The Dagless File

[Dagless]

We all have issues, it’s all part of being human but sometimes we can get locked in to behavioural patterns that harm us when it comes to relationships, whether it’s while we are in one or trying to start one. Shortly after writing my last entry I read an interesting article entitled “The 10 Types Of Emotional Cripples” and I’ll be damned if I wasn’t guilty of being two or three of them at one time or another.

 

Now I don’t know if it comes with experience or it’s something that has developed as a result of repeated self-analysis over the last few years but I have become better at identifying my own harmful behavioural patterns.

 

There are other examples but here is just one: I have always been attracted to women who are in trouble or are unhappy and need ‘rescuing’. I call this “White Knight Syndrome” because you feel like you are doing the right and honourable thing and rescuing the damsel in distress but in reality it’s all about your self esteem being so low that you think that someone will only be with you because they need you and while you are dealing with her problems you don’t have to deal with your own.

 

It’s a crutch. An emotional crutch, something to lean on, something to prop me up right and I must make sure that I never get into a relationship that is a crutch because it never resolves anything. It doesn’t break the behaviour pattern.

 

 

It’s like the saying “You’ve got to stand on your own two feet.” I’ve never truly understood the true meaning of that saying until recently but that’s really what I need to do because if you don’t learn to stand on your own then you are doomed to go from one crutch to the next and never truly find what you are looking for. Something real, something that lasts.

 

I believe that it's only when you don't need anything from someone that you find someone you can't live without.

[Dagless]

While searching for some pictures of The Smiths for a project I was working on I came accross a picture of a young woman donning a pair of national health glasses and pulling her best Morrissey solemn expression. Curiosity got the better of me so I clicked on it. It was a profile picture for a blog of a young Australian woman that hadn't been updated for months. In her last entry (simply entitled "Confession") she was talking about how at times she felt extremely sad, to the point were she didn't want to leave the house and she couldn't put her finger on why. She went on to list all the things that made her unhappy and they were all things about herself. About her body, her face, how she didn't feel she had any talent and how unremarkable she felt. She said she didn't want help or words of wisdom. She just wanted to express how she felt. I can respect that.

 

There is something compelling about the writing of people when they are at their lowest. Maybe we are searching for an understanding of ourselves because we all feel like we are not good enough at times and I guess we hope that there is someone out there who feels the same and understands. I sometimes wonder if this is why people read this journal because there have been times where I hated myself for everything I wasn't. I have realized something about myself recently and it has changed my outlook on things. I have realized that I don't look at the things I do have, I only look at the things I don't have.

 

It is no great secret that there has been a young woman at work who I have liked for a long time but I have realized that she makes me wish I was someone else. Someone who was taller with a great body that loves extreme sports and partying until 5 in the morning. All she does it make me look at the things I don't have but once I had realized this it was as if a spell had been broken and suddenly I felt free. Free from wanting something I couldn't have because I didn't really want it to begin with.

 

It is difficult to feel comfortable in your own skin. Its hard to see your own attraction but as long as your not trying to be something you're not then you will find someone who loves you for who you are. Even if the only person you find to love yourself is yourself then it's a start.

[Dagless]

I find it almost impossible to describe my feelings at this point. I’m starting to wonder whether grief ever truly leaves you or just changes from one form to another. The intense pain and madness that seemed to go on for so long has gone but it’s after affects are still there. After the pain comes a fear of feeling that pain again. I’ve become fearful of caring for someone. I want to have that connecting, I want to be happy but the idea of it leaves me feeling vulnerable and then I convince myself that no one would feel that way about me anyway and that love is for other men, not me.

 

What makes things worse is that everyone seems to have someone. Other people seem to fall in and out of love so easily; if they are single it never seems to be for long. I want to be happy for them but really I’m just so envious that I become cynical about it.

 

People say to me “Don’t worry you’ll find someone” but I can’t help but think that if someone did come along then I would probably scare her away or just presume that she must be crazy for having any kind of feelings for me because I guess I’m so use to women not think about me in that way or at least that’s been my experience to date.

 

It all feels a bit like the devil and the deep blue sea at the moment: I don’t want to be alone but I don’t want to be with someone either. I convince myself that I don’t want love because really I do and I’m afraid I won’t find it.

 

 

I guess it all comes down to emotion investment. What are you willing to put in, what are you willing to risk? If you don’t invest in someone then how do you expect then to ever invest in you? It’s just so hard, when you have lost so much, to risk it all again on something that is so uncertain.

