Escopades

What's the latest on my escopades (escort + escapade)?  For cryin' out loud, I screwed it up - again!

I finally made up my mind; "I'm gonna do this thing!" I said to myself.  So I emailed her to make arrangements.  Back and forth we went.  How about this date?  No that doesn't work for me.  Well, how about this one?  I'll be out of town then. It went so on a couple of rounds and then one of my emails seemed to bounce off her site (she can make it look like an email bounced if she doesn't want to hear from you again.)  I called her on it, she got offended, blah, blah, blah and now she doesn't want to see me.

That's fine of course, she is an independent provider and I know I would make similar decisions if I had a troublesome potential client.  It still stings a bit.  I can't even get a date with an escort.  I would have liked to say that I made a decision that seeing this escort would be scripturally unwise and I decided to stop in my tracks and go back to church.  But no, I only stopped because I was rejected.

I went back on the web to try and find another escort.  No one I found so far had the same appeal as Avery.  There were some that had similar sites with very attractive women, however there was something about Avery's site, description of herself, her blogs, email style and such that drew me in like a lamb to the slaughter.  

In Depression's Grip

I feel badly all the time now.  I can't get myself motivated to do anything.  I am thinking about going into DC to the Teaism restaurant at which I was planning to meet Avery.  Of course there is the secret hope that this is a frequent haunt of hers and that I might get a glimpse of her.  So I have begun to idolise Avery, to dream and fantasize about her.  But my head knows that she is totally out of my league.  While I may be able to exchange the cash for her time, it will not be a reasonable exchange.  I will be the subordinate in that situation.  She will see me as weak, less than her, undermatched.  She may still be kind, however it would be out of pity.  I can imagine her rolling her eyes on leaving with a "glad that's over with" cloud above her head.  

What I need to do is to stand up and take charge of my life.  Make the decisions I need to and stick with them.  Do I really want to add an escort to my life?  That's not the person I want to be, but it is who I am currently.  How can I change?  Always the same:  Study, Meetings, Prayer and Service.  Knowing it is one thing, saying it is almost the same.  Doing it is the hardest challenge, especially in the face of a congregation apathetic to my needs.

Yet and still I can't blame them.  It is still, (reasonably and scripturally) primarily my fault.  God sets standards; they are correct and unassailable.  He doesn't set the bar too high for humans to meet.
  

Let's Go! -- Ooops . . .

This

Or This

So I went ahead and did it.  I sent an email requesting  the schedule of a meeting with Avery.  She hasn't responded yet.  Within seconds of sending the email I began to regret it.  It is like me telling God, I know better, I am going to fix this my way.  I don't trust you to help me through my problems, you haven't done a good enough job, so now I'm taking over.

My God, how could I be so stupid!  Really??!!  Can I think that?  Well sure, and here's why:

I stopped going to church over a month ago.  I think I talked about that in a previous blog.  Things started to unravel by week 2.  Around then is when I started contacting Avery as has been well documented earlier.  Also I  found I wasn't on the nice upward swing I had been experiencing when I started going to church.  The depression improvement stopped and I am slipping back again. The feeling of loneliness is consuming me and I am desperate for attention.  Nonetheless, this is the first thing in a long, long time that I am anticipating with high interest. I will be short lived.

I need to find a way back to God.  But I know that if Avery responds to my email I will set up a meeting with her.  I am pining for friendship and affection.  Now, at least, I can put a dollar figure on how much I am willing to pay for feigned affection of a beautiful woman,  as much as $900 an hour.

I have to find a way to get re-involved with the congregation again.  This step I am about to take is diametrically opposed to that aim, however there is no way I can afford to keep a steady relationship with Avery.  She is a very smart business woman who has found a niche for her product, the company and attention of an intelligent and very attractive woman.  It is more than I can afford on a regular basis.

So the next step is to evaluate how to get back into the church.  The one thing that earns respect of them is knowledge of the bible.  I need to start studying again on a regular basis.  The other thing is the ability to teach others who want to know about the bible.  But that, implicitly goes back to bible knowledge.  So, I suppose that is the real key.  I have to study more.  I don't think I can keep this up.  I failed earlier and will do so again.  But hopefully, through all the setbacks, there will be an overall gain.  "Two steps forward, one step back" is still a net gain of one.  Better than zero and better still than negative one (less than zero - there ought to be a movie with that name.)

