The Book Of Questions – Question #159

If you had the choice of one intimate soul mate and no other close friends, or no such soul mate and many friends, and acquaintances, which would you choose?I feel like I’ve actually have done this question in real life before.  When I started dating Suzanne, I had already decided to cut all of my friends out of my life.  I was going to move to San Francisco and start a new life.  A week later, I went back to Solano and asked Suzanne to be my girlfriend.  Eventually, I brought my friends back into my life.  But for that time, I thought that Suzanne would be enough and would help me learn to love myself.  Unfortunately, that did not turn out to be the case.  **sigh**  How much unintentional pain and suffering did I cause to myself and others because of my depression, and me not treating it properly.

So having done both, I guess I would have to say it depends (such a Joe cop-out).  If we are talking about right now, the way and place that I’m at right now, I would want to have many friends and acquaintances as possible.  I still don’t love myself right now.  I don’t think it’s has bad as before…actually, it’s more that I know how to battle the self hate.  So that’s why it’s not as bad as before.  And having and communicating with friends and people is one of the ways to handle that self hate.  Let others love you until you learn to love yourself, to paraphrase a Ne-Yo song.  You can get intimacy and contact with FWB and online hook-ups.  It’s not a perfect situation, but it can hold things up while you work on yourself.

Now, if I had my shit together and could love myself, then I would only want one soul mate to share it with.  I wouldn’t necessarily need anyone else because I would have myself and my soul mate to get and give the love, affection, companionship, etc. that we each would need.  I think that was the goal that I was searching for a long time, before I start to realize how messed up I really was.  Like that was the goal for most of my previous relationships, def. with April and Suzanne.  Kathy, not so much (we talked about our kids, Vanessa and Michael, but I think we both knew it was a temporary relationship).

At this point right now in my life, I’ve given up on finding someone special or creating a life of my own.  I have given (reluctantly) my life to helping out my parents and that is what my focus is.  So with no soul mate, I could use all the friends and acquaintances that I can get.  But making friends is hard when you get a certain age.  And my depression doesn’t help things either.  It’s enough just to keep and reach out to the friends I have now.  Later, when my parents are deceased, I can look and see if it is worth looking for a soul mate with the few years that I will have left.

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