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.

at work

i need to start writing more. maybe i can use some of this dead time at work.

cassandra says write a little everyday. i know she is right. get comfortable with expression again. find ways to say what i need to. its free anyway. kinda like jerking off.

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I spent so long holding on to you -
If I thought about it at all, I thought I was protecting you
from something

When I let go
It seemed you were swallowed up into the darkness
falling into an abyss

But we two were worlds apart
always

now we are falling alone
as always.

Crucible

I feel certain that I am entering a decisive time in my life. After 9 1/2 years on the job, I have a feeling like the big pay off might be right around the corner. I know that I cannot continue on as I have. I cannot have this be all that I have ever done with my life. I cannot be that much of a failure. I just can't.

Jeni says we can be together again if I leave the state. She thinks its impossible for me to be truly happy here. I think that she has a point (although, I was certainly quite happy when she was here with me). I know that I will never really be happy here. This place sucks the life out of me.

"The more I stay in here, the more I disappear" - nin "The Line Begins to Blur"

There is just no ME left. Not in the Buddhist sense either. I have no peaks or valleys here. I have no highs. No thrills. I'm just killing time and wounding eternity. I have too small an amount of either.

If I do not find the break I am looking for in the next few months, I am just going to quit and leave. I can't spend my whole damn life running hourly reports and doing QA. There has to be something better for me. Every person I know has told me more times than I can remember that I am special and talented and can do this and that and the other. I am not sure I ever really believed it. But on the other hand, should I really believe that everyone is completely wrong about me? How likely is that? Regardless, I have to try.

misunderstandings & explanations

i deleted the last two things i had posted here. the idea of a blog is that you talk about whatever you want to talk about. there is a progression of thought. a reader might then be able to follow how your thoughts develop by reading them.

problem: what happens when a LOT of people completely mistake what you have said as meaning something else? i mean, what if you were meaning to write about the Holocaust and somehow left people with the idea that you idolize Hitler? possibly an extreme or silly analogy, but my point, i think, is made; you'd have to apologize for it and you'd probably want to remove the offending passages.

so i did. and i am more sorry for any hurt that that misunderstanding caused than i can say.

explanations -

the first post in question seemed to suggest that i was pining for my ex and was miserable with my then current girlfriend. this was not the intent. i wanted to write about how frustrated i have been living a life without creativity, or purpose, apart from my job. i felt i could do better than being stuck in my job, without any chance to do something better with my life.

involved in these feelings of malaise was the albatross i bore for causing the ex the pain that i did. so severe was my regret and remorse that i felt at times as though it was sucking the joy out of my life. the guilt over the transgressions created doubt in my heart about whether or not i had what it took to be what my new love needed. an oddly self-fulfilled prophecy.

i said that i "should still be with my ex". what i meant by this was that the things that broke me and the ex up were caused by me. had i been decent to her, i'd still be with her. as luck would have it, i am not. i did not mean (nor did i even say) that i desired to be with her still.

chance subsequently led to me finding myself with someone who i felt far more compatible with than anyone else i've ever met, including the aforementioned ex. it was, nonetheless, because of my transgressions against the ex that i was in that position. how can i feel like i deserve the new and better relationship when i have it because i was an asshole to a good person? maybe this only makes sense to me. i am really fucked up.

the second post basically just contained things said out of pain from the fallout of the whole situation. given the circumstances i felt it was best to retract my statements. words said in pain are often regretted in direct proportion to the pain itself.

Phil Collins Does Not Tell Lies.

She came to get her CDs today. She was supposed to come last night. I guess she didn't want to see me. So it was today.

She text me while I was in the middle of training someone. I struggled to maintain my composure. I was able to. All day actually.

When someone comes back to get their CDs, you know its over. Friends keep CDs. Sometimes for years. People who break up don't. Because its over.

I came home to find a random Phil Collins CD left on my bed. Obviously forgotten. I text her joking about it. She didn't answer.

She told me that we would stay friends. She said I would still see her. She said it would be like it was before there was a relationship to worry over. That isn't how its been. I haven't got a memo saying it changed, but I guess it has.

A person could make a very good case that we should never have been together at all. I suppose looking back on it now that I'd have to agree. It doesn't change how I feel. It doesn't change how much I care for her. It doesn't numb the pain from the shock of her absence.

Almost 5 years of my life was spent trying to make her smile. All those moments, together. All the promises of forever.

All the things that we knew that no one else did. The looks. The words. The memories. Gone. Worse than gone. Undone. Like they never happened at all. Fact made fiction.

I was seven when my grandfather died. I remember standing on the porch of my grandmother's house, not far from where I last saw him, and hearing my mother say "he's not totally gone you know. he lives on in your heart." Even then, I knew that he was dead, and that he didn't live on anywhere at all. But there was a truth in her words nonetheless. He died loving me.

