Bothered in 2014

Courtney asked me something the other day. She asked me what I liked. To be honest, I didn't know how to answer. I'm not sure how to answer that. I've got fewer and fewer answers to things like that these days. I'm not sure how much of it is situational and how much is just a problem within me generally. It's been bothering me. It was bothering me before she asked me, and it's been bothering me since. Let's go over things that used to make me happy.

I think my first true love was television. I can remember spending my summers sprawled out on the family room floor watching old Christmas specials. I remember in 8th grade, when Mr. Montgomery said that a new poll indicated that now young people preferred computers to TV, I was horrified. TV was obviously better. Fifteen years ago. I used to come home by three thirty, and I'd watch two to four hours of TV after school. Now, scattered through a whole day, I'm likely to see less than half an hour. It's even less if you discount weather and TV being on when I'm in the room with somebody else. I can't stand it. I'm not even managing to watch stuff that used to be at least passably entertaining. TV just makes me miserable.

After TV, I fell in love with video games. I'd always enjoyed, but been bad at, console games. Finding the Red Alert games, the Age of Empire games, and, finally, most beautifully, the Total War games, I was enthralled. I spent more time on those than I did on TV. I'd give up chances to do real things, frequently, to be with the computer more. Nowadays, the primary reason I play any video games is because I need to stay awake for some reason or other. There's no enjoyment anymore. I'd barely enjoyed a game at all in a long time before the re release of Age of Empires II, and that lost its novelty after a month. Well, I've been playing it for three to six months now (don't quite remember). Regardless, it's odd that games are now a waking device.

Reading and I were always on again and off again. We've been off for a while now. I haven't felt much like reading anything since I finished that last research Georgette Heyer novel, and that was nearly a month ago. It's weird. I've been back in America nearly a month today.

Theater used to make me happy. Now? I barely know people. I'm trying to run a social scene that requires me to be about five years younger than I am. I'm having to fight off constant insults and attacks by an old friend who wants to be me so badly it hurts sometimes. He ruined a laser tag game the other day with his incessant smack talk. He nearly ruined one, then came close to ruining another. I just wanted to have fun. I can't just shut him down entirely, because I need him. Or, rather, the theater does. But I don't like putting up with him. Also, I'm realizing just how much work (and little payoff) the theater is going to be. I've got almost no friends there. I can't. I'm too old. Everybody my age is in a different world. High school and early college friends are fine when you're twenty three. It's different when you're twenty eight. I don't like being my age. I don't like that I'm stuck between the adult world of Courtney and Kat, and the young life of the people I deal with outside of them. I'm stuck in limbo. It's enough to make me want to keep running.

Girls used to make me happy, but it's been so long since one looked at me with any resembling desire that I don't know what I'd do. Honestly. I don't know that I'd be able to accept a person being attracted to me I'm so disgusted by how I look. And again, it's age. If a girl's twenty eight, she's in a different place in her life than I am. If a girl's at the same place in life as I am, she's probably at least five years younger than I am. And I wouldn't know where to find her. Complicating things with women is my increasing frustration with myself over my inability to just pick one and go with it. My grandma was telling me, today as I drove her to Jackson, that her father was the same. She says I'm a typical Irish man. She meant it as something of a compliment. I'd feel good about pining for Amber if I weren't also pining for Amanda. And if I weren't interested in Kimberly. And if and if and if and if and if. For years now, I've been learning to disregard and undercut my own emotions. Well, I'm getting even better at it these days. It's frustrating to find yourself unable to trust anything about yourself. Are feelings just the general tendencies that we choose? I'm starting to lose faith in objective anything because I can't even find subjective things anymore. More and more I feel like the slave of biology and sociology. The more I know about the factors that influence me, the more influenced by them I feel. Maybe people need delusions or they end up far FAR worse off. But can I accept the notion of a noble lie? Maybe I ought to.

My, ahem alone with the computer time ceased to be pleasurable about a decade ago. It's more a compulsion, or something I do to avoid the far too obvious side effects of when I don't indulge. It's also just another reminder of my failure to control myself. It's just a way to kill time and to avoid a bit of discomfort. Part of it is just a frustrating reminder of what I don't, won't, can't, and yet did, have. More or less. Even exercise isn't as fulfilling anymore. I'm focusing on walking and swimming. I'm thinking they're pretty realistic and they're things I can have a bit of control over. Also, unlike yoga classes, I can wiggle my schedule around AND I don't need to drive. Maybe in June I'll start lifting weights. Still, it doesn't really matter. Weight loss has stalled. I went off of low carb to try to just manage my self control, but that's incredibly difficult. My body just wants EVERYTHING now. I went from having given up on food to suddenly NEEDING it. Not wanting it. Nothing tastes good. Nothing is appealing. Nothing is what I want. It's just something that I feel a need for. Still, exercise is what I was talking about. No, it doesn't do much for me these days.

Friends? I've got two people I talk to. Courtney and Kat. Inasmuch as I realize that they're reading this, it's still, to some extent or other, something I can indulge myself in in a way that I can't in our conversations. Simply put, I realize that I'm miserable and unreasonable, and that all of my thoughts are, by extension, miserable and unreasonable. So I want to reach out to them. But they've got their own problems. And, even if they didn't, it's not their job to help me. They may want to. But that's not what's good in the long term. In the short term I don't even know if it helps anymore. I'm so ashamed of needing, or even WANTING, help that talking to them about things that bother me just makes me feel worse. So, I don't really have the ability to talk to them much right now. Beyond that, I don't really have any friends. Stuff used to make me happy, but now I realize that I have too damned much of it, and I don't have the money to go out and get more. Even if I had room for it. Which I don't.

I don't know what to do or where to go or how to begin. Talking makes it worse. Not talking makes it worse. I feel like Charlotte Bronte's Shirley. I may yet have fifty years to live. The notion is horrifying to me. Oh that I had any strong faith in having faith. I'd take up some dangerous hobbies and hope for the best. Oh that I had no faith in any faith. There'd be a simpler solution, or, barring that, at least the notion that there was always, ALWAYS, a way out of any situation.