We Have Met the Enemy, and He is Us. (Or Not)

“Being enough is something you are, not something you earn.”

Curtis Tyrone Jones

I’ve been single for a bit. A spell. A few turns of the hourglass. A season. One might even say an age. I’ve recently decided that it’s time for that to change.

Dating has gotten progressively weirder the older I’ve gotten, and in my mid 40s, it’s the weirdest it’s been yet. I don’t think it gets talked about a lot (at least not in places I am looking) but when you’re putting yourself back in that arena at this age, it can bring up a lot of feelings. A bubbling cauldron of anxiety, optimism, wariness, weariness, hope, insecurity…and mainly feeling like you’re the only one in the world who can’t seem to get this part of life quite right. It doesn’t help that most of my friends are either married or the non-union Mexican equivalent, so there are some barriers to varying degrees about their ability to relate.

I ventured out into the world of dating apps, which were never great, but somehow seem to be devolving even from the last time I’d used them.

Now, I don’t want to disparage dating apps as a concept entirely. In this day and age, there are a lot of good things to say about them. They promote asynchronous communication, provide distance in the beginning to feel out if someone is worth your time to meet, or if you honestly feel safe meeting them. In exchange for those qualities, you have to sell yourself through a few pics and a few blurbs about yourself. It’s…not a great tradeoff…but it’s what you have to work with if you choose to walk that path. (I did once attend a singles mixer which was hilariously awkward, but ended up with me making a few wonderful friends) Besides, a few of the relationships I’ve considered to be my “most successful” to date were born of dating apps, and I have made several dear friends from dating situations that just didn’t really materialize.

So I sent a few messages, opened a few dialogues, even exchanged a number or two. So far, so good. This is the easy part. When I am made of words, I’m pretty incredible, if I do say so myself. My humor translates well to written form and that’s the primary bait on my hook. Then when things go well in this, my chosen arena, I have to come back to the real world, and that’s where things get unsteady.

Once, way back in my 20s I went on a date with a girl I met online. Bear in mind that this is in the age of pagers, before cell phones, smart phones, etc. We hadn’t seen each other before we met, though we had talked on the phone a few times, exchanged a few emails, and there seemed to be a mutual crush forming. We decided to meet up at a coffeehouse…and things pretty much fizzled immediately. There were other people there I knew, so the two of us were spared a lot of the awkwardness by virtue of making small talk with other patrons of the establishment. At one point towards the end of the night when we were alone again, she told me “if you were thinner, you’d be really hot.”

I think maybe she was trying to take the sting out of the sentiment by emphasizing the word “really.”

It didn’t work.

Maybe you winced reading that. I did, reliving it as I typed it. Ooooof. As you might have guessed, that left a mark, one that has stayed with me regardless of what variety of shape my meat wagon took. That single statement stripped away the value of everything that I liked about myself. It reinforced with steel something I didn’t like about myself. It taught me that no good qualities I have matter while I inhabit a fat body. And perhaps worst, it turned me against myself in new ways that I hadn’t yet encountered in a life already marked by self-loathing in a variety of flavors.

Now as I mentioned earlier, I’ve been a part in a few relationships I would call a success (even if they didn’t last, I learned a lot from them) and a lot more that never really came together long term, but definitely were good times in the while that they lasted. For someone who is painting himself here as an unloveable pariah, I’ve had waaaaay more success with the fairer sex than I would ever think someone who looks like me would have. What this should illustrate is that there are people who see what all I bring to the table and are delighted by it. What I took from it was that I was somehow “tricking” ladies into giving me a chance. Which objectively I recognize as absolute horseshit. People do what they want to do. But that one fateful date some 25ish years ago, forever skewed how I saw myself as it related to desirability, which is to say I had none.

Take this and couple it with the notion that the world we live in ABSOLUTELY encourages this. Media does not frequently portray heavier people as leading happy lives with rich, fulfilling relationships. Instead we are categorized as being lazy, lacking willpower or moral character, frequently having poor hygiene, low levels of intelligence, and are definitely unattractive. The ceiling for media portrayal is comic relief, which is still to many degrees dehumanizing. Despite there being mountains of evidence to the contrary, obesity is still largely framed as being a personal failure, rather than the amalgamation of a number of varying factors about environment, genetics and issues unique to each individual. This is what all of us are being fed, over and over, and it sticks to us, thick and thin alike.

