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[eighteleven87]

I’m tired of feeling. I just want to lie down now.

[eighteleven87]

This time last week I was awoken by the thought of emailing Lauren and seeing if we could meet up and have one final conversation. I wanted “closure,” whatever that actually means. Later in the day I would have a few drinks and work up the courage to actually send her that email. For whatever reason, she agreed and set the date for Friday, June 18.

I maybe shouldn’t have gone through with it. The days prior to the meet-up, I was kept awake by the thought of what could happen, what might happen, what ought to happen. I had a gut feeling she was seeing or had seen other people between our break-up March 10 and that Friday. And, as she would later tell me in one of the last things she ever said to me... go with my gut. I have a gut feeling like nobody else she had ever met.

The night prior, I couldn’t sleep. Tossing, turning, over-caffeinated on Mountain Dew, I was a wreck. I woke up early and texted her, asking her what time she wanted to meet up. She said “6-ish.” I agreed, and bided my time until then. Thinking if it was still a thing I should be doing, which deep down I knew it was not, but it was too late to cancel.

In the back of my head, I knew it was over, but I held onto whatever hope I could that maybe, just maybe, there was a fraction of a chance we could see eye-to-eye, have a good, if final conversation, and hook up. Do what we did best, and at her place, no less, same as the first time we saw each other some two years and nine months ago. But, that was not meant to be.

The evening started successfully enough. We each were calm and collected. We both were apologetic and honest, open about where we did the other person wrong, and what we would have liked to have been different during our relationship when it still was a thing. She wished I was nicer to her and had seen her different from the get-go -- that I had viewed her as a girlfriend, as “the one,” and not another hook-up during my hot boy summer. I wished she wasn’t so nice, was less forgiving, more honest, and set firmer boundaries.

We kept talking over drinks. I moved my seating position every next drink I had, from a chair on the side of her, to her coffee table in front of her, to sharing her loveseat beside her. After our third drink each, things started to unravel. We had just started talking about the money I was set to give her, for she had let me stay with her while I wasn’t offering her much in return, but then she dropped a bomb on me.

Same as the first time we met way back in September 2018, I got close to her and wanted to touch her legs. I asked if she would be comfortable going from a knelt position on the loveseat to stretching her legs over mine. Different to 2018, she recoiled, pulling back and saying, “We aren’t going to sleep together tonight. I’m sorry, it just isn’t going to happen. ... Is that OK?” I backed off. I said that was fine. I apologized.

But then, out with it: “I have to be honest: I’ve been seeing someone.” My heart sank immediately, even though I knew internally that that was more than likely the case. Based on internal instinct, gut feeling, pattern recognition, and witnessing her behavior across the last two times we caught up with each other. There was something secretive about her, where she almost went out of her way not to mention it. A fear she had to her, where she felt if she told me, I would get so angry that I would jeopardize her current relationship, sabotaging it where it stood.

Perhaps her fears were justified. I had previously told her that I informed my previous girlfriend’s boyfriend, whom she started talking to, flirting with, and seeing while we still were together that she still had feelings for me. I sent him texts and photos that she’d sent me in private, as I never felt right about how she was handling things. So Lauren, playing off that, refused telling me about the new guy.

Thing is, this was a case of deja-vu. Lauren also started talking to and flirting with this new guy while we still were together. While we still were dating, spending more nights together than we took time apart, and while we still were sleeping together exclusively. She knew she liked this guy, she followed his Twitch stream, and only after he called her out, asking if she was flirting with him, did she acknowledge it. Then she waited two days and texted me a three-sentence message calling it off between us.

There was much to be desired about how all of this went down. Lauren admitted that she should have broke it off with me sometime in the summer of 2019, but didn’t. The sex muddied things. She didn’t want to be lonely. Into COVID, which she didn’t know how long it would last, she didn’t want to feel isolated. So she held onto me, even though the feeling of wanting me to be hers had long since left her. I was, essentially, a placeholder keeping her warm -- figuratively as well as literally -- until she happened upon somebody she liked and got on with better.

What kicked my heart into the gutter was I was doing my best to win her back. I have been working on my own self nonstop, doing everything from seeing a therapist, quitting drugs, improving my diet, going to the gym and exercising, reading self-help books to teach me how to treat women and how to subdue my angry tendencies... but she was already moved on. While I had been working so damn hard for a glimmer of a chance with her once more, where I would actively rebuild every bridge I had burned, she told me she had found “the one.” And it wasn’t me.

“You just know ‘the one’ when you meet them.”

The mood immediately changed. I didn’t want to be there any longer. Not only was I on her turf, I was on his. I felt played, I felt rejected, I felt betrayed, and I felt used. She kept going, too. “We didn’t have that much in common.” “We weren’t officially together, so it wasn’t actually cheating.” “I’m sorry, it just kind of happened. I didn’t plan this.” And many similar gut-punching claims, all of which I either refuted or absorbed rather calmly. I didn’t blow up at her. I didn’t swear or throw a fit. I took it.

She got up and got me a glass of water. She still cared for me enough not to want me to walk out of her place the final time, knowing I might have gotten into a car accident. And I woke up to a text saying, “Please just tell me you got home safe.” I said “Yes,” then deleted the conversation. And that was the last of it.

While it makes me feel good knowing she doesn’t absolutely despise me, and cares about me as a human being, insofar as not wanting me to get hurt driving home after drinking with her at her place, I can’t help but feel burned by her. To an absolute crisp. She knew it was over, for over a year, but kept me hanging onto the hope that something was left. She spent weeks watching a guy on Twitch she knew she had a crush on, and communicated with him as if she did, while I was trying to figure out a way to hold onto her.

We agreed we did each other wrong, we did each other dirty. We didn’t perhaps ever think that we were “the ones” for each other. And I admit there were other women I connected with better during the relationship and wrote private journals about, but I didn’t go out of my way to communicate with them. I didn’t flirt with them, message them, and most importantly, they never had any feelings for me. They never wanted me.

