Masochism

Masochisim

1. The enjoyment of an activity that appears to be painful or tedious.

Internal reflection. Time alone with your thoughts. It's a dangerous activity that I subconsciously tend to shy away from. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with my own company. I can while away the hours stretched out luxuriously on the sofa, absently-mindedly cupping my genitals with the TV on as well as the next man. I'll kick back with a novel and escape into the inner reaches of my own imagination, contentedly pretending that the real world doesn't exist. But to sit and analyse my own thoughts? To study my own deviances and the reasoning behind them? Now that is a rare occurance.

It's complex to pinpoint exactly why. Or perhaps it's threateningly simple. After all, as I stare at the monitor, fingers whirring away of their own accord, I know the reason for donning my mental blinkers. I'm scared of the realisations that I may just uncover.

But that's the point of this whole exercise, right? Let it all out. Search within. Expose your naked soul. Do any of us really want to expose our naked soul? Shit, I'm a little unconvinced that discovering the reasons behind my issues is going to help me overcome them. Agorophobics must have a pretty damn good idea that the heavens won't fall upon their delicate heads the moment they step out of the house. They still stay the fuck inside.

Focus. I've meandered enough already and it's time to delve into this evenings subject:

'Why do I always want what I can't have?'

It's a cliche. Fuck it, in so many ways we're all walking cliches. Still, it's gradually dawning on me that it's the truth. And, as always, the area of my life where this grubby little stereotype is so common? Women. Always fucking women.

In recent times, friends have flung the accusation at me with increasing regularity. "You only want her because you can't have her" they throw. And each time the same response. "Not true." I rebuke. "I wanted her before I knew I couldn't have her."

And that's me being honest. At least, as far as I can tell that's me being honest. The problem with being an exquisite liar is the difficulty in deciphering when you're bullshitting yourself. For the moment at least, let's assume that my conscience isn't nervously scratching the back of its head when it swears to me that I had a yearning need to be with these women before I knew that I couldn't. This assumption still leaves a problem. I've recently had a realisation vaguely unsettling to discover, the previously undiscovered lump on my metaphorical testicles, if you will. All of the girls that I've ached for, for as far back as I can remember, have had something in common.

Not that they've been beautiful. The poetic sort will insist that all women have an intrinsic beauty individual only to them. I call that a flagrant lie, foolish flattery at best. This isn't the point. They have all been beautiful, all been intelligent and neither of these charming traits form the common denominator. The link is as simple as its reason is complex. They have all been a challenge.

Every man likes a challenge, I hear you retort. And yes, as I understand it that's difficult to argue against. Granted, all men like an easy girl. Every man wants to bed a girl on the first date and the same men are all a little disappointed in the girl if she obliges. That aside, I agree, every man likes a challenge. The problem becomes acute when the task of obtaining the girl is so great that it's destined to fail.

I've met plenty of nice girls. Plenty of girls who like me and are seemingly happy to make this passively clear. There's nothing wrong with these women. To an unbiased eye, stand them alongside the challenges and the beholder will struggle to tell them apart. Seemingly, this would be all too easy. It's the unobtainable that yields the deepest desire within my heart. The path my inner compass guides me down is the trail edged with barbed wire leading to the bottomless pit of despair, complete with melancholy padding.

We're coming to the part where I conclude with an epiphany. That leaves me with a problem. The recent realisation hasn't left me at the centre of a beam of light. I stand enlighted yet not emboldened with the discovery. The weight has neither left my shoulders nor become easier to carry for its recognition. How do we change what is an intrinsic part of our own nature? Perhaps I'll revisit this post in the coming days. It's getting late and the treacle of my thoughts is ever thickening. For now, I'm only wondering one thing.

Maybe it'd be easier if I was just scared to leave the fucking house?

Fear

Fear

1. An unpleasant emotion caused by the belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain, or a threat.

It's been a week since I last visited to vent. Perhaps it's been the purging of pent up feelings relieving some of the pressure. Possibly the simple act of putting virtual pen to digital page has released some of the inherent frustration cursing through my veins. Maybe I'm even growing as a person. Who knows? Regardless, I'm going to tackle a different conundrum perplexing my increasingly over-worked mind.

