marcmymistakes

[marcmymistakes]

A lot has changed since my last post. I should be on here a lot more venting my feelings and collecting my thoughts but honestly it’s been a very strange few weeks. As much as I want to see that great progress has been made, there’s also been some backpedaling. I’m still working on myself every day. I’m still taking my emotions into focus. What I can or can’t do, how I can respond to things, how I react to every situation. There’s just a lot that happened, and not all of it has made me feel OK. Chelsea is now dating somebody, and as much as I want her to be happy, as much as I love her, and only want the best things to happen to her, it hurts me. I have to understand that men and women are different, that we move on in different ways. It still kills me that women can move on so quickly compared to men, from the male perspective it seems almost too soon. Men will eventually move on, it just takes us a long time when it’s something that was so important to us. I know I have to move on and find something for myself, but every single time I feel so off and uncomfortable. It’s just not her and it never will be. I still hear a song and it sets me off, I still cry all the time, I still break down at every little thing that happens that reminds me of her. As much as I want to move on and find something else because I know that I can’t have her in my life right now, I don’t want to stop feeling this way for her. I don’t want to lose this part of my heart. When I talk to her, she tells me that I haven’t lost her, but I know she’s just trying to be nice and make me feel OK. I have lost her. She’s gone and I don’t know if she’ll ever want to come back. She’s growing in a new relationship with Jesse. Part of me wants to be strong and take the highroad, the other part of me wants to just lose my shit and burn the world down. I know these are just feelings and they won’t get me anywhere real. I know that I’m gonna do the right thing no matter what because that’s who I am. It’s just really tough when all you want in the entire world is to just have a hug from the person you love more than anything, but they’re not there and they’re not going to be there, because they don’t want to be.

[marcmymistakes]

I feel absolutely lost. Every time I do anything I feel like she is next to me. Everything I do I want her by my side. I think about her all the time. She is seeing someone else now and I have to live with that. It reminds me of a story from x-men. Gambit has always been in love with rogue from the moment he met her. I feel the same about Chelsea. At one point in the comics Rogue falls for Joseph after a big falling out with Gambit. Instead of being upset about it, Reme says to Rogue, go explore your feelings. He knows how much he loves her and wants her to be happy, unconditionally. So she does. It gives her satisfaction but she realizes what matters to her is not that. She returns to him. And I hope that is my story. I hope that is our story together.

[marcmymistakes]

I never realized that something I took so much pride in could also have aspects of it that weighed me down. When I was a kid I had so much responsibility and had to grow up fast. My parents worked really hard so that we would have everything we needed and in that a lot of the pressure fell on me as the oldest kid. I have always thought that the period of my life between middle school and high school made me grow up really fast and that was awesome. I had become a more well rounded adult, right? Never in my life did I ever consider that it created a level of control issues that I would deal with for the rest of my life. Being in therapy, I have worked through some moments that illustrated an issue that I didn’t even know I had. I started to remember moments where I had arguments with my parents about my level of responsibility and being there for my siblings. It was my job to come home and take care of my brother and sister, make sure they got off the bus alright, make sure they did their homework, make sure that they ate dinner, and that I cooked it in time. I would take it too far, and I would reprimand them like a parent would. I remember fighting with my parents about how I should not be doing that. But at the same time, they left me to do that. It formed a level of control in me that, I started to have over all of my life. This is where my frustration comes from. When I feel out of control, I get frustrated and I get angry. So what I figured out is that the root of my anger comes from my control. So now my focus is on excepting moments where I am out of control, where I don’t have any control. This has been liberating in the last two weeks. Every time something comes up where I feel uncomfortable, I talk to myself, and I tell myself that this is not in your control and there’s nothing you can do about it. It has allowed me to reflect, and look at moments differently. When I feel that I am not in control and that there’s nothing I can do about it, I am able to move on and look at what I’m doing in a different light.  Every day is going to be a challenge with us, but being aware of it has made my life a lot more manageable. I feel more in control. 

