Relationships; Growing Through Solitude

    Despite being single, I've experienced ongoing relationship growth including the awareness that with or without a significant other, I've had the same problems. I've gone through the good and the bad all by myself. the difference is I know that I get total credit and blame. I have responsibility and ownership for how I feel, and I've felt the same things. I've felt 100% loved and accepted, even cherished.... alone. I've felt undesirable, like I was in the way, abandoned, unloved...all of the feelings that lead to breakups, except I was alone. I've felt sexy, powerful, intelligent, helpless, confident, and terrified both in and out of relationships. This lesson for me has come in layers.

   A few unfortunately obsessed strangers triggered this latest realization. Apparently, they first saw me on my Youtube channel, and developed a fixation of sorts. They've written a lot, and a few have, but some are more tenacious. I try to take the Lady Gaga approach, in that I'm not angry about it. It's not about, "Me," but more of a, "Celebrity" thing, and if I could, I'd send them sandwiches. They've no idea if I've even seen their notes or not, and I haven't read them all. In truth, there isn't enough time in the day even if I wanted to do so. We've never had any exchange whatsoever. Still, they have had the whole range of relationship experiences through these emails. They've been, "In love," in hate, they've judged, blamed, bargained, tried to be understanding to, "Make it work," and they've seemed to get hold of themselves, and let go for periods of time, then fall right back into the obsession...with a person they don't even know other than a talking head on some videos.

    For me, those videos are something I've done, something of acting, and something of myself for those moments in time but not, "Me" on the whole. At the very least, time has passed, and people change and grow. The writer has been stuck there like falling for a photograph in a magazine. This is why I don't take it personally. 

  I once imagined Peter Tork and I would fall in love and live happily ever after, and he too had no idea. The difference is, I didn't think he needed to know, and I didn't take it that seriously that I thought to stalk him. Still, I've written posts on celebrities pages, but not one after another or for years on end. The point being, the writer went through this range of experience without my input.

    Now seeing that I've had those similar feelings within relationships, and outside of them. I have to wonder how much of my relationships was real. Just because I can touch you, that doesn't mean that I know you. When I blamed myself or him, maybe it was just life, and we were sort of one another's fans for a time. Now, within the relationships, I dropped the word, "Blame," long ago, and was just working on things that hurt as they came along, but eventually, I did need his help, and he couldn't be bothered. I didn't expect to never have problems, but if I was the only one working on them, or trying to hold it together, it didn't and wouldn't work. You cannot have a working relationship on your own. 

  I gave out from exhaustion one day, trying to hold something together that was draining me at best, when it worked at all, by then. He just wasn't willing, until we broke up, but I'd heard that song for so long, and I couldn't take one more injury to my heart at the time. I was just too broken by then. It seemed we both stood a better chance at survival and maybe even happiness alone, and I think it worked out o.k.

   Last night, I had the same revelation when I watched the movie, "Her." She, the female lead, wasn't real either, in the conventional sense, any more than a recorded memory of someone on a youtube screen. It was all in his mind as he was only interacting with an Operating System. I thought to myself, "Isn't that what we're all doing, here on Facebook, Instagram or elsewhere online where we are having the, "Real" experiences with all of the faults, flaws, joys, tears, and laughter of friendships, while, I cannot put my arms around you?" I really thought about how much you all add to my life while I am, "Alone." 

   Of course you're not Operating Systems or Artificial Intelligence, even one that grows and learns and adapts according to the people you interact with, but humans do that too. I am malleable to you, and you are to me. We affect each other, while remaining ourselves in the healthiest of circumstances. In the movie, the male lead character fell in love, and who, wanting, has not wished we were hundreds or thousands of miles from where we are? Who has not experienced the very real heartbreak of rejection when our love interest found someone, "With a body," nearby...someone to hold? Who hasn't looked at other places and cultures and thought they'd fit, perhaps better there? Who hasn't moped over goodbyes, or felt fear when the beloved didn't sign in online, the same as if a spouse didn't make it home?   
  
  Is it all the same; one colossal gorgeous mind-fuck? The activities are different, but the feelings are the same. It doesn't seem to matter which way you choose. This all comes down to the most profound question my spiritual mentor asked me long ago. 

    What do you want?

  Perhaps we are that basic or amazing that the answers are all in our instincts. Our desires or chemistry, if you will, might be the deciding factor in where and how we experience our particular glorious mess of a life.

   I have no answers. 

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