I'm too good at being alone. in Journal of life stuff

Do I go or stay? I originally decided to go to Dollywood for this vacation because I had no ideas what I was going to do to keep myself from going crazy staying at home. What I have found is that going out and trying the restaurants I haven’t gotten around to trying or sampling the offerings at other local places I just haven’t made the time to visit has actually been quite nice. Last night was the first time I got a full night’s rest and didn’t wake up anxious. Why? Because I had a plan for today and there was no doubt what was going to happen. Tonight is the ‘decision time’ where if I’m going to go to Dollywood, I need to leave tomorrow morning. Thing is, over the last 5 days or so, my desire to go has shrank every day.

Part of that is because I’m cold. 1 week ago it was in the 70s every day, and now it’s in the high 40s. I don’t care where you are from, if it drops 20 degrees in a week, it’s going to feel cold. Doesn’t matter if it’s from 30F to 10F or 70F to 50F. I have been gaining weight, I think, but not at a horrific rate. The thing that has really impressed me is that I’m mostly eating one meal a day. I’ll wake up, skip breakfast, go out for lunch at whatever place I decide I want to try that day, and not be hungry until like 10 or 11pm. Yesterday I actually went 24 hours without eating, my lunch was so large I was legit not hungry for 24 hours. o.0 I would really love not to break 230lbs, but I’m starting to feel like it’s possible for me to not break 230 with this sort of diet. I am gaining weight, but at a slow enough pace as not to cause me to panic.

I’m too fat to fit into my jacket, and that’s a huge part of why I don’t want to go.

When I lost weight from age 24 to 29, i did so because I believed that once I got to a ‘normal’ weight, I would be attractive, people would match with me on dating sites, or be interested in talking to me in person, and I could finally date someone. That didn’t happen. It crushed me that I denied myself such tasty food for 5 years and I had nothing to show for it. Combined with also losing my direction in life…

“I lost my direction in life.” Let’s talk about that. I know, this journal entry is supposed to be me deciding whether to go to D-wood or not, but the reality is that my trauma is a lot further down, and my indecision about D-wood is a symptom, not a disease. Right, so I lost my direction. When I was 15 I set up my entire life to provide for someone else. I thought my role as a man was to get a good job that would give me enough money to pay for food, shelter, and a bit of fun for a wife, and if we had them, kids. That’s why I went into computers, among other reasons, rather than worrying about finding a career I would like, or work that would never feel like work. I put all my chips into that ‘delayed reward’ box. To this day, I don’t own a couch or a comfy chair. I don’t own a TV. I didn’t own a bed (I slept on cheap air mattresses) up until very recently, and my desk was a folding plastic table (up until recently). If I could time jump back to 2017 when I got the bed and desk, I’d go ahead and not buy them. They didn’t really help, and I could have moved without a moving truck if I didn’t buy them. That said, I do enjoy being able to stand up and type this note, so the desk is a bit harder to part with. The bed I also really enjoy sleeping on, but an air mattress is way less of a PITA to live with. Then again, I wouldn’t have ever discovered how amazing wool is for under-sheet layers if I’d stayed on air…eh, the things I bought were a mixed bag that did improve my life, just not enough for me to have no regrets.

I saved all the money I didn’t spend on rent or food. I save around 80% of my net income. It’s only within the last 2-3 years that I started to spend more than $1 per meal. $1 per meal meant that I cooked everything. There were years in there where I made my own tortillas because it was cheaper (and healthier) than buying them. A lot of people say they delayed reward, I’ve met few who can stand on my level and say they really put this much effort in. Frustratingly, I think I went too far. I delayed so hard that everyone around me decided I was no fun to be around, and the only people who will ever date me are broken ones. The 19 year old who never had a good father figure and sees me as one, or the 35 year old who got divorced out of a bad marriage and finally understand what to get. I missed my chance to have that first relationship with someone who wasn’t bound in a solid block of jade (IE: super jaded). I understand the Olympus Mons size hypocrisy in that previous sentence. I myself am a block of jade the size of a house. I am the pot calling the kettle black.

It’s more that I don’t want a relationship with someone as emotionally scarred as i am. Or if they are, I need them to have handled it better than I did. But I don’t think that person, in the manner I desire, exists. If they do, I don’t think I’ll ever meet them.

Regardless though, did you notice the twin fundamental problems? My dream of providing for someone else is gone. Nobody wants that anymore. Well, a few people still do, but they won’t pick me as their provider. Maybe for good reasons. Plus, at a higher level, it was always a shitty goal. Your life goals should never rely on other people. “I want to be a mother” is a better goal than “I want to have a family.” To have a family, you need a husband, and that requires you to either settle for someone or you have to get super lucky and find the right person. Being a mother is far simpler; just adopt a kid. For all her flaws, Charlize Theron did set and achieve her goals.

