Thanks For The Memories

This should probably be some sort of obligatory New Years post.  But I don't really know what to say.  I 'reflected' yesterday, and that was quite enough for me.  But I'm not really sure what else to write about.  I just feel like throwing some words down.  Although, I will start with something relevant to the occasion at hand: I feel good.  Happy.  I hope that holds for the rest of the year.

I wonder how much you've changed now that you accept "never mind" as an answer.  Sometimes I'm thankful.  Other times I wonder if you're not quite yourself anymore.  Not the person who would relentlessly pursue an answer.  You've become less curious.  And I don't mean that as an insult at all.  It's just a fact.  And in all honesty, it makes me a little bit sad.  Only a bit, but it does.

Oh, and, for the record (okay, mostly just because I want to write about it), my favorite memory from that place was that one night on the hill, behind the pond.  It was dark and there were mosquitoes everywhere, and it was just us and them, and we hoped the blanket would keep the mosquitoes away but of course it didn't.  And the four of us just spent a few hours back there, under the stars, laughing and joking and occasionally sharing a kiss.  The next morning we were all covered in mosquito bites and nobody regretted a thing.  Definitely one of my best memories.  I'd have written about it earlier, but that was 2010 and so doesn't really belong in a reflection about 2011.

I'd say something about how I could relive that night over and over again, but I can't.  I wouldn't want to.  It was beautiful.  And I was so happy, probably the first time I was that happy that year, and it was late May, which is saying something.  It's one of those things, just like being in Chicago last December and living on the bed for three and a half days straight.  2010 had beautiful memories.  And I would never, ever, ever go back to relive them because I'd notice things I didn't then.  I'd see the things that weren't perfect, and it would ruin how I remember them.  Because right now, looking back, those two memories were absolutely perfect.

So thank you.  Thank you for having been there for the past two years (even if you didn't realize just how there you were for the first quarter of that).  Thank you for memories that I will never, ever forget.  Thank you for the stories we've told, the mischief we've pulled off, the terrors we've pulled each other through.  No regrets.

Thank you for taking an interest in me two and a half years ago when I know I wasn't even half worthy of your attention.  Thank you for taking that first walk with me two and a quarter years ago.  Thank you for letting me help you two years ago.  Thank you for kissing me a year and a half ago.  Thank you for not letting me break you a year and a quarter ago.  Thank you for pulling me out of my own hell ten months ago.  Thank you for still being there in the morning eight months ago.  Thank you for giving me the best summer I've ever had.  Most of all, thank you for still being here, despite the brokenness, the twisted pieces, the odd and irrational scars.

I know people generally give thanks at a different time in the year.  But I know I haven't remembered to thank you nearly often enough.  So I'll do it now.  Because I don't think there's anything better than starting a New Year happily in love and grateful for every moment.

I know I'm difficult.  So thank you for still being there without trying to reshape the things that make me that way, but also define who I am.  Thank you so much.

But I still don't miss you yet

It bothers me that you never ask me questions anymore.  Okay, let me rephrase that.  It's really not a big deal.  But I miss when you did.  Because even though I know (or think I know) that you don't care about me any less, it feels like you do.

That's really all I wanted to say.  This has been a passive aggressive post.

Show your wounds, I'm bored with mine

Okay, so I guess this means I should do a reflection on 2011, since tomorrow it'll be over (well, the boundary between tomorrow and the day after marks the break, but it's all the same as far as I'm concerned).  I really wan't keen on writing a reflection this year.  Part of it is that my emotional state has been...confusing...at best, and downright terrible at worst.  And part of it is that while the year as a whole was, I guess, pretty good, pieces of it were downright nightmares.  This year has definitely had some of the worst moments in my life.  Probably not the best, but certainly plenty that come close.

So let's begin at the beginning.  I was excited.  I was also nervous.  Especially at 2 am after the big moment had passed.  I wonder if anyone but me realizes why.  And to be fair, it was a pretty pathetic reason.  But that's how it was.  They say that the way you see the new year in is how you'll spend it.  This year was all over the place too much for me to tell...then again, I was up and down that night myself.

It started off on a good note.  Then fell.  Rapidly.  I don't even want to talk about it.  Needless to say, February downright sucked.  That's all I'll say there.  It improved a bit, and mostly hovered there until June.  The one major exception to that was April.  More specifically, the second half of April.  That?  That definitely goes on the list of worst moments.  Again, I'm not going to dwell.  I'm pretty sure I could handle it, but that doesn't mean it would be good for me.  I've written enough on the subject that it doesn't need a recap here (as with all things, ask for detail if you really want, I'll probably give it).

Then it got really good.  Starting in June, going all the way until pretty damn recently, I was happy.  Really happy.  I don't remember the last time I was happy for such an extended period of time.  Everything was going well, I knew where my life was going, what was there to not be happy about?  Nothing was particularly eventful about it, but it was good.  It was calm and pleasant and good.  I got a great job that I enjoy.  Really, life is good.  Even now.

And these past few weeks, my emotions have been a wreck.  I think it's the fact that I finally had a chance to sit still and think.  It's been a while since that's happened, and I guess I've just been needing a relaxing opportunity to catch up.  So when I first got that chance, it all rushed over me.  And I think (hope), that I'm starting to feel better.  I had half a break-down tonight, I guess.  But once that passed, I started to feel better.  So I'm hoping that lasts.

I guess I lost track of the reflection portion of this post.  I'm sorry, this is easily going to be one of the most disoriented posts I ever write.  And I'm not going to go back and edit it because this is just too hard for me to formulate cleanly, too difficult to write well.  So I'll put down the thoughts, and apologize for the shitty execution.

There is a reason for the title, and I'll explain it, since I put some thought into it.  This is the first time in a while that my life has been very, very stable over the course of a few months.  Nothing dramatic has gone on.  The worst stress came from work-related time-crunches.  My personal life?  It's been calm.  Too calm for comfort.  There is no drama in my life anymore.  And the same is the case with most of my friends.

So I'm feeling a little bit tired of being overworked professionally and not having anything to deal with personally.  I want something to happen.  Something exciting and dramatic.  But I know that I'm in far too good a place in my life to do anything dramatic to mess it up.  I want to see things happen in the lives of those around me, because I'd be glad to help.  I'm not used to stability, and this first taste of it...it feels a bit bland.

I've stitched up most of the wounds that have plagued me for the past couple of years.  Clearly, there are still things that come out (in case the past few days haven't been enough of an indication).  But on the whole, I really have gotten better.  It's hard for me to see sometimes.  Especially lately.  But when I sit back like this, I can see that things have gotten better.  So now that my wounds are sealed,  I want to see some more.

Just because I don't have them anymore doesn't mean I don't still have a fascination of sorts.  I like these things.  I like thinking about them, talking about them, and helping with them.  I don't really know why, but I like it.  What I started to do this year and would like to continue doing is moving past my own issues.  I want to help people with theirs, since mine...don't really exist anymore.  Not in the same way anyway.

I'll wrap this up.  On the whole, I think I've come out of 2011 better than I walked in, which is certainly a good thing.  I'm hoping 2012 will continue the trend (hopefully with fewer heartbreaking moments).  Oh, and one more thing.  This year, for the first time probably ever, I made a New Year's resolution of sorts.  I did it casually and wasn't sure if I would even keep it.  But I did.  And I have to say, I'm rather proud.  Even if it was made half-heartedly and only ever considered about the same.

All I've got's what you didn't take

I think that people are made up of all of these little pieces.  Likes art.  Spends an hour getting ready in the morning.  Listens to Rise Against.  Always exactly 5 minutes late.  Adores the smell of cinnamon.  Needs company to work.  Can't sleep without a light.  All of these little things.  Behaviors, traits, quirks.

And I think each time we meet someone who becomes a significant part of our lives, we exchange these pieces.  Sometimes we trade them.  Or we share them.  Or we develop new ones together.  So two friends who were completely different when they met often come out in the end with many similarities.  And the longer you stay connected to someone, whether you see them every day or talk to them every night or spend every waking moment thinking about when you'll see them next, you start to have so many pieces in common that it's sometimes hard to tell who's who and where each piece came from.

All of this is logical.  It makes sense.  And it seems to happen pretty consistently.  What gets interesting is what happens when two people drift apart.  Whether they just don't see each other regularly anymore or if they had a falling out.  The pieces don't always stay the way they were.  When two people were so close as to match so extensively in their collections of pieces and they move on to lead separate lives, some pieces are held onto greedily, others are discarded, and some just fall away.

Some people hoard them.  Because they want to hold on to the person they left or they just like the person they themselves became.  Others find the habits, the tastes, and all of the small things slowly just fading, falling away.  Suddenly there is nothing maintaining that particular piece, so it simply disappears.  And some people drop the pieces immediately, they cast them away.  They can't stand to eat what was just their favorite food or listen to what was their favorite song.  They find themselves unable to say certain words or go to particular places.  The piece is hastily discarded, buried, thrown aside.  It causes too much pain, because it is too much associated with the person it was shared with, and so it is ignored.

Sometimes it happens that a person lets go of so many pieces that there's nothing left.  Then they have to rebuild everything.  Their habits.  Their tastes in food, music, activities.  Their quirks and overused sayings.  Everyone has them, some people just rebuild them each time.  They start back at the beginning and assemble themselves from the foundation up.  They start with what they can't change and start adding things, oftentimes as different as possible from what they had before.

