Mixed feelings about fear.

Mara Abbott, who happens to be the only athlete who I really love to follow, said something in her talk to Whitman Cyclists that made sense to me. If you are numb, you can't tell what problems you are having or how to fix them.

I see that as some sort of explanation for feeling my feelings, even if I sometimes wish the sad ones didn't put me into a House M.D. watching comotose state on my couch.

The feeling I'm confused about now is fear. We hear so much about living every day to the fullest, going after our dreams, achieving all that we were born to do. Mara talks about how special it is to try to be the best in the world at something.  I can see that it is special, and that she has learned a lot on her journey to the pinnacle of women's cycling. But is it possible to be balanced, fulfilled, happy and trying to be the best at anything?

Is trying to be the best at anything antithetical to balance?

As Mara would say, the sports Gods have not chosen cycling for me. I'm sure, based on my general indifference to being faster than other people, I am not destined to be a bike racer. I like the beauty of cycling, the suffering, the friends, the trips to the races, but never did I truly care too much about winning. I wanted to be faster, yes, but I had these visions of being on a real team and helping someone else win. That was as far as my visions went.

Jen Tripplet, one of my favorite life coaches writes about trying to achieve success, in life and on the bike. She inspires me to, and of course, she has the live each day to the fullest attitude that truly only comes from wallowing through the lowest, darkest canyons of grief.

So I look at my goals, my desire to write a book, my desire to approach the brilliance of my adviser, my desire to approach the explorations of Arizona taken up by Rich Rudow and my Canyon Chronicles idol, my definite desire to have good relationships with my boyfriend and mom and friends, and my maybe desire to have kids.

So there is this FEAR thing. Fear stopped me from plowing right ahead into Job applications this semester, saved me untold amounts of stress, and prevented me from graduating in May 2015.

Fear also stops me from going to beautiful but dangerous canyons with keep potholes and exposed approaches on crumbling slopes. This fear, I feel, is justified, since Joannah fell down one of those slopes to her death, and death is not something I can afford to do with my mom being so sick and all.

Fear is a giant pause button on marriage and pregnancy. I'm not afraid that I would be a bad mother. I'm fairly good at taking care of most of my friends. I like helping people. I am ethical and can learn and reflect and grow. My fear, is that children are so unpredictable. When you decide to get pregnant, you are signing up for any possibility. 

I don't think I'm afraid to write a book, but I'm afraid to set goals i can't reach, to push too hard, to burn out. I'm afraid of the consequences, the self-hate, the I don't know. I guess, I'm also afraid that I'm already a miserable failure at getting my PhD done in time and that I should be doing a better job on my career. I know that I have the feeling that I won't be defined my career in academia, and that there is a book in me, but that still doesn't keep me from seeing and thinking about the people going into academia who are more successful than I am. I could be publishing more. I could be living each day to the fullest.... but the more I write and do, the less I explore and see and feel and relax. Stress is a real thing that causes illness.

I fear my mother's death. I'm afraid to take on challenges that might rear their heads in the time that she dies. I'm purposefully and knowingly taking a step down from what I could achieve because of fear or exhaustion or something related to my mom. Part of me says that of course this makes sense to do this. I should plan ahead, how could I think that a mom dying shouldn't be exhausting. Another part of me says that this is my one wild and wonderful life and that I must do everything I can to do what I need to do in the universe.

Fear-it can be so logical. It can keep us from doing things that we really shouldn't do. It can prevent our greatest dreams from ever coming true. Fear, like any emotion, apparently requires balance, and balance, balance balance, is tough for me. I find myself tired easily. I find myself willing to take the easy way out often.
It seems like one of the perceptual questions in my life is should I push harder, through the fear and pain and risk, and possibly achieve everything I've wanted, or do I need to be nicer to myself. I don't know, but usually I try to push,

Summer love-part two-how can I see what I'm doing and still do it?

This is part two of my story of Roark, the depressed and brilliant man I fell hard for. It matters now, because I see that five years ago I went through a process of trying to understand myself and came to many of the same conclusions I am today.  How could I know all this and still have the same issues five years later? Does self-awareness do anything? I'm starting to think that reason is not my path to happiness and loving myself. 

“My mom has been concerned with my selection of men recently.” The addition of the word recently omits the entire truth. I started dating my first boyfriend in ninth grade because I wanted a date for homecoming and was embarrassed that I was the only one of my friends who didn’t know how to kiss. He dropped out of high school and became an abusive father at 17.

“How recently?” Roark asks.

“Well, since I met you.”

Roark is quite curious about my mother’s impression of him.

“Do you remember the conversation where I speculated that my mom was going to tell me to go jump into a lake to cool down my hormonally influenced decision making processes?”

“Yes.”

