Entry 2 - "Creepy"

Question: am I creepy? I never mean to be, but a large majority of the people I've ever cared about at one time or another have called me creepy. In what way, they never specify, but it usually comes as a result of an action or series of actions I intended to be funny or sweet and apparently came across as creepy instead. So…how do I handle this? Should just cease the intention of being funny or sweet? Or should I cease contact with those I care about and just not risk it? I know neither answers are logical, but since when have I been logical? I'm as much a woman in my head as I am a man on the outside, so what obligations do I have to logic, hmm? None. Logic can jog on.

So…creepy. I guess that can be understood. I grew up an only child with only a handful of actual friends, and only a few of those were ever truly close to me. I have never really learned how to express myself to other people; my social skills are about as sharp as George Dubyah's wit. I understand this is why I'm innately self-centered and difficult to talk to, but it's so very frustrating nonetheless. Occasionally I'd like to be an understood individual; to be a little less mysterious and a little more accessible. Being an oddity doesn't exactly do much to alleviate loneliness.

And I am lonely. Even when I'm with my current group of friends and socialites, I'm still lonely. Because I understand that nobody there actually knows me and I can't blame them because I hardly know myself. I'm so emotionally unpredictable even I don't know what's coming up next. Like ever other spring, I imagine sometime within the next month I'll endeavor to get a handle on my emotions, but for some reason seeing me so reserved and so...passive…well, it drives people away even more than me being an impulsive nervous wreck. Maybe I should just stick to video game and never leave my room again. Ero Sennin, indeed, mon pei.

I've been toying with the idea of absolute isolation for a while now. The past year has proven one thing to me: I am unmatchable. I will never have a wife and I will never have a family. Not because there is nobody out there who is right for me, but instead because I am not right for anybody out there. If wouldn't force myself upon someone condemned to eternal damnation. I have never understood why anyone ever fell in love with me and the past year have made it clear that everyone who ever has was actually suffering from a severe bout of dementia often misconstrued for love. Oops.


The issue is once again of unpredictability. I am so scattered, so split between so many essential me's that dating me really should classified as polygamy. I can't expect anybody to be able to actually cope with my mental instabilities. I can't even do it, so why should you? I don't blame you for leaving at the first sign of a season personality shift. Welcome to the world of a seasonal bipolar Section 8 nutjob. Enjoy your stay; your hosts will alternate every 2-4 months at the convenience of nobody in particular.

Is it too much to ask for a little mental consistency?

And my general social life isn't exactly a theory of success either. I have friends, yes, but something tells me it's not really their idea of a good time to have me come over. It nags at me; wrenches with lobes and nodes and other bits and chunks of my brain, that perhaps they're only my friends because they're afraid of what would happen to me, what I would do to myself, if they weren't. People! I've been abandoned before and I will be abandoned again many times in my life. I can handle it. Don't be afraid to walk away. Otherwise you're making this awkward for everybody involved.

As for myself? I think maybe I'll decide to be an overachiever and hit my midlife crisis a couple decades early. Become a workaholic. Straight A's so my dad will get off my back and I won't be so full of guilt I piss sad sighing sounds and shit the letter G in the morning. Maybe graduate right into a nice desk job where I get paid a ridiculous amount of money for a job I don't really pay any attention to. Rent a nice studio apartment and fill it with hugely expensive electronics to compensate for the fact that I'm 30 and single with no real hope or intention of changing that.

Maybe I'll drive a really fast car with great trunk space so I can be safe knowing that, need be, I can make a speedy getaway when reality bites just a little too deep into my left flank and the office smells like rotting what-ifs. Or maybe just so I can know that when I do finally drive off that bridge at the end of my two weeks notice, I'll get some great hang time and people will ask "Who was that guy and why the hell did he wreck such a sweet ride?"

Yeah…becoming obsessed with my schoolwork and my job can't turn out TOO badly, can it? What's wrong with material success? I've never really experienced it, so maybe it's time to try something new: not being a complete failure. Oh dear, there goes my "self-defeating personality" again. Thanks for pointing out that bit, doc. Who would've thunk it that all these bruises on my psyche are self-inflicted if not for your divine wisdom? What a wonderful source of professional help you've been; so knowledgeable and resourceful. Aflak, motherfucker.

