My life is one big regret

The problem with regrets is that they keep working backwards. I can regret eating an ice cream cone for dinner, but then it keeps working itself backwards, and eventually I end up regretting not staying in town for residency, regretting that whole sorrowful time during 2nd year, regretting 1st year and all those stupid attempts to change myself, regretting leaving my college friends and going to med school, regretting that whole sordid relationship mess, regretting going to the college I did, regretting moving to the Midwest in the first place... and it keeps going on and on, and eventually, I end up at the age of five, on a snowy hill in a park in the Northeast.

I was so happy. I had my Freezy Freakies with the jet airplanes on them. I ran everywhere; I was so eager to get there that I had to go as fast as I could. And I think to myself that the only regret of my life, the original regret from which they all stem, is one that I had no control over. I wish my parents had not gotten divorced. I wish that we were still a family. I wish that those winters sledding in the park were the rule and not the exception.

I wish that I never had any reason to move to the Midwest, and maybe worked up the courage to ask out that one girl in the row next to me who always was so flirty with me. Maybe we'd go out, and that would turn into something more, and maybe we'd end up married, have some kids, and live in Manhattan, and visit my parents every few weeks.

They'd go crazy over the grandchildren. My mom would be all over them, and my dad would try to teach them something far above their comprehension. And I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my life trying to figure out what a family is. I wouldn't have to spend the rest of my life trying to find intimacy with another human being.

The problem is that when you go that far back, you stand a good chance of entirely changing whom you'd become. I wouldn't be the same person that I am now. I wouldn't have all the close friends that I do. I wouldn't have a lot of things, but I think I'd trade it all. And I doubt any of you can understand how entirely scared I am to leave here. I don't want to move again. I don't want to leave anymore. This is the only home I have; I don't want to give it up.

And all I really want is someone to tell me that it'll all work out in the end. All this moving and worrying and new beginnings, it'll all come up roses. 'This is the second act. Second acts are always full of anguish and tribulation. But it'll all work out in the end.' That's all I'm asking for. It'll be nice to have a new city, new people, new surroundings. I can start fresh. But you see, I never wanted a fresh start. I appreciate it, but it was not what I wanted. I wanted another chance at an old start.

Realizations about my love life

I was reading through the archives on this site. I enjoy it because it comforts me with the realization that all my problems are not new or special, but in fact festering boils on my existence. It got me thinking that for once in my life, I'm thinking different. Oh the situation is unchanged, notwithstanding the crap that has happened in the interval between then and now, But I'm glad that my opinion on the matter has changed significantly.

Because it's one thing to be unlucky in love. I mean, man, I've struck out more times than should be allowed by law. It's quite another thing to abandon hope entirely. Because I've made a few realizations in my life, and they're stupid realizations, but just because they're stupid doesn't make them any less true.

(1) I can't love someone if I don't love myself. I don't mean that in a narcissistic way. I just mean that when it comes down to it, loving someone else requires you to believe yourself worthy of such an emotion.

And along that line, (2) Happiness is something from within, and I have to learn to be happy by myself if I want to be happy with others. Inner joy isn't supplied by others. It's something gained from within. Happiness based on other people isn't happiness. It's no different than drugs or alcohol. It's a temporary euphoria that is lost as quickly as it's gained.

(3) Part of learning to love myself is accepting who I am. This I am working on. I've been working on it for quite some time. A couple years back, I realized that I was trying to change who I was to accommodate the love interests in my life, and that was a flawed strategy. I need to be myself, and accept that I am the best at being who I am. And that means accepting that I'm a private person, that I have a hard time sharing. I'm a goody-goody Catholic boy who'll quite likely remain a virgin for a long, long time. I draw pleasure from small things. I am very nostalgic. I get great satisfaction by pleasing others. I am conscientious. I am full of quirks and foibles and little sharp edges, and that's who I am, and there's no reason to change that or modify it.

Once I learn to accept myself, and to love myself, then (4) quite simply, I deserve to love and to be loved. I am who I am, and that is the person who deserves to be loved, not someone else.

But just because I deserve to love and to be loved, (5) that doesn't mean that I have any control over who loves me. I've been chasing after eidolons, fantasies. I did not learn until recently that finding the right person is more than attraction. It is finding a person that complements me, that is the other half of my puzzle piece in life.

(6) Love is not trying to fill the emptiness in my life with someone else, but it's trying to find someone who'll want to help me fill those holes. Love is not a solution to anything; it's a partnership. I've always viewed my life as empty and lacking, and maybe it is, but I'm not looking for someone to shore up the gaps. I'm looking for someone to help me along.

But the thing that I really came to terms with is that looking for love, real love, is playing with fire. Because the truth to life is that (7) if you want to be loved, you must love. Love isn't a one way street. And I can't be loved without loving. I can't take without giving. I can't expect a person to love me and not to love her back.

I'm still sorting through these little realizations, but I feel like it's time for me to get back into the dating world. And it's not that I have any prospects that I'm working on. It'd be nice if something just fell into my lap (no pun intended), but I think that it's simply a change in my attitude.

