Envy, not so much.  And envy can be turned into ambition, with a little effort. Covet your neighbor’s new widescreen TV?  Work a little harder, save a little harder, and it can be yours.

But then, jealousy and envy are separated by a fine line, at least from my current point of view.  I’m thinking of jealousy in relationships, the kind that starts fights or works as a deal breaker.  The kind that can very easily find the significant other transformed not into a person who you are lucky to have by your side because they choose to be there, with you, but instead into a possession, to be had or lost.

I understand jealousy.  Too well.  And I don’t think that, under any circumstance, it arises from a healthy place.  Either you’ve been taught and conditioned to think of a lover as a thing instead of a person, or you’re not getting enough attention from your partner (and others are getting more), or you’ve got a co-dependent personality.

In my case, I think a lot of it is scars that I bear from previous relationships, and a fair touch of codependency that I picked up from my family and lived with unknowingly for a lot of my life. I only a few years back recognized that I have my share of those traits, and made a concerted effort to try and work through and past them.  I’m sure I’m not entirely healthy, but I think I’m also not as healed as I would like to think I am, as far as past experience is concerned.

In so many cases, to me, jealousy is laughable to me. Those feelings of anger, or hurt, or whatever, are so often misdirected at someone who has no choice in or control over the matter.  We all know someone who has been berated or dumped, even beaten, because some third party has a crush on them, and their boy- or girlfriend or wife or husband can’t handle that.   I find that amusing (in a sad and pathetic sort of way) — if you stop and think for five minutes, won’t you realize that your anger or insecurity is so haplessly misdirected?  Or will you?

Maybe I give my fellow shitbag human beings too much credit.

All of the anger and harsh words that come from jealousy, though, really just stem from fear.  Fear that you’re not good enough for the other person.  Fear that they’re with you but looking for someone better.  Fear that you’re not treating them well enough and so they need to find their human validation elsewhere.

Just like all bullies.

I’ve tried to eliminate jealousy from my life.  I’ve had such a battle with it in the past that it could have easily torn Melissa and I apart before we ever got started.  Fortunate side-effect of self-therapy for bipolar disorder #6: you learn to recognize the irrational thoughts and behaviors in your life, and to maybe take a few moments before acting to let your rational mind take the reins again. I think that’s how I’ve learned to spot the difference between a third party who is totally out of mine and my significant other’s control, and the sort of valid and rational jeaousy (which I think is better described as behavior that signals a bad or unhealthy (for me, at least) relationship.

I’m a flirtatious person.  Always have been. I used to think that I needed a woman with a strong sense of self, one that could deal with that, because I’m not going to change to fit into someone else’s idea of what I should be.   And to some extent, that’s true; I can’t spend all my energy reinforcing someone’s self-image because that sense is barely functional.  But I now recognize an important addition to what I need: making sure that there is balance.  Pointing out that other women are attractive is fine; love doesn’t make you blind, and I think there’s a healthy release in being able to discuss that with your partner.  But I also think that you have to make sure that your partner hears you say nice things about him or her — that you are as complimentary of them as you are of total strangers.

We have some need of validation – welcome to the human race.  It’s nice to be told that you are handsome, or intelligent, or witty, or (perhaps best of all) that you make someone else feel wonderful and attractive and special.  If all you hear is how hot or great other people are — and never how good you are — it can create a hole.  And I’ve been guilty of that in the past, without realizing it; I’m fortunate to have seen it, so that I can be more aware and careful to avoid that.

The worst part of jealousy in a relationship is trying to discuss it with your S.O.  Like any other uncomfortable topic, it can turn so quickly into a web of lies and deceit and defensiveness. But feelings of jealousy, or of not getting enough attention, need to be communicated — until you meet that special someone with the ability to read minds, if you can’t get those feelings out in the open, then they never go away.

Trust me.  Been there, done it, burned the t-shirt and dined on the ashes.

