Sometimes, that's all you can do. Gasp for air, and then do it again and again. An act of will, every time, and also an act of desperation.

I remember the first time I had to gasp like this. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. What had just happened. What this portended. Everything had changed, and I only needed to live, to keep gasping for air, until it changed again.

Sometimes, things don't work out.

To be so lucky, and still so cursed.

Words didn't work. Actions didn't work. Precious comfortable promising moments didn't work. Even the fucking magic wand didn't work.

My gasps aren't much more than exclamation points now. Screams from a voice that's gone hoarse.

People would say it was a stupid thing to do, if people knew. I don't tell them, though. It's none of their business. It's only for me.

I poke the sleeping beast, to awaken it, to be reminded of the danger that I face.

It's so easy to forget. To be distracted by fleeting glimpses and wispy remnants of fading dreams. By facades and lies.

I poke the sleeping beast. I bare my chest to its claws.

It slashes. Rips. Tears.

And I remember.

I had it all figured out, what I was going to write in another month.

I had all the words corralled in my head.

Waiting. Ready. Eager.

A year would have been awesome.

But noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

I don't get to release the words.

Fuck, I don't even get to write eleven in four minutes. I'd really been looking forward to that.

I have to start all over again.

Good thing I have patience.

I'm not going to jinx myself here. What will happen will happen, whether or not I write anything or even notice anything. It will either come back or it won't. I'm not going to worry about it either way.

I remember reading that old people often have moments of clarity right before they die. A few precious minutes to be themselves, with their thoughts and their emotions and their memories. A few precious minutes, then they die.

I don't remember where I read that. I don't know if it's true or not. I also don't know what it means that, for the last three days, I've had almost perfect clarity.

RockGirl says I'm probably not about to die. She's usually right about that sort of thing, so I'll go ahead and believe her.

In 2005 and 2006 and even a couple of times in 2008, I found clarity. I stopped being distracted by the context of my life, and I started actually living that life. As well as I could, anyway.

Each of those times, I thought and hoped that it might last forever, but it never did. Each of those times, it only lasted for a few hours before the context rose back up to drown me.

This is a pretty crappy time of the year for me. I've written before about how I hate the Fall and November in particular. It would be so easy to lose focus. It would be so expected to lose focus.

So far, though, so good.

I'm pretty sure I'm repeating myself. I think that a lot lately. The thing is, see, I've written 194,201 words since this all started to end or whatever it did. Things I've written there haven't been censored at all, but neither have they been me because they've been anonymous.

Okay, so those words aren't here. They're elsewhere. You just have to know what to Google. Good luck finding them.

Anyway.

In ten days I'll write a quickie called Eleven or something like that. It will happen. Unless it doesn't.

I don't know what I want. I know I've written that before. It's just a fucked up situation. It's a problem with no solution, at least not a solution that I have any control over.

People can change, but it's rare. People can give a shit, but it's more rare. People can admit the truth to themselves, but that's the most rare of all.

There was another site, not mine. I can't think of the name of it for sure. Some place for anonymous venting. I wrote one thing on that site, once, well over a year ago.

I'm in love with a girl I can't stand. I miss her constantly, but then as soon as I'm with her I can't wait to get away.

And the funny thing is, it doesn't end. My feelings haven't changed one iota. My thoughts have run the gamut, but my feelings, my feelings are still the same as they've been for over eight years now.

If I believed in God, I'd become an atheist just to spite the cocksucker. No way no how do I deserve this. Nobody deserves this.

I'm actually in a decent mood right now.

I'm pissed about that.

The walking dorks walked their route the wrong way today. They went clockwise around the parking lot. I bet they're pod people now. That's exactly the kind of simple mistake that pod people would make. I'll have to keep an eye on them.

---

It's not loneliness I feel. It's much more specific than that. It's always specific. One, or the other, or another. I'm alone most of the time, but I don't always feel alone. I'm okay, sometimes.

Crowds are the worst for me. For me, it's impossible to not feel alone in a crowd. I just want to slink into myself and hide from all the chaos around me. Or I find one and I focus.

---

I just have to focus. That's how I manage things like the other night. Once I'd resigned myself to the fact that I couldn't grow eyes in the back of my head, I was able to stop being so damn nervous. Because it wasn't doing either of us any good. We ended up having good time, despite my initial misgivings about going there. A really good time.

---

I don't know where this might lead. Maybe nowhere. Maybe somewhere. That's part of the excitement, I suppose. It's not boring, that's for sure.

---

Picklepie runs up onto my deck most nights when I get home. I pour food in his bowl, but he doesn't want that. He's getting plenty of food somewhere. All he wants from me is to be petted and loved. So I do that. He's a good kitty. I miss him when he disappears.

---

It's not that. Not all of the time. Most of the time, it's just an ache. I can live with it, since it seems that I have no choice.

And you just exist, and you try your best to do more than simply exist, and then you see that it's been eight years since your life changed. Ended. Began. Something. And you see that all you've done is exist. Barely.

And you try to convince yourself that it wasn't all wasted. And you fail. And you want to break down. Because it's just too long. Because it's just too much.

Faith is a funny thing. And by funny I mean incredibly cruel.

This won't work. I'm going to just go ahead and say that it won't work. But I'm going to try. I'm going to try to write something. Even though I've really got to pee right now.

I used to have this thing. This delusion, I guess. Or maybe a psychosis. I thought it was just hope, but seeing as I was subject to delusions and psychosises, my opinion never held much weight. Not even with me.

That was circular reasoning, back there.

Also, I made that word up.

Regarding one particular, um, relationship, I used to think that things would be fine. That it was just a rough patch. That, as long as I stayed true, eventually I'd be treated nicely. It's been a long time since I've felt that way about that particular, um, relationship. After enough mistreatment, I began to expect the worst from every encounter. I lost that hope or delusion or psychosis or whatever. I expected to be shit upon.

Finally, I got to be right. Yay for me, I guess.

Now, there's another, um, relationship that's falling apart. And I find myself doing the same thing. I keep thinking that it will be okay. That this is just a rough patch. That we're way too close to let a little thing like this come between us. That, as long as I stay true, I'll be treated nicely.

So far, not so much.

I think it's a very sad thing, that what used to be so beautiful has been reduced to me waiting for hope to end.

Yes, indeed, it's a very sad thing.

Steeling myself. It won't be long now.

Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day. Anything after Tuesday would be a miracle, I think.

There's nothing I can do, except wait for the inevitable, and prepare to mourn.

So Friday, after work, I went to Rich O's. First time in a couple of weeks, I think. I don't really know why I went. It's not like there's anything there for me anymore. My friends have all finished what I started - abandoned the place for the most part. I think we still go there, every now and then, full of some misguided hope that things will be back to normal for a while.

Yeah, that's never happened. Sometimes the past is really the past. Sometimes change is not only for the worse, it's permanent.

I go in there these days and I'm usually the only customer there is in the Rich O's proper area. Oh well, I guess. This is what they wanted, for some stupid reason.

Anyway.

What I wanted to write about was that, when I went there Friday, I started shaking. Like from a bizarre mixture of excitement and fear. I mean, I fell in love in that place. I found hope in that place. I found patience in that place. Then, later, I found other things. Disappointment. Despair. Heartache.

I finally stopped shaking about an hour after I got back home.

It's really amazing to me, how emotions can hide in places, behind memories. You walk into a place and, for a while, you think you're safe. But you're not. The emotions are waiting. They ambush you. They jump into you, and they take over. They run the show that is you.

My friend OddlyFamiliarGirl remembers every word of every conversation she's ever had. She's all smart and shit, that girl. My own memory isn't quite as strong, nor is it made of the same stuff. Nope, I remember emotions. Not to the point where I can easily relive them, just enough to remember that they're there. Waiting, lurking.

Then, as soon as I realize they're there, they strike, and I shake.

OddlyFamiliarGirl's way would be better, I think. It would certainly be easier to deal with. Plus, it would make for a good party trick.

Behind places, and faces, beneath sights and sounds, the memories wait for me to show up. They even welcome me, sometimes. But hiding behind the memories are the emotions, and they always surprise me with their ruthless intensity, and they tear away at me, and I could do certainly without them.

What good have they ever done me?

This doesn't count. I'm nowhere near as loosened up as I'd hoped to be.

I'm going to be so pissed at myself in 40 years, when I go back to read this shit. Such an important and formative time in my life, and I'm staying so silent. It's like I expect to remember all this shit. Fuck, I'll be lucky to remember my own damn name in 40 years, or how to not piss my pants.

But what can I say? What can I say that hasn't already been said a million times, or been censored a million times?

I'm stuck here, you know. Trying to invent a middle ground where none exists. Loving what I hate, and hating what I love. Everything I ever wanted, blended with everything I ever avoided. My life is a grotesque mixture of dread and hope, of fear and desire, of love and hate. I'm trying to muddle through, but really just surviving, and only barely at that.

This would all be so very interesting, if only I could step aside for a while. If only I could be objective for a while. I feel things, and they're not true. They're not even close to being true, but I not only don't care, I refuse to see. Feelings trump facts, every single time. Faced with the absolute worst, I continue to see only the absolute best. Why is that? Why is it so different this time? Seriously, has there truly never been another?

Why am I so incapable of seeing the damn truth when it's been right in front of my face for all these years?

Fuck if I know. It just is what it is. I just am what I am.

Years ago, I wrote that, if I could step back and take a good look at myself, I'd laugh my ass off. Maybe that's still true, but I bet there would be an awful lot of tears as well. I'm just stuck. I don't know what to do, or if I should do anything at all.

Some things never change.

Like I said, this doesn't count. This isn't even close.

I'm not really sure when I crossed this particular line. Sometime between two years and two months ago, if I had to guess. Sadness became a hard thing to muster, and anger became the easiest thing in the world.

I don't like it, but there it is. Things are, as always, what they are.

The quiet contemplative moments are what I crave and relish, but they're too few and too far between for any semblance of normalcy. There is very little silence within me. I just have to feel something, and feel it strongly, and that's all there is to it.

So I turn my back on the anger that the world expects, and I face the sadness that only I truly understand. Because the thoughts that rise from anger, deserved as they may be, don't fit. They don't fit my heart or my head or the world or the universe. I don't want them. I don't want to think those things about her.

So, I choose to be sad.

Funny, she was right about that. I didn't know it at the time, but she was right. Faced with the choice I've been given, I choose sadness.

Tossed and turned all night. Too damn hot. Too damn much second guessing of everything.

The birds and the crickets outside my open windows squawked and chirped their disappointment all night, scolding me. The lightning bugs flashed their disgust. The stars blinked in disbelief at what I'd said.

I needed more time to find words, but there was none to be found. The time was upon me, the questions asked, and I had to answer with the inadequate and jarring words I had. Silence, though, would have been worse.

I would have liked to have been able to offer solutions instead of just problems. I would have liked that very much. But I didn't, and I still haven't. Solutions evade me, if they exist at all. I look for them, but all I find are increasingly-unlikely miracles.

There was a time when I'd simply stay quiet. Then there was a time when I'd just walk away. Those times are in the past. Now is the time to speak up. For, if anything is to be saved, it won't be saved by my turning the other cheek. If anything is to be saved, that salvation will have to start with honest words.

My words have always been honest. I only wish they'd been more tactful.

Let me make sure I've got this straight. I'm stupid, and I'm a liar, and I'm crazy, and I'm a drunk. But I'm a stupid lying crazy drunk with a truck, so that makes me useful?

Well, as sweet as that is, I'm afraid that I have to decline.

I wish I could make myself believe that this was simply being used as a convenient excuse to see me for some other, nicer, reason, but I can't. And I don't.

Reconciliation is what's needed. Rebuilding is what's needed, if it's even possible, for I may have been irrevocably destroyed. We may have been irrevocably destroyed. Even if it's somehow possible to fix things between us, nothing is going to happen without major changes. Changes that I can't make on my own.

And attempting to take further advantage of my feelings does not count as a major change. And neither does name-dropping another guy eight sentences into a conversation. It's just the same old crap. Problem is, I'm no longer the same person, and I won't put up with it anymore.

Especially not when I'd fully expect to be tossed aside as soon as my services were no longer needed.

Act like a certain kind of person often enough and, eventually, I'm going to believe you're that kind of person. And then, eventually, I'm going to treat you like that kind of person.

I'm so very sorry that it's turned out this way, but I didn't get here on my own. I was pushed and dragged. And I was kicking and screaming all the way here. Remember? I certainly do.

Sure, I worked hard, and sure, I put up with a lot of shit, but it was worth it. Or it was going to be worth it. My payday was going to be huge. I was, in fact, going to be set for life.

Didn't work out that way.

Oh well, right?

Sometimes I manage to find that attitude inside me. That oh well attitude that the world expects me to be displaying by now. Sometimes I throw in an at least I tried but not too often because it's usually followed by but I obviously didn't try hard enough

And that sucks, because I really don't know if I was capable of trying any harder.

---

Yeah, so I've pretty much shut down my life. Work and home are pretty safe, for now. Stupid Jack's on Sundays, stupid Bearno's or Korner Pub on others days - they feel fairly safe, for now. Eventually, that safety could be revealed as an illusion, and then I'll retract even more.

It's not the same as it was before. Now, there's too much overlap causing too much paranoia and fear. Places and people and circumstances, huge chunks of my life, are off-limits to me. Not quite six months may as well be not quite six seconds or not quite six centuries. There'll never be enough time for this to become a part of my past. It's a part of who I am, and so I carry it through time with me.

I've made progress, that's for sure. But there'll never be enough. I cling to this slippery slope. Resting is hard enough, climbing is almost impossible, but I do make progress sometimes. Every now and then, I lose purchase and begin to slide back down. So far, I've been lucky. I've managed to catch myself and halt my descent. But my luck won't last forever. Only this slope lasts forever.

This is my life now. Clinging for life, when it would be so easy to let go, and so exhilarating to slide back down.

I remember what I said, the words that I chose, when I finally said what I'd waited so long to say.

There have been no lies, before or since, but truer words than those seven have never been spoken.

So there.

Five or six or a million times a day, I'll have a thought. Then, five or six or a million times a day, I'll remember. The memories vary, as do the thoughts, but all of each kind are rooted together. One encourages, and then the other discourages. One laughs, and then the other cries. One seeks, and then the other hides. One loves, and then the other hates.

My thoughts, my memories, they balance each other almost perfectly these days. No extremity of mood is allowed to last. Intense explosions of emotion are over as soon as they're noticed. Afterimages fade, cycles repeat, days and weeks and months pass.

Holding my interest might be impossible.

This is my problem, and nobody else's.

I knew this would change me.

I was trying to find something. A web page I ran across once, several years ago. It was a page about flow. I haven't been able to find that old web page, but I did find an old blog entry of mine that I must have written with that page in mind.

It doesn't make a difference, though, even though every spare instance of logical thought screams at you that it should make a huge difference, it simply doesn't. Not in the long run, anyway. You know what you know, and you feel what you feel, and the sad truth is that the two are not always complimentary.

You find yourself forced to choose between the truth and the fantasy, but it's not such a daunting task, because there is no choice. The heart wins, every time without fail or even much hesitation, the heart wins.

The thing that I can't seem to get to stick in my head is that there's nothing I can do.

I didn't do enough before. No matter how hard that is for me to accept. Even though I did so much, more than I'd have thought possible and more than most people would have done, I simply didn't do enough to be good enough.

During, I did too much. I was honest and forthcoming. Too much of each, because I was also hurting. In shock by the suddenness and the brutality of what was happening. I should have taken the time to let things digest. But, I didn't. I screwed up and I let my emotions take over. Oops, right?

And after? After, I don't know what's been going on. I've either been doing too much or too little or the exact right amount, but it doesn't matter, because it's been out of my hands, and it's still out of my hands, and I wish I could accept that fact instead of forgetting it every 10 seconds. Instead of always trying to do something, anything at all, to fix this.

Anyway, I used to always tell her to stop worrying, that I'd be okay, because I'd always been okay, in the past. I'd always bounced back, in the past.

Lately, I've been facing the very real possibility that I won't bounce back this time. That this just might be it for me. These are not particularly fun thoughts to be having, but I'm nothing if not honest with myself. Besides, I'm not sure I want to bounce back. I definitely don't want to forget, and I'm more than a little concerned that the former may lead to the latter.

I guess I'm a little bored today. I feel writey, but not very flowy.

I'm making up words, you see. That's almost never a good sign.

I know that expectations are bad things. They only lead to trouble. People tell me over and over to not have them. Many of these same people are the worst offenders of their own rule. They just like to pretend that they've got all their shit together. Maybe they fool themselves or other people, but they don't fool me.

I have zero expectations for the people I don't care about. Also for the people I don't know or never heard of. For everyone else, guess what? Expectations are going to happen.

So, lately, for certain people, I've had to change my expectations. I haven't been able to eliminate them, so I've had to change them. This was so I'd stop being mad and sad and disappointed all the time.

Now, for certain people, I expect nothing but the absolute worst. This sucks, because I continue to hope for the absolute best.

They say that, without expectations, disappointments are a thing of the past. Well, there's another way to eliminate disappointments. Expect the worst. As a bonus, sometimes you get to be pleasantly surprised. So I've heard, anyway.

And it sucks that I feel that I need to think these things about another human being, especially when it's a person who's important to me.

And it sucks even more when these revised expectations are proven right time after time after time after time after time.

Clearly, something has happened. I don't know exactly what. I have some facts, and I'll keep those to myself. I also have some theories, and I don't know if I want them to become facts or not.

I keep looking for reasons. I keep looking and, though they stand right in front of me, I pretend that I don't see them. I keep looking for something that will not only make sense of things, but will make the kind of sense I can live with. Not like or even agree with, just live with. That shouldn't be too much to ask.

I'd like to be able to say that everything will be okay, but I really don't think it will. Not anymore.

Sometimes I feel like I'm just waiting for this phase to end. Except I'm not really waiting. That's too strong a word. It implies too much effort, or maybe too little effort. Words are hard.

And it's not really a phase, I don't think. Nope, more and more often I find myself thinking that it's not a phase; sometime over the last couple of years, it's become a personality.

I prefer to think of this as a change rather than, say, an unveiling. That lessens the sting a little. Not a lot, but maybe enough. Maybe.

It bugs me when I feel like I'm doing this not-quite-waiting thing. There's really no point. Because I've changed, too, and my change might be permanent.

It would be pretty ironic if the tables ended up turning. Not funny, though, not at all. I think it would be incredibly sad.

I'd probably cave.

Spent some time tonight trying to figure out where I am. Or where I'm going. Both answers have eluded me. I can't even tell if I'm the one moving, or if it's the world that's moving past me. The former, I usually think, but maybe not so much this weekend.

This weekend, I've stood still. I've done nothing. I've rejected invitations and I've ignored phone calls. I've done nothing with my life except that thing which comes all too easily to me. I've wondered.

I remember a time, not too far in the past, when I always felt like I was moving toward something. It was, to be sure, a long and arduous journey, but there was a destination. Now, again, not so much. Maybe I'm still moving, but the world is flat, and only the edge awaits me. Or perhaps I'm a deer frozen by headlights. By fear. By uncertainty as to which way safety lies.

Perhaps there is no safety, and I'm only fooling myself when I let those silly thoughts claw their way to the front of my mind.

It bears down upon me, or I hurtle toward it, and I don't know what it is.

I'm really rambling now. I know that. My brain is at such odds with itself. Wonderful thoughts enter and are immediately rejected as horrible.

I forget too much, and I remember way too much.

I'm just so damn tired of it.

I remember reading something once. That a sign of a dying blog is when the blog becomes full of apologies and excuses for not having new content.

I think I'm just tired. Of everything. Writing. Pretending. Work. Love. Life.

There's no point.

There's no spark in me at all. Not even an ember that I can somehow fan back to life.

This mood shall pass.

Unless it doesn't.

So very tired.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

It's not like that, and it never was.

This has been one of the toughest obstacles to understanding that I've faced over the years. It comes up time after time after time, and it's always wrong, and I never seem to be able to find the words to explain the way it truly was. The way it truly is.

Expectations, assumptions, hopes, they never mattered, not enough to affect any of this. Those things still don't matter.

It just was. It just happened.

That girl is beautiful. That girl seems smart. That girl seems sweet. That girl doesn't seem like a slut. That girl seems friendly.

Nope, I never had any of those thoughts, not at first anyway. I didn't have time for those thoughts. I had two seconds, and that's all I needed. That was an eternity compared to what I needed.

That girl.

Period.

Everything was a bonus. There was no validation or authentication or demonstration or confirmation. There was no ideal, no pedestal, no fantasy, no anything except...

I had nothing but a simple fact, and nothing that's ever happened has changed that simple fact.

That girl.

Period.

---

Sometimes, I hear stories. I don't like them. I don't like hearing them. I wish people would stop telling them to me. They've never changed a thing except my mood.

I'm feeling jealous today. A little mad, too. These feelings will pass. They always do. Only one thing is constant.

And, before too long if it hasn't happened already, the tables will turn, and I'll be the one being envied.

I don't like these thoughts, but neither do I fight them. I just notice them and maybe use them to understand myself a little better. This stuff is interesting to me, the changes that are happening inside me. The back and forth that occurs as I try to find a new equilibrium in this new reality. I sway a lot these days, but I haven't fallen in a long time. Perhaps that power is no longer hers.

None of this can be forced. I've tried and I've failed to rush this. I just have to let it happen, and hope that eventually I'll be better. But if not, then at least I'll still be me, and not some liar denier pretender. I'd much rather be miserable and true to myself than happy and deceptive.

But still, I don't like these particular thoughts. They end badly, for they lead me to a truth that, even now, I'm not ready to accept.

I dunno. It'll pass, I suppose.

I made a choice once. No really, I did. In November.

It was the first choice I'd made since it all began. I went against every instinct and feeling that I had, and I chose to stop. To give up. To turn my back. To walk away. No matter how you want to phrase it, this thing, this last thing, this ending, it was my choice.

I won't lie; I second-guess that choice every single day. Sometimes I regret it, and sometimes I agree with it. Usually, though, I just wish I'd never found myself in a position where I had to make that choice at all.

It's a sneaky bastard, that's what it is. And fucking persistent.

I lock the doors and I bar the windows, and I think I'm safe. I'm not safe. It gets in. It wends its way through the tiniest cracks in my soul.

Hope for what, exactly?

For a chance? That time expired a long time ago.

For a miracle? Nope. Too little, too late.

Maybe, I think, for a series of miracles. At least a dozen of them, each more improbable than the last, culminating in a singularity of...

...something.

I don't know. I just don't.

To nonsensically need what I don't want. To desperately want what I don't need. To count on the impossible. To deny the inevitable. All are true, and all are false.

People say that it's good that I'm finally getting better, finally getting over this, finally moving on.

Those people can suck my dick.

Those people have no idea what it is to be me and to go through this.

To kill yourself, and hope that there's an afterlife.

Or that there's not.

I don't know how to describe this well. I know how to describe it badly, though, and so I guess that's what I'm about to do. You've been warned.

It's like I'm made, not of water and bone and goo, but of clay. Hundred of bits of clay, all stuck together. Ranging in size from that of a marble to that of, say, a baseball.

I walk around, I exist, I go through the motions of life like an actual normal person, but every now and then, a piece of me falls off. It falls off, and it hits the ground, and usually it shatters.

I always notice it, when a part of me falls like that. It's not really painful, not like it used to be, it just something I notice. On those occasions when the piece doesn't shatter, I usually pick it up and try to stick it back on, like sticking a piece of wet clay back onto its vase. It never sticks though. It always falls again. I eventually give up.

What's gone is gone, right?

Right?

But I can't help but wonder what will happen when I run out of clay. When there's nothing left of me to fall.

There, I feel better now. I've had this stupid clay metaphor stuck in my head for weeks.

And so that inkling became an idea, which quickly became a desire which even more quickly became an impulse acted upon.

No time for doubt before, only for embarrassment after. In the morning. Unnecessary, unneeded, unwarranted, unwanted embarrassment.

For what?

Beautiful, that's what it was. No other word will do it justice.

Do not be embarrassed. It was necessary. It was needed. It was beautiful.

Just like you.

I'm going to ramble for a bit. Get over it. Or not. I don't care. It's my blog.

She's always been nice. Always. Not just when she's been drunk, or when she's wanted something, or when she's felt guilty. Despite the bullshit of two months ago, I can truthfully say that she's always been nice.

And, she's always been sweet. Always. Not just when she's been drunk, or when she's wanted something, or when she's felt guilty.

Tomorrow, I'm going to see her. After almost six months, I'm going to hold her.

But who am I going to miss? Who am I going to continue to miss?

Same person I miss right now.

Someone who's nice, at least when she's drunk, or when she wants something, or when she feels guilty. Someone who's just incredibly unbelievably sweet, at least when she's drunk, or when she wants something, or when she feels guilty.

(That last paragraph reads a lot meaner than it was intended. There were other times. Lot's of other times.)

I'm going to miss her, as I've always missed her, for a lot of reasons. Inertia, partly, but also because I was telling the truth that night. The night after the hurricane, when I took her hand, and I took a breath, and I finally told her that she was the love of my life.

Last time I checked, I was still alive. My life was ongoing.

Barely.

So my statement still counts. To me at least, it counts. For something.

For everything.

And then, sometimes, I'm thinking fuck it. If those eyes want to keep prying, then how is that my fault?

Oh, that's right, because I'm an asshole who, at any second, is bound to write something mean. Or something like that. If there's a different reason, I'd sure like to know it.

Anyway.

It's supposed to be fairly warm the next couple of days. I'm moderately excited about the possibility of going out to my garage with a beer or three so that I can do some navel-gazing. I haven't been out there since the weather got cold in the Fall. I miss it. I miss my swing even more, but that's a different story.

My mood has been mostly weird lately. My thoughts, unfettered. The things I used to think about all the time, they no longer hold my interest like they used to. So, if I go out to my garage and do some serious thinking, there's no telling where my thoughts will go. It's a little scary, sure, but it's also quite interesting to me. There was a time, not too long ago, when my thoughts always went to the same place.

Now, not so much.

I kinda feel like I should be writing something now. I'm at work, though, so it will be something short. And, probably, something stupid. But that's okay with me.

Clearly, I'm sick of doing this. Writing censored versions of my thoughts, lest certain eyes become upset. I don't want to upset those eyes. I've done enough of that over the years. But my thoughts, they aren't watered down and pussified. They're just as intense as they've always been, even moreso regarding some things and some people and some circumstances.

Hence, my dilemma.

If I can't write what I want and need to write, then why bother to write at all?

So, I write.

I'm still here, you know. This poet, hiding behind feelings behind thoughts behind words. Clutching to the truth lest it be stolen away from me.

Crazy. Stupid. Drunk. Liar. Those labels have been flung at me time after time in desperate cruelty. None of them have stuck. I may as well be called a Giraffe. I'm not one of those either.

How do I love someone like that, someone who's so convinced that she's unlovable that she knows, just knows, that there must be something wrong with anyone daring to try?

I don't, that's how. Not anymore.

Instead, I gave it everything I had and then, after a while, I gave up. I buried what was left and now I pretend that there is nothing. That maybe there was always nothing. That maybe it was all just a mistake, or a misunderstanding, or a delusion.

But, deep inside, a part of me still knows the truth, and I cling to it.

I cling to the truth that only I will ever truly know, and I try to hold myself together.

Sometimes, no matter how tight my grip, a little bit of truth escapes.

And those prying eyes, they see.

Sometimes, I write.

I don't like it. I'm not entirely sure why I don't like it, but I don't.

It's just been too long. Too much water under the bridge, as they say.

I'm concerned, I think. I don't know what's going to happen next. Could be good, could be bad, could be nothing. I don't like this uncertainty. It, like I said, concerns me.

Plus, I'm a different person now than I was back then. I think I'm a better person now, though anyone who knew me back then might disagree. I'm certainly not the same person. Not even close.

And I don't really like being reminded of how I used to be. Oh sure, I might have eventually gotten around to doing the right thing, 20 years ago, but I should never have let it come to that point. To where the right thing was so fucking painful, I mean.

Could have been worse. I could have stuck around, kept hiding things, eventually exploded.

That would have been gross.

He clings. To whatever is left of himself, he clings.

I go down there, every now and then. Just to check on him. We were friends once, after all. I go to see if he's still breathing. Or if he'll say something. Or if he'll fucking eat something.

Over three months now since I made the toughest decision of my life. That's how long his hunger strike has lasted, and how long his voice has been silent.

He makes no sound when I approach. He shows no emotion or even recognition. He simply stares. At me, or maybe through me. I can't tell. His eyes. His fucking eyes. So much hate in those eyes. And so much sorrow.

So much determination, to outlast me, to outlive me.

To win.

You know what's worse than screams?

He stays down there almost all of the time lately. Down in the dungeon of my mind. The doors are not locked. He's free to come and go as he pleases. But he seems to prefer it down there. Or, at least, he prefers the darkness to the light.

His screams were so loud. They cut straight through me.

I feel for him. I really do. After all, I wouldn't be here if it weren't for him. Faced with that which neither of us could survive alone, the two of us together somehow pulled through. An unbeatable team bound, for a while at least, by parallel goals.

To endure. To live. To persevere. To exist.

To wait.

His screams were so piercing, but at least they showed strength. A will to keep trying, to keep fighting. His screams reminded me of those long-ago days and nights when we screamed together in horrible harmony.

You know what's worse than screams?

All I hear now is soft sobbing. And it keeps getting softer.

Ready to die, in fact, but not until he knows that he'll outlive me.

To love so strongly, no matter what, to never stop...

I admire him as much as I pity him. That poor magnificent bastard...

It used to be all so effortless, even to the point of bothersome. But it was okay. It was who I was. How I was. What I was. I was that guy.

