perhaps sadly, the course of my life can be charted by the extended list of girls for whom my brain has exhausted unmeasured processing time (computer lingo). and so the trend continues….

while driving to work this morning my brain continued, unassailed, to contemplate the newest female introduction in my life. i could make this post about the thoughts my brain produced that directly relate to her, but instead, its the startling thought to which i want to devote some time.

oh. wait. i guess before i do that, i need to lay down some background first. one of the things i was mulling over, with dave mattews band providing the background music, was why i seemed doomed to mental hand-wringing every time i meet a girl that might have something to offer me (that sounds awful to me, but i can’t think of another way to say it).

am i really interested? blah blah blah…. in a moment of clarity it came to me; could this proverbial hand-wringing be a defense mechanism i’ve built over years and years of cowardace? fear of rejection, whether it be immediate or distant. fear of failing. fear of looking foolish.

i’m president of the cowardly lion fan club (being from kansas helps).

for whatever reason, the notion of a defense mechanism has never occurred to me before. i’ve heard about psychological defense mechanisms on television and in the movies, but they were always referred to while taking about physical or emotional abuse inflicted as a child. never had i thought my years of self-doubt and low self-esteem had or would produce such an automatic defense.

i wasn’t focused on failing, focused on all the things that could or would go wrong at some point down the road. what i was focused on, simply, was whether i was truly interested, or if it was a passing infatuation resulting from a cute face and the fact that she laughed at my jokes. and while that question remains, i’m now presented with a seemingly new ‘issue’ to deal with: my newly realized defense mechanism.

of course, the simplest solution, it seems to me, would be to simply address the underlying fear. i’ve said for years, though, that this is much easier said than done. while this fear is broad, it has its roots in an old and deep seeded problem, which i’ve only briefly been forced, literally, to face. its a problem which i may have mentioned previously, but hesitate to do so here.

as is typical for me, i’m inclined to seek guidence from friends, but the thought of such brings to mind flashbacks to high school and so i’m reluctant. really, aren’t i old enough to deal with this shit on my own?