But — and I warned you this was coming, darlin’ —  when you meet someone that is open and receptive to talking about those things with you, hold on to them with all your strength. I’ve been a hundreds of failed relationships, both romantic and friendly, and far too many fell apart because of issues of communication. Sometimes the most important things to remain open and utterly, painfully honest about are also the most difficult.  And in Red, I’ve found someone who is both honest with me and encourages and understands my honesty about the same. Of all the things that are beautiful and special about her — her eyes, her laugh, her compassion, her quirks, even her love of loud angry music — perhaps the most important to me is her openness, her honesty, her willingness to communicate. I’ve had friends of both hers and mine comment on the connection that she and I have, and I think the fact that that connection is so strong and natural and easy is due to her openness and acceptance and encouragement of mine.

I’m not trying to call her out, but Red is easily one of the most special people I’ve ever met, based purely on that trait.
Remove the communication, decide that you can handle the lack of attention or wishing you had more, and jealousy becomes even more like leprosy, eating you alive, slowly, only from the inside out.

And you have to remember that those feelings, the jealousy, is good, at least in one sense: it means that your significant other, new or old, is still worth holding onto and fighting for.

Carl tells me that this song reminds her of me, and how I see Red… I’ve always wondered how i look from the outside. I just assumed “weird”:

Then she appeared, the first photograph on Fox Talbots gel
I was a little frightened
Flying with my senses heightened
Cherubim cheered
Then she appeared

Then she appeared, as the giggling crew of Marie Celeste
Then she appeared, pale Atlantis rising out of the west
I was a little dazzled
Catherine wheeled and senses frazzled
Know it sounds weird
Then she appeared

And the sun which formally shone
In the clearest summer sky
Suddenly just changed address
Now shines from her blue eyes
Then she appeared, brittle shooting star that dropped in my lap
Then she appeared, dressed in tricolour and phrygian cap
I was a little troubled
Hookah with my senses bubbled
All Edward leared
Then she appeared

And the moon which formally shone
On the marbled midnight mile
Suddenly just packed its bags
Now shines from her bright smile
Then she appeared
Out of nowhere
-Then She Appeared, XTC

I wish that I could say that it feels like a whole lot of threads of my life are starting to converge on a point, a singularity in the not-so-distant future.  That’s what I really want — for the past few years of my life to suddenly fall into place, to start making sense in a sudden explosion of knowledge and clarity.  I want the desire to move and the band and the long stretch of bachelorhood and everything else to fall together where they belong in the jigsaw puzzle that has been taking up coffee table space for way too long.

But that’s not the way it works, unfortuantely.  Some threads are starting to merge —  Jonas emails me to say that he’s moving to Chicago at the end of May, for instance.  But then other, newer threads seem to throw a wrench into everything.

My life has become a 24/7 version of LOST, without the hot actors and with not quite as much intrigue. Every week, another tantalizing hint, but then you realize that the hint is only a prelude to the introduction of a new mystery.  And pretty soon, things are so tangled that you’re in Twin Peaks / X-Files territory.  No matter what they do, they can’t possibly explain all that needs to be explained and keep it interesting at the same time.

So that’s life when you refuse to walk the path of the settled, the road into Suburbia.  I can accept that and even deal with it.  But here’s where my weakness for movies comes in, because it would be nice if everything in my life were cinematic.  I could have entrance music that announced my coming everywhere I went. I would always get the girl, and put the bad guy down.   And everything would make sense at the end, even if it took someone spouting off obviously constructed exposition to explain it to me.

It’s supposed to get really bad here in Birmingham shortly — thunder, lightning, and all the rest.  I’m not worried though, because I’m choosing to see this as an opportunity for all the loose soil and flotsam to be washed away, and maybe after 24 hours of rough sailing and scared animals, everything will be clean and shiny, and it’ll be easier to put some of this together.

So Bush approved the naming of names via Cheney, eh?  Does anyone imagine that anything will actually come of this?

Spiff, you owe me bet money from the whole thing about Katrina or wiretapping or whatever we were taking about last month.

Want to know why I’m not political?  Bush and his administration have taken us to war under false pretense, effectively plunging a country into chaos with (from all that I’ve read) absolutely no long term plans.  He’s ignored warnings of the results of natural disasters, and his cronyism led to even worse results than should have been expected in the short and long terms. He’s decided that rules don’t necessarily apply to him and decided to wiretap at will.  And now, evidence erupts that he may have had a hand in ruining the career of a woman just because her husband fought him by presenting factual evidence that ran counter to his goals.  Oh, and lied to the American people about firing anyone with any knowledge of White House leaks.

