Loose in 2016

Really, I’m losing more and more connections. It’s taken me a long time, but things are breaking down. I feel more and more isolated, more and more out of touch, more and more out of reach.
I like this feeling.
I had it in Hikone, but how I had it, I don’t really know. I suppose it was the kind of that overwhelms reason. When you’re happy and young and stupid, and when life had seemed awfully rough and now seemed utterly perfect, it’s easy to forget everything. Now, the things that I once missed and cared for are largely gone, and I’m finding life on its own terms.
Starlight? Effectively gone. Rachael and Amber? Don’t care. Amanda? Engaged. My thoughts of who and what I am/was have been so altered in the last nine years that I have less a sense of myself than ever. Most of what I’ve got are the dying echoes of distantly cherished prejudices. Not exactly helpful, and things that even I’m willing to consciously work to remove.
The Amanda situation hurts, but not as much as it could. I was pretty sure that she’d marry him. And he seems like a great guy. Amanda and I never had the timing right. If I’d met her at a lot of different ages, we would have been fine. We could have grown together. It just never really stood a chance. Not as she was and I was when we were together. She wants something that I can’t really give her, and it’s hard to be jealous of something that requires so much to be different.
This is more a reminder of just how alone I’ve become, but, for the most part, I don’t really mind.
My best friends are names on a screen. Well, I’ve done that before. I’m not accomplishing all I want, but I’m accomplishing more than I have in a long time. I’m behind on my goals, but I’m starting to make them again, and I’m working towards them.
I’m forced to live inside of myself these days. All the more incentive to spruce up the place.
I would have liked, in so many ways, to have been with Amanda. I think that, maybe, ten years from now, I’ll be the kind of man who could have made Amanda happy. But that’s a maybe. And that’s a long distance maybe.
I’ve let go of a lot, but, to be happy, I’ve got to let go of more. I’ve got to give up a lot of silly attachments that I’ve had in the past. Connections to old dreams and ideals. Not to purge them, not to remove the memories, but to allow that things cannot be, and could not have been. To accept that lovely fantasies of alternate realities with the bemused longing and adoration that I would feel for something out of Tolkien. Frankly, me having a happy relationship with Ann, or Courtney, or Kat, or Lee, or Amanda, or Rachael, or Amber stretches the imagination quite a bit more than the notion that a gigantic evil bodyless sorcerer made a ring to take over the world.
So, where does that leave me?
Really, nowhere I wasn’t already. I was mentally preparing myself for her engagement, and I suspect that she was more surprised by it than I was. As I detach further and further, as I withdraw more into myself, I find a clarity of thought that I’ve not had in a long time. These moments of lucidity, though not frequent, are increasing in frequency. My victories, though barely registering as skirmishes, are starting to mount. There is a saying in Japan that I’m starting to adopt more and more as my own. “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.” It’s a much more apt analogy than my old waxing poetic on the trenches of war.
Life is a grind. Life is a struggle. Life is a battle. Every day, we have the capacity to destroy everything we have worked for if even for a moment we cease to be vigilant.
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
What do we do when we are our own enemies? Our first enemy is ourselves. We must see who we are, and defeat ourselves, to become capable of action. Then we must identify our enemies. Going back to Gundam Wing: “Whoever stands before me and tries to kill me. That is my enemy.” Kill? That is a strong word. We’ll say “defeat”, which I think was the word that got used on the after school edits anyway. But that’s very vague. I’m not interested, my and large, in the individuals that stand in my way because, by and large, individuals aren’t. They’re the unthinking, complacent, repositories of other people’s thoughts, ideas, feelings, and lives. What allows this to happen? That’s the enemy.
I suppose this all sounds rather angry. I don’t think it’s terribly angry. I am growing passionate, though about what specifically, I do not know. I am building a fire within me that I had thought went out. I am learning, bit by bit, to fight again. Stupid little baby steps. Arguing more when I disagree. Taking risky stances. Not being so frightened. When I used to watch people on TV having an argument, I’d always imagine myself as the hero, coolly taking it, and then responding in a measured manner. These days, I have imagined myself cowering before superiors. But, this breeds within me shame. A hideous sense of shame. I want to measure myself against someone, against something. And I want to prove to myself that I’m capable.
I think part of this rebirth is honestly coming from watching some MRA stuff. Especially Girl Writes What. Men do, I feel, have an innate need for competition and struggle. I’m sure women do too, but I think that in men it’s more explicit. However, for me, it’s not just social posturing. I want to know who I am. Let me lose a fight and learn a lesson. Let me see the reality of who and what I am and then to build myself up.
This entry has become a long and meandering mess. At any rate, it’s worth recording. Hopefully each of these ideas will be developed individually, and more coherently, in the near future.