with dominance and perfectionism makes relationships rather difficult unless the other person is either very strong-willed or extremely adaptable. In that case, I get along swimmingly with those sorts.

What this all means is that I need to design my life carefully, so I don’t feel constantly frustrated or constantly frustrate others.