Nothing to Say

When the words don't come out, I feel a bit lost. 
Words have been my outlet for a long time.  They don't judge, the only say what you tell them to say and without emotion or bias.  Black words on white page mean only what the reader takes from them. 

When I am blocked, when the words don't speak to me, I am blank. 

So I take Kerouac's approach.  I stream my consciousness.  I hear a rhythm and let the letters form the words by themselves.  Let my mind float along my fingers and tap tap tap the keys to open the dam that holds back the truths that are swirling around in my brain teasing like kisses from a beautiful woman.  Too many images too many metaphors make the sentence obscene to be seen.  I am blocked up, stopped up and straining for the openness of a free spirit.  I have no pain to speak of.  I have no heartache to lean on.  I have no crying to complain of.  These are the things that feed my soul and I take that soul and throw it to a page and push it around to form ideas and phrases and say the things that I need to say.  This if fucking torture.  Where is the voice. 
Where is the muse.
When I am in love I am writing.
When I am in agony I am writing.
When I am content I am not writing. 
The passion from the pain.  The words made by love.

I watch movies.  Lots of movies.

I play lots of music.  I listen to lots of music.
I have started talking to someone who likes music like I like music.  She recommends bands to me.  I listen to them.  I find things that I like.  New things.  This is good.  I get stuck in a rut of what I have always heard and I never hear new things.  I have heard new things.  I like these new things.  I like new things.  They enrich life.  I like routine.  It simplifies life.  Life is balance.  balance of new and old.  Familiar and found. 
I close my eyes and see only black. 

I slept last night, a reasonable sleep.  I had dreams.  Weird dreams.  Good dreams.  I woke up feeling good and refreshed.  I showered.  I worked.  I came home.  I napped and had therapy.  Good therapy.  It was a good enough day. 

But I can't write. 
I have no words.  Nothing to say. 
Nothing to say
Nothing to say

Feeling Stuff Sucks

This feeling thing is a double edged sword. 
For years I had learned to shove things down in order to appear uncaring or nonchalant.  It was easy that way.  I didn't care, on the surface anyway, and it meant that I could not be hurt.  At the same time, it meant that I couldn't really feel anything else either.  I couldn't really care about anything or love anything or hate anything or feel anything at all.  I shoved so many emotions down for so long that it all became a swirl of shit.  Even the good stuff was no longer so good because I dumbed it down in order to protect myself. 
I think this is why I allow myself to get bored so easily.  By moving from one thing to the next at any whim I am not really dedicated to any one thing.  I don't really have to care about anything.  I play volleyball in the summer.  I am okay.  I have good games and bad games.  Because I don't really care about playing, I know that I will have something new after the summer season, when I lose or have a bad game it doesn't hurt me as much. It also means that I may never really experience the joy of winning. 
This is the same for women.  In the past I would move from woman to woman without allowing myself to really feel for them.  They couldn't hurt me and I didn't care enough about them to care if I hurt them either. 

I was unfeeling. 
I was happy.  Or perhaps blissful in my unfeeling. 

I went into my marriage this way.  With walls up and feelings blocked and lying to myself that I was okay with it. 
When the walls came crashing down, all of the feelings came rushing out leading me to a year of the worst depression I have ever been in.  I was crying and screaming and suicidal and hateful and black and miserable...but I was feeling.  I was feeling all of it. 
I am still feeling. 
I feel happiness, not very often, but I feel it.  When I do it is something different.  It is more than just a smile.  It is a leaping from inside. 
I also feel loss.  I have had quite a bit of that and I feel it deeply.  I have been having a hard time putting the walls back up.  Thanks to this inability to protect myself, things that hurt hurt deeply.  The new girl's rejection still hurts me because I feel now.  When she was around I was elated.  I felt alive and wonderful and sunshine and like it was all worth it. 

So feeling stuff now has all of these extremes.  I am either leaping from my skin or crawling in a hole.  Finding the balance is a whole new challenge.  It seems to be all or nothing for me right now and that is not a bad thing, but it is difficult.  With all of the amazing things that I can feel, I can also feel all of the hurtful things, those things that forced me to put up my walls in the first place. 
I can also feel hope.  Hope that this whole feeling thing will allow me to feel something good soon.  I think Karma may still have some work to do, but when it is done there has got to be some good stuff.  With this whole thing where I allow myself to feel the things that come up I would like to think that I will have something more to feel than just the loss of the things I want. 

