the long game.

i played scrabble with my roommate last night. it was a close game the whole night. more than three hours. really interesting words. scrabble words. but we do give each other allowances i admit. in the end she won, her rules not mine, but whatever.
but it seemed the whole time, we were playing two different games, two strategies at least.
tonight, after a day and evening filled with mirrors held up to a face i dont often see, i played canasta with my roommate (lets not add in the complicating variable of why she is always my opponent; proximity, intimacy, defacto, etc.) and a similar trend has started to emerge.
i taught her to play tonight, she said that it was a lot like rummy 500. i dont know the game so i cant tell you. but she said it was different enough to confuse her. i should have had the advantage.
but she took the first hand.
i then explained to her my strategy (most likely to get her to my way of thinking so that we would at least be playing the same game, at risk for giving her my game so that i would create an opponent of my equal or better).
you hold the books in your hand in hope of getting the run. Statistically speaking it is easier to get the canasta with a run than a book. so you should hold out for the run. but there is always the point in the middle where you decide? statistically speaking, how long do you hold onto the run, before it becomes more likely to get the book?
i personally think this is a style. this is a newly thought out theory though, so you let me know what you think.
but i think some people try to get what they can in the first moment. they cover the field. Tackle the opponent. and kill before a single drop of blood has been spilled.
and this is effective, for the short game.
but the strategy that i tried to disseminate to my roommate tonight was that of the long game.
the long game is when you hold out, not just for the run, and actually not even just for the canasta, but the long game is about steadying yourself, taking a few hands, collecting a lot of options and then in the last moments making every connection, laying down, going out.
its the patient way.
but you have to have faith that the other person, your opponent, is at least playing a slower game, if not the long game.
and then you add in the variable of how likely is it that your opponent would play a long hand to a short hand, what is there stance and motivation?
and the plot thickens.
and if you were to extrapolate this theory for the larger picture of life, all the way from professionally speaking to personally speaking, you could further ask: Who's in for the longer run, him or me?

existentially alone...

My very best friend in the world related a story the other night. she said she was in a group of people and felt more lonely within them then had she been alone.
and i was stunned.
not because the feeling is at all foreign to me, because i assure you it is far too familiar, but because she is the one person in the world that i look to as a truly open and wholly loving person.
she and i have strikingly similar backgrounds, in that our tragedies are nearly mirror images of each other. but she and i are not alike. she has responded to those tragedies by opening, becoming more purely a loving person to all around her. when her family failed her she went out and found another self chosen family that would be everything she needed, while still holding up her family of origin.
i responded to my tragedies by shutting down. i spent my young life becoming more and more invisible, by choice, by need. i kept everyone and everything at a safe distance, kept life at a safe distance. my adult life has been spent trying to let go of all the notions of life that as a child I clung to for preservation. it is no wonder I might have some camaraderie with loneliness.
but why her?
why would a person who is so loving and so well loved be lonely?
I have to admit that her loneliness terrifies me far more than my own. with mine I am on good terms. we are familiar and though I would not refer to it as a friend, I understand it, it is a part of me.
but hers, hers strikes at my belief that if I were a more loving person I wouldnt feel alone. becoming a more loving person is a goal I have had even before I met deb. and so seeing how it looks in her and how happy she can be, I thought for sure I was on the right track. it was just a matter of time. but now I am hallowed by the thought that loving may have nothing whatsoever to do with this ache that takes hold of my chest, strangling my breath. perhaps my loneliness, and debs, are existential. I am existentially alone.
and I dont know how to counteract that.
so I did just what any modern westerner would do. I googled it.
there was a lot about how interpersonal loneliness and existential loneliness were different, not even related really. as the former is dependent on outer circumstances and the latter is an inner experience. in one particular article (that I left without citing for you, my apologies) said that where as the former is something that can be combated with love, with relationship, with human contact, the latter remains untouched by these. where the former is present only in our relationships, the latter is all encompassing, touching all areas of our lives.
and it is here that I cried.
the author said that people often mistake the latter for the former and go out looking for love, and at times find it. then finding themselves past the novelty of love, yet still in love, they are again taken with the emptiness. thinking that it must be the love that failed them they move on to find a better more perfect love.
now this goes back again to the differences between deb and I. she apparently never confused these two and has always been able to have healthy long term loving relationships. I on the other hand apparently have been very confused. I have never been satisfied with the kind of conditional love that I received in what has become a litany of abandoned relationships. I have always chalked it up to a fear of commitment or intimacy, easy catch phrases. but I think now it is more this confusion. I was expecting to find a love, a more perfect love that would quell that fire, that would release that painful grip in my chest. shocking isnt it that so many men have failed. it was never theirs to succeed.
and so I wiped my eyes and continued on to find just what was the answer to this question. how to let go of my existential loneliness.
this I found to be a much more difficult question for google to find answers to.
there is one article that will be quoted here (and is linked below if youre interested) that though she did not give me any answers to how to get rid of the whole thing, did have a perspective that released a breath from my chest.

"For Wolfe, the experience of loneliness is neither strange nor curious, but 'inevitable and right' because it is part of the human heart. Just as the experience of joy is heightened by sorrow, loneliness, 'haunted always with the certainty of death,' makes life precious. Loneliness and death are thus inescapable facets of human existence, each ontologically necessary for a coherent human life."

and so I am not alone in this feeling, or even deficient.