This morning it's taking an actual effort. I can do it, sure, but it's quickly wearing me out. It's worth it, though. To feel like myself for a while.

Last Sunday was magical. My mind would return there, as always, but those thoughts didn't hold my interest at all. For the first time in years, my mind wandered.

I kinda want to write something today. I know what I want to write about, but I'm unsure as to how I should approach the subject. Misinterpretation is, after all, rampant.

I try to be nice about this. Even though I know it's probably pointless. Even though I know that niceness has been and will continue to be twisted into something bad more often than not. Something has poisoned her opinion of me. Every word is a lie. Every action is sinister. Every motive is evil. But being nice still seems like the right thing to do. So, aside from a few moments of anger and a few more moments of despair, I do try to be nice.

Plus, there are things that still happen, every now and then. I don't know why these things happen. I have to guess. And, what I usually guess is that I haven't been forgotten. I try to be nice, to honor those lingering memories.

I tried to be nice the other day. It got twisted into something mean, as I should have known or at least suspected it would. But sometimes I still lose sight of the truth. Sometimes I still do stupid things. Trying to be nice the other day was stupid, as it turned out. But I never have any way of knowing ahead of time how my overtures will be received, if they're received at all. It sucks, but I do what I can when I can. I do miss her, and the kid. Things would be a lot easier, for everyone, if I'd stop missing them.

It would also help if I knew what I wanted to happen. I have no clue anymore. I only have a vague fuzzy sense that I want things to be okay between us. I can't define what that word means. It's a ghost haunting my head, glimpsed only rarely and only for an instant.

I kinda wish that I knew what I wished.

I can already tell that this isn't going to work.

I'd decided that I'd just do one of those entries where I just started typing, and see what happens.

Problem is, I have a specific topic that I want to write about, and I kinda want it to be a good entry. I have so few good ideas that I allow myself to write about - I don't want to waste an idea with random finger movements.

I had a dream. In my dream, something bad happened, and it caused me to give up. I gave up on everything. Work. Family. Friends. Love. Life. Everything.

I cast loose all of the ties that bound me, and I literally walked away from it all. I lived an anonymous life after that. No friends. No job. Certainly no love. And none of the obligations that come with those things. I touched nobody, and nobody touched me. I may as well have not existed at all.

And you know what?

There was actually a certain appeal to it.

Once I woke up, I felt all of the weights and responsibilities come back to me. I felt all of the ties cinch themselves more tightly around me.

They choke me.

There was a time, not a specific time but a period of time, when it happened. Over the course of something between days and months, it happened.

It was a couple of years ago now, when things changed. Suspicions became knowledge. Inklings became expectations. Hopes became certainties.

Yeah, that's right. Certainties.

Patience was validated. The long and winding journey became irrelevant, and only the destination mattered. I could see our destination, smell it, almost touch and taste it. It was just up ahead. It was going to happen. We were going to get there.

Just a little bit further...

It became much more than wishful thinking. I hate it when people dismiss it all as wishful thinking. I know the difference. I fucking lived with wishful thinking for years. I'm an expert on wishful thinking. I know the difference between it and certainty. I really do.

Years.

Memories and hopes were all I had, but they kept me going. Wishful thinking kept me going.

Until a period of time, a couple of years ago, when I became certain, certain, that all my wishes were about to come true.

Just a little bit longer...

Damn.

Back then, that's when everything changed. The potential for pain became the potential for utter destruction. But that didn't matter, because I was certain that everything was going to be fine. Great. Wonderful. Perfect.

Damn.

For years, memories and hopes were all I had. They kept me going. Then I found certainties, and it felt like nothing could stop me.

Now, all I have are memories.

I fear that they won't be enough.

I want it to be effortless again. Writing, I mean. I don't know if I can ever go back, though. Everything always seems so forced these days. Or I'll write a little and then second-guess everything I've written. Like it's not good enough, or accurate enough. More often than not, I'll delete it all and hope that I'll do better the next time.

I get so tired of repeating myself to myself. I keep asking myself for explanations, and I keep saying the same things over and over. It never gets through my thick skull. I either don't understand the answers or I don't believe the answers or I don't accept the answers.

Probably that last thing.

It's the same crap I went through for years, trying to answer a different set of questions with a different set of answers.

I imagine myself, in a week or a decade or a century, lying on my death-bed and reflecting on the life that I've had. Or not had. Whatever. I try to envision what I'll think. I rehearse the answers that I'll give myself, when I ask myself if I've had a good life, if I'd do it all again, if it was worth it.

I've said all this before. There's nothing new. I'm stuck in a groove.

I've said here quite often that I should just shut up. Now I seem to have done just that, but I've done too good of a job. I'm not even explaining my self to myself anymore. So I'm confused.

I owe myself an explanation. A big one.

I'm not sure where to start, though. Maybe that's what's been holding me back. It's just too daunting a task.

Things are what they are. I've done what I've done. And the reasons are, well, I can't think of the word I want.

Next to a million flinches, that's where the reasons lie. Among cruelties, and disappointments, and a few lies, that's where the reasons lurk. They keep fear and pain as their confidants. They hide behind incredible beauty and unimaginable joy, but they're always there, and I lost hope that they would ever go away.

I repeat this mantra to myself. "I'm better off, I'm better off, I'm better off, I'm better off..."

Sometimes I even believe this to be true, I really do.*

But I forget that truth every few seconds, and I don't know the reasons for how things are, and I falter. Whenever I breathe, for example. Or whenever I blink my eyes, and that ever-so-brief moment of darkness lets her face intrude into my consciousness.

It was just too much. After all that time, all those years of waiting and hoping and trying oh so hard, my seemingly infinite patience proved to be finite after all. I felt myself wearing down more quickly than I could regenerate. Changing, mutating into a person I neither recognized nor even particularly liked.

It had to stop. It had to end or I was going to end. And, even though it seems to me that I did end, I really didn't. I'm still here, barely. What's left of me.

It was just too much. Maybe that's the explanation. Maybe that's the only explanation there will ever be, because better words escape me...

* - poet and don't know it.

Kinda feeling weird today. Detached, I guess, would be a good word. Unless I can think of a better one. Like I'm detached from myself and from the reality that's surrounding me.

I mean, I know that there's this big giant chunk of my life that, well, is no longer a part of my life. I know that I should still be upset about the loss that I'm experiencing, and I definitely still am upset. But, I'm not as upset as I should be. I dunno, maybe because the sadness that I should feel would simply be too much for me to bear. So, as a self-defense mechanism, I've detached myself.

Whatever works, I suppose. Whatever can get me through this. Eventually. Maybe.

I'm so tired all the time. What's up with that? I know that a big part of it is that I'm getting up at 5:00 every morning, but that can't be the only reason. I should be able to last beyond 8:30 or so at night without feeling like I'm about to fall over. There's probably some kind of clinical depression going on, what would be just my luck. Something else to be wrong with me.

I will be so glad when this month is over. November sucked, but I think December is shaping up to be much worse. Too many opportunities for me to think about how things might have been. Could have been. Should have been. Whatever.

I'll get over it. I always do.

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't think I've ever said that I did. What I've always said is that I'm just muddling through.

This is all just so weird to me. So unusual. So unexpected. So fucked up.

Things end all the time. I understand that. But how do they end when they never began? And how does that make it a million times worse?

How can I be so wrong about the one thing in my life that I was positive about? How could I get to this point? How could I let this happen?

I'm just trying to get my thoughts together, somehow, when I write crap like this. It's tough. My thoughts are all over the place.

I know what I want but I don't want to want it. I'm pretty sure I've said that before. It's not true, though. Sometimes I lie to myself. The truth is that I just don't want to be the only one who wants it. I'm so tired of being alone in this.

Expectations and hopes and desires can either be the best of friends or the worst of enemies. Circumstances vary. Sometimes circumstances crumble into dust. You deal with it. And, if you can't deal with it, then you do the best you can.

Sometimes it's all you can do to simply endure. You breathe. You try not to think. You muddle through as best as you can.

You make mistakes, and you hope that you're forgiven. You hope with all your heart that the bad times will end. You wait for them to end, somehow, and you don't even care how they end, as long as they end.

The old saying is that "God won't give you more than you can handle."

To that I always respond, "Tell that to my friend WomanRepellant."

I don't know what I'm doing. Everyone on Earth tells me to do one thing, but it's just not me. What's more important, to be true to myself, or to give myself a chance at a life?

I'm not sure that I made myself clear. It's not what a person does, it's what kind of person they are. And, often, actions are the main clue you get.

So you examine the actions or the words or whatever, and you interpret them. You form an opinion, based on the available evidence, as to what a person is really like. Sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes you're right. Sometimes you're right, but you wish you were wrong.

Anyway, an action - or a series of actions - doesn't have to be some big terrible thing. It doesn't even have to be bad at all to the other seven billion people on the planet - it only has to be bad to you. Bad enough to shift your opinion.

And so, my opinion shifted. That's all that happened. My feelings haven't changed one iota.

Maybe I'm wrong. I hope that I am, but I can't ignore the evidence that's been presented to me.

Not anymore.

I need to get something off my chest now.

I think I'm hoping that, by writing this, I'll defuse my emotions a little. I'll imagine that it will be read, and that way I'll be able to make my point without any confrontation.

Speaking of confrontation, I'm pissed.

I thought that things had been exaggerated. I was, after all, being assaulted with false accusations; it didn't seem like much of a stretch to assume that other details were being at least skewed and perhaps even fabricated wholly to better match my accuser's anger.

But now I've heard pretty much the same story from several different sources, and it turns out that there was no exaggeration at all.

She absolutely didn't provoke the situation. And she didn't do anything to move things to where they went. She stayed calm and non-confrontational even as you escalated to threats of physical violence against her.

Seriously, you threatened to beat her face? Why? Because you don't like her?

That's the exact same reasoning that assholes and bullies use. Which one are you? Or maybe you're both?

On what planet did she deserve those threats? Certainly not planet Earth.

Look, you're allowed to dislike a person. Nobody is perfect, and I'd venture that everyone has at least one person that just rubs them the wrong way. Hell, most people I meet rub me the wrong way. But adults don't go around threatening physical violence. Adults don't resort to any form of intimidation at all. Adults simply choose to not interact at all with the people they can't stand. That's a hell of a lot easier, and more civilized, for everyone.

Are you not an adult, is that the problem?

Or are you going to blame alcohol?

Oh, that's original.

I don't expect this particular exercise - writing this entry in this journal at this time on this day - to do any good. But neither do I think it will particularly hurt. I think it will waste time, and that's something that I'm very good at, it seems.

I'm trying to make sense of nonsensical things. Why things are the way that they are. How things are, period. It's like there's a part of me that can understand and accept with cold calculated precision, and another part that can only sob. Somewhere in the middle of those two extremes, I sit with my head bowed and my shoulders slumped, and I wait.

I don't know what I wait for. Release from all this, probably. I don't know what this is, maybe it's everything.

I'm angry at myself all the time. For hanging on for too long. For not hanging on long enough. For waiting too long. For not waiting long enough. For closing my eyes to the truth and to the lies. For wondering all the time about the future and regretting all the time about the past, and not spending nearly enough time in the present.

I'll never truly know, none of us can, what would have could have might have happened, if I'd just done a better job of things. If I'd just been a better person in her eyes. I fear, though, that I'll always wonder, and that will be it for me. That will be the rest of my story; a seemingly endless series of ellipses, until it finally and abruptly ends.

Dammit...

I know that it's a cliché for some people that people never change but I think that's bullshit. I know that people can change. I'm living proof, for one thing. There are other proofs, but I don't want to get into that right now.

I've been having a lot of flashbacks lately. Just weird random thoughts and remembrances of times far in the past.

I've remembered taking my stepson to watch fireworks on the day that his sister was born. I've remembered driving through South Dakota as I moved to Seattle. I've remembered my first night of basic training. I've remembered the first time I made love to MixedSignalGirl, and I've remembered the first time I laid eyes on LaptopGirl. I've remembered taking a piss in the middle of the night in the Nevada mountains, and being awestruck by the stars.

All sorts of memories have made their way to the surface of my brain lately.

I don't know why. Not really. I have some theories, though. Maybe I'm suppressing the really important things. The current things. Or maybe I'm focusing on the past because I can no longer imagine a future.

I'm not the same person I was, not twenty years ago, and not four weeks ago. I used to be so full of hope and excitement for the future. I used to think that there was a future.

Now, not so much. Now, I just sit here, and I wait. Every now and then, I breathe. I don't know why. Something to do, I guess.

Fuck it, I'll write something. Nobody's doing any real work here today, anyway.

There's a certain appeal to it. Mainly, I suspect, because it's the easy thing to do. I mean, nothing is always easier than something, right?

Right?

So maybe I'll just do nothing, and then I'll stay like this.

I'll be that guy.

You know that guy - he tried to give himself away, and then when his offer was rejected, he didn't want himself back.

Or something like that. It's hard to write sometimes. I know what I meant, though, even if I'm only rarely able to translate thoughts and feelings into words anymore.

There, I managed to kill ten minutes out of my day by writing this crap.

And the whole process of guesstimation is fraught with guesswork.

When does a dude stop simply acting like an asshole and become an actual asshole? When does a girl with loose morals become a raging whore? When does a child go from misbehaving to being a brat?

These are the kind of questions that we all ask ourselves all the time.

And there are no easy answers.

I've advised several people, over the years when they've been angry or sad, to just hold off a little. To not do anything in the heat of the moment. To take some time to think about what's happened and to consider what they're really dealing with.

It's the person who matters. Not the actions.

And sometimes I take my own advice. And sometimes I take it far too often, and far too many times.

Until something snaps and it no longer matters what kind of person I'm dealing with. The actions become all that matters, because everything else seems like a lie.

And so, here I am. Wherever this is. Nowhere, I suspect.

In a perfect world, I don't think anyone would care about how someone used to be. It should be obvious, after all is said and done, that it's how a person actually is that's more important.

A guy could have been, for example, a real asshole in high school but be a great friend now.

And even more important than how a person is would be how a person will be.

Like, a girl could be a total slut now but eventually she could settle down and be faithful.

There are three problems with all of this.

1. It's not a perfect world.
2. We can't see into the future, so we have to make guesstimations based on present and past behavior.
3. Sometimes past and/or present behavior simply cannot be ignored. See numbers 1 and 2 above.

To summarize, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

I get up. I go to work. I go to Rich O's. I go home. I sleep. On the weekends I might mix things up a bit. I don't work, for one thing. And maybe I'll go to stupid Bearno's and hang out with an old spark for a while. On Sundays maybe I'll meet OddlyFamiliarGirl at Jack's.

I go through the motions of life, just like everything is normal. But, what is normal? I mean, I'm a guy who dreamed for years and suddenly I found myself living a nightmare from which I refused to awaken. Who am I to even pretend to know what's normal?

I glare at my phone not out of hope but out of paralysing dread. Out of dread that it will remain silent, or out of dread that it will sound. My motivation varies with my mood.

I've not awakened from this nightmare. Things are not normal. I pretend because I don't want people to worry about me. I pretend because I don't want people to blame her for my problems. I pretend because maybe, just maybe every now and then, I'll fool myself.

It hasn't happened yet. I may be too smart to believe my own lies, but I'll keep trying. For a while, at least.

I see denial and I see fear. I see timidity and I see delusion.

I see uncertainty and I see anger and I see sorrow and I see regret.

Closing my eyes, that's not an option, no matter what everyone on Earth thinks. It's already burned into my brain.

I'm really tired. Of being deemed useless and insignificant. Of being invisible. Of everything.

That first step?

It was a doozy.

There is more to say. More that I need to say. Wants went out the window a long time ago, and all that's left are needs.

You might think that I've said everything. You might think that I've run out of things to say and so I've simply repeated myself over and over and over and over.

But, you would be wrong.

There's so much that's been left unsaid.

As the walls go up, the truth makes a panicked and desperate dash toward freedom, lest it be trapped forever.

There are reasons for all of this. Reasons, I mean, besides the obvious.

If the truth is hidden away and silenced, does it even count? Is it still true?

There is more to say.

(During a morning re-read, the above came off as slightly ominous. That was not the intent at all.)

This isn't going to work. I can't write anything now. I'm too fucking tired. I'm pretty sure I slept Wednesday night, but I'm equally sure that was the last time.

I just watched a movie. And in that movie a plane was about to crash. And on that plane people held hands when they thought they were about to die. I know, it was just a movie, but those people in their last moments of life touched another person. If they were lucky, they got to touch a person they loved.

I can't write this. There's no point.

I'm in a weird mood. Weird, huh?

I should go somewhere this weekend. I should go to Covington. I say that every weekend. It's become a bit of a tired joke with RockGirl:

I should go to Covington this weekend.

Then, sometime Saturday evening:

I should have gone to Covington.

I never go anywhere. I always want to go, but then I don't. I don't know why. Lack of motivation, I suppose.

I'll go see StupidGirl in February. That seems like a million years from now. A lot can happen between now and then, so it's kinda hard to get excited.

I could die between now and then, for instance. Or StupidGirl could get married or something. I'd still go to Las Vegas if that happened, it just wouldn't be as much fun.

I think that, if I had to pick a word to label this mood I'm in, that word would be conversational. I want to have a couple discussions and try to sort some things out. It probably won't happen, though. People, including my lovely self, get too defensive and accusatory. It makes rational conversation almost impossible.

I just can't help but think about the .0000001% chance that things could work out. That tiny chance makes me feel like a jerk and it keeps me awake at night and it keeps me from lowering my foot.

Anyway, I guess I should get ready for this meeting.

I think I wantneed to expand a little on the quickie I just posted, "My brain is stuck in a groove today."

This has happened before. A couple of times over the last few years, it's happened. I somehow go from thinking about the same thing (you get one guess) every few seconds to thinking about nothing else at all. I somehow still manage to breathe and stuff, but it takes a conscious effort.

In the past, this has usually led to constant sadness or incessant giddiness. But today, today it's not really leading anywhere. It just is.

To paraphrase something that was recently said to me, "I should be more upset about this, but I'm not."

Very, very strange.

Odds are very good that I'm simply in denial, and that once my subconscious recognizes the harsh reality of this mess, I'll fall apart. But that's okay. If that's what it takes for this to be over, then that's a price I can pay. I've wanted this to be over for a very long time.

Besides, I've fallen apart before, and maybe this will be the last time it ever happens.

Yeah, right.

Just kind of trying to get my thoughts together now. No easy feat; they're running and jumping around inside my head like they saw a spider in there or something. Maybe they did. That would be weird, but it might also explain some things, like the cobwebs that have been impairing my judgment lately. It would also explain the screams.

I had such a bad day Saturday. I'm still in shock from it. Both because of the complete meltdown I witnessed, and because of the way I reacted to it. Maybe it was necessary. Maybe I needed something to push me out of this place. This place I've been shown over and over and over. This ever-shrinking place. This terrible and wonderful place that's been my home and my cage for over seven years.

I'm trying to take a step. That's all it should take. Just one little step in any direction, and I'll be gone. Somewhere else. It has to be better, right?

Right?

Oh, here's a thought.

Maybe I really did die back in 2004. Maybe it wasn't a metaphor at all. I've heard stories about how sometimes, when people die, their ghosts are trapped and left to wander and moan and stuff.

Maybe I'm a ghost, stuck in this place because I have unfinished business here. Not that I know what that business might be. I used to think that I knew. I was wrong.

Anyway, boo!

It shouldn't be this hard. Nothing should be this hard.

Just take a damn step, Dave.

Okay, good, you picked up your foot. Was that so bad?

Now, just put your foot down somewhere else. I don't care where, just so long as it's outside this place.

Just do it, you pussy! Be a man and put your foot down!

I think the same thing so many times. I wonder so many times. I think that this is the love of my life, and I wonder what the fuck I'm doing. I wonder what I could possibly be doing, with my foot hanging in the air like this.

There will, by definition, never be another. So as soon as I leave this place, as soon as I put my foot down outside of this place, I'll might be nowhere at all. I wonder if it's an illusion. I think that maybe nothing exists outside of this place. I wonder if I'll simply disappear. I wonder if that would be a good thing.

It shouldn't be this hard.

That one thing: Nope.
That other thing: Not anymore.
That really unlikely thing: Never, really.

Without trust, everything else is irrelevant.

It's not that I don't care, it's that I wish that I didn't care.

Because there's just no point to caring. To any of it. It's all a waste of time and emotion. To care and wish and yearn and desire. To fucking know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it will all be worth it in the end. And then to be dismissed over and over and over and over and over.

To hurt just for the sake of hurting, because that's all there is, and because that's all there will ever be.

It's all pointless. Nothing good will happen. Not for me.

It's not that I don't want to reply, it's that I wish that I didn't want to reply.

Being a good person feels wonderful, for a while. I live to be useful to the people I care about. Until I start to feel like I'm being taken advantage of. Once that happens, once that really starts to sink in, that's when being a good person feels pointless, like everything else. Friendship. Love. Everything. Pointless.

It's not that I don't want to be there, it's that I wish that I didn't want to be there.

Maybe even worse than pointless.

I feel like a fucking doormat. Again.

Dammit.

It's not that I don't care, it's that I wish, with all my heart, that I didn't care. That I would stop. That this would all just stop.

I had a bad day. It fit in nicely with all of the previous days.

Blow after blow land square and hard. He stands, somehow he's remained standing. His knees, however, have become weak. He wobbles. His mind wanders to escape the pain. He forgets why he stands. Soon, he will fall, and the count will begin.

I thought that I felt like writing something. I really did. I even had a couple potential topics in mind. But then, when I sat down at this computer, I lost all interest in writing.

So what I'll do instead is what I always do. I'll repost an old entry from back when I used to write.

Okay, I'm plagiarizing myself here, but it's okay - I gave myself permission.

I hate the Fall.

Too many things have happened to me at this time of the year. There are very few good memories, only memories of death and dying and loss and pain.

I look out my window, and I see that everything around me is dying. The sky is gray, the grass a dull brown. My yard is littered with fallen leaves.

The only things giving color to the world are the leaves. Many of them still cling to their branches, but inevitably, they too will fall and join corpses of their brothers on the ground below. And when they fall, when they spin or glide or spiral through the air, that is when they're at their most beautiful. The death of each leaf is a dance.

I like to stand outside my building at work, when the ivy leaves are falling. Sometimes, a leaf will get caught in the winds swirling around the buildings. Sometimes, a leaf will take a long time to fall, and it will dance in the air for me. If I'm quick enough, and if the winds are just right, I can catch a leaf before it hits the ground. Before its dance is over forever.

My grandmother used to tell me that it was good luck, catching a falling leaf. I'll hold the stem between my thumb and forefinger, and I'll twirl it for a bit, then I'll open my hand and let it finish its fall. Let it finish dying.

Sometimes I envy those leaves. Their most beautiful moment comes at the end of their lives. They don't have to keep living and remembering how wonderful things used to be. And when they fall, they don't have to get back up.

Sometimes I want so badly to reply, but that's not allowed. It's not real communication, after all. It's just an illusion, like everything else.

I've been having a really tough time getting my thoughts together lately. That's one of the big reasons that I don't write very often anymore. Another big reason is self-censorship, of course. And there's also the fact that I'm sick and tired of announcing to the world that I'm sick and tired. And I don't like to write when I'm in a bad mood. Fuck, it's a wonder I write at all. You people should be grateful for what little you get.

So, last night I was talking with OddlyFamiliarGirl and the subject came up of the worst things we've ever done. She went first, and I told her that I was going to go pee and when I came back I'd tell her what my worst actions had been.

It wasn't too tough to come up with some very bad things. Maybe it wasn't as tough as I'd have liked, but oh well.

I'm basically a pretty good person. I keep saying that. Maybe eventually it will be believed. I get so fucking tired of being accused of lies and manipulations and cruelty.

But I digress.

And now I'm in a crappy mood, again, so I need to stop writing, again.

I want to say something now.

But, I won't.

How many times have I said it before? A dozen? A hundred? How many times have I promised myself and promised those who care about me?

Too many.

I've been wrong every single time.

How many times have I wished it before? A thousand? A million? How many times have I lost hours and hours and days and days of sleep wishing?

Too many.

That wish, like its opposite, has always gone unfulfilled.

So, tonight, I'm not going to say it, and I'm not going to wish it.

I'm going to think it, though.

I think therefore...

For the moment at least.

Now it's after 10:00. I'm up too late again. I have to get up at 5:00, after all.

Why am I still awake?

There's no reason that I can think of. I'm not even glaring at my phone tonight, so even that old standby of an excuse is no good.

Anyway...

(Deleted)

I should have gone. But, I didn't. But, I should have. Maybe I'll get another chance. If so, then I'm fucking going. I'll deal with the aftermath later, but I deserve a chance, no matter how slim, at a happy life.

I really do.

If I was going to write something now, as I wait for my clothes to finish washing so I can throw them into the dryer, if I was going to write something now, I guess I'd write about how sometimes I just get pissed about it all.

I'd write that I try to be reasonable. I really do. And I'd write that I know that it's both silly and futile to be angry about it. Much more understandable to simply be sad, but sad gets old after a while. Anger always seems new. Like it's something special. Something that might last, I might write.

But then I'd write about how it never lasts. About how I always catch myself and I feel guilty. Because I have no evidence that this was done to me as opposed to in spite of me. No evidence at all, unless you count the words of everyone on Earth. And I don't. Or at least I try not to.

If I was going to write something now, I'd probably go off on a real tear about things.

Good thing my laundry is done, so I can stop before I write anything.

I had this thought, this entirely different way of looking at things. I had it, a week ago today, and it led me to a place I'd never expected to be again. The thought is gone now. It's gone back into hiding inside my head.

But, it's in there. Just knowing that it's in there means a lot to me. Just knowing what's possible means the world to me.

Wait a second. That wasn't entirely true. It didn't go back into hiding. I did.

A wise man once wrote:

Like an animal raised in captivity, when I became too afraid of the opportunities and obstacles presented by my newfound freedom, I ran back into the comfort and safety of my cage.

But it's okay. I feel safe in here. I feel like myself in here. In here, everything is perfectly clear. All of my hopes and dreams and desires, in here they're all the same. There are no wrong choices in here. There are no choices at all.

The easy thing isn't always the right thing. I wish that it was. I wish a lot of things.

So I was thinking earlier about some bullshit. The way people paint themselves into corners, and then they whine about being stuck.

I suppose I've pretty much done that to myself, but that's not what I was thinking about today. Nope, today I was thinking about a couple of girls I know and how they've managed to slut their respective ways to solitude.

Yes, slut is also a verb. It is now anyway.

And also, eventually people stop thinking of things as the way a person is acting and they start thinking instead that those things are representative of the way a person is. This happens a lot, and it's usually well-deserved.

When listening to disparaging words, I don't always stay silent because I don't know what to say or because simply listening is all that's wanted. Sometimes, sometimes I stay silent because I'm in complete agreement, and I don't want to seem cruel.

My mind just doesn't seem to be able to stop today. No matter how much I've wanted to stop thinking, I've just kept doing it and doing it and doing it and doing it...

At one point, around 3:00, I was tired and I was going to take a nap, but then I got distracted by some stupid daydream or something and I totally forgot that I was tired, so I went to Rich O's instead. I'm pretty sure that going to Rich O's is the exact opposite of taking a nap.

And now it's midnight Saturday night. I think I've slept about an hour since Thursday morning. As a result, I expect to ramble. You've been warned.

I don't know why. I don't know why this week has been so much worse than the weeks and months and years that came before. I don't know why, but it is. It fucking is.

Pretty soon I'm going to sleep. I'm going to collapse, and then I'll sleep. This is my plan. It's a good plan.

I wish I had some topics all lined up nice and neat, so I could just pick the next one in line and write about it. But nooooooooo, I've got nothing except the same old bullshit.

You know what pisses me off? Besides everything, I mean?

All of my friends used to root for me They wished for me the same thing that I wished for myself. But not anymore. Nope, now everyone is rooting against me, and so I'm on my own.

Anyway.

One of the things I thought today was that I've been looking for a switch, but I should have been looking for a cure.

Another thing I thought was that there are an awful lot of things that I cannot do, but there's one thing that I'll be able to do forever. Luckily, it happens to be one thing I'm really fucking good at doing.

I also found myself wondering earlier. Wondering is a dangerous thing for me to do. It almost never leads to anything good. But this time I think it was okay. I was wondering if I would feel relief. You know, when it finally ends once and for all. I don't know if I would or not. Certainly not right away. Right away would suck. I might not even survive. But, eventually, maybe I'd be relieved. I dunno. It's not something I like to think about, to be honest.

Next subject, please.

I spent a couple hours out on my deck with Picklepie tonight. He's such a great cat. Easily the most affectionate cat I've ever known. It breaks my heart that he's got so much discomfort in his future.

And I had a brilliant idea for a novel tonight. Or at least a short story. Next month is November - maybe I'll try that nanowrimo thingy this year. I know, I always say that, but then I never write shit. I've been distracted for the last seven years.

Wow, seven fucking years.

This is a cancer upon my life.

I was thinking earlier today about something I'd been thinking about last week, about something I'd been thinking about two or three years ago when I read a certain book. I don't remember the name of the book. I remember that I kinda liked it, though. Light-something, I think it was called.

I don't think I'll feel that bad for myself, should I continue down this path and die childless. After all, people die childless all the time. Why should I be different? I do try to live my life the right way, and I try to help the people I care about. I guess they're surrogate children, of a sort. Sometimes those people even let me help. That's nice of them.

Anyway.

Last week, I was in the hospital talking with my grandmother. My last grandmother. My last grandparent. My last remaining ancestor. It's hard to describe, the thoughts that were going through my head and I sat and chatted with her, for what at the time I thought might be the last time.

My mind went back, as it had years ago when I read that book. My mind went back and back and back and back...

