I have a tendency to shut people out of my life. I have left family without notice, a roommate without notice, shut out close and distant friends with little a thought. I do it for several reasons; irritablity, lack of trust, one-way emotion, misjudgement. I’d imagine it used to be something hard, something that hurt with each memory of that person to come up at the most inopportune time. It’s lead to the loss of more friends and chances that I envisioned by association. It’s caused relationships to fail before they’ve begun, causes bridges to burn before they were made.

I still do it. In fact, I just did not too long ago. It’s ironic; I didn’t think I would shut this person out. This person probably doesn’t know that they’re shut out – mostly because it’s not a complete transition just yet. It happens in stages, but when it ends it’s obvious. It’s a lonely road, doing this; no surprise that I have few friends that I trust, fewer still that know more about me than what I show on the surface. I tried that before, the whole “trust-and-you-will-be-trusted” thing.

Turns out that was a lie.

People don’t care if you trust them. People just want to use you for your time, your thoughts, your advice, your help. You are a fountain of wisdom, a support, a crutch to be used and then – maybe – called upon when something isn’t wrong. You are a tool for comfort. You are a subject who’s prime objective in the eyes of another is nothing more than an ear to listen, a shoulder to cry on, a wall to absorb all of their troubles. A sponge is what you will become, a vessel to take in the drama that is not yours, and be wrung out, hoping to have pulled an answer for their problems, a bandage for their aches, a solution to their own situations.

I know this because this is how I was treated for eight years of my life. I have convinced people not to commit suicide – people I have not even met before. I have saved relationships, helped start new ones, defused ones that were borderline retarded; I have made people see reason and logic; I have changed lives for the better without a second thought and a single motivation beyond compassion and a genuine “do unto others as you want done unto you” attitude. And it has been turned against me, time and time again.

I have been lied to in several formats: to my face, behind my back, over the phone and on the internet, all by one person. I have been accused of actions that I have never done – harbor suicidal tendencies – and not confronted about them. I have been cheated on. I have been dragged through the mud with unsaid desires, both intentionally and unintentionally. I have been belittled, I have been cut deep and cut down by the very people whom I had helped. Some have done it and may have regretted it since, others have done it with a smile and would do it again if they had the opportunity, I’d imagine.

For these things to have been done to me, I find it a testament to my own sanity and common sense that I haven’t exacted any sort of physical retribution toward anyone. I am not a violent person by nature, but even I have a limit – one that has been crossed without consideration, of course. Couple that with the fact that I know more about the people I have helped than they think, if I were a person of less patience and more destructive tendencies…I’ll just say that several people wouldn’t have to worry about what to wear, so to speak. It scares me to know that I could do such a thing, that I have the information and the wherewithal to make it happen.

But I wouldn’t, because of the very reason that put me in those situations, that had me conversing with those people, that made me what I am today: I am a nice person. I want to help people, I want people to feel good about themselves and honestly mean it. Not everyone I have helped wants the same for me, though. Some want the direct opposite. Some may even want worse.

So I shut those people out. I am air tight. I trust few, far few than I could probably trust, but trusting has only backfired. In fact, I trust so few that the people I do trust probably don’t even realize it. If you have to ask me or yourself, I probably don’t. In fact, after reading this I wouldn’t be surprised if you wondered just how much you really know about the guy behind the name, behind the avatars and behind the online antics.

Maybe someday I’ll trust more. Maybe I’ll even open up to those I’ve shut out.

Maybe those who abuse my trust will stop.

Maybe.

Top 10 ways to un-bake your brain
A site that I found while, well, stressing out. It gave me some tips that I could use and actually work for me.

Productivity@Lifehacker
Hell, while we’re at it, might as well link LH’s Productivity section. Great reads, and not just that section – the whole site!

Thought: “Is society a limiter on what we do, or do we just limit ourselves based on s ome other means?”
Shortly after my roommate, Josie took an artistic nude photography shot of me and submitted it, I’ve gotten a lot of “you’re really brave” type comments. Maybe it’s because I’m an exhibitionist of sorts and I have no problem being naked if it’s not in a complicated situation (read: law-breaking with cops nearby), but I fail to grasp the bravery behind putting myself in front of a camera naked. Granted, I don’t like being in any sort of photography by default, but I enjoyed the ‘shoot’ we had doing that.

