I have shared a lot about weird experiences and huge events in my life, but there have been some I haven’t felt safe enough to talk about to anyone. Until this last 12 month period there have been memories I couldn’t face, and life experiences I felt couldn’t be talked about safely.
So, this is about sharing what it means for the Moon (inner world) and Pluto (ruler of the underworld / shadow aspect) to have been in Scorpio (emotions / sexuality / intimacy) for me. It doesn’t help that my rising sign is Capricorn (showing up in the world) with Saturn (discipline/strength), and Mars (willpower/grit) – there are 2 more that don’t say anything about this share.
All of which is to say: this will hopefully show the depth of my emotional landscape to whatever degree I end up deciding is useful collectively.
Children have the wonderful tendency to be curious, inquisitive, and of course innocent. Usually, they are also highly intuitive in their ability to discern what is allowed and what isn’t allowed. Things the adults don’t talk about become a sort of playground of shared secrets.
I was no more than 3 or 4 years old when I learned the word “sex” and so from that age on I and some of my peers began sharing what we knew with one another. All quite innocent, such as “I’ll show you mine if you..” or “it goes in there” / “how?” and I suspect that’s how it typically goes. I can’t definitively say though, as this is part of our collective shadow. Meaning, we have collectively chosen not to allow discussion of such things – certainly not publicly anyhow. The taboo discussion that seems more taboo than any other taboo – from my perspective.
These equal sided experiences spanned up to the age of 13 – give or take half a year. By this age I had already learned a lot about the world, and its capacity for atrocity. I might have been roughly 11 or so when I really understood the holocaust and WW2 in general. I also knew that my mum’s mum was from England, and that she married my grandfather during the war. That means there are 60 souls living lives with just as many complex feelings and experiences as you, that would not exist if not for Adolf Hitler.. in my family alone. Which if we were to look at the math over the whole world population is going to look like a lot more people than died during the war.
At 11 I wasn’t thinking about other people though. I was thinking about my existence alone being reliant on the atrocity of war. Internalizing something like that before even reaching your teenage years is a special kind of paradox. Realizing you only exist because millions of others didn’t, and trying to hold both without collapsing under the weight.
Meanwhile at home, I was being abused by my older sister who had anger issues and a “my brother is a mistake” complex. I internalized the idea of being stupid early on. It was mostly emotional abuse, but there was quite a lot of hitting too. There was even a broken collar bone one time. For the most part, I learned to live with it. Especially since you “never hit a girl” what a load of shit – I learned better near the end of high school when she moved out and would come back with the same antics over holiday breaks. I didn’t earn any respect until I hit her. So obviously that social programming is not valid. It should have been, never hit people period. Then at least the cognitive dissonance would have been palpable. Some might say never doesn’t mean NEVER, well I say to an autistic kid who takes things literally.. that’s not a good rule to dictate.
So. By the time I was 13, my innocence was gone. That year I was asked by a younger girl, an innocent girl, to have sex with her. I instinctively rejected her requests, but unfortunately she badgered me about it for at least 5 minutes before I reluctantly “agreed” – partially out of fear someone would hear what she was saying to me and I’d get in trouble for putting wicked ideas in her head or whatever. More on task though.. I truly didn’t think she knew what she was asking. I was right and wrong because what we did was not sex, yet her sister advised me their father watched porn around them every day while one of them was still in diapers even.
Following that day I began to fear what I might be capable of. I had been introduced to porn by “friends my own age” the year prior. I began to notice that after masturbating my mind was clearer, I didn’t fantasize about classmates, I didn’t leer at people. I began to use porn as a way to avoid any fears becoming a reality. Fears of making someone uncomfortable, fear of becoming so lustful I rape someone, fear of being ostracized more than I was ultimately.
The biggest issue was that due to the aloofness of my parents, and the vitriol from my sister, I never had a social role model. There was nobody in my life that modeled what it looked like to connect with someone. So I didn’t really learn social skills from family. It isn’t as if they didn’t talk around me, I found their conversations boring.. and so I was never listening. When they tried to engage me it would be like “what are you thinking about?”. To which the answer always was nothing. It was not as if I was thinking about anything specific. My mind was just always wandering cause most of existing is just being bored. I kinda leaned into the boredom I suppose. Only in boring situations though, like at the grandparents house for coffee or something stupid, in lines, that sort of thing.