She actually said “This guy is too weird. Don’t call him again. If you do I won’t let you stay in my house.” I told her that I’d call him and stay with him and she responded that “there is no way you’ll stay with him, he won’t even kiss you.”

“Wow, I don’t know what to say,” Roark responds. It was offensive and also creepy I’d spent so much time discussing the situation with my mother. There is a slightly awkward pause in the conversation.

“Your mom is exactly right. I don’t know how she knows though.” Roark probably doesn’t realize the extent to which his direct quotations have been documented and reviewed by my mother. She is highly qualified at spotting men who are bad news after a lifetime of intensive in the field training.

Roark warns me again that he is bad news for me.

“My mother says that when a guy tells you that he won’t be a good partner to believe him.”

Roark adds, “and run in the other direction.” I wonder what I’m doing with Roark.

 “I have no self-esteem. This was caused by a number of events that are no longer relevant. I want attention to compensate for these feelings. If I see even a little spark of interest I do things to encourage it even if I have no intention of ever actually starting a relationship.” Roark finds this behavior awful. If he actually just believed he deserved a great woman he wouldn’t do this.

“I gave the impression that I was interested in something that I wasn’t. I say things that imply interest.”  Playing the games of dating when you’re not serious, is like lying by omission.  My mom is right that this is not the type of guy I want to be with.  Nevertheless, we plan to ride bikes together the next day and end up talking about relationships in a parking lot again.

 “I know the causes of all of my problems. The repercussions are still around.” I’m curious and he gives specifics. Roark’s dad died when he was in high school. People didn’t want to be around him because he was so depressed but as a high schooler without well developed self-esteem he just assumed that it was something about him.

Roark seems so apologetic for what he’s done to me this summer. Why does he endlessly apologize to me? Does sorry really mean anything.

I think he’s more concerned about it than I am. He hates this behavior in himself. He hates that he leads women on to fulfill a need for attention created by his low self-esteem. He doesn’t know how to escape this part of him but it’s sabotaging all of his relationships and causing trouble for others. I don’t think that he’s that worried about what he’s done to me, but more that he did it again, he repeated his same problem. He’s not fixed. He needs me to accept an apology for all of this but maybe I don’t want to acknowledge the problem.

On loveline tonight a young girl who had just been abandoned by the father of her unborn child was told that she was always going to choose men like that because that was what her father did. What am I choosing in men? Attention. Attention. Attention. It’s why I need so many of them, I’m temporarily distracted because on any given day I’ll get a text message, an email, a phone call, a date, a bike ride with someone. I keep finding geographically improbably men where nothing really matters because it’s over so quickly.

I’m reluctant to accept Roark’s apology because I have the same problem. We both are willing to spend time together because we gave each other attention. I don’t care that it isn’t going anywhere, or at least I pretend well enough to convince myself.

I’m attracted to emotionally unavailable men because my father was emotionally unavailable. How do I get over that?

A normal girl might have hung out with Josh, realized that he wasn’t going to kiss her and gotten over it, stopped calling him. I didn’t. 

One day while riding bikes with my friend Jack he was talking about his dog Cheech. She loves him even if he ignores her. No matter what she is always there, waiting for him to take her out, even if he has ignored her for much too long. I said “that reminds me of women.” He seemed surprised that I’d said that and said, “Don’t most women lose interest and give up if a guy is ignoring them?”

I’m thinking that maybe most women do and it’s just me who is acting like his dog, endlessly waiting for affection. I’ve compared myself to a Chihuahua. Not a good sign.

“The point of this summer was for me to be in a situation where there were no negative repercussions for being with someone else to see if I would want to.” He tells me.

“I’m a human litmus test. I suppose that I should take this more personally but I’m not really hurt or offended.”

I wonder why I’m not hurt. I think of fathers.

My father was angry with me because I reminded him of my mom. He was emotionally distant. He hurt me. It was hard to reconcile loving someone who hurt you but it was necessary because I had to love my dad. Life without loving my dad would be intolerable. So I learned how to love someone who hurt me, to forgive quickly. And I had to take some of the blame myself because if it was all his fault when he screamed at me how could I feel anything less than hate or anything more than a blood-obligation to interact with him?

 “I’m an attention whore.”

“Me too.” 

I get distracted from the story and find myself trying to understand myself instead of Roark. 

 

I’m a whore. I say that and I mean it. I am. This is a problem. I’m aware of it. How do I address this? Roark’s issues are rooted in a lack of self-confidence. I’m often more conceited than I care to admit. I look at my body and usually think that it is beautiful. I’m smart.  I’m interesting and honest. Someone should fall madly in love with me and many should want to kiss me.  Why am I an attention whore then? And what would I do with myself if I was unattractive, stupid, disabled, fat, boring, awful? That’s it. My self worth is tied to my accomplishments. It is tied to documented facts. The more quantified the better. It’s easy to recite a list: SAT’s 1460, AP Calculus, Physics English all 5’s, Valedictorian, Cum Laude, attended 5^th ranked liberal arts college, distinction on math writtens, Phi Beta Kappa, IQ 145, earned at least $7,000 selling art, wrote 90 page number theory book, top 10 at lots of races.