Thought: “If a sale is launched and no one buys any of the product, do the prices go back up?”
Just a thought brought on by our lovely expense season.

Anime; Recently Completed: Ouran High School Host Club
Quite possibly the only shoujo anime I’ve ever fully watched and enjoyed, OHSHC took me by complete surprise – not an easy task, considering that I’ve been watching anime for the last 11 years. It has a crazy blend of comedy (in-jokes within itself and lended from other anime, such as Rahxephon) romance (a third of the male main cast is after one of the leads, while said person is not only oblivious but posing as a guy) and action (how often is the most shouta character the oldest and voted most likely to be a WMD?) that I haven’t seen before.

Anime; Recently Completed: Claymore
Pure action, with a touch of anguish and a heavy dash of revenge is the theme of Claymore. Claymores (the moniker given to them by normal humans) are a halfbreed of humans and yoma (demons) – who slay the latter for the former, all the while trying not to cross over the edge and becoming yoma themselves. How could that happen? Well, each Claymore uses yoki (think of it as a type of energy) in addition to their superhuman physical power, and the type of yoki they use determines their ‘special’ abilities (one is the ability to move fast enough to create a phantom image). If they tap into it too much, though, they become a yoma themselves. It’s hard to say much without giving it away, but it turned out better than I thought at the beginning.

Travel:
Visit a state farther north than Ohio
Visit a state on the east coast that isn’t Florida
Visit Japan
Visit Sweden

People:
Go to a meet in a state other than California
Meet five deviants that I don’t already know (tricky)
Meet a juggler
Give a piggyback ride

Media:
Create a mix
Go to three local acts
Sing in the shower
Prune current music collection

Perception:
Differentiate between unsaid and said emotions
Round out attitude
Display more tact
Drop past ‘baggage’

Events:
New Year’s @ Josh’s
22nd Birthday
New Apartment Party (???)
Fanimecon

Education:
Driving License (!)
Bartending License
Reclaiming intermediate level in Japanese
Beginning Swedish

Short Term:
Modify PSP
Upgrade laptop
Write more often
Focus on limiting immediate spending

Long Term:
Refine and tweak writing style
Motivational saving
Focus on personal health
Continue being optimistic

Relations:
Date with a cause
Realign what I’m looking for
Not being hung-up on people who aren’t poly
Go out to social functions

Living life loosely leaves little
plights posed permanently,
where we would wonder and wander
among an amazing and avid acclivity.

Today is Wednesday, December 12. One week ago, I marked my fifth month of living in Ohio with a peculiar thing: moving out of the apartment of my roommate, and into the home of my ride to work and co-worker. On top of that event, I hadn’t mentioned to my roommate I was doing so, and managed to do the deed in one night.

Needless to say, she was shocked, confused, maybe even hurt. She has feelings for me that I don’t share, but above that, she is a person who quite literally had their world slip out from underneath them. I could imagine that would be shocking to most if not all people who had spent that amount of time with someone, including myself – although, to a lesser degree of sorts. But ironically enough, four days later on Sunday the 9th, I was doing the trip all over again in reverse.

I was moving back into a place I had left for (personal) credible reasons, but without credible motive. Why? I thought it over – seriously, not just looking from my own perspective – and began to understand that even if my eventual goal was to return to California (at least, at the most, to move elsewhere), she didn’t know about the timeline I had set for myself (April/May). I didn’t tell her intentionally, as she seemed to…well, I won’t rehash the bacon and eggs on this story.

I could’ve easily just swallowed my pride, my sense of honesty and most importantly, my sense of compassion in the name of being ‘correct’. I’ve walked out on the one person who’s stood by me the longest, albeit due to proximity relation – so why hold back on a technical stranger? Because it was the right thing to do, the honest thing to do, the compassionate thing to do. So I talked things over with her, cleared the air, and came to some compromises.

I relented because it was what needed to be done, even if my pride were to be singed.