And yet, I still feel rotten how it played out. For how I viewed her from the jump, how I “could have done better” than her and not treating her the way I rightly should have. And, for her not to feel... anything, after two and a half years together, making me feel utterly used, like someone she kept around only because she liked our sex and my company, but not me. 

I feel like if she had just said no to my wanting sex that night, as a “goodbye,” then things would have ended a lot more smoothly between us. Her telling me about how she started following a guy’s Twitch stream she found attractive, watching him, talking to him, having feelings for him, and flirting with him while we still were together -- at least, in my mind we were together -- didn’t sit right with me. It never, ever will.

I was more than on board with making things right between us and paying her back for the money she indebted herself to while we were together. But, she also admitted she was going to move back to her home state of North Carolina to be with this guy, and it made me feel like, man, you can’t even wait a little while between us? I meant this little to you, that you are doing this to me?

She said she ended it as soon as she realized she was flirting with him, and she said she didn’t plan on it working out. He asked her on a video game date or something and she declined, at least at first. She said she didn’t do anything wrong, and soon as she realized what was going on, she ended it. But I can’t get over it. 

I can’t just give her money now, long after she ended it, and soon after she made the decision to move to be near him. I am not bankrolling her new life without me. Whether that makes me a bad, distrustful person to her or not, I just can’t do it. I am too hurt over it. She left me feeling like I could have been “the one” had I just cleaned up my act, then she tells me I was the one before “the one.”

I leave this feeling more angry and upset with myself than I do with her. She wasn’t the one for me, and if I am to be completely fucking honest, her finding somebody closer to her brother and parents as they age and she doesn’t want to be so far removed from them... it feels fitting. I don’t know how I would feel had I found someone so far away from my own family and couldn’t see them every week as I do now, as I am about to in a few short minutes here. Father’s Day without my father? No bimonthly meet-ups with my mom for lunch and cop dramas on TV? No bullshitting with Jamie?

I want to make this right with her still. I do, in earnest, feel as if I was the one who did more of the fucking-it-up part, though we each were abusive toward each other. We both used each other. We both hurt each other verbally, and in some cases physically. But I was the one who took from her, and I do want to offer her at least something to help her out. Maybe I will come to a point where I can accept that, but now is not the time.

I am so, so sorry Lauren.

[eighteleven87]

Out from under the cloud.

There once existed a time where I just had to have every single “limited,” “rare,” and “hard-to-find” item. It used to be wrestling T-shirt, or baseball bobblehead, occasionally it was a concert shirt, most recently it was a vinyl record. I would drive myself crazy if I didn’t get these things -- and, lest we forget, “things” is all they are, and ever were.

It was about a decade ago I attended the WWE pay-per-view “Money in the Bank” and saw a wave of people in the stands wearing a certain T-shirt for the wrestler CM Punk that you could only buy at the arena, and it sold out during the event (which was among the best I’d ever seen, to this day). I didn’t know about this, and while I would have had the chance to buy one for myself, the thought just didn’t cross my mind. Because, to me, I was at the show. I had a great seat. I was about to witness something far cooler, better, and greater than standing in line for a half-hour for a shirt. An object. An item. A thing.

It wasn’t till after the show that I learned those shirts were such a hot commodity, and that you could still buy them, but they weren’t the ones with the date of the event on the back. Those you could only obtain by being there, which I was, but I suppose you also had to care about it at the time, which I did not. And, as this blog has you learn, caring is boring.

Some time had to pass before I was to realize, and rationalize with myself, that the only reason I wanted that shirt was because it was a one-time run, and deeper than that, I wanted it because other people had it and I did not. There exists a certain feeling one gets from having something other people do not have, sort of like when you’re the last person in line at the grocery store before the cashier shuts the light off, leaving everybody else behind you left to find somewhere else to check out.

I recall with a vivid memory a time when the person in front of me at a Cubs game with the last person to receive a Kris Bryant bobblehead, meaning I was the first not to receive one. I power-walked up and down the rest of the stadium to see if any other gate had more, but every one of them was similarly out of that item. How, I thought, did I arrive at such a specific time that I was the very first person not to receive one? Sometimes being “last” ends up working in your favor, as it did for the guy immediately ahead of me.

This, of course, ruined the rest of the game for me, and the day. It well shouldn’t have, but for me it did. It’s foolish looking back upon now as, again, an item is just an item, a thing just a thing. But a big part of the reason for attending that game in the first place was getting the little trinket at the very beginning, and that setting the mood for the rest of the day. You got a prize just for showing up at the right time, what a treat! So you’re probably going to be in good spirits the rest of the game, as well, whether the team wins or loses. Similarly, if you’re as unfortunate not to receive one, your spirits might be dampened enough not to care about the ballgame anymore whatsoever.

Deep down, the feeling is always the same: “I got something somebody else did not,” and sometimes you are the person who does not get that thing. But that’s all it ever is: A thing. Be it a bobblehead or a T-shirt, a record or something else. Never is it anymore than another asset in one’s collection, something that inevitably will get put on a shelf or into a bin in the basement and forgotten about.

The most recent craze I’ve fallen victim to has been vinyl records, which I do collect in earnest absent of whatever compulsive need I have or have had for them being limited, rare, or otherwise restricted from all owning and enjoying them. Over the last year and a half especially, this has been problematic for me. It got to such a point where I would sometimes wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning just for a shot at getting a hard-to-find colored Ariana Grande record, which is one I already own but in standard black.

Why did I want that record so bad? No lies: Because I saw a lot of other people wanting it ahead of me, and I wanted to replicate the feeling the person who got the last Cubs bobblehead felt before they ran out. That little burst of energy, that extra pep in my step, even if it only lasts for but an hour, or a few minutes, at a pass. Upon receiving it, I wouldn’t open it, much less be tempted to spin it on my turntable. It would sit in its original seal unopened, collecting dust, along with all the other records I bought because I was first-come, first-served.

The reality is, the records I enjoy the most aren’t those I buy just to keep unopened, and they aren’t the ones that flip for the most profit on eBay the moment they sell out online. They are, instead, the records I dig for in the dusty boxes of mom and pop shops peppering the streets of Chicago, and those that I actually intend to throw onto my turntable, listen to, and enjoy. They are the records I plan on dancing to at night when I have a drink too many in my system, and the ones that everybody else has access to, as well.

