Oy with the feelings already!

I'm feeling very belittled. Like my experiences don't count, they don't have any weight to them. Like what I have to offer doesn't really matter in the end. So, instead of continuing to feel this way today, I'm going to write it out. Today I was talking with a friend who was going through a break up. And another friend came in to join the conversation...whenever someone says "don't be offended by this," I think you're almost always offended by it. I think if that part wasn't added, I might've even not given it so much thought. What else can you do when someone is going through a break-up other than offer encouragement and give examples from your own life? I talked about my 2 break-ups and how it took me a long time to get over them, but it takes as long as it takes, there is no time-line. But because those 2 relationships were with guys and I discovered that who I really want to be with and am attracted to, is women, she made me feel like those experiences don't count anymore. Getting over that heart break from the greatest loves of my life don't mean diddle squat because I'm not "straight"anymore. That's at least how the other friend made me feel. I just heard the words "don't be offended" and "because you've realized who you are now." And that made me feel like I had nothing to offer the friend who needed help and encouragement. I know that's not true, but it kinda knocked me down for the rest of the afternoon. I've been trying to figure out if there are other reasons as to why I'm mad and hurt over what she said, other than what I've just mentioned. I guess I also feel stuck in limbo. I feel like I'm neither straight nor gay. I don't even know why I need a label. I don't. But what I need, or needed, was to have met a woman and fallen in love and THEN realized I was gay and we'd get married and have a kid together (of course). But even if we had instead, broken up, at least I would've had PROOF that I was a lesbian. I read recently in Lena Dunham's book, Not that kind of girl, about her younger sister who is gay. How in the beginning when she came out (or Lena in fact kind of forced her hand) that Grace told her that she had a romance with a girl on a summer program in Florence. But years later she admitted that she had made it up. She had said it as a "means of proving to anyone who questioned her that she was really gay." I get that. I'm not that talented at making up lies about my life and pass them as truths, but if I could I most certainly would. I feel like you can feel one way inside but actions are really what makes change happen. So I'm partly mad at myself, because I haven't gotten to act on the realized feelings and attractions and longing and desires and pulling of my heart and body, that only came to the surface, to my attention- 3 and a half years ago. But also it hasn't been "ONLY" 3 1/2 years. That makes it sound like it has been no time at all. It feels like a lifetime and I've lived far too many lifetimes now. Lifetimes of loneliness. Lifetimes of isolation. Lifetimes of discovering myself and finding myself, for what? So I can remain alone until the day I die? Then what was the point? I would've rather stayed in the closet that I never knew I was in, than only to come out and be alone for the rest of my life. Now I get to be rejected by both sexes.

I told this friend going through the break-up that there's other fish in the sea (I didn't use those words), but I did say, because she is so beautiful, she will have guys lining up to date her, and that's the truth. She'll have no problem. She'll have too many guys to choose from. Granted, a lot could be jerks, but at least she has choices. I feel like I'm drifting out to sea like Tom Hanks in Castaway. Mollie is my "Wilson." She's my volleyball. She's all I have, and while she's great and all to talk to, like Wilson, she isn't going to talk back to me or hold me in bed or kiss me goodnight. (I do most of the kissing in this relationship. She does lick me on occasion, but that doesn't feel like it counts). But the point is I feel as lost and alone as whatever Tom Hanks character's name was in that movie. But at least he literal had no choices. I have choices...I just don't like any of them. But more on that later.