At first, the two sound similar, but there is a hardline difference. Idealistic perfection, in this case, centers around what you in your area/culture have grown up to believe is “perfect”. An example most know of is the ‘American Dream/Life’: white picket fence, fully owned home in a suburban neighborhood with two kids (one boy and one girl), two cars and a happy, truthfully honest marriage. It’s the perfection your parents, your family, your friends, and probably no one you ever will know will ever have, and that in itself makes it ‘perfect’. It’s the perfection that cause more pain than pleasure when we – if we – actually obtain it; it’s the perfection that you second guess and third guess, but desire it even more after doing so. Although it does all these things and more, that perfection is one that we all live for, if nothing else – because what else would we know if someone didn’t show us?

If idealistic perfection takes on the beliefs of others, then perceptional perfection embodies what we see for ourselves. Let’s take the “perfect woman” as an example: some men believe that the perfect woman needs to know how to cook but needs help, is a virgin but knows all the right ways to please a man, has a beautiful – ‘beautiful’ being what fits the person’s view on beauty, which is a different subject – body but won’t share it with anyone but them. In short, a fantasy that can’t exist because of the rampant contradictions that gave it life. I’m no exception myself, as my own “perfect” woman has contradicting flaws – I want to meet/date/spend time with a girl that is both bookish but outgoing and athletic, isn’t into fashion but knows how to dress (and undress), is kinda shy but knows when to get in my face and tell me to shut up (being 6’2″, that isn’t easy for most), and can keep up with my aloofness. I’ve met girls/women who possess bits and pieces of that fantasy, but not the whole package, and honestly I don’t know what I would do if I ever did – besides fall head over heels and try to decipher if she were real.

By the same token, however, my mother and father didn’t – and still don’t – get along (he doesn’t put in the ‘work’ that he should, thus making my mom the ‘breadwinner’ for my entire stay), my sister had your traditional “my-family-hates-me-so-I’m-going-to-cut-and-plead-for-attention” phase (I don’t know if she ever grew out of it, honestly), I treat my father like any other person instead of an actual parent (since he never acted like one to me, except when it was beneficial to him), and my mother and I hardly saw eye to eye except when in mutual dislike ‘mode’ for the other two. It was that – she, for all intents and purposes, decided to “side” with my father and defended him and wanted to punish me for not doing his job – which pushed me over the edge and lead me to moving out on a sour note.

It was bittersweet to leave that way; with my sister just turning 18 and having no other reliable male role model, and my mother not wanting to speak to me. It stung to see her choose him over me on a subject that happened to be one of the very reasons she wanted a divorce, it was childish to know that I was being hung out to dry because I was the more responsible man. I carried those thoughts with me when I left, I often wonder how things could’ve been if I stayed and gave in – but to me, that would be tantamount to admitting that my father was in the right, and I wasn’t about to swallow and lie for that person.

So here I type, one-hundred and forty-seven days since I left my family, broken as it was. Since, my father gave me an odd cursory call while I was still in-state, my mother has spoken to me once (informing me what happened in a rapid-like manner, like I was going to shut her out mid-sentence) and has left a few voicemails. I’ve sent my sister a text to tell my mom I said “Happy Birthday”, but that’s been the extent of my contact. It’s not as though I have a shortage of events that I could entertain them with – I’ve sworn into and left the Navy, I received my first ear piercing, I bought my first laptop, and I experienced snow outside of California, among minor things – but I don’t feel like I could connect again. It’s not as though I don’t miss them – ‘them’ being my sister and mom – but I remember why I left, and I don’t want to speak.

My mother understands where I was coming from, now. But it’s far too late – I can’t just fly back and act like everything never happened, like she never attempted to have me thrown out of the apartment that had my name on the lease, like she didn’t expect me to pay to have it done, like she didn’t choose him over me. I’m generally a forgiving person, or I try to be – there are just some events I cannot forgive with complete honesty, and this is one of them. Even when I return, it just won’t be the same, and I don’t honestly believe they will have changed.

Will I have changed?

• Women in Ohio – at least the city I live in – have no problem with their partners and themseleves not using contraceptives.

• Ohio State, winner of this year’s ‘Run for the Roses’, was a slightly better team than I thought, mainly because I hadn’t watched them play until this edition of The Game.

• I will attempt to set a Guinness World Record by the time I leave Ohio.

• The memories that you bother you the most are probably present for a reason.

• World of Warcraft is soooooo much better with a mouse than a trackpad.