Since my home life was empty of social skills, my school life became the same. This is an issue because it meant my self inflicted trauma had no outlet, no way of healing. Until this year. Since I had begun using porn to numb base urges out of my life I ultimately became a porn addict. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know anything about addiction. Even if I had, it would have been of 2001. Porn addiction wasn’t, and still isn’t, taken seriously – the difference is now there are communities who know the struggle and seek to give and gain support to one another in fighting it. It’s something I desperately wanted to find at 19 years old when I was at my peak masturbating up to 9 times a day.
The funny thing is that I never wanted relationships for the sex. I wanted the intimacy most of all. I wanted to be wanted, because I felt as though I wasn’t wanted anywhere. I know now that my parents loved me, and they showed me that love in the way 90s parents showed love. By allowing me my freedom to make mistakes and learn – I just wish I could have been shown what consciously making an effort to connect with someone looked like while I was a child.
Don’t get me wrong. I was also a super horny teenager, but I already found a way to not force that into unwanted spaces or people. When I was 16 I met a girl named Lisa in gym class, and we played a lot of badminton with one another. We were both pretty competitive. It took until roughly the end of September for it to happen, but I grew some feelings for her.. as I typically do with attractive female friends. It turns out she had a crush on me, and that maybe was why she was engaging with me at all instead of her female friend.. I thought it was just that the friend didn’t want to play. So these feelings start becoming conscious at the end of the week and over the weekend I work up my nerve. Well guess what.. I was 1 day too late.
From that point forward, up until graduating, I became depressed. Nobody even noticed, except me. To the outside world I looked exactly the same. On the inside I was screaming at the gods that they would make my luck so unfortunate. She even went through at least one other boyfriend. During a single period she had a sleepover though, which I was invited to at which we slept together. And no, I mean just sleep. To date, that is the only time I’ve cuddled with a woman.. or well female I guess since we would have been ~17. I had glimmers of hope, but I was too depressed to act. Now, I look back and think: you know, if I die alone.. at least she showed me kindness, and that’s not meaningless. Speaking of. I was one of her dates to prom, yes you read correctly I said and meant “one of”. After which the whole larger group went to her house where we played some pool among other things. One of those other things was her and her friend asking me to decide who had the better breasts. I was in shock. I poked them and made my decision.. ooh what a fool you were Josh. In so many ways, a fool.
My depression lasted until the summer of my graduation in 2007 at 19 years old. That was the summer I started smoking weed and smoked salvia 60x extract. I couldn’t tell you whether the ego death on salvia played a role or if the set of experiences smoking weed did. What I can say is, I was sober biking to work at a call center (Road Runner internet tech support) when the key insight towards my depression happened. I had just spent 3 years actively thinking, frequently, about all the ways my life sucked. Enumerating my unfortunate luck in all the ways I could. Then one day during this bicycle ride to work it hit me. I stepped back and recognized what my mind was doing. My first conscious act of metacognition (thinking about thinking). I realized I felt bad because I was thinking about things that made me feel bad. So I asked the question: “would I still feel depressed if I weren’t thinking about these things?”
Thus began nearly 18 years of disassociation from my emotional undercurrents.
Meanwhile from the age of probably 14 or 15 up to sometime in my late twenties, I wanted to find a partner whom I could build a life with and explore sexually with. I was involuntarily celibate is another way to say this. It took until my late 20s to accept the very real possibility that I might never experience love and may die a virgin. It was during this transformation that I was learning social skills for the first time. I had always gotten too in my head about “knowing” what to say. I didn’t yet realize nobody knows what’s gonna happen next and we’re all just winging it – except the narcissists who are actively manipulating people.
