This morning was probably the worst of it, as I got to thinking about relationships. In the past year I’ve seen several of my close friends find love, and sometimes it bums me out. I sometimes think, “When is my turn?” I try to remember that I’ve been blessed by great friendships, yet I find myself feeling left out. In the past few weeks, though, I feel like God has been opening doors for me. I’ve been more confident in myself because I feel secure knowing that God has my back. I’ve had some great conversations with people that I don’t think would have previously been possible.

Even so, this reintroduction into religion has been a struggle. The key for me has been to be myself as much as I can. In high school, I tried to force away any doubt I had as forcefully as possible, and the result was depression. I’m trying my best to listen to myself and address any questions that come up. I try to take others’ opinions about God with grains of salt, to make up my own mind, and to be receptive to the Spirit. I think this is the healthy way to go about it. I want to hang on to who I am, but be willing to change.

In any event, I feel my life changing for the better more and more each day.

To get to know someone, usually it means exposing yourself. Each step in a friendship means exposing yourself a little more. I think that every person has a emotional barrier that is the breaking point between friend and good friend. Probably there are lots of little and big barriers.

In one of my friendships, I feel like I’m stuck, but I want to go deeper. I’m starting to think that I have to reveal more of myself to learn less than I reveal. It’s frustrating. I’m starting to think that I need to make a big move to get anywhere. Maybe it’ll work; maybe not. But stagnancy is lame.

Why do I want to do this? I guess I see some of myself in them, and I want to help. Maybe I want to feel less alone. Maybe I want the rush of going out on a limb. I like solving puzzles, and this puzzle is difficult and somewhat personal.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get up the courage any time soon. Maybe I’ll decide it’s not worth it.

Over the past few days I also decided to work on a little theme change for the blog. WordPress 2.7 came out last week, and I felt a new theme was in order. It’s a lot like the old theme, except the HTML/CSS behind is lot cleaner in my opinion. It’s always good to look back at code you wrote a year or two ago and think, “Man, that code sucks.” It means that you’ve gotten better since then.

I had a brief brainwave today about relationships and what they mean to me. The last part of Brian’s latest post made me think a little. For a while now, I’ve looked at the need to have a romantic relationship as weak. Trying to hook up with someone strikes me as lustful and as a sign of low self-esteem. Why would someone want to spend the effort needed to charm someone into a relationship?

I can only see through my own eyes. If I were to try my best to woo a girl into a relationship, it would be for bad reasons. I feel comfortable enough with myself that I don’t feel as much of a need to be intimate with someone of the opposite sex. And I understand that it’s supposed to “just happen” or whatever, and that may or may not have happened to my married/soon-to-be-married friends or not. But I guess I looked down on it to a certain extent.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m secretly bitter that all my friends are getting married or whatever. Well, actually there is no secret. I am sort of bitter about it. When I examined myself a little though, I realized that maybe my sometimes strong and powerful need for close friends isn’t really all that different from someone else’s need to have someone to hold hands with.

I’ve always struggled with people doing things which I would feel bad/guilty/ashamed about doing. It’s sometimes hard for me to comprehend that what might be wrong for me to do might be perfectly fine for someone else. Maybe it’s just a matter of timing. Do I want to get married someday? Yes. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it comes down to the instinctive need to continue the human species. Maybe it’s just that I don’t really care either way, and if it happens I’ll go along with it. Maybe it’s just because I want to be “normal” and to fit in with all my married friends so I can feel better about myself.

Probably the most driving thing is the need to love and be loved. I feel that the best way for me to do that is through friendship. Maybe that’s just because I haven’t found the person out there that completes me in a way that fulfills that need completely. I’m a little bitter maybe because my friends who have that need fulfilled by their girlfriend/wife need less from me than they used to.

The older I get and the more intricate my relationships with people become, I realize that it’s really, really hard to blame someone completely for something. It’s almost always also (at least) partly my “fault” (for want of a better word). That sucks, because it means that I have to look inside myself to see what needs to be changed. That’s how growth happens, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. The alternative sucks even more, however, as I’ve discovered.

