Healing backup

I have a very manual photo backup process. It involves:

  • Carefully going through different devices and merging their photo streams into a folder,
  • Running some scripts to organise these neatly by year/month/date, and
  • rsyncing this to different places.

The trouble with a system like this is that if you go through something traumatic, it’s really hard to sift through the memories of the period and complete the backup. So I sort of just stopped doing it in late 2019 — when I was told my marriage was ending. For over three years now, I’ve been operating mostly backup free. Memories of the kids, little moments around my life, … all just a busted phone away from being lost.

I decided to change that today. I blared a lot of music from my youth, made a whole pot of tea and spent the evening powering through the system. I now have a complete (redundant) backup of all my photos until today.

This is a relief.

But more than that, it feels like an expression of healing, as I didn’t feel anything negative. Just happy nostalgia for when the kids were younger.

Hugo and Oscar when they were younger (2019).

I talked to my mama

I talked to her for a long time. I explained to her that she caught me at a particularly low moment in my life when she called a couple of days ago, and apologised for not answering the phone then. I explained to her that things are a lot happier, and that whether I am happy or sad, I have people who care about me to communicate with what I am going through. I asked her for a lot of time to grow up, and to learn to recognise and appreciate when my life is good.

I don’t think she understood entirely, but I think she feels better about how I am doing.

Shades of grey

Long time readers of my journal are no strangers to the fact that my mood is extremely oscillatory. Much like the colour scheme of this site, my mind is either entirely black or entirely white. I can jump several times an hour or day or week or month from exceptional bliss to extreme depression and sorrow. Sure, this lets me feel alive, allowing me to experience life in an intense manner, but it is sometimes scary as these wild swings are not under my control.

The entries in my journal reflect this, albeit in a skewed fashion, because I’m personally more likely to write when I’m down.

The closer I get to Stacey, the more I’m beginning to understand why I might be this way. I seem to have an extremely black and white view of the world around me. People and experiences and surroundings are either “insanely great,” putting me in a state of intense bliss, or “horribly hurtful,” driving me down into the depths of depression. There seem to be no shades of grey in my perception of or response to the world.

The same is true of how I experience the women I am with, including Stacey. For the first months of our relationship, I was in a state of ecstasy. There was nothing she could say or do wrong, and whatever she was was perfect for me. But more recently, things started to change. The more she talked about her past, the more perturbed I got about her sexual history. I started to sink and see everything in a negative light, and there was little she could say or do that would help me.

The darkness had nearly descended completely, until she reminded me that we’re all just humans and have different aspects of our persona that could either please or perturb another. She pointed out that how I might not be a perfect man by any objective standards, yet all that she’s been longing for. Looking into her loving eyes and soft body as she told me all this reminded me of how happy she’s made me this past half year. And that her past is just that, her past. I don’t have to fully understand or accept it right away, just to recognise that through her imperfections, she’s someone who’s capable of making me immensely happy.

Drowning in opera

Stacey’s life path has been remarkably different from mine. For instance, she’s lived with another boy before. I am not always OK with bits of information like this, and my lack of real acceptance manifests in sinister ways, especially when she’s away. Like what happened last evening at an Opera performance (in a shady bar themed to match a submarine!).

Pleasant conversation and fun people, the evening was going remarkably well until the negative stresses popped up. The cuteish mid-twenty year old cuddling up to an older guy. She was enjoying the show, and he was enjoying her touch.

I couldn’t help but imagine you with someone else. I looked around and I started to see your face everywhere. A younger you. A naïve you with an innocent face, clearly in love. The happiness in your face as you looked at him; it haunted me.

The music changed. The once cheerful lyrics now dark and ominous.

And I needed to leave.

Circle of friends

Well, my great plan to write an entry per day for a whole year lasted about a day. But who wasn’t expecting that?

My social life has improved tremendously since I left the States. For one, I have a loving girlfriend with whom I’m physically and emotionally intimate. I don’t live alone anymore. I have a few close friends to talk to, more to meet up with for activities almost every evening, as well as get to travel with on occasion. Life is good. In fact compared to my earlier situation—being completely isolated and having suicidal tendencies—my current state could be deemed life in Utopia. But even so, there’s been one thing that’s been constantly nagging me:

Everybody I know knows everybody else I know.

