Persistent False Memories

I'm not sure if I'm the only one that has this issue, or if it is some form of mental illness. I have memories that are distorted enough so that I realize it, or a thought imposes itself on me so strongly, I think it actually is a memory. It is one of those annoyances that make life interesting.

When I dragged, and it was in the middle of winter so "dragged" is the proper term, Tracy and a three year old Hayden to Boston, where I served my mission, there were some things I wanted to see. Mind you, this was somewhat uncomfortable for me as I didn't really like my mission all that much. As we hit the places I served as a missionary, I had some things come back to me. Some things remained kind of cloudy. As we headed away from New England back home, I remembered one of my transfers that led from Vermont to New York. On the way into Albany, I distinctly remembered a very tall viaduct that eventually led to a bridge across the Hudson. It was there. I was so sure of it. Well, as we approached Albany, I didn't see much sign of it. There was the river, and the Capitol...where is that bridge?

Albany Bridge
"Is this it?" Tracy asked incredulously.
"Yeah, it must be. Goll, how come I remember it so differently?" Instead of this long, very high bridge that I remember went on for miles, we were on a short bridge that only went up maybe 20 feet.
"I don't know. I was in the sticks for so long by the time I transferred to Catskill, maybe I forgot what a high bridge was like. Well, sorry for raising any expectations."
"You must have. We have higher footpaths at home. Wow!" Tracy laughed.

I don't want to say that I was having some sort of crisis, but I really thought I experienced something completely different that what we just saw. I looked up and down the river in vain to see if I could find a higher bridge or something else that would vindicate my belief. Nothing. Okay. So, I'll keep my mouth shut about what I expect to see at the Capitol. That might be completely different too. (And it was. It was like I was 50 feet off on everything I remembered.)

Nameless hill in Utah
I once went on a trip to Utah and I remember driving to a high altitude. I want to say it was in the Fish Lake area. I once camped in my car there and I was so cold. Well, no wonder, it was over 10,000ft. Anyway, somewhere in my mind's eye, I saw a grass covered hill and I climbed the hill with Hayden in tow. He's younger, like 4 or 5 years old. That's all I see. We never get to the top. I don't think we ever actually climbed anything. It has proven to be the most powerful memory, or fabrication, in my head. I can't even think about it for more than a second without wanting to cry my eyes out. I don't know what created it. I don't really know how it got there. I swear it must be some future thing going on in the time continuum as if this is my deathbed thought. I have taken over half an hour just to write this paragraph because I can't stop crying or gasping for air. It is that powerful to me.

I know I love my son. I love climbing hills. I love mountains and Utah. Somewhere those all became joined in an emotional nuclear bomb in my head and I double over as I am overcome by the mere thought of it. And it never happened.

About the only thing I can compare it to, or what I've seen, is on Darren Brown where he manufactured a religious experience for an atheist by manipulation. See here. When she stood up and gasped and cried...that is what this does to me. It's repeatable. It can happen over and over again. I have such a sense of love and loss all at once that it overwhelms me.

I don't know if I'm unique in this, but it does make me wonder how much of my life that I remember never really happened.

Burn It Down

I dropped my son off at the gym and I'm sitting in a McDonalds drinking that foul brown liquid I have become addicted to. I would have gone to the gym too but in ramping up my attendance at the gym yesterday, I pushed my body enough for a couple days recuperation. I still can't keep my arms up for any length of time.

Instead of bettering myself, I'll indulge myself with a snippet of words. I found this and have been enamored of it since. You see, while I post other quotes about love and longing, I have just started coming to a realization of how selfish love can be. It can hurt and sting. This can go for all parties. I know it might be something of which you have long been aware but I'm kind of new to this.

I've created a lot of new "friendships" on the web, and I've had to work out a lot of my feelings and thoughts with almost complete strangers before I unleash my thoughts on those closer, more present to me. I can't say I haven't made mistakes, but workings of the heart and mind are hard to express at times. Anyway, here it is.

How many times have you tried to talk to someone about something that matters to you, tried to get them to see it the way you do? And how many of those times have ended with you feeling bitter, resenting them for making you feel like your pain doesn’t have any substance after all?

