I just got finished watching a couple of YouTube videos posted by Dr. Todd Grande.  These two videos featured analyses of content creator's videos where they claimed a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder.  I won't get too much into what he said, but I'll just say that this subject interests a lot of people.  

I have never received a diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder by a doctor or other type of clinician.  My official diagnosis is Schizoaffective Disorder.  BUT, the main conceit of my memoir stories centers around a narrative that presents the dilemmas I face in trying to figure these life experiences out, and under which of these two diagnoses my life experiences belong.  I'm trying to present art, not science, which can hopefully speak to a lot of people and their own lives in a way a clinical case study of my experiences never could.

Maybe these dilemmas interest others more than even I, in my most grandiose imaginings, can really appreciate.  Maybe my interactions with those around me on a day to day basis reflect this interest in my story that I can't fathom.  Or maybe I'd do just as well to go piss up a rope as write and draw these comics, write and perform those songs, and write these blog posts.  Again with the dilemma.

I'm prepared to forgive the Invisible Woman for her enthusiasm for wanting to play a part in this somehow, and I can especially forgive that young woman whom I can go on and on about on this blog.  Yeah,  I've been living in a cartoon of sorts long before either of them came along, and I don't mind if they want to watch, I guess.   

The biggest innovation to my game with Sara in 1988 became my ability to readily accept an outcome where me and my love interest of the moment did not become boyfriend and girlfriend.  Up until Sara, I imagine that I told myself that I could readily accept an outcome where me and my love interest didn't make it, but it seemed to always turn out that such a decision was always made for me, for some reason.  My newly found skillset in relation to Sara allowed me to better look out for both hers and my own best interests when I just couldn't take it anymore and I bailed.  That is why my whole time with Sara remains a well that I still draw water from to this day, as opposed to the time of my first girlfriend, which seems to remain a product of its time.  I'm not quite ready to bail on this young woman I can go on about at length on this blog, but, metaphorically speaking, I'm standing at the side door of the airplane, wind in my face, at the proper altitude, weather's good, parachute strapped on, safety chute as well, helmet, goggles, all good, just waiting for the thumbs up from my buddha to leap into the great unknown, which is not quite the great unknown of my youth anymore.

I bought a mostly good best of Carpenters CD a couple of weeks ago.  I get that their original songs such as, "Superstar," "Close to You" and, "Top of the World," make for some well sung, well written, over all well crafted AM pop, but they couldn't do covers for shit.  Of the three that come to mind on this collection, "Jambalaya," "Please Mr. Postman," and "Reason to Believe," only "...Postman," doesn't totally suck.  It doesn't really add much to the Marvelettes original, but it doesn't totally suck like "Jambalaya" and "Reason to Believe."

I had to stop listening to their version of "Reason to Believe" just now and get with the Rod Stewart original on Youtube (no Spotify).  Because of where I find myself emotionally at this very specific moment right here, right now, I really wanted to listen to a good version of this song, and the Carpenters just didn't deliver.  A good cover should be able to plug you in as well as the original, even if it doesn't resonate in exactly the same way.  Nope.

https://youtu.be/mvdKUxW44Wk  The link is to a YouTube post about a woman whose husband stalked and manipulated her into marrying him.  I don't like controlling behavior in women.  If that young woman wants to go out with me, she will have to ask me out.  We can have one date.  It can be a coffee date.  She can bring a friend or friends.  She can set up the date at her place of employment to where she doesn't have to give me contact information.  I don't know if this story in this video is true, but I find it disturbing.  If this young woman does not want to go out with me, I'm okay with that, and I will not ask her out at her place of employment.  I will do nothing to embarrass this person in public.  If this young woman puts a vibe out she does not want to interact with me at all, I will patronize another business that offers the same services.  Let me make myself clear.  I identify with the woman in that Reddit post that the guy reads in the YouTube video.