I am pretty excited about it, to be honest.

Trudging Past Life

I can't stop thinking about her today.  In the back of my mind she sits awaiting my attention.  Her smile, her laugh, her icy blue eyes.  Maybe it's just loneliness setting in again.  I really don't know why I think about her as often as I do.  I am getting sick of myself. 
I wanted to write about something significant, something somewhat interesting, but she won't allow me to give attention to any other details of my day or my life.  She was with me at work and she has come home with me.  I imagine I will be getting in to bed with her too. 
I am wondering if her presence might be due to my talk with the ex wife yesterday.  We talked about her plans and her move and her new man.  She has been able to find a new man.  I am not angry or upset, a little sad, yes.  I am also envious.  Envious that her life is turning out to be full of some really good things.  I know that it is because she is driven and ambitious and has done the things she needed to do to get those things.  She made that choice. 
I chose a much different route. 
I am still choosing to base my life off of something other than what I want it to become.  I am basing it off of some magic relationship that may or may not even exist.  I am still living some dream inside my head instead of living the life in front of me.  Lost in this fucked up blackened existence, I don't see the people that love me and care for me.  I only see the things that I don't have.  A person can't feel blessed if they turn their back on things they are blessed with. 
I can't seem to see those things.  The family and friends that care for me and are there for me are important and are what life is made of, but I choose to turn away.
I keep thinking that if I the new girl would just call me, it would all be fine.  I would feel better and things would be exactly how I want them to be.  And they would be, for a time.  The problem with basing your life off of others is like building your house of straw or brick.  Any bad wolf can turn your house of straw to nothing.  If you create a life built around your efforts and your work, only you can knock that down. 
That was a horrible analogy. 

My mother said that it was important to just keep doing what I enjoy and to just keep going.  I guess that is all we can do.  Just keep going.  Life goes on.  It doesn't stop for those of us who choose to get lost in the muck and mire of life. 

Just keep going.  Life goes on.

Chick Flick Promises

I find myself watching a lot of chick flicks.  I think I might be turning into a woman.  The mindless entertainment filled with promise is comforting.  There is always a happy ending and the predictability of this ending is almost like coming home.  You always know what you are about to find when you walk through the door.  I think that sense of home is something that I miss. 

I used to walk through the side door and would be greeted by a dog or cat.  I would always hang my keys and I always knew that I was home.  I knew my wife would be on the couch or in the dining room working on the computer.  The routine was a comfort and a burden. 

I am a creature of routine.  It is safe. 
At the same time, I rebel from it.  I get bored with it.  I need something new to be thrown in the mix or I get stale.  Because of this, I have sabotaged relationships.  I don't believe I am the only person to do this.  I suppose we all get a moment of restlessness where we are tempted to throw something new in the pot.  The difference comes when we decide what to do with this. 
When I was married, I was a child.  When things were scary or hard I would run.  It's easier to run.  It's easier to not care.  I like the easy road.  I have almost always taken it.  When I left my wife, I thought I was taking the easy road. 
I wasn't. 
I took the easy road when I married her. 

I would imagine that a lot of people find marriage to be the hard path.  It's not really that hard when you keep everyone at a distance.  I always had something or another that I wouldn't let her in on.  I always had control of the relationship because I never let her in, not fully.  As I look back on it, I don't think she did either.  I was scared of being hurt.  When you care, you give someone the ability to hurt you. 
Before my wife, I knew a couple of girls.  They were both beautiful and funny and smart and sexy.  They both seemed to care about me.  One girl, Jill, was what I believed to be perfect. 
I met her in Cancun 3 years prior to really getting to know her.  My romantic heart was in bliss.  The story itself was worth writing home about.  A guy meets up with a girl he met briefly in Cancun and they fall in love.  It might not have been love, but it was something.  I offered to move to Michigan to be with her.  I told her all my secrets and stories and she still wanted to be with me.  When we kissed, our lips were the only lips in the world.  We went to weddings together and when we danced we fit together.  Two parts of one moment.  I will never forget one night together. 
We had been to a friend's wedding.  We ate and laughed and danced and talked and I would look at her and lose myself.  The wedding ended, we returned to the hotel room.  She and I never had sex.  But we took care of each other.  Another skill of hers was more intimate.  She took care of me twice that night.  The second time, I felt the orgasm in my toes.  I told her.  She laughed.  We showered together.  She taught me to love showers.  I still shower head to toe because she said it made sense to do it that way.  I still love to shower with a woman too. 
As we lie on the bed together, clean and dry, I lay on her with my head on her chest listening to her heart beat.  I told her that there was no where in the world I wanted to be.  I was completely vulnerable to her.
After that weekend I told her I would move to be with her. 
I went to visit her. 
She was cold to me.  I was there a week and she had planned tutoring sessions for the days and I would be alone.  When she would return, I knew she wasn't there - not like she used to be.  We had a fight.  I left on Sunday.  I never heard her voice again.
After her, I shut down.  I fucked a lot of women.  I hurt a lot of women, but I was safe. 
The next girl I opened myself to broke my heart all over again.
We worked together.  We started to hang out.  I was blown away that a woman as beautiful as her would want to be with me.  Guys were jealous of me. 
She and I clicked.  It was easy to be with her.  We drove to a barbecue together once and she was on the phone with her mother and I was driving and the sun was out and it was warm and it felt like that was where I was supposed to be. 
Two weeks later we were at a bar celebrating a friend's birthday.  I was talking with a friend, watching people play darts.  I turned around and she was sitting with her ex boyfriend talking.  She looked at me and smiled.  I felt good.  I went to offer her another drink and she was holding his hand.
I left.  Instead of dumping my drink over her head and smashing the bottle on his, I left. 

