I didn't write this. I found it on the internet:

An old Cherokee was teaching his grandchildren about life.

He said to them, "A battle is raging inside me ... it is a terrible fight between two wolves. One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority and ego. The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The old man fixed the children with a firm stare. "This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too."

They thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee replied: "The one you feed."

...we're looking for someone who can adopt a cat with feline leukemia.

Picklepie is incredibly sweet and has no symptoms, but he'll need to stay indoors and away from other cats for the rest of his life. He may develop symptoms in the future and require a very tough decision to be made.

A decision that neither of us wants to make right now.

I can't keep him in my house because I already have two cats and I don't want them to be infected if they're not already. I can't keep him outside because then he's a risk to any other cats he might encounter.

We're really in a bind here. We need to find someone who loves cats and is willing to adopt Picklepie and give him as happy a life as he can have.

I will take care of all shots and neutering if we can only find him a good home.

He's really a great cat, and he will happily return all the love he's given.

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?

I think I'm going to go to Rich O's in a bit. Maybe I'll eat there, or eat at Wendy's on the way. I don't think I've eaten since Thursday evening.

I'm irritated because there's no weird feeling that I'm home. I woke up a few times last night, and it felt like I'd never even left. I was just home because that's where Ilive and in my bed because that's where I sleep and alone because that's how my life is. Usually the feeling of wow, I'm back home and it feels weird will last at least a day or two. Not this time.

My neck still hurts. I foobared it bad the other night, I guess. This morning I took a long shower with hot water pouring on my neck, and it didn't help.

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've got to do something about this schedule I've been keeping. It's just not working. By the time the weekend comes around, I don't want to do anything but sleep for 48 hours. And that's even going to bed early, sometimes as early as 8:00 PM, on weeknights.

It's not like I'm really missing anything by going to bed so early, but it could happen, maybe. That thought nags at me when I go to bed and turn off the sounds on my phone.

There are things I like about getting up at 5:00 AM. First, I like that I don't feel rushed at all. I could probably sleep until 7:30 most mornings, but then I'd have to rush getting showered and shaved and dressed and out the door. I'd have to hope that there were no traffic problems, and then I'd have to go straight in to work as soon as I arrived.

Taking my time is much better. I leave my house by 7:00. Only very rarely is traffic bad enough to make me worry about being late. I get to work between 7:30 and 8:00, and I sit in the parking lot for a while. It's my favorite part of the day, that time before I go into the building.

But, I've been thinking, if I want to leave my house by 7:00, I could sleep until 6:30 and still manage that feat. Getting up at 5:00 gives me time to relax before I have to start getting ready for work, but lately I've been thinking that those extra 90 minutes would serve me better if they were tacked on to the end of the day instead of first thing in the morning.

I'll keep you all posted. Try not to fall off the edge of your seats.

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.