All this because if, by chance, they happened to pick up one of those pieces again, it would all come rushing back.  All of the memories.  Everything good and everything bad.  Everything they never wanted to remember and always wanted to forget.  Every piece is reminiscent of a person, each person tied to a part of their life that was set aside and moved past.  Picking up a piece is asking to get cut again.

So each time, they drop everything.  And start all over again.  From the very beginning.

When it rains it pours like summer storms

December 21st is sometimes the most important day in my life.  No, nothing happened on that day.  Nobody was born, nobody died, or rather not anybody close to me, anyway.  It's not a holiday.  It's not a memoir.  It's just a day that is something I look forward to each winter almost more than I look forward to the coming of the new year.

December 21st is the winter solstice.  It's the shortest day of the year.  Okay, so apparently this year it was the 22nd.  Whatever.  The fact remains though, that I look forward to that day because it really is the turning point of the year in a way.  Let me give a bit of background on that.

The first brush I had with depression was when I was probably eleven or twelve.  And it was, as far as I can tell, what was referred to back then as winter depression.  Now it's apparently called some bullshit like Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).  Whoever came up with that acronym clearly thought they were being funny.  Not that they necessarily were.

So the depression has come and gone since then.  Sometimes it was restricted to winter.  One winter I was fine, but spent the next summer in doom and gloom.  It wasn't always consistent, but as a general rule, the winters have always been worse.  It's cold, it's windy, and there's not as much daylight, not to mention sun.  So the solstice has always been significant because it meant I made it.  It meant that from here on out, the days would get longer, and with them, everything would get better.

And it usually does.  It takes getting through the bitterness of February and March, but eventually it warms up, eventually I feel better.  I'm glad that the solstice has passed.  It means I've made it one more year.  And I'm glad.  Even though it's not much on the whole, it's still very significant to me.

We Were All So Fucked Up

I think my whole concept of not swearing here has gone to hell.  Then again, everything seems to have gone to hell, because I've been sitting here reading things for the past three hours and I can't fucking stop giggling because everything is just so. fucked. up.  I don't even know what more to say on that topic.

July 24, 2010, for reference.  That whole summer, really.  That's one of those things I'm glad is over and done with.  Maybe this is one of those realizations that just comes with age or distance or what have you, but god damn, we were all so ridiculous.  And when I say we, I mean the three of us, which is a very awkward grouping in just about any respect, but that summer was a shit-storm as far as all of our sanity goes.

I don't know that there was any sanity to speak of, or at least it doesn't look that way now.  And to be perfectly honest, I'm surprised any of us came out of it as unscathed as we did.  Okay, so maybe unscathed isn't entirely accurate.   But the scars are really minimal, considering everything that transpired.  There are many ways in which just about everything could have gone better.  I, at least, learned a lot from that.  Mostly about how much of a passive-aggressive and terrible person I can be.  And how much of a good idea it is to avoid that.

I don't even know what more to say.  I don't want to post this, because it's so awkward in so many ways, to me anyway.  But I needed to put that down, especially the title (see, I'm telling you, it's legitimately gotten easier for me to pick those now).  So I'll post it, and worry about it for a week tops, and then move on with my life.  Apologies for...just about anything that can be taken offense to in this post (I'd imagine there's enough).

Miserable Ecstasy

This is a bad place to be three days before the start of the new year.  I can't seem to keep myself together long enough to maintain basic functionality.  Everything that ever hurt has started hurting more.  And it looked like I was doing so well...

I just can't get past this.  And I shouldn't have asked you to wake me last night.  But that's my own mistake.  I should've known it was a bad idea.  Because where I went to bed in a reasonable mood, going to bed after you did left me in a mood comparable to the one I was in for most of the day yesterday.  And that seems to have just picked up and continued throughout today.

So I have three days.  Three days to pull myself together.  And I'm just sitting here, incapable of doing anything, trying to figure out what the hell to do with myself, because I can't get work done and I would really rather not spend the day moping on the couch.  This whole week just isn't shaping up terribly well.  I was so excited to talk to you again, but it's just not the same.  And it's me.  It's all me.  All of the problems are in my head, and I know that.  I just wish I knew how to get them out.

I'm drowning myself in music and this is possibly the second time in my life that I've wished I had a good set of speakers.  It's all your fault, you know, you got me hooked on the music, and now you're getting me addicted to the sound.  I just need to feel something right now, and the ebb and flow of the sound is almost it.  Almost.  Which makes me wonder if maybe, maybe if it was louder, if I could really, literally, feel it, then maybe it would make this go away, make me better.

I've never figured out how to fix my problems.  I always just knew that waiting them out would do it eventually.  So that's how it's always worked.  Because I've always tried hard to be on top of everything, and that usually means I can afford to spend a day just waiting for everything that hurts to pass.  I spent countless Wednesdays sitting on a bed that wasn't mine, staring down at the floor.  Sometimes I took long showers and wondered if anyone would miss me when I'm gone.

I generally came to the conclusion that no, nobody would.  I'm nothing special.  And much as my overgrown ego objects to this, I understand it.  I know that in the long run, I'm not worth anything.  I will never change the world.  I will not be remembered.  I am small.  And I am insignificant.  And I'm becoming more and more okay with that.  I'm pretty sure that I've changed people's lives.  I've also been changed by them.  And that's more than enough for me.

So maybe if I keep writing, if my fingers never stop dancing over the keys (even though I know the motion is really nowhere near as elegant), maybe I'll be okay.  Maybe this will pass sooner.  Maybe I'll be able to get up and do something, anything, with myself today.

As of right now, I still need a title for this post.  That hardly ever happens anymore.  It used to be a big problem when I started blogging.  But I've gotten good at being able to put a title down--be it a generalization or a phrase or lyrics--before I even start the post.  Right now, though, I'm back where I was then.  And maybe that's significant in more ways than one.

I'll get through this.  Eventually.  If I don't personally get through it, at the very least, I know that it will pass by itself.  I can wait.  I have time.  For now.  I've done the whole troubled thing before.  I think at one point I might have even been good at it.  I'm really not right now because I'm a bit out of practice.  But I'll manage.

I don't know if this will ever really go away.  I somehow doubt it.  It comes and goes.  And the first six months of any new situation always seem relatively free of it.  Which is precisely what I'm just getting through--those six months that seem worry-free.  I'll revert back into my shell.  Hopefully this time around I'll be a bit better at crawling out of it occasionally.  At least I have someone to help me work through it.  I hope.

Ubiquitinated

In molecular biology, ubiquitination is the process of a protein getting tagged with ubiquitin.  There is an enzymatic complex (at least I think it's a complex) that binds ubiquitin to this protein.  That marks the protein for destruction.  This post is ubiquitinated from the outset.  It is marked for deletion.  Which means it'll only be around for a certain period of time, after which it will be gone.

Clearly, I'm not capable of talking about it, or typing it in conversation, so it seems that I have to write it out, plan it out, just to get it out.  And before I say anything, I'm going to apologize.  Because I don't know how much of this I do in fact mean or will mean in a day or a week or a month.

We're going to break up.  That seems inevitable to me right now.  And it's not because I don't love you or want to be with you.  It's just that this relationship isn't the same anymore.  It's starting to feel stagnant.  So while it's comfortable and I love you and I love your company, I feel like I might bolt at the first chance I get.

The reason I fell in love with you (I think, anyway) is that you let me just be me.  A little fucked up, a good bit twisted, and never really understanding where I belong.  And I can't do that anymore.  I feel like I have to be perfect for you.  And I'm not.  It feels like I have to be a muse, an inspiration, present a solution to every problem.  In short, I feel used.  Except that I'm doing it to myself.  Because not once do I recall an actual demand from you, or even a request of that variety.

It just feels like this relationship has changed in ways I don't think I can live with right now.  Maybe in ten years I'd be happy with the sheer stability and wound-covering of it all, but ten years is a ways away.  And right now I need to be able to throw myself around in my personal life because that's not a luxury I'm allowing myself in my career, so to speak.  But I don't want to be a wreck because I get the impression it would upset you.  And that's not something I'm supposed to do.

So let me rephrase the initial message of all of this.  I don't want to break up.  And I don't want a break.  But I do want things to change.  I really, really, really want things to change.  While being happy is nice, I need my time to be unhappy, and I'd like to be able to share my emotions with you, be they good or bad.  I miss being able to just talk to you about anything.

Maybe this is why I've been so nostalgic lately, why I've been missing the way things were.  Because "back then" represents a point in time when I could literally share anything with you.  I don't know what I expect you to do, or even what I want you to do.  I just needed to put this down because it's been festering for about a month now.  And I think it's only fair that you know.

I'm sorry.

Patience has never been my strong suit.

I wanted to write this on the morning of the first.  At roughly 2 am (I wish I knew the time, but I think you have chat logs that went missing, because no matter how hard I try, I can't find them anywhere).  And I want to start it by saying something about how this happened exactly two years ago, and how everything was so damn different then, because it would have been two years.  Exactly.  And that would have been such a nice and even and perfect span of time to have elapsed.  But it's not the morning of the first.  Or even the thirty-first.  It's the evening of the twenty-sixth, but I don't really want to wait.  I just want to sit up with you all night and write like I haven't written in a while.