Back to the matter at hand. I don't think the other girl said in these exact words "your opinion or your experiences don't count," but that's how it was implied. Even though I've said I'm "glad I never married those guys," it wasn't necessarily because they were "guys," it was because they weren't meant to be. They are both married now, at least one has a kid, the other probably does too, I don't know I don't keep up with them. So obviously I wasn't the one, but besides that, they weren't right for me, and that has nothing to do with their gender. I don't know that I would've clued in that I was attracted to women, if I had been married to a guy since I was 22 and had presumably had 3 or 4 children by now. I honestly can't tell you. I don't have a clue. Anything's possible. I just know the life I would've had and I would have been in Women's bible study groups, if I had married either one of those guys. I would've been very active in church. I would've been very focused on my children's lives and schooling and caring for them, I wouldn't have even thought about my own needs, not in that way. I don't know what the sex would've been like, we never had sex. But I'm guessing I would've gotten used to it, hopefully. And since all those women in that bible study would've had husbands too, I seriously doubt anyone would've emerged from that setting. I mean I guess anything's possible, but it sounds more like a plot to a movie, than real life. I mean I spent the first 30 years of my life thinking that I was going to marry a nice Christian boy like all my friends from childhood through college. Unless a woman had specifically come into my life and shook things up, purposefully and directly, I think I would've remained clueless, at least until the kids were in college. And while there would've been a lot of hurt still, I'm sure, done to my entire family, it wouldn't be like I was doing it on purpose. I literally did not know I was gay until what's-her-face came along. It's not like I'm going to go out NOW and find me a husband, only to have children and then leave him when a woman finally comes along. I'm not insane. And I'm not cruel. I may be alone for the rest of my life, but I know what I want and what I want is what I've written in my novel, my screenplay, my story of my life in another universe, and countless journal entries. I've even started a young teen Sci-Fi novel that would have a little taste of young love... and those are ALL girl-meets-girl. Actually even the main girl is named Christie.... in all of my stories. I mean why the hell not? Did anyone ever notice that the comedienne Amy Schumer always gives the main character (played by herself) in every skit on her TV show and in her movie, the name Amy? I never copied her on this, I just realized that when I started getting into her stuff. So if she can, I can.
To tag on to what I said earlier about "choices." I'm not saying I have literal women knocking on my door begging to date me and I'm refusing them all. I'm mostly saying that there are choices out there in the world, meaning there are single women out there in the world. Women that are around my age, have a good job, college-educated, nice, funny, blah blah blah... but I feel like I've lost the ability to find them/bring them to me. I'm told, "you have to try and put yourself out there." I say- "I do! I have a TON. Here are some examples..." And then immediately the same person turns around and says- "it'll come when you're not trying." And I'm like what the fuck do you want from me?? To try, or to NOT try? Make up your mind. You can't have it both ways. I have done both, by the way, but that's beside the point, apparently. I feel like girls that are married and have been since their early 20s, get NO say in telling me what I should do, when it comes to meeting someone. You clearly were lucky. You didn't even try. You didn't even NOT try. It just happened and you were alone for like a day (compared to my 9 years) so you don't get to act like you have all the answers. If the tables were turned, I bet 100% of those women would be like, "What am I doing wrong? What's wrong with me? Why haven't I met someone yet? My baby making years are drawing to a close!!"  yeah. So shut your trap, married people. I will only listen to a married woman if she was in her 40s when she finally found someone, but more so if she was alone for at least 10 years prior. I think those women just barely exist. They're about as extinct as the Dodo bird.

So, I'm sure there are wonderful women out there, I just feel like I either can't connect with a single one, or I'm not attracted to them. I'm mostly attracted to the unattainable, so that's not great. But even if I go in with an open mind, and open heart, I'm almost immediately shut down, shut out or shut off. I don't want to blame Facebook or internet dating or the internet in general, but either I've turned into someone who can't relate and connect to people anymore, or I just haven't met that "someone" I can, with...yet. I hope it's the second one. I feel like I use up all my social skills in my job; constantly changing and adjusting to the type of mother I am interacting with at any given moment. Trying to connect with her so that I can help her child with whatever developmental milestone he or she needs help accomplishing. That's a lot of change I go through in a single day. I can talk one way, with a mother who is well-educated and has already done her own research on the issue at hand. And then a few minutes later I'm struggling just to get a mother involved in her child's therapy session, desperately trying to empower her and to make her not just feel like she can help, but WANT to help. I'm emotionally exhausted most days. I don't know that I could have my own child and work with all these others, at the same time. Someone would be getting less than my 100%. I probably won't ever have to find that out, but I'll cross that bridge if I come to it. So when it comes to trying to connect with someone I could be in a relationship with, it feels like I'm starting with scratch, each time, which I guess is all relationships. But I don't know if I can do it. I don't know if I want to. I mean I have, but I'm so tired of trying, only to be discarded, forgotten, cast away (if you will). It's discouraging, to say the least. Sometimes I feel like I have to care so much about the mothers that I work with (at least do my best to convey that when I'm with them), that caring for someone else outside of that situation, is just overload. If I was in a real relationship with them, you better believe they'd be the most important person in the world to me and I would care till the cows came home. But caring about everyone I meet that could be a potential friend or girlfriend...I just am not filled up with enough caring power of my own (poured into me) to care for every single person I meet. Call me selfish, I don't care. I've been alone a really really long time. I'm going to be selfish. I haven't been given the chance not to be.