I began to protect myself after that.  I held back enough so that I was safe, but people felt like I was letting them in.  I did that to my wife.  I never opened myself to her because I was scared.  The heart break that I felt had shut me down.  I was weak.  I was selfish.  I loved her and could have loved her more if I had completely opened myself to her.  I should have been vulnerable.  For a relationship to work, you have to be vulnerable.  You might get hurt.  Your heart might feel like it was ripped from your chest and left bleeding as you gasp for breath.  Then again, you might be happy. 
I was ready to open myself to the new girl.  I did open myself to her.  That is why I am still hurt after such a short time knowing her.  She reminded me of why I shut down.  She showed me what I had been doing wrong in my marriage.  I can thank her for that. 

It hurts that she wasn't curled under my arm as I watched a sappy chick flick tonight.  I wanted nothing more than that.  So I wait again for someone that I want to cuddle under my arm. 
I will have it someday.  Life always deals a new hand. 

Patience in Love

Is there a one true love for each of us?
Out of the billions of people on the planet, is it possible that there is one person that makes us whole? 

Hypothetically speaking, if there is one person that can make the sun set and the stars bright - what is the chance that we would ever meet that person?  There have been a few times when I thought that I had found that person.  There was a feeling in the center of me that knew this person was someone I should be with.  In those moments of chemically induced bliss (which is what love is on a physical level) I believed in one true love.  I was also much younger, for most of them.  Youth has the benefit of naivete.  With age, I think a certain cynicism grows, fed by events in our lives that remind us that life is not all sunflowers.  Love is not all gushing sentiment.

When I got married, I loved my wife.  I still do, though she is my ex-wife.  She is a strong and talented woman with drive and ambition.  She is beautiful with these amazing blue eyes.   I do miss the blue eyes and the moments of real intimacy between us, which were few.  I fell in love with her strength and individuality.  I loved her ability to bring out the carefree in everyone she met. 
When we talked about marriage, it seemed like the right thing to do.  I wanted to be with her and she wanted to be with me.  With her living in England, it was what we needed to do to be together.  I don't know that she was ever a true love for me.  If she had been, wouldn't I have been ready to put everything on the line to work things out between us?  We had begun to grow apart and neither of us wanted to talk about it until it was too late (if it was in fact too late).  I didn't feel that connection with her that I now believe is so important.  At that time, I thought what was missing was a fire, a passion that burned inside me to be with her.  After ten years of knowing each other, that passion had begun to burn down.  This is normal.  This is what happens. 
Passion takes on a new face.  It turns into love.  Real love.  The kind that makes you want to wake up next to that person every day.  The kind that makes you want to deal with the little things about them that piss you off.  Love is what happens after the blossoms have fallen from the tree and you still see its beauty.  Love is not being able to imagine your life without that person. 
I didn't feel that.