The feeling I get, and many others get, from spending a lot of money on these relatively difficult-to-find items, must be silenced somehow. It must be stopped, done away with, vanquished. I am getting there myself, but it takes time, it takes effort, not to feel the FOMO and snag something just because the window of opportunity to do so is narrow. Today, for instance, I passed up a Dave Chappelle vinyl record that is limited to 846 copies. I saw it, clicked the link, read the description, then said in my head, “I don’t want this.” Here is the curious part:

Only after it sold out did I start wanting it. Only after I saw other people who didn’t get one did I start caring about it. While it was still available, I couldn’t have given two shits about it or “needing” to have it among my already burgeoning collection. Because I knew, even at the time I could have grabbed one, that all that special edition of that record would have done would be sit on my shelf, along with my other comedy records I don’t ever touch, let alone look at. Let alone use for its actual function.

There is pain in letting go of that feeling. More pain in having to find that feeling somewhere else, in places that may not exist yet, or from within myself. Logically, this should be easy to do, right? Just... don’t buy the things, and focus your time and energy elsewhere. Simple. Maybe my inability to do that is tied into not having anything else to do, anywhere else to go, coupled with an incapability of saving money.

These things with such strict limitation are designed to create FOMO. They are meant to make you feel a certain way if you don’t get them. And it is in removing that feeling from not having it or getting it -- whatever “it” is at the time -- that is so important. That I need to continue working on.

And it’s always something else. There always exists yet another item or product to chase that keeps the line moving, that keeps the feeling of either getting the thing and being happy about it for five minutes because somebody else did not get the thing, or feeling like you missed out and now you hate yourself for not pulling the trigger when you had the chance. This happens and will keep happening as long as there are people willing to spend their money.

Someday, you’ve got to come out from under that cloud.

[eighteleven87]

Peaceful protest doesn’t work, but it sure makes those who are angry enough to get out there but not do anything further feel better.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of “peaceful protest” lately, and how it doesn’t work. Looking back through history, myriad examples exist of people going outside, showing up at a preordained time and place for a couple hours -- usually in the daytime, usually with heavy police (state) presence -- chanting things, writing catchy, often rhyming sayings and slogans on signs... but none of it has achieved the desired effect.

Imagine if those partaking in the Boston Tea Party were so daft.

Peaceful protest is state-sponsored nonsense. It is what the government, which always knows better and doesn’t fear us or any such organized but controlled entity, allows, and by definition change doesn’t happen without necessary catalysts. It doesn’t work unless people go outside the definitions of what is “allowed.” It exists for those with enough anger to actually go outside and show up somewhere to exhaust their energy before going back to whatever they were doing the previous days of their lives.

People are too afraid to lose their jobs, let alone their lives, to accomplish anything worthwhile in this country, our jobs being immediately tied to our livelihood and all. Yet, you think back to any war we’ve ever fought, and all the sacrifices those people had to make -- voluntarily or forcefully -- and they hadn’t the comfort of coming back to one’s home safely at night. 

They hadn’t the option of going back to their previous existences, lying in bed with their wives, saying goodnight to their families, before starting another work day the next morning. What mission is to be accomplished by one day of protest the state allows? 

They are laughing at us. They are laughing at the very thought and idea that “peaceful protest” will accomplish anything because they know that without taking it to them personally, individually, and with consistency -- without making the people who make our lives Hell uncomfortable -- that the side doing the protesting has already lost. They know this. They count on this. 

That’s why they afford us this form of protest, because they know full well how ineffective it is, and how utterly weak and unwilling the people carrying it out are compared to the ones who actually took action and demanded change in a physical, typically violent, fashion.

Because in this country, and this world, the people making the laws that take away human rights, that kill us, that do everything but protect us, they understand that anything worth fighting for is also worth dying for, and if you aren’t willing to die for your cause, then just forget it because change isn’t going to happen. 

These are the same people that sent millions of men to war after war after war, and for what? Not world peace, not protecting our nation, but to lay claim to being the most powerful nation on the planet. And if they were willing to sacrifice however many hundreds of thousands of lives to achieve that, while we aren’t willing to sacrifice even a fraction of the same for important things like human rights... what does that tell you? 

Seriously, think on that. Then understand why -- completely -- peaceful protest does not work.

[eighteleven87]

Caring is boring.

A piece of beat-up computer paper was long affixed to the side of my ex-girlfriend’s refrigerator, that had a step-by-step guide on how to make money -- real, life-changing money -- off cryptocurrency during the previous bull run that ended just a few weeks prior.

On that piece of paper were details about climbing the proverbial ladder to success, what to do and when, as well as my goals. I would start small, with a couple hundred dollars, turning that into tens of thousands. From there, turning tens of thousands into hundreds, and after that, hundreds of thousands into a million and more.

In addition to that piece of paper, which now likely sits crumpled up and decomposing in a nearby landfill, I spoke to a man who had previous success off the dot-com boom around the turn of the century, and he gave me a detailed preview of where we were heading in the bull run; all I had to do was listen to him, invest my money wisely without touching it, and cash out at the right time. Simple! Not so simple.

I started with a couple hundred dollars, as the paper said. I earned that money from selling off a good, sizable chunk of my wrestling memorabilia, then rolling that money into a single Ethereum token, which was around $350 at the time. I then headed to Twitter and one of the first tweets I saw was promoting a new coin called Unicrypt. Without hesitation, I used that Ethereum to purchase as much Unicrypt as I could, and I ended up with about a third of its overall supply.

I knew what I had soon as I had it. I excitedly told my father I was going to be a multi-millionaire off that coin alone, and had I any idea what I was doing, I in every right would have been. But, I didn’t, and I amn’t.

Because I was so bad at trading, having started at the tail end of the previous bull run in 2017 into 2018, and never experiencing any success more than a couple bucks here or there -- nothing major enough to owe on a tax return -- I didn’t understand the flow of money when it comes to crypto, which is cyclical by design.