I won't lie. I've frequented internet dating sites. I've suppressed the fear of exhibiting desperation and joined the masses pimping themselves in virtual catalogues online. And I've questioned 'why?'

Why, in a world where communication is constantly expanding, has it become seemingly more difficult to meet someone the old-fashioned way? Maybe it's just down to age. Perhaps I've officially reached the point in my life where all the real world avenues to meet someone have been walked down. And all I found were windows with red lights and used crack vials shattering beneath my feet. The vast majority of my close friends are in the process of settling down with girls. It would be normal to expect to meet some of these girls' friends, share a drink, indulge in some mutual flirting and walk off hand-in-hand into a romantic future. Of course, that hasn't happened. As so tragically often, I took an alternate path. I drunkenly slept with various girls who live their lives within the bubble of my closely knit, insestual community, simultaneously setting ablaze potential bridges to more desirable partners.

I'm not a true lothario. There's clearly still plenty of waiting females within easy reach, all too eager for the smiling swagger of a self-loathing charmer to light up their innocent faces with its nefarious glow. But there, lurking in the shadows, lays in wait another issue of my own making. Baggage. I have my own. I hardly need to remind you of that. This is a slightly diffent suitcase of perfection-wrecking malcontent; History. Not my own, in a rare exception to the rule. Her's.

You see, I have a scarily large circle of friends. Actually, lets downgrade that. I have a vast entourage of acquaintances, the ilk of which you make small talk with on the way to the bar, both well aware that if you really cared what was happening in the other's pitiful life then you would already possess the knowledge of every dull event. Whilst an occasional pleasure at a gathering, when your close friends are not in eyesight and a banal conversation is vaguely preferable to pulling out your phone and pretending to text, this has an unfavourable downside.

How are you supposed to take a girl seriously when the chances are high that at some point, at some distance party, you'll be holding hands with a lover of whom other party goers have already had carnal knowledge.

In fact, let's not even dress it up in delicate prose.

How am I meant to overcome the hatred of knowing that other lads I'm sharing a dancefloor with have previously fucked my girlfriend?

And so rather than deal with this trivial issue in a mature, adult manner, I instead make damn certain that I don't find myself in this situation.

Now I could do the astonishing. I could approach a girl that I don't already know and say 'Hi..'. I could intrigue her with fascinating stories of my travels, make her giggle coquettishly with my natural charm, dazzle her with earnest sincerity. Obviously I don't do this. The women with the potential to turn my head, to make me swoon in return, the ones that make my heart pound even before they open their pretty mouths; how could I approach them? You see, if I was to make an opening gambit to an exquisite beauty and be turned away delicately then I wouldn't get what I desired. Easier to not face the potential rejection and instead turn my attention on a different girl that I really couldn't give a shit about. It goes without saying that she will fall for my roguish nature. Because whilst the lady doth protest, we all know the truth. Every girl loves a bastard. And it's all too easy to be a bastard when you're in the company of a girl who has no real impact on you.

Alas, that narrative trail will lead me dangerously off topic and its tracks will stay warm for future exploration another time. As you doubtlessly guessed, I have a shameful record of being a bastard to a girl who's had the misfortune to fall for me. That uncouth monkey on my back can stay comfortably unmolested for the moment.

The point is that experience has taught me a simple fact. Rarely in real life, will I gamble on a girl that I really want. Instead, I aim for the easy red ball perched over the pocket of lust. And always, unerringly, it is a waste of everyone's time.

Which brings me back to online dating. The idea, presumably, is to use the power of the internet's search engines to filter the wheat from the chaff. At the same time, it's vital to showcase in 1000 characters or less exactly why you're such a fine specimen yourself. And all from behind the intangible wall that we each erect in front of our true persona when we embark on such a quest.

