Etwas

I had initially planned to write something about being a man/idiot, but I will touch on that topic in this writing. So, where do we begin?

I was in the middle of letting myself be tossed around by my emotions, had put on my training clothes, and was about to lift some heavy weights in frustration when my stomach told me I was hungry. I sat down and ate.

Next, my head started to spin me around. So, I sat down for a good 30 minutes and meditated. Fair enough. Calm down. It’s not a miracle cure. I read a bit in a book and thought about the underlying thought that popped up while I was in the meditation loop. The same thought that led me to the “man = idiot” idea.

It gave me just enough of a pause to understand why my head, my stomach, and surely my heart were thoroughly tossing me around.

Love.

So that’s what this is about. Something about love. Something about running from it for far too long, and something about finding the direction for love that I want. Even though it feels somewhat late. And of course, something about being a man. And thereby also something about being an idiot. There’s really no difference between the two.

I Flee

A long time ago (3-4 years), I consistently fled from anything that resembled love. I couldn’t handle it, not after coming out of a relationship, and certainly not with the thought of having to deal with relationships and love again.

I walked with a sweet woman, we walked side by side, and she took my hand and smiled at me.

A really nice, warm smile that should have reached my heart. I liked her…

But I freaked out, excused myself by saying I had to go to work, and she probably had to go in the other direction anyway. I was terrified of it. Because it reminded me of something I had done many years before, in almost the exact same way. So I ran away from it, and with it away from something that probably would have been good.

And I did it again and again.

I dipped my toes in but dared not jump into the water.

Even when I threw myself headlong into polyamory with a certain steadfastness and warmth of heart, it was also a strange way for me to keep it, THE FEELINGS!!, at a distance.

For my romantically involved partners could do whatever and whoever they wanted, and so it never really came too close. I didn’t feel jealous because I had a distance from the feelings.

Even though there were plenty of feelings and infatuations, feelings are fleeting. It either hurts, or it gets cold. And I got used to that for a very long time because that way it never really came too close. And it became normal, and that was not so fortunate.

Normality is a strange concept.

(I am 100 percent aware that the relationship type works for many people. This is not an attack on the form of relationship, just an acknowledgment of my own limitations, faults, and shortcomings.)

Something About Being a Man/Idiot

It hadn’t been the best June month. AGAIN! Busy, both in good and bad ways, slightly stressful without being too much, but also with events that I had to deal with.

For better or worse, a month that made me do a lot of things, which culminates in this writing.

I told a colleague at the summer party something along the lines of, “being a man is being an idiot a year ago and realizing it too late.” That the pieces finally fall into place, only to see the puzzle and realize where you messed up years ago. An absolute and complete fantastic feeling (!!!!).

And then even to discover that the poison spreads. Bloody great. Time to take action, pull out the sting before it oozes more poison than good. Idiocy. Hurting people without thinking about it. So there we have a part of being an idiot.

Maybe it ties in with being a man for me is believing that you do the best you can and then doing it. No bullshit.

That I throw myself with heart and soul into things, to then do it as well as I can. So far so good.

But if the foundation fails, or there are blind spots, or if my aim is several degrees miscalibrated, then it doesn’t matter at all, because then the error is built into the action and what follows comes accordingly.

That I only this year, after a stress leave and therapy, began to see the patterns, but then STILL did my utmost to ignore taking action, is a prime example of being a man/idiot.

Well done. Applause.

And despite the fact that I have done many, MANY things in recent years, where the energy has been correctly tuned to throw myself into what I did. Professionally, in courses, when I trained as a teacher, creative projects, travels, with my return from stress. Things have been under control. It has gone well. But love has not been one of them.

As Love Shop sings:

“It took me a year to come up with a hard answer
I hold on to this lie – it’s all I have
it took me a year to understand the way home myself
save that worry that is allowed to pay my retribution”

(also pardon this translation, because how the heck do you translate lyrics while retaining the meaning of the original song?)

It took me years to realize a number of things about myself and my way of acting in relation to love.

Panic fear of it and what it means to believe that it can hold to give oneself wholly and completely to love. Better late than never, but the realization is still a bitch and here we are.

Esben = man = idiot

But I get it! Just a couple of years too late.

These words are relatively easy to write because it’s a mutilation of myself and my way of acting.

Trying to deny oneself and how I am for too long is almost ingrained. But as Love Shop also sings, “It took me a year to understand the way home myself.” Almost. With a little help.

But I realized it in the end. Hurrah.

I want love. The close kind. The kind that leads to more. The kind that leads to sleepless nights and what do I know. With skin and hair, all that it entails. To stop living for oneself and live for others. It’s something that has been rumbling in the back of my mind, but which I pushed away. It objectively went well, I had lots of sex and women in my life. Fantastic job, good looks, and a nice place to live.

So why is something missing??

I knew the answer.

I no longer want to push it away. I have experienced the times in my life when there is perfect unity between heart, body, and mind. Everything I could achieve in that situation, everything I wanted and could, when I was in that mode.

But love, I haven’t dared to give myself to it. Really. It has been at arm’s length.

It is dishonest in the long run and requires a change. For being dishonest with oneself is the worst form of idiocy one can offer oneself as a man… and person in general.

I don’t think that I will stop being an idiot with a snap of my fingers, and I would also like to give an unconditional apology for all the times I was one when it came to love. There’s really no way to make that part right. So I will move on from here, with the awareness that my way of fleeing from love was entirely idiotic, that it led to more trouble than good, and I cannot allow myself to remain in that fleeing behavior pattern a second longer.

It hurts, it hurts others, that’s not how love should be.

So I move away from fleeing and towards love.

That is probably the only thing I can do from here.

It’s the only thing I can think of.