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Self-Destruction

It is a common adage that people tend to fall into patterns they're familiar with. When I was young, I evolved into a profoundly insecure boy who felt inadequate in most everything. It is to easy to say this was my parents fault. Certainly, some of it no doubt originated from seeing what my father did to my mother physically and I'm sure some of those scars colored how I saw the world, but at some point you have to move beyond that and be accountable only for yourself. I never used it as an excuse; it was just how it was. My sense of inadequacy came from something I felt I lacked and I can only blame myself.

As I got older and started to be attracted to girls, my profound and pronounced desire for them as objects of deification and worship was matched with the sense of inadequacy I felt so that my admirations by necessity had to remain at a distance. I suppose in other times it would be easy to view this as a romantic notion, like the whole unrequited love and chivalric code and all that, and my all-consuming worship of them fell in line with that. I felt on some level that if I could view and admire and not touch physically that I could feel pride in the manner of my love for them.

If I were to stretch my memory memory back and determine when this started, I'd say it would have to be grade five. I don't remember feeling particularly into girls in grade four, but by grade six it was already strong and in grade five I really liked a girl and from the first I was shy and insecure. As the next couple of years progressed, this feeling of immense desire and longing grew stronger and stronger. Even by the seventh grade I would think about one or another girl for a long time. At the end of the seventh grade I purposefully missed my bus ride home on the last day of school because my worry over not seeing a cute little curly-haired blond by the name of Patty was so great that it overrode my fears and insecurities and I just had to say something to her. I had to tell her I thought she was beautiful and had a wonderful summer. I never did spot her and the police picked me up an hour later when I had not shown up at my bus stop and my parents were worried. The twenty mile ride home I missed meant nothing to me. I had to see her, if but for a minute. It was worth all those miles of walking home. I had been too shy to say a word to her all year, and now I knew I would not see her again.

Junior High was rough for me. I was more intelligent than most of the people I schooled with, but this was not a trait of value. More important was where you fit in the social heirarchy and I was a loner, plain and simple. As a result of being a loner, I was constanctly harrassed and made fun of. I ended up in many fights, all of which I tried to back my way out of. I was an easy target. My only solace from this period was that I never outright lost any fights. I would have lost one, but a teacher jumped in and intervened. This was a very tough time for me. I had several paper routes and did them in the morning before school and after school was out. On Saturdays I walked the mile or two through the city to go to the libary and would end up walking home several hours later laden with a couple of plastic bags 'full to bursting' with books. Between them and Stephen R. Donaldson, Tolkien, Michael Moorcok, and ER Burroughs novels, I did a lot of reading during this time. At night I would listen to As it Happens on the radio and pace my room thinking of different fantasy situations full of magic. I'd imagine myself as a dragon or a sorceror, or something else. Sometimes I would think of myself as an animal, like a wolf or bear. During this time, my view of girls evolved. While my desire for them did not diminish at all (in fact, continually increasing in intensity), an added dimension began to added to them. I could see them as creatures of debauchery, stretching the boundaries of what they would engage in sexually. I purchased Heavy Metal Magazine issues from a used book store and saw depictions of women swinging swords around and getting into fights and going into taverns and picking up beautiful women and having sex with them. It was the first time I saw women having sex with women and it excited me. For me I saw it as natural. Women were these sources of extreme desire and what's better than a woman? Two women, of course.

At the end of Junior High, there was a girl that I had admired for two years and I knew our family was moving to another part of the country. As I had a couple of years ealier, I summoned the energy to swallow my fears to do something and ask her to the prom. Before I had a chance to ask, I found she already had a date. I went to the dance anyway and spent much of it looking at her and hoping to get a dance. The dance ended before I could. I remember going downstairs and saying goodbye to my teachers. I was very attracted to my french teacher and she knew it. I took a picture of her and it remained with me for years.