The biggest issue for me is talking to people there.  I have been ostracized and pushed into a corner.  I mix with them before and after church but it is as if I am invisible.  The overlooking of me has led to some hostility toward them, so now I don't want to talk to them and it shows on my face and in my demeanor.  My therapist says "Act as if."  That is so hard to do because to do  so I have to let down my guard and expose myself to their rejection.  I seem to have little in common with them, conversations, when they did talk to me, were often brief and with many awkward silences.  I don't seem to share their interests.  This has to be a very difficult decision I face, but face it I must or else  .  .  .

Heat of Battle

The battle is raging and so far I am sinking.  Yes I made steady gains for many months but I am now loosing badly.  I know exactly what it is.  I want and need to get out of this social isolation.  My plans from before (escort) are just unrealistic.  The cost is extreme and the likelihood of success is small.  It is interesting to see how my mind was working on this.  I decide, No Way, Too Much, yet when I get an email from Avery, all of a sudden, in my mind, the concern goes away and I continue preparing to move forward with the rendezvous.  She hasn't emailed me in a couple of days so I am feeling like this isn't going to happen.  Last time I indicated that I couldn't make the original appointment and she is waiting for me to reschedule.  I haven't though.  If she doesn't email I probably will not, and vice versa   It seems odd to leave such an important matter in someone else's hands.  It is silly.  I am out of my depth again.  I need some guidance and structure.  And yet, at the same time, I don't want it because I know what to do.  I know what the best course is.  I am simply choosing not to do God's will.  It isn't ambiguous.  It isn't fuzzy and hard to understand.  I am just in a very vulnerable state having failed to do God's will.

And now I realize that it isn't just an issue hiring the escort, yes or know.  This whole mental debate is dragging me down.  As I think about and drive myself in that direction, I am tearing down the progress that I have made along the way.  Even if I do resist and finally realize the folly of this thoughts with enough intensity and in time to avoid that act, I have still suffered.  Much ground gained is now lost.  And who knows, I might still loose.  I might still see Avery.  All it would take is one email.

Enough

Enough of that feeling sorry for myself, cretinous talk.  Whoever bootstrapped himself out of a bad situation by thinking only about the difficulties he is in.  Do something, anything.  Better to rule out possibilities rather than to continue passively stewing in this morass.

What to do?  I have spent my life turning to myself for answers; look where it got me.  I have to find a way to get what I need from my religion.  I have to get the last of the sanctions removed.  I am out of energy but God promises to "give the tired one power."  Well I need to plug in now.

So what does that mean?  Study, meetings, prayer and service.  Giving up on the unrealistic plans I have been formulating.  Stop doing the things God hates, concomitant with doing the things he demands.  It's like a guy that leaves home and spends his life in asinine pursuits, then has to return home, empty handed. The shame the ignominy, it just  must be endured.

Despicable Me

So here we go again.  The constant and unrelenting struggle to do what God wants instead of doing what I  want.  I am such a selfish blackguard.  Why won't I learn I can't play with fire and not get burned.  I feel so alone and abandoned, I just have to reach out to someone, even at $900/hour.  Yea so I convinced myself that I am really only doing this for enhancing my social skills.  What a crock!  I really just want to get as close as I can to a beautiful and available (by the hour/day) woman.  Just the knowledge that I could have her is inspiring. However I couldn't keep it up for very long.  It is just too costly.  I could do so much with the money elsewhere.  I could probably find a real life coach at 1/4 the price.  And I would give them a higher probability of success, at n infinitely lower risk.

O for cryin' out loud this is a lousy predicament.  I see no way out.  Somehow the fulfillment of the basic need for touch and comfort has vanished from my life.  A real life coach won't restore that.  I just long to be close to, laugh with, hang out with someone who pretends to care.  Even if I know this is a business arrangement and later she will go out with another guy richer, better looking and more powerful than me, and pretend to care about him.  I could meet this woman and watch her call the whole thing off because she can't handle someone so pathetic.

So what, back to the church?  There I must expose myself to summary rejection by others to get any attention.  Watching everyone having a good time, wanting to be a part of it but having been rejected for so long.  I have truly come to doubt the worth of my existence.  OK so I am supposed to remember at this point that God sent his son Jesus to die on my behalf.  Yea, I get that.  He did die for all mankind to have the chance to take advantage.   Yes, I had maybe still have that chance.  However to take advantage of it you have to be drawn to God.  You have to want to do his will.  You have to love God.  Those are the people that Jesus died for.

