Intelligence is a three-stage nested binary.
Stage one is sensory data.
Stage two is that data as it's processed and organized.
Stage three is the time-independent secession and bracketing of thought, nested upon this data, creating a meta-data set in which knowledge of the world is then consider in an as-if framework and a life is experienced through a future imperfect tense of a will-have-had anticipatory framework.
I do this over and over again, being equitable against my own best interests. Best interests are selfish. Best interests are interested in you. Best interests ultimately teeter upon the decisions that prop up survival and flourishing.
Yet here I am, denying myself my own best interests in the sake of being equitable. I'll offer an example, most of which stems from a series of decisions that I analyzed after they occurred yesterday.
I went to the store, as I almost always do on Sunday, and hit the two stores that I must frequent now: the grocery store and the pet store. Both present me with choices to make, not only about items to purchase but with decisions about communicating, reaching out, selecting paths to increase my likelihood of talking with women.
I saw the woman who smiled and waved at me several times at the grocery store out in front. By her clothing I surmised she was rounding up shopping carts. Instead of heading out into the parking lot to talk with her, I entered the store and kept my eyes peeled for her. As I was leaving with my purchases she was re-entering the store after doing her duty. Why didn't I make a move? I didn't want to communicate to her and to the world my interest. Why? I'm ashamed of revealing my interests out of fear of criticism. Why I feel shame over my desires is something of a mystery, but I can recall as far back as toddler-hood being in a situation where my requests to do something were met with sharp rebukes. I'd of course recoil, emotionally hurt. As a result, my desires have been submerged as have my ability to ask for help. I never do either.
The second choice I didn't make came from choosing a line at the pet store. The girl I talked with the week prior wasn't at a check out line, and as I was shopping I scanned for her in the aisles perhaps doing some stocking or returning items that weren't purchased at her counter. Nothing. She was there when I arrived and I was presented with a simple choice, her line or another. The decision was close, and I based it upon which aisle would be open first. I chose against her line, never made eye contact with her, never turned around and said 'hi.' I didn't want to stand out, interrupt her customer service interaction with the guy in her line, and I squandered an opportunity I give myself only once a week.
I find myself poaching customer service for the simple affordance that women in those roles are a captured audience for me. The situation offers a scripted conversation of a set duration that I can familiarly navigate. But it's my one and only way of meeting potential women. In 2018, I asked out two bartenders and one grocery manager to no real avail. They were chosen because I found them in a relational capacity I could manage, a scripted encounter I could engage with, and perhaps one from which I could deviate. They all said 'no' in their own way. A fourth presented herself to me at a grocery store where I took my then still living aunt, but I counted her out as too young. How foolish I was. She was a beauty as well.
And so I rationalize myself right out of the picture over and over. I react to 'no' with a vehement retaliation as if my emotions are too precious to be tattered, and that's something that I have lived with since as long as I can remember. It's the source of my victimhood. It shapes my daily life and my long-term situation. It's the systematic imperfection in the wheel of ritual time that has a cadence all its own, the rhythm of the song of sadness.
What big changes can happen in a week. I purchased a house. I closed on it to be exact. That required a 20% down payment from my personal finances to avoid private mortgage insurance (PMI). That occurred on Friday. When I went to the bank and teller, a young black woman beamed at me and offered much congratulations. I'd like to think she was impressed by my ability to pull more than 45 thousand dollars out of an account, draft it into a cashier's check, and hand it over for a home. That's one thing, that I'm sure separates me from a lot of people. My ability to save money, in general, most surely does. But now I'm spending it, and spending it fast. I have solicited the work of a few friends. One will do the painting and related fixes. The other will be doing a punch-list of fixes. One trip to Lowe's had me drop 1300 dollars on paint and related other supplies. The best part of the experience was how the cash register sort of blanked out at the check out process so that another associate had to dig into the computer system to see if the transaction went through. It did. Now I have a printed out image of the receipt, not a regular one that is printed at the point of sale device.
Sunday had me saying hello to a very intriguing and beautiful woman who works at a grocery store I frequent. She had smiled at me and waved a few times one Friday evening as she was getting off work. I talked to her briefly then, kept it work-related, and didn't pursue anything else. Then, subsequent visits later I didn't see her and began to think of her. I ran into her a Thursday and got cold feet. But this time I said hello and she beamed back a smile and a 'hi, how are you.' I ended the conversation at the reply and kept on shopping as she was working with a colleague in the produce section. Trying to keep things tidy, terse, not too gushy. Keep your cool kid. Give too much away and she'll realize you're a dork and move on. That's a bit of the old me. The new me has a house and some added feeling of having made it, confidence, a place of my own, a way to impress the ladies. Yep, that's it.
Then there was this other, much younger, kinda nerdy, still very interesting girl running the register at the pet store. We talked and she kept the conversation going. My body language was much less repressed, and well, it was intoxicating as well. But everything like this comes in pairs, and that's how life presents itself to me as forks in roads, choices to make, nothing is ever existing in solitude to be happened upon. I meet women in pairs, in systems of encounters, and I have to discover what the meaning of said encounter means. I'm not sure how other men integrate sexual attraction and their means of pursuit. Mine is a little too analytical, and then papered over with some retroactive romanticism. Contrived, yes to me it is, but maybe it looks romantic form the outside. We'll see. I am going to chase down said woman at the grocery store. She's the full package, no doubt. I'll take whatever crazy she may possess, and ride that wild pony into the sunset.
