Why I have problems with relationships and women in general

The point of this blog is a bit of catharsis on my part. As I have more or less stated in my little "About me" thing in the right column, I have Attention Deficit Disorder. It is very real and it is very disabling, if not treated properly. I've only treated it on an as-needed basis going through school, and also seeing councilors when I considered taking my life. One thing I have noticed, though, is how extreme my moods and emotional states can be (are those synonymous? If so, I apologize for the redundancy). I can be high as a kite in the morning, and by noon, be depressed enough to plot my suicide. I've had many suicide fantasies and I often wonder if I'm actually partially insane.

One area where I am affected is how I interact with women. I bring this up because it's the area that depresses me the most.

Since middle school, I've longed for some girl or other, and I've always been too afraid to make an effort to talk to the girl in question. The first crush was sometime in middle school. Nothing came of it and I eventually just got over the failure of overcoming my own insecurities.

The next crush I had was in high school, and this girl was much more significant in that she actually noticed me and flirted with me. This girl was actually someone I noticed in church; my mom and I sat near the front and right half of the church because we liked the right entrance. This girl sang in the choir, and when I first noticed her looking my way, smiling, and giggling with the girl to her side, I would look behind me, and point to my chest to see if she was flirting with me. And indeed, she was, and I flirted back. My purpose in going to church was just because mom made me, but now it was to see this girl. Unfortunately, having your mom there with you doesn't really raise your confidence, and when the guy passing out those weekly newsletter things when you leave remembers you from T-ball days and from being a friend of his son, it's damn near impossible to get that nerve. Once I almost sat next to this girl in the pew, but my mom somehow got between us and I never got a chance to say hi. Eventually the girl gave up on me and stopped flirting. That left a cold, empty feeling in me.

The first girl I ever spoke to was Kendall Nathan in high school. I thought she was kind of dorky, but she was definitely cute and I actually somehow got the gumption to show interest in her. That means, I communicated my interest by way of speaking. She never told me flat out that she wasn't interested, but she never went along with my interest, either. I don't mean to make a villain of her, but I don't know how else to phrase this: she basically led me on until I became creepy. Naturally, we never hooked up.

There was an interesting episode in high school when some girl by the name of Sarah S. was sort of stalking me. Me being the weird kid who was afraid of girls, I was extremely flattered by this and felt like I could walk on clouds. It started when there was a discarded world map on our front lawn. It was a thick, cardboard poster that hangs by a string on a hook, like the elaborate picture frames families keep on the wall above the staircase. Anyways, my brother notices it, comes back to me and tells me I need to see it. Upon closer inspection, written in marker is a phrase like "Mike--I give you the WORLD, Love, Sarah S." and a little heart around Chicago with the words "My heart is here for you". Over the next couple weeks or so, I got a baby's crib mattress and then a coffee table, both of which had equally sentimental things written on them. I called multiple Sarahs from my school, trying to figure out who this was. The only one I didn't investigate was this girl Sarah Stolarski, who was a year under me. I was a little too scared to talk to her because I had no network connections to her (none of my friends knew her or her friends). So nothing came of that.

I managed to finish high school with not one date, girlfriend, or attended school dance. I still remember my dad encouraging me to go to the senior prom. I can only wonder how he felt when the dance came and went and I went along my introverted life as usual. Oh, and I'm sure my lack of experience and isolation were key to my multiple suicide attempts in high school.

College wasn't so hot, either. There was another girl I flirted with in between classes, but I turned her off quick when I tried to talk to her a second time. The gist of it was I had some morning class at, I think 9am, and she had a class in the same room at 10am. I eventually said hi, had a nice first chat with her, and went on my way. I don't know how I screwed it up, but I did. I think I somehow revealed that I had the dating/relationship experience of a school boy in an all-boys school. There was some other girl with whom I managed to have a nice conversation, but so much nothing came of it that I considered not even mentioning it. But I mentioned it for the sake of completeness.

After two years, I transferred to the University of Illinois at Chicago and moved into the city, with my landlord being an old friend of my dad's. He insisted an apartment just off campus would be better than sharing a dorm because he said I needed to be alone. Now, I understand many people would've opted for their own room than sharing one with a dorm mate in college, but the experience is a good one all the same, and I was denied it. The big problem with UIC is that the only way to make friends is if you stay in the dorms. The music dept. had its own network, but unless you were a lame clone, you had no hope. I mean, half the guys in the choir discussed girly movies and TV shows (I mean, what guy likes Meg Ryan movies and "Grey's Anatomy"?). Anyways, I remember one girl who was super-cute, and I spooked her because I was so ridiculously awkward when I said "Um...I think you're cute....and, um.....I like you....". Trust me, I managed to make that suave and sophisticated pick-up line sound embarrassingly awkward. Another girl played along and accepted my compliments and conversation for three or four days, only to confess that she already had a boyfriend and was leading me on. She did this because she was indulging in the compliments. She said thanks for them, but it only made me feel like shit, and then I hated her for leading me on and even for thanking me.

By the way, the more I heard girls say, "You'll find a girl some day, and you're going to make her feel special!", the more I resented girls as a whole and thought dark, disturbing fantasies about them. Some of my favorites involved honey and fire ants.

