Don't mind me...

...but I feel a rant coming.

I am a creature of extremes. I love, I hate, I burn, I freeze. I can't sit idly by and watch the unacceptable happen, I have to get up and do something about it. It doesn't even matter if it is real or imagined, I still can't stand things that don't fall within my framework (oh, I hate that word) of acceptability. Let me explain:
I was sitting today having a lovely lunch with my significant other, and he said something that got me upset, and I flared. Oh wait, actually, he responded to a question I asked, not even his thought pattern to blame here, a perfectly honest and innocuous answer to a direct question. I wanted to know about the time frame of an event that had taken place long ago, and it turns out that it was during a mutually difficult period of our lives. That changed my entire perception of the situation, and I instantly grew angry and cold. No warning, I just shut down. This event occurred in a time when we were both seeking answers, and it has little significance to who we are today, as far as I can tell. It isn't even the event that had me upset, it was the fact that I felt powerless to control the outcome. As it turns out, there is nothing to fear, nothing to be retroactively anxious about, nothing that directly affects our relationship. It was the fact that I felt excluded. I felt like I was running a race I had no hope of winning, fighting a fight against insurmountable odds, trying to defeat a foe who can change form and shape at their whim, and I am incapable of rising to the challenge. To borrow a phrase from somebody in some movie "I got nothin'".

So here you have me, a blowtorch seeking both a flint and an extinguisher, and my S.O., a hapless victim caught in the tidal wave of my emotional storm because I couldn't have gotten there first in everything and been his be-all and end-all. I am, sadly enough, simply human. Somehow I feel like I have to be the originator, the one and only, the perfect answer to all his prayers. If I am not, I wind up feeling like I have been cheated out of something. I feel like I will not be good enough when held up in comparison to his past life. I have no faith in myself.

I cannot blame him and get angry at him for my own internal problems and shortcomings. This is not his war to fight, it is mine. I just wish I could figure out why I feel so substandard and useless.

...

A somewhat acid palate with an amusing nose...

This is what Astro.com dropped on me last night for today:

Some in-depth research might prove enlightening today, XXXXXXX. Fascinating new books may be brought to your attention. You may want to share what you've learned with your love partner, and a long and intense conversation could be the result. Intellectual compatibility could lead to physical desire, so make sure you look your best. Follow your discussion with a great dinner at your favorite restaurant, and enjoy!


Normally I would just delete the entry and be on my way, but I stopped for a bit to reflect on the state of my situation with my "love partner". Sometimes it seems that we are farther from the goal now than we were even when we met. LIfe has impinged upon our sweet little coccoon to rend and tear at us, just the way it rends and tears at the hopes and dreams of so many who are burdened with responsibilities that run at cross purposes to our hopes and dreams. "OK, that was a sweet dream, but it's time to wake up and smell the coffee". Your wife is on the phone and she's pissed that the sink is stopped up, and apparently she doesn't know how to use a plunger or Drano. Or how about "Your husband is not really responsible for hurting you ten thousand different ways because he was raised by a controlling mother who didn't show him any affection, so even though he pretended to be someone he was not while you were dating and has allowed the demons to surface all over you, you have to carry on and act like everything is just fine because that's your job..."

When I was growing up, I had a dreamy and rosy image of what relationships were meant to be. This warm-fuzzy impression of the world of love and romance was fostered by the tripe they feed adolescent girls/women in our society. Between the roles played by Marie Claire and Vogue magazines promoting flirtation and sex, and the pressures of society and church to be "good girls" we were supposed to be at once vampish and virginal. This dichotomy has led to mass confusion, bulimia and anorexia, and the plethora of "bitchy older women" that riddle our society. We are supposed to be available and attractive to our men, no matter what they present as, and we are supposed to believe that if we only get the right haircut, use the right makeup and toiletries and dress fashionably that we will find and keep the man of our dreams. It's all crap. There is no such thing as the man of our dreams, just a collection of bruised and battered individuals out there who are suffering just as much as we are. Oh, and don't believe the "jaded bitches" club when they say that the men have all the advantages and that women are set up to suffer, because the men get shafted by our culture in different, but no less damaging, ways from the women. In reality, we all suck, we are all sick, and we are all unhappy. I am starting to think that we have no one to blame, because we would have to blame everyone.

Anyway, I am not entirely sure where this was headed. I was just venting.

Go easy with me, it's my first time...

Happy Birthday to me....oh wait, not me, my blog. It was born just a few minutes ago. I know that I will never come anywhere close to matching the intellectual contributions of some of the folks I have been observing, but then, I never really thought I needed to. I think it will suffice to just put some of the more persistent thought threads here, and maybe that will give me a bit more perspective on life. Then again, maybe not....