Over the past couple of years I’ve had to learn to deal with my friends’ relationships the hard way. It’s taken a lot of beatings and emotional pain for me to start actually learning how to handle it.

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.

Sometimes my subconscious perks up and warns me to give myself some attention, to make myself feel special. Sometimes I do that by writing journals; other times I do that by spending time alone. Maybe I’ll do both. Usually it happens when I feel under-appreciated or left out or something. I have to stop and remind myself that I’m okay the way I am, and that there’s nothing wrong with me, etc. My counselor called this sort of technique “reprogramming” in a way: teaching yourself to love yourself, since you’ve been taught otherwise either by yourself or others.

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.

Today before lunch I was watching a show. Two people that had loved each other for a long time, but had never got together, finally did. It made me think about my past.

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.