First you buy Bitcoin when it bottoms out, holding a ton of that in your portfolio, then the money flows into Ethereum. There are other coins called “alts” you can buy, including Unicrypt, but they are decidedly less proven, and offer a much greater risk-reward ratio. I was burned a dozen or more times over on these alt coins and the gamble that it takes to have faith in them, so mind you, at any rate putting all the money I had just made off my wrestling junk into yet another alt -- one that I didn’t research whatsoever, and just found in a random tweet -- was about the riskiest play I could have made.

But it worked.

Within a period of 48 hours I had taken $350 and turned it into, as an old email tells me, around $15,500, which was more money than I had seen in some time, and having lost my job due to the pandemic, more money than I had made all year. Now I had my five figures and was determined to turn them into six, and seven, and so forth. Just as the piece of paper, and the man I was talking to, each explained.

Here’s where things went south, though this by no stretch of the imagination was the last mistake I stood to make, nor the first. Rather than holding onto all the Unicrypt, or doing any research about it, I sold most of it before that $15,500 could turn into more. I didn’t wait or even check to see if that coin was legitimate or yet another scam I was falling for head-over-heels.

A big part of the reason I needed to sell my wrestling stuff was, in addition to losing my job, I was too impulsive with my trading. Those impulses, combined with the desire not to have the rug pulled out from under me and fifteen grand being a lot of money to me, caused me to sell that which I had too early, holding onto only a small chunk of it. Yet that ‘small chunk’ was still enough to parlay into six figures, several times over.

As Unicrypt proved itself legitimate, one-hundred thousand quickly became two, and two nearly became three. I recall lying in my ex’s bed, staring at my phone as the number kept going up and up and up. I would screen-shot it one minute, and ten minutes later, another screen shot because I’d just made another ten thousand. At one point I told my best friend I had quarter of a million dollars, and I was going to make it far quicker than I’d ever dreamt possible.

“Making it,” of course, requires knowledge, experience, confidence, patience -- a Hell of a lot of patience -- and not caring too much, though I don’t have a singular word for what that is. It’s not being ‘careless’, because you still have to care; perhaps ‘care-less-ness’.

As it stood, I was one move away from millions of dollars. But that was the trap of it. While I sit here and tell myself all I had to do was come to a point of contentment with how much I was making off Unicrypt, then swap it all out for Ethereum, wait about eight months, holding it until I reached another point of contentment with how much that would give me, then transferring it all to my bank, all while taking the risk of betting on one coin after three straight years of losing my ass doing just that, never once feeling the pressure to sell it in a panic or diversify-slash-de-risk my portfolio... I also am able to sit here and realize that ‘one move’ I was away from those millions was, in fact, a series of correct moves and emotion-free decisions I would have had to make in order to realize any of it. 

And, as such, it simply wasn’t to be.

Not for naught, I did make some good money off the trades I did make. I eventually traded my Unicrypt for a number of alts, some of which had I held them, would have given me those millions I sought, others which rest in the same, albeit proverbial, wasteland that piece of paper sits in today. But, overall, I had made enough to provide myself with two key things: My very first place to myself, a spacious one-bedroom apartment which I have paid off until next May; and enough money to live off, if not thrive, during a pandemic that continues to this day.

While there were millions on the table, potentially, I still have come out ahead, and for that I am grateful. I had big plans for that money, but admittedly, no mind or sense to me, or detailed understanding, of how to achieve it, nor would I understand how I’d feel once I had it in my hands. That was my issue. Well, one of them, at least. The biggest issue I can think of, looking back at it all, was that, simply, I cared too damn much. 

Which is why I titled this blog, ‘Caring is Boring’.

I cared too much because I was never in a position to have my own apartment by myself, and I cared too much because I never had any money in my bank account for emergencies or the oft-spoken-about ‘rainy day’. So I made moves I considered necessary at the time, and without ability to predict the future or any rises and falls related to the newfound money I had in my crypto wallet, I still ended up coming out ahead. I still ended up doing pretty good, and right when I needed to.

If you stop caring, things happen. People start gravitating toward you, opportunities you never dreamt possible start opening up. I can’t explain it, though I will try to make some sense of it.

Think of it like you’re watching television. You care about the show you’re watching, but for some reason that makes you sit really close to the screen. You sit there, feet from the TV, intently, with intensity washing over you as every bit and piece of dialogue ropes you in further. Eventually, your eyes will strain, you’ll start shouting at the characters, and you’ll wonder why you didn’t just sit back and relax on your couch instead of gawking at close-range from the edge of your coffee table.

In caring too much, we lose sight of, and touch with, reality. Our focus sharpens to such a degree that everything else around us blurs, and falls by the wayside. Inevitably, that which we care too much about -- be it making life-altering money that would prevent us from needing to go back into the workforce, or a relationship with someone we find special, down to little things like wanting to beat a video game or win a pair of sneakers in one of those online raffles -- escapes us.

Then, and only then, the real over-caring can begin. But only if we allow it.

It’s a ‘fork-in-the-road’ moment if there ever was one. Once financial opportunity is out the window, once your girl walks out the door for the final time, you could either chase it (or her), and take on all there is to follow, or you could do what I do and write down how you’re feeling, trying to gain some grasp of what, the fuck, just happened. And why.

It certainly won’t make you feel any better about having it in your hands and letting it slip away, but it should provide some measure of clarity, along with preventing you from jumping out a dang window which, for me, would probably be the end, as I currently live on the third floor of my building. Short of growing wings and learning to fly, chasing that lost opportunity would prove costly, and I would lose absolutely everything instead of just whatever gains I had not properly realized.

It would be easy to blame one’s self for it. And, frankly, the most logical thing to do, as well. But here lies another opportunity: To separate taking responsibility for what has happened, and feeling too bad about it. If you have to feel bad about it at all, then use that feeling as fuel for whatever fire motivates you, inspires you, and propels you forward. Bear that word in mind, as well: “forward.”

I blame myself for not cashing in on my ultimate opportunity in life, to make literal millions of dollars off the last crypto bull run, and I am currently doing my best to get over it while not being too hard on myself for it, either. I mean, even after all my taxes and all the expenses I have coming up between credit cards and medical bills, I still have more than I did this time last year. 

