I’ve always felt a sort of void. Particularly, the void has been of a social nature. I’ve felt empty when talking with people, like I don’t have an opinion or like I have to shout to be heard and then I feel as though I am obnoxious and I grow embarrassed for having just shouted an opinion which may or may not have been relevant. I developed so much anxiety about interjecting that I think sometimes the conversation moves on before I speak and my comment is whisked aside.
Art was nearly always a way to express myself that helped me to avoid these social situations. Of course critiques on the other hand magnified this entire situation. People would tell me that I needed to guide the conversation, to get what I needed out of it, but my only real need was to survive and GET OUT of it. I’ve never enjoyed being under the microscope. It makes me wonder how on earth I’ve ended up teaching for a living. I suspect I do it for the vulnerable kids. They feel more like family than trying to live up to my father’s image ever did.
At any rate, I began with a ramble today, and I promise, this all has a point. After some thought I realize that seeking a girlfriend or a spouse was always an attempt to fill the void that I felt socially, but I feel more aware than ever now that no other person can fill that void. It was not created by the absence of a person, but by a perception of my own making. How could another individual change my perception. Certainly others can influence my perception, but I don’t believe for a second that they can change it. Changing me results in bitterness. I know this because two women have tried to change me. They’ve tried to make me a family man, to be aware of the beautiful moments around me, but I’ve always been resistant to their ideal of beauty.
I am much more comfortable with stillness, with the strange shapes the sun creates in the apartment in the mid-afternoon, or in the cool air from the window coming from overhead while the heat from the bath makes me sweat thereby chilling my whole body, or the sounds of those close to me snoring. I listened to a book once where the mother would walk around the house after everyone had fallen asleep and she would touch her hand to the person’s chest, feel their breath, and count them until she reached 7. This feels so compelling to me. I care for everyone in my house, but it is only when they are still that I feel comfortable being with them, living with them, occupying the same space. My attachment to cats seems more fitting than I might have before thought.
I strongly dislike people in my space, but I desperately want the right person in my space. I have no idea who that right person might be. I thought it was my girlfriend from my twenties for a while and then I thought that it might be my wife for a while, but neither really allowed me to be. And admittedly, that statement sounds like I am unwilling to compromise, but the truth is that I am more likely to bend over backwards to make someone else feel comfortable than I am to attempt to make myself feel comfortable.
My mother’s favorite line of scripture was from the Beatitudes. “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.” I wonder if this is Earth in the grand sense or if I do not just inherit a six by four by nine foot plot of earth. I suspect the latter. But no matter what, it is Sunday afternoon and I feel lazy today. There is some guilt because I should be finishing my homework for the class I need to finish my certification, but I just returned from the garden, the children are occupied and I still feel so attached to the idea of Sunday being the day of rest.