So I’m smart. How to I prove I’m attractive? It’s a little trickier but you can find some numbers.  Size 4(except my thighs), 20% body fat, 145 lbs. Wyland told me that I’m beautiful and my mom insists his judgment is valid because he’s a famous artist whose sold work for over 100,000 thousand dollars. I was cast as Titania in A Midsummer’s Nights Dream. Three boys have kissed me this summer. Two more have ridden their bikes a long way with me. A couple more text message me. Seven have told me I’m beautiful.

Abandonment. Abandonment. I don’t want people to leave me. My mom left me to pursue her career in Alaska. Is that what I see in my eyes in that picture that is so interesting to me or am I just putting what I want into my face.

My Dad told me once that that he was proud I was his daughter. He thought that I was so much better than so many other kids. I was smarter and harder working and more successful. My mom loves bragging about my acceptance to fancy schools, not realizing that no one has heard of Pomona. She loves me because I’m beautiful. She likes watching men adore me because it reflects well on her genetics. My entire family thinks that they are smart, talented and right.

I can’t sit alone and quiet without moving and love myself separate from my quantitative accomplishments. Can I just be happy with something that is me? Roark talked about loving someone who was worthless. Maybe he meant loving someone without the laundry list of accomplishments. Do we have an essence outside of this? Is it my laugh, my unique smile? My sense of wonder? I cry when I see other people in pain? I love passionately? Is there some sort of rule that real love isn’t quantifiable? If it is marred by numbers it is somehow worthless? Is it possible that I could love someone just because of who they are despite having nothing in common?

Thank god I was never wrecked enough to think that my self-worth was based on the quantity of men I could bed.  So much of my feelings about myself are based on outside evaluations that with men, with love and affection I do the same thing. I count the days and months in between kisses. It’s as if someone doesn’t tell me I’m beautiful once every 35 days it’s not true anymore. Am I better off now that I’m aware of this?

I saw myself as broken. How do I heal?

Roark, a depressed and brilliant man who I fell for almost instantly sent me an email admitting that he'd cheated and that he was scared he wouldn't have a good relationship with his new girlfriend.

I showed it to my mom. She wrote him back. He got angry that I'd shown the email to my mom even though he knew I was writing stories about him all summer and that she was reading them. I wrote this back. How can I have that insight five years ago and still be where I am now? I feel like insight doesn't bring progress. I don't know how to love myself. I don't know how to be secure. How do I learn?


Here is my email to him:

For the first time in weeks I went out to the loop with the intention of hammering. Your email made me angry and lifted me out of the habit of my slow base pace miles I’ve been putting in recently because after school I don’t have the mental toughness to suffer.

Going up a hill, suffering through a harder gear than usual I cracked. I started crying.  In my life being treated badly feels more like love that kindness. Partial abandonment is the sign of love. The people who love me hurt me because they care, because they are trying to make me a better person, to correct me.

And I get it, maybe, why out of everyone I’ve met what I have with you feels the most like love. Receiving insulting drunken emails from you feels more like love that kissing someone who is legitimately kind and interested in me. You don’t tell me that I’m beautiful. You don’t hold me or my hand. You don’t show any genuine or direct interest and yet that feels more like love to me. It is more exciting interesting and it scares me because I know that if you had wanted to you could have done absolutely anything you wanted with my heart. Maybe I’m selling myself short to think that I would have fallen for you completely with no regard for rationality but I fear that I wouldn’t have had the wisdom.

If my life had a slogan it would be

RAPE IS SEX

ABUSE IS AFFECTION

ABANDONMENT IS COMMITMENT

 I’m used to loving people who do not treat me well. I’m used to being hurt or angry and not standing up for myself because it’s easier to accept fault and try to avoid being yelled at any more. When you emailed me back about trust I felt like maybe I screwed up. Upon reflection, you knew that my mom was reading stories about you and everything that you said. I never promised that I wouldn’t tell her about what you said and in fact made it very clear exactly what she knew about you by sending you the stories. Forwarding emails to my mom is not socially acceptable and I haven’t done it before and wouldn’t  ever send a reply to someone who I thought might actually be interested in me because it’s a sure way to scare someone off and offend them. Perhaps letting her read your words was worse than all of the direct quotes in the stories but I’m not sure by how much. I also know that almost all women upon receipt of such an email would share it with at least one other person they were close to. Does it make me worse that I completely admitted to doing just that or just more honest?

