I semi-consciously, but systematically act to isolate myself from the people in my past, especially from those who know me in ways in which I no longer wish to be known. (I don't do this in an intentional way, and only recognize it well after the fact.) I head for the future instead, as fast as I can go and still remain firmly in the present. Yet I hang onto the possessions of my past. But people, for me, can never be possessions. You cannot possess a person, though many people try. And so, people get left behind as I move on. Someone who felt he was more in possession of the people in his life might feel differently about this. I feel, when I meet people from my past, like I do not know them. I forget, how close they were to me. To me, everyone who is not in my immediate day-to-day life becomes a stranger, the more so the farther back they have been in my life.
1-26-01e
Any more, my fantasies are less about sex than about control. I don't mean to imply that these two are intermixed within the same fantasies. They used to be, but they are less and less so the older I get, so that I now realize they are quite separate motives, with sexual fantasy almost non-existent outside of the act itself, control having nearly completely taken over my fantasy life. But maybe sex is being sublimated into control fantasies. I don't think so, but it's a possibility. Repression can be deceptive.
2-10-01a
I hate that this is true: I need a positive response from people about my work and about my life in general. I don't want this to be the case, and I live to negate this fact of life: we all need people to stroke us. I strive to be independent of this aspect of human nature, that we are mutually-nourishing social beings. It's not that I don't appreciate the attention when I get it. I appreciate it very much. It's just that I have learned (been conditioned): if I am going to be praised, I am also going to be criticized, and I am so super-sensitive to being criticized, in any way, that I decided, a long time ago, to opt out of any feedback. I stonewall response, creating a feedback of my own: "Don't respond to me, I don't appreciate it." This is not true, of course, but it is functional. People think I isolate myself, when the opposite is the case: I can't, and therefore I must; I am too close, too open, too immediate with people, and therefore I demand that I remain too far away.
But, God, what a thrill: to be praised, appreciated, especially since, having been so closed off for so long, I am experiencing a deprivation I will not admit to. On the other hand, what a devastation: to be criticized, especially since, having been so closed off for so long, I am weakened, feeling like I am almost normal to have such smooth thin skin, to have it softened since the time I turned away, when it had become so calloused as to resist the sharpest cruelty. I used to be so impervious. I could withstand any assault, physical or verbal, I had been trained so well, since childhood, ignoring the most injurious hurts. Now, I am growing old, my back hurts, I can't do even the simplest katas any more without feeling intense pain, and I hide away, for fear that someone I meet will criticize me, usually in the form of veiled comments, suggesting I am wrong in what I say or do--or write.
I need to get back into shape: but I don't want to. I like living the way I do, free of the barrage of barbs and innuendo and disguised assaults. I like being alone, relaxed, stress-free, not having to be constantly on guard, never needing to escape, to unwind, to allow the charge to dissipate. I am happy, but oh, how much I miss the praise.
2-11-01a
I'm walking south up Third St, and I meet Betty Hartzell, who's in her front yard. We talk. I also talk to Susan, later, very lovingly, as I walk up Arthur Dr. Part of the way up Arthur, the street becomes a large closet, the north side of which holds shirts that I left at the Conville house, abandoned there when I split up with db. Betty thinks I should take them, and I do too, but I ask her if she can keep them there for me a little longer, because I have nowhere to keep them. There are a lot of them, in good condition, almost like new, flannels and cotton prints that look like flannels. I tell Betty that I have a lot of shirts I left at Mom's house too that I have to get, but then I realize that Mom is dead and that the house no longer belongs to us, so I say that I guess I'll never get those shirts. It doesn't occur to me that Betty is dead too. What do the shirts symbolize? They're clothing, which is protection against exposure, actual physical exposure, but there's no hint of being cold here, it's summer, so it's more likely psychological exposure: Betty (who's dead, so this is a message from beyond?) is telling me to take these shirts as protection against the slings and arrows, the barbs, of society. This is a very "social" attitude here, with Betty and especially with Susan, congenial and friendly, but there is some thing less sociable in her attitude toward wanting me to take the shirts, as if I am taking advantage of her for wanting her to store them for me. She's "storing" my "shirts": she's insuring my means of psychological protection. How?