So, I'm tired. My fingers are tired from typing on this little attachable keyboard on my tablet. And my brain is tired from thinking and "feeling" everything. Enough feeling. I'd love to be knocked down one day, by a beautiful girl who steals my heart and makes me believe in love again. Makes me care, again. I'd love to believe that woman exists on this planet. I'd love to believe she was made just for me. But I think the heart is hardest to convince. The brain can know facts and accept them, even if they make no sense. But the heart. The heart needs convincing. It needs to feel something, and to experience feelings that the brain can't put words to. It needs to feel love, not just be told it.

Living in a TV world

Is there anything more relaxing than the sound of rain falling outside your window? And I mean real rain. I've downloaded some fake rain sounds channel before and I don't buy it. It sounds like fake rain to me. Even if they use actual rain, it's not REAL rain. Live rain is not a recording. Just like listening to a song live by an artist you love, is different than listening to them on the radio. The quality is different. It's raw and real. I love raw and real. If I could find someone who wanted to live that way, with me, that would be awesome. I don't need perfect. Perfect is fake. I don't need you to act like you don't have prejudices of any kind, because every does, even if you won't admit it out loud. I hate meeting new people, I truly do. Because in the beginning, the conversation is about what you "do for a living" and what part of town you live in and boring stuff like that. It's not that I don't want to know those things; it's just that you could just give them to me on a notecard or casually mention it and then move on to your favorite song and why it's your favorite. What memory do you associate it with? These are the hard-hitting questions I care about. My job does fascinate people and they always say "it must be so rewarding," and it is at times, but mostly it's like any other job- the bosses just care about your productivity and making money. That's just the way the world works. In my free time I like to talk about the things I love, which mostly are: TV shows, book/movie franchises, music that moves me and why it moves me, what band or artist I'm going to see next, my cat Mollie, places I've traveled to and where I want to go next, and my godsons. These are all my most favorite things and what I talk about the most; firstly being (due to it's importance) my TV shows. Sure I watch a lot of shows. I used to be embarrassed by that, because it made me sound like I have no life, and maybe I don't, but that's not because I watch too many TV shows. There's a whole other reasons why that is the case and none of them have to do with TV. I don't do reality shows... like at all. If I wanted to watch a show with "real" people, I'd go down to the DMV... or honestly it's my every day life through my job. I get enough of that. Even though reality shows are like 75% fake nowadays, it's still the real world and I prefer my escape to be in the magical/fantasy/apocalyptic/crazy insanity world. One beyond the world of reality. I was thinking about what all the shows I watch have in common and everything I watch falls into one of these categories: 1. Quirky 2. Fantasy/magical 3. Apocalyptic 4. Superhero 5. Dark or Dark Comedy. Grey's Anatomy doesn't fall into any of these categories, but it's just awesome and I've watched it since the first day it came on TV and if I haven't stopped watching after they've killed every character I like, then I'll never stop watching. And Homeland doesn't fall into these categories and that's not usually the type of show I watch, but Claire Danes is absolutely mesmerizing and you just can't look away as she breaks down and ugly cries and spins out of control... so that's more of a "watching it for her" situation. Don't know why I felt the need to break that all down, but there you go. I like escaping into worlds I would never want to live in to begin with. I would literally not last a day in the world of The Walking Dead. Some worlds like that of The Last Man on Earth seem too good to be true. Pretty much everyone is dead, yet all the stores are in tact, there's no garbage or rotting bodies anywhere. It makes absolutely no sense, but to be able to take what you want from museums and shoes and live in the fanciest house by the beach if you wanted, seems pretty dang great. However you'd be stuck with whoever's left on Earth and they could all be jerks, which is how it's looking right now on the show (minus Carol).
