Already I Sense A Pattern

I suppose I could have chosen to be all Old School about it and kept a regular diary - you know, a book filled with paper that I hid away when not using so no one could read it. But I ask you: where's the fun in that? Besides which, do you have any idea how big the Internet is? This stuff is safer here than in the top drawer of my dresser, and that's a fact.

Nevertheless, I have chosen to keep a blog, so that something in it might some day help another poor soul in their time of need, even if it's the calming notion that somewhere there's someone more fucked up than them. In keeping these posts and documenting my various upheavals, it may be possible to detect flawed patterns of behaviour, and in detecting, arrest them.

See, it's like this. About ten to twelve days out of every two weeks I'm the King of the World. I have the life I want (obviously, or I'd change it) and I'm living the dream, baby. So maybe I'd like a maid and a masseuse and the occasional week in Manhattan, but on the whole, things are good. After all, who wants perfection if it can't be improved upon?

The problem is that other two to four days, when I'm feeling vulnerable and a little lonely. That's when I find myself thinking it would be nice to have someone special in my life, if only for a half an hour. The degree to which it bothers me that I don't will vary, obviously. Sometimes it makes me wistful, other times it enrages me. Neither of these is exactly my best colour.

Why it's like this obviously has something to do with the moon (two week cycles, duh), so I've begun charting both my moods and the phases of the moon through Facebook to test this theory. What varies, and therefore worries me more, is the quality of my reaction in each case. Another factor is blood sugar, which definitely affects my mood, and is therefore a crucial link in understanding why I'm forever reacting to more or less the same situation in a different way each time.

The only consistent is that old bugaboo: fairness, or rather, the presumed lack of it. I feel it isn't fair that I can't get gay men to be civil to me. Then again, that may be because it's not. But since when did fairness have anything to do with anything? Third grade? When you're a naive idealist like me, it can be hard to accept the cynical view that life often isn't fair.

Their not liking me does not give me the permission to be such a trench mouth bitch to or about them, and yet I certainly have been. For all I know, their calling me a fat troll is some ironic token of affection. You never know with these kids today; the whole thing could just be one big misunderstanding. Maybe fat troll is, like, all "street" for Daddy Muffin or something.

No matter which way you look at it, though, "an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind". Gee, I wish I'd said that.

Somewhere along the line I've picked up the lie that every person on the planet thinks less of me because I can't get a date. Which is crazy, not to mention extreme. I mean, just because a bunch of people (myself included) think that way doesn't mean everyone does, and I should take care to make friends with the ones who don't. To a large extent I think I've done this.

But I also need to learn to give myself the same break I expect from others. Obviously, I don't devalue anyone but myself for not being able to get a date. No one. So why do I do it to myself? I have no idea. Remember, this post was about patterns. Let's save the epiphanies for a post about flashes of insight, or fucking miracles, or some such.

For the first time in a long time I feel myself spiralling upwards where this issue is concerned, instead of down, which ought to assuage those friends whose patience I've tested. As important as it is for me to expose my disordered thoughts to the withering light of reason, any fresh perspective on them is ever due to Mr. Barr and Mr. Davey and especially Mr. Gagne.

Understanding the pattern of emotions and the rhythm of feelings (not to mention learning how to control them) may help increase the velocity of this upward spiral until such time as this issue is no longer an issue.

I know, I know... As patterns go, I'd been hoping for the tidy efficiency of plaid, myself; instead, I've ended up with a truly stomach-churning paisley. Still, even the worst pattern is better than the best chaos. Baby steps, I keep reminding myself, baby steps...