Or not.
You never know. It could be a bust. She may be smiling and waving at a lot of guys. I have no clue. Maybe she has a sort of dying, fallow relationship. I don't know. The fact that I don't have one, and if she doesn't have one, both could present themselves as red flags. I know this. I've been called many things for not chasing hard enough. I can only hope that she and I could find common ground. Maybe I can get her to talk. Maybe I'll find ways to keep stuff interesting, but all I can say for now is I didn't really sleep, and the situation, house, her, and all has been on my mind.
Harlequin romance novel involving a single, male veterinarian administering euthanasia to various pet owner's pets, the subsequent vulnerable stage in the owners' lives, and the inevitable dissolution of this brief relationship.
I've mentioned this event here and to others in the past. It's the one that I place as the focal point of my behavioral illness, the one where I preemptively reject others out of an overemphasized fear of them rejecting me. It started when I was maybe three or four, following my mother around the house like the momma's boy that I was. One of her daily routines as a stay-at-home mom was to go downstairs and smoke a joint or part of one on a green high chair/barstool near the laundry area in our unfinished basement. As she went, so went I, close behind. This pissed her off to no end. And she'd belt out an audible 'fuck' as I was no more than a foot from her towering leg. I was a clingy little shit. And the research bears out that when we're deprived of love and affection our pursuit of this thing kicks into overdrive. I suspect that's what was driving me--the paradoxical reaction to being shunned by being more clingy, desperate, and needy for affection.
I suppose one of my mother's diversions at that time was to feed me a ready-to-hand sweet, so that I could be preoccupied while she descended to the basement for her routine joint. She had handed me a cookie, and Oreo cookie to be precise. Nevertheless, with cookie in hand I followed her down. As I descended the last short flight of stairs, she spotted me and belted out her audible 'fuck.' I never got near her in these instances. I stayed on the stairs maybe because I was told. But I do specifically remember doing one thing, one action, which would forever define my relationship with others for the rest of my life. I dropped the Oreo. I dropped it to feel sorry for myself. I dropped it to deprive myself of something sweet, coveted, tasty, desired. I actively took control of my sadness and I've been doing so ever since.
I only bring this up because I normally go through an obsessive self-audit to determine what I did wrong and what I can do to remedy the situation. I've gone to my doctor seeking psychological advice. This was in reference to another motherly mental health sabotage, potty training. I needed help getting over the fear of urinating in public, something that has gotten increasingly worse since my mid-20s and on. It keeps me at home, picking public places carefully, and finding ways to manage and avoid the triggers associated with 'choking at the bowl.' That being said, the drugs the psychologist put me on didn't help. She did point me toward attachment styles as a way of self-knowledge about my ailment. Point taken. But in this situation I was dealing with a very specific behavior of not pursuing what, in retrospect, are obvious signs of interest by interesting other women in my midst. I had done this in 2018 to a girl bagging groceries at a Schnuck's where my great aunt shopped. I had completely rationalized her away as too young, too different from me, too dangerously independent to be with, and so I destroyed that opportunity the way I always do--through inaction. I did the same here recently when I went to a grocery store I frequent and one of the stockers was off the clock shopping on a Friday night. She smiled at me a few times. I even asked her a question, "where's the coffee?" but rarely did I make much eye contact. I saw her in the parking lot and I smiled and she waved, then I didn't see her again at that store, at least not until I went on a Thursday evening. I choked, shopped right next to her as she did her job, and not once did I acknowledge her or ask any questions. She wasn't looking at me, nor was I looking at her. It feels like I have done my best to destroy another opportunity, another woman reaching out through space and time, by not following up, making eye contact, smiling, talking, showing interest or enthusiasm. I was dropping the Oreo.
This form of self-sabotage stems from a familiarity, a veritable identity with loneliness. I do things to ensure that I remain that way, and more specifically to remain sulking and pouting about my loneliness. To be fair, when a girl reaches out and smiles the likelihood that I'll have something normal and confident to say are slim. I'm blindsided and at best I prefer to retreat and watch her from a distance, size her up, psych myself up, and maybe begin to imagine us together before I can try for myself. I've done that one too, and it pretty much ended as one would expect. I lack the follow-through to go past 'hi.' I don't ask for numbers. I rarely ask out, especially not in person, and I when I do I am greeted with something vicious, cutting, rejecting. And maybe that's just what I want, rejection. It's what I know. It's all I know. Deep inside I see my happiness as an illusion. My relationship to truth is through cynicism and solitude. I'm not a cheerleader for any cause because that emotion is not something I feel genuinely. I can offer support for those in sadness because it is something that I do know. I help others because I care. But if I see a girl who I'm attracted to or find at least attractive or interesting I clam up and hide my emotions utterly. I'm dropping the Oreo.
