Disappointment, Frustration, and Music

Disclaimer: This is pretty much a sad bastard post... a bunch of personal feelings and old experiences that have nothing to do with D/s. 

I would really love to be working on Part 45 of fs01 right now.  My sleep is all screwed up.  My head is not in a good place for it.  That last argument with T really screwed me up.  I feel like the shell over my heart that I broke down with such force in May is back.  I tried in 100 different ways to avoid this outcome... and yet I managed to fail in 99 of them.  I can feel depression working its way back into my heart.  I am angry and sad about it.  While I was able to find subspace today I still cannot get there when I want to... I feel like I'm blocked from the feelings I want to have and I don't know what to do.

As I sit through this barrage of a million thoughts it reminds me of many things.  It's like I have this mountain welling up in my heart and I don't know how to get it out there and save myself from what may be inevitable.  I will use this time to just write... and let things flow out as they come to me.

I feel like a lot of my life has been spent rebuilding.  Having my world... my identity... shattered by factors beyond my control and then spending years having to redefine myself... find new things to replace the old... that has been the standard.  The first time I can remember this happening was in my youth.

I was a very good athlete and played multiple sports at a high level.  I was fast and strong.  Very strong.  During the final two minutes of a lost-cause football game where half of our team had already given up I was badly injured.  My ankle was destroyed.  At the time they didn't have medical procedures that could do anything to help it and the doctors used an out of date method for diagnosing and treating the injury.  The end result was that it never healed properly.  Hundreds of hours of rehab and I was at best, able to get to roughly 60% of what I was.  I ended up with a limp that gradually led to other problems.  The bigger issue at hand was that I went from being one of the best... to average.  For the majority of my life sports were the only way I could win the approval of my adopted father.  I don't know if approval is the right word... sports were my way of not being ignored.  I played them for years even though I had stopped enjoying them.  They were what I did.  The lone time I tried to quit baseball I ended up being beaten until I nearly broke my collar bone and got put through a wall.  I had grown accustomed to playing through severe injuries.  A torn rotator cuff and UCL didn't mean I sat out... it meant I learned how to play left-handed for two years until my right arm was again strong enough to not be useless.  

Sports were what I did.  They were who I was.  I had no identity without them.  I was already fucked up in the head from abuse and the events I talked about in The Pains of Youth post.  This destroyed me.  I no longer had anything interesting to offer my father.  Our interactions after this reached a stalemate as I had finally grown strong enough to hold my own in a fist fight with an adult.  After a major brawl he no longer attacked me at will and he reverted to mind games to take care of that job.

Over the course of the few years leading up to that I had become a bitter husk of a person.  Full of confusion and overflowing rage I dealt with the world with hostility and sarcasm.  I had no true friends... I had earned that and deserved the outcome.  Two things would impact my life more than anything else over the next couple of years:  drugs and music.  While my battle with drugs waged on and off for a few years, music was the new constant.  It filled the void left behind by my loss of sport.  I learned to play guitar.  I started a band.  I went to as many concerts as I could (250 concerts in 3 years of high school).  I had always been interested in music but now I attacked it with all of the energy of my being.  I dug and I dug... always staying on the cutting edge of the independent music scene (1992-1997).

I used drugs to keep myself numb.  I used music to have feelings on my own terms... when I wanted them.  The only feelings I could relate to were sadness, longing, loneliness, and the other parts of darkness within the heart.  A newer genre started to emerge in the independent scene.  It's emphasis was on emotional lyrical content.  It was the soundtrack of my heart.  I embraced these songs like they were my own feelings.

As of this time I was still terrified to show anyone what was in my heart.  I knew there was a set of feelings I craved... ones that weren't sad... ones that I didn't know... I wanted to love.  At 17 I was searching for the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.  The search did not go well.  My feelings were either rejected or I jumped into relationships just to experience them when opportunity provided... these usually lasted about two weeks.  I finally fell in love when I was 18 several months after I had sobered up.  I shared everything in my heart with her.  She was my angel.  We got engaged at 19 but went to colleges across the country from each other.  She started keeping secrets.  I didn't realize I had lost her until she had been cheating on me for 6 months with the same guy and she broke things off.  I remember begging her on the phone to tell me that she didn't love me.  She refused to say that.  That pain remained an open wound for several years.

The rest of college didn't bode well.  I was looking for something more serious than anyone else was.  I wanted a true connection... love... the desire to be with them forever.  College offered fleeting sex, something I had no desire for.  Depression finally crushed me and I left school to take a year off.  During that year off a car hit mine while I was stopped at a red light.  It resulted in a pair of dislocated wrists, tendon/ligament and nerve damage.  My hope of being a professional guitarist died then.

During my year off a series of suicides by old friends pried open my heart.  I had left too many things unsaid.  I would do that no longer.  I began to share my feelings openly.  Share my care and concern openly.  I left nothing unsaid.

I remained alone for several years, depression sabotaging my attempts to get my life on track.  College took longer than it should have.  The fear of life alone began to build anxiety within me that I couldn't face.  I kept changing majors/degrees in order to draw that period in my life as long as possible.  During my final 3-4 semesters is when things happened with K.

When K passed... life stopped.  Music stopped.  My CD/record collection abruptly ends with her death.

While I moved on in many aspects of my life, many things are still frozen in place.  I feel like my ambitions died with her.  I learned to exist.  The feelings in my heart have stayed strong... I have learned to appreciate every moment... but in doing so I stopped looking beyond.

Three weeks after meeting T I again injured my guitar playing hand.  It was severe... more nerve damage... muscle atrophy... scar tissue... nerve inflammation... I lost guitar completely for several years.  Even now I am a shadow of my former self in that regards.  Music still feels frozen in time. 

It's fucking weird to look back and realize that I have spent over 75% of my life with severe levels of depression.  D/s took over where music left off.  Submission through love became my everything. When it is there life feels good.  In its absence I feel the familiar pains return.  As I feel these feelings creep back into my heart... my music, frozen in time, still feels like it is the soundtrack of my heart.

As I sit here writing... knowing that I'm up way too late and surrounded by thoughts and feelings that I wish I didn't have... It's amazing that I've written so much over the years but still held so many things back.  I have maybe 50 songs that have really reached my heart on such a level that they allow me to channel feelings... they make the feelings swirling around me feel real.  The hardest part for me right now is that I know that what I'm feeling is chemical.  I have no direct reason to feel what I am feeling... it's just what I feel.  I'm frustrated with myself for not being able to keep this from happening. 

This song popped up on my ipod on random the other day and I hadn't heard it in about 12 years.  It caused my heart to stir in that familiar way.  This is something I've never done before on my blog.  Give a personal glimpse into something very dear to me that isn't just an event or an idea... This is the song that currently resonates with my heart.