I even acknowledged to you that I knew that it was strange what I had done but that I’d have nothing to lose. I’m not sure that I necessarily believe that because a part of me does not want to lose you and whatever we have (even though I’m not sure what that is.) When you told me that you had nothing to lose it was offensive. I was nothing. I didn’t matter, but yet I did because you were emailing me. More paradoxes. “I’m in love with a girl named Sophie, cammie?” What does that mean? The juxtaposition of our names is like you really love her, but I’m still something, enough for me to stay interested. I would have been willing to start a relationship with someone this summer. Summer flings are grand but if there is something there I wouldn’t end it just because of temporary geographical difficulties. You never wanted to start anything with me, just kind of kept me interested on a string. 

It’s almost like intellectual infidelity. You are getting something out of your relationship with me. You are not willing to give up Sarah to actually be with me, to love me, to have an open honest relationship with me but you still see something in me. I’m weak enough to accept that small attention even though I deserve someone’s full attention. Even though I shouldn’t be flattered I am. I know I should be able to have more on some level but I’m still screwed up.

I see your life, your mistakes your faults and emphasize with them and still trust you even though maybe I shouldn’t.

I’m scared that I feel this way for you.

You are in some ways my Howard Roark(a character from the Fountainhead who I took my ex's fake name from). You are a measuring stick for other men. Are they as smart as Roark? As interesting? As much fun to talk to? It doesn’t necessarily make sense because you and Howard Roark are characters in a story. You both have so many flaws that are necessary parts of your brilliance. 

When I read the Fountainhead I did not think that Dagny was raped. I didn’t really consider it.

This is the scene: “It was an act that could be performed in tenderness, as a seal of love, or in contempt, as a symbol of humiliation and conquest. It could be the act of a lover or the act of a soldier violating an enemy woman. He did it as an act of scorn. Not as love, but as defilement.  And this made her lie still and submit. One gesture of tenderness from him—and she would have remained cold, untouched by the thing he had done to her body.  But the act of a master taking shameful, contemptuous possession of her was the kind of rapture she wanted. Then she felt him shaking with the agony of a pleasure unbearable even to him, she knew that she had given that to him, that it came from her, her body and she bit her lips and she knew what he had wanted her to know.” Page 217

When I kiss men or sleep with them I want them to hold me down, to bite me, to subdue me. Perhaps it is just normal sexual expression, but I know that I’d have a hard time marrying someone who didn’t want to do this to me.

Falling in love and knowing how wrong it is.

Carmen's note: I wrote many stories about Roark the summer that we met. I include this one to show that I was fascinated by a man who didn't truly believe in love and had some major issues to work on before he could have a happy relationship.  I think, in hindsight, some wounded, insecure part of myself I was not yet aware of felt a deep connection to his depression and insecurities and uncertainty. This is the second story-the first was about a bike ride together in which he played games with the intent of keeping me interested. The italicized text was added much later once I found out more about Roark.

Romantic Relations: Failing the Vertical Line Test

“Will you be here for a second?”  Roark asks as we pack up after Attack the Track at the Velodrome. His tone of voice is slightly vulnerable as if whatever he is going to say will be worth waiting around for. He’s thinking that this is a not a good idea to ask me to dinner. It leads to dangerous ground for him, it will test his fidelity. His tone of voice isn’t the normal nervous because he doesn’t really care what I say. It’s guilt.

            I easily exchange my skinsuit for a red rose dress, pleased at how adept I’ve become at changing in front of people at cycling events.

            Roark walks back over to me as I linger speculating that he might say something of interest.  “What’s up?” I ask.

            “I try not to eat this late but do you want to get dinner with me? I’m going to go get food even if you don’t.” Did his qualification make it more about food than my presence, deflecting some potential embarrassment?

            My answer to his question was the outcome he’d hoped for. 

I smile as I follow his car downtown, pleased that my nonchalance that evening seemed effective at gaining a dinner date.   He’d been playing mind games on our previous bike rides, thinking that leaving me wondering was more interesting than being direct. Dinner is proof of interest. Dinner is proof of interest if one is normal and secure. Dinner with Roark was something else.

His dark brown eyes are not particularly unique but it’s exciting to look into them as we eat.  Our conversation lasts longer than our food and drinks. Realizing we are the only ones left in the bar we feel obligated to leave.

We lean against his car facing each other, our faces reflecting slightly different double versions of ourselves. I ponder if his reflection or his face is more attractive. 

 “Being open about everything is less honest than concealing things, ” Roark proposes another paradoxical theory of love. “I’ve told you a lot but have I really told you anything about myself that matters?” He does the half-smile smirk to indicate he probably hasn’t. He wants to warn me that telling me that he causes trouble is an understatement. I may think he’s being honest, I may accept his small mistakes because he’s open about them. He leaves unspoken some of the truly atrocious things he’s done. His honestly conceals a lot and I’m not taking his warnings seriously enough.