[Dagless]

Fear is a strange creature, it's always changing forms, taking new shapes. Although I think a lot of people can understand and indeed sympathise with the fear of starting a relationship because of the fear of losing them, especially after spending so long recovering from the pain of losing some one but there is a new fear I have experienced recently. You see when you lose someone and you in turn lose your future with them, then your own mortality, your own fragility becomes very obvious to you. Maybe it's because you send a lot of time evaluating whether you should take your own life of not (at least I did, on may occasions but although this may alarm some it is, I have been told, completely normal) or maybe it's because you have seen a life lost and that death so easily could of been you. Whatever the reason you come to realise that your own death is inevitable but instead of it being something that you always thought would happen to you were very old, decades from now, it is something that can happen at any moment.

 

But this is not the fear.

 

You see, my fear is that I will be in a relationship with someone who is head over heels in love with me and then *BAMN!* I pop my clogs and inflict her with the very pain I endured for years.

 

How irrational is that but then again who said fear has to be rational?

 

I wouldn't say that this is a fear I still have, I guess once I realised how ridiculous it was I stop myself from thinking that way. I do however have deeper issues I have to address before I can hope to embark on a new relationship.

[Dagless]

There's been a new guy at work, I say new he's worked in the building well over 6 months but recently it's come to the attention that some of the ladies have been asking about him, wondering whether he is single, saying they think he is cute etc and this hurt me a little bit. No one ever asks whether I'm single and no one ever describes me as "cute" and as I began to sink in to a little pool of self-pity a little part of me slapped me out of it with a large slab of home truth. What right did I have to feel sorry for myself when all I do is idealise women have no time for me what-so-ever while at the same time snubbing any woman who shows any type of interest in me. I mean, what do I want?!? Have I become some kind of heartless monster who wants to be desired but has no intention on reciprocating it?

 

So while I was wondering about that I realised that I hadn't seen that young lady I "like" (you know that one who makes me wish I was someone else) for over a week and how I felt good about that. That was until yesterday when I had to sit next to her in the staff canteen. It made me feel horrible, inept and as I sat there slowly eating my tuna and sweet corn sandwich feeling pretty crappy I had to ask why do I do this to myself? Maybe I have became addicted to this feeling, the inner conflict, anguish....the self pity. After all, I've done this unrequited love thing ever since I was at school. Every year I would fall for some girl and admire her from afar, never plucking up the courage to ask her out. I even did it at College for crying out loud!

 

I guess self-pity is easy. It gives you something to cling on to while at the same time gives you something to blame. "Oh, if only I had this one thing I can't have, then everything thing would be okay." That's nonsence! Worse than that it's cowardly and no one likes a coward.

 

So I'm not a tin-man who needs a heart after all but a lion who needs some courage.

[Dagless]

After my last post I've done a lot of thinking about I have a tendency of building walls within myself. Not walls to protect myself or to keep people out but walls to hide behind. It's like I set a barrier for myself, a point at which I will not pass or even dare peer out from. I long to go beyond the wall but never do because I have already stated to myself that I can't and that's where the self-pity comes in. That's why I have always had this repeat pattern when it comes to relationships. I'd like someone, set up my wall at a safe distance and not go beyond it, admire them from afar and then feel sorry for myself. I even did this while in a relationship, I just pushed the wall in a bit closer. I also suspect that this doesn't only apply to relationships but to every aspect of my life. It is a pattern I know I'm going to have to break because there is no happiness to be found doing that.

 

“If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” ~ Bruce Lee

[Dagless]

My posts have been coming thick and fast on here lately but there doesn't seem to be a day that goes by that doesn't give me something to think about in recent times. Saw Lisa's mother in the store where I work a couple of days back. I didn't stop and talk to her mainly because the woman is pure evil, a sociopath who borders on being a full-blown psychopath. It's scary having met someone like that, someone who is completely devoid of love. It didn't affect me like I thought it would, seeing her, in fact I didn't feel anything at all. I guess I've moved on from all that.

 

Yesterday I found out that one of the young ladies from another department likes me. I don't know how true this is because the young lady in question very rarely says anything beyond "Hi ya" and it's me who has to instigate that. Also I've kind of dismissed her because of her age (she is 10 years my junior) but is this me putting up walls again? Am I looking for reasons to be lonely or is this really a non-starter? I can only think of one way to find out and that to get to know her. Looks like we're gonna have to go past "Hi ya".