At some point I have to stop blaming someone else. Sometimes, it’s easier to try deal with a problem completely on my own rather than have the guts to confront someone about something. But, that’s a different issue.

I always seem to write about this stuff after weddings. Well, get used to it, since there’s way more weddings to labor through in the near future, heh. I told my co-worker that maybe after all of these damn weddings I will have learned some sort of lesson that God wants me to learn. I’ll either have learned it or become that much more bitter.

As a great man once said, “Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.” It’s easy to blurt out feelings and hope it makes things all better. Sometimes it only makes things worse. But, as they say, sometimes things have to get worse before they get better.

In happier news, the guy who I wanted to win this season of Survivor ended up winning. I’ve always been a bit fond of physics teachers. My high school and college physics teachers were pretty awesome.

The thing that blows me away about marriage is the whole “freely giving” thing. Freely giving yourself to someone else. I have a history of doing this and getting my heart broken. I think most of the time, people have done it without knowing it and not on purpose.

The first time I remember really being hurt was by my youth pastor. I looked up to him probably more than anyone in my life at the time, and then one day, he told us he was leaving. Just like that. Leaving. It broke my heart.

Then there was the debacle of my relationship with Emily. Due to poor timing and very poor communication and misunderstandings, it left me in shambles.

More recently it has happened with my friends. I’ve written all about this many times. I think this weekend I realized how much I’ve hardened my heart to protect myself.

On the trip back I was thinking about this topic, and it made me uncomfortably anxious. I found myself feeling bitter and angry. Why does it seem sometimes that all of my friends have someone to rely on, while whenever I’ve relied on someone, my heart ends up being broken?

It would be selfish and naive to the point of stupidity to say that I’m the only one in my group of friends who has dealt with these feelings of abandonment and loneliness. But I just wonder when my time will be to find someone, you know? When I’m with Matt’s family, I see such a willingness to love and welcome people, and it unfreezes me a little bit. When I have to leave them, my feelings callous over again.

I watch Matt’s niece, Ivy, running around. She runs up to everyone. She’s so happy all the time and is never cautious about “talking” to someone new. Sometimes I wish I could be like that again.

Once after high school, I went to a pentecostal church that some people I know went to. This was during the period when I was pretty severely depressed. I generally dislike pentecostal services because there is so much show. It feels so fake. But, at this service, something special happened. There was an altar call, and I went up. I was bawling. Someone came up to me and said something like, “God knows that you are suffering. All you have to do is ask, and He’ll help you.” It was one of those rare times in my life that I felt like God directly spoke to me. So I prayed.

“God, I really need a friend.”

I’ve always felt the intense need to love and be loved. To connect with someone. I know it’s unfair of me to say things like, “I felt abandoned”, because I know there are people that love and care about me. But sometimes, I feel so intensely lonely.

Maybe God wired me this way so that I would someday have a close relationship with him, since it seems apparent to me that sometimes, no one will be there for me to provide what I need except for God. In fact, I did used to be close with God back in high school. But that relationship was poisoned with legalism.

Incidentally, God did give me that friend I asked for.

After the rehearsal, we had dinner. It was an emotional experience. Matt’s brother-in-law gave the toast, telling the story of how Matt and Cat started dating. Cat’s sister, Kara, also told her bit. Then it snowballed a bit to everyone opening up about their feelings towards Matt and Cat. It was a very powerful time.

Saturday started early with breakfast, which was succeeded by the reception preparation. We set up chairs and rinsed fruits and veggies and what not. After a bit more frisbee, we ate lunch and set up a bit more. It was time to put on tuxes a lot sooner than I expected. We dressed and took pictures and then drove to the church.

After we got there, there were more pictures, and finally it was time for things to get going. The groomsmen ushered in the bridesmaids, and we watched Cat walk down the isle. She was beautiful. Dave gave the sermon and what not, and I threatened to cry, but held it back. After the exchange of rings, Matt’s sisters and Stuffy performed a hymn. That’s what did it to me. I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore after that.