[marcmymistakes]

Self care is a tricky thing. Sometimes it is seen as hiding away from the world and staying in your cocoon for a while. Other times it’s gaining new experiences through getting out into the world. Which one is the right one? When do you know the difference and need to switch it up. I’ve been having days back and forth on this and surprisingly have not come to any conclusions. I am intelligent enough to address my flaws and set my focuses but when it comes to the down time and I need self care, I am sometimes lost. Taking a bath and watching tv, going for a walk or rollerblading, playing with my dog in the yard, these are all solo versions and some days they work great for me. Then days come where all I can do is think about missing her during that. How we use to do stuff just the two of us. The. I switch it over to going to new places and trying to meet new people but again that only does so much. My mind always goes back to how I would have enjoyed doing all these things with her, not alone. I look for new friends and opportunities to try new things but they never measure up to how I felt when I traveled or had new experiences with her by my side. She is my favorite person in this world. So as I begin to focus on my self care, I find that nothing seems to stick for long. Some days one thing works and the next it only does damage. I feel perpetually stuck in the middle ground of feelings. This does one of two things for me, it makes me sad that I am struggling and it also makes me know beyond anything that she is who I want to be with. If I take care of myself and in my deepest moments of joy and pain, all I see is that I want her there with me, then she is my person without a doubt. To this day I still feel exactly the same for her, unconditionally in love with Chelsea Leigh Wall.

[marcmymistakes]

Working on my art has given me some much needed focus. I forgot how creative I can be, how driven to finish a project I can be. It can consume me when I get to into it but that is also because it is a passion of mine. As I work on developing my own t shirt business I am trying to keep my mind focused on the business side and not get carried away with the art side as much. The art side is definitely needed but the goal of this project is to make me focus on the next steps beyond just being a designer. If I’m going to grow into my next phase then it is going to be as someone who is taking charge of making something out of this. I am working multiple jobs right now and while it is keeping me busy and making me tired it is also giving me the motivation to be my own boss and make something where I am the one getting most of the money out of it. I may need to take a business class at some point lol. That I will save for the near future when I have time to. So far I have plenty of resources and easy ways to start this business off smoothly and not get to ahead of myself. This makes me feel proud of my work. Something that I didn’t feel in my past jobs. I have missed it greatly. Looking at something that I have made and feeling confident that I did my best feels good.

[marcmymistakes]

I’m having a real bad day today. Most days I can get by with the knowledge that I have things to work on to distract me from feeling down and lost. Today is a hard one, even with getting a lot done for the clothing line I’m trying to work on. I miss her so much today. I’m not going to bother her with messages or sending her posts on Instagram. I want to but she wants space. So I will give her space. I don’t like not talking to her, she’s not just the most beautiful person to me but she’s also my favorite one, my best friend. Without her in my life I feel like I’m constantly floating in space without a tether. Even when I work on things to make money or find jobs or even do some drawing. It all feels meaningless if it’s not going to benefit a life together with her. She’s my person, the woman I want to make my wife. This is all really hard but I have to trust that in the end there will be a better relationship for us to have. If she still wants one.. I know that it is all that I want.

[marcmymistakes]

Adressing my anger again. Last time I talked about this I mentioned that my anger comes out in bad ways. Focusing more on that I have noticed that it begins as frustration in my head. I get i to a situation where at a moments notice my brain or I should say my anxiety is triggered and instead of taking a step back and thinking about what is really bothering me, I got straight into a zone where my anger builds. This doesn’t happen all the time but often enough where I can notice it. The majority of the time I don’t freak out, I do in-fact take a moment back and breathe. Those times it goes away and I am okay to move forward with whatever I was doing. The hard part is that I didn’t learn from those moments, where I should have realized what I was doing to get past them. So when a bigger situation comes along and I don’t take a breather I go straight into being pissed and make everything an issue. Looking over this I have been able to identify the feeling when it comes up. I have to ask myself “is this worth getting mad about” or “is getting mad an appropriate response to what’s happening.” Sometimes it is but there are also different ways to express your anger instead of exploding. I think about the time I lost my cool with Chelsea and smashed a bunch of things across the room. I should have calmly told her that I was upset and handled it in a good way. I stead I lost it and screamed and freaked out. This triggered her and we ended up getting into a huge fight. It could have been avoided but I didn’t recognize that I had gone too far. Drinking didn’t help at all. This anger comes from somewhere, I’m not sure where but I want to identify it and figure it out. For my first therapy session I am going to bring it up as a focus for now. Obviously the first appointment is to get to know the therapist but I also want to mention what I have identified as my issues to start with. This reflection on myself through this journal has helped me organize my thoughts a bit more clearly. It’s going to be a long road but I want to out my best foot forward either way.