[Dagless]

So armed with the knowledge that a young lady likes me I decided that I was going to talk to her. After a little awkward first exchange she struck me as a really nice person. I have to say it was a little exciting hearing a rumour that someone likes you and wondering whether I could make something happen between us, that maybe she was going to be the one and that this is how happiness starts but then I realized that I was so distracted by the possibility of whether I could I never stopped to think about whether I should.

 

I mean, this woman has worked at my place for months now and I showed no interest in her until someone waved the possibility of her liking me. That's not something real, that's just taking something just because you can and that's not fair on her. But I guess that's why I wanted to get to know her in the first place, to see if there was something more than just two people who know each other and kind of like each other, maybe.

 

So what happened when I did talk to her? It was nice, it was pleasant but she gave me no signals what-so-ever that she was interested in me. I started to wonder if I had been sold some misinformation, that maybe I had got my wires crossed and I was barking up the wrong tree but none of that matters because as I stood there talking to this young woman I realized what was missing. Whatever reason had lead to the two of us talking at that moment was inconsequential because as I stood there I realised that we had nothing in common other than we share the same bit of floor and very occasionally smile at each other as we pass in the hallway but what was worse was that there was spark between us. And everybody knows you can't start a fire without a spark.

 

I guess I'm making this sound a little more dramatic than what it was. The truth was I heard a rumour, I looked in to it and found that there wasn't anything worth acting on. End of story.

 

On another note I met up with some old friends a couple of months ago, some of which I hadn't seen for maybe six years. In a way it felt like going back in time to a place before Lisa, before all the grief and pain but as we laughed and talked about old times it made realize how much I'd changed, that I was not the same person I was six years ago. I'm a lot more patient, a lot more open and understanding than I used to be. I'm also a lot more comfortable with myself with a better understanding that it's okay not to want the same things everybody else does. I got chatted up twice while at the bar, which was great.

 

The night was so good that we decided to make it a regular thing, every couple of months or so and we got together again last weekend. While we were all in a club a very nice young lady grabbed me by the hand and we danced for a while. That was a lot of fun, I wonder what her name was? I look forward to going out now instead of dreading it like I used to. I guess I've finally given myself permission to have a good time.

[Dagless]

The idea of becoming close to someone, making that emotional attachment to another person leaves me feeling internally shaken.

I find myself compensating for my lack of willingness to connect to people in this way by listening to emotional stirring music or watching films that give a similar effect. It's like simulated romance, a place to pull dreams out of nostalgia in the safety of my own environment. But it's a bubble and like all bubbles it slowly suffocates you.

I have the need to reach out and touch somebody, to feel something real but as I start to I feel a fear that turns to shame then self-loathing and then I feel ridiculous for even entertaining the notion. I can't break the bubble, I have become addicted to the safety of the dream and I fear the unpredictability of reality.

"Our suffering is peeling off and revealing a brand new skin, a new power.

Love heals all wounds and not just time alone." ~ Jeff Buckley

[Dagless]

Song To The Siren ~ Tim Buckley

 

Long afloat on shipless oceans

I did all my best to smile

'Til your singing eyes and fingers

Drew me loving to your isle

And you sang

Sail to me

Sail to me

Let me enfold you

Here I am

Here I am

Waiting to hold you

 

Did I dream you dreamed about me?

Were you hare when I was fox?

Now my foolish boat is leaning

Broken lovelorn on your rocks,

For you sing, "Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow:

O my heart, O my heart shies from the sorrow"

 

I am puzzled as the newborn child

I am troubled at the tide:

Should I stand amid the breakers?

Should I lie with Death my bride?

Hear me sing, "Swim to me, Swim to me, Let me enfold you:

Here I am, Here I am, Waiting to hold you"

[Dagless]

On Saturday night I went out with some friends for a birthday get together and amongst them was a young woman that I have always been very fond of, for the purposes of this confession lets call her Jenni. Now, if I'm being honest with myself she was one of the major reasons I went out that night but I didn't plan on doing what I did. It was such a small thing but believe me, to me it was a giant leap.

 

I admit that I am helpless at showing my feeling towards women, it is something I have never got my head around. Other guys just seem to be able to do it and I've always envied them for their ability to just talk to women and hit it off. I like Jenni, I like her a lot and I can't really explain what it is I feel for her but I feel a need to care for her (not to look after her, she's a tough cookie, she can look after herself) because I know that she has been heartbroken and hurt but I get the feeling she doesn't get the love she deserves and she deserves a man who would love her with everything in him. And I wish I were that guy.