I was having a hard week this week. The only time I was truly happy was when I was watching one of my favorite shows. Laughing at whatever crazy thing Sheldon said on The Big Bang Theory, took my mind off of how lonely I am all the time; despite the fact that this guy with social problems has more friends that want to spend time with him on a regular basis, than I do, and I would never say the socially appropriate things he says, which gets him in trouble every episode. They always forgive him and move on. I don't really buy it, but it's a show and it makes me laugh, so there ya go. I love getting lost in a show, or a book, when I find a really good one, which I don't most of the time. I'm extremely picky as an adult. I used to read everything as a kid, but now, it's harder to engage me. But the thing with me and my shows is that I fully invest in them and engage in them. I don't zone out and not pay attention. I could tell you everything that happened in one of my favorite shows. I used to do that for my best friend. She didn't like watching shows, but she wanted me to explain them to her. She told me it I explained it so well, it was like she had watched it, but she didn't have to. She always wanted to know what happened on Glee. I happily told her. That show combined my 2 favorite things- TV and music. Musicals are the best of both worlds. Plus my Dad loves TV shows as much as I do, and getting to talk to him about what crazy thing happened on The Leftovers and what our theories are as to what's really going on, is literally one of my favorite things to do. I love having someone as enthusiastic as I am about my favorite TV shows. Most people are too busy with their kids and lives to watch a lot of shows, and don't really care about them anyway. I even have a friend that doesn't own a TV. I can't even imagine. But with my Dad, we literally watch all the same things. We love to talk about them and I never have to feel like I'm bothering him or boring him, with talk of my shows, like I would my other friends. My Mom is another story. Sometimes I feel embarrassed talking about them in front of my Mom, it's better if she's in another room and it's just my Dad and I, or I'm talking to him on the phone about it. I can tell she doesn't care that much about them, despite the face that she too watches a lot of TV. I always got the impression that she thought I was just "wasting my time" or that she felt sorry for me that my this is as exciting as my life gets... talking about what happened on a TV show. I know what she truly wants for me. What she's always wanted- for me to be married and have kids. But that's not looking like that's going to happen. I've felt many many times that going out and meeting people only to fail at it or it being a total bust, that THAT "wasting my time." But binge watching all 4 seasons of Game of Thrones a month before the 5th season came out, never for a second felt like a "waste of my time." It felt like the most amazing time ever. I got to experience magic and dragons and an escape from a reality I didn't choose and don't seem to be able to change anyway, no matter how hard I've tried. But most of all, it makes me happy. I finally found my favorite TV character of all time in Daenerys, the silver-blonde haired mother of dragons beauty. Besides her beauty, it's her strength, kindness, confidence and leadership that I find the most attractive. Especially since she started out weak and controlled by her ass of a brother in the beginning of the series. Bo's Lost Girl previously held the role of my favorite character, and she's still in 2nd place, maybe a close 2nd...she's pretty kick-ass too. See? You can learn a lot from a strong woman, even as a fictional character. They inspire me and I fall in love with them... maybe a little too much, like with a certain girl in another Canadian girl-power show called Bomb Girls. But in the end, I separate reality from fiction and I know where I truly live. But don't all writers live in a fictional world anyway? Unless they only write boring Biographies. If I could, I would dedicate my days to writing. Who knows what I could truly do. But it doesn't pay the bills, and until I win the lottery or sell that first book I've written, of the untitled series with the placement title "1995;"  I'll have to settle for writing whenever I can... in between watching my favorite inspiring TV shows, of course. I'll conclude with my newest TV gem-find. It's a little Australian show called Please Like Me. The main guy and his roommate are actually best friends in real-life, which adds to the "realness" feel of the show. Despite dealing with tough issues like his mother's depression, the show still manages to have a lightness to it, that can only be true of a show written, directed and starred in by the main character. You can tell he puts everything into it, and what comes out is a really "real" show that doesn't make you feel stupid, it doesn't talk down to you, it doesn't "make" you laugh, it just "is." It's funny in a real-life sort of way. When a show is effortless and doesn't feel forced or like they are "acting;" that's a trust testament of a really well-made show. Plus it has an awesome theme-song: "I'll Be Fine" by Clairy Brown and the Bangin' Rackettes which the main character dances and sings along to in a different scenario at the beginning of each episode. Josh may be 21 and learning to navigate his newfound sexuality and figure out what he's supposed to do with his life, but in the end I am just like him. I just want someone to Please Like Me, too.