After I left my wife, I thought I had found what I was looking for.  Maybe I did, for that time.  We all know how that turned out. 
It was a fire that burned too intensely.  I was consumed by it.  I am pretty sure she was too.  It nearly destroyed both of us.  Perhaps it was bad timing.  Perhaps it was just what it was.  A blaze that burned away years of denial and scarring and opened up the holes that I had worked so hard to close.  The holes opened by past loves.  The holes that I stuffed with the emotions that I should have been dealing with.  She opened all of those and my life came flooding back.  A tidal wave that smothered the fire.  I wasn't ready for it.  How could I be? 
In the end, it needed to happen for me.  I hate that it happened like it did, but I am a stubborn ass and have a hard time seeing things that I don't want to see.  I am dealing with all of it, though.  I feel better, perhaps because of it.  I have learned things that I would never have learned otherwise.  I have seen sides of myself that I had never seen.  I have grown.  The waste left by the blaze has made room for something new. 
I can thank her for that.  I know that I don't need that anymore.  That burning passion that feels like your chest will explode and your heart could stop beating yet you would live and breathe off of what this person is to you.  I know that when I find someone that brings that to my life, I will recognize it for what it is.  The force that brings people together so that they can find the love that really can exist.

Love might not be the inability to keep your hands off of each other.  Maybe it's the need to see that person in your life.  Maybe it's both. 

I don't believe in one person for everyone.  I believe in love for everyone.  We will have people in and out of our lives that will bring that in many forms.  I guess the hard part is finding a person that gives you the love you need.  In moments of loneliness, I will hold on to that thought.  Patience in love may be one of life's greatest tests.

Scared Little Boy

The morning seems to be the time of day when thoughts no longer creep around, but rear their ugly head and scream at me.  Usually, it's right when I wake up.  This morning I woke up and thoughts of the new girl were rolling around my head.  They were different kinds of thoughts, though.  Not so much the heart broken pathetic bullshit I have been thinking.  This time it was more of a confident "she wasn't telling me the whole truth" kind of thing. 

I am pretty sure she wasn't. 

That hurts....a lot.  It means that, once again, I have placed expectations on another person.  I believed her to be something she was not.  In this case, I believed that she would tell me the whole story.  I believed that she was not a person who would bullshit me. 

I think I place women on a pedestal when I meet them.  They can do no wrong, even if they are doing wrong.  This hurts, because when a woman does something to hurt me I won't always see it.  I am so blinded by what I want her to be or what I want that relationship to be that I can't see what is actually happening.  I did the same thing with the other relationship I have recently gotten out of. 
I don't really know what I wanted that relationship to be, but it wasn't that.  It was bad and hurtful and no good for anyone.  It was a drug.  I would get a taste and fall back into the cycle of arguments and bad feelings that threatened to tear me apart.  Getting out of that was a good thing for me.  I would imagine it was good for her too. 
She asked me if I was scared of her.
I am.  I really am.  I know that it sounds ridiculous, but she had a power of me that I can't explain.  When I was with her I was out of control of everything in my life.  It was not a good thing.  She had the ability to make me feel better than I have ever felt.  When I was with her, I also felt a darkness inside me.  I have never really been suicidal before.  I have never felt a need to drink to drown sorrows.  I have never cried every day for weeks at a time.  I have never screamed at someone.
I know that those things were not her fault.....but I blame her on some level.  Some of those things happened because I was with her. 
On the surface, she and I did well together.  We could talk and cry on each other.  We could have a good laugh and enjoy getting shitfaced.  We could fuck like the world was ending. 
When it got deeper, though, the emptiness inside both of us seemed to consume us. 

I will not go back there.  I won't even tempt it.

I think I have come to a conclusion.  I have figured out what every other person that knows me has known for quite a while.  I should not be in a relationship of any type right now. 

I need to chill the fuck out and just be.

The impact that the new girl had on me might be a sign that my little heart is still fucked and needs time.  The hardest part will be the loneliness.  Those are the times when I am most vulnerable.  I have never been alone before.  I have always lived with friends or family.  But I have been thinking that it would be good for me to do something scary as often as I can.  This is scary.

But I have a plan. 

I have been blessed with friends and family.  Despite all the stupid shit I have been doing, they still love me.  To take them for granted would be the dumbest thing I could do.  If any of them read this blog, thanks.  I wish text on a white screen could relay how much I mean that. 

How to Stop?

Drunk posting is a bad idea. 
But I sit here, about to post a drunk blog. 