I think about it, wondering what I know about him. He takes pictures of abandoned buildings dilapidated by the weight of time because they capture him better than words. He empathizes with my students who choose laziness because it’s an easier explanation for failure than lack of ability. Laziness is relative to ones peers however. Laziness to Roark means doing 100 hours of work a week instead of the 120 hours the others are doing at his prestigious architecture school. He’s third best at everything instead of the best at anything because he can’t choose one thing.

 “I don’t know what I want to do with my life. I don’t know if I want to be an architect or a photographer or something else.” I relate to his frustration as I try to choose between journalism, mathematics or that something else career that will decisively answer the nagging “what do you want to do when you grow up?” question.

 “I don’t understand myself. I don’t have a clear sense of identity. My life is compartmentalized. I’m a different person in different circumstances. It’s hard to know how to behave when different parts of my life intersect. It causes lots of problems in my relationships.”  Roark has already told me that he doesn’t let people fall in love with him and that he has a low-self esteem. Roark lives in lies to people. Sarah doesn’t know how he feels fear. He’s afraid to let her see that part of him. He has a best self and a worse self. I only have a self. I don’t conceal. I wear my tears on my cheeks without feeling shame. I share my success and failure and guilt.

“You have to love yourself before anyone else can love you.” I connect his problems with a truth found in a guide to dating.  Falling in love is a quick solution to loneliness, purposelessness, boredom, and lack of confidence. Love makes me feel beautiful, desired, interesting and intelligent. However, love insists that we find these qualities on our own before he gives them to us. If we choose love’s quick fix we end up with self-confidence built on something other than ourselves, an unsteady structure bound to fall apart like the buildings Roark photographs. Love isn’t enough. Love is a bandage, a temporary slave. No love can repair our own problems. If we cheat love won’t keep us from doing it. It’s something else, something separate.

“I believe in love when I’m having a good day. When I’m having a bad day and don’t like myself it’s the first thing to go. I like things that are logical and that make sense. It doesn’t make sense to me why someone would love me.”

“Normally I would think that this statement fishes for me to tell you that you are smart, interesting and attractive, but I don’t get the sense that me telling you that would change anything.” I avoid explicitly complimenting him.

“Women can tell me that they love me because I’m good at art or intelligent but it doesn’t make logical sense. Why can someone love one identical twin and not the other?  Love is not about our quantitative accomplishments. Have you ever loved someone who was worthless?”

I consider a long string of boyfriends who were unsuccessful because they sabotaged their own brilliance with refusal to accept social norms. These men couldn’t pursue a mature relationship because of unresolved emotional trauma. As providers, as lovers, as friends they might have been worthless. They were certainly interesting however. I smile at Roark’s comment and laugh to myself. My smile reveals that I am thinking of something interesting and bratty enough to leave others to guess at it.  “I tend to think that the people I’ve dated have not been completely worthless,” I respond.

 “The possibility of loving someone worthless implies that love is not quantifiable.  Intelligence, attractiveness, honesty, humor, are not sufficient conditions to inspire love. When I’m too pessimistic to entertain the leaps in logic necessary to accept love it ceases to be a possibility.”

Roark explains his dysfunctional views on love with a reference to his past.

“I didn’t really like high school. Or to be more honest, high school didn’t like me.” Roark’s dad died. Roark was miserable. Misery may love company but a high schooler with a normal life is unlikely to react positively to that. Roark started pretending to be something else because no one liked the Roark scared by the loss of his father.  

Roark asked, “Do you believe in love?”

“I think that it probably exists.” I have to add probably since I can’t prove it.

“Probably? Haven’t you ever been in love?”

“Yes, I have.”

“How can you use the word probably?”

“My mother believes that romantic love is something that society has taught us to believe in that is really more of a hormonally charged experience. Abiding love takes more time to grow than people normally take before marriage. Her theory is supported by the divorce rates and in deference to her beliefs I added the probably. “He looks at me skeptically. “Okay, I believe in love,” I admit.  I’m an optimist.

It’s late and we decide to head home.  In a normal romantic relation hanging out in a man’s car for an hour in a dark parking lot would result in a kiss. Something was different but I’m still optimistic about Roark.  Optimistic?! Am I a fool. This is why I scare myself. Roark’s goal with me was to avoid kissing. How close can I get and still resist? Am I strong enough to avoid the beautiful woman sitting in my car at midnight who is willing to do what I want? Sometimes when something is different it doesn’t mean that it’s an exciting game. It means that there is a problem. He’s just too weird my mother says. There is something normal about kissing and if it’s missing don’t take it lightly.