I'm reading them again.  All of the chat logs.  Not mine.  Yours.  I'm sure someone's going to kill me one day when they figure out I've read all of those (yes, every last one, but you already knew that).  Two years ago.  It's certainly been a while.  We've both changed in that time.  A lot.  We've grown up.  Arguably, we've gotten better, and while I'm sure we have in many ways, there are still parts of me that are no less rotten than when you first saw them.

My world turned upside down that day.  No less than yours, if you could believe it. And sure, you didn't know it then, but that week that you were busy breaking yourself?  You shattered me, time and time again.  And I couldn't blame you.  It's funny to me now how oblivious you were (please take no offense to that, but it's so true).  I loved you then in a way that was so self-sacrificing, so lonely and desperate and helpless, that it astounds me even now.  Maybe that's why I still relive it sometimes.  Through the chat logs, if nothing more.

I know that things are better now for both of us than they were then.  And I know we've come a long way, but is it so wrong of me to miss that kind of love?  It's grown into a more soothing, comforting creature, something I can rely on and look forward to with a smile.  But then it was turbulent and erratic, I hated every minute that I spent loving you because I couldn't have you.  I thought I hated you at times, because you broke my heart time and time again and didn't even know.

Those six months of utter turmoil were the most memorable I've had thus far in my life.  Nothing has made me feel as strongly.  I don't know that anything can.  And I just want you to understand in light of this that when I say I miss the way things were, I don't, but rather I miss how pure every emotion was then.  I miss that we never lied to protect each other (with the exception of that one big lie I literally lived).

When you told me, at two in the morning on the first of the New Year, I couldn't breathe.  It was terrifying and exhilarating.  I'd imagined it countless times, trying to find the key to you.  Trying to figure out why it wasn't me you'd kissed, even though you could have just a month before that...even though you almost did.  And all of these thoughts, about love and hope and hopelessness and loss raced through my head in the seconds after you told me.

I don't think I ever really put into words how hearing that made me feel.  First off was the excitement, the racing pulse, the subtle smile.  I was hopeful because it meant the end of what had kept you chained (apologies for the cruel metaphor).  And then the panic set in, because it wasn't me.  There was no thought of me in there.  Everything was about someone else, and that crushed me.  First you said you'd wait, and see, and gave me hope again, and then you shattered it.  That week was no less of a roller coaster for me than it was for you.

I knew when you were breaking.  But you never knew that you had already broken me then.  To me, you had come out from behind a wooden fence, only to relocate immediately into a fully reinforced fort.  And even as you told me more, you became more distant.  It was an awfully strange beginning to a year.  One that held promise yet was wrought with forbidden temptation.  That's how 2010 started for me.  It was a more desolate beginning than you probably realized.  Certainly more of a morbid one than you'd have guessed at the time.

Yet somehow it has all led me here.  To reread old stories written as they were.  I love chat logs for the honesty.  They tell things in a way that no blog post or story or even personal diary entry can convey because they immortalize conversations. They put the most transient of thoughts into stone and preserve the way we saw things, which we would not otherwise be able to recapture.  I like looking back at who we all once were.  Even if I can't perceive who I am at this moment, and don't quite know how all of the people turned out.

I often wonder where exactly this strange thing called life will take us next.  I am, as usual, apprehensive, but a bit excited, nonetheless.  I really do hope it goes as well as it has thus far, if not better.

A bit of respect would be nice sometimes

WARNING: Rant forthcoming.  Skip this post now if you don't want to read a lot of bitching on my part.


So I realize that most of the people I've met within the past year don't know that my family doesn't celebrate Christmas.  It may have something to do with not being religious.  Because Christmas is a Christian holiday (pardon the excessive emphasis, I'm a little bit pissed).  Okay, so I realize that many non-religious individuals celebrate Christmas.  And I guess that's fine, unless you're a stuck-up brat who can't appreciate anything and just bitches about not getting x or y or z or whatever other expensive things you've been begging for.

Excuse me.  That there is another rant trying to force its way into my current rant.  But this is not about that (although it's certainly something I object to strongly).  I'm just going to go ahead and get back on topic.

So what I grew up with, as a relic of my culture and the agnosticism of my parents, is celebrating the coming of the New Year with gifts.  That way everyone still gets gifts over the winter holiday season (whatever you'd like to call it), and no unnecessary religious association is forced upon the gift-exchanging holiday.  I realize that many people don't know this, but you, I know you know about it, because I've known you for years and we've had this conversation before.

Which is really the only reason I'm so pissed off about it.  Because if a coworker was to give me a trinket and say "Merry Christmas!" I'd respond in kind, and not correct his/her holiday greeting, even though I don't consider it as really applying to me.  But when this conversation transpires:


[2:04:21 PM] you: Did you get anything fabulous?
[2:04:24 PM] me: not yet
[2:04:28 PM] you: yet?

That bothers me.  Because okay, we haven't seen each other in a while.  And okay, we don't exactly discuss our preferences for religious holidays or lack thereof.  And okay, most people get gifts for Christmas.  But still, I expect at least a little bit more from someone I consider a decently close friend.

Let me clarify: I don't mind people asking me what I got for Christmas on December 26th or whenever.  I'll just say something along the lines of "nothing yet" if they're decently close friends.  And for those who don't know, I'll explain to them that I don't celebrate Christmas.  But for you, it was a little bit different.  Because I know I've given you that explanation at least three four times now.  So if you ask if I got anything and I say "not yet," I'd appreciate it if you would dig this bit of information up from the back of your scattered mind and say "oh yeah, you don't celebrate Christmas...sorry I forgot."

I know that I'll always say it doesn't bother me when people get that wrong.  And generally, it doesn't.  It's when people who definitely know this and are friends of mine mess it up and are still confused after a reminder that it gets to me.  I take it as a sign of disrespect that you don't remember my winter holiday preferences after they have been made clear to you.  It bothers me just as much as when people don't remember my birthday because it's not listed on facebook (which is precisely why it's not listed anymore, in case anyone was wondering).

I've always prided myself on remembering information about people--name/nickname, birthday, unusual or extremely strong preferences, because I think that's significant.  That's what I want friends to remember about me because, well, if they can't keep a few simple facts straight, I feel like they don't care enough about me to really be a friend.  

Vicarious

Oh look!  My first post in a while where the title doesn't consist of lyrics!  Anyway, moving right along...

I'd rather write about this world than live in it and I'd rather play music all day and read and wander around in bookstores and watch humans but not be one of them.


I'm not sure who said that.  I just came across it on the internet a few minutes ago.  A large part of me agrees with it.  That's the way I feel in many circumstances, because people fascinate me and decisions of all sorts fascinate me and I want to know what it's like, to be this way or that, without living that particular life.  So yes, I live vicariously through other people's decisions and mistakes.  I like watching life unfold and details about people's lives be revealed.  It's always fascinated me.

On the other hand, though, this quote disgusts me.  It's like saying 'I just want to spend my life watching other people live theirs, and I want to do nothing useful with myself.'  And that bothers me.  I've never really believed in an afterlife or a heaven or hell or any such thing.  As a result, I've always seen life as an opportunity to take these 60, 70, 80, 90 years, however many are given to you, and do something with them.  I don't care if that means spending your adult life in your mother's basement crafting pots or if it means starting the world's biggest corporation.  I just think it's important to do something, to get something out of life.

I don't understand people who work so hard, always for the future, but in the end...they don't know what to do with themselves because they're old when they retire and can't do so many fun things, and maybe don't even know how to have fun because they've never done it.  I realize I work hard and often don't have time to enjoy myself, but it's something that comes and goes.  I know that I have and will continue to have many memories that I myself made, not just the ones people around me have lived through.

Maybe I'm wrong to be so critical.  Perhaps this is even a bit hypocritical of me, to voice my opinion like this.  But it bothers me when people take their lives for granted.

What have I to show except the promises I never kept?

It seems that people do still read this.  Which is strange for me to think about, since I've been feeling lonely quite often lately, but (undeniably) a pleasant surprise.  Someone told me I should write more often, which is certainly true.  I agree wholeheartedly.  So of course, upon getting home, one of the first things I'm doing since my guest has left is sitting down to write this.

I got to spend time with three of the best people in the world today.  I love these lovely individuals so much.  That's almost an understatement.  I miss them so much it's almost unbelievable and it's hard to imagine that I hadn't seen them in so many months.  But it was really great to spend that time with old friends (okay, so maybe they're not 'old friends' in that they themselves are not old and we haven't exactly been friends for decades or anything, but our lives no longer intersect on a regular basis, and so they are 'old friends' as far as I am concerned).

I was in the middle of writing this lovely post when I got interrupted...for an hour or so (at least I think it was that long).  Anyway, I adore spending time with these wonderful people.  And I'm really sad that I don't get to see them every day anymore, because I really wish I could.  It's nice to know that I can still sit down with them around a table and swap stories for hours at a time, even though a lot has changed.  It's going to be hard for me to find friends as close as these where I am right now.

