Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Life's Funny Like That: Needing Time For Myself


I've had several drafts of a post like this around at one time or another, and now I'm finally getting around to doing something with one.

The thing that has in the past, and probably will in the future, inspired me to write such drafts is that I often feel as though I can barely take more than three steps at a time without tripping over somebody when I'm around people. This is hardly to say that I don't like and/or think I don't need people around. That's hardly the case. I like people more than it may seem, and I know very well that I need them.

It's just that my life, of late, has had me interacting with people in some way, shape, or form virtually every moment I'm awake, which is quite a long time some days. In recent weeks, I've felt very overwhelmed by it all, and it's affected me in ways I don't like.

A lot of that comes from the fact that it seems like I'm most surrounded when the sun's out. I know it's mostly because that's when everybody's out and about. Humans are what's called diurnal, after all. It's just that those same hours are when I feel as though I'm being helped to the point of being effectively useless in my own life, too incompetent to do anything by myself. It gets very frustrating very quickly to say the least, and I do not hide frustration very well at all, I'm afraid.

But then I'll have days like yesterday when I really am left to my own devices, for the most part, for most of the day. Somehow, in the span of a little more than twelve hours, I'd managed to do most of the things I'd been wanting to get done for a long time. There was really only one thing left that I want to get done, and I wasn't sure how quickly I want to get that done, because even then, I was kind of at a loss for what else to do after that.

The real pisser to all of this is that it causes something of a conundrum here, too. See, as much as people may tell me I need a girlfriend, and as right as they may be about it, it's something I'm very hesitant to do that. The reasons are twofold.

One is that most of the time I feel like I'd be giving up that one last part of my life where I still have some margin of freedom and independence. It's the idea that I'll spend all day with family and/or at work, only to come home and have a girlfriend or significant other to spend time doing things with, leaving me with less time than I have now to do the other things that are important to me as an individual.

The other is that I worry that if I bring someone else into my life like that, she'll wind up feeling set upon the same way I do, with little or no time for us even as a couple, let alone as individuals. It doesn't seem right to me to have a person in your life to whom you say “I love you. That's why I'm asking you to submit to being beset by people who seem to think we're toys.”

Now, after having put all that down in writing, it really does occur to me that yes, I'm a lonely, broken man. Do I need a change? Well, no not necessarily. After all, it all comes down to what I make of who and what I am and am not. I'd like to think I'm making good things of that. I'd also like to think that there are people out there who agree with me.

Will this negate the need for other posts like this? Well no, because I don't see my life changing that significantly any time soon. I'm confident enough in myself to think that there's a good chance that I'll pull it off eventually. I'm just not sure when that might be.

Why? Well, as the series title suggests, Life's Funny Like That sometimes.

As I'm sure I'll say a few more times before the year's out, happy holidays and Merry Christmas, everyone.

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