While I was in the union, I had some money, so I thought I'd look into escorts. I was doing this because I was a virgin and this ate at my confidence like you wouldn't believe. This whole lack-of-experience thing was like quicksand: I never had much experience dating girls because I didn't know how to talk to them, and I needed experience to know how to talk to them. And the older I got, the harder it was to acquire experience, and the knowledge of this and the fact that I was a virgin at a comparatively late stage in life depressed me more and more. This is the antithesis of confidence, supposedly the sexiest thing about a man. When I was 24, I briefly had a job in some dentist office building in the Chicago loop, which was some 21 floors high. I took my lunches in the engineer's workshop, which was basically on the roof, but under a glass ceiling/wall cage thing. The access to the roof was easy, and I was the only one there. So, there I was, 24 years old, a virgin with no girlfriend or dating experience, and trapped in a job that kept me away from my passion of music. Had I stayed there a day or so longer, I probably wouldn't be here to write this.

But someone convinced me to post an ad on Craigslist under the relationship section. The gist of it was that I was a virgin at my age, in spite of my being a decent, likable person with legitimate interests and something resembling a career path. I only received four replies, three of which were from girls who were absolutely incredulous that a 24 year old man could still be a virgin. Is it really possible to reach your twenties and somehow not automatically have sexual experience? Yup, and I was living proof.

The fourth reply was from a girl named Lori, and three days after I lost my virginity, I was knocked off of a ladder at my job and shattered my elbow something fierce. I went into shock and my right arm looked really weird: a bone was protruding against my skin in the forearm area and there was a big area of mush where my elbow should have been. But, this is another story. The point is, this girl visited me in the hospital and helped me get by as I recuperated, so this girl also became my first girlfriend. To this day, we're still friends. We didn't last because we knew from day one that we wouldn't marry or anything. Everything that rises must converge, and eventually our age difference and lifestyles just didn't make it feasible anymore.

The most recent girl for whom I've completely fallen is one Autumn Rhodes (I have a thing for unusual names, too). She spent part of her childhood in southern Ireland and she plays something like five different instruments in Irish bands, but mostly she plays the flute. She lived out in a farm area just outside of South Bend and after talking to her via instant messaging programs like AIM, we decided to meet and make a day at a county fair in her area. So I took the South Shore train to South Bend and she picked me up. We made a day of petting animals like lambs, sheep, pigs, and I think there was a llama or two. We also had our signatures analyzed, which was kind of neat. I still have the results somewhere. After the fair, we went to a park area where she played her flute for me and I played my guitar for her. It was a very nice day. Unfortunately, I couldn't stay overnight and the train had a schedule, so we had to end the day earlier than we would have liked.

A couple months later, Celtic Fest comes to Chicago and we rendezvous in Grant Park. I also meet her parents and her roommate in San Francisco (she had been going to school there). That was a nice day, too. She was showing me the world of Irish music and we were seeing performances by famous Irish musicians and bands. It was a great day.

Now, I fell for her online person, and I really enjoyed Autumn in person. I really fell in love with this girl. Part of why I like her so much is because she loves stupid internet phenomena like lolcats, ILoveBacon.com, goofy lists on Cracked.com, plush toys modeled after viruses and diseases, goatse.kcs (or whatever the site is) and images based on it, Talk Like A Pirate Day, the NOM NOM site, and anything silly and sex related. We can both laugh at really tasteless jokes, we both have geeky interests, and we both love good music. I also like how we differ in the musical sense, too: I like a lot of classical, jazz, and more common, popular music such as the many metal, alternative, and rock bands I mentioned in my first blog post here. She's pretty much into traditional Irish music, but I love what I've heard so far. I love exploring the traditional music of a country. Heck, when I took music composition in college, I listened to a lot of traditional Japanese music because I was fascinated with it and I wanted to try and write something in that style, which I did.

I had fallen in love with Autumn, and I made those feelings known to her. Perhaps that was my mistake, because I started to scare her a little bit. Just a little, though. I mentioned that I'd love to marry her someday. Now, she didn't return that sentiment, but she didn't say she was against the idea, either. When I offered to drive way out to see her band play, or to fly out to New York or San Francisco to see her in either city, she never encouraged the idea by providing details and helping to sort out logistics (like, what motels are in the area, what time she would go on here and there, whether or not she could pick me up from an airport, etc.).

Eventually, I sent her a detailed message asking her bluntly if she loved me back, and that it was okay if she didn't. She replied and said she valued our friendship, felt a bit scared about my wanting to marry her, and said that she feels I may only love an idealized version of her and that I didn't know her well enough to say such things. This confused me a little bit, seeing as I knew about her physical conditions, her sexual preferences about men, intimate stories, when she went to Ireland and for how long, how she was received in Indiana when she came back, and so on. She knew similar details about me, including where I grew up, who my family are, my physical conditions, my sexual preferences about women, how I broke my arm in the union, how I joined the union and left, and so on.

To this day, I've only had the one girlfriend. I think I prevent other girls from becoming girlfriends because I get overly excited and I think I fall too much in love too fast. It's hard to moderate, though, because once those hormones come in, it's hard to behave rationally. I just try my best to not be a dangerous creep. I think if I can somehow get a handle on this whole A.D.D. thing, I might be able to manage myself better in the dating department. I don't know, though. I feel like a child who just doesn't have the capacity to grow up or something. It's really hard to like myself when I have such a hard time adapting to the world around me like this, but I'm still here and I'm trying to do something about it. Maybe it's stupid of me to share my personal life here, but I don't care. I've always been one to lay out my cards on the table early on. If I do that and people still stick around me, then I know they like me for who I am. I also believe in being honest with your emotions. If I'm depressed, then I am depressed. Simple as that. I'm not going to bullshit myself and eventually give birth to a second personality (I simply can't afford the psychiatry bills).