The Hardest Part Of Life

I honestly think that the most difficult thing that a you will ever have to endure in life is when you care more about a person than that person cares about you.

Recently, I haven't been able to go to sleep unless I'm watching a movie. It distracts my brain. My thoughts slow down, and my hope is that I wont dream of anything that I'm trying to stay clear of. Last night I was watching Bruce Almighty. There is this part where Bruce's girlfriend has left him, and he's trying everything to get her back. Eventually he's sitting outside her window as she's praying. She confesses to God that she still loves Bruce, but she doesn't want to anymore. She asks God to help her stop loving Bruce because she doesn't want to hurt.

I was thinking about how true that is. Not just in my life, but I've seen it in so many people's lives. Actually, I was talking with a coworker about it today. It wasn't something that I brought up, she's the one that said it.

If I'm going to continue being honest, I'd have to say that I don't know what to do about it.

I don't believe it's healthy to try to prevent it from happening. You run the risk of guarding your heart too much, and never allowing yourself to really care fully for someone else. That is perhaps one of life's worst tragedies.

It just sucks so bad. This isn't the first time that it's happened to me. It doesn't even have to be someone with whom you have romantic feelings, it can be anyone who is a good friend. It really hurts to realize that they don't really care about you as much as you care about them. It's just especially bad when it concerns someone that you have feelings for.

All I know is that it sucks. It really does.

Right Now

I'm okay. I'm alive and expecting good things from the future. I'm working hard to attain some goals, and it's a good thing.

Most of the pain is gone. I feel distanced from the situation. The heartbreak is over. I've accepted the way things are, and I'm moving on. I mean, I have to.

It is impossible for me to simply make my feelings stop. They're no longer as strong as they were, but they're still there. I'm trying to focus the energy elsewhere but it's hard.

I just feel empty. Really hollow. I miss her.

The hardest part is knowing that she doesn't miss me.

My Absolute Favorite Thing

My absolute favorite thing in the entire world is when someone is thinking of me.

When I write that, it looks and sounds kind of self-absorbed, and maybe it is, but that's not the way I see it.

The idea that someone out there has you on their mind has to be one of the best feelings ever. It seriously gives me this warm feeling in my chest. The fact that you matter enough to someone for them to just randomly think of you is amazing.

The idea that someone misses you is life changing.

I love to hear that I'm on someone's mind. It makes me feel like someone cares.

It's so freaking awesome when somebody thinks of/sees/hears something that reminds them of you.

I used to try to manufacture this. When I was younger I became a bit obsessive with the color orange. At first, I actually kinda liked it. But then I went overboard because very few people in this world claim orange as their favorite color. It was my hope that people would establish a correlation between me and orange. If they saw something orange, they would think of me. And, believe it or not, it actually worked fairly well. But what I think this says about me is that one of my very biggest fears is being forgotten.

I no longer try to manufacture things of this sort. If my existence crosses someone's mind it's purely natural, and I like it better that way. It means that it is usually something that really matters to me that brings me to someone's mind.

I often have people tell me that they think of me when they listen to Angels & Airwaves. I love that. People remember conversations that they had with me, or just any memory at all that we shared. My sister-in-law just sent me a message telling me that she heard a song on the radio while driving home from work and it brought me to mind. It was a song about what love really means. She not only recognizes that I'm obsessed with the idea of love, but she also knows of the things I've been struggling with recently. She thought I might enjoy it, and that it might help me.

It means so much to me when people care enough to worry. People rarely worry about me.

My favorite thing to experience is to have someone let me know that I crossed their mind. That's it.

New Game Plan

I woke up this morning and my thought process went like this: "New game plan. Don't fall in love. With anyone. Ever. If that is what it feels like when things fall apart, don't let yourself ever be vulnerable. It hurts too much."

I then realized that this was the old game plan. That's the way I've been living for quite some time. I prevented myself from feeling so I wouldn't be hurt.

Now, I'm not going to say I was in love with her. That's a rookie mistake. We weren't together long enough to give feelings of that magnitude a chance. Besides, who am I to even say that I know what love is? I do know that I had really strong feelings, that we had a good connection, and if given enough time it's possible that things might have gone down that road. I'm just saying that I was deciding to give up in general.

As I've written in here before, I had given up before. I had resigned to the thought that no one would ever have feelings for me. When she proved me wrong, I got excited. Not just because a girl liked me, but because she was honestly more than I've ever wanted or expected in a girl. Since things have ended, I've been asking myself a bunch of questions. "Will I ever really like a girl that much again?" "Will I find someone who is better for me than her (everybody keeps saying so)?" "Is there anyone out there who will prove me wrong again, will anyone like me?" "Will I ever fall in love?"

In my current state of being, my honest answer to those questions would have to be: "Probably not. But I'm gonna have to keep trying."

The feelings I had when I was with her were the best feelings I have ever had in my life. They were different than anything before. I was truly the happiest I have ever been. I wanted it to last forever, but maybe it wasn't meant to. If that was even a hint at what it would be like to be in love, then it's worth fighting for. It's worth being vulnerable and risking that gut wrenching, I just want to die, feeling that comes when it ends.

Those feelings were real, and they were the best things that have ever happened to me. I will have to keep trying. THAT is the new game plan.