When I hit high school, I was most attracted to my next door neighbor. She had two sisters that I was attracted to, but would never admit it because they were a couple of years younger and people would have looked at me like I was a child molester. The older sister was my greater source of affection and I would run with her older brother six miles a day as part of a track club, and when he would stop at his house I would always look through the windows briefly, hoping to catch sight of her. Sometimes I would see a shadow move and hope that it was her. Throughout high school I had several girls I directed my amour towards (in secret of course because I didn't have the nerves to vocalize my interests). Towards the end of my senior year, when me and my family were about to move again, I had met and on some level befriended the older sister of one fo my brothers ex-girlfriends. I wouldn't spot her often, but I she had been a bit of an acoholic, and I felt some kinship, not because I drank (because I didn't), but because I saw another person flawed like me that deserved a better life. Then, on our way out of town, on the final ride on the ferry to Kingston, I saw her family onboard too. She was not, but before I headed back to our car for the last time I rushed over to their van and told her mother that I really liked her daughter. She looked at me with kindness in her eyes and doubtless some sympathy, and said "I know." Beyond that my memory isn't great, but I believe she said "I've known that for some time." It was one of those poignant moments and as I started to leave, our gazes lingered and we smiled. I felt good. It was like she knew I'd be good for her daughter.

I had never had a girl friend through my grade school years. I never went to a party. I went to perhaps four school dances. One was the junior high prom, one was a church dance on Wolfe Island, and two were dances in high school. I kissed two girls before college. One was a girl who I knew liked me in Fort Wayne, and another was my cousin, when we were ten. The level of affection I had for girls had always increased and it continued to have what I felt was a romantic angle to it. When I went to college, I still had all my deep-seeded insecurities and shynesses. I could never look people directly in the face. When I walked around, it was with my head always down. However, I was reaching the end of what I was emotionally willing to face. I longed so strongly for the touch of a woman, to have her gaze at me with admiration, to accept my affections and devotions. I had a world of love I wished to give and ached to give it to someone. The strength of it had risen to the point where I could think of nothing else. It's force made my chest hurt almost continuously. When I had occasion to talk to someone my face almost invariably went very red and my voice would get husky and halting and would usually tremble. If I had to look them in the eyes, even briefly, my face would often shake and my face would get red and flushed and my emotions so strong that I had to look away for fear of tears to come running out of my eyes for the strain of it all. There were many times I really did have to look away. To have a girls eyes meet mine was a terrible greatness. It was so all-consuming that I could not stand it. I was close to tears often. I felt that if she looked into my eyes, she would be able to see into my soul and how urgent and strong was the raging winds within that pushed and pulled at me with such violence I felt barely able to refuse their physical manifestation. However, I had been without love and affection and a source to give my attentions to for too long. I could restrain them no longer, so had to force myself to start looking up. I had to start walking with my head up. I would walk around campus doing nothing but practicing bringing my head up, briefly, to pretend to just notice people and hope for the instant I brought it up to 'notice' them that my face wouldn't shake and betray my thoughts. As the months went along, I would keep my face up longer and longer and found the strength to meet their eyes for a second or two before looking away. In my second year of college I felt I had gained enough strength to try more and moved out of my parents house and on campus. I had roommates and found that I could drink and that by doing so could gain the courage to say things I woudln't otherwise. The first two years of college had little to do with learning (though, I did love classes), and far more to do with phsycially forcing myself to socialize and learn how to interact with people, more particularly girls. I worked at it tirelessly and constantly and found there were girls that were attracted to me. While these were very hard times for me, they were also wondrous. From time to time I had opportunities to kiss girls. I ended up having sex with a girl in my fourth year and six months later with a Buddhist girl I was fond of on our floor. Then, six months later I met a girl during the summer that was to be my first girl friend. She was an American Indian girl (I believe her name was Judy). We dated during the summer for a couple of months. I didn't see her much because she was taking summer classes and was very active on the school radio station and playing rugby. When school started back, she had gone to a college that was a bit of a drive and I found she had fallen in love with a guy from the college's mens rugby team and that was that.

I moved to Truro, about an hour outside Halifax for a year and continued to learn how to socialize with people. I found that some attractive girls could be attracted to me. I had sex a few more times and when I came back to school the following year I felt much more able to meet girls. I found that I could befriend them and even if nothing ever happened, I could admire them afar that way. I was pursued by one of the librarians and at the end of the school year, accepted a tea date. We ended up dating for two years.

Comments

Anonymous said…
You never finished....bummer...

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