The next day at the velodrome I think about how I can talk to Roark. “You have a really big camera.” I’ve wandered over to where he’s taking pictures of the race.

“It’s compensation.” He gives me a half-smile.

I wonder if he’s being serious or not. If it was true it might explain his lack of confidence with women, but would someone admit that?

He starts to walk away from me and I wonder if I should follow him back.  I feel left behind. He didn’t want to talk to me. I don’t want to follow him back without an invitation; it makes me feel needy. He turns around and points the camera at my face.

I’m shocked and realized that he wasn’t trying to leave. Taking my picture seemed like the biggest compliment Roark had given me, he was entirely focused on my face and it made me blush. I imagined that the portrait should be titled “Girl with crush on photographer.”

“I understand what you were saying that you couldn’t take pictures of happy people when you were really depressed.”

“The subject reacts to the photographer.”

Roark stares at me, holding his camera at his waist, trying to catch me off guard. I could hear the camera a split second before it took the picture and had time to wrench my face into some sort of flattered embarrassment each time. Roark doesn’t think he got what he was looking for. The experience is more intimate than kissing and I wonder if anyone watched it happen and now knows exactly how we feel about each other. (Do we know how we feel about each other?)

After I finish racing I try to change my gear fast enough to find Matt and escape the center of the Velodrome before the next race. I don’t make it and by the time I cross the track, he’s already gone, or at least not trying to find me. I debate calling him. Clearly he’s not interested in hanging out tonight but with my confidence bolstered by the photo shoot and sideline cheers I decide that I might as well call him.

He left early because he had to escape the social situation. He promises to explain on our bike ride the next day. We cancel the bike ride and get lunch.

Roark and I talk at a restaurant by the lake where he used to row. “Rowing suited me. It is a beautiful sport.” In rowing you suffer silently without letting your face betray the pain.

“I think you would like rowing. You like suffering on your bike.” We wander around the lake discussing the path to athletic greatness.

I remind him that he promised to tell me about his fear of social situations. “I’m hyperaware of how I interact with people.” When he talks to people it’s always a charade. He learned that people didn’t like who he was underneath, so he made something up.

“I left last night because I was really tired and I didn’t have the energy to put up that charade, to be confidant.”  This type of peculiarity is one I’d unwisely accept in a boyfriend, trading the hurt feelings of not being wished goodnight for the challenge of figuring out someone so complex.  Did he leave because the night is dangerous?

 “I don’t like social situations because they make me uncomfortable. If you say something to someone, the outcome is unpredictable. Depending on how it’s said, their mood, their opinion of you there can be wildly different results. The difference in the results can mean the difference between happiness and being really upset.”  Love isn’t a science Roark wants it to be.

Dating is not a function. If I could hold a ruler up to it, it would fail the vertical line test. One input in dating can result in many possible outcomes. There are enough paradoxes in love that even applications of the axioms is too complicated for calculation.

We end up at the parking lot again. We have lots of conversations standing in parking lots, reluctant to go home, not willing to make plans to go somewhere where something more serious could happen. I contemplate the inputs in our relation trying to draw a conclusion about where this is going.  The parking lot is safe. It absolves him from needing to exercise any real willpower.

“Well, have a safe drive and a good time at the lake with your family.”

I’m thinking too hard about mentioning kissing to respond.

“So you’re not going to respond to that?”

“My silence means that I was thinking about saying something but not sure if I should.” I can tell by their response to this statement if they really want to know.  “We’ve been playing games,” I state.

“What games?”

I wonder if he is just mocking me.

“Playing hard to get.  If you want to go talk to someone but don’t because you don’t want them to know that you’re too interested it’s less sincere than saying I think you are attractive and want to make out with you.”

“Is it insincere if you don’t know? Is being undecided a legitimate excuse for wavering? I’ve done just enough to keep you from giving up on me and losing interest. I haven’t actually made any decisions.”  Is he really undecided? He loves Sarah, Carmen.

“You’ve just caused trouble.”

“I need to apologize for that.”   He is apologizing for everything. For being such a hopeless cause, for purposefully seeing if he can see me and avoid cheating on Sarah. He wants to apologize to all the woman he’s fucked and fucked over but they are not speaking to him so he can only apologize to me and I don’t even understand why he is apologizing. He wants me to accept an apology for so much more than I even know about. It doesn’t work that way though. He can’t trick me into accepting all of his mistakes. I just end up confused, because as far as I know he’s done nothing. When I do get it, I won’t be willing to accept it any longer. He’s almost telling the truth. Trying to get me to be less trusting because he probably sees that in me. I trust people with my heart. He doesn’t really want to tell me what he’s done but someone he needs to warn me because I’m too innocent, too easily seduced, liked to, cheated on and it feels bad to treat someone so honest so badly.