Fast-forward another three or four weeks on the calendar and that may no longer be true, but here I am today with an updated resume, a will to make something of myself using my skills and talents and college degree, and some money in the bank. More important than that, I have the knowledge of where I went wrong, I know of every misstep and misfire I made over the last eleven months, and I am as best equipped for running it back the next time -- if there is to be a next time.

The same, I could say, for losing everything I have lost over the last year, last decade, last however long. Be it money or other such opportunity, be it a relationship or a friendship, whatever. The ability to look back on things with absolute clarity, pinpointing what I did wrong while -- and this is important -- reminding myself of what I did right, has no tangible value. 

It doesn’t make me rich or find me married to the love of my life. It doesn’t make me feel any better than getting what I want would make me feel. It doesn’t do much of anything; it just is. But, it is necessary in the furthering of who I am, of what I know, of how to act and what to do to eventually, someday, get that which (and whom) I want.

Caring is boring, or shall I amend: Caring too much is boring. If I have achieved anything the last year-over -- surely not those millions of dollars I once forecasted myself to make on that beat-up piece of paper that is now long gone -- then it is knowing isn’t boring. Knowing is something else altogether.

[eighteleven87]

How come nobody ever told me the key to a successful breakup is lying to yourself about how you feel, and repeatedly at that? Whatever you are feeling, just do the opposite. Say you feel the opposite.

Oh, that guy you were with for two and a half years? You now feel nothing for him, somehow. Whatever you used to feel, is now the exact opposite.

That girl you were who was your everything with and shared a place, and told your deepest, darkest secrets? Well, she’s now nothing to you, and you want absolutely nothing to do with her.

So on and so forth, until your body consumes itself with a fire starting with your pants.

This is stupid. Really fucking stupid.

It’s dishonest and it’s disloyal. You are lying to yourself and to the person you gave a decent chunk of your life to, and at the least you owe each other a conversation wherein you tell your ex, “Hey, I still have feelings for you, and you do me, but the only way to get over this is by not speaking. Maybe we can be friends or hang out or do something together down the road, but for now, I think it’s best if we don’t contact each other, get both our shit together, and see how that eventually plays out.”

That is IT. But never once did I ever get that. I have always been expected to know what to do, to read this invisible rulebook when it comes to relationships being over, and just follow along.

And the worst part is how you’re expected to act, just in a general sense, around other people. Mostly online.

Like, this blog? Big no-no. Sharing feelings online? Big no-no. Being personal, big no-no. Acting like you’re a human being, in front of other human beings, biggest fucking no-no imaginable.

No, you must stay the course and act unaffected by everything. And, all the time at that. For acting -- which is all it is, acting -- any other way makes you look weak. It makes you appear to be a sad sack. It frames you as a person with low self-esteem and depression. When, in reality, you just believe in a world where honesty and forthrightness and humanity is the one you wish to reside in. Not this farce world where nobody shares how they feel, and for the lone reason of not wanting to come across a certain way to other people.

This world is stupid. I hope once my time is through here I can reincarnate to somewhere full of people who show nonstop empathy and struggle, who wear their hearts on their sleeves, who openly grieve, the whole enchilada. I’m sick of this place.

[eighteleven87]

There are no coincidences. Oh, and timing is everything.

If there are two recurrent themes on this blog it is that there are no coincidences, only incidences -- in other words, everything indeed happens the way it should, or should not -- and timing is everything. It is the only thing. Whatever happens, happens in time.

That said, I had a taste for a slice of pizza and fries at a local place today where I’ve been a customer for decades. I’ve been supporting them since I was a kid, and my family long before that. But today, man, not a damn thing went right with the order I placed, starting from the moment I stepped out of my apartment.

First, an Amazon truck double-parked next to my car, just about boxing me in. I was fortunate enough to have some space between us, allowing me to pull out. Strike one.

Then, I second-guessed myself and took an alternate route to the restaurant, which put me in even more traffic than if I had taken the more direct route. I sat behind a tireless amount of drivers who either drove slower than the speed limit or had to turn into traffic, or people were crossing the street just as I pulled up to the stop sign. Strike two.

After that, I gunned it down the street the restaurant is on, and more people didn’t know what they were doing. A woman walking her dog stood still, looking at me like a fool as I waited for her to cross. A couple pushing a stroller in the dang street prevented me from getting out of my car. Etc. Strike three.

Finally, I get to the restaurant. Maybe, just maybe, this is where my luck turns. No. There was a lady in line who wanted to buy a whole pizza, but the employee told her she would have to order ahead of time to do it, though she could order by the slice, which would be more expensive. She says fine, and orders every single slice of sausage they have right ahead of me, taking it out of my hands. Strike four.

This pissed me off. It infuriated me. Every single thing that could go wrong on that short trip did go wrong, and then the place had the audacity to tell me I could either wait for another sausage pizza to cook, or they could deliver me that which I had ordered some 20 minutes prior to showing up.

I overreacted. I left them a bad Yelp! review. I didn’t want the food after they forced me to settle on a slice of cheese. There was no justifiable reason, in my mind, for them to just... not give me what was mine. And, on top of that, give it to literally the bonehead in front of me, who had never been there before (or it appeared as such). And then telling me I had to wait? Fuck that.

This, I feel, same as everything, happened for a reason. Perhaps to teach me patience, maybe to learn how to shrug off the things out of my control. But no. I wasn’t going to let this go. I still haven’t, and it’s been three and a half hours. I’m still mad, even though it’s come and gone, and it’s done now.

The more I hold onto this stuff, the worse. But, the more you let people get away with screwing you over and taking from you, the worse. So I was at an impasse. I told myself I was done with that place, just fuckin’ done. Never am I going to return. And I told them to fuck themselves on that Yelp! review, which was extremely childish. But it made me feel good. Not restoratively so, but good enough. And that was all I had to show for that ordeal, because I certainly didn’t get the food I had ordered.

[eighteleven87]

A love like theirs.