Clinton, on the other hand, got a blow job and lied about it.

Guess who had impeachment proceedings brought against them, and who didn’t?  And won’t?

I suspect at this point that Bush could execute an abortion doctor on live network television, and ten days later, not only would he still be in office, but no one would be taking about it.

And that’s what pisses me off — not that congress is dragging it’s feet on holding Bush and Rove and Cheney and all the other old Boys’ Club members accountable; but that rather, the people of this country aren’t doing so.

Is this really what the majority of the country wants? An utter lack of accountability? Laws that apply only when they’re not in your way?  Hiring people to do jobs that they’re helplessly unqualified to do because they’re old friends or made contributions to your campaign?

This is you all that I’m talking to.  This is cool with you?

I mean, hey, majority rules.  If this is what 51% want, then it’s fair, and saying any differently is sour grapes on my part. But I just want to know the rules before I start playing the game.  Unless those change, too.

How much longer until we start to see after-effects from the way our current dictatorship is treating the people with total disrespect?  I’m going on record and saying at least November; probably more like November of 2008.  Unless we manage to piss off enough of the rest of the world, and then it just won’t matter at all.

Politicians sicken me.  But maybe even moreso are the people that support them.

Jesus, am I really about to quote Tom Petty? Publicly? Really?

Oh, god, someone stop me. Cause I can’t stop myself:

Well yeah I might have chased a couple of women around
All it ever got me was down
Then there were those that made me feel good
But never as good as I feel right now
Baby you’re the only one that’s ever known how
To make me wanna live like I wanna live now

Shit yeah, I went there.

I’ve spent my life doing things the wrong way. That’s what I’m reminded continously, though. I can’t be thirty four and still acting like this, staying up until all hours of the morning, dressing like I do, growing out my hair and never really knowing what color it was originally.Maybe I’m not wrong, though. Maybe it’s the rest of you that are. Everyone used to think that Galileo was wrong and that everything else revolved around the Earth. People used to think that the Earth was flat. I know people — I can name names, bitches — that thought the second Star Wars trilogy would be worth a damn.

But maybe we’re both right. Is it possible that some people are meant to live “normal” lives, and some of us aren’t? That you can wear your suit and go to work at 8 AM and settle for far less than you ever dreamed of, and that’s okay — but that I can wear whatever grabs my eye that morning, and I can keep looking for my life’s pursuit, and I can refuse to be content with anything less than what I’ve always hoped for? And maybe we can both be okay?

Sure, that’s possible. I think it’s true, even better. You live your way, I’ll live mine, and we can shoot quizzical looks at each other when we think the other is crazy for living that way.

One thing that I do “wrong” and always have is dive into things headfirst. And I know the problems with that. I’ve documented them here. But you know what? By doing so, I’ve lived. I mean, really lived. It’s hedonistic, fine. But I feel that I’ve milked every moment from every situation I’ve been in, and you’ll never catch me saying that I wish that I had pushed things a little farther, or had a little more time so that I could get around to enjoying a moment for all it had.

Yes, I’m talking about relationships. And I’m to this day being criticised in some quarters by people who tell me that I shouldn’t be jumping in wholeheartedly as I am wont to do. I know that some people are concerned for my feelings, and I know that other people see this behavior as cheapening my feelings, making them somewhat or somehow less than I think they are.We’re all entitled to our opinions. But mine are right. So there.

At the same time, I’m fascinated in a very academic way by the whole dating thing. I don’t get it. I don’t understand how you can’t want to spend every waking moment with someone that you’re interested in, how you can not be tempted to blow off work or prior engagements or sleep to be with that someone who has caught your eyes.Or maybe you all do want this, and I just have the self-discipline of a three year old; I’m not discounting that idea, either.

But me, I can’t date. I’m never interested in multiple people, and I can’t imagine investing time and energy across more than one woman. Of course, I’m extremely picky, and I think (mostly) I can spot immediately if I’m interested in you on more than a physical level, so it’s easy to rule most women out without even a single date.

That, and I have the self-discipline of a three-year-old. Impulse control is not one of my strengths. If I’m interested in spending all my time with a new romance, I will, as my long-time friends will probably bitterly attest. But that’s me. Do it goes.