Which brings me back around to modern dating. There’s a woman I’m currently chatting with. It’s been a lot of fun, she’s got a spicy dark sense of humor that is right up my alley. We share the same political views and we’re both people who feel deeply about…everything. She’s even open to learning some games with me. When things were going well, I asked her out on a date, and she accepted.

When it came time to actually plan things, I had to step out of my word-filled fantasy world and back into the one where I pray that I can trick someone else into giving me a chance. I sent the following text:

“So I hadn’t discussed this yet, but as we’re planning to get together, I don’t want there to be any surprises here. I’m a bigger guy. Before the pandemic, I was very active and lost a lot of weight, and then a couple of years staying inside undid a lot of that work. I’m working again to reestablish those better habits, but it’s not an overnight process, and I’m dealing with some insecurity about my body. And I get that it’s me. I worry myself to death over it, every time I meet someone new. Only once in my life has anyone ever shot me down because of my size, but that once was enough to cast a shadow over every encounter since. My history indicates that I worry about it more than any of my past partners ever have, but even in the face of all of that evidence, it’s always a struggle for me.”

At the time, I was thinking I was just being honest about things. No surprises, not trying to catfish you. In the context of thinking about this and writing about it and with the benefit of time passed, I am absolutely cringing at it. It also bears mention that this is not the first time I have laid out this disclaimer when daring to admit that I am romantically interested in someone. I don’t think that there’s been a situation where I haven’t done this.

I warn her about me. I apologize for myself and include language that assures her that I Am Aware Of The Problem And Am Doing Something About It (TM). I proceed to overshare and talk about my historic struggle with this particular cycle, and the notion that despite my fears things have worked out generally well for me. Why am I saying all of this? Why that last part? Am I trying to convince her that if she rejects me, she’s the weirdo?

All of this, rather than just trusting to the fact that we wouldn’t be talking if she didn’t see some value in me. That there are plenty of good reasons why this is a good idea. That my happiness with our exchanges is as real for her as it is for me.

Everyone I know suffers from some sort of body dysmorphia. I don’t know if it’s a human thing or an American thing, but I am inclined to think that it’s more the latter than the former. I know all too well how shitty it feels to be judged on this, and I will go well out of my way to spare someone that shame.

I know I’m not the only one here who has felt this, and y’all, we have to do better. For ourselves. We have to try to escape the traps of programming and bombardment on all sides that we are undesirable, and deserve to be. The world is not going to change, but we can. We can believe in our possession of value, of worthiness, that we don’t have to trick people into liking us (which honestly, we never did). We have to fight back with self-love in a world that really encourages us to hate ourselves….and that’s really super difficult…but it’s not impossible.

For the record, she thanked me for telling her if it was a concern of mine, but it was not a concern of hers. We’re planning to meet soon. And regardless of the outcome of that meeting, I won’t lose sight of my worthiness. I can break the wheel. You can too.

Keeping Your Eyes (and your mind) Open

The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week. – Voltaire

I guess this is the part where I have to say something about trigger warnings, as I’m going to start this post with talking about my relationship with suicidal ideation. So you are forewarned, and thusly forearmed.

The closest I ever came to leaving the world on purpose was about 7 years ago. I was dealing with a heartbreak on the scope of which I had never seen before. I was absolutely miserable, and most of my friends were done listening to me. (Honestly. I had two people both of whom I adored tell me that they couldn’t talk to me anymore because I was too lost in that grief. As someone who has abandonment issues, this is super rough) (The real bitch of that? Hindsight, time and life experience have all shown that it never deserved all of the hell I put myself through with it.) I had the opportunity to volunteer to teach board games at Gen Con, so I went, thinking that I desperately needed a distraction from life. I knew I was a mess, but I figured that it was Gen Con, always a good time, and my sadness could take a couple of days off. It didn’t exactly work. I was miserable the whole time, and all of my smiles were just masks I was wearing.