Now, anyone who knows me also knows that as far as religion goes I'm an agnostic at best. This means that I believe in evolution. This means that I believe, just as strongly as some people believe in an invisible man in the sky who controls everything but prefers to let people suffer, I believe that my family tree goes back much farther than 6,000 years or whatever those crackpots zealots believe. I believe that my family tree goes back billions of years. I think that 3.7 billion years is the current estimate. For the beginning of life on Earth.

Back then, back at the beginning, there was something. probably a single-celled organism, but maybe something even more primitive. Maybe just a clump of amino acids that had clumped together just right. Whatever it was, there was a first. The first life on Earth. And then, because of the first, there was a second, then a third, and a fourth. And then, millions and millions and millions of generations later, here I sit. Letting my fingers type into this journal because my brain is too distracted by a sweet heart and a pretty face to be bothered to write anything coherent or relevant.

If I should die childless, I will feel bad. But not, as I said, for myself. Nope, I will feel bad for the first. For breaking a chain forged billions of years ago. Because the first sprang from nothing, and that effort, against all odds, deserves better than for me to simply die. For me to let the chain end.

I will feel bad. Billions of years, wasted, because of me.

This isn't a real entry. Just a quickie, but my quickie scripts don't handle paragraphs very well. My fault, because I wrote the thing. I probably won't bother to fix it.

Anyway, I was thinking about how everyone thinks they have all the time in the world. To search for something that lets them finally stop searching.

Sometimes, those people are wrong.

I guess that's it.

Oh yeah, except that sometimes, people can't see the tree right in front of them, because they're too excited about the forest.

I'm going to be so pissed at myself someday.

Someday, I'm going to feel like rummaging through my old memories and emotions. I'm going to, after some token resistance in case anyone is watching, zip straight to what's left of this blog and to these years. 2008, 2009, 2010.

And, once there, I'm going to find nothing but feeble ramblings of a man so torn-up that even breathing was an effort; writing coherent words was way beyond the realm of possibility even if self-censorship hadn't appeared out of the gray and stopped my fingers from doing the type-type-typing that they've always wanted, needed, to do.

I am a writer, dammit! I have things to say! Important things! Why have I stayed so silent for so long?

It was two years ago last Tuesday that I finally opened my mouth. Finally said the words that I'd waited either three or four or forty-three years (depending on how you count them) to say. That should have been the last day of my life, or the first day of my life. But, instead, it was just another day. Just another fucking day.

What should have been the end, continued. What should have been the beginning, stopped in its tracks. I entered limbo. And though I've tried to leave, my path has been blocked. And, though I've been shown the door, I've been unable to exit.

I'm still here. Stuck between a place I don't want to be and a place I can't imagine leaving. And I watch everything dissolve slowly around me, and I want to cry out. I want to scream so loudly that my bones flee my body in terror, but I don't know what to say.

"Hurry up! Good riddance!"

"No, wait! I need more time! Just a little longer!"

I used to always say, when I was asked, that it was never all or nothing for me. I meant those words when I said them; they were the absolute truth.

But I haven't been asked in a long time, and I'm not sure what my answer would be now.

It's the not knowing that's the cruelest blow of all. It should never have come to this. I should have died knowing, or I should have lived knowing.

Instead, I just don't know.

I had this thought a little while ago. Maybe it was more of a remembrance than a thought. I'm not sure. My memory of what it was is fading quickly.

I'm surprised all the time lately. Usually not in a good way, but not always in a bad way, either. Just surprised.

I mean, for example, I wake up one morning and I'm forty-five years old. How the fuck does that happen?

Or, I wake up several hundred mornings, and I'm by myself. She's not with me. And you can define she however you want, it makes no real difference. I'm still waking up by myself.

It's shocking, that's what it is.

It's not supposed to be like this. I'm not supposed to be like this.

And now I've got rabies from this damn cat.

Surprise!

But I digress. Rabies will do that to you, I've heard. Makes you digress all over the place.

My life goes through cycles. Never about me, always about someone else. Fuck you, it varies. It really does. Of course I miss LaptopGirl, but then I miss HatGirl, and then I miss MixedSignalGirl with an intensity that still shocks me after all these years. Then for a while I'll miss KittenDamsel, and then I'll almost certainly give StupidGirl her due. It's always about missing someone. It's never about just being sad for no reason at all. Or, God forbid, being happy.

It's never about just being myself.

I'm not sure that I have a life of my own anymore.

When I was a little kid, my future seemed set in stone except for that small detail of her face. Now usually I feel that her face is certain, but everything else is murky and indistinct. Grasping at phantoms that don't really exist.

I liked having a future, even one that improbable. It was something, dammit. Now, nothing.

I don't like it.

Surprise!

I feel like I should start living for myself. But then I remember that there's no point in doing that. Because, who the fuck am I?

Okay, so I had a wonderful, fantastic time in Las Vegas. It may seem like an obvious foregone conclusion to some of you, but not to me. There were several million doubts in my mind.

Every one of my doubts evaporated at approximately 3:00 PM PDT Sunday.

This leads me to an observation.

I should have been there already. I should have been there almost 18 months ago, when every reasonable reason I'd ever had for staying put was ripped from me.

Why, why wasn't I already there?

Well, those of you who (a) have been reading this journal or (b) listening to the words that have been coming out of my mouth, and (c) aren't retarded - you people already know the answer to that question.

---

I've deleted the remainder of this entry. There was nothing nice in any of it.

I've been saying the same thing now for a long time.

The first time I remember saying it was last November or December, in a text message to HatGirl.

Though I probably felt it a million times before then. And definitely a million times since.

I want this to be over. More than I've ever wanted anything else.

Yes, even more than that.

That was a beautiful dream. That was my reason for living. But that has turned into a terrible nightmare. But that has soured me on way too many things. That has made me doubt way too many things, question way too many things. Scary questions, that lead to even scarier answers.

I want to wake up. I want to I want to I want to I want to wake up from this nightmare.

I repeat myself a lot. With my words. With my thoughts. With this journal.

I usually realize that I'm repeating myself when I'm about half through repeating myself. And, I figure, as long as I'm that far along, I may as well push on through and get it over with.

Anyway.

I want something. Maybe even need something.

There's this nagging emptiness following me around everywhere I go. I can't seem to escape it, except sometimes when I sleep and my dreams take me somewhere else. Some place where none of this matters. And where the emptiness can't find me.

I don't know what I want. I don't know if I want it or need it. Most disturbingly, I don't even know what it is.

That up there - that's a fine example of me repeating myself. For more examples, see almost every entry I've done for the past year and a half.

Anyway.

That's what I miss, maybe most of all or at least in the top five things I miss. That sense of knowing exactly what I needed and knowing that I absolutely needed it. My life may have been replete with confusion and doubt but, by fuck, there was always that one thing that I knew beyond any shadow of any inkling of any doubt.

Now?

Not so much.

To repeat myself again, I miss me. It's been a long time since I've seen myself, talked to myself, commiserated with myself.

It's been so long, in fact, that I'm not even sure that I'd recognize myself.

I wrote back in February 2005:

I'm more than a little ashamed of what happened to me, and more than a little sorry for feelings I've hurt and concern I've caused, but more than that, I'm amazed at how quickly the person I was evaporated. I'd have never believed that anything could affect me so strongly. Could essentially erase everything I was and turn me into this amorphous thing I see when I look into the mirror.

And I'm still repeating myself.

I'm trying to be reasonable now. It's tough going, because it's totally unfamiliar territory for me. But I am trying.

It's just so hard, so incredibly hard to separate the reasonable emotions from the unreasonable kind. To throw the latter away and deal with the former in a semi-mature manner.

Earlier tonight - about four hours ago - would have been a much better time for me to write this entry. Earlier tonight, I was much closer to the place I want to be. A shitty place, but a place I know I can endure because I've endured for so long already.

Now, four hours later, not so much.

The thing is, I haven't been exaggerating about any of this. In fact, I've toned things down a lot. Because the truth unbelieved is often worse than a lie. Because the truth stands all alone. Because the truth hurts.

And, now, it's happening all over again. And so, now, I wipe the spit from my face and I wait, all over again.

Wait for what?

I don't know. I used to know, I really did.

Now, six months later, not so much.

I do know it's more than just inertia that makes me wait again. And I know it's more than just stubbornness. And it's still a fuck of a lot more than a crush, no matter how ready people still seem to be to label it as such.

Hope?

I don't think so. Hope needs a target, and there isn't one that I can detect.

The comparison has been made a million times. The challenge. But the simple facts are that A does not equal B, and B does not equal A.

Not even close.

I wish I knew the magic words, to make my dreams come true.

Also, I wish I still had dreams.

Well, this should be interesting. And brief. Or maybe just brief.

My brain is infused with hardening cement right now, so my fingers will have to come up with a blog entry all on their own.

Anyway.

I had this thought last night. Just a random thought like millions of others that have popped into my head over the years. Preventing sleep. Unleashing dozens or hundreds of linked thoughts to tumble and crash.

What if I had a choice?

That was the thought. Six simple words, but six words strung together in a sequence that they'd somehow managed to elude for a very very very long time.

Just a simple question, really. But not to me. And, and the answers...

I can't stop thinking about the question I asked or answers that I almost immediately, reflexively, instinctively, gave last night, as I toed the line between awake and asleep.

Someone else, I answered.

Anyone else, I continued.

And, even more surprising and unexpected than the answers, was the fact that the question could exist in the first place.

Everything has changed now, mostly because I asked, but also because I answered the way that I did.

This won't last. Only one thing ever lasts.

Wow. I wrote this in April of 2007. I don't remember why, but I was in a crappy mood. Oh, wait. I think I remember why now.

Somebody once said that if you don't have anything nice to say, then you shouldn't say anything. Or some crap like that.

I'd bet that if bloggers took that advice to heart, then there'd be no bloggers.

Anyway, today I'm pissed. At pretty much the entire world.

I think I just get tired of hearing the same bullshit over and over, only to see it contradicted just as fiercely via actions and inactions.

Those two things speak louder than words. Actually, words don't speak at all. They mean nothing. They are hollow.

This is why I've given up. Because I've stopped listening to you people out there. Telling me how great I am, then turning your noses up at me when I show some emotion you don't agree with or understand. Offering comfort, but only so you'll feel less uneasy around me. Spouting advice, when you haven't a fucking clue as to what's happened to me.

It's all so fucking convenient, to seek my friendship when you need it. I'm always there. Where else would I go? But let me fucking need you, and you scatter like cockroaches in the middle of the night when the light is suddenly turned on. Because I don't fit into your mold. Because suddenly I'm the needy one. You reject the reality of the situation. You reject the truth. You reject me.

Today, I'm pissed. At pretty much the entire world.

A million years or so ago, I used to have my very own muse. Heck, she even kept being my muse for a couple of years after she stopped being my girlfriend. She'd call me or, more often, visit my site, around 11:00 PM each night. She'd see if I'd written anything new that day. And, if I hadn't, well she'd make damn sure that I didn't go to bed until I had written something.

Sigh.

I miss her. I miss her for lots of reasons. Not just because she was my muse. I guess she's doing okay. I haven't talked to her in at least 9 months. Weird how things change.

Today has been a very long day. I think I started yawning around 11:00 AM, and I haven't really stopped since. And I don't mean that I've yawned several times - I mean that I've let out one long yawn, for almost 10 hours now. I know that I'm tired. I only slept for 4 hours last night. But it might be something else. Something more. I kinda feel like my Fall seasonal allergies might be starting up. If so, then they're about a month early.

Last Fall, my allergies were so bad that my nose started bleeding from all the wiping and nose-blowing I did. There was a steady stream of snot and blood flowing from my face. Yes, it was gross, thanks for asking.

Meanwhile, I continue to wait for that killing blow. It hasn't come. Quite the opposite, in fact. I'm ashamed to say that I'm more than a little bit fooled by what's been going on.

Stupid hope...

I'm so tired right now. I need to go to bed.

Tomorrow I've got a thingy to attend. There might be some people from my old job there. That would be cool. Most of those people, I'd love to see again. A couple of them could drop dead on the way to the thingy and I wouldn't bat an eye. I guess I'll see what I'll see. I probably won't be bored, that's for sure.

In less than two weeks I'll be in Las Vegas again. It'll be different, this time. I don't really think there's a reason to go. Not anymore. Problem is, there's never really been a reason to stay in Indiana, either.

I guess that's it. Maybe I'll have a beer and then glare at my phone for a while before I go to bed.

There's this one word that I hate, at least recently. And don't even ask me to define recently because I don't fucking know. Somewhere between a couple of weeks and a gazillion years.

The word is deserve.

I was just thinking about that word, as I stood out on my deck petting her cat and trying in vain to ease its torture over whatever cats feel tortured about. Lack of mice, perhaps. Or maybe too many moths, so little time. I dunno.

This cat is distraught. It likes being here, and it likes hanging out with me on my deck or in my garage, but something is missing. The cat knows that something is missing but, being a cat, it cannot vocalize exactly what's missing. If it even knows.

Such is my life, even thought I'm not a cat. I don't think I am, anyway.

Meow?

But I digress, wildly.

Anyway, in an attempt to get back on topic, let me say that Everyone On Earth is wrong. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. It's happening right now. I'm right and Everyone On Earth is wrong.

So there.

What Everyone On Earth says is that I deserve something. For my efforts. For my patience. For my craziness. For waiting for almost seven years when most people would have given up or killed themselves a long time ago.

It's not that big of a deal, to anyone except me. And it's not like I count for anything.

News flash: Nobody deserves shit.

We want what we want, and we need what we need, and, unfortunately, we get what we get. And then we die.

That's it. That's the boring truth.

So, sorry to disappoint you, Everyone On Earth, as you cheer for me to get what I deserve, or as you pity me for needing and wanting what I don't deserve.

I'll get what I'll get, and that will be the boring truth.

I have a serious question now.

Why is it so bad that I know what I want , and that I want what I want?

I don't get it. I don't run around trying to talk people out of wanting things or doing things. Yet my entire life for the past seven years has been as a target for these activities.

People tell me that they care about me, but they spend almost every second that we're together trying to convince me to change that one part of me that's impossible to change. Either explicitly through words or implicitly through lack of words, they try to convince me to strip away the most important part of me.

Like it's nothing more than a veneer or a fashion statement. Like she's nothing more than a pretty girl.

Fuck that.

Take me, or leave me. Stop trying to change me.

This sucks. Don't get me wrong. I hurt quite often, but I'll take it because it's better than the alternative. I'd rather hurt than feel nothing. I'll have plenty of time to feel nothing when I'm dead. Until then, I'll endure and I'll muddle through, and I'll at least know that I'm alive.

What I'd like to do, see, is write at least one blog entry every day. This has proven to be extremely hard (that's what she said) because (a) I don't feel like it, and (b) I don't want to, and (c) I don't care.

I've always wondered what I'd write, when I didn't care what I wrote. I guess there have been a few examples of such indifference in the past. Mostly, those entries suck, but every now and then they turn out to be at least halfway decent.

This will not be a halfway-decent entry. Not even close.

That's what she said.

I scratch at the surface of my mind, and I try to uncover something, anything, that's not related to you-know-what. This effort is usually futile, and it's proving to be futile this evening.

Fuck. Stage one sucks.

But I still know that there's something worthwhile down there, hidden. A little diamond in the rough that will make it look like I know what I'm doing.

But I can't find it. I don't even know where to look.

That's what she said.

The problem with letting my fingers type, like I'm doing right now, isn't that they're incapable of stringing sentences together. Quite the opposite, in fact. Many times they do much better than my brain would do facing the same challenge.

The problem is that, by taking my brain out of the mix, the problem is that I'm also taking my thoughts out of the mix, and leaving my emotions to, um, anchor the entire recipe.

Okay, so maybe that metaphor was a bit of a stretch. So sue me.

Now, in the past I've often given one guess as to what my emotions might revolve around, but you people don't even need one guess. You already know, those of you who've been reading me for any length of time at all. The rest of you, you newcomers, well quite frankly I don't care about any of you. Not yet, anyway.

Speaking of anyway...

Anyway, it constantly amazes me that I'm not pissed off 7x24x365. Equally amazing is that I'm not constantly depressed. But, waaaay beyond those two amazing things, I sometimes manage to be happy.

Me, of all people.

I somehow manage to fluctuate, and I don't know how I manage to do that. And it hurts by brain when I try to figure it out.

I mean, seriously. Everyone On Earth knows that I've been used and abused and taken advantage of. I know these things myself.

But, do I care?

Fuck yes, I care. A lot more than I've been letting on but, it seems, not enough. Never quite enough.

Okay, so what am I going to do about it?

Not much, it seems. Just muddle through, like I always do. Wait for it to finally be enough. Meanwhile, after all, the good times are pretty fucking wonderful. Still fantastically surreal even after all this time. So I enjoy things when I can, and I endure the rest when I must. It doesn't even out, and it's become harder and harder to enjoy those good times, but oh well.

For a while there, I thought that maybe I'd survive this. At first, calluses formed, and it looked like they might protect me. But, after months and months and years and years of constant grinding, the calluses went away. Now there are only open sores oozing nasty smelly fluid which, while vile and disgusting, I'm still pretty sure I need because they're part of me.

I know, that was gross. Sue me again.

I really don't know if I'm going to survive this, or ever get over this. This wasn't just a huge blow to what self-esteem I might have had, it's something that's still going on. Every single second of every single day of every single week of every single month, it goes on.

The wounds ooze.

How can they ever heal? How can I ever heal?

I know, or at least I think I know, the answer to those questions. But I don't like those answers, so I feign ignorance. I lie to myself and to her and I perform in this stupid little play.

I hang onto this thread. I walk this thin ice. I endure blow after blow. And I pretend that everything is fine. I pretend that I'm fine, or at least that I will be fine.

But the truth is there, buried deep enough that usually I'm the only one who really sees it. The truth that I'm waiting and expecting to die at any minute. For the thread to snap, or for the ice to break, or for the killing blow to mercifully land and end this nonsense once and for all.

And the other truth, the one that keeps me awake at night, is that I don't know if I'll go quietly when the end finally comes. I fear the things I might choose to say as my last words.

So there.

Back in January, I found myself at this bar called The Green Frog in Bellingham, Washington. I'd gone there because some dude at another bar had told me, in a conspiratorial whisper, that they had a better beer selection there. For the record, he wasn't lying. Because (a), they had Ommegang Chocolate Indulgence on tap. And (b), who cares what else they might have had?

Anyway, I was sitting at the bar, minding my own business, trying not to listen to the jug band "jamming" in front, and this chick got up from a booth and sat next to me. She startled me, not only because she reeked of Patchouli, but because she looked almost exactly like SassyGirl. Seriously, for a second there I actually thought it was her.

But no, it was just another damn hippie. In that part of Western Washington, I'd found, it was hard to even take a piss without getting some splatter on a hippie. I'd learned to ignore them, for the most part. Except when they sat next to me and announced, "Your aura is broken."

Great. One of those hippies. One for whom the years of marijuana smoke and patchouli fumes had caused irreparable brain damage. Next, I expected her to offer to "fix" my aura for a nominal fee. Or maybe she'd do it for free, as long as I didn't mind sacrificing a chicken or something.

"I know," I replied. "But I can't do anything about it. The warranty's expired."

"You don't belong here," she said.

"And just where do you think I belong?" I asked, already tired of the conversation.

"Far away," she replied.

"You got that right," I said.

We talked for a few more minutes, mostly about how much she looked like SassyGirl. I even managed to find a picture on my phone to show her. She admitted the resemblance, so she wasn't completely crazy.

But, she was crazy enough, so I was relieved when she went back to join her friends. I haven't really though about her since, until tonight.

Tonight, or this evening to be more accurate, I was at Rich O's. I'd gone before dinner, and then again after dinner. The first time was to see LaptopGirl, and the second time was to glare at my phone.

During that second visit, I realized that I'd eaten way too much food, and that I needed to go home to sleep. So that's what I decided to do. Except I was on my way out the door and this chick looked up at me and then said to her friend, "That guy's aura is broken."

Whoa, right?

So I sat down at their table and said, "Hi, I'm Dave." Brief introductions ensued, and then I continued. "I couldn't help but overhear," I said. "That's the second time in my life that I've heard someone say that my aura is broken. The first time, I dismissed it as craziness brought on by years of marijuana smoke and patchouli fumes. But you don't look the type. So what's your excuse?"

"No excuse," the possible hippie-in-disguise said. "Sometimes I just see things about people."

"Fair enough," I said, because I'm trying to be more open-minded about shit. "What do you see that makes you say my aura is broken?"

"It is broken," she said. "Like it's been ripped apart. And a lot of it is missing. You're here, but you're not all here. Does that make sense?"

"It makes perfect sense," I replied. "A big part of me is missing." I paused. "My heart, to be precise."

"Where did it go?" she asked, with a look of genuine concern on her face. A look that I really appreciated, because I'm really sick and tired of pity and disbelief.

"I think somewhere in Louisville," I replied.

And that was pretty much the end of that conversation, as her husband and/or boyfriend came back from the restroom or wherever and glared at me. I made a graceful exit and went home for a much needed nap.

I dreamed that I was looking for the missing parts of my aura, but they were in Minneapolis, and I got totally lost because the roads up there are totally nonsensical. And the hippie chick from Bellingham was in the car with me, trying to help but only making things worse.

According to a friend of mine, my problems aren't important. Her reasoning for this opinion isn't, as with most people, that they don't exist or that they're unwarranted. Nope, it's simply because other people have worse problems, therefore my own don't exist.

Note that this is not a simple matter of comparing the severity of problems and assigning importance accordingly. It's a total dismissal of any problem as long as someone, somewhere, has a problem that is worse.

A nice example might be, You have no right to be sad about your love-life, Dave, because my other friend has cancer.

That was an actual real-life example, by the way.

Taking this logic to its, um, logical conclusion, I realized something.

Nobody is allowed to be sad or complain. Ever.

Take any person with any problem. There's almost definitely someone out there with a worse problem, so our hypothetical first person isn't allowed to lament at all. He's a dick if he gripes about his kid dying because there's somebody else who had two kids die. And then there's somebody else who had two kids die and he has a hangnail. It goes on and on, until you get to the person with the worst problems in the world.

You might think that the poor sap with the worst problems would be the only one on Earth with free reign to feel sorry for himself. But nope, because there are other people who are dead. Even the poor sap has it better than dead people, so he can't be sad or complain either.

I, of course, disagree with this entire line of reasoning. Maybe that's because complaining and feeling sad are some of my favorite things to do, and they're what I'm best at.

I guess what I'm saying is, just because something else has a bigger problem, that doesn't mean that our own problems aren't important. They're important to us, after all.

Feel better now?

First, a disclaimer.

The existence of this entry means nothing beyond the fact that this entry exists. Please do not infer that now I'm going to be a regular blogger again. Such an inferation* would probably be foolhardy.

This will not last. Only one thing ever lasts, and this, this is pretty much the opposite of that one thing. I am aware that this will not last, yet I choose to write about it anyway. This is one of the perks of having my own blog; I get to choose my own topics. So there.

Right now, as I type this sentence, I have zero hope.

Z.E.R.O.

Also, as a bonus, I have zero expectations.

Once again, Z.E.R.O.

And, to top it all off in a weird way, I have only an infinitesimal amount of desire. And most of that is probably just inertia.

So much has changed, internally and externally. I'm finding myself wondering again. About myself. About this blog.

So, what will I write here?

Only stupid entries like this one, apparently.

What kind of person have I become?

That's a little bit tougher to say. I might be too close to myself to give any kind of objective opinion. RockGirl could probably provide an in-depth diagnosis, but I haven't asked her. I think I'm scared to ask her.

Anyway, I don't think I'm a dick. I was really worried about that. I also don't think I'm a fuckhead, though I've been accused of that. And I'm definitely not a dipshit. I'll never be a dipshit.

I guess, if I had to guess and I guess that I do have to guess, I guess I'm still me. Just a watered-down version with no passion.

That's actually kind of disappointing. I'd hoped to change more.

I suppose it's good that this won't last. I'll have plenty more chances. To be hurt again.

I postulated, back in March when I was almost, but not quite completely driven away, that I had one possible route toward a chance at having a happy life. It wasn't much of a chance - 10 or 20 percent at most - but it was and is certainly better than zero.

The route is simple. Zero contact and zero sightings. That's what it would take to give me my 10-20 percent chance at a happy life. I mean, I've been asked to forget, and I've been asked to stop thinking. How can I do either when reminders are so random and when they occur so often?

Answer: I can't

I do not think that this route of possible happiness exists in the same universe as me. So I expect to have zero chance at ever having a happy life.

Oh well, I guess.

* - I might have just invented that word.

It's not like before, this quiet. I'm not sure that I can describe it. It's not a lack of noise, or a softening of sound. Those things have happened before. This time it's different. Now, now it's something else that's going on.

Maybe the years and years and years of noise have finally started to affect me. Maybe I'm going deaf. Maybe I've...

Scratch that, I figured it out.

It's become constant. There are no ups or downs anymore.

Noise without fluctuation has no meaning. It's just static, and I think that I'm starting to ignore that static.

This won't last.

I think that I'm settling into this schedule too easily. In bed by 10:00, up at 5:00. Work, home, sleep. This is a recipe for complacency. For the same fucking contentedness that wasted most of my 30s.

Not that I'm even close to content. But I can tell that it's there, just around the corner beyond acceptance. Eventually, if I'm not careful, I'll get there.

That will suck. Man was not born to be content. To just go through the motions of life.

As long as I'm repeating myself over and over and over, I'll say that sometimes I really wish I could still write.

I have lots of ideas for blog entries. No, really, I do. Please stop laughing.

Like tonight. I was watching this movie that this one girl says is about this one dipshit, and it gave me an idea for a blog entry. It's a really good idea, and one that I haven't touched upon here before.

And that, unfortunately, takes me back to where I started.

I wish I could still write.

Because this is, like I just got done saying, a good idea for an entry. It could be funny and sad and thought provoking and maybe even moving. Tears of laughter would intermingle with regular tears. Yes, it's that good.

So good that I find myself woefully unworthy of writing about it. It deserves better than me.

I keep thinking, hoping, that it will come back. That elusive quality that my words used to have. Where I'd come back weeks or months or even years later, reread some words I'd once written, and think, "Wow, I did a hell of a good job with this entry. Almost like a real writer."

But, right now, tonight and this week and this year and fuck even this decade I suppose, that old spark just isn't there. I certainly try, every now and then when I feel like it, but my words no longer live up to my thoughts.

With all that drivel said, here is, in my opinion, the best thing I ever wrote.

This isn't going to work. But I guess I'll try. I said that I would, after all.

My brain is useless right now. Too much NABC Cone Smoker (6028). So I'll let my fingers do the writing. Such as it will probably be.

That last sentence made perfect sense to me, by the way.

I'm supposed to write about faith. This is, believe it or not, something with which I am intimately familiar.

Because I fucking have it.

Not in a supreme being, like too many of my friends. Not in karma, like a lot of my more hippiefied friends. And not even in myself, as I'm so often urged to do.

Fuck that. Who am I to deserve such consideration? Such faith?

I believe in one thing. I trust in one thing. I live for one thing. I have faith in one thing.

Love.

Weird, I know.

But it's never wavered, not even once, not even a little bit. Everything else stands on wobbly legs and sways dangerously and threatens to collapse and kill and maim, but love is a fucking rock. It's a rock shored up by other rocks, defended by more rocks, and camouflaged by even more rocks.

I know, that's a stupid series of metaphors. But it's about as true as my fingers can type right now.

People look at me, quite often, like I'm crazy. It used to bother me. But now, now I think they're just jealous.

Because, no matter how unwarranted or undeserved or unjustified or just plain silly and stupid this might be, it's still more real than anything most of those other people have ever experienced.

And it will continue. It will remain. It will last until, eventually, sooner or later, it will be my dying thought.

I have zero doubt about this. This will happen. I have faith in it.

So there.

I took a walk. Not a long one, maybe just a couple of miles. To the end of my road and back. It was a little chilly, and a little drizzly at times, but it was still nice. As an unexpected bonus, I got to pet a kitty in the gas station parking lot.

I never did get anywhere, though. Not really.

RockGirl was telling me about a movie she'd seen, with a quote that went something like, "half the people are running toward happiness, and the others are running away from sadness."

I like that quote. I'm not really sure where I fit into it. Usually I feel like I'm just spinning in place. Sometimes I get dizzy.

I think that tonight, I was walking away from something. I had two ideas for blog entries. I didn't really want to write either of them. Both are bad ideas, but both need to be said.

I walked, like I said, for a couple of miles. It wasn't nearly far enough. I never escaped these ideas. They followed me. They're still here.

People ask me. All the damn time, they ask me.

I tell them that I don't know. Then, in a somewhat firmer voice, I state that I don't want to talk about it.

That second part is kind of a lie. The insistence in my voice is as much for my own benefit as it is for my interrogators.

Because, I do want to talk about it. I want another pair of ears to hear the story. I want another brain to process the information. I want another pair of lips to, I suppose, explain to me that which I haven't been able to explain to myself. I want, maybe even need, a different perspective.

I desperately want to talk about it.

But, I don't. I'm trying to be a nice guy, after all. Deserved or not, I'm trying.

So, I don't talk about. I pretend that my silence is my choice, but it's not. I don't talk about it because she doesn't like it when I talk about it. And I don't blame her for that. I'd be the same way, in her situation. Whatever that might be.

That first part, however, from way back at the beginning of this stupid entry, is the truth; I really don't know what's going on.

I have my suspicions and opinions, though. And I don't like them very much.

And I really really really wish that I didn't care. My life would be so much easier, if I could just stop caring.

But, I do care. I suspect that I will always care.

That suspicion scares the shit out of me.

