I'm at Denny's again. It's 5:15 Thursday morning as I write this sentence. I'm once again wide awake. I still feel like writing - I even blew the cobwebs off my notebook and brought it along - but I still don't have a topic.

I suppose I'll just wing it.

It's much more crowded here now than it was yesterday morning. Not that crowded is at all a fair or accurate word to describe things here now.

Yesterday some hippie dude and I had the entire place to ourselves. Now, there are five of us in the smoking section, and another half-dozen or so in the main eating area. The same hippie dude is here again. Or maybe he's stillhere. I never saw him leave, and he's sitting in the same place he sat yesterday. He's got his laptop and his paperwork scattered all over his table. He's here for the long haul, I suspect.

Moving my gaze around the room clockwise, I next see two old guys, sitting at different tables but each possessed of the same blank stare.

And, directly in front of me at the next table, there's a girl. There's always a girl in my stories, it seems. This particular girl smiled at me when I came in, and I smiled back. Now she's reading on her laptop and I'm looking at the back of her head and trying to remember how pretty she is. Tall, thin, with short brown hair pulled into a ponytail of sorts. Definitely doable, I think, though of course I'll be doing no such thing.

---

Food was good as always. I didn't eat it all, though. Perhaps my appetite has gone the way of my sleepiness. Oh well.

While I ate what I ate and picked at what I didn't eat, one of the vacant-eyed old guys left and the other one got himself a female companion. His wife or girlfriend, I suspect. Good for him.

Also, two youngish guys arrived, and now they sit in the corner booth talking to each other quietly but not quietly enough to keep from disturbing the ambience of this place at this hour.

The hippie dude is still typing away, and the pretty girl is still reading away.

Me?

I'm scribbling away in my notebook, of course. What a silly question.

---

It's 6:00 now, and the sky is starting to lighten. Though I can't hear them, I'm sure that birds are out there tweeting and whistling. And, I imagine, alarm clocks are going off all over the place as normal people begin their days.

I'll be going home soon, though I don't know why. I guess to type this entry into my computer. Not to sleep, that's for sure. I'm having lunch with HatGirl in six hours, and I can't risk missing that. I've flaked on her far too often lately.

I don't know why I go home at all anymore except to take care of my cats.

I've found that, for the last several weeks, that damn place nearly suffocates me with its emptiness. So I leave, all the time. I go to wherever there are people. Not to engage in any conversations, but instead to leverage the pressure of societal expectations as a crutch, to keep myself from falling over, or as a tight wrap, to keep myself from falling apart.

These people who I don't know and don't really care to know, they're some of my best friends lately. I should put them on my Christmas card list, thought of course I have no such list.

---

Well, DoableGirl has packed up her stuff and gone off to wherever girls like her go at times like this.

I suppose that's as good a cue for me to leave as I'm going to get.

I decided sometime this afternoon that I needed to write something relevant. Something to, perhaps, entice the last stragglers into sticking around this blog a little longer. One such entry follows. Don't read it if you don't like relevant things. This means you, by the way.

It should have been me.

I've said and wrote and felt those words so many times over the last several months, and it's pretty much the one thought that's remained consistent throughout all of this bullshit that I've used instead of a life.

It should have been me. Never before and, I hope with all of my heart, never again, will I ever be so certain about something. Certainty is fine and good, by the way, until it blows up in your face and splatters god-knows-what (certainty guts?) all over you.

I want to know where I messed up. I want to know what I did wrong. I want - no, scratch that - I need to know what was wrong with me.

There. That's relevant.

But wait!

There's more.

I see four options, if I squint my eyes just so and tilt my head at just the right angle. Four.

There should be one. That's all I've ever had, after all, since that unknown evening in the Fall of 2003.

Anyway, nothing, less, same, more.

Those are the options.

We've tried nothing. I've lived with nothing for almost two months now. It's damn near killed me. It may still kill me, if I'm lucky. Better that than to die alone and unloved in my fucking sleep in forty fucking years. A broken heart is a pretty noble way to die, I think.

More, well that is the only option that my heart has ever let me consider. Unfortunately, it's not up to me, or the choice would have been made a long time ago.

Same simply cannot happen. It was an untenable situation, and we witnessed the proof, as everything that we had toppled and shattered and scattered at our feet because of our stupid feelings and our stupid prides and our stupid fears, despite our stupid blindness and our stupid lack of acceptance and our stupid stubbornness

So now we're stuck with less. Exactly how much less isn't up to me, and I'm glad that it's not. Because I'm not up to the task of deciding. I'm still, after all these minutes and hours and days and weeks and months since everything fell apart, I'm still not capable of separating the fantasy of what I feel from the reality of what I see.