[marcmymistakes]

Made my first therapy appointment. Here we go!

[marcmymistakes]

Why stay in a comfort zone? I have always been guilty of falling back into my comfort zone and becoming hard shelled about changing. I have the capacity, I have left the comfort zone before, but why do I keep falling back into it? Ships aren’t mean for the harbor right? I have learned that I grow so much when I push myself outside that zone. So this year I am dedicating myself to being uncomfortable and doing things that I normally would be afraid to try. I had a great day to day at the beach and part of that was experiences I had today. I tried surfing for the first time ever thanks to Dwight, I ate seafood which if you know me I am such a little bitch about, and I faced a very populated area without a shirt on. I can be defensive about my stomach at times. After all of it tho, I felt alive. I wasn’t comfortable and I had a great time. I spent time thinking about Chelsea a lot because I kept wishing she was there to enjoy it with me but I also processed some feelings about that too. What I know now is that I need to enjoy life as best I can, have moments where I am uncomfortable and take them as experiences not disappointments. If things didn’t according to plan then I would get uneasy and feel like that moment or day was a waste. What if that is okay? It is, flowing with the way life happens and not holding onto my opinion of how it should have gone was liberating. I’m not sure why I spent so much mental energy on how that made me feel. Feels like wasted time now. So this year is all about trying foods and physical activities that I avoided for too long. How do you truly grow? Step outside your comfort zone.

[marcmymistakes]

What is it to be fully open? I spoke about transparency a few posts ago but what does it mean to be open to people? Who should you be open to and who should you shut out? I use to pride myself on being so open that anyone could talk to me and I would be there to listen. I like it as a quality that I possess but does it cause any issues or pain? The short answer is yes. If I am spending all of my mental energy on everyone around me, how can I expect to have anything left in the tank for myself or for the woman I love. This has been hard for me to admit in the past because I was raised to help others but in all honesty it takes its tole on my mental health. I look up to my grandmother and mother who I have known all my life to be open to people and always help. I thought I was the same. I thought that I could carry that torch after they left this earth. Another short answer, I can’t. At least not like I have been doing. I need to stop trying to help everyone when I am ignoring the people that matter the most to me. What does it even provide me to be there for literally everyone? Not much, and frankly I am done trying to take on that burden. I’m not saying that I am going to shut out everything and everyone, but if I don’t focus first on the people I love and myself then I am going to be miserable. So are the ones that I love. I am guilty of trying to “save” people and feel some sort of hero mentality from it. Not everyone is worth my time. Not every problem is mine to work out. My focus should be on my life at home and not on the outside world. I am going to practice this boundary by watching the way I interact with people, recognize when I am listening too much or giving too much attention, and then simply saying “that sucks” and removing myself from the conversation. Not to the people I actually care about but to all the other people who randomly talk to me because I’m easy to talk to. I like being open but too open is a big problem. It takes away too much focus and time with the ones I whole heartedly love. I did this a lot in my relationship with Chelsea. It took away focus from her when I could have just been spending that time talking to her or giving her my attention. It was wasted energy so when a problem came along in our relationship I was more reactive from a stressed point of view instead of keeping my head in check. There are other factors as to why I react so strongly, anger being the main one but this is definitely a reason too.