I know I will eventually, but...I miss them.  I miss hanging out with people in the certain way I did in the very places we did.  It is all so full of memories, and I sometimes very much wish we could have time together more than the once a year that we are going to be lucky to get with all of our hectic schedules now (and in the future).

I'm rambling now, so I'll wrap it up.  Thank you so much, all of you, for being some of my best friends ever, and for being awesome people in general.  I hope you all have a lovely year and I can't wait to see you again!

Trust me, and take my hand...

...when the lights go out, you will understand.


I've never been good at trusting.  Scratch that, it's easily one of the biggest lies I've told in quite a while.  I used to be really good at it.  At meeting someone and opening up instantly.  Pathetic as it sounds, I think I liked to think of myself as a flower--suddenly blooming once someone took the time to talk to me.  That's a valid analogy to describe it, although the parallel to a flower couldn't be more inaccurate.

The things you find out about me when I open up are never pretty.  They're broken and twisted and crooked.  I'll talk about old relationships and rules I broke way back then like they're nothing.  That's not what you seen when you really get past the walls.  I don't think anybody has made their way in recently.  Not far enough to see the scars anyway.

I may have alluded to things unintentionally in my conversations with people--the issues I believe in most firmly are, predictably enough, the ones that are closest to me.  But the things you don't see until I really open up are the scars.  Especially the ones that aren't physical, the ones that I can trace the effects of on my soul.

Let me give you an analogy.  Has this ever happened to you?  You have a sore spot, maybe it's a bruise or a cut, or just something that hurts for some reason, or...even a better example, a sore, knotted muscle in your back.  And when you press down on it, or touch it in some weird way you wouldn't normally, you feel a shiver or a tingle or a pain going a great distance through your body, sometimes so far as to affect an entirely unrelated place.  It's an awfully weird feeling.

Even weirder, when it's not a physical thing.  But that's how all of my scars play out.  You say one thing and it reminds me of something I said three years ago, which bounces back and pulls at something in me in a way that makes me unable to place the hurt.  Especially because I know it's no longer relevant...but it still hurts.

Sometimes I wish I was brave enough to strike up a conversation with some of the people I've left behind.  Just to see how (or if) they've changed.  Just to find out if I was right or wrong for avoiding them or ignoring them, or getting myself as far away as I could (mostly the latter).  Maybe one day I will.  We'll see.

When you die when you live like we do

I wanted to start a post with something along the lines of "Getting up in the morning is the most difficult part.  Not waking up, that's easy, but actually pushing past the apathy to physically move."  In case you didn't notice, I didn't.  But it's been on my mind all day...after I got myself out of bed that is.  Which was, just so you know, at 9:18 am.  So not too shabby.

Transitions like these are strange.  They feel almost tarnished in some strange way, because it's all temporary.  And sometimes I wonder if we wouldn't be much better off without all of these odd changes in our lives.  But then I realize that I'm sitting on a couch, more or less late at night, not stressed about the following day, as I write this.  So I come to the conclusion that breaks are necessary.  Even if they take a little bit of getting used to.

The things you carry with you from your past propel you into the future.  They don't have to, necessarily.  There's no inherent quality that makes them so.  You're always free to leave behind that portion of your identity and move forward without it.  But as anyone who's ever tried it knows, that's a very difficult thing to do.  And to a point the difficulty depends on the sort of change you're making.  On the whole though, leaving pieces of yourself behind is a very difficult process.

I've had a lot of trouble lately moving on and being happy in my current life, even though I have every reason to be.  Old thoughts and feelings haunt me, especially as my location reminds me of them.  I like to pretend I've changed a lot, but I'm terribly afraid that I haven't, that a moment more here will trigger things that I thought I was past.

That's the thing about scars.  They take a while to fade.  And some never really go away because they're too deep.  That's just the way things go.  Maybe it's not possible to escape certain things once you've been there.  Maybe they follow you, even after you tried to leave them behind.  That's quite possibly what I'm most afraid of now--the consequences that my past actions may have in my future, particularly the ones that are beyond my control.

I've always been a fan of free will, of the power to control your own destiny.  I like to think that there is nothing that can't be fixed or helped or cured.  And I'll readily admit that's not the case with medical situations--be they a tumor or a chemical imbalance leading to depression (which, unlike most forms of depression, is a legitimate medical condition).  But what I mean regarding free will is something like apathy or laziness or depression which are not caused by a legitimate chemical/hormonal/physical issue.

I know entirely too many people who have been prescribed medications who really need either

a) a swift kick in the ass, or
b) someone supportive enough to motivate them through it.

But then, why is it so hard for me to get past any of the things that have happened in the past three years?  There's no denying I'm motivated and disciplined and, at least by some measures, otherwise successful.  So why do I find myself still sucked into this apathy on mornings like this?  Why is it so difficult to push past the way things were and enjoy them as they are now?

How can I say all of these things about a swift kick in the ass when there are days when I can't motivate myself?  I certainly hope I'm right, and that all I need is a bit of motivation.  But as of right now, I'm still struggling to find it.

You tell me this will be the last night, feeling like this.

I want to write every day for the next three weeks.  I have the time to, I know that, and I feel like I could use the release after the amount of pressure I've been under.  So why is it so hard for me to pull words out now that I've sat down with a blank page before me and no one to talk to?

It used to be so easy for me to channel emotions.  Especially sad ones.  But now I'm sitting here with a dawning sense of loneliness and I don't know how to put it into words, which is probably more scary than the loneliness itself.  I've always been able to put something onto the page.  Very little of it was truly good, but I was good at using writing as therapy.  That's why that creative writing class was so good for me earlier this year--I had to write.

And most of the things I wrote were morbid or terrifying or heartbreaking, in my mind at least, although I know my execution was awfully flawed.  But that's what I needed to write, and taking a class about writing made me put it down on paper.  So now, when I'm busy and preoccupied and writing just isn't that high on my list of priorities anymore...I don't do it nearly as often.  And I'm afraid that I'm slipping away.  That I can't write anymore.

I'm falling away from the middle ground I seem to have found over the summer into two opposite directions.  On the one side is the success, and on the other is failure.  The first is occupational, the second is emotional.  The strange thoughts are back.  I say that as though they are a malignant tumor which prevents me from functioning, but no, they're really not.  They're nothing exceptional.

It's just that I can't talk about these things and I have a hard time writing about them, and I don't express them anymore, which means they have no outlet, so they brood.  And I'm bad with brooding thoughts.  If two years ago didn't give that one away, I don't know what possibly could.

So here I am, at this odd hour, trying to make sense of the life that makes none.  I almost wish someone would comment on a post so that I know that anybody reads this, but I doubt anybody would if I asked.  So I'm not going to ask.  I never wrote this for others to begin with, although I do censor it solidly enough.  The thoughts are all for me.  No sentence is crafted to please anyone's fancy but simply to throw my emotions out of my mind.

I heard about the concept of a meditation stone at one point many years back.  You pick a smooth stone and you hold it in your hands and pass it back and forth and will all of your worries and anxieties into the stone, so that they can't disrupt you anymore.  I considered trying it, but stones don't do it for me.  Writing did for a while.  Then other things replaced it.  I came back to writing shortly after that.  But now, I don't have a metaphorical stone.

I'm sitting here lost in a world of my own creation, making everything so melodramatic and emotional it almost sickens even me.  I'm not even going to pretend to understand.

Everything You Do, You Pay For

It's that incomprehensible sadness.  And maybe that's just because I'm typing on this laptop I haven't typed on in almost four months.  But it feels strange.  The keys are different.  Nothing has really changed, but everything feels so strange and different.  Reading people's writing that I haven't touched in a while.  Even going back through my own dark stashes.  It's strange.  And I miss it.

I'm sorry that it's all I can say.  But I miss it.  So I know, I should just shut up, and leave it here, and give up, and let it go.  But I can't.  I should just leave this here.  Just stop writing.  And maybe then it would be a touching and emotional post about some deep and bitter sadness that I'm pretending to understand.  But let's cut the crap.  I don't understand it.  And I'm being pathetic.  And writing about nothing.

Nobody reads this anymore.  And those who do have nothing to say.  I think that says something about the quality of the writing on here.  I've watched the trendline that indicates my readership plunging over the past six months.  And while I can pretend that I don't care, I actually do.  Because this blog meant something to me.  It actually meant a lot.  Even though it doesn't mean as much anymore, it still makes me sad that nobody has anything to say because that means that I'm out of interesting things and it means that nobody cares.

I know it's not true.  That doesn't change the feeling.  This is a bad post.  It's full of half-formed thoughts and poorly expressed emotions.  Worse than that, it's filled with more of that angst.  I guess I find it back eventually, no matter where I go.  I wish I wrote the way I did then, I wish I knew how to feel that deeply.  But wishing isn't going to do anything.  So I just want to go home now.  I miss it.  That's all.  No fanfare.  Just me.

I Fell in Love with Your Sin

We were so young then, so naive.  We thought we had everything figured out.  We believed in truth and beauty (and I don't mean the quarks).  I don't know why that photo triggered this feeling, but now I can't make it go away.  We never really talked, but when that photo was taken, there were some similarities between us and where we were in our lives.  And it was such a strange place to be, looking back on it.