So, the short of the story is that I think I'm ready to try to start dating again, and that I'm kind of glad that I've had all this time off from it, in spite of all the shit I had to wade through, because I had some lessons to learn, and learning those lessons was valuable, because learning to accept myself for who I am is probably much more valuable to my existence than some scattered dates that led nowhere and would've caused a lot of heartache.

Thank you

I guess now is a good a time as any to get this over with. I want to just thank some people, and by thank, of course I doubt any of them actually read this site, so I get to thank them in utter anonymity.

Thank you, M. I think that I've never met a person quite like you, and probably never will. You've no idea how much you inspired me to be a better student and a better doctor. You showed me that it's okay to hold myself to a higher standard that what was expected of me. You showed me that being a good doctor is not about smarts, but about heart. I remember when I first met you, I remember smoking outside school between classes. I remember it all, and I doubt that you'll ever comprehend how much I'm in your debt.

Thank you, S, for keeping me running even keel. You had such a fantastic way of putting things into perspective. You kept me from getting unbalanced and tripped up. You kept me pointed in the right direction at all times, as much as I wanted to go the other way. You made me realize that life is what you make of it, and that when all you get is lemons in life, you get to discover just how delicious lemonade is. You made me feel like I was a part of your family, and you made me feel at home. Thanks.

Thank you, R, for rejecting me, of all things. Thanks for making me look at myself in the mirror and see who I really am. You'll never know it, but over the past two years, I've grown by leaps and bounds, far surpassing the other nine years I've lived in the Midwest. You know, it's been a long, long time since I've felt like I'm not pretending. It's been a long time since I've been true to myself, and although you probably have no idea, you shook up my world and forced me to find myself. Thanks for only being a friend.

Thank you, F, for listening. Thanks for never blowing off my ravings and tirades and anger and desperation and sadness and self-loathing. Thanks for letting me be myself, and helping me along the way to discover just who I am. Thanks for always being the person to lean on when I needed a shoulder, and the helping hand when I needed a lift. Thanks for making me understand that it's not what's around you as much as what's in you.

Thank you, K, for being the most decent person I know. Thanks for showing me that there is refuge for the kind-hearted and compassionate. Thanks for making me realize that all the qualities I want in a doctor are things that you can't measure or quantify. Thanks for being a person that I admired, that I could call my friend.

Thank you to everyone that helped me along the way to get to this point in my life. I couldn't have done it without you. Everything I've done, I couldn't have done it without friends to lend a helping hand, an attentive ear, or a shoulder to lean on. There are some people who deserve all the thanks in the world, but I'd rather not thank everyone here.

What I really want to do is thank everyone who held me back, everyone who threw roadblocks in my way. I want to thank everyone who doubted, interfered, meddled, and made a mess of my life. I want to thank each and every one of you who made me contemplate suicide for the first time in nine years. I really, sincerely, want to thank you.

I'm not being sarcastic. You know when you're drowning, you've got to strip off your clothing so that you don't sink. When you're running low on fuel, you've got to pitch the dead weight so that you can go the distance. You know, it's like I've been climbing, and I'm halfway up a wall, there are only two directions to go. And as much as you tried to drag me down, I'm still going up. And knowing that you were there to hinder me, to hold me back, to make my life as hellish as possible, it makes reaching the finish line that much sweeter.

Seven facts about me everyone should know

(1) I do not give out compliments. I just don't. It's not that I'm trying to be rude, but I just don't see the need. Conversely, I cannot take a compliment. Whenever someone says something nice to me, I am the picture of awkward. This goes back to when I was 15 and I decided that I would stop using the word 'love' because I thought it was overused and lost all of its meaning and significance. Similarly, I think people pay each other compliments just to feel better, and not because it's true.

So, I decided back then that I wouldn't use love unless I meant it (I've since rescinded), and I also decided that I wouldn't compliment someone unless I meant it. So, believe me when I say that any compliment I pay, you have to amplify a bit. If I tell you that you look nice, you're fucking on fire you're so hot. If I say that you did a good job at something, then you blew the freakin' doors off of it. That's just me. I can't give a compliment.

(2) I have a rule for everything. I realized this when F pointed it out to me. I started to say something about the proper way to do something and he stopped me and ran back into the room saying, "Wait, wait, I want to hear the rule for this!" I realized then and there that my superego is the 600 lbs gorilla of my psyche. It extends far beyond rules of etiquette. I have rules for the proper way to read the newspaper, the proper way to store clothing, whether to recycle and what one should recycle, when to smoke, proper e-mail etiquette, how to read a poem, and other topics. In fact, I have an opinion on the proper way to do most anything. I have had to actively suppress this urge to give my opinion, especially when F gave me his business card and asked me what the rules of business cards were (his cards broke most all my rules).

(3) I completely hide my emotions. It is very difficult to get a read on me, not in some vague trivial sense, but I'm talking huge deals. Like I was suicidal for a day or two and no one even noticed. People piss me off to extraordinary lengths and have no clue. People accuse me of being angry when I'm tired, happy when I'm depressed, bitter when I'm remorseful. There are only about 5 people in the world who manage to see through my layers upon layers of defenses to who I am. Everyone else just sort of operates on the assumption that I'm this happy-go-lucky sort of individual. As an example, I have a friend who I was planning on cutting out of my life entirely. That person's saving grace was a Christmas card. I know someone else who will probably never know how much our friendship has meant to me, and I'm fine with that.