“You don’t need to apologize.” I don’t want him to have to apologize because it means that I’ve been duped, or made a mistake to entertain going out with him.

 “You played all your cards right, you just picked the wrong person.”

 “If I tackled you to the ground and tried to kiss you would you let me?”  I just need to check that no inputs on my part will result in the desired outcome.

“No.”  This relation is certainly not behaving as expected.

“If this had been a different year things would be different. It’s been a rough year. I tried to kiss you but I couldn’t do it.” Roark is crazy. “I get obsessed with people easily and that is not what I need.  I’m saving you from more trouble by not kissing you.” He has something good in him. Am I being ridiculous to give him credit for saving me from himself? Is he the schizophrenic serial killer that tells his victim to run in a moment of clarity. That’s too dramatic. Sometimes we have moments of strength. We know that we cannot love, we know that we are too fractured, too shattered and we tell a person to leave, to escape before they are drawn into our madness.

Am I lucky that Roark is saving me from my own selection process?  I worry about the men I find myself attracted to. My mom speaks of her “people picker” being broken, her three failed marriages the result of a bad selection process rather than her own shortcomings. It can’t be all coincidence that I’m the most interested in the two men who don’t want to kiss me.

“What is your mom going to think of this latest conversation?”

“Probably she will go tell me to jump into a cold lake.” I know what my mom would say about Roark. Give up! Give up! If they tell you they aren’t ready for a relationship or think it’s a bad idea, believe them.  

ÒÒÒ

After a trip to the lake, I return to Seattle to spend a few more days on the track. My mother asks me if I saw Mr. Deranged when I return from racing. In my defense, I tell her that he’s interesting and that there is no harm in hanging out with someone interesting for a few weeks. “I’m concerned that you become obsessed with men who are emotionally unavailable. You flock to the wounded birds.” 

My mother is suspicious of a man who doesn’t want to kiss her beautiful, intelligent, kind daughter. If the outcome isn’t a kiss, the relation is just too strange to be worth engaging in.

My mom’s people picker has been refined. Something was seriously wrong, Roark was not normal or okay to date. How can I learn to figure this out more quickly? Why do I go for men who need to see counselors? If I don’t go for them who will? Are some of us just destined to be alone until we are ready for love? Alone seems to be a necessary part of life. How do people get married so young. Hormonally influenced reality perhaps.

he wrote me this email and I still fell in love with him for four years.

Carmen's note: Five years ago I fell hard for Roark. Nothing but flirting and insinuations happened between us all summer. We lived in different cities. Later he and I both moved to Seattle and despite this email and all of his baggage I feel madly, hopelessly in love with him and we began a passionate relationship. I wrote stories about that summer of bike rides and lunch dates that went nowhere-the summer that happened before he sent this email:

in a little more than two hours (less by the time i finish writing this, i'm sure), i'll walk out the door of my mother's house for the last time.  i've spent the last three days going through my childhood, deciding what to keep and what to throw away.  in three weeks, another family will move in to my mother's house.  i wish them luck.

i'm at a loss, carmen.  not so much a loss for words as a loss for actions.  i don't know what to do with my life right now.  it's three in the morning, i'm hammered drunk, and i have no one to turn to.  frankly, not even you--but i'm writing anyway, because i need to write to someone.  i'm not much of a diarist.

and i can't write to Sarah, because the best part of me doesn't feel fear like this.  and Sarah is...  well, Sarah is.  and i'm unwilling to risk that with this at this point.  maybe in person, someday.  but for right now, i like to think that i'm the best i can be around Sarah.  and i'm not the best i can be right now.

i guess i'm saying that i have nothing to lose in writing to you, and that i have to give voice to some of this shit somehow.

what the hell am i doing with my life, carmen?  i'm about to get on an airplane with every intention of making a go of it in another city.  i'm fully intending to return to seattle for thanksgiving every year, and that's it.  i'm fully intending to be done with this town.

do you understand the gravity of that statement, carmen?  it means i'm walking away from everything i've ever known as home.  it means that i'm completely through with tricia the 6 year girlfriend.  it means i'm going to have a very different friendship with ryan.  it means i'm going to have a very different friendship with cassie.

at least cassie and i never actually did anything about the tension that ebbs and flows between us.  that would have been bad news.

i had korean food with a girl i went to high school with a couple of weeks ago, and she explained to me how happy she was to finally be single again.  she's getting a veterinary degree in a year.  she's the first girl i cheated on tricia with.

i don't even like korean food.

i'm struggling to remember this girl's name right now.

late at night, carmen, when i find myself awake and alone, things always come back to sex.  can you explain to me how i can have a dual reality like this?  one where i spend the week going through my children's books, saving my favorites for (Sarah and) my kids, and the only word i've ever capitalized in an email to you has been her name.  and another where i'm so afraid to be alone, even for a minute, that i have to stop myself from sleeping with my 44 year old friend.