Like when you’ve split up with someone, and you try to communicate the way you feel, because you need to say the words, need to feel that somebody understands just how pissed off and frightened you feel. The problem is, they never do. “Plenty more fish in the sea,” they’ll say, or “You’re better off without them,” or “Do you want some of these potato chips?” They never really understand, because they haven’t been there, every day, every hour. They don’t know the way things have been, the way that it’s made you, the way it has structured your world. They’ll never realise that someone who makes you feel bad may be the person you need most in the world. They don’t understand the history, the background, don’t know the pillars of memory that hold you up. Ultimately, they don’t know you well enough, and they never can. Everyone’s alone in their world, because everybody’s life is different. You can send people letters, and show them photos, but they can never come to visit where you live. 

Unless you love them. And then they can burn it down. 

~Michael Marshall Smith

 That last line. That last line puts it in such a blunt way. Love can be so powerful, so constructive. With it though is a power to destroy lives.

I don't have many other thoughts about it right now. I've had this quote for some days now, and I wanted to frame it properly. I don't think I can.

Love isn't simple. Perhaps it is if you married your first and only love, but what if you didn't? There was hurt involved there, for someone. What if there are divorces, children? More hurt and pain. As we age, the ripples spread wider, with greater effect.

Perhaps this is why people run on autopilot as they get older. They don't change their situations, their loves, hopes and dreams. Too much momentum. Too many to be scattered in their wake. Minimize the damage; don't turn left or right.

Does love accumulate, like snow? Or maybe it piles up like tinder so when it does burn down, it burns with a greater light?

Yeah, my random thoughts about this can take me wide afield. This is why I don't sleep very well. So many thoughts demanding to be thought.

"He's probably a good lover."

This is a continuation of the previous post, "What does she see in him?"

A friend’s wife pointed out that I only referred to her as “My friend’s wife” and never as her own person (Yes, I’m aware I’m doing it here).  The comment was shocking; and I’ve thought long and hard about it ever since. 

 I honestly don't think I do this. If anything, I identify with women more than men so if anything I = would look at it as "My friend's husband". I might know husbands more than the wives, but that is because the church pushed me to interact more with them.

I do have something to talk about here and this is probably the most logical place. The church has taught me how inappropriate it would be to be friends with members of the opposite sex, now that I'm married. I shouldn't be alone with them. I shouldn't interact with them without the spouse being present. This teaching, I believe, is toxic. It infantilizes us. I'm a grown man. I'm interacting with a grown woman. We both have control over our desires and our bodies. I'm not sure if the fear is what people will think about a man and a woman interacting or if they are afraid adultery would break out. First, the world doesn't care. I can't control what other people think about me. I don't really care what people think about me. If I'm talking with a woman and someone thinks I'm being inappropriate, well, that tells me something about them more than it does about me. As to the adultery aspect, I'm more of a fatalist when it comes to things like that. If something happens to the romantic life of someone, then it happens. I would hope that people are adults and mature about the situation, and yes, there would be hurt and pain, but to do anything else is to try to exert control over someone else. That doesn't work very well with the human spirit.

High school friends I can separate into individuals of both genders, but after my mission it is almost impossible to think of women as “Their own selves”.  Now maybe the church doesn’t have this impact on every person who serves a mission, but it had this impact on me, and I think it  worth mentioning so that individuals are aware of it and can self-investigate it to.

I remember when I was struggling with parts of my life, and I wanted to talk to a woman I've known since college. I told her that I wanted to talk to HER, and not to her and her husband. I probably violated 12 levels of LDS protections, but I didn't care. I wanted to talk to someone I trusted about some very personal things. I probably put her in a very uncomfortable position. THIS is the problem. She was my friend and yet the church teaches that it would be inappropriate for me to spend an afternoon talking to her. We weren't children. We were both in our mid 40's. I shouldn't need to feel uncomfortable talking to her, but yet I did. I still don't know if the friendship was damaged by the meeting. It was a very sensitive topic and she learned more about me than she probably wanted to know. I think that can be disconcerting, but I shouldn't have had to feel like it was wrong to talk to her as an individual and not as just half of a pair of people.

I have since talked to several women in one on one situations. Like the quote, it is easier for me to do with women that I know from High School, and these women actually insist on being treated as individuals, I don't know how often my conditioning in regards to the opposite sex kicked in but I know it is there. I did experience it during times with my managers at work who were female. I don't know how many friendships with fantastic people I have missed because of this teaching.