"Loneliness is not the experience of what one lacks, but rather the experience of what one is. In a culture deeply entrenched in the rhetoric of autonomy and rights, the song of God's lonely man so often goes unvoiced and unheeded. It is ironic how much of our freedom we expend on power -- on conquering death, disease, and decay, all the while concealing from each other our carefully buried loneliness, which if shared, would deepen our understanding of each other"

so google, please to tell me, if I share this now with the world will it do more than deepen my understanding of the world and its of me, will it also cut the ties that hold me to my aloneness? but they said that connection with others bears no release for this existential variety.

"So loneliness, on this reading, isn't something to be shunned or afraid of: it is, rather, a possible catalyst for a more purposeful and engaging life, and an avenue for heightened self-awareness."
(http://www.philosophicalsociety.com/Archives/An%20Existential%20View%20Of%20Loneliness.htm)

well ok.
that is something.
I do hold this notion of a heightened self-awareness in the highest of esteems, in fact look upon the activity as a kind of prayer, even worship, likened to the eastern ideals of meditation.
but do we not look to this self-awareness as a way to transcend the mundane, the pain?
in knowing myself, will I feel less alone?

"No Hard Feelings"

i woke this morning, too late to go to my african dance class, so i was immediately a bit self critical. not a good way to start the day. so subconsciously i started looking for places within my head where i could counter that criticism with some patting of my own back. i do this sometimes. it keeps me balanced.
my first thoughts drifted to last night. i spent last night talking to the previously mentioned given up on boy who doesnt like me and his new girlfriend (who by the way also works with us and so that whole we cant date because we work together thing was total bullox, but whatever...) and i actually really do like both of them as people and would like to be friends with them. and so the thought was
'wow, im so mature about this. no hard feelings at all'
which is mostly true. but then i thought about that statement, no hard feelings. and as i am a therapist and spend most of my waking life wading through feeling, whether they be mine or other peoples, i got curious about that moment when you rectify a wrong with this statement. promising no hard feelings. shaking on that agreement. in that moment do we really expect that we are going to be able to avoid any feeling that might be hard? feelings are hard, most of them anyway, and unless you have some zen sense of the world and your position in it, youre going to experience hard feelings. i woke up this morning with a hard feeling to feel. and therapisty as it sounds, im ok with that. well more ok than the opposite, which i see as the pushing down of difficult feelings and pretending to always be light and happy. life isnt all light and happy, and i dont think it was ever intended to be. somewhere along the line we decided to search for this fairytale ending. as if to say that if you were having a successful life you would be living happily ever after. but dont you think that cinderella got a bit depressed now and again even after the wedding? and what about snow white? she looks to me like she could have had some anger problems, especially with all those dwarfs around.
so as i sit here now im going to amend that statement.
'im proud of myself for not letting this boy and his new girl thing get weird, but some of these feelings, that im feeling right now, are hard.'

after reading through just now in order to edit, i then thought, well now were all ok with the having of these difficult feelings, whew load off. but then the next step would be to look at the feelings. what are they, why do i feel them, blah, blah,blah. i know i know, ive gotta start hanging out with people who arent therapists.
but anyways...so where do they come from? ego.
my 'if he likes her better and she is oh so cute and then i must compare myself in order to see exactly where i fall short in that comparison' thing starts and it is this bruising of my ego that makes my chest a bit tight. and yes rationally i know full well that these things dont always come down to whos more attractive or what have you, i have more than once turned down an attractive man because i just didnt feel it. so it is possible that i was turned down for a similar reason. but rationality has no place within my bruised ego. they dont play well together. no the best thing to do for my ego would be to go out and um get it stroked a bit, thus making it forget its painful bruise. now i recognize this is probably not the mature route that i was so proud of myself for, but all the same i know its effective. youve got to keep the little beast happy right? its like having a cat.
cats are independant. they can be loving and can curl up and let you pet their warm belly with all the purring and it is oh so nice. but they can also be vengeful and vindictive. they are experts at knowing just what to scratch up, or pull out and lose or in the worst cases just where to leave that eternal cat urine smell. and so we keep them happy. we live in this eggshell state where we walk the line between im in charge here and im not going to push you too far. and so it goes with my ego.
i am in charge here, but im not going to push you too far either. a nice loose leash. i suppose the ultimate goal here is to not let it get bruised in the first place. which i admit i am very good at. how do i do that?
if you dont put it on the line, it cant get hurt. and so i generally dont put my ego on the line.
i am a reacter. i wait for the other in any situation to set the stage for whatever interaction we are going to have and then i react. its another way in which i can establish my control over the world around me.
and over the years i have become a very good reader of other people and am a sort of barometer for atmspheric pressure between us, and between others as well, which is a great party trick.
i know i should use my powers for good instead. but then if we start on the 'should' diatribe we have to move into the ...
'i should not let my ego have so much power. i should learn to move beyond ego. i should have more faith in that things happen for a reason. i should use this as a growth opportunity.'
but i hate shoulds.
and i dont want to walk that line just yet. not this morning.
this morning im going to use my little tricks to distract myself from my thoughts and my feelings and i am going to go into a bit of denial of the whole thing.
were talking all encompassing denial here.

"wow...im so mature about this, no hard feelings at all."

its a new year

i opened the little silver package mentioned in the previous entry.
i very soon afterward inebriated myself, so i cant really tell you what i learned from opening that package. maybe i should reopen it.
maybe i would just inebriate myself again.
i suppose its fairly likely that something i read in that package led either directly or indirectly to the need for inebriation.
could be why i am putting off the next part in the tradition. maybe i wasnt ready for the new year to start.
time waits for no man. thats how it goes right?
guess i better catch up.