As the subset of the universe that makes up my readership prepares to roll its collective eyes...

Not this shit again?!?

Yes, indeed. This shit again.

Something else. That's what we've become. Something undefined, and perhaps undefinable. Not friends, not acquaintances, certainly not lovers. Neither strangers nor enemies. Ghosts who haunt each other from time to time.

We give life to lies by pretending they're true, but we fool nobody but ourselves, and only then through luck and stubbornness.

Everything that was and everything that could have been, replaced by this, this something. Blindness. Deafness. Numbness.

We have become something else. A round peg searching desperately for purpose, but finding itself in a universe full of square holes. Definition eludes, cowers.

In flux, perhaps.

Three hours ago, I was going to write something and then I was going to go to bed. I was going to go to bed at a normal hour, like a normal person.

See, I've got a lunch date with HatGirl and I want to be refreshed and shit. So I was going to go to bed at 12:30 or so, right after I wrote something.

And here I still sit.

Better late than never, perhaps?

There is a quote by Ernest Hemingway on NakedGirl's blog.

There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Anyway, I was thinking today that I need to stop this bleeding.

Or not.

Maybe, instead, I should slice the veins in my soul and just let myself pour.

How long would I bleed? Forever?

That would be gross.

Okay, so now I'm home again. It's 3:14 in the morning as I type this sentence, for those of you keeping score.

I just, like right this minute, got an urge to type something. Once again, unfortunately, I haven't the slightest idea what I can/should/will write.

So I'll just let my fingers twitch against this keyboard, and then I'll see what's produced.

I think I've figured out what it is that I want. Something impossible, of course, but that's never stopped me before. And the nice thing about impossible dreams is that I'm not disappointed when they don't come true.

The thing is, like it or not, I'm still pretty much the same person that I was two months ago, six months ago, five years ago. Recent events have shattered my hopes and derailed my desires, but they've done absolutely nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing to me.

Only the direction has changed. This compass that once pointed true now spins wildly, seeking a North that no longer exists.

Or does it?

This is an important question.

I've got so little patience these days. I run around and I grab heads and I peer into eyes, and if I don't see what I want within the first few seconds, I release my grip and I move on.

I know what I'm looking for, and I know where to find it. I just can't look there, not anymore. So I look for it elsewhere.

It exists. I know it does. It's out there somewhere, somewhere else I mean. I will find it. Or maybe I'll die trying, but if so, then I'll die fucking trying instead of sulking.

Hmmm, I just read the drivel that I've written so far. It sucks. I know exactly what I'm trying to say here, but my fingers aren't cooperating.

Maybe my fingers are tired. I know that the rest of me is.

5:35. AM. In the flipping morning.

Sleep tries to elude me, but I always manage to catch it. Eventually. I do sleep. In fact, I get more sleep now than I did before all of the shit hit the fan in my personal life. Figure that one out, and then explain it to me because I don't get it.

Things are way too calm inside my head. It really doesn't feel right. I should be devastated, and I always feel like I'm right on the verge of devastation, but I never seem to cross that line.

I keep saying that I don't know who I am anymore. That's an absolute fact. I mean, for years I was that guy. You know, the one who had hope for something wonderful with someone wonderful. The one who gave up his life to spend as much time as possible with someone wonderful. I may have mentioned some of this from time to time.

Anyway, I'm no longer that guy, and I'm almost always alone, even in a crowded room, and so I'm not sure just who the fuck I am.

So, after you figure out why I'm managing to sleep, maybe you can figure out who I am, and let me know that as well.

Sometimes I find myself in a weird mood. But not a regular weird mood, where I feel like writing something deep and moving and relevant, instead a mood where I feel like plagarizing myself.

So much of what I've written over the years has been the absolute truth. So true, in fact, that it remains true to this day:

The thought that a pretty face, or a sexy body, or a friendly personality - the thought that any or all of these things might be enough for me - that thought borders on hilarious.

There's always something missing, it seems. That thing which is intangible and all-important. That's the thing for which the need permeates me. I've found something to fill that need once, twice, maybe three times. I may never find it again. That would be sad, I think.

Desire is more important than satisfaction. Because you can never really have the latter without the former. If you try, it inevitably feels hollow and empty. It feels like a lie, and for good reason.

WeirdGirl and I talked about this stuff for a while, our breathing still synchronized, in the late hours before sleep took us. We've discussed it before, and it's starting to sink in, the things that I say. She's finally starting to understand me, and her understanding will probably signal the end of this. Whatever this is.

I could have lied to her. Either explicitly or implicitly, I could have been much less than honest and therefore been a much better boyfriend. But that's not who I am, how I am. I will not change. The truth is all that I have sometimes. All that I have left.

I want to write something now.

I want to write that I'm done with trying to be nice, with trying to salvage any semblance of civility from this mess. I want to write that I get it, that I'm going to stop denying the harsh truth and that I'm going to accept it even if I can't embrace it. I want to write that I realize that it will take more than my own feeble efforts to resurrect any hope for anything at all, and that my efforts, unaccompanied as they are, cause more harm than good. I want to write that I see no way that this can be fixed.

I want to write all of those things, but I won't. I won't write them because they wouldn't be true.

Not yet, anyway.

So I've been thinking a lot lately. That's not really anything new. I do it all the time. Lately, however, it's been so damn futile that I don't know why I'm even bothering to think at all.

Problem is, I don't know what I want. And it's not that I keep changing my mind. I don't even seem to have a mind to change.

My resolve is strong, but what exactly is my resolution?

I don't know what I want because I don't know who I am, and so I don't know what to do. I'm living on reflex, and I don't like it.

Very frustrating. For years I knew exactly who I was, and what I wanted, and so I could act accordingly.

Now, I look in the mirror and I see a stranger with some hidden desire, and I wish he'd let me in on the damn secret.