As soon as I feel ready enough to do so, I will start patronizing that business that young woman works at once more.  I don't even know if she works there anymore.  I hope this post finds her and hers well, regardless.  I said on June 15th that I stood willing to walk away from this whole deal.  I told several people in my world that I stood willing to give us both the whole rest of the Summer off from this deal and go into a kind of self-imposed exile.  I made good on my word.  Right?  At some time, sooner rather than later, I 1) hope to see this person again, and 2) plan on pretty much leaving her alone.  Maybe my return to my normal routines will serve to further wind down a situation that she seemed to want to take a break from.  She seemed cheerful the last time I saw her.  At least she didn't seem to have any issues with me.  I came through on my pledge to just take a break, and I have a lot of confidence that I can just leave her alone if I perceive that she wants that.  I stood willing to let go of our deal from day one.  Yeah, it was a pretty shitty deal on day one, but I stood willing to let her go from that day to this, and I've done nothing if not totally prove that multiple times.

In my last post I talked about an occupational hazard a lot of attractive, young female employees face in retail and service industry jobs.  Namely, the unsolicited invitations for a date or other social activity by a male customer while they work at their job.  I talked about how this kind of thing must get old pretty fast.  I also talked about the two occasions where a female employee first broached the subject of seeing me outside of their work first, and how this works so much better, so much so that such a dynamic may constitute the way these employees approach the subject of going out with customers.  That would mean that such a dynamic upends the traditional one where the man initially brings up such a subject in any given setting.

Okay, I'm down with that.  Whatever works.  Right?  But I'll lay this one on you.  One very attractive female employee of a retail business I frequently patronize started giving these sultry, flirtatious looks whenever I found myself around her at her place of employment.  I knew her first name from her name tag, so I decided to try and find her on social media.  I found her alright, along with references to her two kids and her fiancé.  That put an end to any effort I might have made to reach out to her socially.  

The thing of it is, before too long, this young, very attractive woman started acting vey rudely towards me at this same job she worked; as if I'd done something wrong.  I've had two pretty clear cut examples of the same kind of behavior in other settings, one in college, one at an art gallery, that I came to the same conclusion about this series of exchanges with this female employee.  I came to the conclusion that the young, very attractive female employee sought to entrap me in a cruel rejection game she tried to get going.  Basically, she'd flirt with me hard, then when I asked her out or anything like that, the ax would fall.

I can think of a few reasons why someone such as her would behave this way, none of them make me feel particularly sympathetic to her point of view.  One reason might consist of a desire on her part to simply win at this kind of game, and since she lost she wanted to take it out on me.  One reason might consist of a desire to prove I'm some kind of obsessive weirdo who doesn't know enough to leave this kind of rattlesnake alone.  That would make me some kind of a bad guy in her little drama world.  And, on the bad guy angle, one reason might consist of trying to punish me for some offense I committed against womankind that she'd heard about somewhere.  These reasons seem to sum up where such horrible, abusive behavior might come from, in my experience.

I think these women who behave this way, and I have several examples in my past where I took the bait and women such as her won at their games, see this behavior as empowering to themselves as women.  I, of course, don't see it that way at all.  I see it as simple, cut and dried entrapment.  This kind of behavior explains the whole reason I initiated the, "What if I turned my back on love?" experiment back in 1988, and I why I so eagerly decided to revive the experiment in 2012.  See the post from January/ February 2016 titled, "I'm not bad," to read an outline of this experiment.

If any young, attractive female employees at businesses seek to capture my fancy through such flirtations while I patronize their business, and they engage in these flirtations out of a sincere desire to get to know me better, but they don't want to go so far as to broach the subject of an outside-of-work social encounter with me, well, good luck with that.  If any young, attractive female employees of businesses I patronize want to explore the possibility that I could be the love of their life through such flirtations, but they don't want to go so far as to broach the subject of a date, well, then I sincerely apologize.  That might just make us two entirely different people with radically different experiences in life and not much in common, and that might just mean that our love is not to be.

On one of my social media accounts, I follow an attractive young woman who frequently posts videos whereon she vents her frustrations at the demanding customers she encounters at her retail job.  As I watched one last night, I thought, "God, what a bitch!  If she has this kind of an attitude towards the customers at her job, she should just find another line of work."  In one of my posts last week, I talked about how harsh and unforgiving attractive young women can seem of a potential suitor's shortcomings.  "If this is how this bitch is about where the potato chip aisle is when a customer doesn't ask in a courteous enough manner, how would she be if my fifty-seven year old ass asked her on a date?" 