Let me try to explain this. Everyone I get to interact with from day to day: my partner, friends, flatmates, landlords, activity partners, … is either someone I work with or someone they knew and introduced me to. Every single person. This isn’t inherently bad, but I don’t think it’s normal. I feel like I can’t ever say or do or feel anything toward any of these people without everybody else somehow knowing. And that bothers me quite a bit.

This thought has been gnawing at me for a while, but only recently did it crystallise in my head. With which came the obvious solution to my predicament: I needed to bond with other people removed from this bunch. But along with the obvious solution came the obvious problem: I believe I’m borderline autistic, and that my current social circle materialised through pure luck. How could I possibly recreate that environment?

One times three-hundred and sixty-five

It’s taken me a long hiatus to realise this, but I need to write. I think putting my thoughts and feelings down in words plays an integral role in how I go about processing them. And so, starting today, I plan on rekindling my writing habit by jotting down at least one entry here each day. I’ve resolved to keep it up for a year, but we all know how well such proclamations usually pan out. However long this lasts, I expect that the writing style will be unfocused, raw and in the moment. Though today, you get a little back-story for the tales that are to follow.

  • After a month-long holiday in India with Stacey, followed by a couple months alone there doing very little, I returned to Oslo. I’ve been here for just under a month now, and live in a new home with a couple of housemates who are also my friends and colleagues. This leads to some interesting situations which we’ll definitely be getting into. Either way, this is a temporary situation as Stacey and I will be moving into an apartment together before the end of the year.
  • Things with Stacey have been almost perfect, and she makes me very happy, despite the fact that she’s needed to go to the States for a few months to study. She’s managed to take breaks and visit me in the interim, which has made it a lot easier on us. I’m much happier in Oslo than I was in India, and my feelings toward Stacey gives me a surety about my decisions that I lacked before she came along. Even so, I have some misgivings about her past, which is a topic of some consternation when I feel low. (Which tends to happen when I feel separated form her. Which tends to happen when I am separated from her.) I hope this changes as we spend more and more time together.
  • I am trying to make all sorts of positive changes in my life. I have started to work out and I dress better. I am motivated to work hard (to ensure my stay in Oslo). I am trying to form and maintain additional friendships beyond my current set. These changes help me feel better about getting older.
  • I work in a new scientific group, and not knowing many details makes me feel like an idiot. You’ll hear about this more and more if my reading doesn’t improve the situation.

I am sure a lot more back-story is required to orient you to subsequent stories, but I will stop for now. Instead, I’ll try to insert relevant bits as necessary, and now go to sleep.

Avoiding a scene

I wish I could say a lot of this to your face, but I won’t. I’m tired just thinking about the drama I’d have to endure.

Every time you go off on one of your rants reminding me how cold I am for not displaying my affection toward you in public, I shut up and hug you to placate you. But the entire time, I’m thinking of only one thing: How I really wish you didn’t have to remind me—how I’d be all over you if only you were smaller, younger and cuter.

I wish you hadn’t lived such a hard life, and didn’t have any of the scars to show for it. Sometimes, I want more than just someone who’s very good to me. Sometimes, I want someone whose physical allure makes it impossible for me not to jump them.

I’ve fantasised and fantasised and fantasised about how my life ought to be, and how much I’d yearn to caress and cuddle the woman I love (yes, even in public, since this is such a big deal to you), but I just can’t seem to make myself behave that way all the time around you. It’s different when I wake up needy in the morn or when I feel vulnerable and alone, but sometimes when we’re out together, I am almost embarrassed to be with you. As wonderful a person as you are and as loving as you are toward me, you’re not what I thought my life’s catch would be. Part of me is always left bitter and unsatiated, leaving me feeling I could do better.

I need you but I don’t want you.