I can only talk from my own mindset. Each and every date that I go on with another stranger, to another generic pub, has my subconcious scream at me exactly what it is. An interview. It feels inherently wrong to spend time with someone to find out if you like them. Whatever happened to spending time with someone because you like them? The answer is glaringly obvious. In a world of instant communication with minimal effort, it's become so damn easy to hide. No longer is approaching a pretty girl in the street one of few options. Now a mixture of dating and social networking sites mean that we can all crouch behind cover and make contact without ever truly exposing ourselves. And if you don't expose yourself to the greater risk, how can you expect to claim the greater reward? The easy convenience of a digital world has made cajoling yourself to a greater effort exactly that; a greater effort.

Even as I write this, the stench of hypocrisy wafts its guilty scent up to my greedy nostrils. I'm pressed up against the sandbags of life, only too aware that to stick my head above the parapet is both everything I need and everything that I fear. I'm starting to see all too clearly that continuing to simply wave my helmet on a stick from an outstretched arm just isn't going to garner the results I yearn. The moment is approaching.

I'm going to have to go over the top.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy

1. The practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case.

Everything happens for a reason. That's what the world's romantics preach to us up high from their tower of spiritual piety. It's what Hollywood cooingly whispers into our ears with every unrealistic movie temptingly laid out before us. You didn't get that job you wanted? Everything happens for a reason. She kissed someone else behind your back? Everything happens for a reason. Your world crashed down around your ears in two years of emotional turmoil, whilst you asked the world through your streaming tears "what the fuck is going on?"..? Everything. Happens. For. A. Reason.

Well, quite frankly, bullshit.

To my ears, suggesting that everything happens for a reason smacks of deceitful posturing. It feels like nothing but a warm, fluffy blanket of pretence that there's some rhyme or reason to the trauma of life. Because so rarely does the 'reason' show itself.

Sure, I don't deny that often, should you dig deep enough and with the power of hindsight, you can often pick out a nice, shiny conclusion to the story. Shit, I could look back and decide that being diagnosed with Crohn's instantaneously upon picking up my first mortgage was God telling me to slow down. No doubt I'd never have gone travelling without it. I'd never have had the impetus to run away from all of my problems and discover the real definition of success. That to be successful, all a man need do is to find a way to be happy. That I'm not happy wouldn't be the point; the defining 'reason' would be the discovery.

Allegedly.

Of course, in some instances, brushing the muck away to uncover the 'reason' is decidedly more tricky. An ideal case in point belongs to my mother. A few months after separating from her husband of thirty years, whilst still worrying about the health of her youngest son, some six weeks short of her only daughter's wedding...her mother passes away. Just at the time when she needs her mum more than she ever has in her adult life; poof, in a flash of tragedy, orphaned. Where's the reassuring 'reason'? Where's the warm, fluffly blanket of consolement? Where is the fucking point? To make her stronger? Maybe it was the inheritance that paid off her new mortgage? Well you know what? I'm pretty damn certain that my mum would have foregone the bonus resiliance points and taken the monthly repayments to have her sole remaining parent there for the ride.

If everything happens for a reason, perhaps sometimes that reason is that life, as ever, is a bitch. And that blanket is wearing awfully thin.

Over the last few posts, we've shared a little now, you and I. Together, we've held uncomfortable hands, meandering awkwardly through the darker, more melancholy shadows of my pysche. Avoided each other's eyes studiously as we pretended that this blog isn't a tirade of anonymous self-indulgence. 

I'm comfortable admitting that at least. I suspect you're getting to know me for the cynic I am. As flawed as the next man. As packed to the brim with indignant double standards as you are. If not more so.

Because whilst I proclaim disdainfulness and loathing for 'Everything happens for a reason', I slip comfortably into bed fondling the sweaty genitals of 'It wasn't meant to be'.

Everytime I lose a deal at work? It wasn't meant to be. Every time I let an opportunity slip through my lazily clasping fingers? It wasnt meant to be. Everytime I say the wrong thing, at the wrong time, to the wrong girl. It. Wasn't. Meant. To. Be.

The lacklustre excuse for my own failings, the result of a distinct lack of enthusiam to make the effort of learning from my own mistakes. Yet, at the same time, and in a fashion that I don't truly understand, I doubtlessly believe the notion of 'It wasn't meant to be'. Perhaps, with its intrinsically negative slant, I just feel more comfortable with the belief that sometimes life is meant to be disastrous. That my soul feels defiantly unwilling to bond with the notion that a hurtful situation can later transpire to have been for the best.