Okay, so I wrote this back in 1996:

A million times.

Disappointment times a million.

It never fades. It never gets any easier. It always astounds me with its intensity.

Someday, it will end.

Someday, in a portion of a fraction of an instant, disappointment will transform into joy.

Until then, disappointment will be my reason for living. My purpose. My destiny. My fucking calling.

After that, well I guess I'll have to wait and see what happens after that.

Anyway, that one sentence - the one about joy?

Hope is what caused me to write that sentence.

I miss having a reason to write sentences like that.

Maybe someday, somehow, I'll have another reason...

Damn. There I go again, having stupid hope.

I find this mood, every now and then. It's a little hard to describe, but I'll try. It's not like I've got anything better to do.

For the longest time, I was that guy. Everyone who knows me, and some who don't, know what I mean by that. I was that guy who...who...who...

Well, I guess I don't want to say it. It's been said a million times already, and its always fallen on deaf ears. Deaf and doubting and disbelieving ears. I won't say that my words were wasted, but that's probably just because I'm being stubborn. If I wasted the words, then I wasted my life. And I don't want to say that. Not yet.

So anyway, there I was, being that guy, and then, then I wasn't anymore. I was someone else.

I mean, I am someone else.

But I'm not sure who, exactly.

I spend an inordinate amount of time searching for clues to my identity. I search my heart, my mind. Sometimes, I search the bottom of a glass. Sometimes, I drive to South Carolina or Covington or Nashville. I fly to Las Vegas. I search and I search, but I elude myself. As I've written before, I'm a slippery bastard.

Every now and then, not as often as I'd like but more often than I'd expect, I find myself in a certain mood. It's the mood I'm in right now.

It's not that I've given up, on this quest for myself. It's not even like I've taken a break. It's more like, like it just slips my mind. Like I forget for a while. I forget, not only that I've changed, but that I exist in the first place.

I'm a disinterested spectator of my own existence.

It's a peaceful mood, but a little boring.

Of course, by writing this entry, I've reminded myself that I don't know who I am anymore. So the search renews. Maybe I'll go out to my garage for a while. There might be storms tonight, and who knows?

Maybe I'm already out there, waiting to be found.

This is a snippet from something I wrote a long time ago. I happened to run across it tonight.

I've lost so many dreams.

Too many to count and too many to even estimate. Some, I've let go all on my own, and some I've had ripped away from me while I screamed and clawed and frantically tried with every tiny bit of my being to just hold on for a little bit longer.

I often feel like I'm repeating myself. This is no great stretch of the imagination, because it's often true.

I often feel like I'm repeating myself. Here, in this blog, I mean. So maybe I've said this before. I could search back through over 3,500 old blog entries and find out, but I won't.

That would be too hard, and stuff.

That's what she said.

Anyway. I didn't want to ramble too much. I only wanted to maybe repeat myself. Maybe.

I never thought much about kids. Not any more than normal. Some people might know that I used to have kids, sort of. They were their mother's kids; I was just a stepfather for a while. They were great kids, and I loved them, but then their mother and I went our separate ways, and after a while I stopped thinking about them. I dunno, maybe it was too painful. Whatever.

My sisters have kids, and I'm not the Uncle Dave I would like to be with them. I was off to a good start, I think, when Dina's first two kids were little. But then they grew up and we grew apart. And Neisha's kids always lived on Mars with their parents. At least, that's the excuse that I use. For not being a better Uncle Dave. Same excuse I use regarding Dina's youngest son.

Things are how they are. Kids exist and I tolerate them and sometimes I like them and I'm almost always at least nice to them.

I never thought much about kids. Until...

Wow, I don't think that I'm really allowed to say. That sucks.

So what I wanted to write about now is that, now, I think about kids. All the time.

I think about a baby girl. A daughter, just like her mother. Full of laughter and sparkles and oh so very beautiful and sweet.

Just like her mother.

Whoever that might be.

It's breaking the unwritten rule, I know. Men are supposed to want a son, especially for their first born. It's been a cliché forever; men want a son first.

Not me.

Maybe it's because I'm old enough to feel that even having one child is a pipe dream. Maybe I realize that one child is, at most, all I could ever have. And, the thing is, if one child is all I can father, I want that child to be a daughter.

Just like her mother.

Whoever that might be. She will be so wonderful, though.

I want that to be my gift, someday, somehow. A beautiful baby girl. The greatest gift that any man could ever give to the woman he loves. And it would never have to be repaid, because we would share the gift with each other.

She will be so wonderful.

Just like her mother.

Often, I feel like I'm repeating myself.

I don't believe in them. I don't. I can't.

If you believe in one, then you have to believe in the other.

For every child that's born, another is taken in a senseless accident. For every lottery winner, a loving father contracts cancer. For every likeness of Jesus on a piece of toast or in the bark of a tree, an old woman slips and falls in her tub, and dies alone.

Fuck that.

There is no purpose. No divine intervention.

There are no miracles.

But, I wait for one. What form it might take, I don't know.

It will have to be a real doozy.

I wait, because that's all I can do. Hope is beyond me, has been beyond me for a long time, but I can wait.

Just in case. I want to be ready.

It's a very weird feeling. And more than a little unsettling.

I spent all that time wondering what it would take. And now, now that it really finally seems to have happened, my mind has gone idle and stagnant without that all-encompassing question that had replaced the earlier all-encompassing question that had replaced the even earlier all-encompassing question.

There is another, lurking in the shadows of my mind, waiting to take the stage, but it might not ever have its chance.

Because what's a question with an answer?

Not much, that's what.

Q: What am I supposed to do now?

A: Nothing. There's no point.

Wow, it's late. Or early. I'm not even sure what to call it. I guess it's late because I haven't slept, but it's early because the Sun will rise soon. It's about perspective, I guess.

Anyway.

I knew this was going to happen. There was zero doubt in my mind. I was going to be told a lie, and I was going to believe it, and then the truth was going to crush me all over again.

What sucks extra hard is that this time, I think, I invited the lie.

Oops.

It's not like I'm perfect, though. Far from it, actually.

I'm living not just one, but two lies right now. Both are lies of omission, but as I've said before, lies of omission are still lies. One is wonderful and selfless, and the other is horrible and selfless, but they're still lies.

I hate liars. So it really sucks that I'm one myself.

How do you say that which needs to be said, knowing that it will destroy?

I don't know. I just don't know. My brilliant plan is to die before I ever confess.

And the other truth? The one that would absolutely fall upon deaf ears?

Why bother?

Because it needs to be said?

Who says so?

Me?

Who the fuck am I?

People change. They can change and sometimes they do change.

I'm living proof of this. HatGirl is another example.

And this wouldn't even be that much of a change. Just a stripping of some bullshit veneer.

It could happen.

Great, now I have stupid hope again.

Metaphors, similes, analogies. I use them all the time, when I feel like writing here. Part of me just likes to use them. They make me think I'm being a better writer. But another part of me realizes the truth.

I hide behind these constructs. I hide behind them because to do otherwise, like maybe to tell the fucking truth, would be too much.

Too much for me, I mean. You readers are a hardy bunch. And a very patient one.

It was so much easier for me to write about a gorilla, than it was to write that I was in love. It was so much easier to write about a line that we carried with us, than it was to write about how incredibly difficult it was for me to be so close but so far, all the damn time.

It's so much easier for me, right now, to write about this burned bridge, about how the rubble stretches away in front of me, than it is to write that, that, that...

That what?

That the love of my life is no longer the love of my life? That the last six years of my life was for nothing? That the only chance that I have of my life ever seeming worth living is if I never see her or hear from her again? That this is a decision that I've had to make, and a realization that I've had to have, because I've been the only one in a position to do either?

That I was wrong about her. About us?

Fuck that. The light of truth is too bright, sometimes.

That damn bridge. It was shaken and twisted and rocked and rolled, and it got weaker and weaker and weaker and weaker. But it was still there. It fucking stood for something. Something important. Hope, I suppose.

But the final piece of the final beam finally broke, and the entire damn thing collapsed.

And I stand here in shock. I just can't believe that's it's gone. That beautiful destination will forever be unreachable, and maybe, just maybe, it's turned out to be not so beautiful after all.

I'm in a weird mood tonight.

There's probably nobody on Earth who'd call me innocent. Stupid, perhaps. Naive, certainly. Honest and trustworthy and caring, I like to think. Hopeful and hopeless and stubborn and blind, probably.

But, innocent?

Nope. Not me.

But this wasn't always the case.

I remember when I lost my innocence. Not the exact date and time, but I remember the place and the circumstances.

It was the night that I found out that she was cheating on me. I'd kinda sorta suspected it already, but I hadn't been sure. I was in denial, I suppose, but there was still enough suspicion to lead me to that place at that time on that night.

Shortly before Christmas, in 1986.

That was so long ago. Not just another life ago, but three or fours lives ago. At least.

I don't dwell on this. It's just something I was thinking about tonight. That night, and that girl - they have no impact or bearing on my life these days. Except for how it's a little bit harder to earn my trust, and how it's even harder to get it back once it's gone.

And something would have happened eventually. I would never have held onto my innocence forever. It would have been long gone by now even if that particular night had never happened. Something would have happened to steal my innocence away.

But I can't help but think that it would be nice to have it back. Just for a while. Just for a little while.

To once again look at life through young eyes. To trust. To feel untainted love with a heart that's still pure.

To believe.

She's been acting weird lately.

In a good way or in a bad way - I can't say for sure. Mainly because I don't know.

A weird way.

Like suddenly I matter more than I mattered before.

It's about time, I think.

---

I've been having a really tough time lately, with memory.

I find myself thinking that this situation sucks, and I kinda dwell on that fact for hours and hours and hours and hours.

I drink lots of beer.

Then, I remember that this situation was my choice.

Then, I remember why I made that choice.

Then, I decide to stick with that choice.

Only then, for a few precious minutes, and I anything close to okay with this.

The rest of the time I'm barely held together with band-aids and those twisty-wire thingies that come with loaves of sliced bread.

---

I seem to have forgotten what paragraphs are for, or how to use them.

---

Something else is happening. To a friend of mine. Something that I just know is going to end badly. But I cannot warn my friend, because nobody ever fucking listens to me.

Even though I'm right all the time.

All I can do is hope that, when the inevitable pain comes, that she can deal with it, and that she knows that she doesn't have to go through it alone.

---

I've been having these horrible, terrible thoughts. Like daydreams, except that they're more like nightmares.

Is there such a thing as a daynightmare?

Anyway, these little scenarios are fucking horrible, like the worst things that could possibly ever happen, yet in each of them I end up being needed.

So they're like 99.999999% terrible, and .000001% good.

I like to be needed.

I need to be needed.

But not at the prices I keep imagining.

---

Sometimes, I feel guilty.

Like, right now for example.

But what can I do?

Nothing, that's what.

The requisite eyes are not mine. I'm too close.

---

That last bit was a little murky, wasn't it?

Good. That's what I was going for.

I was just thinking back to that night in mid-May, 2007.

It's hard to believe that any human being could be as happy as I was.

My face hurt so much because I couldn't stop smiling. For days and days I couldn't stop smiling.

I could have died on that night, and I would have died an incredibly wonderfully happy man.

But nooooooooooo.

I had to keep living.

It's pretty ironic that, as it turns out, that was the worst night of my life.

Heh, this guy on facebook just asked me if I ever sleep.

Sleep brings dreams, so no thanks, I'll pass.

I wonder, if I were to write an entry about cynicism, would people doubt my motives?

I'm pretty sure that I would. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'm doing it right now, as I type this sentence.

It's just something I was thinking about today. I don't want to become one of those people. One of those people who's distrust has become so universal that they can't even trust themselves anymore. I know several people like that. They're not happy people.

I don't want to be like that. Like one of them.

But, problem is, I'm bombarded with selfishness and deceit everywhere I look and everywhere I go.

Lies disguised as kindness.

Cruelty for my own good.

And so on...

It's hard to trust. It really is. To look through the deceptions and beyond the actions and see what a person is really like. To ignore the bumps in the road and remember that it's the destination that's important.

I'm rambling now. I think I'll go sit in my garage. It's a nice night.

I could write a bunch of stuff right now. A huge part of me wants, perhaps even needs, to vent a little.

But, I made a promise.

I keep my fucking promises.

Wow, it's late. Time flies, as they say.

I guess it's fortunate timing that I don't really feel like writing, because I'm not sure that there are sufficient words to describe my current mood.

So much potential, pissed away.

A few weeks ago I was numb. That was because it was simply too much to bear, I think.

I'd kinda like to be numb again.

Tomorrow I might get to see HatGirl. I'm holding her car hostage in my garage until I get to see her. It's been a bajillion years.

I'm not looking forward to telling her about Thursday and Friday. She'll be disappointed in me, I know. She warned me that, if I let my guard down, I'd get hurt all over again.

She was right.

I wonder, if she'd given me any inkling that it would be as bad as it turned out to be, if I would have heeded her warning.

Probably not.

There's this old saying that everyone has heard.

I'll paraphrase. "If you don't have anything nice to say, then don't fucking say anything at all."

Well, I don't have anything nice to say.

Don't push it. I'm angry. You won't like me when I'm angry. I know that I don't.

Okay, I'm in a writey mood tonight. Wonders never cease, huh?

Problem is, I'm also a little bit drunk tonight. A couple glasses of Fat Tire (2246) and a bottle of The Reverend (782) will do that to a person, especially if that person is me.

Sometimes I really hate being such a lightweight.

Anyway...

Looking for inspiration, I did a search of my old blog entries. Bonus points will ensue for anyone who can deduce the two-word phrase for which I searched. Not that it matters. It's all the same. It's always been the same, for six and a half years. And, I fear, it will continue to be the same, for as long as it takes. Either long enough for me to stop breathing, or long enough for me to stop waiting.

Here's one from July 2009. I could have written it yesterday, and it would have fit perfectly:

It's not stupidity that keeps me here. Nope, it's knowing the truth, even when everyone else fails to see it. It's speaking the truth, and living the truth, and waiting for beautiful eyes to open so that I'm not alone any more.

It's not cowardice that keeps me from turning away and facing the unknown. It's that the unknown holds no appeal for me. And why should it? The appeal of the unknown lies in its potential, and I've already found all of the potential I could ever want.

It's not weakness. I'm not here because I'm weak, but because I'm strong. I have persevered when others would have given up. I have pushed forward when others would have faltered. Time after time I have exposed my heart to the daggers of reality and, though I've been stabbed, I've never given up and I've never cowered and I've never ran away. I've been right here all this time.

And it's not insanity. Step inside me and look through my eyes. See what I see. Feel with my heart the things that I feel. Use my lips to speak, and use my ears to listen to the words fighting to be heard. Reach out with my hand and touch what I touch, and feel the tingling of a million touches yet to come. This is all very real.

It's not stupidity, or cowardice, or weakness, or insanity. It's something else.

I know what it is. So far, I'm the only one who really knows what it is. What it's like. What it means. What it portends.

So far, I'm the only one who really gets it.

But eventually, there'll be another.

Beautiful eyes will open, and they will see me, right where I've been all along.

I can forgive a lot of things. I have forgiven a lot of things. More than anyone else would have forgiven.

But this?

How the fuck am I supposed to forgive this and still manage to maintain some semblance of dignity?

I am not a doormat, though I've played one in the past, when it seemed that a doormat was needed.

I did what was necessary, or at least what seemed necessary at the time, not because of what those things were, but because of who needed them.

Because of who needed me.

And I liked it. Loved it, even. I lived for those opportunities.

And now?

Summary dismissal.

Of whatever the fuck you want to call it. Friendship? Something more? Something less? Something else?

I don't care what you call it. Just pick something. And don't say nothing. Don't you fucking dare say nothing.

We may no longer exist, but I still do exist. Barely.

And what's left of me deserves more than this. Even the worst person on Earth would deserve more than this.

More than nothing.

What's the point of another 45 years?

This question is both serious and rhetorical.

I don't know the answer. I used to know it, but I was wrong.

I was so fucking wrong. I bet my life, and I lost the bet. I risked it all, and I lost it all.

So what's the point of another 45 years? What's the point, dare I ask, of another 45 seconds?

So, in his mind, did we lie to him as he wept from the thought of missing me? Did we only say what needed to be said, regardless of the truth, to ease his pain? Did we pat him on the back, and tell him what he wanted to hear, only so that we ourselves would feel better?

Or is he smart enough and mature enough to know that sometimes things aren't black and white? That one day's truth can be another day's mistake? That good intentions are not always enough?

I hope for the latter, yet fear the former with all my heart.

The words are still there, you know. Inside me. Straining to be set free. Yearning to serve their only purpose. To be heard.

Slamming into walls that I've slapped together. Testing. Practicing. Staying ready. Staying patient.

How much would it cost me, I wonder, to just let them out? So many would tell me - have told me - that I have nothing to lose. Nothing left to lose.

But what would the words say? Would their screams be in joy or in sorrow or in anger? Or, perhaps, a mixture of all three? I know only that they would be loud; beyond that I cannot predict. These words, they reside in my heart, not my brain, and my heart is a mystery even to me, these days.

To be so wonderfully right, and so incredibly wrong, about the only thing that has ever mattered to me. It's a wonder that I'm not crazy. Not really crazy, I mean. Oh, I have my moments when people might fling that label at me to see if it sticks, but I know better.

Can the truth ever be crazy?

Perhaps I, too, simply landed too soon.

As I've written before, I've heard that most people don't dream in color. As I've written before, I do dream in color, and I always have as far as I can tell.

Sight, even colored sight, is nothing to me, in my dreams. It's no big deal at all.

But, to have a dream so powerful, so real, that I can touch it, and smell it, and taste it?

I've been dreaming for a very long time.

Jostle me, holler at me. Scream "wake up" until your lungs bleed. I never want to wake up. Never. I would rather die.

Because sometimes, maybe once in a bazillion years, a dream will come true.

I'll take my chances.

So there.

So, this is what I wrote. One of the last things I wrote, will ever write. I'm not in the habit of making private conversations public, but I'm going to make an exception in this case. I hope that those of you who might choose to be cruel will read this, and know that it's the truth, and know that there is no cause for cruelty.

Most of the time, I'm very grateful. I got to feel something that a lot of people never get to feel. And I got to be important to you, albeit for a relatively brief time. Most of the time, I know that I'll be eternally grateful for all of this. So many people are zombies, or clueless. I'm neither, and that's all been because of you.

If I would just write. I mean really write. I know I could accomplish something with it. Even if the something was nothing more than the long overdue clearing of my head and my heart. These thoughts grown stale. These feelings wilted from lack of nourishment.

I can still do it, you know. I can still let my fingers tap-tap-tap away on my keyboard and watch words appear on my screen. I'm doing it right now, actually. But these words aren't me. These words are just shadows of who and what I am. My tap-tap-tapping fingers force the words into the light, and they disappear.

Where do shadows go when the light shines?

And what's left behind, when the shadows are gone?

I can't help but wonder. Just like you, my dear readers, can't help but wonder.

So what if we wonder about different things? We're still in this boat together, in a way. There is a difference, though. You can always jump ship, but I cannot. I'm the fucking captain, for better or for worse. I'll go down with this ship, or I'll keep it afloat and bring it into port. Time will tell, I guess.

I mean, you wonder about how long I can keep writing about the same old thing, the same old crap.

I, meanwhile, wonder about other things.

Like, tonight, exactly who am I even writing about?

The lying bitch who used me and then tossed me aside? Or maybe the sweet girl who felt genuine affection for me, only to have it evaporate before it could solidify? Was I a victim of indescribable cruelty, or were we victims of timing?

I wish that I knew. I really do. It would/should/could make all the difference in the world. To walk, or to run, or perhaps to stand my ground, at least a little longer...

I don't even write here anymore. Not because I don't need to write, or even because I don't want to write. I don't write because, what would I say? What good would it do? What would be the point?

I constantly look for the words to say to make everything right. I've been looking for so long. I'm convinced that the words exist. Such is my delusion, perhaps, but also such is my salvation.

I'm still met with disbelief, after all this time - and I meet it with my own disbelief.

Excuses after excuses, but never a reason.

Unnecessary.

Did I need a reason?

Nope.

So why should I expect one in return?

Answer: I shouldn't.

But, I do.

Something that I can believe. Something that's not clearly made-up bullshit. Something that's more than just an excuse.

Dammit.

So there.

It felt like I'd forgotten to wear pants.

It was Wednesday, I think. I was sitting in the throne at Rich O's. Or somebody was sitting there. I'm not convinced that it was me, despite numerous testimonies.

It was like one of those dreams. You're at school and everything is cool and then you notice that you're not wearing any pants.

I'd definitely forgotten something. Where was it? What was it?

Then, Thursday night, it felt like I had an itch. One I couldn't scratch. Not one of those annoying itches in the middle of your back that you can't reach, but deeper. Under the skin. In my heart or my brain or my soul - I couldn't pin it down. It was an irritating itch, but it wasn't unbearable.

Dammit, it should have been unbearable.

I'm not really sure what's happening.

HatGirl thinks I'm being stoic. But it's not that. It's something else. I'm something else.

Tonight was another weird night. I knew exactly what I was supposed to be feeling, but I couldn't quite get there. I was a needle on a record player, running parallel to the music but never quite in the right groove.

I hope I haven't become a pod person. I hate pod people.

I got some sleep. About four hours before my phone woo-hooed me awake. And then work called with some minor crisis. Better than no sleep, which is what I got Saturday night. I was so sad Saturday night. I made quite a spectacle of myself, I'm sure. Saying my goodbyes to everyone and everything that matters to me. Clinging to HatGirl and LaptopGirl as if my life depended on being with them. Which it does.

See, when I left for Washington in November, I suspected that it would be tough. But Saturday night, as I prepared to return for another month, I knew what it meant. There was no doubt. No hope.

But then there was a screw-up, and I didn't have to leave Sunday morning after all. I got myself an extra day. Not that I did much with it. Sat around dreading the feeling of isolation that was waiting for me in Bellingham, as far away from here as you can get, and still be in the continental U.S.

I leave for the airport in an hour and a half. Then ninety minutes to Chicago, then four hours to Seattle, then two hours driving to Bellingham. Each minute and each mile it will get worse and worse.

People try to help. They really do, and I really appreciate it, sometimes. They tell me to use my trip as an opportunity. To get better. To realize that I can, once again, enjoy my own company. But they don't understand. I don't want help. I need to miss them. I need to have a reason to come back, to get up in the mornings, to keep breathing.

People don't want me to be sad anymore. I don't know if it's so they'll feel more comfortable around me, or because of guilt, or out of genuine concern. It's probably a combination of those things. But they don't understand. It's not about the sadness. It's about the love. The sadness is a side-effect, thrust upon me by these circumstances. But it's not what's important. It's not what I cling to.

To get rid of the sadness, I'd have to get rid of the love. And that can't be done. Not by me. Every time I've tried, it's felt like I was putting a gun to my head, about to pull the trigger. This is so much a part of me, and has been for so long, that to end it would be to end everything that matters to me. It would be suicide.

Now, I fully support a person's right to end their own life on their own terms, but it's not for me. So I can't. I won't. Instead, I'll suffer. It's what I do. It's all I can do, for now. For the next month.

After that, who knows?

You know what's funny? Or maybe not funny, but I call it funny because it keeps my wrists intact and my brains inside my skull?

It's always the same thing. Every year on this date, I try to do one thing and I end up doing another. I try to reflect on the year's events, and I end up having a séance of sorts.

Well, except for last year. But last year was special.

Tonight, I spent midnight alone. After last year, I really and truly thought that I would never be alone again on New Year's Eve. But, I was.

Oh, well, right?

This year, instead of the usual fifteen minutes, I was outside for an hour and a half. Well, it was an eventful year, you might think.

Wrong.

Not about 2009 being eventful, but about that having anything at all to do with my being outside for seventy-five minutes longer than usual.

What went wrong? What went right? What progress was made? What setbacks were encountered?

How can I do better, in 2010? How can I be worthy, in 2010?

Hi! How are you? I miss you.

The year 2009 saw lots of things. But they're all irrelevant. All except for one thing. One person.

I didn't want to have a séance this year. But, I expected it to happen.

And, it did.

Funny, right?

Too many excuses. I'd say that there are a million of them, but I've already been called on using that number too often. It's just another excuse. So, instead, I'll say lots.

And when one or two or a hundred are disproved, there are scores more waiting to take their place. Or, even easier, memory becomes conveniently optional.

I'm supposed to be having fun. Everything is supposed to be a lark.

Tra-la-la-la-la-la-fucking-la.

But it doesn't work that way. Not for me.

For me, this is too important to take lightly. It's my life after all. The only one I have.

And this, this whatever-it-is that keeps me going. I don't even know what to call it sometimes. Stupid hope is usually the term that I employ.

But is hope ever really stupid?

Everyone On Earth tells me that it is, in this particular case. That doesn't make them right.

This is hurting nobody except myself. It's my choice, and I do choose it. Choice is something I didn't have for a very long time, but now I do. Now I have a choice and nothing else has changed.

Anyway, in a little less than 20 hours, this year will end for me. This year in which everything fell apart. This year in which everything continues to fall apart. Constantly crumbling into smaller and smaller pieces.

I can't fucking wait for this year to end.

This really blows. But you already knew that, didn't you?

Again, why are you here?

Oh, because you're stupid, that's why.

I almost forgot who I was talking to.

I'm not really sure what my mood is. I mean, I'm angry, but it kinda feels normal. Like this is how I'm supposed to feel.

Angry, and a little sad.

It feels like the real me.

Also, I seriously doubt that I'll sleep at all tonight.

Also, I should just stay home tomorrow night. No good would be served by my presence anywhere else. I think that's been proven enough times.

No, I really haven't abandoned this journal. No, I'm not dead. No, I'm not in prison.

I guess it's just the same old same old. The things I want to write, I can't. The things I don't want to write? Well, I don't.

This too, shall pass. Eventually one dam or another will break, and everything will start pouring onto my keyboard again.

But, for now, here's an entry from July 2007.

I've decided to try an experiment. I'm just going to type. Whatever comes into my head, I'm going to let it flow out through my fingers.

I don't expect this to be anything good. Or interesting. I suppose that I do expect it to be real, though. And that's gotta be worth something.

I'm a sucker for tears from a woman. Wait, that doesn't sound quite right. Because the word sucker implies that I'm being deceived. That I'm being naive. And I'm not. At least usually I'm not. Usually the tears are real.

They cut right through me. Make me want to drop everything else in my life and do something, anything to help make the tears stop. Even if I don't have a fucking clue what I should do or say, the need to do or say something is almost overwhelming.

That's pretty normal, I think. To want to help someone in need.

But then there's the other thing. The realization that something special is happening. The realization that I'm seeing a girl at her most open and honest, and that she feels comfortable enough to share that kind of intimacy with me. It makes me feel a little bit special, and a part of me actually wishes that it would continue for a while longer, so I could feel special for a while longer.

If I could somehow milk the tears. Control their pace and their ferocity to something manageable. Ride that wave for as long as I can, and carry the intimacy that we're sharing along for the ride.

I think that tears are a lot like orgasms. A woman is never more real to me than when she's crying, or when she's climaxing. At those times, she's her most primal self. Her most authentic self. No bullshit. No games. No doubts. Just her. The real her, and she's sharing it with me, of all people.

I want to help. I really do. To turn my back would be just incredibly selfish, and that's one thing I'm not. But what if I can't help? What if I shouldn't help? I mean, maybe I'm just supposed to listen. Maybe I'm just supposed to be there for her, offer a shoulder to lean on, lend an ear, say a kind word every now and then.

I want to help, I really do. But if I can't, if I shouldn't, then I'd still want to be there. I'd still want to share that intimacy. I'd still want to feel special for a while.

I don't think that makes me selfish. I think that makes me human.

Human. Imagine that.

...41 to go.

I know what's supposed to have happened by now. I get the emails. I get the texts. Questions, and reasonable questions all. I don't ignore them, even if I don't reply.

There are, despite the platitude, such things as stupid questions. Undeserving of an answer.

But I'm feeling cooperative tonight, so what the fuck?

What was supposed to have happened follows.

---

Wow, a little over a month by myself. With zero hope for a respite, for another forty-one days. With nothing to anticipate, for another forty-one days. That's what it took. When willpower wouldn't suffice, and when intelligence wouldn't further, and when experience wouldn't ease, a month alone has finally accomplished.

I'm not going to sit here, in my hotel room late on a Friday night, and write that I was stupid, or ignorant, or blind, or unrealistic. Perhaps I was all of those things, but I'm not going to admit to any of those shortcomings.

I'm going to admit to one thing. One and only one thing, which should excuse everything I've said and done and felt, and everything for which I've hoped and yearned and waited, for the last six years.

If only people would have believed me.

I was in love. Absolutely and beyond a shadow of a doubt, I was in love.

Now, the use of the past tense in that last sentence is interesting, to say the least. It hurt my brain to write that sentence. It hurt my heart even more.

But I'll survive. It seems that I always survive, even when I don't particularly want to do so.

Thirty-two days. That cured me. Who would have predicted that?

Besides Everyone On Earth, I mean.

---

Maybe that would be nice. Maybe you people could move on, go about your lives. Maybe I should lie.

But I won't.

I'm likening this to some books I've read which were written by prisoners. Incarcerated and isolated bodies and souls, forced to look inward for entertainment. Face to face with themselves. Finding themselves. Finally emerging better than when they went in.

That was supposed to happen to me. Everyone On Earth thought it would happen.

But I won't lie. I didn't expect it to happen, and it didn't happen. Not to me. Not to what's left of me, I mean.

I haven't found myself at all. For a simple reason. I'm not here in Northwestern Washington.

I'm almost two-thousand miles away. I'm in Southern Indiana. I'm with her.

...45 to go.

