I haven’t been around in a while. I seem to do this because I loose interest in what I am doing, I am hoping to continue this venture even during the times I have nothing to say.

I am going to talk about love. I am taking human sexuality right now and today’s topic was about relationship and dealing with breakups and relationship violence. The last part of the class we talked about love, we talked about it more in depth on tuesday but the professor, Dr. Caron, added her own 2 cents at the end of lecture about love.

The piece started after she showed the book “The Missing Piece finds the Big O” by Shel Silverstien. I own a copy of “The Missing Piece” but I’ve never read this book. In this book this piece searches high and low to make itself complete. It tried many different tacticts that i’ve tried just to find itself lonely. It found a piece, but then grew and found itself lonely yet again. In the story the piece came across a rounded piece, the piece wanted to roll around with the rounded piece, but the rounded piece didn’t need the other piece, so the piece wanted to roll around but couldn’t, but the rounded piece said to the other piece have you’ve tried. So the piece started to roll around eventually rounding off its corners and then rolling about.

This taught me a couple of things about myself and my love situations. For one I am looking for love in all the wrong places, and for all the wrong reasons. I realized that I am looking for love to complete myself and that I feel empty inside and that someone is going to fill the void. I really can’t help but feel that way, but I know that isn’t true. Finding love won’t solve all my problems. I need to make it on my own and realize that I am complete on my own. I need to love myself and love who I am before I make the choice to love another person. I looked at my current situation and I am starting to realize the because of circumstance that it isn’t a good choice to get my hopes up, or even to pursue anything at this time. We are in very different places, though my feelings for him will never go away as much as I try I have to accept things the way that they are and move on or else I will never get on with my life.

I guess i’ll keep my options open…

I sometimes wonder if this world is ready to enter a new era of responsibility. I look around me and I see people who are not prepared to take responsibility for their actions. They don’t learn from their mistakes and as a result history repeats itself. People come and go, some fade off into oblivion others hurt us in ways that go without consequence. They return like a cancerous tumor. They taint the blood stream and spread through the system to rape and pillage once again never taking responsibility for their previous actions. I’ve noticed that a lot this year. Evil people, people with no moral fiber hurting others, then disappearing off the radar only to come back as nothing has happened before in the past. I understand the concept of forgiveness but I do not condone forgiveness without consequence, without disclosure and without facing your adversaries.

Its funny to observe people and this phenomenon. Lets create a hypothetical situation to illustrate what I am taking about: Person X is in love with person Y, person X hurts person Y. Person X leaves the situation without facing the consequences. Person Y and person Y’s friends talk about person X and how person X is evil and person X doesn’t deserve the love and care of person Y and person Y’s friends. Person X returns, and person Y and person Y’s friends return to normal as nothing happened. Lesson learned, Person X can hurt as many people as he wants because in the end everyone will continue to respect you no matter what you’ve done, just as long as there is a buffer zone for a short period of time. This is a generic situation of course but I’ve seen in here during my tenure at the University of Maine countless times. Again I can’t see us entering a new era of responsibility when this is being taught as socially acceptable.

Well Kenneth Benjamin has done it again. At 58 years old he still hasn’t learned from his mistakes and it repeating the same pattern as before, apparently jail, rehab, and exclusion wasn’t enough for him. I wonder what it is going to take? I’ve learned to trust my instincts and I knew that him reaching out to me was not a genuine action. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.

Washington County - Labor Day 2008

Every year I try to learn something new about the past year so I don’t make the same mistakes over and over. For the most part I adhere to that policy, other times I do not. Failure is always a struggle. Every time it is harder to get back up when you get knocked down, but you have to maintain direction or else you will ultimately fail in life. I admit I didn’t always make the greatest choices in life.

At the beginning of the year I started off living in Hermon, Maine. Instead of confronting my problems I decided to run away from them and move to Milford. The same difficulties are arising and all I can think about doing is running away again. Many of my problems develop from running away. In 2008 I also became more distant to my family because I feel that I need to run away from them, their problems, and how they react to me, and my choice in lifestyle. I can’t help but being me, but I can’t really deal how they react to me and how certain subjects get brought up, so I ran away from those problems.