(4) It is remarkably difficult to get me angry. But once someone gets me mad, I stay mad. And I never let go of grudges. I mean, really, I was social with my ex and my friend who basically undercut me in order to go out with her. And this guy, I stuck with him when his previous girlfriend and him broke up. I was a good friend, and he royally screwed me over. But man, I was waving hello and inviting them to things. Getting on my shit list takes a lot of effort. It's one thing to annoy me or irritate me, but getting me angry, that takes work. In this world, there are only 2 people that I hate. And I dole out forgiveness like I'm gunning for sainthood. But once someone crosses the line, that's it.

The funny thing is that most people have no idea what will set me off because I don't show it. There are more than a few people in the last few years who have pissed me off to a major level and it's not like I ever did anything about it. It's difficult to know what will set me off because there's so very little that does.

But my opinion of people certainly brightens and dims without any indication. I have a friend who came up short on a bill, leaving me to pay an extra $10, and I don't think I'll ever confront that person, and I doubt I'll ever have a favorable opinion of that person like I did before. Another person, I confided some pretty serious shit to, and that person more or less blew me off. I didn't say anything, but I spent the better part of a month deciding whether I ever wanted to talk to that person ever again.

(5) I am angry with God. I was told this by a priest during my last confession which was over 5 years ago. I came to realize that this priest has a level of insight into the human soul that is unbelievable, because he was dead on. I am remarkably angry with God, because I feel like my life is without purpose. I feel like my entire life is spent pointlessly without any effect or repercussion on anyone, muchless humanity in general. It's a sobering realization to think that I could be erased from existence without so much as a hiccup. And the part that truly pissed me off was that in spite of this pointless meandering existence I lead, I'm not allowed to end my life. How wholly unfair. It's pretty much the only reason I haven't killed myself.

But I go to church like it's my job, and I do spend time in prayer. I feel very grateful for what God's given me. I'm remarkably fortunate. But still, it's hard to look at all this good fortune, knowing that most of it is stuff I could do without, and the stuff I do want in my life is all deficient.

(6) I am extremely paranoid. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if I had a psychotic break sometime soon. I have a lot of paranoid thoughts. I worry that someone may be following me, or that one of my friends is actually trying to betray me, or a girl I like is actually making fun of me behind my back. I worry endlessly about what people think of me. I spend a lot of time trying to rationalize away my paranoia, but the problem is that it's ended up being right a good number of times. Part of dispelling an irrational belief is realizing that it has no foundation in truth. It becomes exceptionally hard to dispel an irrational belief when your previous irrational beliefs (like that your girlfriend was cheating on you, that a girl you liked was mocking you behind your back, that one of your friends was just humoring you but actually resented you) have been proven to be true.

(7) I don't talk to anyone about what goes on in my life. Sometimes, I'll call S, or I'll track down F maybe, but otherwise, I keep everything to myself. I've become an intensely private person, because I've come to the realization that I'm not really sure I can trust anyone with my emotional wellbeing except for those with a decent track record. And this is rather amusing to me, in that ironic kind of amusing way, because I would love to share myself with another person. I would love to have someone I could really confide in. But honestly, most people wouldn't know what to do with me. I had a friend who honestly just avoided me for 2 months after I spilled some emotional baggage. I had another friend who offered me a terse e-mail whose content can be summed up with the words: so, are you better now?

Two things I have to do before I die

The thought occurred to me that I may be single for the rest of my life. This has actually been invaluable. I thought the whole point of being okay with myself was that this realization shouldn't scare me as much as it does. I have to admit, it scares the shit out of me, because it sort of infringes upon one of the two things I'd like to do before I die. We were talking one day about things that we'd like to do before we die, and when rubber met road, I decided that only two things are really critical. Everything else, like going to the Vatican, having children, all that stuff, it was a wash. There were only really two things that I thought I absolutely had to do before I died. And the sad fact is that I've made no progress on either front.

What are these two things? What the hell, I'm in a sharing mood. (1) I'd like to make a difference in someone's life, a real difference. Not some bettering the world bullshit. I'd like to have a situation where I made an honest to God difference. I can't say that's happened yet, and I doubt it'll happen any time soon. (2) I'd like to know what it's like to love someone with all your heart. Y'know, it'd be nice to have a girlfriend and all that jazz, or even to reproduce, but what I want is to know what it's like to really love someone. These are the only two things that I feel like I need to do before I die.

And I'm sure that some of my friends would say, "How can you say that you haven't made a difference?" Well, it's actually quite easy to say. And easier to believe. I really haven't. My life has been exquisitely selfish. I figure that one day, I'll take a bullet for someone, and that'll be that. As far as love, I've no fucking clue. I really have no idea what it is to love. It's an entirely meaningless word to me. I'd like to know what love is, not lust or crushes or infatuation or friendship or obsession or any of that shit. Balls to the wall 100% love. I haven't the faintest.