Okay, so I'm home again.

Today was a giant disappointment.

I didn't want to be there, and that lack of interest eventually showed up in my game.

I need to write more about this, but now right now.

Maybe tomorrow.

...is missing a fucking message, that I've been waiting for, simply because I'm downstairs.

I really really really need to figure out a way to have my doorbell ring or something whenever I get an e-mail from people on a certain list. It shouldn't be that tough. I've got all this X-10 shit all over my house, and I can already control my lights from my computer.

I should be able to do this.

Once upon a time, something inside me snapped, and a part of me that I didn't even know I had screamed. And it screamed, and it screamed.

Echoes of those screams still reverberate inside me, bouncing around to and fro off the walls of this hollow shell that defines the place where I used to keep my soul. The echoes are softer now. Usually, I have to really concentrate to be able to detect them at all. And, even if I do think I hear something, I'm usually able to ignore it. To dismiss it as a memory of a memory, not relevant at all.

Usually.

But sometimes, like tonight, one of those echoes manages to bully its way close enough to the surface, close enough to the surface that I simply cannot ignore it. So I have what might be called an anxiety attack, or on bad nights, a panic attack.

Tonight was a bad night.

It started when I was about halfway through my glass of Delirium Tremens (409). There was a time when a good Belgian ale would actually calm my stomach down. But not tonight. My hands started shaking and my gut started doing flips, and I knew right away that this was not a good night for me to be at Rich O's.

Trooper that I am, though, I did try to tough it out. After my Tremens, I had a half glass of Upland Bad Elmer's Porter (42) and enjoyed that while I kept my eyes locked on the entrance to Rich O's proper. I don't know who I was expecting to walk through that door. The grim specter of death might have been a welcome sight - that would at least have explained the anxiety, the incredible sense of dread that was washing over me.

No such luck.

By the time my porter was gone, I knew that there was no way I could stay in that place for another minute.

So I left.

Eventually, hopefully, I'll stop shaking, and then I'll go downstairs and shoot some pool. I really need the practice.

From rebunting's journal:

I want you to remember that you don't have the whole story. You don't know everything that happened, you don't know what it was like to live what I lived.

Nobody knows the whole story of what happened to me. Only two people really even come close, and they only know what I was able to describe. Most of what went on defied description even while it was happening, and now it's all blurred by the passage of time and the imperfect memory a brain has for what a heart feels. Felt. Whatever. Fuck.

So people roll their eyes at me, or they chuckle at me, or they shake their heads at me.

And I bite my tongue, and I wish I shared their ignorance.

Starting tomorrow, you people might have to get along without me for a while.

Now, I'm not going to pull a Natalie, and disappear for a million billion gazillion years, but it could be as long as four days.

Some of you may know that I'm a fairly serious pool player. Well, that seriousness leads me, every year at about this time, to spend some of my hard-earned money and some of my precious time and compete in the Derby City Classic. This is actually a series of tournaments held in Louisville.

My specialty is Bank Pool, and that's the event that I participate in. But even more important than that, I attend the thing and I get to spend several days with other pool players. Pool players are even better than beer snobs as far as I'm concerned.

So I don't know if I'll be updating here between Friday morning and Tuesday. My intention is to update my pool 'blog during this time, and then if there's any time and energy left, I'll update my regular 'blog.

There'll probably at least be a Thursday beer report, as tonight is virtual Friday for me. Yay!

You know what pisses me off?

Besides everything, I mean.

There was a time when I could just sit down here and start typing, and words would string themselves together on my screen in a way that actually made a little bit of sense. To me anyway. I had so much inside me back then, things that were dying to get out. It took less effort to write than it would have taken to keep things contained.

Now, not so much.

I used to have things that I needed to write. Now I've just got things that I want to write. Before, all I had do to was loosen the grip on myself just a little and all of my thoughts and emotions would just start flowing out through my fingers. Now, I have to make an actual effort. And then I see what I've written and I'm like, was that even worth it?

Usually, it's not.

Like this entry right here.

This is just some extra crap I thought of in the shower this morning.

That's right - I was totally naked when I thought this stuff up.

Naked!

I asked for this. I actually begged and pleaded and struggled and fought for this. This is what I wanted. This is what I needed. If I keep telling myself these things, do it often enough and for a long enough period of time, then maybe I'll stop fucking whining about it so much.

If I'd just let myself go, and stop overthinking things so much, I bet I'd be a lot happier. I'd probably be an asshole, but I'd be a happier asshole.

I love women. I love the way that every line of their body is a curve, never beginning, never ending. Just curves, always leading to somewhere beautiful. I love the way they smell. I love the way their jeans fit. I love the way their eyes tell you everything you need to know about them.

The best night of my life? Easy. July 15th, 1995. I spent the entire night with my dad at his little camper out in the country. Sitting on his deck, drinking cheap beer, and talking about life and love and everything. Talking like friends instead of like father and son.

The worst night of my life? Easy. October 9th, 2004.

It's almost 2:00 now. This beer has taken longer to drink than I'd thought it would. I suppose that I should try to get some sleep now. I hope I don't dream.

I hate this. I hate this doubt and this insecurity and this fear. I fucking hate it all. But what I hate the most, what I hate more than anything else, is that it's all coming from inside my own treacherous self, and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

I often wondered, what will all this pain look like, when I finally can look at it from the outside? I know now what it looks like, and it's not very pretty. I think that, in some ways, being surrounded by it and overwhelmed by it was actually preferable to this, to this detachment that's become my crutch lately. At least back then, I felt like I was a part of something special, something unusual. Now, not so much.

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.

I've begun to seriously doubt that I'll ever regain the ability to just shut the fuck up. I used to be such a quiet person, especially when it came to my feelings. But that was easy when I had none. Now I'm sort of like a born-again Christian. It's not enough for me to marvel at my own transition. I have to shout about it to the world. Some things I should whisper first, just to see how they sound. Just to see who listens.