Porto in July

In Porto. In July. I'm here with my beloved cousin, he's like a little brother to me. I'm 31. Spent the past few days going around with Segways, electrical Renault Twizy cars, taking a funicular train, beach, hills. Amazing food. Amazing wine. Amazing sangria. Sun. Laughing. 

It's a nice chilled atmosphere here. I'm in a hostel. On a sofa. Next to a big brown stuffed gorilla. Frank I call him. He's been a bit quiet, but I can say great company. That's what you want. A silent, solid companion. 

When I'm feeling down and out, it's amazing what avenues your mind wonders down. The dark corners that shelter all my fears and all my limitations. The dark places where less of me lives and less of me multiplies when I'm so disempowered. 

I'm probably PMSing. Whatever you want to call it, I'm emotional, I'm weak, vulnerable and fearful. I think me being I'll does also help. 

I've been thinking about many coincidences including how my desire to get to know a person inside out, left, right and all around has met with D.'s personality to keep things to himself, not to share and not to reveal. I am not sure how much he is doing that as a conscious act or just being himself. 

I organically need to get intimately know every corner of someone's soul. Especially the dark, full of weakness and fear ones. Those are the ones that are the most interesting. Funnily enough, this is really good when you are friends with another person. Because knowing what hurts them and what they fear the most can allow you to help them and empower them. It kinda works the same in a relationship, at least from a logical point of view. 

In reality, me getting to those dark corners of someone I'm a relationship with changes my perspective on them. I deeply care about respect and being able to admire someone that I with is critical. Being able to look at them and see them as superior, better in many ways is what makes me love them.  Seeing all of their weaknesses and all of their less empowered states slowly takes those positive feelings away from me. 

I'm not saying that I'm perfect, or that I want to be or expect someone perfect. We all have our ups and downs and me if all people ... I sometimes have the worst downs of them all. But somehow being with someone who tries to be happy, who tries to help themselves and who tries to focus on positive things is .... Well .... Desirable. I hold myself to the same standards and don't want to burden someone else nor expect them to carry around my own misgivings and my own monsters. 

Now, saying all of that... I sometimes think that D.'s levels of shown emotional empathy are incredibly low. Not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing yet. So far, it has worked quite well, because he stabilises me. I tend to be up and down and him being so level is really good for me. 

So far I haven't needed him to just give me a hug and hold me. Stroke my hair and tell me that everything is going to be ok. And I can only hope that I will not need this ever from him. However, should I ever need to, I don't think he would even know what those things are and how to execute them in a logical, rational, structured set of steps that might seem a little natural. 

This might sound weird, but this is what I believe to be true about him now. Not sure if he is just being reserved and holding back. I don't want him to mother me and take care of me, asking me all the time or catering to my every need all the time, but it would be nice to know that, if required, he is capable of doing that. 

I also don't want to appear weak and negative to him. I don't want to be like that at all, not just to him. 

I also fear that when I will feel vulnerable and will need a little but more of a careful managing that he will just not know what to do, not want to engage with me like that or decide that this is not something that he wants to deal with at all. 

Who would? And would I like being on the other side of it? Maybe occasionally, maybe in moderation. 

And if he cannot and does not want to deal with me when I'm like this, then what's the point then? If someone chooses you only when when your up, happy go lucky and doesn't when you need to be supported, then I don't know how that is a relationship. So, then, what's the point? 

Well, the point is that these are the dark avenues my brain goes through when I'm in a disempowered state. I worry and I overthink and I doubt myself. I think I'm stupid and ugly and not worth anyone's time nor effort. That I'm just not good enough for anything. I also bathe and wallow in this muddy misery of self loathing so much that I just get confused and think I like it. It's a familiar place to be. Oh, it's so familiar. 

And it spirals down and down and down. Into self deprecation, into killing any self esteem. Killing love and killing happiness. Sucking the fresh air out and pumping in pollution. Dry, dusty, chocking air. Until there's no more light, until I can scream and only hear myself. This is the place where hope seems a distant, faraway afterthought. Something that you had in a hazy dream but cannot quite remember what it felt like. 

It's a place of aloneness so deep. It's not a place of solitude where balance and individuality can flourish. No, no, no. The feeling of being alone is so acute that even with thousands of people around, even with 3 best friends holding my hand I cannot escape feeling the only human left on earth. Deserted, left here to rot. 

A black hole for all that is good and right with the world. This is a disempowered place. This place I have visited and lived in many times throughout the years. That's why it feels so familiar. I recognise the old furniture. The destroyed walls. The scratches and the blood. Me ripping my soul apart. The silent screams. This is where the faceless tears fell down, washing away the love for myself. A chopping block and the knives for my kindness. The fire burner for my acceptance. 

It's only an illusion because now I know what's truly on the other side and I can still say that I know this is an illusion. This place is not real. That this less of me state is not real, it's not what makes me ... Me.