Somehow I never lost hope. Even still. I’m still celibate. I’ve actually had a number of opportunities, but something always feels off.. either for me or the other person. With Lisa it was timing. With Tasha I think it was a soft rejection. With Kahla she had a boyfriend, and so too with Bethany. That’s all the people I’ve felt drawn to in my life.. excluding Megan when I was 5 and she asked me to kiss her under the gym benches. Not bleachers mind you, a bench.
So while I’m an incel I basically have no clue how to talk to anyone, let alone women. I do meet a woman, Kahla, while I’m learning my social skills though. She was a hoot to be around. We played a lot of pool mostly, hung out once or twice beyond the pool hall where everyone socialized between college programs. Or rather, where the people living in town in Woodstock hung out. As I already mentioned though she had a boyfriend. With Lisa I simply never had a viable window. Or at least none my socially retarded ass could identify. If I lived nearby, I think she’s single now.. I’d totally ask her out but alas ~1/6 the earth’s circumference away. The next, Tasha, claimed she had just gotten out of a relationship; she was a co-worker so I really didn’t have any idea how true it was. We were pretty chummy at work regardless.
The last is perhaps the most tragic of all being 19 when I’m 29. That got ultra awkward for her via text after knowing each other for like 4 or 5 years. We stopped really hanging out after the first year.. but she also had a boyfriend anyways. It got weird when they broke up and I was friends with him and he asked me to grab his stuff. She shared waaay more details than I bargained for, and it got me ruminating on something I thought I had buried long ago as soon as she said she had a boyfriend. This is only counting face to face attractions where I felt something of a spark, some sort of passionate interest in her. Most of y’all are simply boring ass bitches, no offense. I’m a boring and pathetic incel to you, so it’s a fair’s fair situation, right..?
I figure I’ll probably meet somebody by the time I’m 40, but maybe only because that’d make the movie the 40 year old virgin even funnier.. if only to me. If I recall correctly that released when I graduated high school.
I think maybe I’ll leave it there. Whether I publish this though.. or keep it to my journal.. time will tell. Dunno if I want people judging me.. cause this one certainly invites a lot of opinions. Dunning Kruger will bring out all the loudest idiots with zero real knowledge and only what their imagination and the news tells them exists. I even lived with people who’s kids prove my point for me, and there are police records cause they fucking put whatever the fuck it was on youtube getting someone’s dad’s YT account banhammered. [I obviously have, and it is not exactly the same as the private version. It’s far more coherent, and unambiguous.]
Heh.. Gospel of Thomas #37 comes to mind again. The thing about it is.. it’s only an uncomfortable subject for us.. once we know we can’t unknow. To them, it’s a big mystery full of novelty, and that’s exciting, not discomforting. I bring up the Gospel of Thomas and the secret saying #37 because I am presently 37 years old, my name means the same thing as Jesus’ name does.. and 37 is as follows:
(37) His disciples said, “When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?”
Jesus said, “When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then you will see the son of the living one, and you will not be afraid”
Which is not to say I’m the messiah. To quote Life of Brian: “he’s not the messiah! He’s a very naughty boy!” To me it means I shouldn’t be afraid, and honestly I think my fear is gone. We’ll see though, because tomorrow is a new day.
Back to this whole collective unconscious stuff though..
Maybe I’m wrong here, but I think a lot of those involuntarily celibate men have similar experiences within their consciousness. The events may look nothing alike, but I’d bet money there is a good reason they think they’re a “good guy”. They just haven’t learned the lesson about change vs love. Or perhaps they just need to sit down and give The Mask (1994) another watch.
You don’t “deserve” to be loved for who you are, everybody has shitty qualities about them. We should all be seeking to grow and improve upon yesterday’s version of ourself. Whether someone loves you for you is ENTIRELY up to chance.. or fate if you will.
If you can’t get a date, the problem is clearly you. Now you gotta figure out what the fuck to do about it. If you can’t find a good match, either lower your standards or accept that suffering is part of life. One way or another, you’ll find something to suffer over anyways. Then until you learn that desire and expectation create the inertia of your suffering, you’ll continue to suffer profoundly. If you make it through all that, and you’re still celibate.. at least it isn’t involuntary anymore.
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