The Return of the Emo Blog

We were an hour into a nice picnic trying to find teenage LARPers sitting on a bench overlooking trees that look like they were melting like candles when she turned to me and told me she couldn’t date me. My mind went blank and the colors of the world became more vibrant and the park was silent.

I was hurt, but I was okay. I understood where she was coming from. She had to do it. It wouldn’t have been fair to either of us if she had forced something that wasn’t true. I applaud her courage.

I walked around in a daze. I tried finding a book to take things off my mind, but every book evaporated into my thoughts and I was standing there thinking about what just happened. I guess I was in shock.

She had said she didn’t know she was going to say that when she showed up to the park to picnic with me. She told me I was handsome, funny, smart, nice, but she just couldn’t date me. I’m a great guy, but great doesn’t cut it.

This morning I went to therapy. I was going to casually mention what had happened. I was proud at how I reacted and how I handled myself, and if I had to do it again, I wouldn’t have done it any different. It was going to be this quick check in before getting into the other stuff, but the minute I started talking, I started balling.

Goddamn it.

I’m adopted. My therapist thinks that is a big deal. I have always felt it wasn’t. A great family adopted me, so why would something I know nothing about be more of a big deal than something I know a great deal about? My therapist thinks that it has had a larger impact on my psyche than anything else.

I was sitting in my chair crying and saying I’m tired of being alone. I’m tired of being almost good enough for people, but they can’t be with me. I cried that I just want to find someone who’ll love me, be my home, someone I can belong to.

The crushing truth is that being adopted is a fucking big deal. It hinders me in my relationships and whom I choose to be in relationships with. I never feel like I belong and I feel homeless.

I feel like my genesis is like Superman’s, but instead of crashing to earth and discovering super powers, I come crashing to earth and my powers have been taken from me.

And when someone doesn’t want to be with me anymore I have been abandoned.

And that is why I was in a therapist’s office balling my eyes out this morning. That is why I didn’t sleep last night and why I did a lot of thinking. That is why I just don’t understand anything.

I still feel like I’m walking away from this last year and I still see the trails of smoke from the scorched earth of cancer, losing my job and my relationship. I see my scars and feel my body being different. I thought those trails of smoke were miles behind me, but now I see it is everywhere I step.

I’m mad. I spent years trying to be a good person. I spent years working on being a nice person. I spent years trying to automatically do the right thing instead of having to call someone to find out if what I’m doing is right or wrong. I’m mad because it seems like all that work has just left me in a place of perpetual loneliness and fear, a place that allows me to easily get hurt if I try to become intimate and honest. It makes a man look back to the days of darkness and treachery with longing.

I’m mad because I worked hard for something and I’m not getting it. I guess the thing to do is accept what I am and just stop trying to make something happen that won’t happen. I’m not meant for partnership.

Some people might look at me and tell me I’m still young, but I spent my teenage years almost dying – sometimes actually dying, and this last year almost dying from disease, so I don’t see this long life in front of me. I see more behind me than in front of me.

I’m in total self-pity. I think after playing it cool for years I get a fucking turn at it since I watch and listen a lot of you get away with it with impunity. I am in total fuck it mode. I’m mad and sad at the same time. I’m depressed and lonely. I am fucking ungrateful as fuck.

Then I had to stand in the sunlight and wait for a bus to take me to work. It is sunny and girls are walking around wearing pretty outfits by beautiful flowers. I’m brooding under the bus stop shelter listening to sad music composed by Henryk Gorecki. I’m praying to dead myths to make it rain, but my prayers fall on deaf ears. It must be beautiful today!

So I went to work and faked being a happy person. My coworkers appreciated my humor, but humor is just hiding my pain. I tried looking every customer in the eye, but was so afraid they would look back and see.

I caught the bus home and was so happy that it was dark out. The air even bit a little from being a little cold. I listened to Arvo Part’s choral music and imagined falling out of the sky and burning up in the atmosphere like a shooting star. Two dudes started yelling at each other at the back of the bus. It takes one hour to get from work to home.

What I want is to find some of the armor I was taught to drop and put it back on. I want to be protected again. Walking through life raw is painful. It is how I imagine losing my skin would feel like. I want to find my old exoskeleton that helped me not be such an emo swan.

I’ll be fine. I just feel dumped on and haggard. I feel like I have run out of time and that my whole life was going to be a certain way if I didn’t change some things, so I tried changing those things, but life kept being a certain way anyways. I’ll just accept my life as it is.

Since my life went through shit this last year I almost feel entitled to a happy life. I feel like I deserve some things to go my way. That’s what I get for thinking I deserve happiness or anything for that matter.

The original post I almost put up was a lot angrier and much more emo. I guess I’m not as well as I thought.