One night, I needed to drop something off in the car, which was in a parking garage a few blocks away from the hotel I was staying in. It was a tall building, and the level I was parked on was somewhere in the teens. After doing whatever it was I was doing when I started to walk back to the hotel, I walked to the edge of the wall where I could look down. I was high enough to where there was zero chance I would survive if I jumped. I stood there leaning over the wall, raising onto my toes, considering the end and daring fate to do something with my balance. The temptation was strong, and my resolve to live…wasn’t. I don’t know how long I stood there, staring down from that height, breath short, and body tense; and I don’t remember making the decision to walk away. I do know that I went and consulted a friend who was there with me that I was in my darkest hour and she talked me through it. (Marie, I don’t know if you read this clownshoes blog, but if you do, you very literally saved my life that night).

Something weird I think is that that’s where my mind goes now when I think about suicide. I think about that specific parking garage and that floor. Every time. There are a million ways to do it, but for me, it’s always going to that parking garage in downtown Indianapolis. While my therapist is never thrilled with the notion that suicidal thoughts are something I still struggle with (it has gotten much better though, and the urges are fairly rare when they used to be omnipresent) she does like that my most likely path to it involves a 3.5 hour drive, which is plenty of time to calm myself down.

I’ve been struggling lately, my dear five readers, which you might have guessed as I haven’t updated in a bit. As always, there are a lot of factors in play. My work has been pretty hyper busy and stressful lately. I’m still processing grief from things alluded to in earlier posts and the non-linear path of grieving can be maddening. I’ve been moving forward on all of the initiatives that I’ve talked about here, but lately my heart hasn’t really been in it, and the miracle cure I felt I discovered a few posts ago has run into a pretty serious challenge.

For those of you tuning in just now, I’m talking about the basic idea of learning self-love by looking at myself and my decisions as I would if I were my kid. If he had these struggles, what would I tell him? And I thought it was foolproof, because I would be able to navigate him through all sorts of nonsense. But what if my kid told me that he was just tired of everything? And that nothing is fun anymore and that he feels all he does is grind away at work to keep the lights on? What do you say to the person who is struggling to find the point to…well, anything?

This is where I’ve been stuck for a bit. And I wouldn’t know how to navigate my kid through that sort of existential despair. Would telling him “things will get better” be in any way genuine, helpful, or most importantly truthful?

I’m reminded of a reddit post that was circulating around a bit some years ago regarding poverty and some of the myths surrounding it, namely that there is this really perverse idea that if you scrimp and save and deny yourself monetary indulgences of pleasure that it will someday work out for your security, when the truth is that there is no “money heaven” for good behavior, that restricting yourself in these ways will never lift you out of poverty, and that these myths were perpetuated by people in power who benefit from your believing them because the real solution takes them out of that power.

Can I tell my kid that things will get better when I struggle to believe that they actually will? It complicates matters when the mental focus it requires to separate my conscious self from the me-as-my-kid view is…difficult to attain. Spinning my wheels here leads me to despair and thoughts about a trip to Indianapolis.

I should stop a moment here and say that I’m not in crisis mode, and that historically speaking, I’ve dealt with suicidal ideations pretty much the entirety of my adult life on varying levels, but through my hard work in therapy, I got to put them down for a bit and am just less than thrilled that they are coming back around.

I sought the wisdom of my friends because at least on some level I still have the understanding that the reason friends can be helpful in these times is because they can be objective. They’re not the ones fighting to keep their head above water (at least not the same water that you’re in) so they can keep calm and provide insights that the people who are drowning are too panicked to realize themselves.

One of them told me I needed to look into more heavy hitting mental health options. Get a full evaluation and new updated diagnosis and then figure out treatment options so that I can get to a point where I feel better and do things other than work like “have hobbies” and “meaningful relationships that bring me joy.” They’re not wrong of course, but I’m skeptical in that then I’m grinding to be able to afford whatever those treatments are, and that’s a whole different can of worms I’d just as soon keep closed.

Another had presented a more simple option and reminded me that for as much as my feelings and my cynicisms felt true, they were also not the whole story. That I should tell “my kid” that there are a lot of truly great things that were just not on his radar and feel like impossibilities at his lowest points That there are all sorts of miracles that happen that we never expect. In her case, she never thought she was able to have a kid, and she not only became a mother, but lucked into an absolute treasure of a kid. Circumstances can change in the most unexpected ways, that they’re not always bad.