I know that one day, when I was serving as EQ president, I was working with a young couple who wanted to get married.  She had a history of eating disorders, and he was an artist; unable to get steady work.  I saw it as my duty to help him shepherd his artistic ability and provide for his family.  Exasperated after one conversation I commented on “What does she see in him” and someone else replied “He’s probably a good lover”.

And it hit me; the church never defines “a good lover” as a positive quality in a man.  Never, not once.  And yet women want that.  In all the lessons I had, we were never told to be romantic or to focus on a hobby.  To be interesting, creative, fun.  Never.  Provide, provide, provide.  And I still define most of my success by that metric.  “Did I provide for my family today?”

But life is about a lot more than that.  Spouses want more than that.  Female co-workers, and friends are more than that.   But that was the measuring stick I learned. 

 I'm not sure if I would have expected the church to teach me how to be a good lover, but it should teach more than it does. Let me elaborate. Growing up I wanted to know how to date. My parents weren't all that informative, so church provided a place for me to at least get to know girls in a particular environment. Church held a lot of dances, but I was too self-conscious to really do that comfortably. For a few of our combined activities, we would spend time with each other learning how to interact. A few times, the boys would cook dinner for the girls and next month it would be reversed. Those were the events I really enjoyed. I really wanted to be a good date when I got around to doing it. I needed time to be with girls my own age in different situations. I was just starting to become social at school. Those combined activities are really my best memories of going to church activities at that time in my life.

As I became more comfortable around girls and went on dates, I resolved that this is where I wanted to excel. I wanted to focus on other people. I imagined so much being able to date and make a girl enjoy her time with me. While I had ambition and a desire to succeed in life, that success was mostly to be defined by having a good relationship. The lessons at church became more and more focused on being a good priesthood holder. That is how I was to be defined and that is what all those beautiful Mormon girls wanted. Well, if that is what was wanted, I guess that is what I'll try to be. Little to no effort was spent on the more intimate times and fostering good manners in relation to your significant other. It all related in being a good person and how it related to the institution of the church.  The church was the third person involved in every relationship. It defined expectations. It defined limits. My sexuality was defined by guilt and shame. At a time when I needed and wanted to have those more intimate times, I was stopped and blocked, because there was never a good time before marriage to be intimate. I'm not just talking about sex. I'm talking about emotional intimacy as well as intellectual intimacy. I was told never to get too close to a girl, that bad things can happen. When I wanted to think about my life, my church obligations and expectations were in the forefront of my mind. When I wanted to share my life, that third person in the room was looking at me disapprovingly.

After I was married, I did have a huge amount of stress in thinking about providing. I can't put that all on the church, because my own family traditions and drive propelled me to succeed. Perhaps succeed isn't the right word. I have never been an alpha male. I didn't want or have plans to be a millionaire. I just wanted to be able to feed myself. I wanted Tracy to do what she wanted and that also required money. I can't say that the lessons from church helped or hindered. Again, success was defined in relation to the church. Have kids to be happy. Do your home teaching to be happy. Spending time with your spouse was usually tossed off as "Have a date night."

I don't have too much of a beef in particular with the church not teaching men to be romantic. I do have a beef in that I wasn't an alpha male. My entire focus was in making the woman who wanted to be with me, happy with me. That didn't mean time spent away from her doing church work. It would help if the church attempted to understand men like me who were emotional, introverted, sexual, thoughtful and not make us feel like we were breaking every commandment and expectation for being so. I wanted to be a good person. I attended 3 hours of church a week. The rest of my time I wanted to devote to those that wanted to be with me.

I had so much guilt over the past decades just wanting to be me.

“What does she see in him?”

Some Thoughts On How the Church Impacts Men

This is my reference on this post. Please read the above article before continuing on. I'll try to use it as a prompt but I'll also throw in a lot of my own experiences.

