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.

When I think of women such as Veronica, Wanda, Ann Marie, Jenna, Sara, Linda, Julie Drake, that virgin girl who used to work at that one business I patronize, the girls at that business I patronize who came after, and several others, the word "fun" doesn't really come to mind.  Neither do the words "joy" and "happiness" come to mind, for that matter.  The word "ordeal" more readily comes to mind, even in regards to those later women.  Even though I made progressively and comprehensively more and more intelligent decisions about such women the older I got, I wouldn't call any of those times fun.

On the other hand, define "fun."  I think the skillset I've developed over the years in coping with these charged love interest types has progressively provided me with greater degrees of satisfaction concurrent with the development of this skillset.  Don't get me wrong, the necessity of developing good coping skills in regards to such women proved essential in helping me get anywhere in my life, and I'm glad I made those changes.  But, learning how to make intelligent decisions about such women never seemed to involve "fun," or "joy," or "happiness" in any recognizably conventional sense.

An aspect of my mental illness that it benefits me to pay attention to comes in the form of dissociative thinking.  I think of dissociative thinking as applying the interactions with and observations of other people as I go about my day to day life to a very specific context that has something to do with my deepest, most private self.  I can walk down the street on my daily walks, and if a man smiles at me and says hi, I often think he KNOWS things about me I may only confide in with close friends.  I categorize such grandiose thinking as visceral, gut-based thinking that has little to do with reason or logic.  I have such feelings and thoughts every day of my life, as far as I can tell.  A good deal of my thought process consists of parsing out which of those interactions of that nature have any basis in reality to what I think about and which of those interactions have no basis in reality.

The most constructive approach I've come up with in the area of interpersonal relations in these past couple of months still consists of the token reward system I've come up with.  Briefly, I give myself a sticker at midnight every day if I feel I've tried to get along well with and be nice to those it would profit me to get along well with and be nice towards.  On the first and fifteenth of every month, if I conclude that my efforts merit it, I reward myself with an inexpensive, easy to acquire CD, normally of music that I wouldn't normally buy.  Right now I'm listening to a Barry Manilow CD that I ordered earlier this month.  Good songwriter.

Am I a super-genius who finds himself beset by a perpetual confederacy of dunces, or am I just a mentally ill person who gets easily confused in his thinking along the lines of how I've outlined my day to day thought processes in the previous paragraph?  Regardless, I feel these thoughts and feelings as a kind of social heat I draw.  The token rewards might not answer those questions once and for all, but I can commit to a course of action and behavior that those around me and I myself find acceptable.   My own restrictions on what I can write about on this day of the month prohibit me from getting too specific, but I hope to try this token reward system on several people in my world sometime in the foreseeable future. 

  

I have a feeling that I might have "Yojimbo'd" a good deal of the audience that reads these blog posts, if anyone reads them at all.  To see what I mean by "Yojimbo'd," well, watch Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo, and then watch the sequel, Sanjuro.  Yes, watch both of them, all the way through to the bitter end.  Those in my audience who really needed, nay, deserved a good "Yojimbo-ing" will only upon watching BOTH MOVIES, ALL THE WAY THROUGH, will only then truly appreciate what a good, righteous "Yojimbo-ing" they just experienced.

I implore the members of my audience who experienced this good, righteous "Yojimbo-ing" to savor this moment while it lasts.  I'm getting old.  I'm tired.  How do I know?  I didn't even feel like watching Yojimbo and Sanjuro on the home theater screen tonight.  I watched Nebraska starring, among others, Bruce Dern and Will Forte.  I've seen all or parts of the two Kurosawa movies many, many times.  I know what happens.  I've never seen Nebraska, so I watched that movie instead.  Maybe the day will come when I more identify with Bruce Dern in Nebraska over Toshiro Mifune in the two Kurosawa movies.  Maybe that day is today.

I figure that if anyone regularly reads these posts, and they make up some of the people I encounter in my day to day life, I figure that this audience doesn't order my books online, because that just doesn't seem to be the case. Nonetheless, the following blog entry contains spoilers, so anyone who wants to not read key character and plot points of my books might want to not  read this blog entry.

First off, let me apologize to "Jenna" for what I will write next, but I want to get this off of my chest.  During the Summer of 1992, some weeks after I made things right with Jenna on June 22nd of that year, at a movie theater where she worked on a Monday night, I came to consider the possibility that Jenna's dad had sexually abused her as a child, a very young child.  Jenna would employ a non sequitur mannerism at times; she would sit in a chair and look as if she were thinking about something and laugh to herself and shake her head.  I remember in January of 1992 how Jenna had said, "My dad didn't even send me a Christmas card.  That bastard!" with a sideways grin of indignation and look of reflection in her eye as if to add to her tally.