She was promise, this new girl.  She was a promise of something real and powerful. 
She is gone from me. She doesn't want me.  She speaks words of promise and then acts the opposite.  My heart aches too much.  I can't help but believe that it wouldn't hurt so much if things weren't as they were. . I cry a lot.  I can't help it. 
You know who asked if I had found my happiness.  I haven"t.  If anything I feel more alone now than I ever have.  I am drinking, alone, in my apartment, feeling like nobody cares.  Is this a bad thing?  Yes it is.  But I don't know how to deal with this.  I don't know what to do.  The cavity in my chest is a ruling force in my life.
I had volleyball tonight and the new girl was there.  She spoke with me.  But I knew.  My gut told me.  She is out.  Maybe I am too old for her.  Maybe she just isn't in to me.  Maybe the timing is wrong.  Maybe karma is giving me a big fuck you. Maybe fucking maybe. 

Maybe I should just get it in to my head that the ones that I want are not the ones that I can have.  Maybe I should fucking realize this.  Maybe I should just focus on this beer and realize that a person gets what they deserve and you have to play the cards you are dealt.
Maybe I am just feeling sorry for myself. 

How to stop.  How to stop.  How to stop.

If anyone is reading this, accept my aplogies for the pathetic state in which I now reside.  Honestly, I am not always this much of a whiny bitch, evidence aside.

Just Commit Hara-Kiri

Just 24 hours ago, I felt like was gaining some control over myself. 
I began to get past the whole thing with the new girl.  I found motivation to do the little things that seem to get pushed aside when I am down.  I sent a message to the new girl letting her know that if she gets to a point where she might want to see me, she should call because I would like that.  I found out she is coming to volleyball.  There are mixed feelings about it.  I am not sure how to handle it.
Then I did stupid shit. 
I made out with someone that I probably shouldn't have.  I neglected friends that I shouldn't have. 
Today, I saw the ex wife in the gym.  This in itself is not really a big deal.  I can handle that much.  Today, however, she mentioned that she was seeing someone....a UFC fighter to boot.  This is really great for her and I am happy that she has found someone that is more her speed.  Then I think that she really is better off now that we are not together.  Yet, I am not and it is all my fault. 
The fact that she is seeing someone and seems to be happy is not what bothers me the most.  I am more pissed at you know who for the final text message she sent before I cut off all communication.  She said to me that I had to move on.  She has and so has my ex wife.  She finished with "I know all about it."  This message was pretty much the line for me.  In itself, it was below the belt and said with no other intention than to hurt me.  What really pisses me off is that she did know, and she felt that she was the one who was going to tell me because she knew it would fire me up. 
I know that I said things to her.  I recognized it and I apologized for sinking as low as I did.  She apologized too.  Then she proceeded to message me more fucked up shit.  I haven't thought about her in weeks....till today.  Then I get a card in the mail.  The intention was good.  I appreciate that she wants to be friends.  The card has fucked me up, though.  It brought up a bunch of shit that I thought I had dealt with.  This was compounded on top of the ex wife and the new girl and blah blah fucking blah.  It is all too much.

What the fuck?

I tossed aside a decent enough life because I thought I would be happier.  I began a "relationship" with someone else because I thought it would be better.  I wanted it to be better.  It wasn't.
Now I sit alone feeling alone.
I know that I need to do something.  I need to make some moves.  I need to get on the proverbial horse again.  I have to.  I can't be in this rut forever.    But how do I know which horse to ride?

A piece of advice for anyone pondering a divorce. 
When you think about leaving your wife because you think there is something better out there, take a knife and shove it into your chest.  The pain is similar, but I think that divorce is worse because that is a decision you have to live with.  The knife at least kills you.

Love Dumpster Diving.

Someone asked why the things we love hurt us.
I suppose it is because the things we love and the things we care about are the things that can hurt us.  I feel like I have a hole in my chest right now because something that I cared about, something that I wanted fell apart and all I can do is keep moaning about it.  My fucking brain is consumed by all of it and it is pissing me off. 
So I dump all of this shit here so that it might stay out of my head.  This electronic world is like the trash bin for all of my obsessive thoughts.  It would be nice to have something else to say, something else to think about.  Then again, where I am now is better than where I was four or five weeks ago.  My obsession is better than my depression and I am not pondering killing myself every day.  That is a step up.  I should grab that thread and attempt to make a rope and climb my way out of this shit. 