Some explanation, some emotion, it's trying to dig its way out of me, and I don't know how to put it into words because I'm so wasted from a lack of sleep and general fatigue and a bad day thus far.  I don't at all miss the way things were then, but I miss how I felt.  Everything made so much more sense, even though we didn't realize anything.

And the strangest thing--we thought we knew what love was then.  I still don't know it now.  Looking back, how could we have been so happy?  How didn't they drive us to the points we both hit later anyway?  I wish I'd gotten to know this person better, if only because we were so similar until we became so absolutely and completely different.  And even then, I think there are more similarities than most would guess.

---

Nobody ever says things outright anymore.  Not on those topics, anyway.  Everything is that, with a particular emphasis.  It's like saying the words would start something again, even though we all realize that it wouldn't.  It's never brought up anymore.  Sometimes it's alluded to.  It's like the giant gorilla in the room.  Everyone knows it's there, but no one brings it up.

I miss when we would talk about things brazenly and rashly.  When the words carried their meaning and didn't just imply an unmentionable doom.  Because you know what?  I miss it.  There are days when I miss that feeling like no other, and I know that right now, it's lost to me.  It's not something I can unlock again.  And part of me really, really wants a reason to do it anyway.

I miss when we never lied to others, but only ever to ourselves.  The tears gave the words away.  The actions spoke of things it would have taken novels to express in words.  Everything was so perfectly obvious then, and we always knew. And now look at us.  Each word, every action, all of it is about avoiding getting hurt.  We're terrified of pushing the limits because we feel like we're finally comfortable with where we are.

Except I'm not.

I miss the lines.  The edges.  The suspense and exhilaration that you can find only when you know exactly what's going to happen next but can never admit to yourself.  When everything was so fragile and unguarded that no amount of caution could stop it from being damaged, so no caution was exercised.

Something will happen eventually to knock me away from this mood.  I don't know what and I don't know when, but it'll have its time.  In the meantime though, I'll be just fine, pretending I'm not.  If only because I like it better that way.  Brownie points if you caught the lyrics in this post.

Crafting the Impossible

Instability is like a fucking drug.

I wish I could continue on that vein, because it's the sort of thing that sounds real and raw and makes no sense but burns in me in a way that can only be explained as understanding.  But I don't think I'm really that passionate about it.  It's just the sort of thing that sounds nice, and sometimes, I just want to write until my blog reads like tide pools with rivulets and thundering waterfalls.  Water is a good analogy for how I want it to flow, because it can be calm and peaceful or forceful and choppy, but it still undeniably flows, it is continuous, and sinuous, and elegant and beautiful.

But anyway.  I think somewhere along the line I got addicted to rush of instability.  I first remember feeling the longing for this particular rush three years ago.  A little bit less, actually, but it's close enough.  I think that he introduced that longing for the unstable into my life.  And like I said, I don't like his habits, but they didn't make him any less interesting.  Meeting him was like a rude awakening.  He's really the factor that threw me out of my sheltered life.  I'd always been good and kind and polite and thought that everything and anything was sacred.  He lived his life like Marla Singer, to draw an odd connection there.

So when we stopped talking (I still don't know why, but it seems now that I could guess), that living-on-the-edge fell away.  And for the first time, I found myself longing for something I couldn't place.  I wanted something to happen.  I was restless.  It went away eventually, because things started happening, but until it did, it was a constant itch I didn't know how to scratch.  I tried a number of things, quietly, mostly pulling different strings in my own brain, but none of them worked. I wonder if I would have become more desperate if I hadn't been snapped out of it by events that did create change.

I've come back to that feeling since.  Some part of me has become addicted to that edge.  And I may mean that in more than one way, if only one edge is really a way of reaching the other.  I miss never knowing what was going to happen.  I miss the panic, the rush, the elation, the waiting.  And in a way, when there is nothing to create that rush for me, I do it myself.  I mentally create all of these impossible scenarios, some which could potentially happen, others which I know never will, and I relive them over and over again until they stop exciting me, until the appeal dies down.

And then I move on to something else.  I come up with another scenario.  I imagine this or that or something else.  I picture the impossible hook-up (and let me assure you, it wouldn't involve me), I craft the atmosphere and the outcome.  I build all of these scenarios in my mind and all for what?  All for this edge that I've been missing, and don't know how to find back.  The problem is though, I'm not terribly imaginative...this cheap thrill is bound to run out soon, and I wonder what I'll turn to next.

Words

Can words belong to people?
...this word is yours, your world, and for another to utter it is to steal your world.  To steal a word is to steal a world.


That was a while ago.  And in case you couldn't tell (for all none of you who frequent this establishment of mine), they're not my words, either.  Oh the irony of me using that phrase in this context.  But alas, I didn't write them.  I would have done so differently if I did.  I'm pretty sure nobody realizes I ever read those.  And unless I'm sorely mistaken, I was definitely not supposed to ever see it, especially not when I did.  The writer of those words has long since stopped writing where they appeared, perhaps unfortunately.

I've gone back there a lot recently.  Perhaps it's all been a misguided attempt at torturing myself, although I have no idea why.  It's just an association I maintain, of pain, from a time when it was relevant, although it certainly no longer is.  I think that something is missing, misguided, mistaken.  Something isn't right, and I can't place it, because everything that used to hurt no longer hurts, no matter how hard I try and everything that once brought elation is tinged with the subtlest streak of pain.  So even though I hope I'm wrong, I think I may have worn something out in myself.

And maybe it's just that I need a break or that the excessive work of the past few months has finally pushed right through any sanity I may have ever had, but I find myself doubting things and wondering why.  I don't fight for it anymore.  To pull this back to the beginning of the post, I don't fight to keep those words.  I'm not afraid of them flying away from me, even though I know, consciously, with dead certainty, that it should bother me beyond anything else.

Embraces scare me right now.  So maybe that's just it, that I need to be left alone for a little bit.  But I'm afraid it's deeper than that.  And I don't want to fall into the mistake I did three years ago, where I stay around even though everyone knows I should be gone.  If I was so sure of this, I'd say something, but I'm not at all sure that this isn't just me being paranoid and sensitive, so I don't want to say anything or cause alarm.

I think what I'm looking for in all of these attempts to torture myself with the past is simply an excuse to fight for this again.  Because I feel like that's gone, and maybe I'm slowly slipping away with it as well.  And I don't want to, because this is good and makes me happy.  I think I've lost it entirely now...

*N.B. Credit will be given if the original author of the phrases which began this post would like.  On that note, my apologies to this individual.  For many, many things, the least of them being the use of the phrases at hand in this context.

Stability on a Cliff

Stability is a good thing.  I appreciate it.  I really, really enjoy the fact that my life makes sense and it is stable and I am honestly happy.  And I am generally okay with the fact that I beat down my emotions a little bit to get them to fit into a stable life, because it's been a very long time since I can remember my thoughts even remotely resembling something stable.

Let me clarify this simply, once and for all: I am anything but stable.  And I like that. I'm okay with not being able to rationalize my emotions and I enjoy my occasional wild urges to disobey convention.  I've learned to reign them in and frolic in the thoughts, which is enough for me.

But I sometimes think, like tonight, that stability has stolen pieces of me away.  I used to go on walks, especially in the winter, and cry.  I had no reason, but I would just cry, because I liked the tears, and they made me feel alive when I felt barren. I miss walks.  By myself or with others.  They're part of what made me who I am.  Nothing, even now, makes me feel as alive as a good walk.  That's how I got to know you, if you remember.  Walks bring back memories and give root to new thoughts.  They make me feel better.  And I miss them.

And maybe writing this here is merely a passive-aggressive way of telling you that please, I want to take walks again, and that please, I want you to come with me.  And in a sense, that's the reason I started writing this.  But that's not the whole point or anything, I'd just really enjoy it.  Please?

Stability also stole my writing.  I don't really blog anymore.  Three times (including today) in this entire month, that's all.  That doesn't count as blogging anymore.  I don't know how to write about my feelings because they're no longer so vivid or poignant as they once were.  I read one of the most truthful pieces I've ever written and shared again today, and I wish I could still write that well.  But there's nothing for me to draw from in that way.

Stability has made me boring, and that bothers me.  I don't focus on the wreck of my emotions because my emotions are no longer a wreck, really.  My life has become mundane and regular.  I still have highs and lows, but they are dampened, and the glimmer of rebellion in my soul is displeased with this.  There is something in the pure recklessness of what my life was that I am sad about moving past.

So in a way, this goes back to something I've said before.  I need a new source of adrenaline.  My pain is no longer so bitter, but my joy is never so incredibly uplifting as it was then.  And while I like this stability quite a bit, I do miss that range of emotion.  I don't really feel alive anymore.  I feel like a machine designed to do work.  My space feels like a prison.  It's all work I like and a prison I am very much at home in, but I still want to run as far away from it all as I can.  Please, please tell me how I can have both.

Everything Hurts...Or Maybe That's Just Me Strangling Myself

Sometimes I think I'm slowly killing myself.  More slowly than anything the least bit intentional.  More slowly than smoking or drinking myself into oblivion or trying hallucinogens until I throw myself off a bridge.  I'm not so melodramatic.  Anymore. But still not completely slowly.  Less slowly than the natural course of living.  Less slowly than enjoying my youth and the spare time of my maturity and waiting on a beach in my retirement years for it all to catch up with me.