So I am going to try my best to slowly remove my blinders to take a look around and see that as my main man Buddy Wakefield says, that there is life after survival. That peace, satisfaction, and dare I even say a deep happiness, are things that are possible to attain without disassociation. It is going to take effort and consistency on my part to do so (hello blog reminding me to write out my shit!) but I’m going to keep trying, because I know I’m not the only one feeling this way, and if you’re relating to this in any way, I urge you to take a deep breath and remind yourself that like me, you’re not seeing the whole picture. We can do this.

And now here’s something we hope you’ll really enjoy!

Still working on my next Healthy Gamer post, but I want to make sure I am still hitting a goal of posting every week, and I’ve had a few requests asking when I am going to be talking about some games, and the answer to that is NOW! (ish)

I’ll be attending a local convention this weekend in order to teach a few games that I will probably talk about here including Cascadia, War Chest, Space Base and Cubitos. I also have a few new games that I would like to try to get played so I can write about them, including Illiterati, Heat: Pedal to the Metal and most importantly Hegemony, but it’s going to take a minute to find the right group for the last one.

Are there any games you want my take on? Let me know in the comments. I can’t promise I’ll try to write about them, but I’ll try to try.

Hairy Blogger and the Power of the Completely Mundane

If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

Not that that mystical stuff is necessarily true. The only thing that’s capital-T True is that you get to decide how you’re gonna try to see it.

– David Foster Wallace “This is Water”

Heeeeey, how about this? 3 weeks in a row with updates. I’m going to try to keep this up, and because I know that some of you, (hell, probably most of you) are here for my gaming insights, I’m going to try to make some games happen soon so I can scribble about them and dance for your attention. Promise.

Last week, I was struggling mightily with the concept of self-love and how maddeningly distant it felt, and how discouraging that can be. Just reliving any of that in typing that sentence is exhausting. I had a few people share their thoughts on mine (not here) that helped me to gain a little perspective and encouragement that I didn’t really understand how badly I needed.

I…am not really good at loving myself. In fact, I’m bafflingly bad at it. My historical high points in this regard have been peaks of neutrality, where I didn’t actively dislike myself. What I am really good at, is loving others. I am a caretaker by nature, and while I’m not the guy who will help just anyone, if I feel you are worth my help, there’s not much that I won’t do for you. I always rationalize this to myself as aspiring to be someone that I would want in my life if I needed that kind of help and support. And then of course when I am that person in need, I put up walls and isolate myself so that none of my ick can get on anyone else. A burden that no one should have to bear.

I have always based my value, my worth as a human interacting with other humans on what I can do for them. It’s both selfless in that I will go to great lengths to prove that I’m worth associating with and selfish in that I do that because I desperately crave that kind of approval that I am utterly incapable of giving myself. And that care has to be kinetic. It’s never been enough for me to just be, to have value by virtue of existence. If I’m not always actively trying to impress you, then I’m pretty scared that you’ll not see a reason to be around.

Ooooooof.

I’m not saying anything here that a lot of you haven’t heard before, or possibly felt yourself. It’s honestly pretty crippling in a number of ways and judging by how I am feeling this second as I type this, I don’t think I want to elaborate on it any further. But I’m happy to report that I think I’ve had a bit of a therapeutic breakthrough since my last post. I think I have found a key to this extremely complex lock.

I’m really bad at loving myself. But something I am good at? I am phenomenally great at loving my kid. He’s amazing y’all. Such a bright and loving human. Someone who has dealt already with too many slings and arrows of ignorant people for someone of his age, and instead of becoming bitter and spiteful and withdrawn, he still champions education and inclusion of those different and forgives those people who have wronged him. I’m so stupidly proud of him that I’m struggling to see what I’m typing through the tears that are now freely streaming down my face. If someone were to threaten my kid in any capacity, oh man it would not end well for them. Or for me. But I digress. I couldn’t ask for a better kid, and I love him more than anything. And I am frequently terrified that his apple didn’t fall far enough from my tree. Whenever I see him become angry with himself, I immediately move to intercept and engage with the most potent tools I can bring to bear; patience, kindness and love.

That’s the easy part. Where it gets tricky is applying that same grace to someone I don’t really care much for, namely that colossal fuckup that I see whenever I pass a mirror. So…I’m skipping that part.