[marcmymistakes]

Mental heath and anger. I have gone back and forth dealing with my mental health over the years. I go through some issues whether it be depression, anxiety or anger, then I get help and I am okay for a while, but then after a while it all comes back up again. It rears its head in small things at first which can make it tough to recognize when it is happening. The question of whether or not I am reacting over something important or not. Did I really need to react like a child over sharing something like that? Did it disrespect me and that’s why I reacted? These questions come to mind as I start looking for a therapist again. What will be the most beneficial topics to cover and what do I want to focus on when I see a therapist? My anger for one is something that needs to be addressed. I’m not a hot head in the way that I blow off the top and rage out of control. Rather I boil under the surface and let it out in small moments. Getting annoyed over something not going how I expected it to go, so now I’m mad that I’m not getting my way. It’s childish at times. Internalizing this frustration and then shooting down the ones I love and care about over mundane shit that doesn’t matter. Like where to put something, or is there enough things of mine around to make it feel like home, or can you wear my Mandalorian helmet while we have sex.. that last one is very specific and I regret my actions for that immensely. I regret all my childish responses like that. Where does this anger come from? Why does it live in me now when it is something I should have let go of. The short answer is that I haven’t addressed it enough to find coping mechanisms. The long answer is that I carry around a lot of turmoil from my childhood in having to share a lot of my things with siblings or cousins, and that is a big can of worms. I always thought that I had processed a lot of that but what I’ve found is that while I have faced it and I know that it isn’t still apart of my life, I haven’t forgiven those moments or people fully. I can see that they are the root of it, and at no fault to themselves because we were all just kids, but do I just address them directly about it. That seems awkward and unnecessary. What I can do is write about it, put it out into words in front of me and then read it out load. Maybe I’ll find it silly, maybe it’ll be some profound moment where I actually feel levity towards the anger. This is the first thing I am going to address with my therapist. The drinking I was doing for a while definitely brought a lot of it to the surface. The pain I was feeling at the time made all that anger increase in value ten fold. Since I have not had anything to drink since St Patricks Day it’s made it easier to address this subject and really open up the why of it all.

[marcmymistakes]

Fear or personas we create? Tough to pick just one, but luckily I don’t have to because for me they are tied together. I felt so much pain being alone without someone to love that I was afraid I would never find it again. So I decided that I would cover myself in a version that didn’t feel that fear. A version that was okay without being in love. Only when I met someone worth dropping that did I let my guard down and try again. To my surprise it was good to feel it again. To have someone to know that intimately. To be known that intimately. But I also kept a guard up in my mind, ever afraid that one day it would turn on me and I would feel like hell again. I kept a certain mental distance whether it was known or not and that created a new half persona in me. Time passed and then some challenges came around. I lost my job, I didn’t look hard enough to find employment again, I felt depressed at my ability to provide and be a contributor. I took an easy way out and it was pretty obvious. I worked for Lyft for a few months, saying that it was just temporary. But it wasn’t. It lasted for four months. Not being able to afford groceries or to go out really had an impact on my relationship with Chelsea. She became resentful of me for trying to keep my lifestyle going but not working hard enough to afford it. I don’t blame her but part of me did start blaming her when she started talking shit about me around town over this. I heard from many people about it and it crushed me that my partner, the woman I loved could talk about me that way. I should have tried harder but still it hurt that she saw me that way. After a while I got an offer to go on tour with Powerglove and I took it, I figured fuck it, I need the money and I need something to make me feel better. Chelsea hated it because I didn’t consult her before accepting the offer. Or maybe because I was going away for a while. Either way it hurt her to make that choice. It wasn’t an easy tour, we worked hard and I drove between gigs while also selling merch. The distance grew between us. I missed her and she missed me but either way it wasn’t easy. The reason I bring this up is because I realize now that I made those choices because I was afraid. I was afraid of what our next chapter was in our relationship. Why was I afraid? I had a loving woman who would give me the world if I wanted it. I was afraid because I felt it slipping, her resentment towards me, my lack of passion to work in anything. I put on another persona. One that was gonna be a guy that cut off feelings that didn’t support what I had chosen to do. Putting on personas hasn’t helped me at all. If anything is has made things worse. I realize that now in shaking off all my layers. The past few weeks I have cut through to my core and asked my self some questions that make me analyze myself and my reasons. Why did I act that way? What purpose was I trying ti achieve? The short answer is to not be afraid. But fear is okay, and now I know that I am actually not afraid of the next chapter of my life. In talking with my mother I realize that I can have the life I wanted before, I can have a family, I can have love that means the world to me. I just have to do the work on myself to make sure that I understand it’s not gonna be that scary. It’s full of possibilities and love.

