Happy Birthday to HatGirl!

HatGirl!

Yay!

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.

Last night I was thinking about stupid questions, mainly because I was asked one.

The cliché is that there are no stupid questions, but that's a stupid cliché.

Here are some types of stupid questions that I've thought of off the top of my head.

1. You already know the answer, but you don't want to hear it.

2. You don't want to know the answer.

3. You want to argue with the answer.

4. You won't listen to the answer.

5. You won't believe the answer.

This list isn't meant to be all-inclusive. I'm sure there are more. Feel free to leave other examples in the comments.

Lately I've taken to not answering stupid questions.

Happy birthday to my father, on what would have been his 69th birthday.

"69, dudes!" -- Future Bill & Ted

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.

I hate it when I'm misunderstood.

I suppose most people are like that. I especially hate it when that misunderstanding stems from emotions and motivations arbitrarily assigned to me by others.

I mean, I'm an open book. So what's the reason for all the guesswork and the assumptions?

Anyway.

Disappointment and resignation. That's it.

No anger, or malice, or disgust. Certainly no hatred.

I'm disappointed in how things turned out, but I'm resigned to the fact that they did turn out this way.

There's no mystery. There's no hidden agenda. There's no scheming.

It's all pretty boring, actually. So maybe some people should find something else to fuel their fires.

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.