No one ever replaced me to him. I was special to him and nothing will ever change that. That is what forever means - until you can't anymore.

Reannan is not dead. She is gone. We are never going to go on vacation back to our home at the beach. We are never going to hold hands again. We are never going to lock arms moments after getting out of the car and walking into some place. We are never going to wake up in bed one day and realize we are old. We are never going to her parent's house for stupid fucking Christmas again. I wonder if I will even see her again. Not at this rate. I don't matter to her anymore. I'm not special. I am nothing but a mistake that she made. How many people can say that about me?

My eyes are burning and I'm choking from my tears. Every moment of my life with her that I cannot forget, ever memory indelible in my mind is now twisted and torn. Every smile is pain.

I don't want to survive her. I don't know how to lose her. I don't know how to go on. I don't want to. I don't want to never be able to wake up next to her again. I don't want to never watch her sleep. I don't want to never make her laugh again. I don't want this life.

I want to be back in Virginia Beach, standing in the Punk/Ska section at Planet Music. I want her to come up from behind me

and wrap me up in her arms and say "MINE!". That was my favorite memory in the world. It's gone now.

I have never wanted out of life so badly, but I have never felt less likely to kill myself. I'd probably just fuck that up too. And I'm not sure there is even a point to truncating a life that is already well underway. Like leaving a movie you've already paid for.

Just like how I felt watching Transformers, I knows thing are only going to get worse for me. Almost certainly in ways I cannot even imagine. What difference does it make? No one is going to care about my suffering and my pain in 100 years,

almost no one does now. Then, it will be forgotten. Just like it never happened. I'll leave nothing more in my wake than a

lifetime of plastic containers. An ideal legacy for an artificial fraud.

I deserve it all.

What's Wrong With Me?

I started this blog because I very often have hilarious observations about people. Someone suggested that I should write them down. Seemed like a good idea.

Well, its gone a bit off track hasn't it? I guess I just don't notice as many great things to write about anymore. Too busy hating myself I guess.

Like a baby, stillborn,
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
'Bird on a Wire' - Leonard Cohen

I have found a place to live. It will be by far the worst place I will have ever lived in. Its a single room in a basement. Its dark, small, smells bad, has no bathtub, no windows, a very low ceiling and is generally decrepit. Its also super cheap. If I plan on staying alive, I have to live somewhere. I might as well not spend much money on it.

It's not all bad. Shelly knows the man who owns the place. This means that should be able to trust him to be decent to me. Its also not a bad area at all. And fairly close to where I am now.

It doesn't really matter. It's this or the grave. Either way I'm underground.

Alone

"Alone" - Edgar A. Poe
From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were---I have not seen
As others saw---I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov'd, I loved alone.
Then---in my childhood---in the dawn
Of a most stormy life---was drawn
From ev'ry depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that 'round me roll'd
In its autumn tint of gold---
From the lightning in the sky
As it pass'd me flying by---
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

I am alone. I took her flowers today. I couldn't even knock on the door. I just left them under her windshield wiper. I took a picture of them and sent it to her. She never replied.

I'm not trying to restore our relationship. I know its over. I just miss her. She had said that we would still be able to be friends. I was resistant to that at first. Faced with losing her totally from my life, I agreed that we should be friends. Now I haven't heard anything from her in quite a while. I don't know what she is thinking. I don't know if she is ok. I don't know anything. And I'm having a really hard time with that.

Things are probably not going to change. She is gone for good. She is enjoying Josh-free life for the first time in four and a half years. Having lived with myself for even longer and I can understand the feeling of relief she must be experiencing. I could use a break from me.

It's unlikely that I am going to find someone else to be with. Certainly not anytime soon. Its my fault. I know this. I could just talk to people. I don't. I'm not going to start. I'm just not. Its just not me. Never has been.

Its a difficult time to have been semi-estranged from people who matter to me. I am totally forgotten by D****. He has a whole life now that has nothing to do with me. I am barely a background figure in his world. A casual acquaintance at best. A forgotten brother.

A*** is the same really. She comes in to visit. Sees her real friends. Leaves. I don't find out that she has even been in until someone posts pics on facebook. She goes to events and shows. Never a word to me if I would like to come, even though I offer to include her in everything that I do. After having been ditched at the last show, I don't think I will ask again. Its humiliating to beg someone to be your friend, even when you are in awe of how amazing and awesome he or she is.

Amber and Shelly are my lighthouses in this dark time. Loyal and true. I want to believe that nothing could ever change that. I want to believe that there is something in this world that is permanent. I have doubts. I am afraid that even these stalwarts will eventually abandon me. I dread it. I fear it. I feel almost sure sometimes that its just about to happen.