[marcmymistakes]

What does it mean to be fully transparent? What do you show people inside yourself and what do you keep just for yourself? I have a tendency to keep myself closed off until I know it’s safe to say something that I feel. Part if it comes from being a people pleaser and part of it is being defensive because at one time in my life someone I loved whole heartedly used it against me. As I review the things in my mind that I want to face about myself this question comes up a lot. It was a barrier in my relationship with Chelsea that we faced often. I would be closed off about something whether it was conversationally or even something as simple as my phone. I hate people looking over my shoulder to see what I’m doing because in my mind that is my personal time to myself but yet I always say that I am an open book to the ones I love. Am I really? Do I just like to think so? The conclusion I have come to is that I need to be more transparent in relationships that matter the most to me. That means showing the things that I don’t think people will accept about me or may take the wrong way. My only hope is that they won’t be used against me again. But that is part of trust right? Taking the chance and trusting that everything will be okay.. maybe I should share this journal at some point.

[marcmymistakes]

The idea of having your shit together. That’s the goal right? The way we will all feel like we are truly an adult or have reached a benchmark that grants us immunity from troubles in life. Having been through a lot of restarts I am finally looking clear at what having your shit together really means. It means having the tools to deal with change. Having the means mentally and emotionally to process struggles that you will inevitably come up against, so that you can move past them in the most productive way possible. I use to think that if I didn’t have the perfect balance of work life and home life then I didn’t have my shit together and I wouldn’t be ready for a future I always wanted. I realize now that it was actually my confidence in myself or lack their of, combined with my emotional state that made me feel unprepared. How does one fix that? That was the next question I began asking myself. I look at myself over the years and analyzed how I had been at certain times. When was I the most confident, when did that change, how did I get back to being confident again.. these all had the same answer and for some reason it seems to be a lesson that I keep learning. This time I actually looked at it tho and before I had just gone through the motions. The answer was simple, I lose my confidence because I get comfortable, I gain it back when I have to. It’s not that I am incapable, it’s that I do it when it matters most but I get lazy with it. So now I need to apply a mentality that keeps that fact in my sights. I need to work on understanding who I really am and how close that is to who I want to be. The feeling of losing myself in someone is romantic as hell and I do it when I love someone as deeply as I love Chelsea. I did it before with Deanna. The difference I am noticing now is that I want to do this work so that I have a future no matter who wants to be a part of that. I want to have my shit together, and I know what that means now.

[marcmymistakes]

Working on yourself is really hard. Analyzing yourself is really hard. My mind wants to rationalize a lot of my decisions but my heart knows that I need to do more to truly grow. The past few weeks I have been going over and over what it means to be validated, in your options, your actions, your own personal value. I have always felt validated because I believe in my heart that I am a good person. What I have come to realize is that I constantly seek external validation, and more to that I always seek it from people that frankly are not worth my time. I use to live with the confidence that I had been the right person in a lot of interactions with old friends. This was a big factor in my relationship with Deanna, we had been the only couple of our college friends that was still together after school. This felt like we were right in what we did. In the end it just meant that we had stuck it out the longest. After that relationship I changed a lot. Forced myself to change because if I didn’t I would have died. I felt better for a while and even got a great job. I tied everything in my emotional balance to the fact that I was validated from this change. When I met Chelsea that all changed for me again. I only needed it from her. She filled me with feeling validated and okay as a person. Somewhere along the way I felt it becoming dependent on her and I was terrified that it would go away. I acted like a stock broker and began diversifying where I got my validation from. I thought that was good.. It wasn’t. I should have built that within me. Within the things I did and made of this world. I think that’s why I get to crazy in my head about things when that validation isn’t there. I began drinking a lot near the end of my relationship with Chelsea, she told me that I should cut back or stop drinking liquor, at the time I felt like I could handle it myself and that I would fix it soon. It was something that I tied to being validated. If people like me then I’m good, I’m worth something in this world. Having a work life that I hated added to my lack of self worth. I should never have looked past how much I meant to her and her only. She loved me more than any other person has and it was just because of me being me. I was enough for her. No one else should have mattered. Ultimately they won’t truly validate anything for you because you have to find it in yourself. So that’s what I will work on. One step at a time.