There’s this woman; I’ll call her Red, for some semblance of anonymity on her part. You’ve read her name here, and you might have seen her around. She’s a beautiful spirit, and a beautiful creature. She’s got a lot of spirit, a lot of quirks, and a lot to offer the world. She’s also extraordinarily appreciative; she recognizes the little things and shows it, and the big things too. I didn’t even realize how important a lot of things were to me, how hard I’ve been searching for certain qualities in a woman, until I spent some time with her.

Who knows where it’s going? It’s going forward, where it will; the universe unfolds as it should. But I have faith that it’s going in the direction that I hope it will. She says that she’s like me, that she’s a headfirst diver, but that she wants to take things slow. And she has good and valid reasons for wanting to do so.

And it’s not easy; this is opposite of what I know, of what I’ve always known.I’m willing to chance things, though, to risk that I may invest my heart and soul to an uncertain wind, because she’s unflinchingly honest and, bless her heart, communicative. She’s been up front about everything, and equally important, understanding of my insecurities and emotional muscle memory. Those are rare qualities in the humans that I meet everyday, and they mean the world to me.

As hard as it is for me, given that I’ve known differently for so long, I would wait for her as long as I have to, becuase I think the good things are worth waiting for. Is this some sort of message from the universe? God, all that stuff I say about the universe could be total blather; it’s the closest I come to faith in a higher power, but I have no idea, really. But maybe, just maybe, this is my time to learn that maybe patience isn’t a wasted virtue, that maybe there’s a reward for waiting instead of pain.

I wait, because she’s worth waiting for. And even if it all falls apart, I’ve spent as much time as I could with a person who is one of the best people I’ve ever known, and loved every moment so far.

Option anxiety?  Nope.  I’m not a woman getting ready to go out for a night on the town with her BFFs, standing in front of a closet bigger than my office and agonizing over which boots will match the new earrings she bought that afternoon.  Nor, to be fair to women everywhere, am I myself standing in front of the DVD shelf at Best Buy trying to narrow down my purchasing options.

No, in the spirit of the crossover with Spiff, I’m referring to the choice of perspective on the world. I agree completely with him — that there is no good or bad until we decide that it is.  And you can, with the right effort, decide to shift your view, as I’ve said here many times.  Not only here, actually, but to other friends a lot lately.

Those who can, do.  Those who can’t, blog.

Detached, I can see the choices.  They’re right in front of me.  There’s a lot of stuff in my life that it’s easy to view as good: I’m clothed, housed, fed (if I could remember to eat, that is), with a nice car, nice enough stuff.  I’ve got lots of friends and plenty of opportunities for making money.  The potential for romance is out there, nearby, at least close enough that I can pretend for a little while (even if I am misinterpretting signals, for which I have a knack).  I’m talented and smart and blah.

But on the glass half-empty side, it’s been a long few weeks.  I’m overloading myself, which is not unusual, only this time I may have found my envelope and snapped the boundaries.  I just spent way too much money getting that nice car repaired (just three months after purchasing it, I might add).  I am so busy that I continually — moreso than usual — forget to eat, and I’m getting even less sleep than usual.  My chosen career sucks, but in order to keep fed and housed, I don’t have a lot of other options at the moment. My house is a wreck, and for someone as borderline anal retentive as I am, that just adds to the stress.
I’m at least keeping myself from sinking into the familiar depths of funk by focusing on the former and doing my best to push the latter from my head.  There’s that.  Knowing that you’re bipolar doesn’t fix things, but it does make it easier to cope.

But I’m tired, honestly.  Tired of struggling, and tired of my ideas and plans to lessen the struggle backfiring on me.  I begin to understand more and more the people that withdraw from the world and become hermits in the woods, sending scathing rants scrawled on unlined paper to their local newspapers, thinking anyone gives a shit about how they feel about the decline of their once beautiful United States, surrounded by animals that they talk to by name with an earnest sincerity that would spook the boldest of therapists.

I want to push all this out of my head, not only because it’s a waste of perfectly good mental and emotional energy, but because I fear that I will miss out on too many of the small moments that I have faith are headed my way.

What I wouldn’t give to trade this for a simple case of option anxiety.