Then I thought, "Okay, Rich, have some empathy.  You've worked in retail.  What is all of this bitchiness really about?"  Well, if my experiences in retail, food service, and other customer/ client service jobs tells me anything, her attitude is about sensory overload.  My social media followee expresses that she's just over certain aspects of her job, which in a retail job, usually means she's over certain categories of customer demandingness.  If it's not the customers, it's her supervisors, her fellow employees, the company she works for, the building she works in, the drive to work.  You get the idea.  The customers always come first in the just about any service industry employee's complaints about their job.

Keeping this in mind, I guess, moving forward, I will NEVER take it upon myself, EVER AGAIN, to approach a young, attractive female employee of a business I patronize for social reasons, unless they CLEARLY, UNAMBIGUOUSLY, broach the subject of such activity themselves.  Even if I get on a pretty familiar basis with such an employee, but they never broach the subject of an outside social encounter themselves, nope.  

The only two times in this century I recall female employees bringing up social activities with me outside of their job, I was totally down.  Every time I brought such activities up first with female employees, not so much. I guess the two women who brought this subject up first saw me as a treat for themselves as they went about their often hard workday, and so they treated themselves to an invitation for some kind of a date.

I guess I can assume it's that cut and dried; if an attractive young woman gets on a familiar basis with me, and/ or kind of flirts with me a little or maybe even a lot, but doesn't broach the subject of social activities outside of work, then she's not interested, period.  That's based on my experiences on both sides of the counter, and my sometimes limited ability to empathize with the kinds of women I'm attracted to.  And, I might add, my limited empathy skills will probably serve me much better in actually refraining from such activity than any prospect of getting indignant or really hurt at some young woman shooting my prospective invitation down.

Regular readers of this blog know that I give myself token rewards for accomplishing certain tasks on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.  One thing I give myself is a CD for doing things such as getting along with members of my family over a certain period of time, and another thing I will reward myself for consists of not mentioning a certain person on every day of a given month except for the 1st and the 15th.  Well, I'm in a bind about that one.  Recently I added another reward incentive for not mentioning this person ON the 1st and 15th as well.  So, come this September 1st, I have my eye on getting THREE CD's instead of just two.  One CD will recognize my efforts to get along with members of my family since the 15th of August, one CD will recognize my efforts to refrain from mentioning a certain person since the 15th, AND, I want an additional CD for not mentioning this person on the 1st of September.   The three CD's I want are Days of Future Passed by the Moody Blues, and "Best of.." collections that feature ABBA and Barry White.  

But here's the problem: I want to mention this person I've prohibited myself from mentioning this past month.  I want to talk about this person really bad.  BUT I WON'T DO THAT, because I want that Barry White CD really bad too.  Now, earlier today, I thought along the lines of, "Oh fuck it, Barry's cool enough that I might conceivably buy his collection even if I'd never even set up a token reward system, so I'll mention that person on the 1st AND buy the Barry White CD."  But then I thought "NO! I know I allow myself leeway to bend the rules, but that's bending them too much.  The rules are still the rules, and I want to respect that."

So here goes, the following statement IS NOT ABOUT THIS PERSON AT ALL.  I SWEAR.  IF THIS PERSON IS READING THIS, THEY CAN JUST LOOK AWAY OR GO SOMEPLACE ELSE ON THE WEB, BECAUSE THE FOLLOWING STATEMENT DOES NOT CONCERN THEM AT ALL AND IS NOT ABOUT THEM IN ANY, WAY, SHAPE OR FORM. ......Here goes.....Okay.  I think the Invisible Woman and others want me to feel loved.  Now, the Invisible Woman is spoken for, as far as I know, and for all I know, so are ALL of these OTHERS.  But nonetheless, I think the Invisible Woman and these others want me to feel appreciated, loved, and understood, no matter their current relationship status.  That is all.