Today was a bad day. Not that they're not all bad, but today was especially so.

Abandoned by one, or maybe two. Ignored by both, certainly. Real or imagined transgressions have made me the way I am tonight. Alone. Physically and mentally and chronologically and emotionally.

I'll get over it, most likely. I always do. I always forgive.

But what if I don't want to forgive?

Huh?

What if I want to stay angry? Can I force that particular emotion upon myself when other, less selfish emotions, constantly claw and climb their way towards the surface of my mind? Can anger be strong enough to defend its position? It's never been strong enough before; that's for sure.

This bullshit I use instead of a life would be a lot more bearable if I could stay angry. At the lies. At the teasings. At the broken promises, both implicit and explicit.

I keep waiting, expecting even, for something to push me over the edge. To make forgiveness impossible, even for me, of all people. It's going to happen. Eventually.

I can't fucking wait.

I've always wondered what I would write if I were to give up.

Soon, perhaps, I'll find out. Soon, perhaps, we'll all find out.

I watch it happen, because that's all I can do. I cannot stop it, and I cannot slow it, and I cannot...

Uncoiling, unraveling, falling, piling in a haphazard tangle at my feet. The contents of me, the essence of me, they spill like...

I watch, because that's all I can do. And because it's what I must do.

Something has gone terribly wrong.

I die, but I live.

Why? To witness? To pay homage? To...

49 to go...

Almost.

That's the word I kept telling myself tonight. Over and over and over until I started to actually believe it.

Almost bearable.

See, I know who I am, and what I do. When I'm being myself, I sit at a bar, and I drink, and I think, and I smoke.

Last night, and tonight, I got to do all four things at the same time.

Washington, like most places these days, has an anti-smoking law in place. But Washington, perhaps unlike most places, also has Indian casinos in place. That's what they call them. Indian casinos. Not native-American casinos. Politically incorrect, maybe, but it's certainly their choice. They can call the things whatever they want.

Anyway, as near as I can figure it, these places and the reservations which contain them are not considered to be part of the United States. That's why the anti-smoking laws don't apply to them.

So tonight and last night I got to be more like myself than at any other time since I came to Bellingham.

It was almost bearable.

I'm 1954 - I looked it up - miles from home and from my life. I miss my friends and my family and my cats. I miss some people - they know who they are - more than I'd thought possible. More than is appropriate and more than I'm allowed. But even more than that, I've missed myself. Tonight and last night I found myself for a while.

All is certainly not perfect. I still search for that elusive writey mood. I dig around in my brain and my heart, my fingers grabbing and grasping at anything and everything. But when I pull my prizes into the light to examine them, they're never quite what I'm looking for.

I have so much to say. Too much to say, perhaps.

It sometimes seems that I'm needed the most when I'm unavailable. I was afraid this would happen. I even knew this would happen eventually, if I was gone long enough. Well, I've been gone long enough. And I'm needed. But I cannot help.

I'm too far away.

...50 to go.

I keep waiting, expecting, hoping to get into a proper mood. A writey mood, I call it. I doubt that's really a word, but I don't care. I'm going to use it anyway. It fits, and shit.

Besides, every word in existence was coined at some point.

But anyway, the writey mood eludes me. It's a slippery bastard.

---

It's all such bullshit. I've been told a thousand lies. A million lies. I want the truth. But nobody knows the truth. Not even the liars.

The truth, it's also a slippery bastard.

I get so sick of people tiptoeing around me. Treating me with kid gloves. Beating around the goddamn bush. Fucking protecting my feelings.

It's all such bullshit.

My feelings are nothing but scar-tissue. They're fucking indestructible.

---

Even now, even after everything, I don't matter even to myself. I will not, can not, put myself first. Second, maybe, but not first. Not before her. Or them. Whatever.

---

It was a horrible idea. I wanted it so much, but I wanted it for the wrong reason. So now, now I get to be alone over the holidays. I get to feel sorry for myself.

All will be as it should be.

---

This is my fault. I'm the one who messed up. I'm the one who can't or won't face reality.

Maybe they're really nothing. Nothing at all. Not leftovers of a reality almost gone. Not even echoes of a reality gone for months. And not even inklings of a future promised yet denied.

Maybe they're nothing.

Nothing at all.

Perhaps it's all in my head. Perhaps that's where it's always been. Perhaps that would make the most sense. Perhaps that would explain everything, to everyone but me.

---

He screams and he moans and he groans. Sometimes, he cries. His agony is as unimaginable as it is inevitable.

He will not die. He will not starve and he will not drown and he will not suffocate and he will not take his own life. He suffers and he endures.

Somehow, he survives.

I pity him, and I admire him. I worship him.

---

People like to spout platitudes to me. It makes them feel wiser and therefore superior to me. One such platitude is, "God will never give you more than you can handle."

My response to that is, "Tell that to my friend WomanRepellant."

---

They're not leftovers and they're not echoes and they're not inklings. What the fuck are they?

Seriously, I want to know. I need to know.

I fucking deserve to know.

This is my 14th day here. I guess the newness is really starting to wear off now. I’m feeling more and more homesick with each passing day. Some people told me that it would get easier. That I would get used to it. Some people were wrong. This sucks.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I have managed to enjoy myself, just not as often as I’d have liked. Going down to Kent this past weekend was a lot of fun. It was really great to see some of my old friends and visit some of my old haunts. I’ve really missed living there, even more than I thought.

I’ve noticed that I don’t like to write anymore. It always seems like such a chore. And when I do manage to bang out some sentences, nothing flows. Nothing has rhythm. This is especially true when I try to write about the mundane events of my days and nights. So I don’t write about those things. I hardly write about anything.

It’s all I can do to keep from packing up my stuff and flying home. Is this job worth it? I haven’t seen her for over two weeks. And it’s going to be another two months. How am I supposed to function with that knowledge constantly beating away inside my head? Breathing is a chore, and yet I’m expected to work, eat, sleep?

I just don’t know.

Who am I going to be when I finally return home? Will anyone even recognize me? Will I recognize myself?

It's gotten so bad that HatGirl is actually rooting for me to leave. To move away, or at least to find work elsewhere for a while. To just get away from all this pain. No matter how much she would miss me, she still says I should leave.

"It would do you good," she says.

Wrong.

There is no getting away. Physically, sure. That would be fairly simple. But emotionally, not so much. This is where I belong. This is where I am, and this is where I'll stay, no matter how far away my body might happen to be. I could travel to the ends of the Earth, and it would do me no good at all, because I couldn't take my heart with me.

So we have a disagreement, HatGirl and I. Even though she's very smart, there are some things that she just doesn't get. This problem that I have, it's not going to be solved by running away. It's not a physical entity from which I can hide. Nope, this is something that, if it's ever going to get better, it's going to have to happen right here.

Not that I expect anything to get better. I fully expect that this is going to kill me eventually. But, at least here, I have a fighting chance. At least here, I can be strong and brave. At least here, I can stand my ground.

I look death in the eye, and it doesn't blink. I wait for the killing blow, and it doesn't come.

What is it waiting for?

Records from that time are so spotty, and they're spread out all over the place. It took a lot of work, and a lot of memory, to accurately piece together those events.

May 12, 2007. The happiest day of my life, up to that point. After I got home, I sat on my swing until the Sun rose, my face cramping so much from smiling that I nearly cried from the pain. Not that anyone would have noticed. I was already laughing from being so happy, and in the dark it's hard to tell the difference.

I've been happy since, certainly. There have even been times when I've been happier than I was on that Spring day, nearly two and a half years ago. But that day will always be special to me, because it was so pure.

So much has happened since then. It's so hard, sometimes, to maintain the proper perspective on things. But I try. I really do try. I think about that wonderful night, reliving as well as I can the joy and the relief and the hope. Remembering what it was like to feel all those things again, after all those months that they'd lain dormant.

I've said before that I died on October 9th, 2004. Well, on May 12, 2007, I finally lived again.

I need to remember that. I am still alive.

My schedule, such as it is, has blurred together. It's now as meaningless as it is fluid. Night and day are just words, abstractions, faint memories, and nothing more.

The dark of night and the light of day have formed gray, as they always do. Gray is okay. I'm used to gray. It's the brightness of the light and the mysteries of the dark that bother me. Frighten me.

Am I tired right now because I'm actually tired, or merely because I feel that I should be tired?

I could ask myself the same question regarding every feeling that I've had lately.

I've mentioned before about how I like to go back and read my old entries. It's always interesting to see what's changed, and it's even more interesting to see what's the same. Plus, sometimes I find stuff that manages to remind me that I'm quite capable of being a pretty decent writer. When I want to be and/or when I've had enough to drink.

June of 2006 was a good writing-month for me. The following is one of my favorites from then. Except that the wall is now more of just a line in the sand.

"You're a fucking dumbass," I said.

"What are you bitching about now?" I asked.

"You know exactly what I'm talking about, you stupid fuck, " I answered.

"Well, how about you pretend that I don't know, and you explain it to me."

"Okay fine." I paused for effect. "You had hope just now. Don't even fucking try to deny it. That person just walked in the door and you had hope that it would be her."

"Bullshit," I said.

"C'mon, I was right here," I said. "I know that you had hope."

"What if I did?" I asked defensively. "Besides, it was only for a second."

"I can't believe how stupid you are." I was getting frustrated. "How many times do you have to be hurt before you give up this bullshit?"

"It's not bullshit," I protested. "It's perfectly normal for me to miss a friend, and to hope to see that friend again."

"You forget who you're talking to," I said. "I'm the one person you cannot fool."

"I'm not trying to fool anyone. You're just being paranoid."

"Paranoid?" I was incredulous. "You think I'm paranoid, you dumb fuck?"

"That's exactly what I think," I said. "You forget that things have changed. I've managed to separate things in my head. I want to see my friend, that's all."

"Save that bullshit for your 'blog," I said. "Like I said, you cannot fool me."

"You suck," I responded. "You suck, and I don't have to listen to you if I don't want to."

"You are such a stubborn asshole," I said. "Fine, but let me ask you something."

"What?" I asked confidently.

"You say that you miss your friend, and that's all that you miss?" I asked.

"That's right," I responded.

"Well," I continued, "What about the potential for something else? What about the potential that you saw in the two of you as a couple? What about the potential that you saw in her as a person?"

"That's all in the past," I said uneasily. I was beginning to get an idea of what would come next.

"Oh, is it really?" I asked. "You don't miss that potential at all?"

"Um, well I guess I'll always miss that," I answered. "At some level at least."

"You try so hard to sound like you've got your shit together," I said.

"Hey," I protested. "I am a lot better than I was. Why are you being such a dick?"

"Because I'm sick of your bullshit," I answered. "That, plus I might be the only person on Earth that cares about you."

"You have a funny way of showing it," I pointed out. "I was in an actual good mood for once, and you had to go and ruin it."

"You idiot," I said. "You've actually managed to forget about it, haven't you?"

"Forget about what?" I asked.

"About The Wall," was all I needed to say.

I went numb for a precious second. "You asshole," I said as the pain came rushing back to me. "Why did you have to remind me? Why couldn't you just let me be content for a while?"

"Because contentedness is dangerous for you," I said. "You can't handle being content, and you always look for something more."

"And what's wrong with that?" I asked, though I knew what the answer would be.

"What's wrong with that, you dumb fuck, is that you always look for the same thing. Over and over and over and over. And you're never going to find it."

"Because of The Wall," I admitted.

"Right. Because of The Wall," I answered. "All of that potential that you saw - it's unreachable to you now. You've got to come to grips with that fact."

"You know," I countered. "I wasn't thinking about that stuff at all, before you butted in. I just missed my friend. You could have left me alone."

I sighed. I'd hoped that it wouldn't come to this. "Okay," I said. "I'll make you a deal. Let me ask you one more question, and if you answer it honestly and still want me to leave you alone, then I will."

"Great," I answered. "Ask your fucking question."

"Okay, here goes." This was going to be hard for me to ask, I knew that it would be exponentially tougher for him to answer. "Right now, you realize that all of that potential is something that you'll never see realized. Right now, you know it like you've never known it before. My question is this: Without that potential, with nothing except the opportunity for what you once had, and nothing more, ever, are you sure that you want to see her walk through that door?"

I knew what I was supposed to say. I sure as fuck knew what I wanted to say. But I decided, for some reason that escapes me now as I tell this story, I decided to answer the question honestly.

"If you put it like that," I responded, "then the answer is no. To simply go back to what there was would be impossible. It would hurt too much. I'd rather have nothing than try to go back to that while knowing that there would never be anything more."

"Thank you for your honesty," I said gently. "And now, as I promised, I'll leave you alone if that's your wish. You can hope and dream all you want, and I won't interrupt you again."

"That's okay," I said. "You can stay for a while if you want."

"Thank you," I answered. "Let's have a beer together, and let's miss her for a while."

"Sounds good," I accepted. "I'll try not to have any hope this time."

"I know you'll try," I said. "And if you slip up, I'll be right here for you. To smack you down once again."

I allowed myself a smile. "You're an asshole, you know?" I said.

"Yes I am," I conceded. "But at least I'm not a fucking dumbass."

"Maybe that's why we make such a good team," I ventured.

"Cheers!" we said in unison, as our glasses clinked together.

Look, I'm really flattered. Again. Really. And even a little bit tempted.

But, I'm not like that, and if you knew me at all you'd know that I'm not like that. It's perfectly normal for you to assume that I'm like every other guy on Earth, but I'm not, and I find it a little insulting when that assumption is made and made and made and made. There has to be a possibility of a future and, for us, there is none.

---

And you. I don't even know where to start. I've never known where to start.

Who are you? Do the girl I see, and the girl you are, do they have anything in common at all?

And who the fuck am I?

I keep finding myself wishing, more and more often lately, not that you would start, but that I would stop. This is a fucking huge shift, and I'm still trying to come to grips with it. My entire sense of self has blurred.

I'll probably try to go to sleep again in a few minutes. I don't expect much success, though. I find myself back in the same pattern I was in several months ago. Two hours, maybe three if I'm lucky, and then I'm wide awake again. I think I've averaged about two hours per night for the last week. Maybe four hours per night for the past two weeks. I slept really well on a couch a couple of weeks ago. I think that was the last time I slept well.

The main difference, this time around, is that I don't know what keeps waking me up. If there are bad dreams, they're evaporating as soon as they've done their damage. Maybe I don't need to have those bad dreams anymore. Nothing has changed, after all, from when I hit rock-bottom back in May. Maybe those dreams are implied, and so they don't need to actually appear.

And I feel okay, I suppose. I'm not constantly exhausted like I should be. Maybe I'm getting used to this, finally.

All of the days and nights are blurring together. They have no meaning to me anymore, for the most part. Oh, sometimes they matter. Last night mattered for a while, until it reverted to just another night. I'm disappointed about that, even though I knew it was a real long-shot. Stupid hope may be stupid, but it's better than nothing, and it still stings when it's dashed. Still reminds me that I'm alive.

And I think Wednesday night was pretty fun, or maybe it was Tuesday. I wish I knew for sure about that one. For a few seconds there, I was smarter than OddlyFamiliarGirl, and that almost never happens.

In nine days I get to leave and maybe enjoy myself for a while. At least that's the plan. I've been afraid that I'll get this damn swine flu and have to cancel my trip. Or, even worse, I could get sick while I'm in Las Vegas. That would really suck.

I suppose, for the sake of completeness, I should say that there's a chance that I'm not coming back. It's not a big chance, but it's greater than zero.

Hmmm, I feel really tired right now. It's probably a false alarm, but I've got to try to sleep.

It's such a nice night outside. It's warm, I mean. So even though the predicted thunderstorms look like they're a no-go, it's still nice.

I'm going to go out to my garage, and sit on my el-cheapo white plastic furniture, and drink at least one yummy Marzen, and I'm going to try to get out of this damn writey mood that I'm in.

How do I do that?

Well, I allow myself to be overwhelmed. So that thoughts refuse to line up like baby ducks. So that my mind is awash and aswarm with thousands of conflicting thoughts and emotions. So that I couldn't pick a single tree out of that forest if my life depended on it.

I make no promises, though. I might be able to keep my big fat mouth shut, or I might not.

There are things that I need to say, dammit. There are things that need to be said, dammit. There are thoughts that need to be expressed, dammit.

There are dragons that need to be slain, dammit, or at least acknowledged.

If I was Catholic, I think it would be funny to do that cross-myself thing whenever I was about to do something scary or stressful. I see baseball players do it all the time when they step up to the plate.

Or if I had asthma, I could use my inhaler thingy at those same times. I guess I could get one of those inhaler thingies even though I don't have asthma. For comedic effect.

Or maybe if I was a voodoo priest, I could sacrifice a chicken. But it would be a big hassle to always have to carry around live chickens.

Anyway, I'm not pushing my luck tonight. I'm going to Bearno's instead. It sucks and it's LOUD there, but at least it's not haunted, except by SneakyGirl, and her ghost isn't scary.

I thought I'd try to write for a bit before I tried to sleep. Some people probably think I'm just avoiding the inevitable insomnia, and maybe that's part of it, but I also feel like I've been a big fat slacker when it comes to this journal lately.

My brain is pretty tired, so I'm just going to let my fingers type for me. They usually do a better job than my brain, anyway.

People ask me stuff. The same things over and over and over and over. Typical questions include, "Are you fucking retarded or something?" and the ever-popular, "Why?" and the rhetorical, "Really?"

No, I don't think so. But if I were, would I realize it?

I'll get to that.

Yes, really.

Wow, I just caught myself reading what I'd already written. I'm not supposed to do that. It only complicates things when I let my brain get involved. Sometimes my brain doesn't like what my fingers have written and then they get into a big fight about it. It's not pretty.

The problem I've always had with the Why? question has been that I must be psychic. But I can't tell people that because then all they do is revert back to the Are you fucking retarded or something? question and it becomes an ugly loop.

How does anyone know the reason for anything? I mean the reason that they do something or think something or say something or feel something. A lot of the time life seems, to me, to be a series of after-the-fact vindications. I'm smoking a cigarette because I lit it. I lit it because I bought it earlier. I bought it because I was running low. I was running low because I'd smoked most of the previous pack. And so on and so on.

I'm smoking this cigarette because I was born. There, you happy now, or should I go further?

I'm smoking this cigarette because the Big Bang happened.

Whoa, I seem to have gone a little off-track.

I did that because of the Big Bang, too.

Vindication is what I was going to write about. I was going to use it in a sentence, as in: I don't fucking know why, okay, but everything I've learned in the past six years has provided vindication.

So there.

Nothing has proven me wrong, and so that means that I've been right. And, because I was right when I had absolutely no reason to even form an opinion, let alone the right one, then I must be psychic.

Not retarded.

Why is the sky blue? Why is the sun hot? Why is water wet? Why is grass green? Why her? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

Just because, that's why.

The question of what I'll be doing tonight - it didn't even need to be asked. I'm going to miss her. I just am. I can feel myself hurtling towards stage one at breakneck speed. Before too long, I'm going to hit that wall, and I'm going to lie in a heap for a while.

The only question I have is where I'll be doing this. Either here at home, or maybe at Bearno's, or maybe at Jack's. I should go to Jack's, but I doubt that I will. That place is becoming haunted, and I'm not sure that I need any more ghosts right now. Maybe I'll go if OddlyFamiliarGirl wants to go.

But I'm not complaining. I've been so spoiled these last few days. I got to spend a lot of time with HatGirl Saturday night, and today SneakyGirl paid me a surprise visit. Hell, even LaptopGirl herself managed to communicate with me a couple of times.

So, I'm not complaining. There's a price that I have to pay for daring to be happy, even if that happiness is in scattered bits and tiny pieces and fleeeting moments. And that price, I'm hurtling towards it.

Tonight, I will miss her. Tonight, I will be back where I belong, in a heap at the base of a wall that I can never seem to break through.

I've been trying to figure out just what, if anything, he was trying to accomplish by telling me. Perhaps I was supposed to be scared away. Perhaps I was supposed to get angry. Perhaps I'm supposed to care.

But I wasn't. And I didn't. And I don't.

Or maybe it was to ease some guilty feelings. Not for what had happened, but for the secrecy that had followed. If so, then guilt was unnecessary, and there's nothing for me to forgive.

In truth, I'd suspected it for years. After all, why should he be different than just about every other guy? I know that I, given the opportunity, would have jumped at it.

Oh, wait. I was given the opportunity, more than once, and I decided to be a nice guy instead of just a guy. I decided to do what was right instead of what was expected. But, of course, my circumstances have always been different, and so I have always been different.

Anyway, this thing, this thing that may or may not have been revealed in order to anger or sadden me, or to unburden a chest, it was a long time ago.

And, like I said, I don't care. It changes nothing.

It's instinctive, of course, but that doesn't make it boring or robotic. Instincts are translated to thoughts and emotions by our brains, and so everything makes perfect sense and it makes us feel like we're in control of things.

I don't have any kids, that lived, that I know of, so maybe I'm not the right person to be spouting any words, let alone advice, about parenting.

But, it's my blog, and I'm not forcing anyone to read it.

We want to shelter our children in their own little Garden of Eden for as long as we can, so that they can stay innocent for as long as they can. We feed them, clothe them, protect them. We teach them about all of the wonderful and amazing things that the world has to offer, and we watch in awe as they learn and embrace the truths that we show them. But the bad things, we hide the bad things from them. So that they won't find out. Not yet, anyway. We don't tell them that, while the world is full of love and wonders, it is also full of fear and pain.

There are terrible things in this world.

But I'm not one of them.

I said that I'd understand, and I do understand.

But I don't agree. Not at all.

So many times, I've thought it might be the last time. Not every time, but often enough. Too often, I mean.

It wasn't always like that. There were good times, lots of good times. There were nights that would end with the certainly that there'd be another day. On those nights, I slept well. I miss those nights, that confidence that I had, that it would continue for at least another day. That maybe it would continue forever.

The last time wasn't one of the good ones. The last time, like so many other times before, I heard the voice inside my head. "This could be the last time," it whispered.

"Make it last," it advised.

"Remember this," it urged.

"Never let go," it pleaded.

I didn't want to let go, not ever. I wanted to have and to hold and to protect and to cherish, but mostly I wanted to hold. To just hold on to, well, everything that matters to me.

But I didn't. I let go. I released my grip, and I let my arms fall back to my sides.

I wonder, Was that the last time?

This entry is mistitled. I'm not even close to being drunk. Oh well, can't be helped now. I've already typed the title.

Well my plan of just sitting in my garage and drinking didn't work out. I got through a bottle of Barfly and then, when I'd had just a couple sips of a second bottle's pouring, my phone rang.

What followed was pretty much the exact opposite of sitting in my garage by myself.

Anyway, it was a good night. Not because of the way it turned out, but I guess because of the way I managed to hold myself together long enough to be useful. And, not only that, I also got to say some things that I'd really needed to say.

See, just like everyone else, there are reasons for my being the way that I am. Reasons besides pure insanity, I mean.

And we certainly had a good example of insanity tonight, didn't we?

But I digress.

The reasons almost always exist, even if they're not known. I, for example, still have no idea what reason(s) there might have been for what happened to me a little over six years ago. But I do know, boy do I fucking know, why I hit rock-bottom a few months ago, and why I'm still down here, wallowing in the muck and the mud of my own misery.

Tonight, I got to state those reasons. So that made it a good night. Even if nothing else had happened, I was able to finally unburden myself a little. And I didn't get any back-talk. That really meant a lot to me.

And I was able to stand up for myself a little. By stating the simple truth that I don't know if things between us can ever work. It seems to me that we tried to make it work, for a long time, and it seems to me that we failed.

That I failed, I mean.

I don't know if we broke up or not. Definitions will vary, as will intentions. And results are unknowable at this time. It certainly felt like a break-up to me.

But I'll tell you something: If it was a break-up, then it was at least a proper one. Finally.

So, there is a very real chance that I'm drunk right now. But that's okay. It's 3:07 AM on a Thursday morning. I'm safely at home, where I plan to stay for the next several hours and/or days and/or weeks and/or months, at least until I become sober again. I am no menace to either myself or to society.

And besides, it's not even my fault at all that I'm maybe possibly drunk. And it's not even OddlyFamiliarGirl's fault, even though before her kind invitation I'd been planning to go to sleep at 7:00 or so, and after her kind invitation I ended up having a nice Marzen (16022) and a nice Urbock (437) while at Rich O's.

It is, of course, LaptopGirl's fault. Who's else would it be? She is, after all, the root of all evil and the fountain of all goodness in my life. Why shouldn't she also be in charge of my drunkenness or lack thereof?

So I ended up buying a bottle of Avery Reverend to take home with me, and then, because of the aforementioned you-know-who, I ended up drinking the damn thing (716) while I glared at my phone and replied to emails and strived to remain useful whilst I died inside.

I will be fair, though. I will share the blame. It was me who poured the beer from the bottle into the glass, and it was me who then poured the beer from the glass into my mouth.

Did you ever wish that water wasn't wet? Or that the sky wasn't blue? Or that the Sun wasn't hot and bright?

Or that love wasn't real?

Anyway, it just doesn't fucking matter. None of it does. I can no more take my heart back now than I could have resisted giving it away so long ago. It no longer belongs to me, and it never will again.

And the truth is that I like this mood I'm in right now. I'm fucking focused, after all. The universe, and the room, and the inside of my skull - these things are all quite blurry and wavy, but everything that matters is still in perfect focus.

I'm in love with her.

So there.

A lot of the fucking time, I wish that I wasn't in love with her.

So there again. Take that.

But wishes are as useful in my life as, as they say, screen doors on a submarine.

I sit here and I sit there and I sit wherever I might happen to be sitting, and I wish and I wish and I wish and I wish, and then on the good nights I wish no more, because I realize that it's a waste of time and effort.

Things are the way that they are. Things aren't the way that they aren't. Not a single thing that I do or say or think or feel will ever change anything, because it's not up to me, and it never has been up to me.

I did not lie.

Not even once.

Not even a little bit.

Lot of good that did me.

So there.

I ran across this old entry, from March of 2006. It amazes me how little has changed over the years.

The nice thing about this is that it's giving me something to think about, but the bad thing about this is that it's giving me something to think about.

Too many things, actually.

My mind is aswarm with thoughts, my heart is teeming with feelings, all with their own agendas. Some will merge for a brief time, join forces in fierce battle against their enemies, swear allegiance to false alliances, but all the while only truly working toward their own vision of an idealized conclusion.

Others are adversaries from the start. Like dogs and cats, like Arabs and Jews, they are born into this war which began long ago and which will continue long after these individual skirmishes and battles and betrayals have become nothing more than forgotten footnotes in a history book.

And the individual combatants, so full of resolve and so possessed of purpose, they will become nothing more than patches of ground where the flowers, nourished by the blood-soaked earth, grow vibrant and strong.

And me?

Well, I'm Mars, The God of War.

And so, now I'm back. Where I belong.

Where breaths are lies, because I don't want to take them.

Where heartbeats do nothing more than mark wasted time.

Where moods and thoughts and musings are nothing more than faint textures fumblingly etched onto a terrible canvas.

Where I hold my tongue, as much as I can, because I cannot scream and because screaming is all that would be worthy. Where it doesn't make sense. Where there's no explanation. Where I can't be trusted.

Where it's all just too weird.

Where I pretend, all the time, that I'm moving toward something or away from something, but where I'm really just standing still. Rooted in this here and this now and this what and this why. Because there's nowhere else to go, and because there's nowhere else I want to be.

Where I belong.

Where I miss her.

I've been sleeping a lot lately. At least twelve hours every day. I've been dreaming a lot.

Goodnight, cruel world.

I haven't done one of these in a while. Probably because it's a hassle.

And, upon watching the video, I saw that I'd said MisunderstoodGirl when I meant to say MixedSignalGirl. Not that I don't also miss MisunderstoodGirl, it's just that she's not one of the first people who came to mind.

I'm sure that every who knows me would shake their head in some assholish combination of pity and disappointment over what I did late Friday night.

But, Oh well.

How could I refuse?

Answer: I couldn't fucking refuse.

And it's okay. It really is. I feel better now, because I got an explanation of sorts, for the way I've been treated lately. One that I can actually believe, if you can believe that. I needed that explanation even more than I thought. I needed it more than I needed to breathe.

And it's also okay because I got to be useful again, albeit for just one night.

Not that kind of night, you perverts!

And all that stuff about getting to be a part of her life again, and getting to be a part of the kid's life again?

Well, I knew it was bullshit all along, as it was being said, and she would have known it too, had she been sober.

I don't pity myself over what I did, and I'm not disappointed in myself. And I'm neither disappointed nor surprised over how it turned out. And my opinion is the only one that really matters in this case, so the rest of you can go tsk tsk over someone else.

So.

One week. Seven days. One hundred sixty-eight hours.

How could I up and disappear like that? How could I be so insensitive? Don't I know that I have readers?

Yeah, well, my readers will just have to deal with it. It happened, and it's ongoing, despite any evidence this entry may present to the contrary.

Anyway.

It just wasn't working. Too many temptations. Too many reminders. Too many opportunities. For self-pity, and failure, and stupidity.

My life was broken.

So the first thing I did was send an email. One that was long-overdue.

After that, I stopped.

I stopped as much as I could. I stopped going to facebook, lest I be reminded. I stopped going to Rich O's for the same reason, and also so that I wouldn't be coerced. I stopped drinking, hoping that I wouldn't get into one of those moods. I stopped writing here, so I wouldn't be tempted to scream.

I stopped all of these things, and more, in an effort to...

I don't really know.

Not to forget, that's for sure. I'll never forget, no matter how badly I want to.

Not to get on with my life. There's no point to that. Humpty Dumpty cannot be reassembled.

Not to get over it. There's no way I'll ever get over it as long as I know that, the next time I see her face, or hear her voice, or even the next time I get an inane email or text message, it will all come rushing back.