Several times, when Jenna and I sat next to each other, starting in the truck on our drive to Kansas City with my roommate Davey at the wheel, Jenna acted as if she wanted for me to make a move on her, such as hold her hand.  I never felt comfortable doing anything like that at these times, for whatever reason.  Every time after these "missed opportunities," Jenna would hook up with some other guy in a matter of days, and often act snotty towards me as well.

The first time I talked to Jenna, days before our Kansas City trip, she criticized Davey and I for not intervening when an older woman touched her inappropriately while conversing with Jenna at a party we'd all attended earlier that night.  Some days later, after the Kansas City trip, and after she turned down at date request from me, John-John at G/M Steakhouse said she had some guy who wanted to take her to a nude Lake Travis swimming hole, and how she really didn't want to go, but how she wanted a guy to be at her place to answer the phone in case he called again.

For my part, during that whole time I pursued Jenna romantically, I played to the notion that she reminded me of Sara, someone I had cut loose in 1988.  By that time I'd figured that Sara may have been a virgin during the time our cat and mouse game played out to the point of me cutting Sara loose.  In the Spring of 1990, I'd come to embrace the conviction that I'd made a big mistake in cutting Sara loose.  By the time Jenna came around, I'd become determined to see matters pertaining to these charged love interest types to the very bitter end.

I tried to let Jenna know by the whole of my interactions with her that I didn't just want her for sex.  Those times when it seemed that she wanted to try to initiate intimacy through these "jump through my hoops" moments just fell flat with me.  People at parties would seem to put out some vibe that I came off as foolish, or as a dumbass who didn't know enough to just go for it when she gave me the chance.

I even forsook potential opportunities with two other young women during the first few months of 1992, supposedly on behalf of my deal with Jenna.  After a particularly noisome rebuff of Alice's sexual overture to me at her party in April, I inadvertently began to really ramp up the pressure on Jenna. Jenna loudly and forthrightly said that she did not want to "do something" with me during Memorial Day weekend, and I demanded that she would have to call me if she ever wanted to go out with me again.  She did not take that seriously.

I saw Jenna at Emo's the following week on the Friday after Memorial Day.  She walked up to me and tried to introduce me to a girl friend of hers.  I angrily asked for a light for my cigarette, then said, "Forget it! Forget I said anything," and walked off.  I saw her the very next Friday at Emo's, she vibed pissed and standoffish.

I decided that I wanted to just leave Jenna alone after that, so I didn't go to Emo's that third or fourth Friday in a row.  On that fourth Friday, I attended a party at a girl named Michelle's house with my friends.  At the party,  Gil Wilson showed himself.  "Let me ask you this then, are you still having encounters with your mind?" Gil asked after we sat together to catch up.  We talked about "Tim." a mutual friend we'd both grown up with, and how he'd ratted out some accomplices in the aftermath of a big pot buy gone bad.

In the day or two after my conversation with Gil, even though he never mentioned Jenna, and I never mentioned Jenna, I just knew he wanted me to make things right with her, so I did.  I saw her at the Dobie Theater when I caught a movie there, talked to her a little, and parted with her by saying, "You can call me if you want to," then left.

In the days that followed, I'd come to the conclusion that Billy Biliams, a known serial date rapist, had, through his word or merely his presence around her, offered himself as protection for Jenna from me.   I freaked out in the following weeks over this and eventually went to the  psychiatric hospital for the first time, where I received treatment with antipsychotic and antidepressant medications and a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

In the Fall of 1992, after my release from the hospital, the pendulum swung from extreme psychosis over to extreme depression, and I had to go to another hospital for that by December of 1992.  I got stabilized enough for them to release me after three weeks, and I just rested and chilled out in Big Spring with my dad from early January until I returned to Austin in May of 1993.

I saw Jenna at a party in mid-June that Summer.  She greeted me with her snotty, "Oh, it's Riiich. Hey Rich," after I greeted her.  I caught some bits of conversation she made with some guy where she said, "If you or anyone else give me any trouble, I'll beat them up."  The guy came off as polite, and Jenna just said this as if to say, "That's just how I roll, nothing personal towards you." I just caught a bitchy vibe off of her, and didn't much want to talk to her that night.