Feeling Good by Dr David Burns, has some stories involving women and their wayward spouses and elusive boyfriends.  These tales involve women patients of his who want these partners back in their lives, and Dr. Burns counsels them on how to go about it.  In the case of the woman with the elusive boyfriend, a man who was tomcattin' around at the time the woman saw Burns, he counseled her to not criticize her boyfriend or anything, but to communicate to him in a genuine empathetic manner that she tried to understand that his tomcattin' ways constituted his attempts to figure some things out in life, and that she still cared for him, but she had to attend to her own life in the meantime.

I think the story went something like that, it's been many years since I read it, but at any rate, the boyfriend wanted back into her life, eventually, but by that time she'd decided he wasn't for her, and she wound up marrying someone else.  I believe that Burns emphasized that none of her communications that attempted to express empathy towards her boyfriend constituted any manipulative attempts at "reverse psychology" but an attempt to really see things from her boyfriend's point of view.  And in making this attempt to see things from his point of view, she found the personal strength to move on with her own life.

My last post talked about how bad I often feel when some love interest or other attempts, from my point of view, to somehow let me know that my best is not good enough.  Okay, what understandable truths might reside behind such a seemingly cold-hearted point of view?  I suppose such a person has a genuine concern about how others in her world might see her if they saw her "giving in" to me in a way that would diminish them in the eyes of their peers.  Social phenomena such as appearances and the presentation of one's "face" to their community might concern such women more than I personally could appreciate.  After all, for me to date a young, very, very attractive woman might count as a real feather in my cap for me to MY peers, but for her to date me and show me off to HER peers, maybe not so much.

Okay, that point of view is not one I typically have towards anyone I ever have up for consideration, but the whole idea behind empathy resides in the notion that the other person is NOT me, but that I, with enough thought and care, can see where they might come from if they front me an attitude that my best is not good enough for them.  In that case, I would advise such a young woman, should I ever run across one I care for enough to try and court in the foreseeable future, and this young woman DOES perceptively front me an attitude that my best is not good enough for them; I would advise them to move on to a suitor who meets this need for them to maintain a presentable "face" to their community, and to not give me another thought.

I've told so many stories about the bad deals with women I've found myself in I won't even bother to tell some of these stories again. I just want to say this: If the apotheosis of romantic love for me comes in the form of a twenty-something year old girl letting me know in some way that my best is not good enough, then I'm out.  I don't want love, I want something else.  So many bad deals I've found myself in involved just this sort of thing.  The funny thing about it is, even when my game with these types of women markedly improved, as it did with Sara in 1988, these types still seemed to try to make me feel as if my best was not good enough for them.

I came from a family where all members, parents, children, all of us, were very critical and judgmental of each other.  As the youngest, I proved no exception, and I could say very mean things to my siblings and my parents about their appearance, or their intelligence, or their efforts at being creative, or what have you.  Couple this with the fact that we did not typically engage in displays of affection such as hugging each other, or saying, "I love you," or even simple praise for any achievement,  etc., well, others knowing that this represented our family functioning might find the whole deal pretty sucky.  


As a result, I now believe, my often quixotic pursuit of very attractive twenty-something year old women smacks of an aspirational pursuit for acceptance and approval by those around me and the society at large.  The obsessive mindset I often find myself in regarding such women, without consciously putting it into words, of course, revealed a belief that my ability to "win" the affections and love of such a very attractive young woman would make me criticism-proof and lead to bigger and better things for me in life.  I feel pretty sure about that on this day of Our Lord, Friday, August 27, 2021.

If I ever again find myself in a circumstance where I attempted to carry a torch on the supposed behalf of some very attractive, twenty-something year old girl, I think that would say a lot more about me and my shortcomings than any shortcomings of character I might perceive such a young woman to have.  I think my pursuit of often very, very attractive young women really set me up for harsh judgement by them, because, if there's one thing I've learned about very, very attractive young women, it's that they can be very judgmental and unforgiving of a suitor's perceived shortcomings.

So the vicious cycle of harsh judgement and criticism I first experienced in some way or other from every single member of my family  in my youth and well into my adulthood just continues on with the harsh, unforgiving judgment and criticism of me at the hands of very, very attractive young women.  I think any further attempts to carry a torch on such an individual's behalf, supposedly, now or in the future, would just set me up for another fall.