Even to my mind, it seems a tragic comprehension.

To be distinctly at odds with 'Everything happens for a reason' whilst being able to affirm that 'It wasn't meant to be' seems like a path destined to end in a life unsuccessful. A life unhappy.

Which means that I have some effort to apply to the situation. Because without recapturing the drive, the yearning ambition of a 21 year old with the world at his feet, a successful life will be otherwise unobtainable.

Hypocrisy. So often a miserable affair.

Deliverance

Deliverance

1. The action of being rescued or set free.

In the last post I briefly mentioned that my perception of love had recently been called into question; this perception being that the all important relationship between love and timing was absolute. My previously steadfast belief was that love in real life, as opposed to the fantastical Hollywood version, occured almost exclusively when an individual had decided that it was time to "fall in love". My conviction being that whether the target of their romantic overtures was deserving of such high regard or not was largely irrelevant.

When I sat down to write this, I had planned to serve up a mouth-watering hypothesis for you to salivate upon. Instead, I'm going to thrash the muddy, stinking waters of my own sole experience of love.

And of course to do that, I have to forcefully wedge some context down your willing throat.

For the last few years, a sobering thought had loomed ominously in my mental peripheral vision. For a while at least, this thought was the metaphorical floating mucus on my pupil; always slipping to one side when I attempted to examine it thoroughly. It was only over the last 24 months or so that I became able to grab the pesky cerebration by its ears and bring it under close inspection. And the realisation was as simple as it was disgustingly complex. I was unable to fall in love. Somewhere, deep inside, there was a part of me that was broken.

You see, I've always been rather good at clinical thinking. Weighing up decisions, risk versus reward, pros against cons...all with those troublesome emotional elements removed. For as long as I can recall, I've treated relationships in the same way. "Well, I don't want to have to deal with the drama of a breakup." I would muse. "Do I really think this girl is someone I could spend a lifetime with?" I would contemplate. Invariably, the answer was the same. Fuck no. And so I ran for the hills, emotionally withdrawing long before any girl had a chance of having some kind of impact upon me.

Perhaps you can see the obvious flaw in these kind of thought processes? If you hold back from letting yourself get close to anyone, you'll never get close to anyone. But shit, if you do let someone get close then their actions have the ability to impact on how you feel.

And of that, I am not a fan.

I'm going to cut an increasingly lengthy diatribe short. I met a girl. I met a girl at work of all places. And my word, was she beautiful. I don't just mean that she was physically attractive. That goes without saying. I mean that she was as pretty on the inside as she was stunning on the outside. Just a look, just the slightest glance from her would entice the hairs lazing comfortably on the back of my neck to jump to attention, puffing out their chests with basic instinct.

Of course, as we all know, life is a bitch. She had a boyfriend. And so I ignored my feelings. For a while. And then, I thought "Fuck it.".

I won't go into the details of how the affair started. It's not something that I'm proud of. I justified it to myself in a simple fashion. I wasn't just trying to fuck her. The more time I spent with her, both at and away from work, the more I knew. This was a girl I could spend my life. This was exactly the girl that I could marry.

I can't pinpoint the exact moment when I knew that I had fallen madly in love with her. When the very thought of her made my heart pound for the beauty of a world where she was by my side. But I knew. I wasn't broken. I just hadn't met the right girl before. I hadn't met her before. I would lay in bed with her nestling her perfect head on my chest wondering just how I had possibly got so lucky.

She ended it. Our tumultous affair, the bastard timing of when and how we met meant that, in reality, it was never going to last. However much I pretended that it would. I was smooth. I parted from her with my reassuring words dripping like silken honey down her ear canal. And in private, I wept. I cried over a girl like all of the emotional weaklings that I so despised. Bollocks.

Lord Alfred Tennyson confidently told us 'Tis better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.'

Lord Alfred Tennyson was a fucking idiot.