I guess, if I have to give a reason, I guess I'm just tired.

I wish...

And then my mind just sort of trails off.

I don't know how to finish that thought. Not anymore. I don't know what I wish. What I want. I used to know exactly what I wanted.

I guess...

For this to end, one way or another, that would be nice. But how?

To stop being toyed with, to stop being tortured, those things would fantastic. But I don't really see those things ever happening. There may be some sick pleasure involved, some twisted motive that I could never understand.

Or maybe...

Just maybe there's still something good, and it will eventually make itself known.

Meanwhile...

I wait. For what, I have no idea. Not anymore.

Once or twice or a million times every week - it used to be much more often - I get the urge to say something. To initiate communication.

I don't do it, though, not anymore. I resist those urges, with whatever amount of effort is required at that particular time.

I have my reasons.

My feelings had become unwanted background noise to every word I said. Always inferred even when not consciously implied, even when explicitly dismissed.

I think that the thing I wanted to say, when I first had this thought earlier tonight, is that I haven't gone anywhere. But that wouldn't be quite true.

The truth is, I have moved.

But I've moved only as far as I've been pushed, and not one inch farther.

I'm still here, dammit.

Just one the other side of this damn line in the sand. Wishing that I knew what had happened. Wondering what would happen if I took a step forward.

Maybe I'll just repost old shit today. I feel like posting thing, but not like writing things. Because writing would be, like, hard and stuff. Plus, I've got some stuff I want to say that probably wouldn't be appreciated, so I'm keeping myself in-check.

Anyway, I'd forgotten that I'd even wrote this entry, back in 2006. It's a little negative, but that's how I rolled back then. Now, of course, I'm not like that at all. Now, I shit flowers.

Meanwhile, I'm tired.

---

Anyway, I've been sick for a few days. Nothing major as it turns out. Just a bit of a fever. I missed a couple of days of work, but that was mostly because I didn't want to infect everyone there. If I'd had the plague, as I'd originally feared, and I'd infected someone at work and they'd subsequently died - well I could kiss my annual performance bonus goodbye.

A while ago I was at SassyGirl's going away party, and at one point I found myself out on her deck with a bunch of kids. Teenagers mostly, though a couple of them might have been in their early 20s.

I found myself all alone with these kids because everyone else, everyone I knew and might have had at least one single solitary thing in common with, they had all taken off to pull some chick's car out of a ditch or something.

I don't remember what we were originally talking about. Probably something stupid. But at one point some of the kids started rambling on and on and on about their various thoughts about love. Such as they were.

Each time one of them would finish making a statement that they thought was profound, all of the kids would look at me. I guess because I was twice as old as any of them, they had subconsciously chosen me as some kind of spiritual leader. Their love coach, if you will.

I think I spent most of the time rolling my eyes.

Kids are so stupid.

Or maybe naive is a better word. Yes, I think it is.

Kids are so fucking naive.

With their fucking hopes and their dreams and their stupid ideals, it's really a wonder that they've managed to live for as long as they have. I mean, most of them seem to think that they can fly. It's truly miraculous that the ground isn't littered with broken bodies.*

I think back to when I was that age. No way was I that fucking stupid. By the time I'd graduated high school, life had already been feeding me shit sandwiches for years. By the time my marriage had ended, I'd learned to enjoy the damn things. By the time LaptopGirl moved away, I craved them like they were manna from Heaven.

But those kids, those kids on that deck that night, there was not a single one of them possessed of a single clue about what love is all about.

Like I said, I spent most of that time on that deck just rolling my eyes. But at one point I did speak up. At one point the drivel being vomited out of a young mouth was just too much to take. At one point I saw the opportunity to say something worthwhile. I took that opportunity. All eyes were upon me. I'd been drinking. One of the girls was hot so I wanted to seem especially wise.

There are very few truly evil people in the world, I said. And, chances are, none of us have ever met any of them, or dated them, or given our virginity to them. But we're still fooled into seeing evil where it doesn't exist. This is a defense mechanism, invented by our hearts and backed-up by our brains. By demonizing those who have hurt us, we further isolate ourselves from the cold harsh reality of life. The reality that we will be hurt, time and time again. By good people. By people who are just like us. When we slap an "evil" label on someone who's hurt us, we fool ourselves into believing that it was a rare event. An anomaly. That it won't happen again, or at least not with the same intensity.

It's still better than the alternative.

* - If you took those last two sentences literally, then you are an idiot and you should go kill yourself now before you pass on your idiot genes to the next generation. If you've already managed to find someone as stupid as you to procreate with then you should probably kill your offspring first.

Here's another dog-themed entry. Damn, this one was written in November 2004, about a month after I died.

---

When I was a kid, maybe eight or nine years old, the neighbors across the street had this dog for a while.

The dog would bark constantly, and Mr. Hill would beat the dog. Then the dog would start yelping, and Mr. Hill would beat the dog some more.

I couldn't do anything about it (I was just a kid after all) but I do remember that somebody called the police one time and eventually somebody came and took the dog away.

One thing that's really vivid in my memory is that, even though Mr. Hill would beat the dog nearly every day, the dog would still get all excited and happy when Mr. Hill came home from work. He'd wag his tail so hard his whole body shook, and jump up against the truck door. He just couldn't wait for Mr. Hill to pay attention to him.

The dog had to know that he was going to be abused, but he didn't care. He still loved Mr. Hill and he seemed ever-hopeful that things would be different this time.

I remember hoping that the dog would fight back someday. Perhaps growl at Mr. Hill or maybe even bite him, but he never did.

That abuse was the only attention the dog ever got, and I supposed he had decided, in his little doggy mind, that if his purpose in life was to be a punching bag for Mr. Hill, then so be it. He'd be the bestest, most loyalest punching bag ever!

Even though I thought I understood what was going on in the dog's mind, I still thought it was pretty stupid. I knew I'd never let somebody abuse me like that. I knew I was smarter than a dog, after all!

Even if I can't fight back, I'm at least smart enough to run away.

Eventually.

So here's an entry from almost three years ago. I like to repost these old entries. For one thing, they help to squelch those who doubt me when I say how long this has been going on. For another thing, they keep me from having to write anything new.

Today I'm contemplating a last-minute trip. To where, I don't know. What I do know is that, if I had any brains, I'd go somewhere fast, and if I had any balls I'd stay put and not be so damn afraid.

Another thing I know is that, if I wasn't so fucking tempted to stay, then I wouldn't want to leave.

---

My grandmother used to have this little Pekinese dog. She had several of them over the years, actually. I don't know what this one particular dog's name was. It might have been Raindrop. I know there was a Raindrop at some point during my childhood.

One thing about this dog was that it was ugly. But that should go without saying. All Pekinese dogs are ugly with their squashed faces and their stubby legs and their weird compact torsos. Selective breeding gone horribly awry.

Another thing about this one particular dog was that it was terrified of storms. But not petrified. Whatever the opposite of petrified would be. Maybe frantic with fear.

Whenever thunder would rumble, this dog would start running. My grandmother's house was a big circle. The dog would run from the kitchen to the laundry room to the bedroom to the foyer to the living room to the kitchen - on and on and on until the thunder stopped. That dog, with it ugly little tongue hanging out of its ugly face, that dog would run that circuit nonstop until the storm had passed.

Unless somebody messed up and opened the kitchen door.

When that happened, somebody - usually me - would have to go out into the storm and chase the stupid little thing down.

It was amazing how fast those stubby little legs could propel that dog.

This past weekend I went driving. A lot. And I thought about that dog and how it would run and run without ever getting anywhere. How it would run for the simple reason that it was too terrified to stay where it was.

I wondered if I was doing the same thing. And not just with the driving around. With all of my traveling, and with all of my life, I wondered if what I was really doing was running.

Maybe.

And if I am, then that begs the question of whether I'm running from something that I cannot escape, or running toward a destination that I cannot see.

How badly am I fooling myself?

Am I as stupid as that ugly little dog, running simply because it's the only thing I can do?

Here's what I wrote three years ago on this date. Back then, it was only the second anniversary of the day I stopped fighting. So today, it's the fifth.

The minutes take eternities to pass, but somehow the years rush by.

Two years have passed in the blink of a teary eye.

I never thought it would happen. I fought for so long, I convinced myself that I was winning. I faked a smile for so long, I convinced myself that I was happy. I fell for so long, I convinced myself that I was flying.

I never thought it would happen. I never thought it could happen.

But it did.

Splat!

My world still reverberates from the force of that impact.

I don't want to say any more.

I've already said too much, yet I could never never never say enough.

Those two words would lead to those three words would lead to a billion more words, and still it would not be enough.

It was never enough.

The problem, or one of the problems, or the biggest problem, is that there are too many thoughts.

Oh, how I long for the days when a million thoughts would chase each other around inside my skull, like some bizarre merry-go-round, never ending. Never getting anywhere, but at least moving.

Now, not so much. Too many thoughts, competing against each other for attention and precious time, and my mind has ground to a halt.

I didn't really forget the anniversary. I only forgot the actual date of the thing. It's been on my mind for weeks, if not months. I really thought it was tomorrow. But it wasn't tomorrow, it was last Tuesday.

Oops.

I'd thought that I'd write about this. Maybe tell the story of that night. I dunno, maybe I still will. It's a good story, I think, even though the ending wasn't particularly happy. But I'm not going to write that story right now. Nope, right now, I'm going to make you people read two entries I wrote last year. Two days, and five days, after that night.

Maybe these two entries are enough. Maybe there's no need to tell the story.

everything

Well, I did it.

I said the most important words I've ever said, to the most wonderful person I've ever known.

I told her everything. Ev. Rey. Thing.

And now...

I just don't know.

I've got nothing left. I've done all I can do. I've said all I can say.

Maybe I've ruined everything. But if I did, at least it was with the truth. If those words turn out to be my final words to her*, then it's fitting that they were also the most important. The most real.

And the most overdue. Mustn't forget that.

---

It's so tempting to stop now. Writing. Talking. Communicating in any way with anyone at all.

It all seems so trivial to me now.

Lesser purposes and all that...

* - They were not.

dilemma

Sitting at Rich O's, at night. Stupid, I know. I was going to sit over on the weirdo Sportstime side, but they were packed. Over here, at least I'm able to sit.

Anyway, I kinda feel like I should be writing something about some thoughts that have been rattling around in the dark places inside my head. Thoughts that will neither go away nor venture into the light. Because these thoughts have never been fully illuminated, I fear that this entry will probably be disjointed crap. This is in contrast to my usual drivel, which is at least somewhat jointed, and sometimes it's not even crap. You have been warned.

---

The thing is, I only meant to make a statement. To finally get the entire truth out there. I'd say something like laying all my cards on the table, but this is no fucking game to me.

I realized that I was taking a very serious risk, but frankly, at the time, I didn't feel like I had much left to lose. I was rapidly dying anyway. So it was, at least partly, an act of desperation on my part, the statement that I made. I guess I wanted my dying words to mean something. More than that, I wanted them to be heard. And they were. They certainly were.

But all along, from the time I started considering it, through the time I was saying it, and even during the conversation that ensued, it was always a statement. Telling the truth, and nothing else.

It was never a question.

It was certainly never a request.

So why, I wonder, why do I wait so impatiently for an answer to a question I never asked?

Why, I wonder, do I long for a response to a request I never made?

This is my dilemma.

I could have asked the question, but the question wasn't the point. The statement was the point. Besides, deep down I knew that I wasn't ready for the pain that the answer might bring. I could have even made the request, but it would have been ludicrous to do so, without the answer to the question. I may be insane, but I'm not that insane.

The statement leads to the question leads to the request. That's just the way it works. And I stopped at the statement. I stopped myself, or she stopped me. I don't know. All I know is that I did stop, rather abruptly. Jarringly, you might say.

Which was fine with me. That had been my plan, such as it was, when I started. But I screwed up. I wasn't thinking clearly. I was distracted, after all.

See, I didn't need to ask the question, and I didn't need to make the request.

They were implied. Or inferred. Whatever.

And so, now I wait. For an answer to a question I never quite asked, and for a response to a request I never quite made.

This is my dilemma. This is my life.

I'm not there yet, not to that point where I can turn my back on this. At best, I sometimes manage to feel oddly detached. At worst, I miss her so much I can't think of anything else and I'm lucky that breaths and heartbeats don't require conscious effort.

Most of the time I'm somewhere in the middle. Sad, but resigned.

I suppose that's normal.

I have this thought, or this theme of interrelated thoughts - something like that - which find its way into the front of my brain every now and then. When there's time. When it sees an opening, a break in the nearly constant barrage of thoughts regarding you-know-who and you-know-what.

It goes like this:

There's something there. Really and truly, and weirdly and unexpectedly, and sneakily and secretly, and wonderfully and scarily, there's something there.

I like it. Nothing will ever come of it, but I like it anyway.

In an effort to keep my slackage from reaching epic proportions, I will now attempt an entry. I don't have a topic in mind, though, so I make no claims as to the readability or interestingness of this entry.

I'm still muddling through, trying to make some sense out of things. Coming up with excuses, basically, for the ways I've been treated and for the ways I've reacted. Sometimes the excuses I make up persist for a while, and sometimes they don't.

I keep trying to manufacture some kind of perception wherein everybody gets to be a good person. I used to try to make it so everybody could get along. I've stopped trying to do that. It was never going to work when I was the only one trying. I'm afraid that the good-person thing is going to fail as well. There's very little recent evidence to back up that particular claim.

I can probably still make it so everybody doesn't hate each other. Maybe.

Damn. It's been two months, as of today.

There are things! And they're happening!

Yay!

That's just about all I can say.

But I wonder, I can't help but wonder, even though I know it's stupid to wonder.

Am I finally awake, or have I merely shifted to a new dream?

What was I supposed to feel, four hours ago?

I ask because it's become quite clear to me that what I actually feel - this is so irrelevant that I'm the only one who even notices it anymore. And even that's only barely.

I ask what I was supposed to feel, because I have no idea.

Relieved? Irritated? Hopeful? Hopeless? Frustrated? Loving? Useful? Useless? Guilty? Happy? Sad? Nostalgic?

Tell me what I was supposed to feel. Is it the same thing as yesterday, when almost the exact same fucking thing happened?

And, while you're at it, tell me what I'm supposed feel right now. Now that it's been four hours.

I go hours and days and weeks. In the past, I've gone months and years. Four hours certainly used to be something, but now it's nothing nothing nothing nothing.

Tell me.

Better yet, reach inside me and place the proper emotions into those empty places wherever you see fit.

My vote, if I'm allowed a vote, is for irritated. I was having a nice afternoon with HatGirl, and the woo-hoos of my phone were a distraction. Ironically, the lack of woo-hoos right now is proving to be a distraction from breathing. But I've been wrong before. I'm probably supposed to be feeling something else entirely.

Tell me what that was supposed to accomplish, and I'll do my best to comply. I've got nothing better to do, after all.

I can forgive a lot of things. I have forgiven a lot of things. More than anyone else would have forgiven.

But this?

How the fuck am I supposed to forgive this and still manage to maintain some semblance of dignity?

I am not a doormat, though I've played one in the past, when it seemed that a doormat was needed.

I did what was necessary, or at least what seemed necessary at the time, not because of what those things were, but because of who needed them.

Because of who needed me.

And I liked it. Loved it, even. I lived for those opportunities.

And now?

Summary dismissal.

Of whatever the fuck you want to call it. Friendship? Something more? Something less? Something else?

I don't care what you call it. Just pick something. And don't say nothing. Don't you fucking dare say nothing.

We may no longer exist, but I still do exist. Barely.

And what's left of me deserves more than this. Even the worst person on Earth would deserve more than this.

More than nothing.

I'm leaving in 20 minutes. I hope to get my hairs cut today. I also hope to beat the rain that's looming. This all got me to thinking (uh-oh) about timing. It really is everything, like I keep saying.

A couple of years ago, the car carrying my nephew and his friends, and another vehicle, had the worst timing possible. If the speed of either vehicle had been different by even one mile-per-hour, what was a tragedy would have only been a close call. If either vehicle's speed had been ten miles-per-hour different, it would have been a non-event.

Unbelievably bad timing,is what that was.

In February, StupidGirl asked me to move to Las Vegas. It was a very sweet and kind offer. But I didn't go. I didn't go, because I had a relationship here in Indiana that was very important to me, and also because I had a job here. Now, I know, I also had friends and family and a house and blah blah blah, but the reasons I stayed were because of LaptopGirl and, to a much lesser extent, my job.

Two months later, my job was gone, and so was my relationship. Both had gone the way of the dodo. And StupidGirl had gone and got herself a shiny new boyfriend.

So that was certainly crappy timing. Nowhere near as crappy as the timing that my nephew and his friends experienced, but crappy nonetheless.

I could list a billion examples. Like how I met MixedSignalGirl because a deer ran in front of her car just when I happened to be driving behind her. Or how I found RockGirl because the "random journal" button at journalspace.com took me to her journal. Or how StupidGirl just happened to be on the rag and be my waitress on the same night.

Anyway, speaking of timing, I've got to go now. Maybe I'll finish this entry later.

(This is a repost from 2006. I'm too tired to come up with anything new this morning.)

---

I hate it when my most recent entry sucks, so I'm writing this one which hopefully sucks less.

Somebody last night - I think it was one of the PBDs in a moment of alcohol-induced pseudo-wisdom, made the following observation:

You should just follow your heart, and do the right thing.

Head started to nod up and down in unison like commuters on a bumpy bus ride - imagery which looks much better in my head than it does on my screen.

Such a sage suggestion! Such worldly wisdom! Such axiomatic advice!

Such babbling bullshit!

I had to put a stop to it before people started getting whiplash.

"But what if following your heart and doing what's right are mutually exclusive?" I offered. "Remember that hearts are stupid and selfish. It's very rare for them to be right about anything. What if you're always finding yourself being forced to choose between following your heart and doing what's right?"

That stopped the bobbing.

"Well then that's pretty fucked-up," someone responded.

Indeed.

I can sense the eyes upon me sometimes. Looking for what, I don't know. Hoping for what, I don't know. Dreading what, I don't know. I really don't know much, it seems, but I do know that I can sense the eyes upon me sometimes, and I relish those times because (a) it's contact of a sort, and (b) it's all I have.

Anyway, I'm in a good mood again. Two nights in a row. Weird.

I take part of that back.

There are, actually, two people who I desperately want to understand me.

One of those people already does. And the fact that she lives over 700 miles away, and the fact that I've never met her - those truths change nothing.

There's another person who I wish would understand me. She doesn't. She probably never will. There's too much distrust, for some stupid reason that's out of my control. I plan to continue to live despite this. So there.

I think what I want to say right now is that it's okay that people don't get me. Fuck, half the time I don't even get myself.

If I try to be totally objective about things, then I decide that I'm a dumbass. That's one reason that I try to stay subjective.

I'd rather be a loser than a dumbass.

None of this is for me, and it never has been for me. If people would understand that, then they would understand 99.99999% of me.

I'm not holding my breath though. Partly because I can't hold my breath that long, but mostly because I don't care if people understand me or not.

It is what it is. It has been what it has been. It will be what it will be.

If you can take those last three sentences and not infer any meaning beyond what was written, then (a) I applaud you, and (b) Stick close to me - I may need someone to back me up at some point.

Tonight, I'm in an almost perfect mood. In love with being in love, and neither dashed hopes nor destroyed expectations can change that.

At least, not tonight.

I will feel what I feel.

So there.

I like it when I can just let my fingers fly and then I look at the screen and it's actual words and sentences and paragraphs. And sometimes those things even manage to dance well together, forming a sort of stage-show portraying my current thoughts and/or feelings and/or whatever.

This is not one of those times. This time, my words and sentences and paragraphs and all have palsy really bad, and they're just sort of twitching.

What's going to piss me off, I think, is when everything that everyone warned me about turns out to be true. My life will become a cacophony of I-told-you-so and You-should-have-listened and You-fucking-dumbass. I don't expect it to be very much fun. It's already started, and it already sucks.

Just because something turns out to be true, that doesn't mean that it was true all along. I think I've written about this before. Like, if I were to announce that I will win the lottery, and then I do win the lottery, that doesn't mean I was right with my prediction. It only means that I got lucky. This is kinda the same deal.

I don't care what people have said to me about this. I didn't want to hear about it then, and I don't want to hear about it now, and I definitely won't want to hear about it in the future.

First, some snippets from a February entry:

It changes a man, to see a beautiful face distorted by pain. To see it over and over and over and over and over. To stand helpless and watch the tears flow.

To watch a wonderful soul harden, and to feel your own soul harden with it. Not from pity or compassion or even love, but simply because your souls are irrevocably bound.

I failed her so badly. I failed myself so badly.

And my punishment for that failure is severe, but I deserve so much worse.

You either do it or not. There is no try. It's either there or it's not.

It's never off in the distance somewhere, so you can see it coming. Nobody ever says, "I don't trust you right now, but next Tuesday should be great."

Trying to trust is like trying to fly. No matter how fast you flap your arms, you're not going anywhere. And you look like an idiot.

It's one of the easiest things to lose, and one of the toughest things to get back.

Sometimes trust can be regained, but it will do so in its own sweet time. Don't bother trying to rush it, you'll only make things worse. Same thing with trying to use guilt.

It can't be reasoned into existence, either, because it's a heart thing, not a brain thing.

Oh, and everything I said about trust also counts for forgiveness.

Over the last several months, it has come to my attention numerous times, that I should have accepted the fucking offer.

Heh, the fucking offer. That's some funny shit, right there.

But, I didn't. Then, I didn't again. And, finally, I didn't again.

I think that's the correct count of the times I started out being a good guy and ended up being a dumbass.

And, after each episode of retardation, I resolved that the next time it would happen, and then I'd be able to deal with the consequences easier because I'd be wearing a big goofy grin on my face.

But, it never did happen. This was never about that, though. Not for me. There were bigger fish to fry and all that.

But, I ask myself over and over and over and over and over, since when did my desires matter?

Yep, I definitely should have accepted the fucking offer. Every time it was made.

It would have been good.

And now that my entire life has been reduced to nothing more than a series of memories, it would be cool to have those particular memories in my head.

Man, I was such a dumbass. A good guy, but a dumbass nonetheless.

I wonder what I would write, if I were to write anything relevant.

I dunno.

First thing I'd need to do, before I let myself get anywhere near my computer, would be to figure out exactly why I was writing in the first place. I mean, would it be something that I needed to write, lest the pressure of not writing explode me. or would it just me something that I wanted to write, in which case who the fuck cares what I want?

I can resist the latter urge. I usually resist it, anyway. But I'm not so sure about the former stuff. I don't have much success with suppressing my needs, unless you count when I bury them in metaphors and such.

I'm bored right now, in case you didn't guess that already.

Okay, now I'm not only reposting entries from years ago, now I'm reposting an entry from fucking July. And it was a repost to begin with.

This is what's become of me.

Anyway, I like this entry, and the one contained therein. And I was thinking about this stuff tonight, so there.

---

It's just a brief downward flicker, most of the time. A few inches. But enough for me to notice, and enough for her to notice, should she happen to be looking. So far, I think I've caught it in time. Caught myself in time.

Eyes to lips. Just a few inches of smooth skin, down a cheek, along the ridge of a nose. Physically, that distance is very small, but emotionally, it's vast.

Eyes may welcome and engage, but lips, they beckon.

---

Speaking of lips, I like this old entry from 2007:

I'm not really sure which was the first. I've got it narrowed down to two girls, two occasions, but the passage of time has blurred my memory to the point where I can no longer be certain about the order of things. Like, I'm pretty sure that I kissed both those girls after that comet killed all the dinosaurs, but I wouldn't want to bet anything substantial on it.

So I don't remember which was my first real kiss. But I do remember them both. They were passionate, each of them. And full of promises that neither of us was ready to keep. There was none of this sweet and gentle and perfunctory crap that I've been so wont to do lately. To show that I'm a good guy, at least at first. Back then, a kiss was all you were going to get, so you damn sure needed to make the best of it.

I'm pretty sure that I could remember all of my first kisses. I don't mean that I could list them right now off the top of my head, but if I thought about it long enough, I probably could. And if I heard a name or saw a face or had something like that come along to help jog my memory, then I definitely could.

I was thinking tonight about a few of my first kisses. From the drunken and playful and inevitable kiss of that night last Winter, to that fascinated experimental kiss a couple of weeks ago, to that romantic kiss in Las Vegas in June, to that initially timid kiss that somehow lasted an entire weekend in late 2004, to that incredible indefinable kiss a few months earlier that still makes me weak in the knees when I think about it.

I don't know why I've never written about kissing before. About lips. I've written about hands, and I've written about eyes, but not lips. I don't know why. Maybe, maybe kissing just seems too personal, even for me to write about. Maybe hand-holding and eye-gazing are just fine, but kissing belongs in the same realm as sex, and I never write about sex. Nobody wants to read about that - they only want to have it. Maybe kisses are the same way.

Anyway, I like kissing. It's my favorite. I just thought I'd share that little tidbit. You know, just in case anyone wants to make out or something.

I'm constantly bombarding myself with a million questions, but there is one that hits the hardest.

What to believe?

Do I believe the words? Do I continue to try to be a friend, or at least act like one, when I'm not being met anywhere close to halfway? Words can be lies, you know. The craftiest of words can even fool the speaker. When that happens, the listener has no chance. It's either ignore the words, or be made a fool.

Perhaps, I tell myself, I should believe the actions. But that can be folly as well. Actions may speak louder than words, but they often speak gibberish, and they're so very subject to misinterpretation. They never say anything, they only imply. And I, being the way that I am, I almost always infer the worst. It's only been my mind's own sense of self-preservation that's kept me from doing so recently.

What am I supposed to believe when the words say one thing and the actions imply the opposite?

And the part that's really fucked up is that one day's truth can be the next day's lie. Minds can change, or be changed, and all I can do is try to keep up. Watch and listen, interpret what I can, and try to do what's right. I seem to be failing at that, but I really am in the dark here. I don't know the rules, and I don't even know the name of the game.

I don't like games.

I like honesty, even when it's brutal.

I'd rather be stabbed in the heart than shot in the back.

I found myself for a while, Thursday evening. I was hiding about an inch below the fading head of my second glass of Marzen. I should have stopped drinking right then, or at least slowed down. But I didn't. I went ahead and finished that glass at a normal speed, and by the time that beer was gone, so was I. Like I'd never been there at all.

I've been very elusive these last few months. Sometimes I've gone weeks at a time, searching in vain. I really shouldn't squander opportunities like I did Thursday evening. It might be a long time before I get another chance. Hell, it might not ever happen again. I am changing, after all. That part of me which was destroyed in the Spring, and which is slowly being rebuilt, will almost certainly not be as it once was.

I'm not sure that I've ever really described myself with any detail. What I've meant for the last six years when I've said that I was looking for myself, or what I've meant when I've said, on those rare occasions, that I'd managed to find myself. It may be beyond description. I just know me when I find me.

The real me is able to cope with this, basically. To sit and think and just deal with it. Without being overwhelmed into insanity, and without resorting to stupid distractions which mask the pain but do nothing to lessen it.

Because, let there be no doubt about it, this does hurt. A fucking lot. And I need to hurt, and I want to hurt. I've gone through so much for the right to hurt. I've given up so much, of my life and of myself, for the privilege of feeling this pain. I want to experience it, but I don't want it to control me.

And this morning, as I write this entry, it's trying to control me. I have to stop writing now.

I want to get sad tonight. I want to sit in my garage and drink some Marzen and bring myself right up to the very edge of babbling and weeping insanity. But I don't think it's going to happen.

I think I'll just stay my regular kinda depressed self, but that true sadness will be beyond me tonight.

The guy treats her, from everything I've heard, like the princess that she is. Oh sure, I would have treated her the same way, and I did treat her the same way, but that brings me to my next point.

She's happy with him. And there's more to being happy than just being treated right. Whatever that something extra is, he has it, and I might not have it. Not for her, at least. Maybe.

It's very tough for me to admit - it's been six years after all - but I might not be able to make her happy. No matter how badly I would want it and no matter how hard I would fight for it, I might not be able to accomplish it. Intent and desire can only get you so far.

To try and to fail at that task would probably be more than I could bear.

Right now, she is happy. That's what's important. That's all that matters. My own happiness is less than trivial when compared to hers, and it always has been.

I wish them the best, I really do.

If she's happy, then she smiles. And when she smiles, then the world is a beautiful place. So what if that smile's not for me? And so what if I don't even get to see it? Beauty is beauty, beheld or not.

How can I really be sad in such a beautiful place?

I'm experiencing a dangerous urge now, and so I figured that I'd better write something here, where it's fairly innocuous, than in an email, where it would most certainly not be.

Plus, I'm killing some time by writing this. And perhaps the urge to write that email will go away soon. Maybe writing this here will hasten its departure.

I want to call someone out on some bullshit. Partly to show that I know about the bullshit, as I think my knowledge is a secret so far, but mostly to see what the reason might be. I really can't see any reasonable explanation for this particular bullshit, but that doesn't mean that such a reason doesn't exist. I'm curious, I guess.

I'd also really like to see this person's reaction to getting caught. That show would probably be worth any possible price of admission, unless spontaneous human combustion was involved. I certainly don't want to cause that much of a reaction.

I need to think about this some more.

I wonder, how am I supposed to be feeling tonight? This week? This month?

Since it happened?

Not that I'm planning to tweak my feelings to match anyone's expectations, or that I'm going to pretend to be something that I'm not, but I do wonder - maybe I'm normal now.

Under the circumstances, I mean.

That would really be something, to be normal. Even if it was only for a while.

I need to go out to my garage, have a couple bottles of Domaine DuPage, and contemplate this some more.

If I'm normal, then - by definition - there's nothing special about me at all.

