WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT!!! Read at your own risk......SERIOUSLY!!!

I am awash in confusion, pain, disillusionment; short on answers, long on misery. Why is it that I am repeatedly encountering such blisteringly awful people when all I am trying to do is connect, meet-and-greet, maybe find something with a bit more gravitas than just a friendship? What is wrong with me? I have to say that I don't really know that there is anything wrong with me but I keep attracting guys with the quality of flies to shit. I also see how I set myself up to imagine all kinds of awful things about me because I do indulge in the viewing of porn and use it to satisfy my carnal ambitions(more on this later). I imagined it was the safe way to keep myself from getting emotionally entangled, as I am so able to do, in one night stands or quickies. I cannot separate my emotional self from the sexual self and be animalistic in my pursuits. I cannot keep from growing some kind of attachment to the other person. I am not made that way. I am complete in my evolution and it is all meant to be experienced as a whole within me. Which brings me back to the pain of constantly encountering such freaks and weirdos. So I cannot go out and sleep around and find satisfaction, nor can I utilize porn as a means to recreate with my body because here is what happens: Porn is a set of idealistic pictures and actions, whether from the stand point of bodily perfection, sexual positioning, settings, etc. As I peruse porn, I see all these scenes and scenarios that are so titillating(I CANNOT BELIEVE that I just used that word!!!) and "perfect" in their specificity. My brain takes that "perfection" and punishes me for not having it in my life. I am not that perfect body, I am not the idealized fantasy of every living creature, I do not enjoy the perfect lover in my life, I do not have the biggest genitalia, best ass, nicest chest, nor youth anymore, I am not the living embodiment of every one's fantastical dreams. So I submerge myself into those fantasies of perfection but I do not walk away unscathed: I suffer a half-conscious repeated self-rejection every time I am confronted with the pictures, be it on a billboard(like A&F models, so young and visually perfect), in porn, in any kind of advertising. I am a victim of my ego's repeated and constant need to throw up into my face the seriously lacking details as compared to the perfections demonstrated in porn. As it is I work in the Castro and am constantly being bombarded with aspects of well-defined men, younger men, "more beautiful" men(all regardless of their state of drunkenness), and the built in reminder that I am not any of those thing(never mind what I am that is good), so therefore I am "less than", "lacking", "not good enough", "a failure", "uninteresting", "not deserving of respect and good treatment". And what do you suppose it is doing to me? It is slowly poisoning me. I see myself mistreating others. I see myself being caustic. I am becoming that bitter old fool that nobody likes to be around. I see why it is that so many people drink to excess so regularly. These self-inflicted demons are slowly wearing me down and I, too, want to escape. How does this tie in with the writings at the beginning of this blog post? Clearly, I had another, well 2, unfortunate and ugly incidents with prospective dates. I find myself too quickly wanting for them to "love" me rapidly, as a means of saying that I am indeed ok after all. I try to play it cool. I try to be reasonable. I want things to be smooth and simple yet I am so quick to become emotionally invested in what really is nothing more than a simple engagement over a plate of food. I need to step back. A LOT. I need to pull out from all the madness that I have created. I need to begin to recognize that when I'm "feeling" something for someone, it is WAYYYY TTOOOO SOOOON and quite possibly is rooted in my own obsessive need to "belong", "be loved", and not have to recoil so severely when it ends badly. Writing this now, I am embarking on a steady diet of "porn-free" living. I do not need the subversive psychological messaging that my brain gathers up and hurls back at me. I am not living life to be the embodiment of anyone and every one's deepest fantasies. How could that be possibly? I am not capable of maintaining a sexual lifestyle to give to all those people anyway. I get locked up into those half-conscious messages of not good enough and they are brutal and relentless because they sneak in and percolate so subtly, a feeling comes to tell me that I am living in the dream of their destruction and I suffer because I do not fully awaken to the stress of them. I then lash out at other people because I am in pain but am not able to see that my dissatisfaction with the other person is really based in the half-conscious pain I am basting in. I am unfriendly, I tell quick mental stories about them so as to distract from my own perceived failings(very short lived) and "package" them up into a cruel treatment and then dispose. It happens so very quickly and I find that I am aware of it AFTER they have gone and it becomes more shame heaped up on me and I continue to cruelly treat myself, half conscious, and the cycle continues. Is this any way to live?