I'm worn to the bone.  I don't want to be alone, but I don't want to be touched.  I hope to god you don't read this because I'm not writing it for you, I'm writing it because I need to get it out of the caverns of my mind it's echoing through now.  I've always hated pity, and I think you'll pity me for this.  Or maybe you'll just be sad, but the point isn't to make you sad.  It's not even that I'm sad.  I'm just worn so thin, so tired.  My mental state feels like the emaciated skin-stretched-over-bones body of someone who has been wandering in the desert for weeks, even though it's not the least bit reflective of my physical state.  Just my mind, my emotions.

I want something to happen with her.  I don't even care if it's you or me, but some part of me that is busy loathing myself needs a fuck-up, need someone to make a mistake.  I'm tired of being poised and motivated and hard-working, because that's all I've been these past few months.  And some part of my mind defaults to thinking of her when I hit these points.  Moods, maybe?  I'm not sure what to call this.  I feel like if I met her now, I would.  Which makes no sense and is pointless and stupid and unrealistic, but I need to feel like it would actually happen, even though it couldn't.

I don't know what I've been saying.  If you read this, don't tell me.  I don't want to talk about it.  I just need to spew my thoughts at the internet right now.  I want to do something reckless and foolish.  I want my chances to make a mistake back, because I've been so busy avoiding every single wrong path.  And maybe you're right, maybe I push myself too hard, but what am I supposed to do if I don't?  I'm better at dealing with highs and lows than a mediocre constant.  I need the change.  I'm afraid that I'm too restless for the sort of life I want to (or perhaps am expected to) lead.

I'm okay.  Really.  I promise.  And I'm not just saying that.  This week is hell.  So let me deal with it my way--by drowning my sorrows in empty, hopeless words.  I'll get past it, and I'll get everything done.  I just need a little bit of time to hate myself before I can go back to being okay.

This Doesn't Feel Right

Typing the URL of this page into my browser is strange, now.  It's no longer familiar, and it's not something I want to type anymore.  I've watched the number of readers dwindle steadily since the start of the summer, and the number of hits decrease still more rapidly since then.  I doubt anybody reads this.  Not that I ever wrote it to be read, but I'm out of things to write and there's nothing here for anyone to read.

I want to say goodbye, I want this to feel significant.  But it doesn't.  Maybe it's just that I'm so tired right now, and so overworked, but to me, right now there is no such thing as significant.  I don't want to care, even though I know I have to.  So maybe if I tough it out, and push through the apathy...maybe I'll get somewhere and start caring again.  I hope I will, at least.

Nobody really uses blogger anyway.  Everyone is on tumblr.  Even the people who did at one point maintain a blog with blogger have moved on to tumblr.  I don't like it as much.  It's nice for collections of things you like, but that's never been the sort of thing I was interested in.  I didn't start a blog to post pictures I like or copy other people's brilliant ideas.  I really just needed somewhere to write, and wanted someone to read it.

Now none of that is relevant.  I still don't want to collect other people's ideas, but I'm also out of things to write.  I want things to hurt, I want to be pushed somewhere, I would like something to worry about, think about, anything.  I'm tired of the only things I can do being work and more work and not enough sleep. Maybe it's just that this is a bad morning.  Or maybe I really do need this to throw down the remnants of my angst.  Whatever.  I give up.

Hello, It's Been a While

If there is a god, I think it should be a woman.  I don't care about feminism or female empowerment or any of that.  I just want to see the reactions when people show up expecting this impressive, bearded man, only to find themselves face to face with a woman.  Wouldn't that be a riot?

Part of me really likes the idea of everyone being so wrong.  We all spend so much time arguing our opinions, trying to prove that we have it all right, that we know everything and nobody should disagree with us.  What I think humanity needs is a big lesson.  Just something to say "hey, you're all wrong; stop pretending you're always right."  I think we all need to be dead wrong about something we were so certain of.  It'd teach us a bit of humility.  Goodness knows we all needed...myself included, without a doubt.

The past two days have the phrase 'like a boy enduring his first biblical rainstorm' stuck in my head.  Props if you know where it's from.  This isn't biblical, really, but I gave up on the umbrella and have resigned myself to wandering from building to building, clutching a laptop to my chest under the trench-coat I never would have worn a year ago.

The rain is good for existential questions.  It makes everything seem so transitory and absurd.  Nobody looks up while they're walking outside anymore.  A floating castle could appear and we wouldn't even notice.  Everything around us could disappear and we'd all just stare at the sidewalks and hurry on our way without realizing it.  Everything is cold and distant; subdued and forlorn.

Words die on the wind and questions of effort are extinguished like a flame as soon as the door opens and a gust of wind carries a bucket of water indoors.  It's a restful time, a pleasant one.  We have neither time nor strength for petty arguments so we all rest, refill out depleted energy sources, rebuild the walls around our crushed and worn out souls.  It is good.

Instantaneous Derision

It's like an impulsive self-hatred.  I've always been a bit of a masochist, but it's faded lately.  Maybe because my life has changed, maybe because I myself am a different person.  Regardless, I don't loathe myself anymore.  Not in the same ways or for the same reasons.  As I said before, life goes on, things get better.  People change and all that good stuff.

The odd thing is, there are still days when I find myself driven back to angst.  And even though it doesn't characterize me as a whole anymore, I still have days when I want it to hurt.  This week has had a couple of them.  It's probably because I've been stressed and busy and not getting nearly enough sleep.  But that's okay.  I'm fine, really.  Even if it doesn't feel like that sometimes.  And no, I promise, I'm not just trying to convince myself.

When I want things to hurt, though, I always turn in one direction, even though it lands me in a slightly different place every time.  But I always focus one one point.  It's no longer relevant, really.  Sometimes I miss the days when it was.  Which is not good by any means because those things were so relevant when I was in a bad place.  It's complicated and confusing.

I don't know why I keep looking back there, trying to find more that I know isn't there.  Maybe even wishing it was, even though I know it would upset me.  I don't know why I want a piece of that back when it hurt me so much, or why it seems like a good idea (okay, no, it doesn't, but that doesn't change the fact that part of me still wants it).

I think I'm still trying to move past something, but I don't know what it is.  I don't know how to find it or get there or move past it, and that leaves me stuck, trying to come to terms with I-don't-know-what.  And, like with other things, I don't want to bring it up because I don't know what to say about it.  I'm sorry for all of the pointless nonsense on here, lately.  I don't really know what more to say.  Apologies.

Trauma

Every person responds to it differently.  Some people need to talk about it.  Others, lay it aside.  Some need to cry for weeks until they can't cry anymore.  Some need to pretend it didn't happen until it catches up to them and then they let it break them down.  And some do it differently.  The only common thing, really, is that everyone has to do it themselves.

There are pieces of my past that I have put behind me now.  I dealt with it, accepted it, moved past it.  I'm over it.  Which means that I don't want to talk about it ever again.  I feel selfish when I bring it up.  I hate the pity, the sympathy, the hushed, wordless acceptance.  So I'm not about to bring it up in conversation because it's not relevant anymore, it's not something that people need to know about me.  It's old, it's worn, and while it certainly changed the person I have become, it is no longer reflected in my personality.

But when it comes to workshops I'm required to attend on the subject, that's when I feel myself slipping back a little bit.  Because, the thing is, I know all of this.  I've been there.  I've experienced it.  And I've seen all of the statistics, read all the advice, been told everything and anything that someone in that situation could be.  I don't need this workshop.  So even if others do, that's not going to stop me from being upset about being required to go.

It brings back things I don't want to think about anymore.  I went through all of the processes of putting myself back together after the fact.  I repressed it, I dealt with it, I moved past it.  That's where I am--past it.  And that means that it's not a part of my life anymore and I really don't want it to be.  But I'm not about to explain that this is why I don't want to go to a workshop.

It's not that I can't deal with thinking about it.  I still do that occasionally.  It's really just that I don't want to get lectured on bad experiences that I have already been through.  I don't want to be told how to prevent them and what to do about them. Because for me, all of those words are hollow and empty.  None of them mean anything because I'm different than I was a few years ago, because I know not to let it happen again, not like that, not in any other way, if at all avoidable.

I don't want to talk about this.  I don't want a big conversation about my experiences and how they have affected me and why this influences my opinion of such workshops.  I just need to get it out of my system because it's festering and frustrating me right now.  I'm out of things to say.  Anything else I write will just repeat or restate the things I've already written, so I'll stop.

I know it's not all completely rational.  I know it probably doesn't make sense to most people.  But this is my thought process.  This is why I detest these things.  This is why I'm never going to want to go and why I'm always going to be cynical about it.  Because even if it doesn't really hurt anymore, it's not the sort of thing I want to go back to.  It's not at all the sort of thing I want to be lectured about.  That's all.  Sorry.

Today Has Been a Weird Kind of Day

I want to say something.  I want to know what it meant, and I want to know if maybe I read too far into it or if I projected.  Which seems entirely too likely, but I really can't read it any other way.  I read into things damn near constantly.  And I'd like to think I'm right at least some of the time.  Then again, maybe not.  Or maybe I just really, really want to know because I'm just that curious.  I guess there's no way for me to know.