And why not? I can barely tolerate myself. How can I expect anyone else to?

"Everything on this earth dies alone." - Grandma Death

If I'd Know Then What I Know Now

If I'd known 6 years ago that one day I'd be 31, single, sober, and alone in a corporate bookstore on my day off because I don't want to go home to my empty apartment, I'd have killed myself, and been sensible to have done so.

I just can't seem to do it. I think I just enjoy some things too much. My Hedonism wins out against my impulse toward self destruction. If I didn't exist I couldn't eat Indian food. I couldn't drink Scotch. I couldn't have sex (although its reasonable to wonder if I will ever do that again...).

I would like to create a time machine and go back to that night in late January 1977 when I was conceived. I could just bang on the door of the trailer I grew up in at the right moment, and just blink out of existence. Maybe destroy the universe or something while I'm at it.

Stupid fucking universe.

Blogging Sucks. So does everything else.

I guess I just can't get the hang of this. It's not for want of trying. I want to do it. I intend to do it. I just don't. I guess I am boring. A friend recently asked me what my hopes and dreams were. I didn't know what to tell him. I expect nothing from life but more and deeper disappointments.

I don't understand the basis for optimism. I have never been able to manage it. No matter what I do, I'll die. I'll leave almost everything that I ever wanted to do undone. I despair. Everything is as hollow as it seems.

...and yet, I endure. I don't even know why. Some part of me is resilient. Some part of me IS optimistic. Some part of me believes that if I hold on long enough that something really great is going to happen. Like as good as the Transformers movie was supposed to be. Or as good as a whole collaboration album from Bowie and Queen would have been. Something extraordinary. I just don't know what or when.

I guess its not reasonable to think that way. When I look around at the world, I see people losing lousy unfulfilled lives every day. Why should I be any different?

Staying Busy | Fake Problems vs Real Problems

When you deal with shit people tell you to stay busy. It's good, practical advice. The downside is that it prevents you from really stopping to analyze your situation.

I'm sitting here alone listening to a very excellent Wayne Hancock bootleg proving that I am not an alcoholic. I want a drink but I don't feel like going downstairs to get a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator to chase. I even have water up stairs with me. I just can't be bothered.

Today's day off was turned into a goddamn horsecock by extreme cold. Cold that caused Thursday's scheduled closer to call off for fear of the ice. Very legitimate fear for someone living up in Sissionville actually. Nonetheless, the end result to me is that I have to come in and work. Save the day. Again. It happens.

I'm a worried man with no immediate problems. My friends and loved ones have serious issues.

Reannan has set the world's record for fastest identity theft on her new bank account. Seriously, like two days after getting it. Its not like she had much in there to start with.

Amber's stupid fucking cunt of a sister is still causing her and her family unending grief. As though she ever does anything else.

Ally's mom has stupid fucking cancer. What else is there to say about that? Its damn cancer. There is not much of an upside.

Shelly and her husband's family have just suffered the loss of her father in law.

And me? I'm sitting here, fairly warm, listening to good music, too lazy to even make a drink. I'll get mine soon enough I suppose.

As things stand right now, I am thinking a lot about going back to school. I am struggling with the fact that almost everything that I am interested in apparently involves all kinds of math. I am not really sure that I can do that. So what then? Give up? Lower my expectations?

Perhaps. It may be the only realistic thing to do. Plenty of people live meaningless and unfulfilled lives. Plenty of people never reach their potential. Plus, going to collage is hardly an inoculant to that.

Trying this carries significant risks. I stand to lose a substantial amount of time and money on this regardless of success or failure. Time I have some of, money not so much. I absolutely must have a realistic chance of success with this. Otherwise, what is the point?

I am ready for the end of the world. I has to happen sometime.

Changes

So everythings changed for me. And I just can't talk about it. I don't know what to say. How to say it. I don't know what I can say.

This has got to be the world's worst blog entry.

Anyway, I intend to get back to regular topics. I need to do this more. I just didn't want to not mention the big changes for me at all. But I am still not talking about it. Not yet anyway.

And if this just confuses you. Well, I'm sorry. It happens.

Internet Suicide. So Fucking What.

Some dumbass kid gets all torn up about his shitty life and how some chick he is crazy about will never love him and decides to kill himself. Perhaps all the rest of you are not aware, but this happens ALL THE TIME! The hand-wringing and wailing about this kid make no sense to me at all.

It's also not news that some people watched someone kill themselves. That happens all the time too. In fact, some other guy recently hung himself on a webcam after being "goaded into it" by the people he was talking to on line. This kind of ghoulish voyeurism appears to be a part of our human nature. Not long after they started building sky scrapers, people started wanting to jump off of them. Pretty much from the start there have been people on the street below who egged them on. Guess what? Human beings suck. We always have. Take it back to the Romans who watched people get killed in the Coliseum if you like. Its just who we are.

