It’s been a weird week. But luckily I have a nice weekend planned. More details on that to come and hopefully a few photos, too.
I heard Rick Astley on the 80s on 8 last night while I was doing housework. Thought about my friend. I wish something could be done about that, but I don’t even know where to start. I saw where he had gone online and blasted me out. It’s nice to know that someone you cared about and loved as a platonic friend has placed a value on you of $200. I guess I know where I stand with that. Considering that I have lost somewhere in the neighborhood of $1300 in that situation, it really speaks for itself.
I have a friend whose mother is going through the ringer with cancer and chemo. It gave me a flashback to last year when my friend Ron passed away. I was so mad at him for not trying to fight. And when I miss him, I still get mad about it sometimes. I have no right to sit in judgment of his decision because, let’s face it: until you are in that kind of pain and suffering, you don’t know what you would actually do. He waited so long to get any treatment and then by the time he did, it was like he felt that it was too late and too pointless to put up a fight. It has not been easy to come to terms with that. He was my go-to misanthrope. I could say anything in front of him and there was no judgment. I miss that. So many things have changed in my life since he passed. And I wish he could be here to see those things and to meet the new people involved.
I was having a discussion with my friend Frank earlier. Unfortunately, part of my Anxiety Demon involves sitting and spinning out a million what-ifs. And naturally, they are not good what-ifs. They are always a bunch of torture. Being in this relationship with Arsey Darcy + realizing the poppyseed of love exists = a stoking up of my anxiety. And I don’t want to do that anymore. I know you can’t control what thoughts pop into your head and you can’t control your emotions. Believe me, if I had that kind of Vulcan control, I would not be ready to feel the poppyseed this early on. I’d wait until at least the 6 month point. And I wouldn’t sit around wringing my hands about what may or may not happen 3 months, 6 months, a year, or 5 years down the line. Only God knows those things. One of the worst things about it is that it robs you of the present moment. Thinking about crap that’s happened to you in the past and crap that may or may not occur in the future distracts you from what’s going on right now. Besides being the only thing you’ve got, right now is pretty special. The past is already gone and the future is not guaranteed. Logically, I know all of that. But the Demon wants you to panic. He wants you to flip out and fuck up your life so that you don’t have to deal with the potential pain. Is it possible that Darcy could get a job transfer he can’t walk away from and he leaves me and breaks this off? Yes. It is possible that I could meet his family down the line and it be a disaster? Yes. Is it possible that he could get mowed down in traffic on his bicycle and be killed or maimed? Yes. In fact, he’s been seriously injured before. So all of these things are possible. But they aren’t guaranteed to happen. In seeing the way that he looks at me and the way he treats me, I seriously doubt that he will pick up and leave the area unceremoniously. But since I’ve been dumped unceremoniously before, I have a fear of that happening again. That was some horrible, fucked up pain. All of that happened before I started this blog. We had been talking about marriage and had even discussed dates and locations. I had looked at dresses and we’d agreed on a honeymoon destination. Then one day he walked out to smoke a cigarette, walked back in and told me this was not working for him anymore. Less than a week later, he was gone forever and I was left to wonder WTF just happened. Arsey Darcy is not that guy and I can’t and don’t want to punish him for what that jackass did to me. It’s sort of like that song: “I’m not always there when you call, but I’m always on time and I gave you my all.” We’re not always together. Sometimes he travels for business. Sometimes we spend time with other people. But he comes back. It’s not like we don’t see each other for several days and then he vanishes. So as I’m talking with Frank, he suggests that I really need to take the bull by the horns with my anxiety. And I am going to. I’ve been dreading it for a number of reasons, but it’s past time. I’m not entirely sure what to expect but I think getting a handle on how to redirect away from worries and negative thoughts will help a lot. It’s like when you have a panic attack: if you tell yourself to stop it and calm down, it actually makes it worse. If I have negative thoughts or I’m trying to turn off the what-if cycle, the more I try to tell myself to stop it, the worse it gets. I want to figure out what the root causes of these problems are. I know some people say, “Don’t worry about the why. Just fix the problem and be happy.” And I get that. But I’d like to know why I do some of the things I do. There is no certainty in life. Even if Darcy and I get married later on, there is still no guarantee. A lot of marriages end in divorce. I just want to quiet the Demon down. I want to be able to assess what is actually a red flag versus what is simply a baseless anxiety. We’ll see how it goes.