Is it so hard to see now why I have such difficulty expressing my affection for you freely in public? It’d be tantamount to announcing to the world how desperate I am not to be alone.

That, and I don’t want to ever dissuade that cute woman glancing in our direction from talking to me.

On Jack’s vicarious anguish

It’d been nearly a week and that queasy feeling in Jack’s tummy wasn’t going away. He’d pondered the events of these past days over and over, and it wasn’t clear to him what bothered him more—what had happened, or the way in which she was handling it.

They’d enjoyed a wonderful evening in the park together. She’d lovingly stuffed their picnic basket with a number of delicious goodies, including his favourite snack: praline ice-cream sandwiches. The children playing football in the background, the noisy party-goers at their barbecue grill, the nature-lover meticulously cataloguing different kinds of birds—all the activity around—was lost to them. They were in their own little world. The hours had flown by as they cuddled and conversed, and it was nauseatingly-cute the way she kept insisting on feeding him.

It wasn’t conscious at first, but even through her smiles, Jack could sense the discomfort brewing in her eyes. It didn’t come as a surprise to him when she abruptly told him she’d like to end the evening and go home. By now the agony was apparent in her eyes, and Jack helped her up and cleaned up a bit before they left. Though he had a hunch as to what the problem was, it was clear that she wasn’t in any frame of mind to talk. And so he didn’t ask. She’d always had the most painful periods of any of the women he’d known, and he instinctively gazed at her cute derrière, not to gawk at her as he so often did, but to examine her clothes for spotting. What he saw—the growing blotches of deep red—didn’t leave any doubt in his mind. Unaware of the seriousness of the situation, he wrapped an arm around her and helped her home.

Her blue jeans were a shade of purple by the time they reached.

She wasn’t crying on their way home. She wasn’t crying when she told him. She had an unconcerned look on her face, and as she puffed her 93rd cigarette for the day, she casually tossed out that she’d miscarried. Though he knew that he wasn’t the father, Jack was distraught. The more he attempted to console her (thinking, hoping she needed it), the more she mocked him for his foolishness. She found it rather silly he should care so much for something not his.

He should’ve realised it when she kept up her heavy smoking and drinking even after finding out about the baby. She never wanted it.

Ineffectual

It was the second, perhaps the third, time that night. I had that sinking feeling of despair wash over me as I realised how little of a man I was. As I lay over that beautiful woman—wet and ready with her legs parted in invitation—I found myself doing the unthinkable. I was desperately holding my shrinking cock in my trembling hands and stroking furiously: I needed to be hard again. I needed to feel that wonderful sensation of her pussy lips wrapped around me once more. I needed to feel like the strong man towering over that delicate flower rocking rhythmically as I caressed her chest and face with my own.

I needed to be within her.

I am shrinking some more. Panic is beginning to set in. Her annoyed breaths are turning to sadness as she’s trying to egg me on. “Please,” she sighs, “don’t stroke yourself when you’re over me. Just enter me.” I could have died at that instant. I haven’t felt as little or as inadequate as I did right then. All I wanted to do was to show her how much I loved and needed her. All I ended up doing was to struggle to stay hard and convince her there was something wrong with her form.

I don’t deserve anyone, especially not such a gentle loving creature that adores me so. I don’t know what went wrong, but I am terrified.

Hey, wait a minute. That’s not how this story ended!

However the story did end, the moral of the tale is this: Don’t use newfangled muscle-relaxing, cock-desensitising, stay-hard-for-her-longer condoms.

Her unborn sister

In the midst of a heart-to-heart, Cecille’s mother broke down and sobbingly admitted to her that she’d aborted Cecille’s unborn baby sister when Cecille was still a young girl. Now a grown woman, Cecille responded in the only way she knew fit—offer her mother some solace and quietly grieve the loss of a sister she never had.

Meanwhile, her sombre and supportive façade served to mask the only thought running through her head—I wish it were me instead.

