Self-Partnered in Current Events

Last night I dreamt that I was standing at a beach in Australia. I did not tell anybody that I ran away from home. The dream ended with me walking around an apartment like Lisa Loeb but I was singing Natalie Imbruglia’s song Torn. What is going on in my subconscious? Hi subconscious, are you okay? lol. I always imagined that the first thing I would do in Australia is crawl under my bed in the hotel room and have a panic attack! Because I would feel upside down lol.

So yesterday I did manage to not let myself go under. I pinched off the toxic thinking at the source. It all starts with thinking about my previous employment situation. Then it all goes downhill from there. I dunno, but I feel empowered today. By like, 20%. I could cry. As I was falling asleep last night I was visualizing myself feeling empowered today. Maybe I hypnotized myself to regenerate my backbone?

Hetal called me yesterday because she wanted to know if I looked at her resume. The situation is a little complicated but long story short I told her to not wait for me because she has an opportunity to start a pharmacy gig right away in Ontario. If she gets it she will start on Monday. She will pack up her life and move to another province at the drop of a hat. She offered to take me with her. She can get me a gig as a pharmacy assistant. Though my roots in Winnipeg are not deep I do have some unfinished business here. But damn, she will be making $42 an hour to start. I’m going to miss her so fucking much. I just got her back from India :(

Tomorrow I have an hour-long appointment with my new doctor to discuss mental health. There are a lot of external things that I do have anxiety about that are easy to fix but for some reason, I can’t let it be that simple for me. At the beginning of the year I got in with a therapist and he asked a question that I was not ready for. What brings you here, what are you trying to get from these therapy sessions? I’m like… bruh I don’t even know. I’m at the top of my game. My health has never been better, my relationships have never been better, my finances have never been better, my job has never been better but I can’t seem to bring myself any further than this. Then I blamed it on social anxiety. It was a half-ass answer. Now here I am, I lost everything. I had anxiety when I had it all and I have anxiety still so that says to me that it is not the content in my life that is hurting me but the context of my life that is hurting me. A few entries back I reckoned with what it is that has been plaguing my mind and holding me back and I will need help rumbling with it. Processing it so that it no longer hurts me. I’ll be so fucking free without “social anxiety”. I can’t even imagine what my life would look like if I was 100% a go-getter and unafraid of being outside of my comfort zone. Every little thing will be the adventure that I want. Just constantly pushing my limits instead of listening to that little voice in my head.

Bev wants me to join her for lady’s night at her sisters tomorrow. I know that she would like to show me off or maybe she is trying to help me get out and be a person but I don’t like being a male at a lady’s night. It’s awkward for me and I’m not exactly sure why. In my mind, I make women uncomfortable because I am a six-foot-tall native male. They always leave about nineteen feet between me and them whenever I’m in line somewhere. I never blame them. I’m afraid of predatory men too. Also, in my mind, everybody thinks that I am Johnathan Van Ness realness just because I am gay. The commodification of gay men was a thing of the past I thought? lol. I’m going to decline and spend another day locked inside my room. Yeah, social anxiety for the win. I suspect that I will have this house to myself this weekend also. I been craving a selfie sesh lol.

I was born to be mild. My life is so boring. I need to go make some calls and throw my resume around a bit online today. Bev offered to print some copies of my resume for me also so I’ll get that done by Monday so I can drive around and hand them out. I hope that the sticker that I put over my check engine light is still on. I should not be allowed to own a vehicle. This is when I feel like I need a man in my life. Someone who would be on my case about shit like that lol but I’m self-partnered as Emma Watson put it. I love it! I have never related to anything anyone has ever said ever. I don’t want to mansplain what that is so I will copy and paste what a psychologist said about it. That’s right, Emma made a statement so mind-blowing that the journalist needed a clinician to help them understand why someone would be happy being single.

What does that mean, exactly? Carla Marie Manly, a clinical psychologist based in California sees merit the idea. Manly describes the relationship status this way: “self-partnering focuses on the ideal of being happy and complete as a solo individual. A self-partnered person would feel whole and fulfilled within the self and does not feel compelled to seek fulfillment through having another person as a partner.” That doesn’t necessarily mean a self-partnered person doesn’t date or never hopes to get married someday. It’s that they’re taking the time to know themselves first. “To be truly self-partnered, one must often invest a great deal of time and energy on personal development,” says Manly.

I just discovered Jay Shetty yesterday. He was your typical Indian from London and had three options in life. To be a Doctor or a Lawyer or a Failure. He chose to go to business school and be a failure. He was your typical party boy until his friend introduced him to a monk. He didn’t even want to meet this monk but he was blown away. He spent the next couple of years spending his summers shadowing this monk in the Himalayas. Anyways, now he is a wise beautiful man who is on a mission to help others find their purpose. The reason I bring him up is that he talked about how most of the questions that he gets asked are about relationships. He explained that his generic response is to ask the person if they even know what they want out of a relationship. People just dive into them not even knowing what they are trying to get out of it. That spoke to me because I don’t know what I want out of a relationship either but I know that I don’t need one to feel whole. I liked Russel Brand’s response to Emma’s statement also. He mansplained how we all have this prescribed journey that society feels that we need to be on and Emma ventured in a new idea to the media that a woman who is “single” is not incomplete. I guess she got tired of being asked about her love life. Anyways, what Jay said spoke to me because I never know what I want out of anything I do. So how am I supposed to even get anything rewarding out of it?

[Trigger Warning: The following content may not let racism be comfortable]
I was watching something else the other day and there were a couple of gay men who were reacting to a gay actor who said something that kind of slut-shamed the gay community. They apparently don’t like it when gay actors act like they’re better than the gay community when they’re probably paying for hookers. That pretty much sums up how they felt in that conversation. Anyway, I feel like I am that gay guy that the gay community hates because I have talked negatively about them. To me, the fact that somebody can comfortably put hate like No Fat, Fem or Asian in a profile and get away with it goes to show how much work needs to be done to end body shaming, misogyny and racism in that community. Most people can skip over that and pretend like it isn’t happening and be a bystander and help enable it but a thick person who wears makeup and is a POC does not have that privilege. That hate hurts. I could play devil’s advocate and put No Fit, Masc or Caucasian in my profile and that would absolutely make people suddenly care about body-shaming, misogyny and racism. Oh it’s just a preference, I need the attraction to be there lol. I don’t have that fight in me anymore though. I’m trying to let go of that bias so that I can return to the LGBT community with a clean slate and get more involved because there really is a lot of good people there. Lot’s of love and acceptance and my mind is too constipated to see it. I let a few bad experiences get in the way and I never gave it a real chance. I was overthinking about this the other day. How there are white people helping end racism and there are straight people helping end homophobia and there are men helping end sexism and I have been looking at this all wrong. I can see the hate, yes but I am not seeing the love and support. I need to retire the old ways of thinking. I was fighting fire with fire and I don’t need to put that hate back out there. This isn’t war. Everybody is doing their best, I have to believe that. They just need an opportunity to learn something new, just as I do. We’re all here to have a temporary human experience together and to take in as much of life as we can.

Anyways, sorry if I caused any dissonance. So yeah, I gotta run and get my foot out of my mouth now. ta!

Last updated November 15, 2019