I Am Human

My entire life I've felt different. I've touched on this before in this journal, and I may do so again. It's a huge part of who I am.

I've been watching a ton of Dexter recently. Not only is it great television, but it's been really good at distracting me (my days have been seeming really long lately, and I need something to fill the time). So if you've seen Dexter, you would understand my next sentence better. I've always held myself to a different code. I didn't feel normal, I didn't feel the way I assumed humans are supposed to feel. So I pretended. I guessed at how to interact with people. I protected myself from being hurt. I didn't let myself feel certain things, and didn't understand some emotions when I felt them. I had rules. I kept higher standards for myself than most people do.

For some time, I came to accept myself as this non-human thing. I was alright with it. I even celebrated my weirdness. When The Killers came out with the song "Human" I proudly proclaimed that I was indeed dancer and not human. Being human seemed too hard, so I decided to live with myself the way that I was. But I still really had this longing to be normal. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to experience the things that humans experience. It just seemed impossible for me.

Within the past couple months I've learned that their are other people like me out there. Many people are damaged. Not by living lives that are made hard by things like abuse, poverty, drugs, or any of the other things we consider terrible. But there are a lot of people who have dealt with a bunch of emotional struggles just like I have. Not everybody has dealt with them the way I have, but there are people who are hurt. People have emotional scars. Some of them are even afraid like me. A lot of them are guarded.

Not everybody is like that. My best friends aren't. They've always been good at living life. Unless you've been where I was, you'd probably never understand someone like me. There are different kinds of people. That's a normal part of life. I always thought I had to be like my friends, because they're normal. But not everybody is the same when it comes to these things. I've learned more and more that I'm not alone in the way I feel.

With all the events that have taken place the last couple of months, I let my guard down. I forgot my code. I didn't care what happened to me. I just wanted to feel. One day, after everything that made me come to that point had come crashing down, I was riding home from work and I realized the most amazing thing ever. I am human. Fully human.

I don't intend to go back to what I was. I will allow myself to be normal. I like this too much.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still weird. I definitely have my share of quirks. But that's just the way some people are. It's all gravy, baby.

Growing

I know it's not anything new. I'm sure I've heard it somewhere before, probably many times. But when you're hurt you have a decision to make. You can either let it damage and scar you, or you can grow from it.

For most of my life I let it damage me. I let myself be the victim. To be completely honest, most people who have had a hand in hurting me had no intention of doing so. I know this to be true. But, of course, it still hurts. This last time around, I know she didn't want to hurt me. And that only helps a little. It still hurts worse than anything. However, I'm choosing for this one to not damage me. Instead, this will help me. I've already learned a great deal about myself. I've learned about people. About relationships. And about a lot more things.

I've changed a lot this past year. More than I ever would have imagined. I've changed a ton even in the past month. Heck, this past week. I'm finding my identity. Growing as a person. Growing up.

I hate that it had to end. I still don't understand everything, and maybe I never will. I guess she made what seemed like the best decision for her, and I'm just gonna have to accept that. I will have to move on with my life. I'm already starting to. But even though I wish it didn't have to be this way, I will grow from this experience. It will be good for me.

I Will Feel

I've struggled for a lot of my life. It's not that I've had a terrible life, because I haven't. Compared to many people in this world, I live an easy life. It's just been a bunch of emotional crap. A lot of it having to do with girls, even more having to do with me not liking myself. It's really too much to put into one post, and it's not really the topic of this entry, but I will definitely elaborate in several posts in the future. I'm going to focus on just one thing for now.

At one point in my life I was going through so much emotional stuff and I just couldn't take it anymore. It was the same thing that had been going on for years, and it was all piling up. It was driving me crazy. The pain was simply too much for me to handle. I made a decision, a decision that no one should ever make. I chose to not feel.

I became numb. Literally no emotions. It hurt too much to feel, so I wasn't going to do it. Sure, I still had a sense of humor and could laugh at jokes, but there was nothing deeper. I couldn't feel any pain, but I also couldn't truly be happy. Worst mistake of my life.

This lasted for about a year. After that year I slowly allowed myself to feel some things, but kept my emotions closely guarded. It wasn't until sometime this past year that I finally let myself completely feel. But I'm still terribly afraid of being hurt.

It's hard to interact with other humans when you can't empathize with them even on the most basic of levels. And it really destroys your own personal development as a human being. To this day I still have to remind myself to feel things, and I'm constantly wondering if what I'm feeling is normal.

Recently some really good things were happening. I became truly very happy for the first time in forever. I let myself feel the most I have in a very long time. This past week, all that came crashing down. I can't really write on that subject, because I still don't fully understand it. But right now I'm hurting. It hurts more than anything I've ever experienced before in my life.

The temptation to fall back into that trap and become numb again is so strong. It would be so easy. I wouldn't have to deal with these emotions that are tearing me apart. Honestly, I DON'T want to feel. But I'm choosing to do so.

I know that not feeling is a horrible thing, but at the same time it's extremely difficult to deal with these emotions. The pain is so bad. I'm finding it hard to remember why it's important to feel. As I'm writing this I can't really come up with any good reasons. But I will not go back to that place. I know now that feeling can be the best thing in the world. It's worth fighting for.

I choose to feel. I will feel.

Just bear with me while I have this crap ton of emotional breakdowns. Maybe someday I'll be happy again. It just might take a very long while.