I went out with my two engaged friends last night, Tony and Kaila. It was a great time, and it showed me a lot about myself and my own relationships.

For my entire life, I’ve never seen or been shown a positive example of a relationship. Two loving people who want each other, value each other, see the world in each other. I’ve really only seen the opposite: In my parents, in the rest of my family, in many of my other friends whom I thought “had it together,” but did not.

How could I expect to form a positive relationship myself with somebody, with anybody, when all I’ve ever known is negative? When all I’ve ever seen is ego and controlling behavior, which cycles back again anew when I go out there to try to make it work? My dad still tries to control every situation I’m in with him, and that feeling of wanting to break free of that puts me into a position of being controlling myself. The only way to snap that pattern, therefore, is by gathering examples of people who are outside of that bubble. Who aren’t hindered and inhibited by that cycle of not knowing what true love is, or what it looks like.

Every time I’m out with these two, it feels different. Talking to Tony’s fiancé, feels different. It feels easy to talk about anything with her, and I can be myself around her, unapologetically. She gets my jokes and my humor, and I get hers. There is rapport there, a connection -- one that I find didn’t exist between me and most of the women I’ve gone after, or spent time dating. And without that specific type of “click” connection, you’re just going down the wrong path. The longer you go down it, the worse.

I’m reading through an e-book on self-esteem, and it’s fairly revealing. It’s been showing me that I’ve been getting on with the wrong people, and out of desperation or a false desire. Liking the idea of someone and hoping to eventually come around and like them, instead of finding someone like Tony did in Kaila.

It’s shown me that individuals with low self-esteem tend to gravitate toward like kind, and that doesn’t lead to love. It leads to need, and to feeding the ego. It leads to filling voids using other people, forming a false sense of complement as opposed to a true, genuine connection.

Now, I can’t look at any relationship quite the same. Not after seeing the two of them and how they get along and pair together perfectly. Now I can see the abuse in not only my own relationship, but the toxicity in that of almost everyone else’s. And it’s sad -- maddening -- just how many people force themselves into situations they shouldn’t simply because they know no better. Because they know no other way.

Last night, I found my way. It may not be pretty, and it may not put me where I want to be, when I want it to be, and it will take some time. Some learning, lots of growing, lots of understanding. But I have that direction forward, and I’ve Tony and Kaila to thank.

Someday, may I find a love like theirs.

[eighteleven87]

Control.

I’ve been thinking about the concept of “control” for a while, as long as I can remember. And as I think about it more and more, looking deeper and deeper into it, I think I have figured out its role in the way people act.

Why does this person abuse others?

Why did he bully kids when he was younger?

Why did that girl torture animals?

Why did that guy commit a mass, heinous crime?

The answers given scratch the surface. “Oh, because they’re mentally ill!” Or, “Because they’re bad people, that’s why!” But it goes so far beyond that. You have to explore their childhoods, their upbringings, how they were raised by their parents and families, whether or not each and every friend of theirs made a positive impact on their lives. And so forth.

Somebody who commits a crime of abuse or torture or murder is more than likely a bad person, yes, obviously, but digging deeper I venture you’d find they also share one commonality: Having the control over their own lives and destinies taken away from them. And by somebody close to them. Somebody who was supposed to be there for them, doing a better job. Somebody they trusted, perhaps wrongly so.

When a person feels a lack of control, they will do whatever it takes to reclaim it. Some people sleep with as many people they can, others lie and cheat and deceive. While a grouping of others kills people or hurts people or kills/hurts their own selves. All in the name of restoring the life narrative that, rightly, belongs to them, and always has belonged to them, but was stripped from them.

I see the pattern forming of the country I reside in, and the world surrounding it, offering less and less control to its population, and that is dangerous. Fewer people own more property, possess more money, and this forces those who aren’t so privileged to be under the control of those who have it all.

It is in the US and Israel teaming up to control Palestine. It is in China telling American actors that Taiwan is not a country, and if they say as much, they shall be punished. It is in what should amount to corporate monopolies being allowed to exist in the name of pure profit, and not much else. It is in our endless wars. It is everywhere, and it is only getting worse.

The only way to stop it -- to stop the number of mass shootings, the amount of police-related murders, to stop all the nonsensical brutality the world over -- is to restore control to the people who ought to have it in the first place. But how does one go about that? By taking the control back from those who took it from them. Which means more violence. Otherwise, the controlling side will keep pushing, harder and harder, to own it all, to control it all, until there is only one king left under the sun, and we all eight billion of us under his control. Essentially, man becomes God in this scenario.

And there is no playing God. So, we’re at an impasse. The only way to free ourselves from it, to fight back against it, any which way we can. By saying “no.” By standing up for ourselves. By respecting ourselves and retaining our dignity when temptation arises to surrender it willfully. By recalling we are born free, and we subsequently have that freedom taken from us. 

It starts with awareness. But I don’t know how it ends.

[eighteleven87]

Riding the rollercoaster.

Morning, noon, and night.

Getting over a breakup is never easy. It’s been like 10 weeks for me now, and every day is different. Sometimes, I experience different emotions on the same day. I’ll go from angry to upset and back again. I will think about how I fucked up, then think, “No, you know what? Maybe they fucked up.” I just want it to stop.

I wonder how they do it. How they pull it off. Or maybe they don’t have to, they’re just done, over it, moved on, looking forward. We’re both looking in the same direction, looking for what’s next, but I always feel like there are more obstacles in my way obscuring that vision.

I just wish I could stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about her. The only way to make it stop is by waiting, not talking to her, waiting some more, and hoping. Fingers crossed this subsides, and fast. Nothing bothers me quite like going from fired up and pissed off in the morning, ready to tackle another day, then feeling so exhausted all I want is to take a depression nap come afternoon.

Stop the ride, I want to get off.

[eighteleven87]

30 Hours.

I had dreams about Lauren H. last night. One right after the other. Soon as I shook out of one, I went into the next one.

The dreams were pleasant. We met off a chance encounter at a hotel and hit it off again. We caught up. We apologized to each other for how we behaved in our mid-20s, and all we took away from each other because we were silly, stupid, foolish, drug-addled kids. Kids who, perhaps, were too similar to work, but similar enough to make something work.

