Two months later…
It’s been a little over two months since I wrote my last real blog entry, “It just doesn’t feel quite right…”
Where did I disappear to in those two months? Let’s just say I took an emotional hiatus. Yep, I put up a big ol’ wall, just like I had as far back as when I was 13 years old. As you read in my blog, I resolved not to think about those things any more. In fact, I resolved to just not think about anything emotional for a while. After all, I knew my company could function better when I worked like a machine (and worked my butt off) than when I was an emotional mess. So I said “Fuck this” and put up a wall.
Simpli did really well in those two months. We met our revenue goals for 2005. We completed a datacenter move. The datacenter move was complete hell, but Russ and I pulled through with little to no sleep for 5 days and pulled it off. It was good that we got it finished.
I went to NYC in November, to LA (for IBI Dec. 5th-12th), and to Miami for New Years. I met S in NYC, who is definitely the person most like me in this world. I don’t think I’ll ever meet someone more like me. It’s crazy to know how someone will react even before they say anything, but S and I are like that. This makes us great friends, but also likely to drive each other crazy on a regular basis. 🙂 We talk every day. I told him I didn’t want a relationship because we’d end up killing each other. I think we both know this and this is part of what helps us be such close friends…that we know we have that boundary there where we can walk away at any time and take some time for ourselves without suffocating each other. It is pretty cool to know someone who is the opposite-sex version of you. I guess I always wondered what I would turn out like as a guy. Well, now I know I’d probably turn out like S. Which is not at all bad. In fact, he’s a pretty cool guy! But I suppose I have a biased opinion, being that we are nearly identical in our thought patterns.
S and I spent New Years together in Miami, too. No, I don’t have any pictures, mostly because I had this gross eye infection that made me look kinda crazy. (Google image search for “sty” if you want to see what I had. Yuck!)
I did post pictures of NYC on Flickr, but none of me and S. Sorry. Neither of us are photogenic.
Back to the wall. I had a lot of fun in the past couple months, but unfortunately it didn’t solve the nagging feeling I had. I successfully kept the wall up until last weekend, when I saw R for the first time in 2 months. Within an hour of seeing him again I felt the wall come crashing down and I was crying.
You see, for the past couple months I have ignored the gnawing feeling. I distanced myself emotionally from everyone. I did this all because, deep down inside, I have a huge fear. That is the fear that something about me makes me inherently unlovable.
I don’t mean unlovable as a friend. I have lots of friends who love me, and I know my family loves me. But I feel that there’s something that makes me unable to have a long-term relationship with anyone. I have some idea of what it is — that I’m a real perfectionist and I don’t think anyone, including me, lives up to my standards. But I can’t seem to let this go long enough to enjoy a relationship. It’s like a compulsion — whenever someone lets me down, I don’t deal well with it. I get angry. I yell, I scream, and I distance myself from that person. A lot of times, the distance is permanent. Other times, like with R, my feelings are too strong to make it a permanent distance, and I reach out again, only to inevitably be disappointed and hurt again.
R is particularly frustrating because there are so few personality clashes there, and a lot of things I really like about him. (Okay, love. I’ll say love.) He and I get along really well. I know I’ve said that before, but there’s something in my heart that doesn’t want to let him go, because he actually makes me really happy when we’re together. It’s when we’re not together that the nightmares kick in and I constantly worry that I’m not good enough for him or that he’ll find someone else who fulfills all of his needs. And the fact is that he probably will. He probably will, and then I’ll be left to look through the window just like I do now with FG, and see how happy he is and wonder what it is about my personality that forbids me from finding this happiness with another person.
I admit it. You have it in writing now…I have such a perfectionist trait that I break out in physical symptoms, like itching, when people don’t meet my expectations, which are set so ridiculously high that no one can meet them 100% of the time…not even me. And yet I don’t know how to stop it. I see the devastation it wreaks when I demand so much of people. I’ve watched people break down in front of me because they can’t meet my expectations. And yet I can’t seem to control this, this thing that runs my life, that makes me so hugely successful but at the same time is slowly killing me. The drive and the passion that I have for succeeding come from this, or (in my perspective) are enhanced by it. But it’s also crippled me; it makes me constantly worry that Simpli will fail, or that I will run out of money, or that I’m in debt. And it runs my interactions with other people, to the point where people don’t want to be around me because I can’t stop being driven. I can’t relax.
It’s out of control and I need help. I don’t know what kind of help I need. I’m not really into the whole medication thing. But I know that I need to learn how to relax, and I know that I really love people who can help me relax, like FG and R. But I also know I drive those people away with my perfectionism. I need to figure this out, but I don’t know how. I don’t know what to do. This drive may make me really rich (it looks like I’ll be an official millionaire before the end of the year), but it doesn’t make me happy… and happy is what I need more than anything else right now.