I don't think I like the sound of that.

Yet another repost. This usually means that I'm feeling lazy, but this time it just means that I've already said it all before. And hey, building an entry about memories from an old entry seems quite fitting:

For a while, after she got her hair cut, her hand would still move to her shoulder, and her fingers would twirl hair that wasn't there anymore. She did it all the time, and then she'd laugh at herself because she forgot.

I remember how she looked in my bathrobe. How it would never stay closed. I remember hiding the belt so it would never close again, and how she laughed when I told her what I'd done.

She'd take her finger and trace soft circles on my arm, or on my hand, or on my chest. It wasn't enough for her to touch me - she always had to give it that little bit extra.

In my peripheral vision, I'd see her looking at me, and when I'd turn my head and catch her doing it, she'd always blush.

I remember how she'd fall asleep in the car, no matter how short the drive was.

She would grab my hand, and hold it tightly when we had to walk by strangers on the way back to our cars.

I remember the little dance she did once when a song she liked came on the radio.

One morning I woke up to her whispering my name. My cat had finally allowed her to pick him up, and she was standing by the bed holding him. She was so excited.

When she was struggling, trying to think of the perfect words to say, her face would get all contorted, and I'd mimic her expression until she caught me.

She was so very nervous, that first time, and when we were done the sweat glistened on her skin like a million tiny stars.

I remember all of these little things, and so many more. I think that I will remember them forever.

It's such a cruel world that let's me love every single thing about a person, but that won't let my heart take that extra step.

Such a cruel fucking world.

I remember trying so hard to look at her and see only her, but always always always fucking always looking beyond her, over her shoulder. Looking for someone who wasn't there.

I remember coming home that one night, and finding her sitting on my couch, with my cat Nugget in her lap. She'd had a bad day, and she'd known that I'd welcome her no matter what. I owed her that much, after all.

I remember welcoming her.

I remember how hard we tried to make it last, but how it always felt like we were just treading water. Staying alive, but not really living.

I remember that night last Summer. The last time I saw her, when everything was almost exactly as it had been before. Only the new ring on her finger whispered the truth.

I remember everything. This is my gift, and my curse.

I talked to her tonight, for a while. I wish I could say that it was just like old times, but it wasn't. Those old times are gone forever, and we both know it. We just like to relive those times, every now and then. It's nice, in a poignant way. It reminds us that there was once something that was important. And that, no matter how tough things get for the two of us as we struggle to live our separate lives, there is still something that's important.

I walked away from her, years ago. I know why I did it and, by now, so does she. I know it, but I still can't really believe that I did it. She knows it, but she still can't really accept that I did it on my own. That it wasn't her fault. That she didn't push me away.

There are so many things I wish I could forget, so many memories I wish I could erase from my mind. But, among those memories, there's not a single second that I spent with her.

I'm always looking for words, it seems. Magic words.

Mostly I've been looking for words to fix us, to undo some of the damage that's been done to us, or by us. Some turn-of-phrase that will somehow make everything okay. Or better than okay, when I'm feeling really ambitious, which isn't too often lately.

Speaking of lately, something's changing.

I'm still looking for magic words. I know they're in there somewhere, sneaking around in the dark, but quite often lately I've been looking for a different set of words. Lately, I haven't been looking for words to fix us, I've been looking for words to fix me.

These words may prove to be just as elusive as the old words have been. But I need to at least look. I need to dig around inside my head and, if that doesn't work, then dynamite may be necessary. I need these words.

I worry about myself sometimes. I see myself on my death-bed in forty years or so, and I see myself still glaring at my phone. I see myself wondering if she'll visit my bedside. I see myself wondering if she'll come to my funeral.

Sure, it's kind of nice to have all that to look forward to, and to believe that I'll never really go back to the emotionless robot that I used to be, a little more than six years ago. But I also realize that it's pretty pathetic. And I don't want my life to be pathetic, not any more than it's already been.

The words may not exist. Maybe it's time that I really need. That's what a lot of people have been telling me. Or perhaps I need a distraction that eventually becomes something more than a distraction.

Well, time has never done me any good before, and distractions, despite my best efforts, continue to be fleeting. So I'll put my faith in magic, because magic is real. That was proved to me, a little more than six years ago. Maybe, when time and distractions fail, maybe magic will succeed.

I wonder, these entries, are they my memoirs? Is this blog going to end up being the means by which people finally get to know me and understand me? Will Neisha burn it all to DVD and hand out copies at my funeral? With Dina make a scrapbook? Will Teri overcome her loathing for funerals and show up at the thing? Will anyone else care at all? Will anyone else notice at all?

Will Rich O's stay in business without my constant support?

I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Hell, I could die of old age tomorrow and it wouldn't surprise me at all.

Is this going to be my legacy?

It'll be a pretty fucked up legacy, if that's what it ends up being.

Way more questions than answers. Lots more crypticism than clarity. And a fuck of a lot more silence than anything else.

---

"I had a fantastic year."

That's what I said. And I really did italicize the word fantastic because anything less would have fallen short. Anything less would have been a lie.

I had us stand up, and then I said those words, and then I kissed her. This was no surprise at all. I'd been giving fair warning for weeks. There was plenty of time for her to "get sick" or to "have other plans" or to "just not feel like it."

But there were no last-minute excuses. There was only that time, and that place, and two of us all alone in that crowded room.

People tell me all the time that it's all in my head.

Fuck people. I was there.

That was supposed to be it, see. I had no plans or intentions beyond the end of that kiss. I would have gladly died at the end of that kiss.

But that wasn't the end of it. There were another couple of minutes, the first two minutes of the new year.

When I was about 19, I was swimming at the pool at Scott AFB. There was a kid, maybe 7 or 8 years old, and he got himself into trouble in the deep end. I just happened to be there. It's not like I jumped in to save him or anything, though I like to think that I would have done exactly that. But, in this case, I just happened to be there and I just happened to be the closest person to that kid.

He grabbed onto me, and he clung to me. He clung to me for dear life, for salvation. Every instinct he had focused onto that simple action of clinging to me. Waiting for me to save him, putting his life into my hands and trusting that I'd do the right thing.

The next time that anyone clung to me so fiercely was years and years later, after I said those words to her, and after I had kissed her ever so gently. I was not expecting it. Like I said, I'd had no plans beyond the kiss. But then, suddenly and brutally, I found another person's life in my hands. And I found trust in the weight of a beautiful head against my shoulder. And I found that there's no limit to love, because just when you think you've reached such a limit, it explodes.

People tell me all the time that I'm exaggerating.

Fuck people. I was there.

People are wrong.

---

There.

Now that's worthy of being a fucking memoir.

Trying to figure out what I should write, if anything. I get so sick and tired of my mood flapping back and forth. I don't want to write anything and then have it turn out to be false by this time tomorrow. I hate it when that happens. It makes me feel like I should put a disclaimer at the beginning of every entry.

This entry, and the feelings and/or hopes and/or circumstances described herein, while accurate at the time of posting, may no longer reflect reality at the time of reading. For this reason, speculating or wagering as to my current state of mind, based on the information gleaned from this entry, is not recommended.

Today, I am struggling with the same old stuff. It just keeps getting worse and worse, and I'm having a really tough time maintaining anything even remotely resembling hope. But I keep trying, because I need to have hope in my life, at least for now. I don't want to go back to the way I was, but it's a very real possibility these days. Except that this time it will be worse, because I'll know what's missing. Back then, I didn't even know that anything was missing, let alone what that thing might be.

I had a nice conversation with MixedSignalGirl the other night. She had some opinions and theories that I hadn't thought of. Opinions and theories that might help me to get through all this, if I can cling to them fiercely enough. And if I can convince myself that they're not just another set of lies that I tell myself in a futile attempt to rush through this healing process.

I need to write more about this. Maybe later.

Okay, here's the deal.

My text messages weren't working tonight. So, while I got some, I don't know if they were from tonight or if they were from months ago, as they claimed.

In either case, my response remains the same.

This was not my goddamn choice, the way things have been lately. This was, in fact, the last thing I ever wanted.

I am not the bad guy here.

Reasons are reasons and excuses are excuses, but which is which?

This is not my call. It's out of my hands.

Weird annoying. I'm finding myself at a total loss for words. I mean, I know exactly what I want to say, as long as I don't have to actually say anything.

It's just so damn clear to me, but the words either don't exist or they're really fucking good at hiding in my head. I can think them and I can feel them, but I can't articulate them.

I need to say something, but I find myself unable to say anything at all.

And dammit, this is important. Way more important than anything I've written in a long time. Maybe ever.

"How can I give this up?" I want to write.

"I can't give it up, it's everything to me," I want to continue.

Those words are nothing nothing nothing. The tip of the iceberg. A hint of an inkling of a notion of the truth.

Infinite is only a small portion of the whole. Forever is just the beginning. Unconditional is much too restrictive.

The words that I've said, the things that I've done, the feelings that I've felt - they're all just symptoms of a much larger truth.

Maybe the words really don't exist, to describe this. Maybe you need to look into my eyes, read my mind, feel my soul.

Or, maybe I'm drunk.

Go ahead and think that's all it is. It's easier.

I like that word. It fits so well with so many things in my life. I should probably change my middle name to Inordinate. I never liked Shane that much anyway. Plus, then my initials would be DIS and so maybe I'd be all hip and shit. Or is that DISS?

I think I want someone to tell me that it's okay to be pissed about the way I'm being treated. I fall so easily into anger over it, but then I always feel guilty. I spend an inordinate amount of time feeling guilty.

Tomorrow another weekend begins. I remember when weekends meant going to Rich O's and spending an inordinate amount of energy watching the door. Those were such different times back then. Hope ruled my entire life. But this weekend I probably won't go there at all. It's no longer a good idea for me to go there at night, for lots of reasons. People think there's only one reason, but people are wrong. It's not only because I'm being a baby. That's not even the main reason. Maybe I'll write an entry about this stuff, some day.

And I heard from TremensGirl that MusicalYuppieDude is having a party this weekend. I can't go to that either, even if he does get around to inviting me.

Saturday I might get to see HatGirl, if she doesn't flake on me. She's so busy all the time, I'm incredibly flattered that she thinks enough of me to pencil me in. She's one of the world's best people, and I spend an inordinate amount of time wishing that I was a better person, so that our friendship might be better justified.

In fact, she should be the one I'm in love with. That would make sense to everyone.

I don't write about work in this journal. I think that most people know that. I don't want to get dooced, after all. But I started a new job this week, and maybe that deserves mention.

There, I mentioned it.

It's after 3:00 in the morning, and I'm not really sure why I'm still awake. I spend an inordinate amount of time being awake.

I should try to go to sleep now.

Tonight I don't know what it was that woke me up. Another damn dream, I imagine, but I don't know for sure. Maybe a mouse farted - sometimes that's all it takes. And, once I wake up, that's it. A thought or a series of thoughts gets into my head, and it gets into my soul, and it grabs and it twists.

As I once wrote:

Today, it's neither the pain of the past nor the agony of the present hammering away at my mood. Nope, today it's the future, of all things, that torments my thoughts.

The thing about the future is that I'm not really sure there's going to be one.

I don't think it would come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. I'm in a fucked-up situation these days.

I spend an inordinate amount of my time looking for, I dunno, something.

For what exactly, I can't say, because I don't know what it is. I think that I might be looking for what's left. Something that survived that terrible flood. A recognizable chuck of debris on the bank, perhaps. Just something to remind me, though I could never forget.

The rest of the time, I wait.

For what? Again, I don't know. I don't know what it is, but I'm waiting for it right now.

Back then, I survived that flood, and I found what I was looking for. I found much much more than I thought I'd find, and I was actually happy, for a long time. Me, of all people.

But then a new flood came. A more terrible flood. And this one is still flowing, rushing, ripping.

Last year, I was knocked to my feet, and I stood up, and I was knocked down again. And again. And again.

This time, there's no sense in trying to stand. There is no ground anywhere beneath my feet.

This time I'm trying to stay afloat.

I'm looking at these lines from a post I did a couple of months ago.

I lived in a place of hope, and dreams, and love. But it was all a lie.

I worry about the things I'll write when I feel like I have nothing left to lose. I wonder why I don't feel that way already. Perhaps there are still lies waiting to crumble.

I fear the vacuum, I really do. It was never there before. There was always something before, whether it was false or not, it was something.

Now, not so much.

First, the walls crumbled. That was bad enough. But now all of the air is being sucked away.

Isn't the point of living about having something you care about, that is important to you? Isn't it about having something left to lose?

If there is truly nothing left to lose, then what's the fucking point of living at all?

The other night I was thinking about fate. I've written before that I don't believe in fate, but then I also wrote this:

This series of events and emotions that was set into motion all those years ago, there is a reason. I just don't know what that reason is. Perhaps its purpose is to destroy me.

So far, so good.

I'd also guess that, on each one of those 12,000 days, I probably saw a pretty girl, or two, or three. On some days I saw the same girl(s) I'd already seen, and on some days I saw someone new.

So, maybe 12,000 different pretty girls that I've seen in my live.

And out of all those times, this happened once? When I saw her?

What the fuck?

Approximately 2,146 days ago, 2,146 girls ago, in the span of about two seconds, my entire life changed. It has never been the same since, and it will never be the same again. No matter what else happens, I will never be the same again.

I don't believe in fate. I think that fate is a silly concept, and that it implies things that I find unacceptable about the uselessness of life. I think that people use the concept of fate as a crutch, as an excuse for not having things turn out the way that they wanted, or as feeble justification for doing things that would otherwise have no justification at all except for stupidity.

I don't believe in fate, but I really want to know why that happened, approximately 2,146 days ago.

I'm trying to keep from knowing the time. So I don't know how late it is, or how early it is. I don't know if I'll sleep again tonight. I doubt that I will.

I did sleep, for some undetermined amount of time. I slept, and I had a dream, and I woke up.

That damn dream.

So I'm not looking at the time. I know it's there, down in the bottom right corner of my screen. I'm refusing to look. I don't want to know. Fuck, I start a new job sometime in the next undetermined number of hours and, instead of sleeping, I've spent two beers worth of time out on my deck with listening to the crickets and the owls and the stobors. I've spent the last two beers worth of time trying to forget the dream.

But it's a futile effort. It always is. I remember every word she said, in the dream. I remember every word I said, in the dream. I remember what happened next, in the dream.

That damn dream.

I mean, what if I look at the time and it's only 1:00 or some bullshit like that? Then I'll be so fucked. No way will I be able to function all day tomorrow until quitting time. Oh sure, maybe I could look and it's 6:00, and maybe my alarm is about to go off anyway. Then I'd know that I could survive. I've survived worse, after all.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The truth always seems to be somewhere in the middle.

That damn truth.

Every single time, it happens. Every single fucking time. I see, and it happens. I hear, and it happens, I smell or I touch, and it happens.

And I can't describe it with any clarity, and I can't endorse it with any understanding, and I can't espouse it with any eloquence, and I can't dismiss it with any abruptness. I can't I can't I can't I just fucking can't.

It's just fucking there. It just fucking happens. It just fucking is.

Why?

That's the question that I ask myself every 10 seconds. That's the question that everyone on Earth asks me every chance they get.

"Why?" they ask.

"Fucking just because," I reply.

Eyes meet, and circuits close. Words are exchanged, and energy flows. Auras merge, and affection glows.

And, every now and then...

Hands touch, and desire grows. Skin slides, and lust shows. Lips meet, and love overflows.

Why?

Sometimes I wish we would just talk about all this. Not discuss and not debate and certainly not argue. Not lie and not predict and not dismiss and not make excuse after fucking excuse. Just talk.

I guess it's because I'm a man. I always think that things can be fixed. Even when they're not really broken. I constantly look for the words to make everything okay, and I constantly ignore the fact that okay may be too lofty a goal.

Lately though, more and more often, I've thought about eschewing words, and letting actions speak my volumes for me. For us. Words, after all, have done zero good.

Perhaps it's time for action. Perhaps it's too late for action. Fuck, perhaps it's too late for anything.

The way I see it, there are two times when I absolutely should not be writing here. One of those times is when I'm sad.

I know, I write when I'm sad all the time. It's par for my particular course, I guess. But the deep sadness that I sometimes feel, I don't write during those times. I'm too busy trying to breathe and keep my heart beating. So you guys are spared the really depressing stuff. You're welcome.

The second time when I shouldn't be writing anything is when I'm pissed.

Like right now.

There are so many things that I want to say. So many accusations that I want to level. So much pressure that I want to vent. So much truth that I want to fucking scream.

But, I shouldn't be writing when I'm pissed, so I won't. You're welcome.

My brain tells me that I should be writing something now, before I go back outside to cavort with the stobors. Of course my brain has no idea what I should write, so I guess it's up to the rest of me. My fingers, perhaps, because my heart is all tapped-out, and my dick isn't much for words. It's more of an action dick.

I'm not really sure when it was that I became wise. Sometime over the last few years, I think. It's like I stopped getting birthday presents and started gaining wisdom. Or at least a very good imitation of wisdom. Good enough to fool most people, including my lovely self a lot of the time.

I found myself today in the most unlikely of conversations, giving the most unlikely of advice. Unlikely, that is, unless you actually know me, and not many people do. Lots of people think that they know me, but they're wrong. I'm a better person than many people give me credit for, and I'm a worse person that many people suspect. I'm a person, is I guess what I'm saying. If I were 100% good I'd be some kind of supreme being, and if I were 100% flawed I'd be a dipshit, but I'm somewhere in the middle, just like almost everyone else.

Anyway, today I found myself in a conversation about relationships. Because I'm some kind of expert, I guess. It's like quitting smoking; I've done it a million times it's so easy. Well, I haven't quite had a million relationships, but I've had my share. So maybe that makes me wise in a way. I dunno.

I'll paraphrase from today's conversation, in which I pretended to be wise:

Every new relationship seems perfect. But then it turns out that everything isn't quite perfect, and people get disappointed and they start to question the entire relationship.

Every relationship in history has followed the same pattern. Sometimes they last beyond that initial disillusionment, and sometimes they don't.

I think back to the relationships that I've had. Not all that many, really, and except for the ones that were doomed from the start, they've all followed that pattern. Not many have made it passed that first round of disillusionment, but the ones that have, the ones that have lasted have all been something really special to me. They're still really special to me.

I'm in one of those relationships right now, and even though I know that almost everyone on Earth would say that I'm in no such thing, I will say without hesitation that almost everyone on Earth is wrong. We are in a relationship, and we've made it passed that first disappointment, and the second and the third, and the fourth.

But we're still here, in one widely varying form or another, we're still here.

Doesn't that mean something? Shouldn't that mean something?

Isn't this supposed to be the goal?

Because, as I said today in my unlikely conversation, Perfection doesn't exist, so shouldn't a relationship be more concerned with surviving imperfection than with seeking perfection?

Am I the only person who sees this?

So, just sit and let my fingers type whatever they want, huh?

That seems like it should be easy. One might think that I'd be a little worried about the words that might spring forth, but I'm really not. I've pretty much said everything already. Dropped my pants, so to speak.

There is one more thing, actually. One more thing to say, and then I might be done. Not that I'd quit, mind you, but I'd have to start repeating myself over and over and over even more often than I already do.

Not an accusation, though that's how it would be interpreted. I'm not sure how I'd get around that. Denial ain't just a river in Egypt, after all. And this would be denied until the end of time, at least out-loud, when people were listening. There'd probably be umbrage. And outrage, even.

I'm also afraid that it would come off like a called marker. But that's absolutely not what it would be. This is not about something I've earned, and it's not about a favor owed; it's about an opportunity for honesty.

Would I get that honesty?

I seriously doubt it, and that makes me sad. Because if I've earned anything at all, if I'm owed anything at all, it's honesty.

I close my eyes, and I see it. It blinds me. In the stillness between heartbeats, I hear its defeaning roar. In the pause between breaths, I smell its intoxicating aroma. Between swallows, I taste its juices. And, every time I relax, I feel it. Caressing me. Massaging away the aches and the pains of living.

I stopped being overwhelmed a long time ago. Callouses formed. Strength developed. Resistance wilted and died.

Thoughts are stones. Feelings are rapids. Disturbing the tranquility of the stream, but not the flow. Never the flow. Take away the obstacles, and the stream will barely notice. It will flow as it always has. Try to dam the stream, and it will find a way. Nothing can stop it. Nothing.

I wonder what has happened to me. I wonder what is happening to me. I wonder what will happen to me.

(This is a repost from six months ago. I don't feel like saying anything new, because it would be pointless today, but I do feel like saying something.)

There's a place. It's not a physical place, though that's part of it. It's more of a spiritual place.

The place, it's where I belong. It's why I'm here, on this Earth, in this life. To be in the place. It's where I fit, and more than that, it's where the universe fits me.

Problem is, I can't get there. There's no navigable route, and even if there were, the place is already occupied, and even if it wasn't, I'm not allowed in the place.

I've come very close. I've stood next to the place and I've felt its pull so strongly that it's threatened to rip me apart atom by atom.

If I believed in God, I'd surely hate Him, for showing me the place.

Tonight I sat at Rich O's with a small group of people, and I noticed something. Before I say what I noticed, maybe you need some background.

I am smart.

Okay, that's enough background.

Anyway, tonight I sat in a group of five people, or to be more specific, I sat on the outskirts of that group, and I noticed that there was absolutely no way that I could consider myself to be one of the brightest members.

This was weird to me, but not unprecedented. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen.

At least two members of the group were obviously and immensely more intelligent than I have ever been or will ever be. One other was probably tied with me on the old IQ-meter. The last member, while not quite as bright as the rest of us, was still far above average, even for Rich O's. So we didn't ridicule that person, too much, and not intentionally. Subtle sarcasm and even more subtle innuendo sufficed, as it always does.

Besides, my dad always said, "Don't make fun of retarded people," and that advice scales quite easily.

See, there's a difference between intelligence and knowledge. Some people don't get that. Some people are incapable of getting it. We pity those people, but not too openly, because we all know that we're only a few ounces of beer away from becoming just like them.

There. This should count as an entry, shouldn't it?

I just don't have anything to write, but here I sit. I guess I don't like the previous entry being the most recent entry. Because, as I'd predicted and hoped, that particular mood did not last.

The other day LaptopGirl asked me if it would kill me to write a positive entry. I don't know the answer to that question. It probably wouldn't kill me, but why take the chance?

Oh, because she asked, that's why.

I'll certainly try. The next time I'm in a good mood, I'll try to write a positive entry.

I'm in a most unusual mood tonight. Not merely a "weird" mood, as I've so often said. This particular mood is one that I honestly can't remember ever having before.

I just don't care.

Now, this mood certainly won't last. None of my moods ever last. I'm amazed that this one has gone on as long as it has. Since about midnight, I think.

This is not a reaction to anything in particular, or to the lack of anything in particular. There's no anger, or sadness, or frustration, or disillusionment, or confusion, or longing or even lust or even love. Okay, maybe there's some disillusionment, but not a lot. Not enough to explain this mood, now of all times. And there's always love, but it usually defines me instead of simply punctuating me.

There was no impetus at all for this mood. One second I felt all of the above, and the next second, I didn't.

This mood won't last. I don't want it to last. Not forever. Not even through tomorrow morning. Tomorrow morning I want to wake up as myself. I need to know who I am, what I am, how I am. I need to fucking recognize myself when I look in the mirror tomorrow.

This person sitting here at my computer tonight, typing this crap - he isn't me. He's just another asshole who stopped caring because it hurt too much. Another dickhead who stopped trying because it was too hard. Another, dare I say, dipshit, who quit the game because he couldn't cheat and get away with it.

Fuck that. That's not who I am.

It's fascinating, though, I won't lie. I never thought there'd ever ever ever ever ever be a time when I'd feel like this again. I walked two miles tonight, towards my old high school, and with every step I took I imagined myself getting closer and closer to...

Well, I don't know what. Something. Some place that I haven't seen in a long time, or maybe ever.

I never got there. Maybe there doesn't exist. Not for me anyway. I tried to explore outside of myself and I found emptiness and loneliness. So, disappointed, I turned around and I walked home.

Tomorrow morning, I'll be me again. I'll love again and therefore I'll hurt again. But I think that the memory of tonight will be with me for a long time. The memory, and the realization that it brings.

Anything is possible, even the impossible.

It always happens this way. I make it one thing or two things into the list of a gazillion things that I want to say, and then the conversation ends. Abruptly.

Questions and comments and opinions and predictions and more questions and more comments, left to smolder inside my head. To fester and evolve into a beast that I can no longer contain.

It's all about the same thing, though. The quest.

The never-ending search for the right words, the magic turn-of-phrase, that will end this bullshit and right these wrongs and, well, fix everything.

There are people who might venture that things aren't broken, but those people don't have my unique perspective, so their opinions don't count. I was right all along, and I will continue to be right, and dammit I'm right at the present.

Alas, long-gone are the days of clubs and caveward draggings. Today, we live in an ostensibly polite and sophisticated society. Today, words are important.

So, I search for the words. Sometimes, I think I find them. I send them forth and, far too often they, like so many of their fallen brethren before them, end up impaled upon the swords of deaf ears, and they are forever silenced.

I'm in a weird mood this evening. In case you couldn't tell.

Of course I can handle it. I'm stronger than people think. But I shouldn't fucking have to handle it. It's not supposed to be happening at all, and it's especially not supposed to be happening tonight.

I haven't seen SassyGirl in almost a year, and tonight, instead of getting to enjoy hanging out with her, I get to always keep one eye on the door and constantly be on pins and needles. I get to wait and wonder how many more seconds or minutes or hours I have until that wave of reality comes washing in to drown me.

I know, life isn't fair. I know that fact better than most people, I'd wager. But c'mon, sometimes it's just ridiculous. Sometimes it's a fucking joke, except nobody's laughing.

UPDATE: Well, reality was nice enough to call and let me know that I needn't expect it to show up Wednesday night after all. And then SassyGirl ended up making a short night of it, anyway, so I was able to come home earlier than anticipated. So, whew!

I spend a lot of time searching for words. I bet most people who do a lot of writing, professionally or otherwise, do the same thing. Oh sure, most of the time I'll just let my fingers pick the words for me, but every now and then they choose poorly. That's when it's up to my brain to get off its lazy ass, stop fantasizing about pretty girls, and do some work.

I've been in this mood since last Friday at least. One of confusion, but that's not quite the right word. One of concern, but that's not it either. My brow has been almost constantly furrowed. There was, I knew, a word for the mood in which I found myself mired, but that word was hiding from me.

I found it last night, about halfway between my house and the Highlander Point shopping center. I walked along the dark road, and I passed a deer. Just standing in a field, as deer so often do. Upon my approach, it turned its body away, but it did not run. It just looked at me, its head turning smoothly. When I'd passed behind it, the deer turned its head the other way, and watched me some more.

I kept an eye on it, of course. Just in case it decided to attack. Do deer have rabies? If the deer had attacked, I supposed I'd have used the time-honored defense method of shitting my pants to gross-out my opponent. But it didn't attack, it only watched me, and then when I was a safe distance away, it crossed the road.

Perhaps it had a date with a chicken. None of my business, and who am I to judge?

For years, my thoughts have been almost constantly churning, my heart has been almost constantly yearning. But for the last few days, there's been something else. I couldn't find the word for my mood, until I looked into the inky eyes of that deer. That deer, watching me walk down the road in the middle of the night, it was experiencing the same mood. The same feeling of confused concern.

That deer was perplexed.

And so am I.

It started out as a joke. A stupid game I'd play wherein I'd imagine and predict the worst thing that could happen.

It used to be funny, in a weird way. Until it all started coming true. Then it stopped being funny.

I wrote a while ago that I expect to be murdered. That was not a random off-the-cuff statement, it was a prediction. The end-result of a long list of bullshit mistreatment. A totally warranted extrapolation.

The cruelest and sweetest person I know will murder me someday. And I will like it, because I'll serve a purpose to her. An outlet of some kind, I guess.

I like being useful to the people I care about.

I'll probably be smiling when I die. I doubt that I'll be laughing, though, because that could be misinterpreted.

It's not stupidity that keeps me here. Nope, it's knowing the truth, even when everyone else fails to see it. It's speaking the truth, and living the truth, and waiting for beautiful eyes to open so that I'm not alone any more.

It's not cowardice that keeps me from turning away and facing the unknown. It's that the unknown holds no appeal for me. And why should it? The appeal of the unknown lies in its potential, and I've already found all of the potential I could ever want.

It's not weakness. I'm not here because I'm weak, but because I'm strong. I have persevered when others would have given up. I have pushed forward when others would have faltered. Time after time I have exposed my heart to the daggers of reality and, though I've been stabbed, I've never given up and I've never cowered and I've never ran away. I've been right here all this time.

And it's not insanity. Step inside me and look through my eyes. See what I see. Feel with my heart the things that I feel. Use my lips to speak, and use my ears to listen to the words fighting to be heard. Reach out with my hand and touch what I touch, and feel the tingling of a million touches yet to come. This is all very real.

It's not stupidity, or cowardice, or weakness, or insanity. It's something else.

I know what it is. So far, I'm the only one who really knows what it is. What it's like. What it means. What it portends.

So far, I'm the only one who really gets it.

But eventually, there'll be another.

Beautiful eyes will open, and they will see me, right where I've been all along.

Seriously, why am I still here? I was supposed to be gone weeks ago.

This is going to be bad. Maybe as bad as the last time, or maybe even worse. Probably worse, I bet.

What planet am I supposed to be from? What species am I supposed to be where I can just blow it all off and be okay with it? Handshakes and high-fives all around.

Bad news: I'm human.

Being okay would invalidate everything that I've said and done for years. But still, I would be okay if I could. Fuck, I might even fake it, if I could do that halfway convincingly.

But, I'm a terrible actor, it seems.

