I heard an interesting story today. I don't want to get into too much detail. I suspect that it was a little more painful for those involved than the retelling indicated, and I've got no business opening up anyone else's wounds.

Just a little story about a promise kept. An impulse followed. A relationship tested. A drunken jaunt similar to those that have run rampant in my own imagination for months.

I was thinking about this tonight, as I tried to put into words some of my imaginings. As I was trying to do the homework I wrote about the other night and, failing miserably, I thought about this story I'd heard.

This was a story about people that cared about each other. Each in their own way, to be sure, and I'm not going to sit here and say that I completely understand everything, but all of the people in this story definitely cared about what was happening. And even if they didn't like it, they at least understood.

I tried to use this story as an inspiration for my own.

And, as I said, I was failing miserably. I failed miserably.

See, a story of understanding and caring just does not apply to me right now. There are things that have happened to me, or because of me, that I still don't understand. Things that I may never understand. Yet I don't care. I've said so many times in these writings that it's all irrelevant. I believed it each time I wrote it. This time as I write it I don't just believe it - I know it. And if understanding is irrelevant, then I don't need it.

Everything that once threatened to pull me Westward is still there. Every answer to every question is still there, behind those sparkling eyes. It's not that I don't want to know the answers to these questions. I still do. But what was once an all-consuming force has been reduced to mere curiosity. Sure, it'd be nice to know the answers, but I don't really care what they are. And if these secrets wish to remain as such, well that's fine too.

I guess you could say that I've given up.

You could say that, but you'd be wrong. I haven't given up anything. Whatever it was that I had, whatever it was that was driving me for so many months, I didn't give it up.

It was taken from me. In the middle of the night, two weeks ago, I lost focus. Not because I'd turned my gaze elsewhere, but because the world itself had shifted around me. I'm still stumbling about, waiting for my vision to clear. I have no idea what I'll see when and if the world solidifies.

And, right now, I really don't care.

So I won't be writing the story of my search for answers and closure. I won't be writing of how I'd face my fears and my desires and walk through the desert to bare my chest and offer up my heart. I won't be writing about the pain or the joy that would result from such a journey. That story just isn't inside me anymore. Exactly what's inside me I'm not sure.

And I don't really care.