thoughts that ruin lives

It's not unreasonable to be optimistic about this.

This time, it's going to be different.

It is not going to be like it was before.

She means it.

I mean it.

I've learned things. Important things.

I'm ready for this.

She has been waiting for me.

It's never ever been like this before.

This is the one.

This time it will last.

It's perfect. It feels perfect.

There is nothing that can ruin this.

I have thought of everything.

I am being smart about this.

I have thought everything out.

I am not rushing into things.

I am listening to my friends.

I am thinking clearly.

I have learned a lot from my mistakes.

I am ready to get started with my life now.

It's time for things to get good for me.

I deserve this.

I've waited my whole life to really be happy.

This is where it starts.

Everything is going to be ok now.

this is different

reading my old posts about reannan, im reminded of how much it hurt when things ended with her.  how devastated i was.  reading the words it sounds so much like how things feel now with jeni.  i dont know why exactly, but it is different.  it feels different now.  it felt different then.  its just not the same.

as bad as things were with reannan, this is so much worse.

i did feel more magnetically drawn to jeni.   i felt a romantic connection that i have never felt with anyone else before.  fireworks.  insanity.  shelly told me once that she thought it was because reannan didn't really understand me, but jeni did.  i rarely doubt much that shelly says, and i suspect she is right here.

i think that jeni thinks im just re-writing the past.  i think that she was jealous of reannan.  there was a terrible fight that we had around a misunderstanding of that very point.  i dont think that she she really understands how much i care.  even now, even after all that has happened, i dont think that she does.

and honestly, i dont suppose it matters if she does now or not.  she's gone.

one year ago today

One year ago today, I was sitting at work and got a message from my girlfriend telling me that she didn't want to by my girlfriend anymore.  I suppose it should not have been that big of a surprise to me.  To be honest, we'd had some trouble.  She wasn't living with me, wasn't in the same state as me even.  But we had very recently been on vacation together.  We were still talking about things in a long-term way.  I never once believed it was over, that it was almost over, or anything like that.  I suppose that means I was stupid.  I suppose it means that i should have not taken certain things for granted.  I'm not sure that it would have mattered.  I know that it doesn't now.

I have hardly moved from that moment.  I cannot seem to let go of her.  Even now.  A life has passed between us, and I still cling to her.  Her warmth, her smile, her laugh.  The promise of a future. 

She's had no obvious issues moving on.  She's married now.  She's having his baby.  She's a happy, happy person.  And I'm what she had to let go of in order to be happy.

I have an exquisitely clear memory of a particular moment.  We were in my car.  We were driving around a curve in the road in my city.  The day that it became our city.  The day that you moved to be with me forever.  It was sunny.  It was azure and light.  I asked her if she was here to stay.

"Yes."

She grabbed my hand as I steered the car around the sharp curve behind these government buildings that we were passing.  I looked into her face, I saw her perfect smile.  I believed her.  I believed her like I'd never believed anything in my life.  I believed that one word more than I'd ever believed in Jesus or the Resurection.  The gigantic truth of that word filled me like a mug of coffee in my hands on a cold day.  The sure comfort of her in my life erased everything bad that had ever happened to me. 

So warm.  So alive.  Like I never was on my own.  This was the moment I had been waiting on.  This was when my life started.  That was when everything started counting, starting meaning something.  Everything had fallen into place. 

Life happened. 

Things I said must have seemed to strange, so alien.  Things I did were stupid.  She didn't understand me quite as well as she needed to.  No, that isn't all there is to it.  It wasn't just her who didn't understand things.  I was oblivious.  I was utterly and totally oblivious and ignorant of things that were bothering her.  I would have done so much differently.  If only I'd known. 

I was depressed.  I've always been depressed.  I was happier than I've been, and yet I was still depressed.  People tell you they understand depression, they tell you they have been depressed.  They don't understand it.  They think they do, but they still think that your depression has something to do with them.  That it has something to do with what's going on with you.  It's not like that.  Hell, it's not even about whatever I think it's about if someone asks me.  It's just about me.  I was born this way; I can't be really happy.

She didn't even know how happy I was.  She didn't understand how good she was for me.  All she heard were the stupid depressed things that I say all the time.  And she took each and every one of them to heart.

She left a little after Christmas, after only being with me a few months. 

Before she was even home, we were talking a little bit again.  In a few weeks we wanted to see each other again.  She still loved me.  She came to visit me.  I went to see her.  We talked and talked.  We planned.  We named our children for the thousandth time.  Everything was fine.  Everything was going to be fine. 

And then it wasn't ok.

I'm sitting in the chair she sat in when I begged her not to go.  This chair is sitting in the room that we lived in.  The room we fought in the day she left.  The apartment that I brought her home to that first day, when she promised she'd never leave.  When I believed her, that it would be her and me, from that point forward. 

I'm still here.

i cant stop thinking of the way she said the word chorizo.
or her faux-shocked "What?!" face.
i cant stop thinking about how she and i would hold hands and alternate squeezing rhythms back and forth.
or how i told her once that i couldn't ever hold her closely enough.

my brain keeps remembering how she said she would be there for me forever.
and how i believed her.
eventually.
and then again. and again.

this never stops being my fault.
people say that things work out 50/50.
but they dont.
its my fault.

its like in Inception, when you watch the limbo dream world slowly fall to pieces.
my future. imagined.
believed. gone.

no amount of fucking can make this better.
time will heal me.
like a tree half cut down.
gnarled. flawed. rotting from the inside.

my heart rages.
quiet down you fuck,
its all fake inside anyway.

The Devil Inside

I was accused of being a tool of the Devil recently. The absurdity of it shocked me. I honestly cannot remember what it felt like to believe in the Devil. I know that I did at one time. It was very real to me. I do still remember what believing in God felt like, but not the Nemesis.

I want to understand this. I want to understand how this was ever real to me. I want to understand the faith impulse. I don't feel like I do completely. I don't quite understand how my brain was able to be warped so as to reject anything that did not agree with the faith.

writing every day has not happened. too many distractions. need to make more time for things that are important to me.