I wasn't happy thinking that I was broken, that I just didn't have the ability to love. But now? Now that I know that I can? Once in 27 years I met a girl that made my heart leap out of my chest and slap the back of my head, until my dizzy brain collapsed into a mush of fuzzy love hearts and song birds. And there have been plenty of other girls. It seems foolish to envision that another girl who could make me feel the same way is just over the horizon. And I'm meant to believe that the memories are worth the anguish? Surely it's better to always be blind than to be granted sight for such a fleeting moment? Better to have never known the wonder of a song than to hear just one melody?

As far as I can see it, Lord Alfred Tennyson was an absolute moron.

Part of me wishes that I'd never met this girl. That I was able to continue blindly stumbling on, without knowing that in the sky was a sunset of the ilk I would likely never see again.

I found out that I wasn't the broken man I thought I was. And it left me a broken man.

How's that for deliverance?

Saviour

Saviour

1. One who delivers or rescues from peril

As I see it, life has always been a matter of focus and timing. Sure, maturity and experience have their obvious parts to play. The burning issues of our teenage years always seem laughably miniscule as we replay those hormone ridden incidents in a nostalgic review. Still, in my internal playback, I recall equally pitiful 'dilemmas' that, even at the time, I didn't give a shit about. Why? Focus and timing. Always, focus and timing.

And in one particular facet of life, focus and timing really do rule all. Relationships. Bloody relationships.

Focus:

If my furious googling has served me well, it was Shakespeare who first stated that 'love is blind'. Well, I'm going to put a slight swerve on that, if you don't mind Will. As I see it, love is blinkered. I'm talking about everything from sinful lust through puppy love all the way to being metaphorically impaled upon Cupid's bastard arrow. It all comes down to focus. Now, for as long as you can keep your focus solely upon the object of your affection, nothing will distract you. Nothing. Not food. Not work. Not your friends belligerently reminding you that it's the third weekend in a row that you've blown them out to watch another crap film with your girlfriend. And certainly not another member of the opposite sex. But woe betide you if you let that lovestruck stare quiver for a heartbeat. Because in that natural, treacherous moment, where your eyes remind you that there are a multitude of attractive possibilities, your focus imperceptibly shifts. Imperceptibly at first, that is. Before you know it, in a rush of libido and biological imperative, your focus has been shunted from your heart's desire to your loins' desire. And once your focus shifts from one specific woman to many potential women the blinkers are lost, never to be recovered. Focus is a bitch.

Timing:

I've previously declared that Love - and I've capitalised it to indicate that we're discussing the Disney variant of love here - is a question of timing. That when someone decides that they're ready to fall in love, lo and behold, miraculously the next vaguely suitable mate they find is elevated to the love of their life. Cynical, yes. But wrong? I remained convinced that my perception of love was unerring until recently. We'll deal with that heart-wrenching episode another time.

All in all, a remarkable insight you'll doubtlessly agree. But where does all of this nonsense fit into what's been playing on my mind in an infuriating loop? Let me fill you in.

I've always confidently preached that in order to be able to have a healthy relationship with a member of the opposite sex, you have to be happy in yourself. In previous years, I've delivered sermons to a choir of friends on the matter. "The problem with Rachel" I admonished "Is that the thing that makes her happy in her life is me; that's why I have to finish it with her". Finish it with her I did, confidently striding along my egotistical path in a state of blissful apathy. This was a few years back. The ensuing couple of years transpired to be a cluster-fuck of physical and mental destruction. We'll save those soul-raping events for another time.

Which leads me, in typically tangential fashion, to the tuneless melody reverberating its miserable notes down my spine. I'm not happy in myself. I have great friends. I have a wonderfully supportive, albeit slightly fragmented, family. I'm attractive enough. To the casual observer, I'm in a great place. Shit, a recent ex-girlfriend wrote a list of reasons why I'm so great (yet another backstory for another time) and there, sitting smugly at number one; he's a happy person. Am I fuck. I'm just another individual well-versed in creating whatever impression he chooses. And my main problem? Easy. I hate my job. Loathe it. Absolutely detest every minute of it.

