The Death Of A Hopeless Romantic: Postscript

So you, dear readers, are the first beyond Uisdean Rudah to hear the sad and tragic tales of The Death Of A Hopeless Romantic (because if you are going to bring something to light, go big or go home).  This is also the first time I have considered the matter is well over a score of years, and the first time ever outside of my journal I have written about it at all.

Your commemorative book marks are in the mail.

Looking at it for the first time "on paper" as it were, and reading it out to myself through the long lens of time, I am struck by two things:  One is my complete and total ability to be tone-deaf to what I thought I was actually accomplishing, the other is the belief that I needed to be "something"  - in love at that particular time, but other things since then.

The tone deafness has moved over the course of twenty plus years, but only with the speed of a glacier and the visibility of an oak tree growing - it happens, but you never quite know when.  I am marginally more conscious of the things I am actually trying to accomplish through my actions and words, and have gained some ability to rein them in or consider them more carefully.  I am more willing to "not react" to a situation that I feel as if I need to react to, but know inside that acting will only make things worse.  I can avoid commenting if it seems out of place or contrary to what I am trying to accomplish (mostly).  That does imply some level of confidence and trust with others that they are both being honest and will interpret my lack of action or silence not as a refusal to act or an act of disgust or non-involvement, but simply as an action - which is a struggle as I remain with a high degree of distrust in the motives and actions of most of my fellow human beings. 

A complicating factor of tone deafness is the fact that if is one is approval based - and I am highly approval based - one looks for the slightest sign of  anger, disappointment, or loss of interest, and immediately attempts to modulate the perceived loss.  The same is true the other way of course - one looks for the slightest sign of approval or promise and immediately tries to double down.  This is again something that I have spent long years in overcoming and remain only slightly better than I used to be - why, I can let something happen and not try to immediately fix the situation or make it better 2% of the time (that, of course, is foolishness - it is more like 4%).  I have had to learn that people being angry, disappointed, losing interest and drifting away are not signs of failure or always require a reaction, just as I have had to learn that people's engagement or approval is not necessarily a sign they want more.

For the need to "be something" - if improvement in tone deafness was glacial change, improvement in this makes tone deafness look like a speeding cheetah.  Even today, I still build up in  my mind (as I have always done)  great visions of what I could be, what I could do - indeed,  what I should be and what I should do.  There is almost always some self-imposed vision I have overlaid on myself based on the beliefs of society, religion, or culture (although I assure I far more hard on myself than any of those could be).  The need to be "more" than the perceived sum of my actual self seems as strong as it ever was.

This latter part I attribute to my own internal "make up" - even now I still find myself tilting and windmills and looking for dragons to be slain and people to be rescued.  In that sense I suppose, the Hopeless Romantic has collapsed, but the Hopeless Idealist continues on unimpaired, eyes on the horizon, sword at the ready, prepared to hurl myself into the next great crusade or need.

Perhaps while one can learn to modulate such things, one never truly gives up on them.