The truth is, in a couple days I'll have gotten over this and then a couple days after that I'll feel like this again. Rapid-cycling bi-polar disorder. Hell, if it weren't written down with someone else's bad handwriting, I'd think I was a hypochondriac. Who knows, maybe I am and we can add that to the list. If Santa passed out prescriptions, I'd be one happy hypo.

Actually, I still don't take meds. No, revise that: I still won't take meds. See, this is the point where hubris takes point and I grow a donkey's grin and sit back stubborn and shaking my head. Because meds means my mind lost. Not is lost, but HAS lost. It means my essential being, my self is not strong enough to overcome these afflictions and I must be assisted in my daily existence. that is not living. That is being stuck on mental life support while the real you, the inner you, gags on the rebreather and lays vegetative under the covers and fluorescent blue-white lights. I would rather live my entire life fighting a mental stalemate than submit to that kind of induced reality. I am stronger than that and someday I will prove it.

Yes, I am mentally unstable and I am hard to deal with and even harder to understand. My friends know this, but part of me wonders if they are capable of accepting it. That inability to accept, no matter what the will, is why 'She' after 'She' after 'She' is now just relegated to 'her' in the past tense. It's why so many "best friends" are just stories I tell when I'm drunk. It's why I'm here now, typing in an empty house ignoring my phone for calls that aren't even incoming. Thanks for wanting to be my friend, for wanting to help, but we're all only human.

Wanting to help, wanting to be there for me, doesn't mean you can. Some people…most people, can't. I'm just too much to handle. I don't blame you, any of you, for leaving. If I weren't bound by these ridiculous notions of honor and duty and obligation, I would too. But those notions, those ideals, are self-inflicted and not everyone is as mentally masochistic as me.

And on a side note: wow, I sound like a goddamned Senses Fail song. Fuck. "I'm an emo kid, nonconforming as can be. You can be nonconforming too if you're just like me." Ah fuck it. Who cares? Originality is just an illusion for artists and writers to get horny over.

Anyways, am I creepy? No. Not any more so than anyone else really is. I just lack the practice to hide it as well as everyone else. Creepy is when someone else expresses more of a specific emotion than we want or expect. It's an issue of control. We worry over those who lack that self-control; worry what they are capable of. It's not an actual fear of what they feel, because if they expressed it in a more controlled manner then it wouldn't be creepy, would it? No. Creepy comes when they're a bit too enthusiastic and unexpected in expressing how they feel.

And for this reason, I'm at a severe disadvantage. As socially unpracticed as I am, it's hard to for me control how I express myself, how I convey my emotions and intentions. They often come out unfiltered and pure. And pure emotion is sadly unacceptable in today's time. Even passion isn't pure anymore. Nothing is pure except the cold, intolerant bias against vulnerability. I don't care who knows it. I am very emotional vulnerable. Having not had my perception of my role as a male colored by a mother figure, I have no obsession with machismo. I am not concerned with appearing manly or macho. I am masculine because I am honest with who I am. And masculinity is what so many of my male peers lack.

However strong or fast I am physically, the real reason I am masculine is because I can admit that I am emotionally vulnerable; I can confront my flaws; something which few people can do and even fewer can be proud of. I am proud that I am flawed. Sometimes my pride is a flaw in and of itself, but I know that my negative pride and the hubris it brings are against me; against my own internal failings and my disappointments with myself. I really am my biggest critic and my biggest bully. More than anybody outside my door will ever hurt me or berate me, I've already done so dozens of times before leaving my room. I know what my flaws are and while I am not proud of them, I'm proud that I know them.

So am I proud that I've been called creepy? No. Hell no. That's stupid to be proud of something like that and if you thought I'd say Yes then you've watched too many Will Smith movies. But as disappointed as I am that I've merited the title of creepy, I'm more disappointed by the fact that 'She' and 'She' and 'She' couldn't get over it and move past it. In time, with practice and exposure to socialization, I'll eventually learn to build my mask and filter my expressions of emotions. But those emotions will still be there, even though I'll no longer be called creepy. Because the only reason I'm called creepy is because the world can't handle the unadulterated expression of emotion, whether it is mirth, sadness, love, anger, humor, mischief, compassion, hate, or loneliness.

I'm creepy because I know how to feel.