It accelerated from there. The chemistry we shared, the way we looked at each other, it was all still there. So too the memories of what we had done to put such a thick wedge between us for all this time, but so too forgiveness and understanding. Dreamscape Derek took it as two people who loved each other too much, wanted it to work -- truly, genuinely wanted it to work -- but the timing wasn’t right. We weren’t where we needed to be, neither of us.

Of course, this was all fantasy. These were just my brain waves ebbing and flowing as I had had Lauren on my mind from two nights before, which was her 34th birthday. (I can’t believe we’re already that old. I can’t believe it’s been that long since we’ve spoken.)

But the frequency of these dreams stood out to me. How vivid they were, how... friendly... they were. How ideal. How I wish I could just sit down with her one more time at Ed Debevic’s over a plate of wings and fries, a couple drinks between us, and just talk.

That day may never come. I don’t see it happening. The last time I checked, or was informed by my sister who remained her “friend” on Facebook or LinkedIn for some time after we ended it, she lives in or around Seattle. That’s far enough away for it never to matter again. She’s far enough away where she could have, and do, whatever she wants, absent of me and the hurt I put inside her.

Over the course of these dreams a song by Kanye West off his album “The Life of Pablo” began running through my mind, serving as the soundtrack between memories and fantasy. The song is called “30 Hours,” and there is a line I’d always kept close to me due to how it described my roadtrips with her, including one of utmost importance, as it was the last time she would ever see her father.

Chicago - St. Louis, St. Louis to Chicago Ándale Ándale E.I, E.I, uh, oh You had me drivin' far enough to switch the time zone You was the best of all time at the time though Yeah, you wasn't mine though

We took two or three trips to her then-home in St. Louis, and it was the first experience I ever had in Missouri. Early into the relationship I met her family, and I spent some one-on-one time with her father, who apparently liked me. Her father, supposedly, never liked any of the other men she brought home to him.

A week ago, I accidentally logged into a dummy Facebook account I created following our break-up to check on her. I saw her in my “recommended friends” and saw a more recent picture of her. The song goes:

My ex says she gave me the best years of her life I saw a recent picture of her, I guess she was right I wake up, assessin' the damages

I’m not calling out her looks by any means, those are just Kanye’s words and I am copying and pasting them here. But the dream I had last night was indeed about how those were the best years of our lives: ages 24-26. I did see a recent picture of her. And I did wake up, about an hour ago, to hop on this blog and “assess the damages.”

The song goes on about how Kanye is upset at himself when he sees this woman with another man, and he wants to beat him up, even though it’s over between them and they had an open relationship. Me and Lauren didn’t have an open relationship but the other lyrics all track.

She had a hard time letting me go (so did I, perhaps more so). She would text and email me for weeks, months, after the break up to check in on me, even as she got into a new relationship with someone she (at least at the time) didn’t see as comparable to me. 

She complained about this new man, and we had a few lengthy conversations about how I was better, how she was just waiting for me, etc. But nothing ever really came from it, so I used that dummy Facebook account to tell the new guy what she was up to, and that’s what ended it for good.

Essentially, I could have gotten her back. She wanted me back. She was waiting for me to figure things out, find a job, clean up my act. But, she also knew we had to move on to accomplish that. Another instance of sand slipping through one’s fingers.

As I woke up from one dream about her, passing into the next, I thought, however briefly: How long would it take to drive from my place to Seattle?

Turns out it would take -- you guessed it: 30 hours. Not a moment less, not a minute more. Here, see for yourself:

I didn’t know this in advance. I never looked this up. This was me hearing the song in my head as the dreams cycled through, already noting the handful of connections that come up in the song. But one final, ultimate connection was in the cards, which I didn’t know till I woke up and assessed the damages.

Now, I don’t know anything about her currently. I’ll be honest: I don’t even know if she is alive. I have tried through the years to reach out to her, to get some closure on the relationship, to apologize for being a fucked-up, lost 20-something, the whole nine. I want this desperately.

It is possible she no longer resides in Seattle. I don’t know, and I respect her enough not to look any further into it than accidentally catching a glance at her Facebook page last week. But, that’s where she landed for a while, after poking about Washington, D.C. for a year or more. And that was the last place I knew her to reside. So to me, it remains eerily fitting.

Don’t get me wrong: These were merely dreams. These were only coincidences. While I don’t particularly believe in coincidences (only incidences), there is good reason for my brain putting these patterns together. 

I already had the song on my mind because I listen to it frequently. It was Lauren’s birthday on the 25th. My friend Justin I talk to almost every day online lives in Seattle, and I have communicated to him that my ex may share a city with him. All these incidences combined, and yeah, that might lead to the greater “coincidence” I experienced overnight.

Still. What a wild ride.

Clearly, I have and hold a lot of feelings toward her, and about how things ended between us, and my massive, unforgettable involvement in that. She was right never to speak to me again. But that doesn’t mean it sits right with me. I likely will take this to my grave, which would be most unfortunate.

I would do anything to see her one more time. To feel that feeling. To see that look in her eyes, to share that knowing glance.

Only in my dreams.

[eighteleven87]

There are three women who aren’t related to me I think about the most, each one representative of a different period of my life. Each one who genuinely liked me, loved me, and wanted something to work. And each one who left in the same, exact fashion.

Ashley represented my youth and teen years. I dated her when I was 17 and 18 years old, straight out of high school and into my freshman year of college. Lauren H. represented my wild, rambunctious mid-20s, from ages 24-26, a time I was leaving journalism and writing and looking for other, similar career paths. Lauren J. was there from ages 31-33, as I started to want to settle down but was still too reckless to fully get myself there.

Drugs impacted every relationship. It was the decided lack of drugs and drinking that earmarked me and Ashley. We were fervently against all of it, and we shared the vision until she started getting into it when she went off to school, so looking up to her, I took her lead and started using them myself.