But my own goal required someone else to need me. That was a mistake. My parents programmed me to provide for (them) someone else. They specifically tore out any requirement for me to feel loved or appreciated as part of that, and actively destroyed any attachments I formed to other people. “It’s your parents fault for making you who you are. It’s your fault for staying that way.” I try to live by those words. I’m a long way off no longer living the way they made me in this respect.

“So what do you want to do?” If I snapped my fingers and had my bitcoin millions, and didn’t have to work another day in my life, what would I do? I’d work on a dating website I think. There is a slot in the market for a dating website that doesn’t suck. A place that isn’t selling swipes, or hot chicks, or onlyfans, or sugar people, or any of that bullshit. Mostly because I’d be the primary user, but also because I see people like Louis Rossmann, and a bunch of other less-than-ideal people who all found their partners purely because of youtube or some other social media platform putting them in front of enough eyeballs that they could actually get noticed by someone and meet. They used social media as their dating platform by just being themselves, rather than looking.

If I wanted to follow in those footsteps, I’d either need to create that website (a task I don’t really want to do, because I hate web design; I’m a backend guy) or I’d need to make yet another teaching youtube channel to explain things I understand. But how do I make it interesting? Lots of pictures? But then I have to video edit and have all that stuff associated with video editing and graphics creation. Ahhh!

I don’t mind working hard, but the problem with all my ideas for how to put myself ‘out there’ so I can be noticed is that all of them feel like work. And I know that if I start today, it will generally be 10 years before I get the level of recognition required for me to get what I want. By the time I’m 42 I could maybe, finally, meet someone. 20 years after I wanted to meet them. These can’t be the only options in life. I can’t do it again. I can’t delay rewards for another 10 years only to not get any reward. There has to be another way that I just can’t see.

“You talked about two problems?” I did. THe second problem is being noticed. When I was a child, I loved garfield. I got a t-shirt that said ‘SHOW ME THE COFFEE’ with a very disgruntled looking Garfield on it. Everyone always offered me coffee or asked me how I liked it. I hate coffee. I like the smell, but the taste is horrid. I loved the shirt because I understood how garfield felt, and I felt that way myself a lot. I wore it because I identified with the emotion. As a 5th grader, I couldn’t articulate that, but it was the reason I liked the shirt so much. It got so bad, that since fifth grade, I have not owned or worn any shirts that had any logos or emblems on them at all. It wasn’t until I got a hat from Habitat for Humanity that was super warm and comfortable that I finally broke that rule. Seriously, it’s the warmest hat I’ve ever owned, and I wear it more because of that than because I want people to ask me about Habitat. Nobody ever has.

Think about that. I have focused on NOT being noticed since the 5th grade. And now my job is to get noticed and stand out. Like…fuck. Everyone and everything tells me that I’m worthy of another person’s love and attention just because I exist. That is objectively not true. But every time I’ve achieved what it took to be worthy of someone else, the definition of worthy had changed. I’m chasing my tail, and have been for 20 years. It’s a problem. Being afraid of other people seeing me is a problem.

But what do I want? If I had to pick how I’d spend the next 30 years of my life, what do I actually want? And that’s where I can’t decide. I see pieces of what I want, but I can’t see the entire picture.

I want to own a home, but I never want to feel like my home will cause me to lose opportunities with people. Too many times I got told “I think you’re great, but you live too far away from me.” and never was given a chance. I know, if something that small is a blocker, the other person was not ready for a relationship. But it’s hard to hear all the same because what if they actually were, and just couldn’t imagine someone willing and able to make distance not an issue? I have failed to imagine a lot of things. What I want most of all is to be allowed to fail, rather than told I’m not allowed to even try.

I either want to be beloved, or isolated. I really can’t pick between these two. On one hand, I’d love to own one of these 300k-1.5 million dollar homes near me and have people over for cookouts, or to chill in the pool, or to play billiards, or woodwork, or, just, anything. I have this huge house, I want people to come over and enjoy it with me. But at the same time, I could also be totally happy living on a 10+ acre plot, where I can’t see my neighbors, and the government ignores me as long as I pay my taxes, and I’m left to create my kingdom as I see fit. Want my own underground shooting range? Dig a long underground trench. Want a new shed, build one. Water heater broke? Build a new one. Wildfire risk? Build an underground rainwater catch basin + deluge system to keep my house from burning down. …ok, so the latter plan clear is a lot more defined to me than the former.

And in a lot of ways that makes me sick to my stomach, because I’ve spent so long being alone that I’ve gone off and gotten really good at being alone.