This line of thinking is largely a response to Spiff’s wonderings today, but that’s largely because it’s one of those puzzle pieces that has fascinated me for a very long time, one that I keep coming back to (as does Spiff). I would summarize, but I assume you can read, so go. I’ll wait…

…

Back?  Okay, good.  I’m not sure if you read the comments, but here was my response:

“Some moments do “just happen” totally independent of your control. You have to learn to recognize them — better, to intuit them, so that you can feel them coming and better steel yourself to appreciate them.

In fact, having said that, the best moments – the ones that most of us, you and I especially, live for — happen outside of our ability to control or capture. Otherwise, we’d be making those moments all the time, and then they wouldn’t be so special.”

To which he responded, via email:

“Yes, moments happen not only as a result of our actions, but others’ as well. But do we not choose where we are, and when we are there? It’s like the tree question: Does it make a sound if no one is there to here it? Does a moment occur if we don’t experience it? If you’re not paying attention, it’s not a moment. And I don’t mean those life-changing, euphoric moments either. If we choose them to be, everything we experience – even something as simple as typing these words on the computer – can be a moment from which we can learn, which we can enjoy, and so on. In some ways it’s a very microscopic view, but in others, it’s grand and sweeping.”

(And this is where the conversation will turn to a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle, and I will at some point walk away because all the tangents are tangled and convoluted. But since this is an intercompany blog crossover — the first of its kind, maybe? — I’m hoping that Richard might pick up a few threads and either run with them or argue with me, helping me to clarify my own thoughts. And any of you that wish to join, leave me a comment if you do; I’ll make sure that we start including you in the circle of talking.)

It sounds as though Spiff and I are sitting on opposite sides of the table here,  but I don’t think we disagree at all. I’m not saying these mystical moments in life are out of our hands; I’m also not saying that they are.  Rather, I think that’s maybe reducing the concept down to a binary line of examination, which is a bad idea.  There are many contributing factors in the experiencing of moments: where and why and when and how you have chosen to be.  What your intentions are going ahead a week or two weeks. What else and who else are in the same environment.  How receptive you are to the situation, and how perceptive. How receptive other people are. Whether that butterfly you let go in Nebraska last week has made it to New Zealand yet.

Try making one of those moments — and I’m talking about the big, life-changing ones that you remember forever.  It’s like starting from a fresh chess board and trying to accurately predict what the board will look like 53 moves from now against a player you’ve never seen before.  Not impossible — nothing is, really — but highly unlikely, at best.

Next: does a moment occur if we don’t experience it?  Yep.  I can look back and realize how many I missed by being too distracted by fear.  Not to mention that you’re assuming that moments are defined by us, and are purely perspective based. I think I agree there.  But maybe not; maybe these moments are universal, and we simply choose to envelope ourselves in them or not.

My last bit: We are the definers of the big moments.  Those moments — for me, a first kiss, or winning the Sidewrite competition, or getting lost in the solo of a song — are chosen by us, not necessarily consciously, and our definitions of big shift from day to day, depending on our tastes, our desires, our needs, and our environments.  The small moments, if you choose to take a Zen approach, can be just as joyous, possibly as overwhelming (though I think that requires a need for such a feeling, alongside the discipline to recognize it).  But then, you’re getting back to my view that nothing is good or bad until we as individuals define it as such.

It’s all perspective.  But what is the path to adjusting your perspective to allowing the small moments to be huge?  Or even to recognizing the rarity of the big moments, such that you don’t miss out on them through meaningless and trivial distraction?

Ah, questions for the ages.

For thirty years where have I been?
Eyes open but not getting through to me.
-Dream Theater, “Octavarium”

I wrote a little while ago about the struggles that I’ve had to confirm and retain my identity in the face of societal expectations. It’s something that I’ve wrestled with all my life — coming to terms with the fact that the things that I was told all my life that I should do, the things that I should work towards, the things that I should enjoy and find fulfilling; coming to terms with the fact that these things don’t mesh with the things that I want.