I still think about her, not the new her, but the old her.  I blame her for this.  Thanks to her I feel shit again.  I seem to have lost the ability to not give a shit and to lock my emotions down.  I am hoping that I will see a benefit of this at some point.  It seems to only be making me crazy.  I am working on finding that not-giving- shit-place again.  Not much success as of yet, but hopefully soon.  The last time I was like this was with this girl Jill.  She crushed me pretty hard.  After her I just fucked a lot and didn't really care.  It was great.  I am getting the impression that I am too old for that now.  It may just be too difficult to find women near my age that will just have hook ups and move on. 
It's also difficult to believe that doing that will have any sort of real anything. 
Something real is what I am looking for.

If I haven't thrown all of that away.

A Nocturnal Reprieve

I don't really know what to say. 
I am a bit drunk and thinking that I should write something. 

I find it hard to believe that anyone reads this drivel. 
The thoughts of a lonely dude can hardly be interesting, yet someone is reading this stuff.

I wonder if karmic retribution is done with me yet. 
Every time I turn around I feel like something else is fucked up and I think "hey, you brought this on buddy."  So how can I complain.  The hole that I feel in my chest has to be nothing compared to what my ex wife feels, yet I feel it.  I can't not feel it.  Though I try.
And I wonder how long it will last.
I am not as young as I was and things are all different now.  The last time I had this lonely state of mind I would just sleep with some girl and feel a little better.  But girls at 24 are different than girls at 34.  They don't seem to share the same state of mind.  So, I am forced to grow up just to stay in touch with the world around me.  No shit, right?  I haven't really seen it until now.  I haven't really felt my age until now. 

So what do I do? 
My heart hurts
My back hurts
I hurt.

I am tired of hurting.
She was the promise of something and now she is gone. 
I don't know how to deal with that. 

I could use some help, but don't know who to ask or how to ask for it. 
"Hey, I knew some girl for a few weeks and now she doesn't want me but I hurts so bad I can't sleep." 
what do I do with that? 

Why can't I stop bitching?
This is all what I wanted, right? 
To be alone and do what I want. That's what I wanted. 
Well, now I have it. 
Yippeeeeee.

At yoga tonight, the instructor talked about how happiness is in us.  We are the only ones who can decide to feel happy.  I am trying.  I am trying to live in the moment, but at this moment I am not happy. 

I will just try to sleep. 
Sleeping is a nice reprieve.

Dangerous Romantic Fantasy

Have I lost my mind?
I can't sleep.  I wake up and I think about her and I go to sleep and I think about her and when I am watching TV I am thinking about her and I can't fucking stop and it is making me insane.  I have it in my head that I should call her.  I should say the things that are on my mind and heart and just lay it out for her.  I am not talking about love I am talking about seeing if there is something there.  I have only been like this once before where I wanted a woman so badly and she wasn't ready and I just let it go.  It still fucks with me today.  Is this the same kind of thing.  Is this a second chance at having that something or is it just a figment of my lonely heart? 
I can't explain why I have this hole in my chest right now.  I have not even known her for a month and I am all fucked up about her. I want to talk to her. 
I am scared.
I am scared that she will think me crazy.  I am scared that I am crazy.  I am scared that she will reject me and I am scared that she won't and then I will fall back into my pattern of not wanting what I have. 
But what if I don't try and I lose the chance?
So then comes the question of how to do it.  If I go to her house, is that weird?  Should I call and ask to see her?  If she says no, then at least I know.  At least I tried.  I have to ask. 
But is that insensitive?  Is that not caring about what she needs? 
She said she needs some time to sort things out for herself.  After the things I have been through in the past year, I should be able to understand that better than anyone.  Do I want to be the one denying her the time she needs to heal and to sort her head out?  Absolutely not.  That time can be the most important thing a person can have. 
So, what do I do?
I have no answers here except what my heart is telling me to do.  It is screaming at me to talk to her.  But I am scared.  I am scared of a lot of things.  Is that fear something I should listen to, or should I say fuck it and do what this ridiculous voice in my head is telling me to do? 
Romantic fantasy.  That's all it is.  Right?
What the hell is wrong with my head? 
I think I have lost it.  I really do. 

My Straw House

I fall hard and fast
It's like my heart is waiting to be taken, yet once it's taken it only wants to be free.
And once it's free it only wants to be taken.

Right now, it only wants to stop hurting.
It's not that I want a relationship, it's that I want her.
It's not often you meet someone that makes you want to be a better person.  Every word and look and touch and smell and move make you want to be more.  She makes it seem like all of the shit that piles up around you isn't so bad.  It's rare to meet a woman like this. 