Twixt my nethers

I could’ve sworn I had some money in Euro lying around the house. I seem to remember exchanging a lot more currency than I ended up needing during my last trip to Germany, but perhaps I’m just misremembering things. Either that, or I’ve lost a bunch of bank notes during the move to my new apartment. Anyway, it’s not like they don’t have ATMs in Paris, which is where I’m spending this week. I reckon it’s going to be interesting—my mom sent me a long list of her favourite places there which she insists I not miss—but more on that later as events warrant it. We now have bigger fish to fry.

As I run around my home tossing things into my trusty campers’ backpack a few hours before my flight, my mind keeps returning to the events of last night. There she was, pressed up to me whispering in my ear even though the obnoxiously loud music in the club had long since given way to much softer and more relaxed background fare. Her slinky cocktail dress which exquisitely accentuated her delicate form did little to sheath the warmth of her body. I remember being transfixed by the way her tongue-piercing glistened under the subdued lights as her mouth moved, and struggling to string coherent sentences together as I drowned in her intoxicating perfume; but her frequent giggles and pouty smiles seemed to suggest I was doing something right.

It took much of the night, but I was finally beginning to feel relaxed and not completely out of my element. Without the blaring music and the smoke, my system wasn’t on constant sensory overload (at least, not the kind that bothered me!) and the setting quickly became a lot more intimate. It stayed that way for a long while—until it eventually evaporated; an inevitability I was bracing myself for the entire time.

I amn’t going to discuss details, but I believe I do need to take up some form of dance lessons. Not for improving the gracefulness of my movements, but to prevent me from getting petrified and retreating into a shell (not to mention arguing to defend my pitiful chickenhood) when being pushed to.

As I sit here amidst this scattering of paper I rummaged through to look for my Euros for the trip, I can’t help but glance at their contents. Much of them are unfinished journal entries over the years, many of which are desperate pleas and pointless grousing, a sizable chunk serving to highlight the complete history of my sexual failures. I seem to be doing the same things over and over expecting dramatic changes in my life. But the events of last evening, this stack of memories strewn about, everything, points to how absurd a notion that is. If I want my situation to change, I need to change too.

First stop, manning up and signing up for dance lessons. For a while now I ain’t had nothin’ twixt my nethers weren’t run on batteries.

Dripping dropping people drop of a hat

I’m quite convinced the problem with my brain is that it’s not dead—it’s actually capable of thought.

As I lie there exhausted, my heavy eyelids slowly descending over my tired eyes, I feel her snuggle up even closer to me with a contended sigh. That’s when it happens—right when I’m on the brink of actually experiencing a moment of true happiness—my brain begins to race in a frenzied panic:

“But she’s not petite enough. Shouldn’t she be younger? She doesn’t look anything like what you’ve always longed for. Does she have to be such a tomboy all the time? I wish she were more of a girly-girl; it wouldn’t hurt for her to pay more attention to herself…”

How much I adore her, or how good we’ve been together, or how much fun I have when she’s around, or how liberating it’s been to openly share things with her… all of this, every single positive facet, quickly fades into the distant background. My brain has decreed she doesn’t look like she “ought to,” and its own voice is the only one it’s willing to hear.

The sad part is, I’m not able to convince it that it’s wrong. Superficial? Of course. Acting idiotically to our detriment? Hell yes!

But wrong?

Cognitive dissonance

Maybe it’s having too much time on my hands, or maybe it’s just my ultra-negative world view, but whatever the case may be, I know what’s coming next: My downward spiral.

I’m reverting to a very dark place, where I’m justifying antagonising everyone in my life. I’m perceiving reality through a warped “you’re either with me, or against me” mentality—where everyone just happens to be standing in my way. I’ve managed to completely justify every self-destructive action culminating in my sorry existence by transferring every last morsel of responsibility to others—making them the enemy, deserving of my rage.

This is not going to end well.

On the flip side however, observe how my disappointing life serves as a textbook example of cognitive dissonance. Consider the disparity between the following true statements:

  1. I believe I am a upstanding and kindhearted individual, sensitive and generous to the world around me.
  2. I am perpetually woebegone.

In an attempt to reduce dissonance, I plainly conclude that the world must be rife with malice. Moreover, why should I then be courteous toward it?