So to the question of suicide itself. People were criticized for "goading him on". Well, why exactly shouldn't they? I believe that people should be free to do whatever they like with their lives. If you want to OD on prescription medication and kill yourself in front of an Internet audience, go right ahead. Fine by me. No one is making me watch.

Additionally, some of these fuckers just need to go ahead and do it. I'm tired of hearing about "a cry for help". You know what a cry for help sounds like? "HELP!" A self-obsessed ploy for attention sounds like "I'm going to kill myself, I swear!". There are too damn many people on the earth as it is. If you want to do your part to promote population control, have at it my friend. The truth is, that someone is going to miss you, but it won't be me. I really could not care less.

There is an entire industry in the US today that deals with involuntarily hospitalizing people who are claimed to be suicidal. This plays on our mistaken assumption about the sanctity life (see George Carlin's excellent discussion on this subject found on "Back in Town"). We think that life is SO SACRED that a person cannot even make the decision to end it, all at once, on his own. We let people kill themselves slowly with cigarettes and unhealthy lifestyles. Just not all at once.

For the most part, we don't restrict people's ability to create life either. Not even when an honest examination of the mating participants suggests nothing short of abject horror will be unleashed upon the world. No, we allow stupid, ignorant people to fill the earth with their progeny and then we refuse any effort to rectify the situation.

I can hear the usual chorus of voices suggesting that suicidal people are not in their right minds and are making a decision, influenced by depression or trouble in their lives, that they might regret. If they live that is. Which they may not. Others might point to a great list of people who killed themselves who "had so much going for them" or "had so much to offer".

Does having a lot going for you or being blessed with talents and abilities mean that you have less of an inherent right to determine your own destiny?

Some people like to talk about "those left behind". Won't mom and dad be devastated? Won't your girlfriend feel like a big failure? Who will play fetch with good old Fido? Well who knows? Its certainly no business of the guy who killed himself. He won't be here to worry about it. We don't force people to take certain jobs or stay in religions or marry this or that person for fear of letting their parents down do we? Why should we restrict a person's ability to give up on life?

I mean, sure its tragic, but so are lots of things. Whenever I see someone I love with a cigarette in their hands, I think about the tragic demise that very likely awaits them. I would like very much for them to stop. I might even try to influence, prod and bully them into quitting. But I honestly do not question their RIGHT to do it. If tragedy is what you want, I think its your right to have it; just don't expect me to cry for you.

Vacation all I ever wanted, vacation had to get away - Recap and Postscript

This should have been posted several days ago. There are no good excuses.


Saturday was the payoff from the whole damn thing. I spent all day with my sister. There was general mischief and minor pandemonium wrought in the greater Morgantown area.

It's hard to not make this sound like way more than it was. It was just us spending time together. But this is not something that we had really done since we were reunited. So maybe seven years or so. This used to be such an important part of my life. I didn't know how MUCH I actually missed it until I had it back. It was never weird or anything like that. It was just like it had never stopped at all.

Back in the real world the next week. Job. Home. Life. I really did feel better after having had the chance to be with Becky for a day. I'm grounded slightly; reminded that there is more to my life than misery and disappointment. There must be more to me than that.

I have basically ruined my certain parts of my life. Damaged much of what I hold dear to me beyond repair or recognition. Looking at the scorched earth that remains, I have to have something to hold on to. It's not enough to live everyday to fix what I've done. I don't even believe that I can. There must be some part of me that I can still believe in.


Some Buddhists believe that YOU are not simply everything that has ever happened to you and everything inside your brain. They think there is some part of everyone that just IS. Its not your soul, because that isn't real and even if it was your soul would still be you. It would still be dirty and fucked up from everything that has happened to you and everything you have done. Having a soul is worse than not having one because it means that I was always like this. That there was never even a chance that I COULD have been any other way, any other person. It would mean that I was destined to be this failed project.

I've been thinking of a Tom Waits song that I first heard sung by Johnny Cash (Down there by the Train - American Recordings).


If you've lost all your hope, if you've lost all your faith,
I know you can be cared for and I know you can be safe.
And all the shamefuls and all of the whores,
And even the soldier who pierced the side of the Lord,
Is down there by the train,
Down there by the train,
Down there by the train,
Down there by the train,
Down there where the train goes slow.


I'm sure that my sister has never stopped to ask herself if her brother was "good" or not. She never wonders if I'll forsake her for another sibling. We are the only siblings we have. Its obvious how special it is.

Being around her was a reminder that I have a place I can go to where I'm just me. Not the fuckup who did this or that thing and broke people's hearts. I'm just me. Just who I've always been. Even someone like me can be have a moment of grace.