And I really don't think that I'll ever be capable. Nor do I want the job.

Cool. A relevant entry with not just one, but two relevant subjects. That ought to keep people around for a while longer.

Now I have a decision to make.

I bought cold Barley Island Barfly, introduced to me by LaptopGirl and very good even though it is an IPA. I also bought warm Left Hand Smoke Jumper, a yummy smoked porter that is actually what I went into the store to buy in the first place.

So, I could drink some Barfly right now, even though it's not really what I wanted, and even though it might make me think sad thoughts. At least it's cold and ready to drink.

Or, I could wait another hour or so for the Smoke Jumper to get cold enough.

This is a tough decision. I think I need a drink while I try to decide.

How do I leave without running away, scurrying to the relative safety of the unknown? It could be the greatest opportunity ever, but could I take advantage of it for its own sake? I want to stay, but how can I stand my ground when that ground has dissolved beneath my feet? How can I leave with any dignity at all?

How do I stay without clinging, with desperation and inevitable futility, to false hope? Do family and friends mean anything at all? Does my house mean anything at all? I want to leave, but how could I possibly leave my own life? How can I stay for myself, and for nobody else?

How do I change my life, and my habits, and my haunts, without hiding and cowering?

How do I show strength without being cold, without invalidating everything that I've said, and done, and felt?

How do I show emotion without being spineless and selfish, without shaking every time I hear a voice or, God forbid, see a face?

Everything I do is seen through these damn colored glasses. The ones that I've worn willingly for a large chunk of my life. It's no wonder that people are watching me, listening to me, reading my words.

She's reading my words.

How do I move on without rebounding?

I'm stuffed now. The food was fantastic. I should go to Denny's more often.

I told RingGirl that I'm in the middle of a very tough breakup. Funny how words can be both a bald-faced lie and the utter truth at the same time.

Oh, yeah - the ring is a prop, to scare away undesirables.

Trying not to think about the past, or at least not the recent past. It's just too damn depressing.

Also not thinking about the future, because for all I know there isn't going to be one. It's all amorphous and shit.

And the present?

Fuck the present.

So where does that leave me?

Nowhere. Or Nowhen. Whatever. Random firings of neurons in my brain that sometimes luck-out and form coherent thoughts.

Ahem...

It really bothers me that I censored myself so much these last several months. I mean, I didn't even write about New Year's Eve, for fuck's sake. That was a wonderful night. I still can't write about it, though. Except that it was wonderful.

And...

So many other times that I felt such incredible joy, and I still kept quiet. I hope that my silence was appreciated, because I didn't stay silent for myself. I wanted to not only write about my joy, I wanted to shout it from the rooftops.

And...

Clearly, I waited too long to say those words. But really, was there a better time? An opportunity that I'd missed, a hint that I'd failed to see? Perhaps, but hindsight is 20/20, and foresight is maybe about 20/200 at best.

And...

I thought things were progressing naturally. Not in a weird way at all. I was wrong about that, and eventually I felt desperate and forced to say those words that I'd kept hidden for years. And I was too late. Or maybe still too soon. I haven't figured that out yet.

And...

Completely changing the subject, but what happened is that we ended up scaring the shit out of each other. The first time was back in 2005 when we first met. The second time was much more recent. We still scare the shit out of each other on a regular basis. But it's a good kind of scary, I think.

Oh, and also...

Changing the subject again. I don't know what's going on. I like to think that I know myself well enough to recognize those old danger signs, but it's very possible that I'm just lying to myself all over again. If so, then at least I think she's lying to herself as well, and that's why we make such a good team.

I managed to get eight hours of sleep. I don't think that I care that they were all during the daytime.

I'd probably have slept longer except my cat Buddy jumped onto the bed and began loudly singing his sad song about starving to death. I got up and dumped some cat food into the bowl - I don't know why they can't do that themselves - and so now I'm awake and up. And the cats are sated and asleep.

I'm thinking fairly clearly right now. It's almost like the human brain needs sleep to help it function properly. Someone should study this - I may be onto something.

Anyway, about that other thing. I'm disappointed, of course. But I got exactly the reaction that I was expecting, so at least shock is off the menu for today. And that's enough about that, I think.

I was going to write a blog entry tonight, I really was. But the damn thing morphed into an email. A personal email.

So I wrote and I wrote and I wrote the email, and then I sent it off. To be read, I suppose. To be believed, I hope. To be understood, well I can't say I'm very confident about that.

But still, two out of three isn't bad.