It definitely feels like today has lasted at least three times as long as it actually has.  My emotions have been all over the place (not to say that this is the least bit unusual lately), and I honestly haven't felt like a day has lasted this long in quite a while.  I don't really know what to say.  I feel the need to write something, though.  And by something, I mean anything.  And by anything, I mean say things that could help.

But, to be fair, I don't know what's going on, and I know it doesn't concern me.  I don't know that I could say anything useful or that even if I could it would really help, because life is like that in that sometimes the best things you say are never going to be heard.  I don't know why certain things always bring me back into the past.  It's not at all bad.  Just strange.

Strange in that I can't do anything about it, don't know how to deal with it, don't really know where to begin thinking about it even.  And, something that should have probably gotten through to me by now, I have no reason to be thinking about it at all.  But time permits me, so I do.  I guess.  Life is odd.  That is all.

I Never Was Normal, Really...

And I don't think I ever will be.  I'm okay with that.  Happy with it, even.  I got over the desire to be normal when I was fifteen.  I think at that point it finally hit me that normalcy (normality, perhaps?) is boring.  I don't want to listen to trashy pop songs and spend my Friday nights getting so drunk that I don't remember what happened.  That lifestyle stopped being appealing to me after one very troubled summer.  It was a phase.  And, to be fair, at that point I was too young to seriously be considering that sort of lifestyle.

I like where I am right now.  I like being lost in the crowd in this place.  I like not knowing everyone I see around me, not hating people, not being afraid to interact with certain individuals.  A life in a place this big is giving me the opportunity to avoid forming bad relationships.  I don't know the vast majority of people I see on the street and that means I don't fear them even a little bit, I don't have to try avoiding them, I'm not trying to impress them.  Overall, I'm in a good place right now.  It's an odd adjustment, but I'm starting to really get comfortable here.  Something about the atmosphere is good for me.

Some things are definitely not going the way I want them to, others are a disappointment.  The thing is, I'm finding good things.  I've had unexpected surprises.  I like what I'm doing.  I'm pleasantly busy (even if it is a bit much to handle at times), I'm learning things again, I'm enjoying myself.  Some days are drags, others are full of elation.  And there's still plenty that I'm worried about, certainly, but I feel like I have it at least somewhat under control right now.

Looking back on the past couple of years, I get nostalgic.  I miss some of the people, I miss certain aspects of the environment, and I miss some of the adventure (because I haven't really had time for adventures here yet).  I want to go back and visit, though, not be part of it again.  Parts of it, especially at the end, felt like I couldn't possibly look back on it fondly, but now that I've finally distanced myself from it, started establishing myself in a new home, with new friends...I'm okay with it.  Some of the memories really were incredible.  Some were anything but.

Perhaps the best part of it all is realizing that there will be more.  There will be more wonderful memories and more terrible memories.  I'll be ecstatic and I'll be hopeful.  There's a lot in front of me.  Getting away from that past is letting me see that.  I'm not despairing anymore, and that's always a welcome change.  I still like the same music, oddly enough.  It used to be the way I could relate to it, the pain, the distress, that's what kept me listening to it even after it didn't hold the same significance as when I first started.

I listened to this music because it let me know that I wasn't alone.  That some things hurt, and some things cut you so deeply it's hard to imagine ever moving past them.  And maybe sometimes you don't.  Maybe I haven't.  But it's possible to feel better.  I still have tough days or even weeks when I don't want to get out of bed, it still follows me around sometimes.  On the whole, though, I'm happy.  Which is hard for me to believe, but undeniably true.

I still listen to the same music, though.  It still makes me feel better.  Some people tell me it's bad to dwell on  your past.  And I have to agree, that most of the time it is.  But it helps me.  Remembering the things I put myself through, the messes I pushed through, the things I got over eventually, it helps.  I like listening to the same songs because I don't feel that way anymore.  Because I like remembering where I've been and how I've become who I am.

I feel empowered today.  That's probably one of the most cheesy, overdone statements I've written here in a while, but it's true.  I feel good.  I don't want to preach, but I have to say it.  It never feels like it's going to get better when you're in the middle of it.  I know.  But it can.  It does.  When circumstances change, so does everything else.  My location changed, my life changed, and I changed, too.  I'm glad I did.

Opaque Suicide

I saw a photo with this caption (or is it a title?) today and it caught my eye.  It wasn't the best photo I have seen.  Nor the most interesting or extraordinary.  It wasn't bad.  I'll certainly give it that.  Maybe even artistic, although I say all this not looking at it any longer, so perhaps I am completely wrong in my assessment thereof.  But nothing special, nothing that would have attracted my attention if it wasn't for the words.

Some words just seem to catch my attention, I guess.  Anything related to death, certainly.  I don't know why I have this morbid fascination or where it came from or why I still think about things like this, but it's there, regardless.  And, to be fair, I find it fascinating.  I've always liked the darker things, the secret, hidden ones.  Especially the ones you're really not supposed to talk about or consider liking or even come close to thinking about.  Those are the most fascinating of all.

I lost track of my thoughts again.  I should stop doing that in the middle of posts.  I don't have much more to say.  I have too much to do and not nearly enough time.  Being sick has really made productivity more difficult.  I hope I catch up soon and get back to blogging decently well on a semi-regular basis.

I Don't Think Anyone Reads This Anymore

I mean, I still get hits.  Or something.  But I'm still writing things.  I don't know why I'm bothering, because it's not that I really need to put these things out anymore.  I'm just a little bit lonely.  I don't have people here yet who would want to read this.  Or maybe I do, but I don't think I want them to read it.  Which is all very counterintuitive and backward.

I wonder how long I can keep saying that I'm adjusting until it doesn't count anymore and I'm just an antisocial individual.  I'm bad at this.  I guess.  I don't know.  I think I'm getting sick, which might explain why I'm so tired.  I'm rambling, but can't think of anything else to say.  Maybe if I ramble more it'll get better.  I wish it worked that way, but history says otherwise.  It really doesn't seem to play out like that.

I've lost track of time again.  I think I just need to get to sleep.  I've been unusually unproductive this weekend.  That happens sometimes, though.  I never have enough free time anymore.  That's my own fault though, I presume.  Although it doesn't really feel like that.  I don't know.  I'm out for the night.  Apologies for making no sense.

I Shouldn't Want to Apologize

I've been a bit absent lately.  Not absent-minded.  Just absent.  I haven't been blogging as much as I should be, here or elsewhere.  I've just had a lot to do, and I've been busy doing it.  That's all.  When I came back here, I wrote immediately that I have a lot to do and blogging is going on the back burner, and that's where it is right now.  I'm still making an effort to blog more or less regularly, but it's not enough to keep me up late anymore.

I still feel bad about it, even though I shouldn't.  I have been busy, though.  A lot has happened in the past few days, I've had three and a half million (approximately) ups and downs emotionally, mentally, and in any other imaginable way.  I don't know.  It's been a weird and messy and complicated week, following up on last week which was just blurry and not at all logical, which, as you might imagine, led to a few less-than-pleasant consequences this week.

I think I'm starting to get things together.  Hopefully.  I'm still getting used to this, and it honestly feels like it's taking me entirely too long to adjust to a new place, given that it's been exactly a month now, and in some ways it's thoroughly familiar and pleasant by now, but in other respects, I either really miss where I was before or just can't adjust to this.  And I honestly think it's going to pass.  In part because I just don't know what I'd do if it doesn't.

I mean, it's not terribly hard.  I'd figure it out.  I'd get things together and create a plan for what happens next, whether I make myself adjust or go elsewhere or whatever it took.  But I'd just rather it not get there.  And I have to admit, everything is going by very smoothly, very pleasantly.  I like it this way.  I do think I feel a bit less out of place than I did before, especially at the very beginning.  The nice thing about huge places is that even after a while, nobody knows you, who you are, who you were, or any of it.

I like being the stranger who blends into a crowd, the mysterious person on the edge of the circle.  I don't want to be the center of attention, I don't need to be noticed or have three hundred best friends.  I'm happy with a few people I get along with and can enjoy myself around.  That's good enough for me, and I think I'm starting to find it here.  Even if it took a little while.

Magical Rhythm

To be fair though, this place has a magic of its own sometimes.  It doesn't come in bursts or spurt through the soul unexpectedly, though.  It's a more controlled mysticism.  It's soft and smooth and vibrant, this flow of energy under everything that sometimes bubbles to the surface in a rush of joy that steals an entire day from under you and carries you away.

Today was one of those days.  Just the sort of thing where I could put on music, and get into a rhythm, and just sit there, swaying to the energy, getting so much done.  Even the things that were frustrating couldn't dissuade me.  It was a peaceful but energetic sort of tempo, and it encompassed my whole day.  Running back and forth, doing this and that, changing plans, making new ones, looking forward to things in the future.

I'm happy right now.  These days are more common here than they were before.  It's easier for me to get enthralled by something and spend hours dancing with it, exploring it, learning anything I can about it.  Then again, it's also easier for me to get stuck at something, to not be able to move past whatever may be standing in the way of my mind.  But days like today make me feel like that's just part of the adjustment.

