After a few hours of sleep I was up and back to ARC for my disaster kitchen class. Sunday was awesome! One of the other people in the class was from the SA and mentioned they could always use kitchen volunteers who aren’t doing it to serve community service hours. I admit I have more volunteer opportunities engaged right now then I have time for, but that’s definitely on my waitlist now. Anyhow, getting stuffed into a mobile kitchen with six people and making 350 meals in two hours was an incredible learning experience. A bunch of photos were taken, hopefully some show up online.

I briefly mentioned it, but the wedding was awesome. A couple photos have popped up. This is the second time in 2010 I’ve worn a suit already, which is usually a number that takes me all year to accomplish.

I spent six hours today taking ________ tests. The examiner kept asking if I was fatigued, because we got ahead of schedule. And I think they just expect you to.I can’t say it tired me out, but it wasn’t my normal Monday for sure. First time I’ve biked to Edmonds alone, which was another learning experience.

Why are you defensive when I tell you how I feel? Why do you act like I’m asking something [unreasonable] of you when I tell you how I feel? Why do I feel like I was supposed to pretend to not really feel if I wanted to keep you?

Among other things, I’ll spend two hours tomorrow with five others cooking 350 meals, 300 for SA and 50 for ARC (including ourselves) as training. Those numbers feel insane, but considering what’s accomplished in actual disasters, it’s pretty reasonable. It looks like I convinced another person to join ARC though, yay!

Larry and Lesli’s wedding was amazing, those kids are wonderful. Unfortunately, it sort of exemplifies feelings of dishonesty inside. I’m so tired of that, it just makes me feel like I should be robo-tarded to just feel normal.

I’ve thought a little bit lately about not repeating myself; that people either listen or they don’t. Mom told me once that sometimes books find us, because we’re ready for them. Perhaps sometimes repeating yourself is necessary because people aren’t ready for what you have to say yet.

It’s been a really hard month in relation to my motorcycle accident. I have a much better grasp on pain and suffering now. My temperament is pretty stoic, but sometimes I’m unsure if surviving is anything like unaffected. I usually feel better when I don’t keep my emotions bottled up inside of me, the release garnered from articulating my feelings is usually significant. Although, sometimes pretty detrimental to relationships. Under the veil of honesty being righteous, I stand by my side in defense.

As I slowly run out of ARC training I’m feeling a little bit of an outsider still. I’m not sure how much of that is a product of everything I’ve been going through lately, and how much of it is false expectation. Speaking of which, class all weekend, with a wedding thrown in the middle.

I’ve written about madness; about existential angst, breakfast of champions, a beautiful mind, the house episode about genius and the robotussin cure. Nearly all problems in life are life itself. But if you can’t connect with other people, if the smell of spring isn’t something you can share with each other, what binds you and others? Love?

I fear that the majority of my relationships are the combination of my compassion, physical attraction, and enough personality correlation to like each other. The implication that the madness that exists between this and my emotions is something I have to treat as a disability is traumatizing in itself. Today was long, and it took a lot to keep my feelings away from those who don’t want to know them.

When I think about the three types of knowledge, I think about my indifference to get worked up by things I can’t really change, that I feel like I’m suppose to be upset about. But then there’s those things that do evoke feeling, like M, that I wonder if I’ll ever find a place to set down. As I step back and question my own mental and emotional sanity, I can’t help but feel alone, sad, and disappointed in others.

When you can’t sit still any longer, and feel like change is needed; how much of it is the distraction of something new overtaking dealing with the present?

M’s inability to cope with her emotions evoked by the presence of mine continues to be at the forefront of my thoughts. J and I seem to agree that she doesn’t have the tools needed because she refuses to prioritize her feelings, likely out of fear. And yet, no logic or explanation I can garner changes how I feel. Under the circumstances, I very much wish it would.

I had lunch with Adam the other day and I mentioned the fear of compromising who I am for a relationship. He stated that nobody I’ve dated would outwardly want me to do that for them. Not that he has known most of the people I have dated, but as a rule. That calls into further question what exactly I aim to garner from a relationship. Lately I have been more convinced it is to be challenged as a human that has been missing, and I’ve spoken a lot about ‘peers’ accordingly. Maybe I need to make that fully my own responsibility and find comfort in a more pure companionship setting. Which is to say, establish a companion as less as a motivator and more as a cohort. Does this come back to ‘pals’? That’s just confusing.