Why am I still here?

And the thing is, I can almost be okay with it. My own desires and priorities have, after all, changed, blurred, whatever. I could be okay, and I only asked for a little help. Like to not rub it in my face, and to not bend me over and fuck me up the ass with it.

Not too much of a request, I don't think. A little goddamn common decency and empathy.

em-pa-thy
noun
1. Identification with and understanding of, or at least acceptance of, another's situation, emotions, or motives.

I want to leave.

I need to leave, to get away from this fucking failed experiment before it sucks me in all over again. I don't want to go through it all again.

Where's the fucking payoff if I stay?

What's the reason for all of this? The rainbow is beautiful, but the pot of gold is forever out of my reach. Set aside for random others. Like they fucking deserve it. Like I haven't proven myself.

I try to be a good guy, and I think that I am a good guy.

But I'm not that fucking good.

Nobody is that fucking good.

The other night, MusicalYuppieDude told me that I should be knighted. I countered that perhaps I should be straight-jacketed.

Telling the truth has turned out to be the worst thing I could have done. How messed up is that?

I've got this problem. It's an incredible urge to write. But I sit down here at my computer, my fingers poised over the keyboard, and all that emerges is drivel.

I'm an ocean held back by a finger in a dike. There's so much in me straining to be released, but it never comes with anything approaching its potential. Just a trickle, every now and then. Just enough to frustrate the bejeezus out of me.

Eventually, I tell myself, something will give. My search for work may provide me with new surroundings. Maybe that will enable me to release this pressure. Or perhaps I'll find something that allows me to remain here at home, but circumstances will change. Or maybe I'll change. Maybe I already have.

Things end so suddenly, sometimes. I used to be kidded about how I was always afraid that each time would be the last. The last look, the last hug, the last kiss, the last word.

I'm looking at a word right now. It's the word "that" in black font on my screen. I'm looking at the word, and I'm terrified that it may be the last. And now, I'm thinking about the last look and hug and kiss, and I'm worrying that they're over forever.

I do worry about these things. I have to. I need to be prepared, because sometimes, I'm right.

It's just a brief downward flicker, most of the time. A few inches. But enough for me to notice, and enough for her to notice, should she happen to be looking. So far, I think I've caught it in time. Caught myself in time.

Eyes to lips. Just a few inches of smooth skin, down a cheek, along the ridge of a nose. Physically, that distance is very small, but emotionally, it's vast.

Eyes may welcome and engage, but lips, they beckon.

---

Speaking of lips, I like this old entry from 2007:

I'm not really sure which was the first. I've got it narrowed down to two girls, two occasions, but the passage of time has blurred my memory to the point where I can no longer be certain about the order of things. Like, I'm pretty sure that I kissed both those girls after that comet killed all the dinosaurs, but I wouldn't want to bet anything substantial on it.

So I don't remember which was my first real kiss. But I do remember them both. They were passionate, each of them. And full of promises that neither of us was ready to keep. There was none of this sweet and gentle and perfunctory crap that I've been so wont to do lately. To show that I'm a good guy, at least at first. Back then, a kiss was all you were going to get, so you damn sure needed to make the best of it.

I'm pretty sure that I could remember all of my first kisses. I don't mean that I could list them right now off the top of my head, but if I thought about it long enough, I probably could. And if I heard a name or saw a face or had something like that come along to help jog my memory, then I definitely could.

I was thinking tonight about a few of my first kisses. From the drunken and playful and inevitable kiss of that night last Winter, to that fascinated experimental kiss a couple of weeks ago, to that romantic kiss in Las Vegas in June, to that initially timid kiss that somehow lasted an entire weekend in late 2004, to that incredible indefinable kiss a few months earlier that still makes me weak in the knees when I think about it.

I don't know why I've never written about kissing before. About lips. I've written about hands, and I've written about eyes, but not lips. I don't know why. Maybe, maybe kissing just seems too personal, even for me to write about. Maybe hand-holding and eye-gazing are just fine, but kissing belongs in the same realm as sex, and I never write about sex. Nobody wants to read about that - they only want to have it. Maybe kisses are the same way.

Anyway, I like kissing. It's my favorite. I just thought I'd share that little tidbit. You know, just in case anyone wants to make out or something.

Maybe it's just a matter of reigning myself in a little. I've certainly been unable to stop myself, even though quite often lately I've wanted to do just that.

This is an idea I had come to me last night. Apparently this idea was hiding at the bottom of a glass of Marzen (12419). That's a weird place for an idea to be hiding, but I'll still take it.

Wanting something because you feel like you should want it, or because you used to want it, or because you can't think of anything better?

Smells like bullshit to me.

I've been so damn stubborn. I watched everything crumble and I refused to really accept that it was happening. Had happened. Whatever.

Trying to stay somewhat cryptic here, while remaining readable. I don't think I'm succeeding.

The other night I found myself smiling, when I had a realization that there was one thing that hadn't crumbled.

One thing that hadn't changed.

And it never will. And it's the only thing that matters. There need be no expectations to erode or desires to dull. Lust lessens and faith falters and wants wane and hope becomes hazy.

Fuck all that other stuff, all that icing. I really think I can do this. I've already been doing it for years, after all.

I'm not thinking very clearly. It's very frustrating. I can't even obsess over a single thought, like normal. Nope, all I can do is sit back and sort of watch the show, turn my gaze inward and glare.

Nothing fits. No ideas, no feelings, no resolutions, nothing will stick. I don't know what I want, and I don't know what I want to want. My mind rejects everything like water rejects oil.

Well, I guess I do still have that one thing. But I've been suspecting that it's running on inertia, so I don't trust it fully.

I think that I want things to be okay, but I don't know what that means. Its shape fluctuates wildly and it never stays the same long enough for actual desire to form around it.

Wow, I'm really rambling. Like I said, I'm not thinking clearly.

I'm irritated this morning. And worried. Not really sad, though, so that's nice.

I keep trying to write an entry, but none of the thoughts racing through my head will slow down enough for me to catch it and pin it down and dissect it.

I was just reading some old emails, from a year ago. Right before and right after I found out she was seeing someone.

I read one email wherein I said that I expected to have to go through it several times, and that each time would be tougher than the last, but that it would all be worth it eventually. I'd be the one who would always be there when she needed someone, and eventually I'd be noticed.

And now, a year later, I fear that it's all starting again. And I'm not there.

This really sucks.

Maybe it'll storm tonight. That always cheers me up. Must buy some beer, though.

I wish I knew how to fix all this, I really do. Maybe it's so hard because it can't be fixed. Maybe, even after everything that's changed, one thing is still the same. Maybe we're still too lopsided.

The thing that I need to do, though, is figure out what I want. Or, more precisely, what I want to want. Because things have changed, and not for the better.

The solution that keeps coming to me, time and time again, is to pretend that everything is fine. To act like I don't care. To lie, in other words.

I don't like that solution, but I'm starting to see the appeal of it. At the very least, it would give the appearance of balance.

I really want to write something relevant now.

But I won't.

Or can't.

Because I'm drunk. Or very tipsy. I'm at home though, so it's okay.

Hic.

It would have been awesome, though.

You ever get a desire and at first you don't pay much attention to it, because you figure it's just collateral damage, and then it grows and grows and sometimes threatens to consume you? And you can't think about anything else, even those things that are much more important and much more noble and even much more realistic?

Yeah, me too.

Most people probably think that I'm a pessimist. They're wrong for thinking that, but I guess I understand their mistake. It's just that I try to prepare for the worst.

The problem that I have is that "the worst" is an ever-changing thing. What was "the worst thing" yesterday is nothing but the fucked-up past today, and there's an entirely new "worst thing" for me to prepare for.

I've told RockGirl, several times, that I expect to be murdered someday. And, not only that, I expect that I know exactly who my killer will be. It's just common sense. A trivial extrapolation that a child could do while sleeping.

But that's in the far-off future. I won't have to worry about that until a million other bad things have happened. And I'll wait for each and every one of those things, and I'll endure each and every one of those things, because they must be important or they'd certainly have stopped by now.

I used to joke about the bad things, until they happened. After that, they didn't seem all that funny to me anymore.

I'm in a good mood. That doesn't make any sense at all.

It must be denial.

What will tomorrow bring?

I don't know, but I bet it will suck, whatever it is.

I could lose power at any second. That's kinda exciting to me. The lightning outside is crazy, like living inside a strobe-light. I want to vomit some words here and then I want to go back out to my garage and watch the lightning some more.

This probably isn't going to make any sense to anyone but me, but I don't care. I don't know why you people read this crap anyway. Inertia is my guess.

---

I can close my eyes, when I'm in the right mood like the one I'm in right now, and I can see.

A single bright point of light, directly ahead. It outshines, without even trying, the smudges to my left and the smears to my right, and even the fading spotlight behind me.

People think, people wonder, people question, people doubt, people question some more. But people just don't see. It's right there.

All I have to do is close my eyes, and everything is perfectly clear.

So I had that thought dangling from my brain. When I finally dislodged it, I sat down here to write an entry about it.

But, as it turns out, I've already written the entry. Over three years ago. Oops.

I was wrong about being okay, when I first wrote this entry. I might be wrong again this time - the bruising is much more severe, after all. Time will tell.

---

(January 2006)

The other night, I drank a bottle of yummy Alaskan Smoked Porter and wrote a bunch of snippets of boring crap. One of those snippets was this:

I think about a couple of my friends who've recently started reading my 'blog. I try to keep things light for them - but not too light. I want to come off as neither a lunatic nor as a child. This is easier said than done. Especially when I'm both. I want to come off as insightful at times, and as brilliant at others. This is easier said than done. Especially when I'm neither.

We'll see if I can write anything coherent without alcohol in my bloodstream. I have my doubts.

The problem is, I don't seem to be able to write anything that's either interesting or well-written unless that writing comes from my heart. My emotions are the source of everything I've ever written that I considered readable.

Because of this, I tend to stick with those same emotional topics and rehash them to death. Beat that dead horse into bloody pulp.

So someone new to my 'blog comes along, reads some of my drivel, and makes conclusions based on it.

Conclusions that are often less than accurate. Or at least not timely.

SCRIBBLERESQUE PARENTHETICAL THOUGHT: This is the third time I've restarted this entry. I know what I want to write, but I'm having a hard time deciding how to write it.

But what are people supposed to think about me, when they read my 'blog?

Read something from the Fall of 2003, and you'll be so bored that you'll never read anything by me again. You'll probably volunteer for a lobotomy to prevent accidentally reading something I've written.

Read some of the later stuff, and you'll feel a little sorry for me. You'll think my writing is insane, and obsessive, and overly dramatic, but some of what I write is at least interesting and/or well-written and/or entertaining.

But what are you supposed to think about me?

I read back through my old entries, and there is of course one theme that keeps popping up. That fucking dead horse. I write about it because it's what I know, and it's what I feel, and it's - I guess comfortable would be a good word.

But it's not me. Not anymore. Not, at least, to anywhere near the extent that it used to be. That's what I want people to think about me when they read my 'blog:

I'm okay. Or I will be.

I get better all the time. Every day I wake up with a little less pain, and every night I go to sleep with a little less feeling that the day was wasted because she didn't share it with me.

I think I'm what you might call emotionally bruised.

But that bruise is fading.

So what should people think about me, when they read my 'blog?

I'd like people to think that I'm a person, a human being, just as capable of pain, or passion, or selfishness, or friendship, or stupidity, as anyone else. I'd like people to not be afraid of me, or of hurting my feelings. I'd like people to know that they don't need to tiptoe around me. That I'm stronger than I seem.

I'd like people to understand that there are some things about me that they may never understand, because I don't even understand them myself.

But that's okay, and so am I.

The problem is that, sometimes, it does no good. Pretending that the monster in the closet doesn't exist is both futile and stupid when it does exist. Lurking, waiting, salivating.

"Suck it up," they say.

"Suck this up," I so badly want to respond.

But, I don't say any such thing. I'm nice, after all. And people generally mean well, even when they advise stupid shit like that.

Some things simply cannot be dealt with by sheer act of will. Some things are, get this, actually hard. Some things, they take time, and too often time is a concession we're not given. So, too often, we find ourselves pressured into ignoring the problem, pretending that it's not as bad as it really is. Trying to fool the world and ourselves into believing that everything is okay.

And then one day we explode into a million pieces.

Ignoring problems doesn't make them go away. Acting normal might fool some people, but it never fools the most important person, the person doing the acting. So what's the point? The inconvenient truth is always always always better than the convenient lie.

And the thing is, I suck it up a little bit every damn day. How else would I get out of bed each morning? How else would I ever leave my house? How else would I breathe?

I do all I can to get through this, and that is, by definition, all I can do.

Okay, maybe I could close the closet door. Maybe I could turn on the lights and banish the shadows but, eventually, I'd have to sleep. And that's when it would get me. In my sleep.

No thanks.

I'd rather be awake, And see that monster coming. And hear the hinges squeaking and the floorboards creaking. And feel and hear the soft whimpers from my throat as my body tenses up from fear.

In case you were wondering, I'm in a weird mood right now.

I'm in a pretty weird mood today. Lack of sleep I guess, the blame for which is shared equally between a bout of insomnia keeping me awake and a thunderstorm waking me up.

I want to write today. More than that, I want to be a writer. Whatever that means. Vomiting words and somehow having them splatter into readability. A Rorschach test to reveal things about the writer, and maybe about the reader as well.

You ever just have one of those lives?

I'm waiting again. That's what I do. The present holds little interest for me, and the past is annoyingly immutable, so I wait for the future. I hope that, once I finally catch up with that elusive asshole, that this will all make sense. That I'll understand why I've endured.

I need to get out of this house, and out of this mood.

It was one of my big concerns, actually, that I wouldn't let this end quietly. That, once this beast was no longer looming ahead of me but was instead standing beside me, that I'd lash out. Or at least try to defend myself.

I haven't really done that, I don't think. Nope, I'm just letting it beat the shit out of me, and hoping that it'll tire before I die.

---

Another concern is that the end will never be a part of my past. That I'll pick it up and I'll carry it with me for the rest of my days. Burdened by its weight, encumbered by it's size, but unable and unwilling to let go because it will be all that I have left to prove that I ever existed in any way that mattered.

---

I lie awake, and I doubt the truth of every word that was ever said to me.

And the amazing thing was the rapidity with which it all took place.

I never in my life saw anyone sober up so quickly, and then, once the crisis has been dealt with, I never in my life saw anyone go back to being so drunk so quickly.

It really was uncanny. I looked around for Allen Funt, but he wasn't there. I think he might be dead, come to think of it.

Anyway, I really do like to feel useful. It's all a matter of perspective, of course. What to one person is an obvious manipulation, a blatant advantage being taken, to another person - my lovely self in this case - it's nothing more than an opportunity to feel useful. These opportunities are especially welcome because I never thought they'd happen again.

HatGirl says that I should stop defining myself by what I mean to others. My response to that is that I can't think of a better measurement.

I'm just rambling now. I went to Denny's after we left Jack's, and I thought it was a lot later than it was. So now I'm wired because it's only 2:16 instead of 5:16.

If time flies when you're having fun, I guess that means it drags when you're miserable?

I didn't think I was miserable. I thought I was in a pretty good mood - it's the feeling useful thing - but I guess I was wrong. Maybe I was so miserable that I somehow looped back into a happy place.

Weird.

The thing that I can't seem to get to stick in my head is that there's nothing I can do.

I didn't do enough before. No matter how hard that is for me to accept. Even though I did so much, more than I'd have thought possible and more than most people would have done, I simply didn't do enough to be good enough.

During, I did too much. I was honest and forthcoming. Too much of each, because I was also hurting. In shock by the suddenness and the brutality of what was happening. I should have taken the time to let things digest. But, I didn't. I screwed up and I let my emotions take over. Oops, right?

And after? After, I don't know what's been going on. I've either been doing too much or too little or the exact right amount, but it doesn't matter, because it's been out of my hands, and it's still out of my hands, and I wish I could accept that fact instead of forgetting it every 10 seconds. Instead of always trying to do something, anything at all, to fix this.

I'm doing it right now, with this entry. Trying to fix things.

Wasting my time, some would say.

Standing my ground, others might counter.

I get so damn impatient sometimes. You'd really think, after all these years, that patience would be something I'd be really good at.

You'd be wrong.

I remember writing something, a long time ago. It wasn't here in this blog, I don't think. I think it was somewhere else. Somewhere that no longer exists.

There's a lot of that going around these days.

I went, in an instant, from feeling useful to feeling used, from feeling needed to feeling taken advantage of. That instant is when it happened. It was a Monday night when the walls of my false reality crumbled and crashed at my feet. March 23rd, 2009.

I lived in a place of hope, and dreams, and love. But it was all a lie.

I worry about the things I'll write when I feel like I have nothing left to lose. I wonder why I don't feel that way already. Perhaps there are still lies waiting to crumble.

I'm sure it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, to anyone close enough to me to know what's going on, or I guess what went on would be more accurate. These hypothetical friends and theoretical stalkers heard or read my tale, and they probably yawned a little.

Well, I was there. And I didn't fucking yawn.

It's all about context, see. One person's distraction can be another person's reason for living.

And now, those same friends and stalkers would probably expect me to be angry today, having been ever-so-briefly shown the light, only to be (apparently) thrust again into darkness.

Perhaps, soon, I will be angry again. But not today. Today, I'm mesmerized by the afterimages of what I saw.

I've got this annoying urge to write something this morning. I just feel like I should write something. Shit happens, and I write about it. That's the way it's supposed to work.

Well, some shit happened. And, like I said, I feel like I should write about it.

But I don't want to, at least not until I figured out exactly what happened. And definitely not until I figure out if it was a good thing or not.

I guess I can say that I don't think I'm as sad as I was a couple of days ago, and a couple of weeks ago, and a couple of months ago, and a couple of years ago. At least, I don't think I am. I dunno. Maybe I'm worse.

Oooh! I just thought of something!

There's a tornado inside my head!

So there.

The last few times that I've awakened so suddenly and been unable to get back to sleep, it's been a little different. The last few times, I've known exactly what it was that woke me up.

Either a stray thought, or a snippet of a dream, about the one person in all this who is truly innocent. I have my thought or my dream-snippet, and it latches onto my brain and simply will not let go. Its claws grab hold and, for minutes or hours, my brain simply isn't capable of any other thought.

Maybe this is progress, this knowing. Hard to tell, maybe this is just the eye of the storm.

I'm not sure. It feels better to know, even though these thoughts keep me just as awake as all of the unknown torment did before it. At least this is reasonable. At least this is expected. At least this is normal.

I think that the thing is, out of all the anger and the sadness and the longing that I've done, there's one thing that I don't think anyone could begrudge me for doing.

I miss that kid, and it's perfectly reasonable for me to do so. If I didn't miss him, I don't think I'd be human.

I can't help but wonder, When am I going to say that enough is enough?

When will I stop? When will I give up?

It's the most annoying thing, being so stubborn and blind, and knowing that I'm being stubborn and blind, and relishing in it because the alternatives are unacceptable.

My eyes are wide open, and still I don't see. Still I cannot see. Still I refuse to see.

When will I stop? When will I give up?

When will I die?

This is not a life. This is a death. Prolonged and stretched almost to the point of indiscernability, but a death nonetheless.

When?

I'm at Denny's early today, or maybe I'm here late last night. Whatever, it's 3:49 right now, so it's something fucked up.

It's very crowded here right now. And LOUD. At least 90% of the noise is coming from the corner booth, and at least 99% of that noise is coming from one person, a somewhat round girl who I shall call Loudy McLoudandfat. Her cackling is threatening to liquefy my bones. That would be gross.

The remaining 10% of the noise, itself almost ear-splitting, emanates from a group of guys dorks playing some kind of trivia game at the center table. I'm fairly certain that sexual favors are being wagered, and that they don't really care who wins the game, because they'll all get to "win" later in the parking lot. Hint hint wink wink.

And finally, over in the corner, is an old guy, as quiet as I am and probably as miserable as I am because of these auditory assailants.

My plan, such as it was, was to come here and scribble out a quick entry, then have breakfast with DoableGirl. My plan, such as it was, did not include arriving at 3:45 in the flipping morning. So now I've got to improvise. I've got at least another hour to kill, and I don't know if I've got an hour's worth of words inside me, straining to escape. I guess I'll find out.

It's hard to stay in a writey mood in this place. Usually it's too quiet. Sometimes, like this morning, it's too loud. It's weird, though, that I can sit in a bar and write for hours but in this place even 15 minutes seems too long. It's not that different from a bar.

Anyway, earlier tonight I was thinking about my readers. Not any of my specific readers, but my readers in general. My generic readers.

Some of you people have stuck with me for years. Out of habit, possible, the inertia of interest that's long since faded. Or maybe that's not fair. Maybe there's still genuine interest out there somewhere, a curiosity, perhaps, about what exactly the fuck happened.

Those readers, the curious ones, are owed something. There's a debt there. There's always been an unspoken agreement. I write about my life, and people read it. Well, I haven't been holding up my end of the bargain lately, and I know it. The more that people read my irrelevant drivel, the more into the red I sink.

I fear, however, that this is a debt which will never be repaid in full. There are too many things about which I simply cannot write. Too many feelings to be hurt, too many fingers to point, and too much blame to assign.

See, this blog isn't about me, and it hasn't been about me for a very long time. It's been about something else. A feeling or a desire or a question or an answer, all intertwined and all pervasive. Everything that I wrote was about that. Everything, even if it didn't seem that way to those of you reading. And now it's got too stop. It's become just too damn intense.

Luckily, this blog is no longer about that thing at all. Now, it's about trying to survive even as I wonder if I want to survive.

And, as long as I'm being forthcoming, nothing I've written has been written for me, or for you generic readers out there in Internetland. Nope, all of it, every single word that I've written in the last half-decade, has been written to and for one very specific reader. A reader who is probably wondering, as she reads this sentence, "Is he talking about me?"

Of course I am, silly girl. And that also has to stop. Again, way too intense.

Now, where was I going with all this drivel?

Doesn't matter, because my date is here. It's about time. I'm starving.

I'm such a damn hypocrite sometimes. Like when I claim to not believe in fate except regarding this one tiny thing, and regarding this one tiny thing I base years of my life on faith that it's meant to be.

Make up your damn mind, Dave.

So here's the deal. Maybe I've been wrong. Maybe I've been wrong about fate, and maybe I've been wrong about this one tiny thing. Maybe it's all been random, or existing only in my head, or maybe there is fate, and what's happened is exactly what fate had in store for me.

It's a tough pill to swallow, being wrong. Wrong about a life. Wrong about a love. Just flat-out wrong about the only thing that has ever mattered to me. The only thing that, I fear, will ever matter to me.

So, having accepted the possibility that I've been wrong, what am I supposed to do about it?

Nothing. Not a damn thing.

Wait to die, or maybe wait to live. Maybe I've been right, and I just need even more patience, and maybe I've been wrong, and patience is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. All that matters is that I do nothing, because that's what she wants from me right now.

Nothing.

And I hope that others will follow my example. There's been too much meddling and too much drama already.

It's time for peace to prevail.

I've had this thought sliding around in my head for a few days. It's a slippery bastard, though, and I never can seem to maintain a grip on it. Long enough to recognize it, but not long enough to really get a good look. I suspect that, eventually, this thought will be captured and dissected into a blog entry. But not today.

---

I'm at Denny's again this morning. I got here late, for me. It's 7:15 as I write this sentence. I guess I timed things just right, as I pretty much have the place to myself. I see an elderly couple out front. I bet they're going to church when they leave here. I hope they find what they're looking for.

---

KittenDamsel and I were supposed to go to Covington last night. But then I was reminded that there was a party at my sister's house, for my niece and her fiancé. So I went there instead. KittenDamsel didn't want to go because, she said, she wouldn't know anyone. Well, out of the 7.5 million people there, I only knew perhaps a dozen. Maybe I'll go to Covington today. Maybe she'll take Monday off and come with me. Maybe pigs will fly. We'll see.

---

I wonder what time Home Depot opens. I could buy some 4x4s and some Quickrete and work on my swing. I can't believe I've let it go this long, but I guess I've been distracted. I've never done anything with concrete before. I'm afraid I'll make a mistake and get trapped somehow. A permanent monument to my own ineptitude.

---

I guess there's just no way that I can go anywhere without running away from here. I'm coming to grips with that. I can run, perhaps because I must run. The thought of running away is not what's giving me pause. Nope, it's the stark realization that, by running somewhere else, I'd also be giving up on here. That's what scares me. I'm just not ready to give up, and I fear that I never will be ready.

I've written before that I think fate is a silly concept, but I just can't shake this feeling, this certainty, that there's a reason for all this. A reason that I'm sitting at a Denny's early on a Sunday morning and thinking about her, missing her. This series of events and emotions that was set into motion all those years ago, there is a reason. I just don't know what that reason is. Perhaps its purpose is to destroy me.

So far, so good.

---

The crowd is starting to pour in now. More church people, I bet. I guess it's nice to have faith in something. I can't say that their faith is any more misplaced than my own.

It's too early to be writing this. I should wait. I should go back out into my garage and have another Marzen and then write this drivel.

But I'm inside now. And my garage is all the way out there.

Screw it. I'm going back outside. Nobody wanted to read unpolished bullshit anyway.

I have this thing that I used to do, years ago. I used to write something every night, before I went to bed. MixedSignalGirl was my muse, back then, though my own thoughts and feelings certainly put their two cents' worth in whenever the pressure became too great.

Now, I'm certainly not saying that I'm going to go back to writing something every day. I've said that before, and I've always failed to live up to that promise. But what I am saying is that I'll do better than I've done in the recent past.

---

Tonight I was thinking, as I'm so wont to do. Thinking was, as it has always been, a bad thing for me to do.

I was thinking about invitations. Invitations that I've received and invitations I've merely wanted to receive. And I was thinking about what my responses would be. And I was surprised and irritated at some of the realizations I made.

I would still, for example and after everything, rather simply hang out with the girl I love than fuck anyone else.

I've known this, on a subconscious level, for months. But tonight, it really seemed like a choice I might have to make. And, tonight, I once again realized that there would be no real choice.

---

I tried to be nice. I actually think that I was nice. But it was for naught. I was accused of being mean, basically. Of being an asshole. That same old assumption still ruled, and fuck the truth and the horse it rode in on.

Well, news flash; I'm not an asshole. And neither is the horse. It's a really nice horse, actually.

---

So then I made a phone call. I asked KittenDamsel straight-out. Her answer surprised me very much. If I go, then she'll go. She'll go and then we'll see what transpires.

There's this thing called faith, see. Not the religious kind, but faith in a person's goodness. I have it. KittenDamsel has it. HatGirl certainly has it. And certain others don't have it. Oh well.

That old saying, better safe than sorry, is all well and good except when it becomes the primary driving force for a life.

Safe, far too often, leads to sorry.

Failure to take any kind of real chance is, quite simply, a failure to live.

I decided sometime this afternoon that I needed to write something relevant. Something to, perhaps, entice the last stragglers into sticking around this blog a little longer. One such entry follows. Don't read it if you don't like relevant things. This means you, by the way.

It should have been me.

I've said and wrote and felt those words so many times over the last several months, and it's pretty much the one thought that's remained consistent throughout all of this bullshit that I've used instead of a life.

It should have been me. Never before and, I hope with all of my heart, never again, will I ever be so certain about something. Certainty is fine and good, by the way, until it blows up in your face and splatters god-knows-what (certainty guts?) all over you.

I want to know where I messed up. I want to know what I did wrong. I want - no, scratch that - I need to know what was wrong with me.

There. That's relevant.

But wait!

There's more.

I see four options, if I squint my eyes just so and tilt my head at just the right angle. Four.

There should be one. That's all I've ever had, after all, since that unknown evening in the Fall of 2003.

Anyway, nothing, less, same, more.

Those are the options.

We've tried nothing. I've lived with nothing for almost two months now. It's damn near killed me. It may still kill me, if I'm lucky. Better that than to die alone and unloved in my fucking sleep in forty fucking years. A broken heart is a pretty noble way to die, I think.

More, well that is the only option that my heart has ever let me consider. Unfortunately, it's not up to me, or the choice would have been made a long time ago.

Same simply cannot happen. It was an untenable situation, and we witnessed the proof, as everything that we had toppled and shattered and scattered at our feet because of our stupid feelings and our stupid prides and our stupid fears, despite our stupid blindness and our stupid lack of acceptance and our stupid stubbornness

So now we're stuck with less. Exactly how much less isn't up to me, and I'm glad that it's not. Because I'm not up to the task of deciding. I'm still, after all these minutes and hours and days and weeks and months since everything fell apart, I'm still not capable of separating the fantasy of what I feel from the reality of what I see.

And I really don't think that I'll ever be capable. Nor do I want the job.

Cool. A relevant entry with not just one, but two relevant subjects. That ought to keep people around for a while longer.

How do I leave without running away, scurrying to the relative safety of the unknown? It could be the greatest opportunity ever, but could I take advantage of it for its own sake? I want to stay, but how can I stand my ground when that ground has dissolved beneath my feet? How can I leave with any dignity at all?

How do I stay without clinging, with desperation and inevitable futility, to false hope? Do family and friends mean anything at all? Does my house mean anything at all? I want to leave, but how could I possibly leave my own life? How can I stay for myself, and for nobody else?

How do I change my life, and my habits, and my haunts, without hiding and cowering?

How do I show strength without being cold, without invalidating everything that I've said, and done, and felt?

How do I show emotion without being spineless and selfish, without shaking every time I hear a voice or, God forbid, see a face?

Everything I do is seen through these damn colored glasses. The ones that I've worn willingly for a large chunk of my life. It's no wonder that people are watching me, listening to me, reading my words.

She's reading my words.

How do I move on without rebounding?