The first couple of paragraphs deal with ties. I can tell you that I also hate ties. I despise them. After my mission, I vowed to at least not wear a suit again, except for certain occasions, like marriage and job interviews. I've kept to that. I did wear ties to church as it was expected of me, but I didn't like it. I view it as a silly throwback to an earlier time and serving no real purpose. However, I'm also a bit of a conformist, or at least I don't want to draw attention to myself, so I wore them. In the bigger scheme of things, I think that is one of the ways the church impacts men. It makes us do things that we wouldn't do otherwise. Now that isn't always bad. Quite often, our lives are filled with things that we would rather not do. However, in the example of ties, No, We really don't need to do this.

And then there are the ideas like that a woman should only marry a return missionary; and someone faithful (meaning a super-active mormon boy; not regarding infidelity).

When I returned home from my mission, I had some goals in mind. I was going to date. I was going to date often and I was going to be a fun date. I didn't want to start dating right away because a mission does "significant ****ing" with the mind. I wanted to acclimate to being a normal human again. (Of course, this should have been some red flag to me hearing this from returned missionaries, Being a missionary means you aren't normal. I should have processed that differently than I did. I suffered from a deep depression my first half of my mission and used the second half to climb out of it.) I can't say that it was too long before I started dating, but my first dates didn't work out too well. You see, that whole "date an RM" that women receive while growing up affects them quite strongly. (I know, this is supposed to be how it affects men.) These women want to date and find a husband and they are surrounded by competition. That makes some women take more chances than they should, be more aggressive than they should. Don't get me wrong, I had a good deal of confidence that I was a good person and worth the chance a woman would take on going out with me. However, if it didn't work out, that aggression started coming out.

Later on, after contemplation on my life and how the church affected me, I had the natural question if these women had really cared about me or cared more about my status as an RM. I even had to ask that from my wife. In some marriages, the marriage wasn't to each other, but to their status and potential. If one of the spouses decides to leave the church, that expectation is broken and the marriage doesn't survive. I've seen a lot of marriages of my friends and acquaintences fall apart as they question the church and life goals change. There is a human toll here. It might not be strictly taught by the church as doctrine, but the church fosters a particular culture and doesn't explicitly tell the membership "RMs don't make the best husbands. They are humans and aren't any better or worse than any other man."  Of course they wouldn't teach that. The prospect of a beautiful woman waiting for you or motivating you to go on a mission in the first place makes many of the boys go on missions for other than their own desires. If you take that expectation away, the missionary force would drop. It played large in my motivation to go (out of gratitude for the woman I was dating and the expectation that I would be a better person for it and she deserved the best person I could be.) When I wanted to leave my mission after the halfway point because my mission had depressed me to the point where I literally couldn't function, I stayed partially because if I wasn't an RM, the women of my culture wouldn't want to date me. Yeah, this really, really affected me negatively.

BTW, my realization of this is fairly recent. Women have expressed to me some of their thoughts on this and I did ask my wife about it. She told me how pervasive the "marry an RM" in Utah was. I didn't get any of that being male of course, I just experienced the "Go on a mission" mantra. Since I was living in Michigan growing up, most datable partners weren't LDS so I don't know how strongly "RM preference" was taught in Young Women's. I did get an appreciation for the strength of this with some of my dates. The first woman I dated upon my return was overtly sexual and I felt she was always trying to trap me into a much deeper relationship than what I wanted. She physically threatened another woman I dated. When I broke up with her, she was still making her presence known and I soon referred to her as "my stalker". Looking back, I'm sure she was trying to hold on to an RM that was very relationship oriented to the point where she became a bit obsessive. At least, that is how I view that situation now.

And there is also the line “Worthy priesthood holder”, that is used so often by teary-eyed stay-at-home moms.  It is certainly a pride-inducing and man-shaming concept (Because every guy who ever did anything less that perfection feels guilt when women say that), that puts a wedge between mixed-faith couples with absolutely no need.

I'm not a perfectionist by any means. Tracy had known from the get go that I had issues that were deeper down. For example, I didn't talk about my mission. I didn't want to let on, other than it wasn't a great experience for me, just how badly I fared. I put all that guilt on me. I'm shy, or rather, I felt no need to talk to people about religion if they didn't initiate the contact. I suffered through home teaching when I mustered the bravery to do it. I didn't feel any particular inspiration when giving blessings. I had to turn down a few church callings because I knew I couldn't do it. This brought me a huge amount of guilt. I seemed to be in a church that I was constantly in conflict with. That brought more guilt. I really didn't care much about the institution's opinion of me. I did care about my wife's opinion and I know I was being taught to be a good husband; I needed to be a good priesthood holder. It seems I never was. That's not a great thing to carry around with you.

