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.