There's this chick who makes a living from her blog. If my understanding is correct, she supports a family of four with her blog. And one of those four is a baby, which of course costs about eleven million times more than a regular person.

That would be pretty cool, I think, if I could somehow make a living from blogging. I'd have to break my own rule about advertising, but the ads on her site are pretty unobtrusive. I think I could live with something like that.

Of course, Heather is a much better writer than I am, but maybe I could get better with practice. And I'd have to get over this whole self-censorship nonsense that I keep running up against, but it's not like I've been perfect in that regard anyway.

It's giving me something to think about, that's for sure. Something else, that is.

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.

Today, I've got stuff I'm supposed to do. I keep putting it off and I don't want to do it any more.

I need to buy a damn refrigerator. I need to buy shoes - some for work and some for walking.

And, since I'll have a refrigerator, I need to go to the grocery store.

I never said this would be an exciting entry.

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.

LaptopGirl pointed out that today is the first anniversary of the day that my friend WomanRepellant died. I don't feel like writing anything new about that, so I'll just post links to the entries I wrote a year ago.

This first one, I wrote the day before he died, and this one, I wrote immediately afterwards.

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.