By the time I got around to Lauren H., I was off pot because I was staking out for a new career at the railroad with my father, who had an in. I never got the job so I fell off and started using again, and our shared, addictive personality type led us down a path of excess, where pot, acid, and ecstasy were commonplace. We never made a serious effort to ditch the drugs outside an attempt here or there.

When it comes to Lauren J., I was already using, but she wasn’t. She was more into drinking and playing games with her friend group. On our first date I brought over some weed and we smoked, laughed, and bonded. One hit led to the next, to the next, and we developed a pattern and reputation for using pot and later ecstasy that would end up being a big chunk of the reason that relationship ended.

The pattern is so simple and so clear to me. I am not where I should be, even yet -- drugs are the cause of that, the reason for that. Additionally, the women I have chosen have all been terrific choices with addictive personalities, and the drugs only stood to make those relationships worse given my own personality and how drugs affect me.

Now, I have a choice. For the first time in a long time, I feel I can turn the tide for myself and see things for how they are. I can either go down the same road I’ve been going down, the only one I really know, or I can just... not do that. I can choose, with some activeness, to just stay put, stay off drugs minus a few nights of drinking, and work on myself.

Every time I would get myself to a certain point, a peak where I could see the sun shine its brightest, I would take a rollercoaster ride down the hill and into a years-long valley of either feeling depressed because it didn’t work (Ashley) or sharing in the self-destruction with rampant drug abuse (both Laurens).

Working your way up that mountain isn’t easy. There is going to be influence along the way that shakes your thought process. There are going to be people telling you to stop what you’re doing, or to go a different way. To follow them. But, you cannot listen. And there are going to be setbacks. Lots of setbacks.

With a clear vision forward, and one’s back against the wall, it almost becomes necessary to climb and keep climbing. To again reach that top of the mountain... and then keep going. For I do not know what exists beyond that, above that, further than that.

But I’d sure like to find out.

[eighteleven87]

Thinking about how me and my ex had front row tickets to see Bob Dylan and we had plenty of time to get on the highway to get our seats, but instead we got high and argued and spent the half-hour prior to the show waiting in a will call line to pick up our tickets, and by the time we got in we both were too exhausted and annoyed to even want to be there, much less wade through the sea of people who stood in our way to our seats, so we just sat in the back and didn’t look at each other for an hour before agreeing to go home.

[eighteleven87]

On the same subject as the last, I was kept up last night thinking about it. Now I am in that half-tired, half-fired up phase you get when you don’t have your proper REM sleep. So it goes.

But, like... she was shitty to me. She withheld how she felt about almost everything. Including how she felt about me. And she let her friends, her therapist, her parents, everybody influence her. She would run to them with the stuff she should have been talking to me about, so we could smooth it over, and actually grow as a couple. 

Ugh. I see it all for what it is now, and I fucking hate it. I regret it so much. I will always miss her, but maybe more so the idea of her. The concept of her. Because what she showed me, and who she gave me, was anything but what I deserved.

At the least, I was honest with her. She never was with me. Not even once. Just lies and deception and withholding, always withholding everything. Because, what, she “was nice”? Is not being honest a true sign of “being nice”? Fuck that.

[eighteleven87]

I can’t help but look back on my previous relationship and feel... let down. By her, by myself, by everything.

I feel like we suffered from a lack of clear communication. Whatever she disliked about me, she was very shy about revealing in full; she wanted me to figure it out. Or I would have to get it out of her in some way. She could never just tell me how she was feeling, and that led to me keeping up certain behaviors that forced a massive wedge between us.

I’m not a perfect communicator myself, but I always tried telling her how I felt, one way or the other. If she was making me happy or if what she was doing was bothering me or making me feel bad. Man. Do I just wish I wasn’t left to constantly assume how to act around her. Or what she wanted. After so long it was just assumption after assumption between us. A big guessing game. And that’s what prevented it from working.

[eighteleven87]

One thing that is... particularly difficult for me to get over, much less comprehend, is how people who exit relationships have this raw, almost unnatural ability to just stop talking to the person they shared a good, decent chunk of their lives with. How quickly they go from seeing you and speaking to you every single day to not at all. And how I never have acquired such an ability myself.

[eighteleven87]

Heart on the sleeve: Lauren was really everything to me. Now that she’s gone, much of me has gone with her. Gone is my daily sense of drive. Gone is my direction. Gone is my favorite person to talk to and gone is the one I enjoyed sharing so much of my life with. Because of me.

My sister hasn’t been with another person for 16 years, and Lauren would always get upset over that fact. “He cheated on her!” she would say. “There is no reason for her not to try again.” And yet, I’d be lying if I didn’t know exactly how my sister feels.

Me and Lauren weren’t perfect. There are a handful of things about our time together I regret, resent, and wish never happened. In effect, we were another example of “right place, wrong time,” which has been the theme of all my relationships. The pattern. Right person but not at the right moment in their lives. Rinse, repeat.

I could have married any of the girls who captured my attention and my heart. It could have been Ashley. It could have been either Lauren. But, three strikes and you’re out. Now I am back where I started, left with the same feeling of directionlessness I had the last time, and the time before that.

It took me years to get over Ashley. And Lauren. And it may take me years to get over the second Lauren after her. And I don’t think I ever fully got over any of them. The regrets are painful. The resentment still present. The feeling of “what have I done, oh no, I’ve blown it again” reverberates. How many times must one man blow it, just utterly fuckin’ blow it, before he says no more to trying?

The smart move would be to play pretend and act like I am not hurt by this. To put a smile on my face and carry myself as if I am doing well. That I am feeling fine. That things are going well for ol’ Derek, don’t worry about him, he’ll catch you on the other side.

And that, psychologically, would appear attractive. Nobody likes a complainer. Everybody likes someone with confidence, someone care-free. But that just isn’t who I am. It’s never been and it may never be.

Inside a period of 96 hours I have gone from a man with a renewed drive and ambition, to somebody back to feeling depressed and unmotivated. With hurt in his heart he just cannot permanently, or even somewhat regularly, dismiss. Every comeback followed by a quick, quiet collapse back down again. Where does it stop? When does it end?

Maybe, this time, it just doesn’t.