Got a Bad Case of the Feelings

I've always despised the stereotype that men aren't supposed to feel emotions. I'm a man and I feel all sorts of emotions! You know, like, anger, frustration, hatred, um, punchiness. Well, maybe I'm bad at expressing myself emotionally with any variety. I'm not sure if that's a man thing or me thing but either way it sucks.

This is the general theme of this post

Lately I've had an attack of the feels. Bit by the emotion bug or something. I've got all these feelings that I wish I could make go away just by shooting things in video games. But no matter how much I binge that doesn't seem to help.

Probably the biggest thing I'm dealing with is a ton of insecurity. I mean, I feel insecure about pretty much everything. My job, my writing, my friendships, my faith. I'm convinced I'm the worst at all of it. I'm afraid I'm extraneous and not doing a good enough job at work. I'm afraid my writing is terrible. I'm afraid I'm a terrible friend who no one likes. I'm afraid I'm a terrible Christian.

The hardest adjustment for me has been doing a job I legitimately care about. Working in customer service or being a cashier I was ultimately going to work just so I could pay rent. It didn't matter if I didn't do a good job just as long as I got that paycheck. It was okay to just be "good enough." But now I care. I want to be better than just "good enough."

I'm afraid I suck at my job. I'm afraid someone else could do it much better. I'm afraid I'm not making a difference. If I'm not making a difference aren't I just a waste?

I'm also afraid of being judged. About everything. My writing sucks. Time and again I hear that reinforced. I mean, I can see it myself. Right now you are reading this and thinking, "this sucks."

I'm afraid you think I'm just being whiny. I'm afraid you think all these insecurities are true and I'm just in denial. I'm afraid you're one of the many people I interact with through work now also thinking I'm not that great in this position. I'm afraid you think I'm weak for feeling this way.

I'm afraid I'm a loser.

I'm afraid.

The fact that you are still reading at this point is both impressive and surprising

I'm also terribly lonely. "But Chris," you say, "aren't you happily married?" Why yes, I am. But anyone who said marriage eliminates loneliness was an awful liar. I honestly don't know what I'm looking for here. I mean, I have friends. Pretty much all of them are several states away, but they do still exist. There's just some level of connection missing from my life. I go to work, I go to church, I go home to my wife, I videochat with my friends. But I never hang out with friends in person. I have no buddies, I guess. No one to just waste time with.

I mean, Kurt Vonnegut always helps me out with explaining things. I'm going to massively cut down this quote from him, but click through for the full thing:

"What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them...It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to...But most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.  When a couple has an argument...What they’re really saying to each other, though, without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!”"

 I'm a very introverted person but I still miss the community of friends I used to have. Right now I have no one to tell dumb jokes to or share my life with besides my wife. And honestly, that's just not enough people. I'm lonely and I don't know what to do about it.

So, there's my whiny feelings for you. I am, of course, afraid that this post will make you hate me or some other annoying negative conclusion, but I think it's good for me to write again. I haven't really been writing about my life and I think that's not good for me. I want to make a few changes in my life. I want to be more transparent, less inhibited, more honest, more real, more me. I want to throw caution to the winds. This should be easy for me, but I’m so scared of consequences.

I would be surprised if I lost my job over anything I would write, but I could certainly lose the respect of several people. I'm afraid that by being a more transparent person people would think less of me. If I drop this image of a really quite put together person and admit that I am so very weak I think most people would look down on that. Humility is good, of course, but not if it means admitting imperfection or fear or, heaven forbid, doubt and hopelessness.

If you look back at my older, much older, blog posts you will see that I was incredibly whiny and annoying. But I was also almost indecently honest. Between my pride, my desire that people will think well of me, and my fear, my worry that people will think poorly of me, I feel paralyzed into only blogging about the good things in my life. I feel like only sharing triumphs and never mentioning defeats. I only feel safe mentioning praise reports, never prayer requests (to put it in Christianese.)

When I was a teenager with nothing to lose honesty was so easy.

But now that I do have so much to lose I find that for fear of losing it I never want to show any honesty at all.

I saw that comic and, man, I can't tell you how often I've thought of that. It's very Fight Club, I guess. "Its only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything."

The fact that I now have something to lose means that I've lost the freedom that comes from having nothing to lose.