When they were pronounced, we all happily recessed and greeted people as they walked out. After a while we went to the reception. Now, I usually hate receptions. I complained a lot to various people for the few days beforehand in anticipation of it sucking. But, lo and behold, I had a blast. I even danced.

Whenever I’m here with Matt’s family, I can’t help but feel God’s blessing rubbing off them onto me. His family is amazingly blessed, and they’re just getting more blessed as time goes by. They’ve touched my life more than they know.

Back during the rehearsal dinner, I did a lot of thinking. People told stories about Matt and Cat, and I realized how special they are and how special their relationship is. I couldn’t help thinking about my own life and felt myself wanting to be special, too. There’s only a few times in life when you really find out what you mean to people and what they mean to you. This was one of those times for Matt and Catherine. I caught myself wondering what people would say about me if I had been the one up there getting married.

During this weekend I discovered how much my relationship with both of them means to me. Matt and I have been friends since college, and even though I knew Catherine then, it’s only been in the past couple of years that I’ve gotten to know her. It’s really hard to put into words how much friendship means. They’ve become a big part of my life, and I love them both.

It’s been an emotional couple of days. It was a great wedding and a great reception. It was a time for friends and family. I’m truly grateful to have been a part of it. And I actually had a good time.

Tomorrow we head out early after breakfast. My knee is still bothering me. I might have to go get it checked out if it doesn’t improve in a week or two.

Here’s the thing. I’m not actively looking for a girlfriend. If someone came along and it worked out, great. If not, that’s okay, too. So, I rely on my friends maybe more than people who have girlfriends/boyfriends. I have friends that I’ve connected with in a deep way through college. I’ve lived with them for years, and we’ve gone through a lot together.

So when a friend of mine I’ve known for years suddenly starts dating someone and spending all their time with that person, I take that personally. My friend, who I know well and who knows me well, chose someone (whom they might not really even know that well) over me. And that hurts my feelings. And it continues to hurt my feelings.

Well, I’m finally trying to change my way of thinking so I don’t get my feelings hurt so much. I have to, because if I don’t, I will suffer and so will my friendships. And they have suffered. One of which (by far the worst by several orders of magnitude) hasn’t ever recovered.

It’s taken at least three iterations of this for me to understand. Okay, obviously they get something from a girlfriend that they can’t get from their guy friends. Granted. If it wasn’t that way I would worry. So I finally understand that it’s not personal on their part. I take things too personally. Maybe it’s hard for me to comprehend because I’m just not really that interested in having a girlfriend right now.

Now that I understand, I don’t think my feelings will get hurt as much. But it still hurts sometimes. Last night I had the beginnings of a mini-anxiety attack about it until I controlled myself and made myself understand that it wasn’t personal. I don’t think my subconscious believes me yet.

I think you’re the only one that can teach you to love or hate yourself. You take queues from how people treat you, but really, you decide whether or not they’re correct about their opinion of you (or at least what you think their opinion of you is).

A couple weeks ago I had somewhat of a revelation. I was hanging out with some friends, which included mixed company. Usually if I like a girl at all who is single, and there exists any possibility of dating, there is immediately some idea of competition that enters my mind. It’s me against the other single guys. Then I can’t be completely myself because I’m worried about one-upping people. So it was business as usual that night, and then I thought, “This is stupid.” Who gives a flying !@#%?

The rest of the night I felt (almost) as comfortable as if I was just out with the guys. It was kind of liberating. So from now on whenever I’m in those situations, I try to keep that in mind.

Tonight we hung out at Catherine’s and Natalie’s place, playing games and such. On the way back I started thinking about all this, and I remembered a conversation I had with my old roommate Yves about relationships back in my first year at Belmont. He said something along the lines of, “If you ask a girl out, and she turns you down, no big deal. It’s not personal. Well, actually it is personal, but that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you.” Of course, she might think there really is something wrong with you, or she would have said yes. Or maybe there’s another reason. Who can know?

