"I am drunk in my desire..."

There is a Sarah McLachlan song called "Elsewhere" that has the following refrain:

I believe
This is heaven to no one else but me
And I’ll defend it as long as I can be
Left here to linger in silence
If I choose to
Would you try to understand

One of the verses is:
Oh the quiet child awaits the day when she can break free
The mold that clings like desperation
Mother can’t you see I’ve got
To live my life the way I feel is right for me
Might not be right for you but it’s right for me...I believe...

I am that "quiet child" who generally prefers to be "left ... to linger in silence". Why is that so hard to understand?

Yet there are times even I crave company, in various contexts. Being together does not have to mean "a constant interaction or pursuit of something" -- can't two linger in silence?

I listen to this album as I drive to visit my grandmother, failing finally after 91 years, at a nursing facility about 70 miles from home. I treasure the trips there and back again, alone in my car. I will often repeat this song several times before I let the album continue.

There is another line that captures my strange mood this past Saturday:
I am drunk in my desire...
I don't drink or use drugs. I'm sure that some of my food- and sex-oriented behaviors are mildly addictive in nature, but generally drinking coffee and driving fast are the only vices I have left. So when I feel euphoric, I try hard to understand why.

I have lately begun to pull my head up out of the sand to see what's happening in the world. I have discovered that not much has really changed, except me. I have had a few interactions of a fundamentally prurient nature lately with other like-minded individuals. Each has been positive, suggesting that even at a very superficial level, I'm desirable. Some have been a bit deeper, and they too have been positive. So again I must conclude it's not me, but the other in my life who has lost interest in and respect for me and my interests.

So Saturday morning, I had a some quite positive, quite "shallow" interactions with a few people, which for reasons not entirely clear to me set my hair on fire. But I could not pursue any actual meetings, so I dutifully drove to the nursing home, helped Grandma eat her lunch, and returned home. By the time I got home, my fires had cooled somewhat. By Sunday morning, I had a "drunk with desire" hangover--I felt pretty emotionally crummy all day. And he was just as unwittingly awful as ever, which will never help and never change.

This morning, I crossed paths with a past partner in prurience. He is a medical professional (let's say he's a chiropractor, which may or may not be quite true) with an enormous house in an expensive neighborhood near mine. We share a liking for efficiency, and such was our tryst this morning in his garage. (His life situation is similar to mine so the house was off-limits this morning, though I have been inside in the past.) It left me physically feeling a somewhat relieved, but as Newton taught us, "every action has an equal and opposite reaction": coming down off the endorphin high has left me wanting.

Catching Up

So, yeah, it's been 8 months. I told myself when I started this that it couldn't become an obsession like about everything else I start. That self-admonition seems to have been pretty effective.

I completed the two spring semester classes with A's. I took one summer class and received the lowest grade I've ever received (on a class I actually finished): a B-. Everyone claims that it will be ok, but I'm still not so sure.

Fall classes started four weeks ago. I'm taking two: elective graduate-level applied statistics (I get the material) and a required senior-level Introduction to Abstract Algebra (I cannot imagine anything more foreign). So far doing OK, but only with Herculean effort for the algebra (which just goes over swimmingly at home).

Home life still sucks (yes, one may correctly deduce that I'm still partnered). I cannot imagine what my defective psyche is waiting for, but by golly, I can't seem to move. Not one tiny little bit.

I was thinking about this today and I realized something important: I've always believed that as long as I was harder on myself than anyone else, everyone else would always be satisfied with me. He, however, is in fact harder on me than I am on myself. Nothing I do is right or good enough. Intellectually I realize this is about him not knowing what he wants and being incapable of respecting that others have viewpoints too, different from his but equally valid.

I have also realized that I have this experience nowhere else. My few carefully-nurtured friendships sometimes experience mild disagreement, but are obviously founded on mutual respect and admiration of the other as a person of worth despite differences. My interactions with my professors and peers at school is positive and worthwhile. My interactions with my leaders, peers, and direct reports at work are cordial to warm. So it cannot be that I'm the problematic factor.

We had an interesting conversation Friday night. He wondered why the world just couldn't handle the truth, and he illustrated his point by sharing that he was saying some pretty rude things about someone he works with, and when another party to the conversation pointed out the the object of discussion might be within earshot, he told them that he didn't care. I asked how he would feel if he heard someone saying the same things about him and he replied that if he didn't generally care about the person saying them, it wouldn't matter to him what they said. I told him that is not normal, in the "social contract" sense of social interaction.

I wonder if he is ready for the truth?