[marcmymistakes]

I use to journal a lot when I was younger and it helped so here I am.. trying to sort things out in words. The past few weeks have broken me, broken me like I’ve been broken before but never wanted to feel ever again. I decided to make a change for what I thought was the way forward to a good future. One where me and Chelsea had all the right tools to make our lives work forever. We had been through so much that I thought it wouldn’t break us, I thought out love would handle anything.. and it probably could have but what happened after took it all away. Idk where to really begin but this is for my own mind so I’m gonna word vomit cuz who fucking cares. I’m in pain, not that uncomfortable can’t figure out why kinda pain but that gut wrenching loss kinda pain where you can’t think, every thought is filled with a multitude of panic and anxiety, the worst thoughts fill my head and I am acting crazy. I never wanted to open myself up to feeling anything like this again after last time but when I met her it wasn’t a question, I was gonna open that door no matter what. After 3 and a half years, here I am, feeling like this again. I carried every emotional burden that came along with both of us, it broke me, I lost myself in her. I failed. I failed again and I don’t know why I let it get here. How could this all happen.. how did I get so off track? I made a lot of mistakes along the way but I always faced them with her and worked on being better. When we went through the roughest times I made sure we talked about it, I made sure to apologize first, she’s the most stubborn woman I know and she always needed me to do it first, and I would do it every time because not getting past it with her was never an option in my mind, she was who I wanted to work on everything with, she still is. I got to a point that I felt like I was drowning inside, not because taking everything on that we had to face was too much but because I let go of myself and didn’t keep track of what made me feel strong enough to do it. I had nothing that was mine, that I drew my strength from, nothing that I had achieved on my own to give me confidence in myself. I needed to leave to work on that, to keep my focus, around her I couldn’t focus. I left and it crushed her, she was always afraid that I was going to leave, and even though I was doing it to make things better for us, it didn’t matter. She was hurt and I couldn’t take it back, I didn’t want to because I was focused on the goal of being the best I could so that I could be the man she truly wanted, the man I was when we met. I spent a lot of the time trying not to cry, trying to hold it all together so I could make it through each day and function. She didn’t like that, she made me open up, it fucked me up, I cried and cried and cried and couldn’t work. I got complaints from clients, I messed up a lot, I couldn’t function. Work was all I had and I hated that job but I needed to stay afloat. I needed the money. After moving out I had nightmares, I couldn’t sleep well and I would find myself reaching for her in the middle of the night. I missed her but I needed to be strong. I needed to find that man I was or everything meant nothing. After nights of being sad, feeling horrible, I decided to keep going out and try to find moments of happiness, to find something that felt normal to me or at least what use to be normal to my schedule. Going around Deland here and there felt weird. It was the same town, the same faces, the same bullshit, but without her being around. I would talk to people and tell them about what was going on and they would all tell me that it’s all gonna work out, that I was doing the right thing trying to be better. So I kept doing it. And then I went too far, I only know now because of hearing it later but I got drunk and made out with someone that I didn’t know. It doesn’t matter really whether or not I defend myself on how it came to be, the fact that it happened is all that matters. It hurt Chelsea to find out, it embarrassed me to find out too. Now she doesn’t want anything to do with me.