The point is that it doesn’t matter what someone thinks of you, just as long as you think well of yourself. I don’t need approval from other people to like myself. At least, that’s what I have to keep trying to remember.

All that leads to the question, “If I’m comfortable with myself, why date anyone?” That’s a whole other issue. =) I’d like to think that the need to date would come from meeting someone so awesome that you don’t want to be apart from them rather than needing someone else to be close to all the time to fill some insecurity.

Run-on sentences FTW.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy doing those things. It’s just that it’s so damn predictable. I don’t have time for myself anymore.

Nate’s girlfriend is over so often. It’s almost the complete opposite of the situation with Matt. This is the second time I’ve dealt with this in four months. Matt and I made amends right when I moved out a couple months ago, only so I could move in with another friend in a very similar situation. Great. Cowboy’s here, though, which means I have someone to talk to.

All of this makes me want to move out on my own sometimes. Having roommates has both advantages and disadvantages.

I wonder about the meaning of life. The older I get the more apparent it seems to me that life is only about trying to get a piece of the pie so that you can be happy. Life isn’t so complicated after all.

I used to think life was only for serving God. It was simpler when I thought that, sort of. Then again, there are things about who I was back then that were wrong.

I see couples touching and frolicking and whispering constantly in public. Sometimes I think, “I don’t want to be that way, because it would make my friends feel awkward.” What the hell do I know about it? I wonder if I’d care about my friends’ feelings if I had a girlfriend. I’d like to think that I would go to great lengths to not show a lot of affection in public. I’d like to think I’d show some moderation in how much time I spend with someone. But like I said, what the hell do I know?

I want to go to the mountains and camp by myself forever.

I remember what it feels like to be in love with someone. It was ages ago, but the memories of those emotions are still powerful. I thought about the courage I had to work up to tell her about it. I thought about the giddiness I had when we were together. But that’s long past. Now I find myself feeling very sad about it all.

It’s been so long since I’ve felt that way. I’ve become so numb to those feelings; I haven’t felt them in so long. The other day Cowboy was talking to me about a girl he met that he liked, and that she might be visiting him soon. I said, “That’s great, man,” but inside, I was numb about it. I feel indifferent. Someone I know meets someone they like that likes them back, great. Good for them.

Sometimes when I’m sitting with some people and they’re having a conversation, I think to myself, “Man, this conversation is so pointless.” I watch how they act. Sometimes they tell a joke or say something randomly, but loud enough that everyone can hear. Then they look around to see if anyone laughed. Sometimes they’ll make fun of someone who isn’t there, but then on a different day and the person they made fun of is around, they’ll be as polite to them as ever. I like when people try to sound like they’re experts on some topic, but really what they’re saying is just common sense. Why not just be quiet? Why say something when you should just think about it quietly? Let someone else talk for a change.

And then I realize that I’m thinking all this, and I feel guilty and ashamed. These people are my friends. I’m no better than any of them. I’m no better than anyone. I shouldn’t need to be better than anyone. I should be me, and that should be good enough.

These are the battles that go on inside my mind. And I feel like the only way to voice what’s happening is to write about it. I really feel like it’s not fair sometimes. I think about things, and sometimes those thoughts lead me to think that I’m better than someone else, and then I punish myself in my mind for thinking that I’m better than someone else. It’s really fucking hard sometimes.

Sometimes I’ll vent angrily, and then the next day I’ll feel guilty about it. I’ve deleted more than a handful of journal entries because of that. Then I calm down and try to find the root of my anger, and it’s almost always a self-esteem issue. I tell myself that I’m special the way I am, that I deserve to live as much as anyone else does, and that I feel good enough about myself that I don’t need to put down others. Eventually I calm down and go back to my neutral self, and the cycle starts again.

Frisbee pick-up later. Hopefully I can exercise some of this frustration out of me.