I think I'm learning to get past days like that and move on to other things, and try again later when they make more sense or are more likely to work.  It's been a good day.  I hope this trend continues for as long as possible, because I could certainly use this kind of motivation.

Autumn

It smells the same here.  Walking back from dinner, with the sun going slowly down, wearing the same sweatshirt I borrowed a year ago, it felt familiar again.  The crisp air, the chill breeze, the familiarity of warmth flooding over frigid, rosy cheeks, it hasn't changed.  I don't like this season, but I do like the comfort of it all.  It's not the same and I know it never will be.  Nonetheless, it's not new, and that's something I've been craving a bit lately.

* * *

I miss that bench and that pond and that hill and the grass where we first had sex because face it, it was having sex not making love because the love was already there and having sex didn't change it and didn't make it any more or less so.  I miss that place because it gave you to me and me to you and because it was magical and when I say it was magical I mean that some things happened that I'll never forget and some things felt the way they're never going to feel again because that's just the way it works.

And it's not that I want back how confusing it all was or how much it all hurt and how many times we hurt ourselves and each other and her and her and me and you and everyone else around us, but I just miss the magic and I miss the moments and I miss the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen ever again and standing behind the pond hugging for way too long even though we shouldn't have and being pressed against you in the corridor and nervously laughing at everything you said and listening to your music because it meant I was learning about a piece of you.

I miss the process of getting to know you and falling in love, of the cascade of steady little pieces trickling down from when we first talked about her on that bench to when I told you I loved you in the same place so many months later.  Or maybe it wasn't really that many.  I'm never going to miss that place because of what it was, in the strictest, most literal sense.  But I'm always going to miss it because that's where I grew up, that's where I became the person I am, that's where I learned how to love and how to hurt and how to break.

So even though it's really nice to know how to be functional and make things work and be happy where I am and not be breaking, part of me is always going to miss the magic of the time and place where I was.  It defines me in the same way she defines a piece of you, because if it weren't for that, you could never have been the same person, and even if it's not something I want to relive, it's something I think about often, miss a good bit, and will never forget.

* * *

My deepest apologies for the gush of emotion that came many hours after I started this post.  It just happens sometimes.  I hope you don't mind too much.

Quirks and Uncooperative Places

Something about tonight made me miss where I used to be.  That's not necessarily a bad thing.  Part of me wants to say that I'm still adjusting to this, still getting used to it and all that, but I wonder if that hasn't been the case for a little too long for it to be valid anymore.  Then again, maybe it just takes me a while.  To be fair, that does match my past experiences, this slow adjustment thing.  But it doesn't really make me feel better in the moment.

Sometimes it just feels like I picked the wrong place to spend the next couple of years of my life.  Part of it agrees with me perfectly, but the large majority of it, the pieces that are the real 'life' of the place, so to speak, just...isn't my thing.  And that's not necessarily bad, but I just haven't found that many people in the same situation as me yet.  I'm trying to work hard and do interesting and useful things, and it feels like this lack of belonging is just getting in the way, even though it isn't too closely related.

But that's life.  It has its ups and downs.  So I'm just adjusting to this, slowly, steadily, I think, I hope.  I'll figure it out eventually, I'm pretty sure.  It's just going to take a bit of time.  And, to be fair, even if I don't, I can always go elsewhere.  So maybe it won't be ideal, but I'm confident that I can at least figure things out, which is always a good thing.

Getting Lost in a Familiar Place

I'm not sure why I thought of this now of all times, but I guess some things are just conducive to particular thought patterns or emotional responses.  I miss wandering down corridors I've never been in around a familiar building, or sitting in a long-forgotten corner that I haven't been in.  I miss the exploration of it, even if everything was familiar.

The odd thing is, nothing here is really familiar yet.  It is all yet to be discovered, new, interesting, unexplored.  And yet here we are, not doing any discovering.  That makes me sad in a way.  Part of me really misses the anticipation of it, the excitement, and even the heartbreak.  I've said it before and I'll say it again: stability is nice, but I miss the adrenaline-inducing experiences of those unstable times.

I need a new adrenaline rush.  I'm not taking any risks in my personal life, nor do I want to.  My professional life, so to speak, is doing just fine and I'm perfectly okay not sabotaging it.  Everything feels pretty smooth for the most part.  This is really approaching the sort of life I could always picture myself living and would be perfectly happy maintaining a good while in the future (with a few slight modifications).  I'm really happy with the way things are going right now.

Alright, so I have no right to complain.  None whatsoever.  And to be fair, it's not that I really want to.  I guess I was just feeling nostalgic for a bit, and maybe still am.  That's okay, though.  It's been happening less often, which is probably a good thing, knowing me.  Things are looking up and I hope they continue that way.

Old Phrases and Forgotten Words

I don't think you realize it.  Just those three words so simple, so insignificant, even, and yet they have the potential to hurt so much.  And you won't read this in the near future, and by the time you do, you will have no idea what it was about, and even I might have forgotten the meaning of this, but those are three words that I don't think I'll forget.

You scare me sometimes.  I've said it before and I'll say it again and again.  It continues to be true.  It's not even necessarily a bad thing, it's just that I worry about you.  I worry about you a lot.  And you need to stop worrying about that, but I'm not going to stop worrying about you.  Which is a little hypocritical and illogical, but that's the way people are, and I reserve the right to remain that way.

You say some things that worry me.  You do others that worry me more.  And I don't always know what to say or what to do or how to react.  So I'm not terribly skilled with people, and I don't really know how to be comforting or kind, but I just know that I love you, and I don't want anything to happen to you, and that some things just scare me.  Some words just stick with me long after you say whatever it is that bothers me.  But that happens, I guess.  I just don't ever want you to feel that way again.

~I want out.~

Full Corners and Empty Rooms

It's not that I'm in a lull right now or anything.  Lull...is that the right word?  I'm pretty sure it is, but it just doesn't sound right.  I'm just tired and have a headache.  And at those points in my life, my thoughts revert back to loneliness and emptiness and a little bit of depression.  I'm not really unhappy, just feeling a little bit empty.  I don't know why I feel so empty, really it's not so much that I do but that I know I will as soon as I leave.

Or maybe I just won't leave.  I feel like that's part of it--that not knowing where I am going to be in a little while, or what I will be doing at any given point in time.  I'm just tired, and I never know how to act or feel when I'm tired.  Sometimes, when I have enough work, I just feel overwhelmed.  And while I'm not at that overwhelmed stage right now, I get the impression I'm steadily approaching it.  I know it would probably be good for me to go to bed before that happens, though.

Whether I will or not, well...that's another question entirely.  I've never been terribly good about going to bed at an entirely reasonable hour.  I've gotten better about it since a year ago, to be fair, but a large part of it is just that I'm past that particular stage in my life.  I'm rather glad of that.  Silly though it may sound, growing up, getting older, that sort of thing, which I feel like should sometimes not even apply to me at this age, still happens.  It's refreshing.

The human brain can continue producing new neurons throughout life, which is a fairly recent discovery (I'm not entirely sure what the 'recent' bit entails, but it's what I've heard, so I'm sticking with it).  It's nice to know that people can still change even after many, many years of any given thing.  Humans are more flexible than we give them credit for more often than not.  That's generally a good thing, I'd like to think, as much as I lack trust in people myself.

I miss some people right now.  Or maybe it's just the close relationships of a certain sort that I really miss.  It's just tonight.  I know I'll get over it.  But in the meantime, I should really get some rest.  Good night.

I Forgot To Blog...Again

I've been legitimately busy.  So at least I have a reason for forgetting now, unlike over the summer when I just wouldn't feel like saying anything.  And I've got plenty to say, but I feel like I don't have the time to say it, especially given all the time I spend saying that I don't have the time to say anything (a bit counterintuitive, no?), so I might as well just get started now.

I wish you realized how much you mean to me.  I know I'm not the best at showing it, especially not when I'm as busy as I have been lately.  I just feel very overwhelmed when I have this much to do, even though I know that it's perfectly manageable and I just have to sit down and start it.  But that doesn't change the fact that I think you're absolutely wonderful and wish you understood how much you meant to me.

And then I went and set this aside for a couple of hours because I decided to finish some work I needed to do.  So now that I'm back from that, I lost my train of thought.  I'm sorry, I'm insanely busy and tired right now.  I think I've got most of the workload under control now, though.  I think.  So I hope that maybe in a little bit, I'll be able to get back to decent writing.  In the meantime, my sincerest apologies.

Maybe Long Post Titles Are Correlated With More Hits?

Okay, that's probably untrue, but I have been getting a lot more hits lately.  My stats are almost up to the levels they used to be at before those wonderful weeks or months of forgetfulness on my part, and I know at least one of the people who used to be a regular reader has stopped reading for the most part (if not entirely).

So I have no idea where all of the page views are coming from, but hey, I'm not complaining.  To be fair, it doesn't really matter to me how many people do or don't read my writing.  I've said it before, I'll say it again, I don't write for anybody else, I just write for me.  It's good practice, if nothing more.

Anyway, I'm unusually sleepy for this time of night (especially taking into account the different time zone), so I think I'm going to go collapse shortly.  My apologies for the short post, but I'm glad I at least managed to write a second one today.  Oh, and I had something else I wanted to say, but that can wait until morning.  Good night.