This is not something that I’ve just started dealing with, which may explain my frustration with the topic. I’ve been fighting with my parents’ ideals and goals, and to some extent, greater society on the whole, since I was in my teens. I wanted to be a musician; I should have been an engineer, or a lawyer, or a computer scientist, because those things pay good money (especially working with computers), which will allow me to have a family and provide and blahblahblahblah. And I never was too good at wearing the things that I was supposed to wear, or listening to what everyone else did, or thinking or saying things that went along with the mainstream.

I’ve learned over time that being someone outside the norm is a wonderful thing. There are all sorts of benefits – you’re more noticeable, more memorable. You think differently than most, and so your outside-the-box contributions are often in demand. And you don’t feel pressure like most do, if you learn to accept the place that you’ve put yourself; there’s no keeping up with the Joneses. Occasionally, something you do comes into vogue, and you’re a trendsetter for a little while.

But it’s not easy. Not always, at least. My brain, for a long time, has to varying extents continued to choose between what I want and what people want for me, often getting the two catalogued into the wrong category.

Kasey held up a mirror to me today, though, and while I am perfectly aware of what’s going on in my head — introspection ain’t pretty but it sure is fun! — it was a good reality check for someone else to slap me in the face with my own advice. After all, if I can’t follow it, who can? And who would, for that matter?
Lately I’ve come back to sorting through what’s me and what’s the brainwashing (poor choice of word, though not completely) I’ve picked up all my life. That’s tough, figuring out what you really want, especially when you’ve trained yourself to second guess and question every answer. But you have to force yourself through these conversations with all the voices, to figure out where you are, where you want to go, and how you should best get there. Not to mention figuring out which voices are yours and which are your families’, friends’, whatever. And which ones just need a little more alcohol, because you’ve got to sleep sometime, damn it.

The point of all this, though, is not that I’m struggling with my identity. We all do that (right?). I’ve got a ways to go to get all this figured out, and I’m okay with that.

This is more of a public thanks, to Kasey, specifically, for accepting me as I am and letting me know that she does. But also to Wade, and James and Mandy and Katie and Mom and Dad and so many others who have (mostly) not given me grief about my choices and decisions, for realizing it’s my life and I am the only one who can live it (at least, where the parents are concerned, for the past decade or so). It’s important when reestablishing who you are to have people behind you that will support you, especially if you are making unconventional changes in your life, or when you’re trying to get back to an unconventional or unpopular state.

Those who spend their lives with their well-being dependent on making other people happy, on living up to the expectations, of others, are destined to be miserable. Doing your own thing doesn’t guarantee you happiness, but it’s a much better path to follow than the alternative, I suggest. Though again, I watch Wonder Showzen and laugh like there’s no tomorrow, so my advice might be better off on a bar napkin at Bailey’s on a Saturday night.

If you have someone in your life who does eccentric or quirky or strange things, and those things don’t hurt you and don’t risk hurting the other person, why not support them? Just because you don’t like tattoos or long hair, or blue jeans and polo shirts, or country music or FRIENDS, why not tell them that it’s great that they do? Or just shut up about it, because do you really want them doing exactly what you do?

They have their own lives to lead, as do you. If you’re going to be travelling the same path for a while, it might be best for you to be ready to support them, as you hope they will be ready for you to do.

Once you’ve accepted that you’re ultimately on your own in life, and demanded that people accept your for who you are — not just select bits and pieces that fit comfortably in with their ideal, but all of you, shadows and dirt included — it makes living happily and freely a much easier process.

I do my best to live my actions and speak my words in such a way that I will never regret any of them.

If nothing else, no one will ever have power over me by threatening to reveal a secret that I hold. Make that threat, if you want, but go ahead and hand me the phone so that I can dial your intended caller for you.

When Sir Walter Scott said “What a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive” (Marmion) (not Shakespeare — there’s your trivia for the day), I think he was talking about the mess you find yourself in when you lie, and how it draws you in deeper the more you try to untangle yourself from it. I could be wrong; I’m functionally illiterate, and obscure Scottish novels are never published with pictures.

But I think that there are many forms of lying, and hiding or not revealing information is just as powerfully sticky as a blatant mistruth.

I’m not a good chess player, because the strategy comes in-game, and I’m terrible at adjusting my plans on the fly when it involves other thinking beings.  But goddamn if preparation isn’t the key to winning — or at least never having to play the fucking game.

“Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true.” –Richard Bach