To start things off, I should talk about who I am and why I have chosen to start writing about the world of emotion that I live inside.
I am a pretty normal, nothing special, 50-something single father. I have always struggled with my mental health, and struggled in relationships.
I grew up in a large regional city in Australia, the youngest of three children – an only son.
I have been let down and had my heart broken in some seriously horrific ways – at least they seem that way to me. I am not bitter about those times and those situations, as sometimes relationships and personal interactions just don’t work out they way we plan or hope.
Different people deal with situations they want to get out of in their own ways, and sometimes those actions seems cold and mean particularly to the people they are inflicted upon. As hurt as I have been, I’ve come to understand that most people don’t intend to cause that kind of pain on others.
They just take the easiest way through their own pain, and think of themselves first – and that’s perfectly okay. We should look after ourselves when dealing with pain – too many people do not.
I hold no malice at all – while some men take rejection so terribly personally, I’d like to think that I am different in that respect. Someone who doesn’t want to be with you is probably not someone you should want to be with anyway.
They are not flawed or any kind of horrible person if they have chosen to move on from you.
Many of the women who have passed through my life in a romantic sense are still very good friends in my life. That can be both a good thing and bad thing, particularly when I am feeling at my loneliest – as it is easy to reach out to and lean on them and open up feelings that shouldn’t be reopened.
I am a lonely person.
I have never been a particularly social person – keeping only a core group of really important friends that I know I can rely upon.
I am an over thinker, and a deep internaliser. I am typically quite introverted and struggle to make friends – which is why that core group of friends I do have are so important to me.
I have a very best friend I went to university with – he and I have now known each other for more than 30 years. We see each other as brothers, and we call each other when we’re struggling. He too has his mental health demons. We don’t get to catch up all that often, but when we do it’s like we saw each other last week. Time between catch ups doesn’t count – the bond makes up for that every single time.
As I said earlier, I seem to have this habit of remaining friends with women who have been romantic interests in my life – but out of all of those, my very best female friend goes back nearly 40 years.
Maddie. My beautiful Maddie.
Despite never actually having been in a romantic relationship with each other, I consider Maddie to be my first love. For a long time after I first knew her, she was the only girl I held in my heart. Nobody came close to her in my heart. Nobody could. I wouldn’t let anyone else try.
It started in high school when I was still 11-years old, and she was already 12-years old – the older woman, so to speak!
I will talk more about who she is in the next post.
I am successful in my career, and live quite comfortably and well within my means. I consider myself very fortunate to have had the life I have, and despite the bumps along the way, have for the most part enjoyed the journey.
When I speak about my mental health, I’ve never been suicidal or into self-harm when I have been at my lowest ebbs. My struggle – despite all that I have written above – is with my self-worth, my confidence within myself, and how I envisage other people see me.
Outwardly, I show little care for what other people think of me. The people I need in my life understand and respect me – but if someone doesn’t like who I am, I just don’t lose any sleep over it. I don’t need them in my life.
Inwardly however, I am shy and very self-conscious. When I find people I care about who haven’t yet figured me out, I often make a complete fool of myself trying to show my worth to them. I try too hard, and I am sure that has pushed many people away from me over the years.
That hurts the most when I am trying to attract the attention of women I find attractive and interesting – and often I suspect I end up looking like a dick.
It has only ever been that those who have stopped and taken a moment to look at me beyond that outer shell, who I have managed to connect with and managed to form relationships with – whether those be romantic relationships or just really amazing friends.
The good part is that because of this my core group of friends really are amazing friends.
The downside is that too many people I have cared about – even on the most basic of levels – either just don’t notice me, or write me off as some kind of goof because I’m trying too hard and make a complete mess of it.
As such I have spent a lot of my life as a single man.
I’ve found that that is not usually a problem – I know I don’t need another person to feel happy. Even with my mental struggles, I am generally a pretty happy person. It just sucks on the difficult nights when I just need to climb into bed and lay up against someone.
Against someone who wants to be there. Be there for me.
Which brings me to why I’ve decided to write my story into this website.
I don’t know if it is going to help me, but there have been a few recent events in my life that have bottled up inside of me a lot of feelings that have manifested over many many years.
Many of them are related to Maddie.
The thing about me and Maddie is that although I have loved and cared for her in so many different ways over so many years, not a lot of people know about my feelings for her.
She knows that I have them, and she respects that I have them. That wasn’t always so, and I’m sure that story will be told here too.
My family know about her, and although I expressed a little of how I felt about her to them in the early years, I certainly never “coloured in” the story of exactly what she meant then, what she means now, and all the different feelings I have had for her in between.
I wish I had talked of her more.
I am sad at the moment – and these are feelings I need to express outwardly. Many of them concern Maddie. Plenty of them don’t. Lots of them are a mixed bag.
There is music – so much music. You don’t care about someone for almost 40 years, and not have a playlist of songs you hold in your heart for them. It’s a very long playlist on my phone! Those songs will help me tell this story.
I fear a little that this website will become something of a shrine towards Maddie, but that’s not the intent. However, I have kept so much inside for all of this time, that those feelings finally need oxygen.
I can feel myself slipping down, and I need to use my love for her to rise up again.
She’s always been able to do that for me.