...to be continued.

In Defense of Awe

Over the past couple of months, not unlike many others, I get somewhat depressed. I think it might be SAD and I don’t have any issues if it is put in those terms.  I get tired of the cold weather. I get tired of everything being wet. I am cursed with dry skin so I live in discomfort from that during the winter months. I would say a good deal of cabin fever is also setting in. The fact that I’ve had two weeks of the flu, where moving makes me wheeze and cough hasn’t helped the situation.

I’ve a trip to Oregon coming up and I’ve tried to calm my soul in that I will soon be back in the mountains and volcanoes that I adore. No, I have never been there before, but I have many thousands of pictures  from photographers in the NorthWest so I feel like I’ve been there. I miss the West a great deal.

As I was coming back from dropping Hayden off at school, I was contemplating my poor situation. I’m not trying to overthink my situation. I was severely depressed on my mission for the church and I spent a significant amount of time and energy clawing my way out of it. Since then, I’ve been very aware of triggers and my state of mind in relation to depression so I don’t ever suffer like that again. I was mulling over what might pull me out of this. Perhaps it is warm enough for me to go to the river and just watch the water go by. That usually does wonders for me. Getting back in the gym would also help, but I find it hard to be in the gym once it gets warm.

Then it happened. I looked up and I saw a large airplane turning into its landing path to O’Hare. We are blessed to be on one of the glide paths of O’Hare Airport and the planes sometimes make their lazy turns somewhere close to our home. As I watched the plane turn, I went into several trains of thought. It wasn’t a 737 so perhaps it was an Airbus. Do those have four engines like this one? How fast is it going? What kind of lift is it experiencing? Which of the surfaces are getting the most lift. What ratio of lift vs. directed air are making it turn? My God, how do we get so many tons of aluminum and steel and people in the air like that?

I realized that I was in “awe”. It is something that happens quite often and I know how much I enjoy it. That is why I stare at mountains. That is why I long for life. Indeed, it might be why I even love, the awe of another person and all that they are. So while I was contemplating why I was depressed and what I need to do to get out of it, there it was, literally in the air in front of me.

The world is an amazing place. The people in the world can be amazing too. I don’t know how I can be depressed with such wonderful things around me. Unless, unless you keep me in a box because it is so uncomfortable out of the box at the time otherwise known as winter. I may have found something very fundamental to my thinking and emotional well-being. Gliding in the air. Right in front of me.

How Do Poets Do It?

This is a practical question. How do they do it? How do they write the things of the heart and still maintain relationships?  People think things. They draw on all their experiences, good or bad. What if they write something, about someone they love but it isn’t in glowing terms? What if they write about previous loves? What if they write about previous loves in glowing terms? Do they live in the present? Do they live in the past?

Who is this about?
It isn’t about anyone.
Why don’t you write about me?

Who is this about?
No one. <it is.>
Ok. <knowing it is about someone else.>

Who is this about?
You.
Why do you think that about me? Do we need to talk about this?

Who is this about?
Lisa.
Why do you feel that way about her? She broke your heart.

Who is this about?
Mandy.
You wrote this about your dog?

Who is this about?
Beth.
Your sister died. This sounds more like a love poem.

Who is this about?
You.
I don’t want you to feel that way about me.

When I started reading poetry, I reveled in the poets' honesty, their openness on what they felt. I read Keats and I felt his desire for Fanny Brawne. It reached out and took me. His love poetry was real, but his letters were love on paper, substantial and tactile and frantic desire. I read more into the genre and found other examples and then I read the poetry about heartbreak. Did these men and women ever have second thoughts about what their poems and letters might mean to others? Were they entitled to private thoughts made public without judgment?

I don’t know.  I’ve been thinking about this. Do I put my life on display? Do I tell people all that I feel and face rejection and misunderstanding? Do all romantics have to work out these things? Do they have to compartmentalize or become disingenuous? There are plenty of poets that liberally throw around their hearts after any interest they may have. They are beautiful words, but transparent people. Do you have to be transparent? Do you have to become unfeeling in order to feel?

Perhaps I finally understand Hemingway.
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”