 

So there I am burning in the corner wanting to be close to her but with no idea how to do it and I see her kissing another guy. At that moment I felt completely inept and utterly lost, like a child. I was so upset I went downstairs into the smoking area where I fully intended to spend the rest of the night crying into my hands but as I sat down my confidence sudden found his voice and he gave me an ultimatum. I could either sit there sniveling like a baby or I could march right back upstairs, grab her by the hand and tell her exactly how I felt. I knew that if I didn't say something I would regret it forever.

 

It was clumsy but I did it, I actually opened up and told her that I liked her. Since then I have had a lot of conflicting emotions because I don't know what step to take next but I don't regret saying something to her because it is how I feel. I'm not embarrassed by it or ashamed, I feel liberated for letting my heart have it's say.

 

For a long time I didn't think I deserved another persons love and that is why I have always pushed it away but not anymore. It's time to start reaching out again.

[Dagless]

A friend of mine has a blog. It's mostly sport related but he does touch on the idiosyncrasies of life too. He's latest entry was about heroes in the wake of the Oprah Winfrey interview with Lance Armstrong. I'll put up a link so you can read it for yourself and I recommend that you do before you continue reading here: link removed

 

After reading it I couldn't help but feel he had missed the point of heroes. They aren't some one you put on a form to make you sound intelligent or flag you to wave to be popular or fit in. Your hero can be ordinary and unknown, after all it isn't about celebrity or fame. It's about showing you can over come fear and improve yourself, not just for yourself but for others as well. And show that we can over come incredible odds by shear strength of will and determination. As long as people need a guiding light in this, there will always be heroes.

 

I have been called a hero in the past, it isn't something I see myself as. Most my life I have struggled with myself, the inner monolog of my confidence and paranoia is a constant battle but I guess the point of the battle isn't to win or lose but to keep on fighting. Fight to better yourself, to grow and become the person you always wanted to be by following the example of your heroes....who ever they maybe.

[Dagless]

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I do this. I do this a lot.

 

Do you remember when I talked about Jenni? Well after I posted here about how I felt I decided that I should be saying these things to her because I didn't express myself very well that night. So I sent her a message through facebook and we messaged back and forth for a while. I told her about Lisa because, well, she asked and I don't mind talking about it. In all honesty I thought I'd never see her again, I suppose that when a man is thinking like that it gives him nothing to lose. But I did see her again...at the works Xmas party. To cut a long story short we had a really nice night and I gave her my phone number and we text each other over the Xmas break. It felt nice but then I stopped and she hasn't text me since. I convinced myself that I was barking up the wrong tree, that she wasn't really interested and maybe I was right but maybe I was afraid. Afraid to really get to know her. Afraid that she would really get to know me.

 

Part of me wants to text her. The other part doesn't want to make a nuisance of myself....

[Dagless]

I have to work every other Saturday or so these days. It's only half a day so it's not too bad. Today as I walked accross the cinema car park on my way home I saw Lisa's father. He didn't see me but I saw him and he had Ethan with him. Lisa's son, the boy I haven't seen in five years. I quickly backed into an exit door way and hid from view for a moment. I peered out again as they walked away from me and round the corner into the cinema. His hair is brown now and not blonde like it was when I knew him. It's strange seeing someone you love and not knowing if they even remember you.....I felt like a ghost catching a glimpse of a past life.

[Dagless]

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I stumbled accross this fascinating documentary about a group of girls dubbed "Dirty Girls" by their classmate because of their dress sense an apparent lack of personal hygiene. I guess at the time this would have been seen as strange but looking back now you can see that it was the 90's. This was grunge and teenage angst. There are also elements that remind me of the early days of punk when the clothes were very much an artistic expression (before there become a punk "uniform" with the mohicans and leather jackets). I think it's easy to just dismiss these girls as just being different for the sake of being different or just saying they are not normal or weird but what they are demonstrating is, to me, a very important part of being young. I think it's all about belonging to something even if it's being separate to everyone else. Stephen Fry puts it perfectly in a video I will post below (I would recommend watching the whole of that video if you get the chance because it really is wonderful).

As we grow up and look at young teenagers and think how ridiculous they look and how things had so much more meaning in our day but really they are just doing what we did, only in a different way. Incidentally, the whole grunge thing just passed me by. Maybe it's because I wasn't really in to popular music until the mid-90's when Britpop was huge and my love for Oasis was unshakable. I can understand why so many teenagers could (and still do) identify with Kurt Cobain. Being a teenager is mostly confusing and frustrating in equal measure. At school popularity can seem very important but some of us just can't or don't fit in.