I'd certainly changed a lot through my experiences of my romantic pursuit of Jenna, but was I the only one who'd changed?  In the years leading up to the completion of that whole saga in my books, I thought about what Jenna had said to that guy at that party in mid-June of 1993.  The girl I first met in 1991 had criticized Davey and I for not intervening on her behalf when some older woman had touched her inappropriately at that New Guild party where I first talked at length to Jenna.  From what I remember, Jenna just passively sat there as that woman talked to her and touched her in a way that made her feel uncomfortable.  A few weeks later, John-John related the story about the guy who'd invited Jenna to Hippy Hollow, a clothing optional swimming hole, and how Jenna wanted some guy in her apartment so he could answer the phone in case this invite extender called again.

Maybe Jenna had learned early on to passively endure transgressive behavior from her dad, and therefore had trouble fending off such behavior as a young adult, thus making her a tempting target for Billy Billiams. Okay, okay, and yeah, I'll say it: Maybe, just maybe, maybe, because I was a guy who wouldn't jump through her hoops whenever she tried to rush intimacy with me, and I tried to let her know in other ways that I valued her as something other than a recepticle for my seed, maybe I made her feel loved to the point where she could find the wherewithal to tell a Billy Billiams to go fuck himself and his offer of "protection."

So any woman out there who tries to make me feel as if I'm not performing up to their expectations in supposedly consummating our  deal can go fuck themselves running, for all I care.  The only expectations I have to live up to are my own.  If I never meet someone who can give and receive love in a way I can understand, then so be it. 

In those instances where I carried a torch for women such as Donna, Linda, and Gwen, I likely never thought of myself as the sole keeper of the flame.  I likely thought some mutual feeling for me existed in these women, and such a belief justified the flame I kept alive over a period of time when I did not see them.

What did wind up happening, as I see it, resides in the notion that these women felt touched by my expression of feelings for them after my "journey" for our love.  Somewhere in that mix, before, during, or after my heartfelt expressions of love, I experienced a mental breakdown.

So, if I ever find myself on a "journey" again in relation to someone I still think about, but whom I have not seen in a while, a little "math" might help me see things more clearly.  In effect, adding things up.

I recently had an occasion happen where I had to deal with close relatives on a daily basis over a period of some weeks.  Naturally, I started focusing on their shortcomings and how such shortcomings would make it difficult for me to get along with them.  But I had no way of escaping the reality of having to deal with these family members a lot over a period of around three weeks.  

I give myself token rewards in the form of stickers on my calendar for accomplishing certain tasks on any given day.  These tasks can include anything from housework, to abstaining from sweets for a day, to taking a walk for exercise.  So I decided to establish a token reward system for getting along with my family members.  If I could behave nicely to my family members until midnight on any given day, I could give myself a little apple sticker on my calendar at midnight.  On the first and the fifteenth of the month, I could buy an inexpensive, easy to acquire present for myself, such as a classic rock CD.

This system worked very well.  The family members I tried this with both reported to others that I got along well with them during our time together.  It worked so well I've decided to extend the life of this token reward system for getting along with various people past the point where I needed it for my relations with family.  I've decided to use if for anyone in my world I deem it necessary for me to get along with, which means I will use such a system every day for lots of people, pretty much.

Today I thought about my perceptions of discrimination from women I had or have an attraction to, regardless of what these women really represent to me in the real world.  One time I went on a date with this woman who said, "I don't compete for men," in this self-satisfied, smirking tone as we sat and talked.  I took this to mean that she didn't feel as if she had to compete for me.  I took great exception to this perceived slight in regards to my viability on the dating scene, and this became one of many reasons I pretty much had nothing to do with her after that one date.

She would occasionally write me, inviting me to come visit her city and hug me when she did see me after that, and I, for my part, did nothing to discourage those kinds of gestures from her, but I still pretty much rejected her.  That said, I never did anything to sabotage our deal, such as tell her she can suck my dick if she wanted to or call her names or behave in any other hostile, alienating manner.  Even though I really didn't want to date her, I still wanted to get along with her okay.

I will keep that in mind moving forward as I navigate my way through the world we live in.  I've vowed to give myself a token reward each day I make a sincere effort to get along with anyone I could potentially have a problem with.  Just because I perceive that a lot of women I have an attraction to seem to look down on me, that doesn't excuse me from trying to get along with them the best I can.  I can apply this same system to people such as guy friends who don't call me back anymore, but whom I'm likely to run into at a club one night in the foreseeable future, or the wives of guy friends who seem to know more about my past than I care for them to know and how that might affect their opinion of me, or that female gatekeeper type at that one comic book convention who tried to behave towards me in a less than wonderful way.  This kind of token reward system, one that materially rewards good behavior towards people I may have problems with in any context, can apply to all kinds of scenarios in my day to day life.