Solitude, Continued.

Well, here we go again. I wonder if anyone out there is timing the interval between these dark spells? It may be informative... or, of course, it may not. I try not to read my journal after I've written it, not to go back over the past as one of the purposes of this journal is, after all, to put things behind me.

It may be more accurate to say that I am having a sad or a lonely time, rather than a dark time. I don't feel as if I'm holding on to control by the tips of my fingernails. I don't feel in immediate danger of anything terrible happening. This is not a fear of change, or a reaction to change, as it sometimes is.

Easy to say what it's not, isn't it? There's definitely some fear sitting over me when I try to examine what I'm feeling. I think I haven't got a good idea of what kind of loneliness is acceptable in my life, or what level of loneliness I should expect from my current situation. With a lot of 'negative' feelings they don't effect my life very strongly because I expect them: I expect to be angry, sometimes, or disappointed, or sad. When I feel those things, I think, 'this sucks' and be nice to myself, but I'm not surprised, and they tend not to trigger second- and third-order emotional responses.

Loneliness, though, triggers worry for me. I do not /want/ my life to be a lonely one, overall. I'm not sure what level of interaction will make me look back and think, that wasn't enough. I've tried/am trying to level out interaction such that I spend time with people regularly, and don't have these huge gaps and then huge interaction-without-break to make up (or vice versa).

And so, when I'm lonely, I fear for my relationships, I feel inadequate about what I've done to minimise that, I worry that I'm in the wrong relationships and go into examination mode. In consequence, for the third level of reaction, then, I get both clingy and distant, demanding, I get hungry for new people in my life to fill the percieved gap and to provide security.

What I don't know is how to avoid this cycle. Something(s) are causing this enormous fluctuation -- last week I spent six or seven days with people around me in some kind or another of substantial interaction at some time during the day, this week it's perhaps one or two at most.

I think part of the problem is that in my current relationships, with the people I'm currently having relationships with, there is both a lot of personal fluctuation in availability (for many reasons, work-, other relationship-, or emotionally-imposed among others) as well as a lack of foreknowledge of those availability fluctuations and/or a lack of communication about them.

People normally have a lot of fluctuations in availability, just as things go. I do, I know. If I'm informed of those in advance, I can plan to get my closeness and connection elsewhere when any one person is not available.

Some people, in the normal state of things, don't have to think too much about when they're going to be available. Some people, also, tend to think only in one vein or another about their availability -- will I be working that day, or will I feel like accepting visitors, but not both. Then there is a miscommunication where their availability is overstated, because not all the draws on time are considered.

Some people also can miss out on some kinds of available time, for instance, forget that people can go grocery shopping together or run errands together.

And then, of course, sometimes someone accurately pegs their availability and then they don't tell you about it, or assume your own availability (ie I know it's Friday at 8pm, wanna go out in five minutes?).

There's a little bit of all of this in my circle, as well as a couple of other things that can be lumped into the categories above fo rthe sake of this processing.

Thus far I think(?) that everyone involved has been trying very hard to meet my needs in this, provided I do the initiating. That is, I request knowledge of availability in advance and then am told a little while after I ask. I believe harder work is done to grant the availability after I ask for it than to communicate it, or a lack, in the first place. That is, if I say, are you free Friday, people will work harder to be free Friday than they will, if I don't ask, to say, 'hey, we're going out Saturday night and we're busy Sunday and so if you want to spend time in the next couple of days then Friday is the only one available'.

This means that I really need to keep on the ball about asking in advance, cause if I drop it then I miss out.

I try hard not to believe that all this means these people don't want to spend time with me. They're busy, I'm busy, and the fact that they're comfortable going longer than I am without serious contact doesn't mean they love me any less. Negotiating that contact tends to be pretty hard work. My ability to accept this on a gut level comes and goes -- it's generally pretty good.

I have been reassured that everyone involved wants about the same level of time with each other reciprocally, though I think other people are perhaps able to average over a month better, where I need consistency on a smaller, more weekly scale.

The time issue has been ongoing for me. It's one of the few that I consider both mine to do something about and that I haven't managed to resolve over a period of several months. I've been doing reasonably well with my other issues, spectacularly well in many cases, and I'm not happy at all about this outstanding case.

I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this post, nor what I'm asking for. I'd hoped, again, that writing on this issue, again, might bring some clarity to my thoughts. All relationships plunge into unhappiness sometimes, and that I accept. It will take a little more than this to get me to worry seriously, and I will need to try a little harder before I do that.

Perhaps I'm asking for advice? And perhaps I'm just asking for a hug from someone who's not too busy to give one. It's not asking terribly much, after all, and is certainly easier to fulfill than some of my other demands. :/

Take care.