 

All the way through the 90's I was in school or education of some sort and I remember kids forming into their own little gangs. There was the hard kids who would always threaten you with violence if the looked at them the wrong way (this was boys and girls btw), there were the brainy kids, the dweebs/nerds and the cool kids. I think this is the same as everybody’s experience at school but how you reflect back on your school life probably depends what group you belonged to. I just kind of drifted between groups. I wasn't clever enough for the brainiacs, not uncool enough for the dweebs but too strange for the cool guys. I never drifted towards the hard kids though. I always used my quirky sense of humour to make them laugh and keep them at bay.

 

What does surprise me is how when you leave school people still stick to their little gangs and as a result I still find myself drifting between them and never really fitting in anywhere. The rule of the playground still looms large.

[Dagless]

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Jump to 24:28 to listen to the part I mentioned above. I must have watched this video 4 or 5 times now. There are parts to it that really make me think about my attitude towards myself and other people.

[Dagless]

Following the death of Margaret Thatcher I found myself reading a little into her time as British Prime Minister. This lead me to read briefly about IRA bombing that that took place during the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. My father told me about the Birmingham Pub bombings of 1974 (later claimed by a militant group called Red Flag 74), which claimed the lives of 21 people and injured 182 others. My father worked with two Irish guys and people blamed them for what happened. They had nothing to do with it but people were angry and scared.

 

This was terrorism. I had hoped that we had seen the end of it but we live in a post 9/11 world where terrorism is being used for a new purpose. It’s not political, there is no agenda, nothing to gain. This is just terror for the sake of terror. Killing for the sake of killing.

 

As the pictures came through of flames and smoke rising in the Boston sky I couldn’t help but think of the days of the IRA and the events of the 7/7 London bombings. A normal happy day suddenly turned into panic with people running with blood on their faces. We’ve all seen it before, too many times now and it’s still sickening. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Evil is always transcending.

 

It makes me angry…and deeply sad that human being can do this to one another.

 

Why must people do this? What ideal are they striving for that involves killing children and maiming countless others? What pleasure do they take by ruining people’s lives?

 

Whatever their reasons they are wrong.

 

We do not live amongst gods, angels, devils or demons. We live amongst men, women and children and all the good and bad that we do…and what we do to each other. We have free will and with it a massive responsibility because everything we do affects everything around us in some way or another. We all have to live with the consequences of our actions and the actions of others too. This is something I don’t think the perpetrators of these bombings understand or maybe their twisted beliefs have lead them to disregard this understanding. It’s the total disregard for life that shocks me most. Ordinary people, living ordinary lives which, thanks to the action of a few, will never be the same again. I do not know if we can do anything to stop the evil that men do, it always seems to find a way to hate and destroy, whether the reasons are political, religious or just anger born out of fear.

 

“Evolution has meant that our prefrontal lobes are too small, our adrenal glands are too big, and our reproductive organs apparently designed by committee; a recipe which, alone or in combination, is very certain to lead to some unhappiness and disorder.”

 

We are all human, with all the flaws that come with it but I will not give up on my belief that people are essentially good, kind and just want to get on with their lives without hurting anyone. And no matter how evil the deeds of the bad ones out there, good will always rise above it.

 

Evil will, therefore good must.

[Dagless]

For the longest time I was happy being single. Relationships seem such hard work, to get into, stay in or get out of. It was easy to say "I'm not looking right now, I'm okay by myself" but then something happened... I got old. Yes, I don't know how it crept up on me but it did.

 

One minute I was in my mid-20's and I had all the time in the world and then BAM! I'm in my mid-30's and that 20 year old I was chatting up at the works Christmas part suddenly feels all kind of wrong.

 

Time to get myself a love-life before it's too late! I thought until I realized that every woman I know who is my age is either married, in a long-term relationship or just isn't my type. So as I have a few friends who have had success with online dating sites I thought I'd give it ago.

 

There have been a few consistencies I have noticed: Anyone I find remotely attractive isn't interested in me (how's this different to the real world again?), anyone who is interested in me I don't find them attractive ("Dagless!" I hear you cry "Your standards must be too high", they aren't I can assure you but I do have preferences, we all do, don't make me feel guilty for that) or if they do like me and I like them, then they live 50 miles away and that's just no good. I'm not looking of a long distance relationship and 50 miles!?! They might as well be living on the moon!

 

Oh, and there seems to be a lot of women from the Philippines have taken a fancy to me... whats the deal with that?

 

The whole experience has all been a bit depressing and I haven't even started going on actual dates yet!

 

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