The miserable bastards such as myself can look forward to hell.  We/I have turned our/my back on the opportunity to serve God well.  I have repeated this pattern all my life.  It is just that the flame is dying.  Each time I get a little more distant.  I know the end is near, certainly relatively speaking.  At some point it is near literally speaking.  Could be tonight, a few minutes from now or 10 years into the future.  The signs are so broad and general, there is no way to determine the precise time, by design. 

So I feel like I am just waiting to die.a lonely death panicked and terror stricken.  I lived a life of  sadness, rejection and failure.  Yes I have  succeeded in some small things but overall, none of the real goals I set out for  myself have come to pass.  They all have withered away and died due to my own neglect.   Even the successes don't feel good at all.  I truly hate what I have done with my life, and I feel powerless to change it.  It's 6:30 and I am still sitting in my office at work.  Trying to eek out a little more productivity for the company.

Nothing to look forward to tonight, nothing this weekend, or this month or year, or decade.  The one thing I remain a little bit excited about is what you may ask dear reader?  Contacting an escort and spending a fantastic some of money with a huge risk of failure and massive temptation that could snap my will like a dried twig.  I can barely believe that I am falling for this, a clearly Satanic trap, yet again.  How many times must I be broken before I just stop trying to figure things out for myself, truly throw my burden on God and move on with a life in his service.  How to make that change?  I know I have to do the formula: study, meetings prayer and service.  I have known this for years.

I did just give it a good try.  Last year I studied more hours about the bible than any previous year in my entire history.  With what result?  Being largely ignored by a very friendly congregation.  Having 1 of 2 sanctions that have been around my neck for 7 years lifted.  Feeling like an outcast.  It is just too much.  I cannot handle this load.  I am so ashamed of myself because I know that God doesn't make the path too hard for humans to manage.  So it  has to be my fault!  I am the one responsible for this shambles resulting from all the bad choices I made.  It is me.  I am a failure.  I lost.  To the best of my knowledge, I am despicable in God's eyes.  

Alone in a Crowd

So I talked with my psychiatrist and he thinks I should do things like join a club be it a bike club, book club whatever.  And also join a dating site.  These things are needed to encourage me to become a more social person.

I am sure he is absolutely correct.  It is nonetheless a challenging assignment.  Most don't know the discomfort many feel when meeting a new group.  But is is just something I have to do though it be at odds with the counsel I am getting from my church.

Why am I running from my church if as indicated previously, that is where I ultimately want to be.  It is because of my experience with the congregation.  When I moved here, early on I tried to make friends with people already therein.  This proved difficult; one of the closest friends made earlier moved away.  Other people that I wanted to befriend moved as well.

Being an introvert it didn't bother me too much.  When my son came of an age where he could develop his own friends, he did this with alacrity.  I encouraged him to talk with some adults, not just people his own age.  He did so but after a while the adults just didn't seem as interested.  In any case, he was natural and self assured in the social context.  Eventually, people in the church began inviting him out but not including me.  At first it was just "guys his own age parties" of which, of course, I wanted no part.  Then the pool parties and other events came up with decidedly mixed age groups.  He would find out without the word ever coming to my ear.  I would drop him off at the party and pick him up later.  Eventually people saw this and said (through my son) that I was invited too.  In a single instance a host actually expressed this directly, however I doubted his sincerity as evidenced by the fact that he only did this after my son told him some of the comments I made about being uninvited.  To this day, I don't think they really wanted me there.

Eventually my son moved out of my house and away from the area.  Then things returned to normal, no one speaking to me at church.  My God, it is awful. I go to church and there are all these people laughing and talking, having a wonderful time.  Every once in a while someone will come over and say, "how's it goin?'"  Really!!??  isn't it obvious?  But I know enough to mute that response.  I never say anything less positive than
"Fair."  I learned much earlier on that people are fully uninterested in my problems or issues (other than to satisfy their curiosity) so I keep these things to myself.

I am trying to get back in good standing with the church.  I was sanctioned (as mentioned earlier) and that has diminished my reputation among others.  I began trying to make up for this.  I spent 5 to 10 hours each week for about a year, studying my bible, reading the related publications and going to both weekly services.  To no avail.  Now I am just exhausted and have stopped going to church and studying altogether.  I still believe that this is the denomination of this church I want to be a part of it since I think this is a truly valid way to serve God.  No other denomination has these characteristics IMO.  However I have become literally  untouched by human hands, (except those of my own, of course.)  It has gotten to the point where I don't want their friendship.  I am positive this shows in my demeanor and so it reinforces the earlier decision of almost all members to not speak.  Hell they don't even make eye contact anymore.

So I am looking outside the church for the caring human attention I so desperately need.