I used to complain that I had simple desires that were so hard to fulfill. Now I see them as not so simple, but still maintain that I am not asking for very much. Still, so few I meet seem to have the experience to leverage to grasp so much. J comments often about how I’ve put more energy into this than those in my age group. Does that make dating anyone my age or younger a fundamental mistake? That would be prejudice, but I wonder about the implications.

I feel like the second paragraph of my last post needs a complete rewrite.

Historically, I haven’t been in a hurry to define ‘what’ a relationship is. There have been times when something has felt wrong, where more is at play than has been communicated. I don’t think B know how to communicate what she felt. Her actions seemed to usually preface her thoughts and when called on this she would back away. In retrospect, M is probably similar, but for some different reasons.

There’s something to recognize in that feeling the something is unsaid. Perhaps because it took me by surprise with M? Because that was so ‘I do not know what this is, but I am out’? I may have learned to be more aware of the unspoken.

A part of me still believes there is no comparison. I’m simultaneously refining what I want into something that appears to have no long term resolution, while coming to terms with that and further accepting how much I’m on my own and can’t count on finding an adequate companion to my life.

Some days I really feel like the rest of the world knows something I don’t. Damn robots.

Feelings with B were a two sided coin. Either wanting to embrace them (but too fearful to) or keeping her distance in a way that exemplified that they weren’t worthwhile. Even now, when I expressed concern for her feelings she told me I wasn’t responsible for her feelings, and yet unconsciously expressed how much I actually did. It wasn’t fair at all, and some friends immediately told me not to feel guilty or responsible when I retold the story. I don’t though. I can’t recall feeling like I’ve unfairly hurt anyone in quite some time. I always try very hard in relationships.

As I gave a nod to in my last post, I feel like JR is the most emotionally intact person I’ve dated in a while. Available may also be synonymous, I’m not sure. I just feel like chasms in the road were hit where no amount of communication and patience on my part were going to bridge the gap.

I was talking to J, trying to describe how I got along with M and the best I could describe was that I felt we were ‘pals’ and that I wouldn’t be sacrificing parts of myself to be together. I don’t know if I’ve felt that way before, nor exactly what it’s makings were.

July is going to be interesting.

It’s funny hearing cheers to “17 year olds and 7 speeds” and “I like your gray hair, it means something is important enough for you to stress about” in the same evening.

The last couple days I’ve felt some uncomfortable parallels between M and J. Some are silly, like my nose going into pure useless water drip mode recently, and when it did about a year ago. Others are more disconcerting, like body language.

I went to make a comment tonight about how my last two relationships felt emotionally curtailed, then I thought about it and upgraded it. To the last three. Then again, to the last four. What a year. Then that bothered me, the past year. A year ago was the peak, a relationship that started out feeling very emotionally intense, but which backfired and burned itself out from the inside. Since that turned downhill, it’s mostly been an emotionally unavailable world and I haven’t known quite where to put myself.

We’ll see where that goes. For the time being, I’m excited about that coming to an end.

There’s a manner of spirit that excels when life is formidable. When I think about doing too much, I realize it is more about doing to much at once. A lot of discussion recently has centered around age. Not that it is the core factor, but the conversation starts there and evolves out. It’s easy to start there; thinking about who I was five years ago is mind boggling now. Yet, it is often circumstances, their past experiences, and how strong their drive is to become a better person that reflects who they are than their age. Moving forward with an open mind to the unknown, and move forward honestly.

Years back a boss conveyed to me that he wanted me on board supporting an action he was going to make, but in business-etiquette-book manner he was unclear about the specifics, yet inferred enough. I told him I would do what I thought was right. He didn’t like that answer, nor my resignation.

Last night in a very frustrated conversation someone was trying to convey to me their difficulty of being stuck between two options, one of making someone else change or suffering. I told him if I were him I would walk away. He’d have none of it, so I couldn’t explain why. You can’t change other people, and suffering is inevitable. In a world of two bad choices the one that feels right to you is where I side. Our own actions are what matter.