For the past week or so, whenever I have started to get angry with myself, I have stopped and asked myself what I would do if I were witnessing my kid getting angry with himself. And then with a surprisingly small amount of effort, I engage with myself with that same patience and kindness. If you have the same kinds of struggles I do, and you have a kid, I beseech you to try this. If you don’t have a kid, maybe just try to envision the victim of your cruelty as a toddler version of yourself. You wouldn’t be that mean to a toddler, would you? The love part is still a work in progress, but the parts that I am able to do? Holy hell. It’s been amazing. Not in some way that I have miraculously overcome my damage and am healed, but in a way where I can see that it is possible.

That’s a pretty big deal. I’ve never been a “glass half-full” sort. Most times I’m a “broken glass and a puddle that I’m pretty sure is piss” sort. I’ve tried being more kind to myself more times than I can count. Most times it resulted in an eye roll, dismissing myself, or a half-hearted attempt to do better, and at times, it just forced the self-loathing to evolve. I stopped getting white-hot angry with myself and tried a more gentle approach where I would forgive myself for whatever thing I did that made me angry and promise myself that I would do better next time. That when next I encountered a similar decision point, I would make the “correct” choice. The problem is that “next time” was always “next time” and what started as an attempt to be more gentle with myself turned into me becoming more and more permissive of poor choices and bad behaviors. Sigh. Pretty sneaky, Sis.

But when I take a moment to envision my situation as something that is happening to/with my kid, the correct answer is there, immediate, simple and crystal clear. I never have to question it, and it makes it a lot easier to act on it too. I have to force myself to look at myself through that very specific lens, but it works. It’s going to take a long time before I get to put down that crutch and can really value myself like that. It feels like it may never happen, but I know that with persistence, I will eventually wear down my own walls and really love myself.

Which ties to the second part of this post. A few days ago, I was looking at some videos on YouTube, and their algorithm felt that I would be interested in reaction videos. At that point my only experience with them was the dark parody Bo Burnham created for his masterpiece “Inside.” I got to thinking about the existence of reaction videos and became curious about how they came to be in the first place. What demand was this supply filling? I settled pretty quickly on it being a response to technology’s advances contributing to our further separation and isolation from one another. Watching a reaction video was trying to get some happy brain juice flowing by watching someone appreciate something that you like, giving you that sweet, sweet validation while keeping you clicking for the next video, but never giving us pause to foster any meaningful connection between you and other humans. Kind of bleak, right? I was a little distressed with this idea and I took to the internets to see what other people had to say about it.

The conversation derailed pretty quickly into people saying why they did or did not enjoy reaction videos, which wasn’t what I was asking about, but one of the participants in the conversation pointed out what is a pretty simple truth.

“What’s in there?”

“Only what you take with you.”

If you approach anything from a place of compassion and love, then you will most likely encounter compassion and love in your findings. If you approach from a place of cynicism and depression, guess what? When you go looking for trouble, you almost always find it. So the second part of this is to do my best to limit unconscious decision making. Catching myself in those moments requires being present, which is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. I’m getting better at it, little by little and taking time to stop myself when I’m annoyed, angry, dismissive, etc., to ask myself if I can make a better choice. Making the better choice is always a no-brainer. Catching yourself in the first place is the hard part.

The quote that starts this post is from a commencement speech written by David Foster Wallace. I’m going to link it here because I think it’s pretty wise, and while it’s probably best not to look to much deeper into the author’s history, for at least this, he was right on the money. It’s 23 minutes and change long, but I assure you it’s worth every second.

I’ve listened to it multiple times, and every time I have the same reaction, that this is the real deal, or as he would say, “the capital-t Truth”…but then have failed to act on it. But lately I’ve been working on staying present, staying mindful. What I’m doing with trying to treat myself as I would my kid is definitely helping me to stay more in the moment, but it’s hard work. It is supremely easy to slip into a place where you are making unconscious decisions and reactions, and a lot of these will be negative, but we don’t have to do that. We can take the time to decide how we want to feel about something. We can take the time to appreciate the myriad of miracles that we are all constantly surrounded by. Or we can roll our eyes and say that everything is bullshit. I’ve done that my whole life. I’m absolutely not done doing it. But I’m trying be more present, to know that I do have a choice. It’s hard work, and I won’t be seeing any long term benefits from it for a while, but I’m pretty jazzed that after as many times as I have listened to this, recommended that others do, etc., that I’m starting to actually internalize a bit of it.

And if I can do this, anyone can.