"Shit.." you exclaim. "That's easy to change". And of course it is. The difficult part isn't knowing what you don't want to do. The real tough part is having a clue what you want to do. Now, I know exactly what I want to do. I want to work with dogs. I want to get up every morning looking forward to my day. 'Find a job you love and you'll never work a day in your life'. Beautiful, Confucius. Profound wisdom, no doubt. But what do you do if the job you'd love just doesn't touch the sides when it comes to paying your bills? How I envy the individuals who grow up wanting to be solicitors and accountants. So, I'm left endeavouring to sum up some enthusiasm for a search to find a job that I don't want to do.

I want to meet a girl. I want to have kids, settle down, start a beautiful family and live happily ever after. Of course, first I have to meet the right girl. And that's when the trouble starts. When the girl in your life is your only constant source of happiness, you're leaving the door to anguish wide open. Even the initial courtship is a rollercoaster of emotions, soaring high on first kisses and plummeting to wrenching depths when your phone doesn't beep within an hour of sending that text.

And that's when the nagging starts up again. How can I really have a healthy relationship when I'm not happy in myself? I mean, what am I looking for?

A fucking saviour?

Catharsis

Catharsis.

1. the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, especially through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

Emotional tension. Yep, that sounds about right. Everyone has some form of emotional tension. I'm certainly not a special case. Hell, I used to be a damn sight angrier than I am these days. Metaphorically packed to the brim with emotional tension at one point. And now? Now I just don't know where I am.

Well, that's not quite right. I know where I am. I'm in a position where I'm far better off than a lot of people and nowhere near where I want to be, in every sense.

You see, I have a real problem with emotional indulgence. I resent it in others. To be frank, I ridicule it in others. I can scroll down the Facebook newsfeed in a numb daze and still internally cringe at the screams for attention jumping out of the screen at me. So and so "doesn't want to talk about it.." followed by comments of "are you ok hunni? ? xx". Who gives a fuck. Don't wash your dirty laundry in public. Yet here I am writing a blog. Still, I'm not expecting this to be read by anyone and if there is another soul sullying their eyes with this diatribe; well, turns out Mr Cathartic isn't my real name and chances are rather high that you don't know me.

So back to emotional indulgence and more specifically, my very personal issues with it. Forget about my hatred of it in others for a moment. Nothing fills me with more self-loathing than my own emotional indulgence. Because I certainly indulge. It's a rare day where I dont crawl into the dark corners of my pysche and wallow in self-indulgent dispair. And then? Well, then I feel guilty as a dog sheepishly trying to ignore the puddle of his own piss in the corner as his master walks in. I feel foolish, in fact. "How the hell are you going to moan about your lot?" I demand of myself. "You really think you've got it bad?.

You see, I'm very aware that everyone has their own shit to deal with. I know what my pressing issues are. And everytime I dwell on them, the martyr in my head points out what a dick I am.

"Fucking Crohn's Disease. Why can't I be normal?" - "Michael has Cystic Fibrosis and you're going to moan about Crohn's?"

"Why couldn't my parents have loved each other and be together?" - "Your childhood was fine and you have an incredibly loving and supportive family. Who are you to bitch about anything?"

Even writing a blog I feel like a melodramatic fool. And, as I mentioned before, I'm not even expecting anyone to read this tosh. Which brings me on to Therapy.

Yep, I've capitalised it. Fuck it, it's a dirty word to me. Both my brother and sister, independantly, have suggested that I could, perhaps, use a little therapy. Probably right. But shit, if I feel guilty just splashing around in the depths of self-commiseration in my own mind, how the hell am I meant to seriously contemplate paying someone else to listen to my petty grievances?

And how are they meant to help me? Do they consult that illusive handbook entitled "Answers to Life"? Ah...I see. It's the 'getting it off of my chest' which is meant to be the real therapy. You know, the whole 'talking about it' shindig. Well, I'm not a big talker. Don't get me wrong, I'm a charming social butterfly when I want to be. I'll fall for a girl and tell her just about everything that has happened in my life. But to talk to someone about something that really matters to me? To use someone else as a sounding board for how I should feel about things or how I should be reacting to a situation? Now that is not me.

Which leads me to here. A nice convenient place for me to rant without the self-ignominy of keeping a diary. Or, as my brother calls his, a journal.

Fucking ridiculous.