should we judge people by their actions, cammie?  or should we judge them by their unfulfilled intent?  am i strong for admitting this, or weak?

am i strong enough to stop myself from cheating on Sarah?  will the divinity implied in punctuation keep me from sinning?

heaven knows i wasn't strong enough in the past.

i cheated on the girl i was cheating on my girlfriend with.  point of fact, i cheated on her, too--but that came later, after the breakup and the recriminations.

none of these girls are speaking to me right now.

can i still be a good person if i do these things, carmen?  can i still be a good person if i have done them in the past?  can i avoid them in the future?

what will become of me, lost on another coast, mired in a city too big for a cyclist, late at night when these demons arrive?  these problems are 9 months away, and i can already hear them approach, clicking up the sidewalk towards my door.

what if i can't do this?

what if i can?

which is worse?

none of this matters one whit.  i am hopelessly committed now--there is no path but forward.  the road i'm on crumbles behind me with every step i take.

it is time, carmen, to put away childish things.

it is time to become a man.  more precisely, it is time to modify my behavior to be indistinguishable from that of a man.  isn't that the same thing, carmen?

i am in love with a girl named Sarah, carmen.

is that enough?  because i'm afraid it's not even close.

The beginnings of awareness of myself...

A boyfriend I dated briefly my senior year of college couldn't get it together to do something I cared about and had asked him to do multiple times.  I wrote this:

"If I can’t trust him with something easy like that how can I trust him to be there for me in a more serious way? Is this going to be the line I read after our relationship has failed and think you are so dumb, you did it again. Lisa thinks I should dump him because he’s treating me like second fiddle and I’m too beautiful, adorned with too sexy a body and far too compelling a curiosity to ever settle. I’m adventurous, athletic, and kind, really a perfect girlfriend in many ways. Sure I have my issues. My needyness, my lack of confidence, my tendency not to stick up for myself, my frequent discussions of myself. In Lisa’s mind getting committed emotionally to John is a bad idea. I deserve to be treated better. Well, we must first decide if John is treating me badly. I don’t think he treats me badly but I do think he has issues. He realizes this though and seems remorseful. I don’t want to fall into the trap of excusing inexcusable behavior but I also want to be understanding of all his issues."

His issues were that he watched his friend die in a bloody sledding accident right after they had been fighting. His friend ran into a pole and died in his arms in the ambulance. He was a brilliant, eccentric artist. He drew endless self-portraits and then videotaped himself ripping them up or urinating on them. I found all of this fascinating. I saw him as broken, but not myself.

I don't see a deep awareness of being damaged in myself. I see a young woman with awareness of issues she has that were probably all related to her fear of being unable to have a happy marriage. I'm not so sure I was that far along yet in my self-awareness.

Why is my dad so angry?

First- I see that I have had 95 pageviews!  A far cry from the 10,000 on my other blog, but I love it that someone is reading. Thank you! Leave a comment-unless you are my mom and can't figure out how to do that anonymously. You can keep sending me emails about why you love me. I like that!  I also loved that you sent me an email about the facts of the case with my father. It was helpful to read that the judge immediately gave you custody and that my step-mom was investigated for not reporting abuse in her house. I didn't remember that my dad agreed to everything I wrote down that he did to me. I didn't know that he said that it was all normal and that he didn't understand why everyone was upset with him for yelling at me and hitting me. I never knew that his lawyer refused to represent him because of what he so willingly admitted.

I told Johanna's husband about all the work I was doing in counseling and he asked "I wonder why your dad is so angry. What happened to him?"  I know my dad was disabled in elementary school and wore a brace for a year and was prohibited from playing sports. Would that make someone angry? I'm not so mad at my dad right now-I see him as broken and unhappy. I wonder, what made him so angry? I wish he'd be strong enough to work on himself instead of denying his problems or ignoring them with drinking. I always wonder why my parents don't love me enough to overcome their problems. When my mom smoked and I told her how much it bothered me and that I had nightmares about her dying of lung cancer I could never understand why she didn't just stop.  Of course, I know I have issues, like my emotional reactions to minor criticism or rampant sugar consumption, that I don't know how to control either. But when it comes to parents, it just always seemed like their love should make anything possible. It does seem like my hid and ignored so much that she must have been feeling so she could be a mom to me and act as if she had it all together. I'm 28 and I know I have crazy emotions that I would never expect a parent to display. Parents, to me, are supposed to be calm and rational and consistent and sure of themselves.  I suppose one reason that I've never felt ready to have kids is because I don't know myself. How am I supposed to tell them what is right and wrong if I don't even know?