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.