In school I switched majors for the 3rd time in an attempt to run away from my problems. I switched from Social Work into Psychology. Even though the School of Social Work had some obvious problems and shortfalls, the program was still very manageable. I didn’t get along with my professors and other students in the department which caused many problems in motivating myself to complete the work that was required. It wasn’t a smart decision in hindsight, but it was the choice I made. I am very lucky I didn’t suffer any other repercussions from my actions.

I ran away from my problems at Acadia Hospital because I didn’t know how to effectively deal with them. I also chose to run away from my therapist because she was asking too many uncomfortable questions and was delving into areas I wasn’t prepared to work on. I have many issues to work on, many of which have to do with my mother and my family and how I interact with them. This is more of a personal issue so I won’t get into that.

One day, Labor Day, 2008 I reached the breaking point, summer was stagnant, finding work was difficult, so I decided to run and go on a drive I dove to Lubec, Maine because I wanted to go as far east as possible, and stand out on the Quoddy Straits and dream about life on the other side of the ocean and picture myself out of Maine, off on a new land starting a new life.

I loved and lost in 2008. One love was rekindled, but suffocated faster than it was started. This love hurts the most because I still have contact with him and it hurts to ignore what was said in the past. I don’t know what was meant by those words. We speak as though it is all water under the bridge but I still think about it everyday. He went thorough changes in 2008, many of those changes were for the best. I am very proud of the choices that he made and I know that great success will soon be acquired thanks to the changes he made. I still have issues of what was said before versus the actions of today. Did he really mean those words? If true does he still mean it? what changed? what happened to change the meaning or change the words? I felt I was given a thrown together and not very in depth answer and that hurts me inside. I’m afraid to ask in fear of loosing what we have left. Sometimes I wonder if it is even worth salvaging at this point. Still I have hope. Another love was more of a crush that never happened. I still wonder about him and why it was necessary to stand me up as many times as he did. I guess he’s had a history of that so it doesn’t matter at this point. I’ve never encountered anything like him in recent experience, and still to this day stumps me.

I did a lot of running in 2008, running away from something adverse, and running toward something inviting. Sometimes running toward something inviting doesn’t always produce the desired results. Sometimes being nice stirs up more trouble than it is worth. I repeated a very dangerous pattern that often screwed me in the past. Being nice. Sometimes I am nice and nice to the wrong kind of people. People who will take advantage of certain situation that primarily benefits them. I realized why I am so bitter at times. Mostly because I expend energy in people that it isn’t worth expending that amount of energy, while I ignore the ones that truely appreciate me and my generous tendencies. In 2008 I was happy to help a friend out of a jam. In the end a thank you is all I need. The reason I did it is because if I were in the same situation  would hope that someone would do the same for me. For that I am truely grateful.

What I need to change in 2009

1. Confront my fears in a straightforward and direct manner.
2. Solution oriented, not problem oriented.
3. Confront the truth, expose it for what its worth.
4. Look at the past not as a hindered, but a stepping stone for more possibilities.
5. Evaluate the seriousness of my condition, and not dismiss it as “a problem that will go away”
6. Make small positive daily changes to make the big picture seem less daunting.
7. Keep blogging!

Most of you know me and gather that I am a complicated person. I never take my experiences for face value, but take them for a deep and inner meaning. Sometimes this kicks me in the ass, other times I use it to my advantage. I feel that my experiences are going to prepare me for life and what I am going to become. At this point I feel that I am making the right choices in life. I am establishing myself in school, and striving for a career in the field of psychology. I have greater aspirations than my bachelors degree. Currently I am striving to get my PhD in psychology and hopefully obtain a teaching and research position at a University. I love psychology and I want others to feel the same way and have the same understanding in my field. Currently I am interested in researching the biological basis of behavior and adolescent group functioning.

I tend to have strong opinions about many of today’s issues, so if you have a weak constitution I’d suggest you go elsewhere to complain! but I like to keep an open mind about many of these issues.

I am Josiah, I love, I work, I live, that is who I am, there is nothing more that I can be. That is all…

Sincerely

Josiah James Benjamin

more to come soon…