It is also unfortunate.
It is unfortunate because when she flies away you are left with a whisper of her in your ear.  You don't sleep because you dream of her and she is not there.  She has become the dream once again.  And every night you dream of her, the hole in your heart gets a little bigger.  What can fill it but her?  Not even time. 

Those from your past, the ones that inspired you and made you crave so much more are still scars on the promise of something.  It seems like it would be better to just shut it all down and set up the gates once again.  To make the meaningless a goal so that the dream will just go away. 

Dreams hurt. 

What can be said about the incredible effect that she had on me.  I knew her for such a short time, yet she is more than a ripple.  She is the tidal wave that shattered my walls only to leave me defenseless for when she went away.  The loneliness seems so much bigger now.  Yet, I knew it was going to happen.  I could feel it.  The problem was that she didn't feel it.  She didn't want it. Now it's gone.

I live, once again, in the loneliness that I have built.

Walking Frost's Path

It's all me.
It's all in my head.
The anxiety and bullshit are all figments of this lonely demented brain. 
The past year has done a job on me.  I have seen a side of myself that I didn't know existed and I am struggling to recover. 
There was a time when I was confident and assured and that side of me seems to have taken a little vacation amidst the hurricane that has been my recent history.  I am no longer driving.  I have lost control.  The wheel is steering but not by my hand.  I have forgotten how. 
I am a mess still. 
But I am better than I have been. 
I see things differently now. 
My sight may still be clouded by a haze of lonely insecurity, but I see it.  I know it is there.  I need some help in getting past it.  I have chosen Frost's road and am truly walking an untrodden path.  The roots and stones still trip me up.  My footing is unsure. 
But I see something else besides the fucking storm. 
That's at least a step in the right direction.

Middle Child Syndrome

I have begun to wonder if I have to have drama in my life.  Maybe that is why my marriage would never work.  I was actually content and feeling normal.  I had a dog and a cat and a house and a wife and was planning for kids in a few years.  Now I have.....nothing.  In some sense the nothing I have now is better than what I was in the middle not too long ago, but now I almost miss the....adrenaline, maybe.....of that time.  There was constant drama and texts and talking and sex and stuff all the time.  It was a fucked up roller coaster ride that I should have gotten off way earlier, but I didn't.  Maybe I didn't because in some sick way I was enjoying it.  If nothing else, I was always getting attention. 
Now I am not getting attention.
Now I am missing the attention I was getting no matter how bad it was.
This may be why I am so crushed by this new girl backing off the way she is.  I don't even know that that is what she is doing, but what she is doing is not what I was experiencing for the past 10+ months.  I don't really know what to do with it. 
This may be why I want a cat.

Why do we create situations that aren't there? 
Isn't there enough stuff in the real world to make life a challenge without the mental creations of an insecure mind? 
In the past month or so, I feel like I have been making a lot of progress within my silly and confusing self.  But I still find myself slipping into certain patterns that are self defeating and starting to piss me off.  I am not sure what to do about it.  Sometimes I contemplate drugs to make myself more level and so that I feel more socially acceptable, whatever the fuck that really means.  But then, I feel like that would just be squashing me for who I am.  In some ways this might be better than being lost in the twisting and often circular paths that prevail in my mind. 
Maybe I would stop creating situations in my head that aren't really there.  Maybe I would get the fuck out of my head.  Maybe I would become Buddhist.  At least then I could just meditate and find myself and do daily chores and eat and meditate and shave my head and wear orange without fear of social repercussions.  Then I wouldn't have to worry about days like today where I feel like everything I say is just insane. 
My brain is a scrambled egg today.

It might be best if I avoid human contact today.
I am just going to say stupid shit.

The Heartache Battlefront

And so it goes without saying that I was dumb.....but not as dumb as I thought. 
Perhaps it is intuition or some psychic bullshit....but I was not wrong.  There was something going on.  It just wasn't quite what I thought.  She was having some of her own drama that did not really involve me.

I just made it involve me in my own stupid head.

My problem, if you want to call it that, is that when I like someone I will dive in head first and put it all out there.  This is an issue because when I do this the relationship does not go well in the end. 
I am doing it again.  I have to back off, I just don't know how. 

I really like this girl and I think she likes me but I think she is in a weird place.  Timing seems to be the be all and end all of relationship failure rates. 

And so I am going to try and back off a little. 
Mostly for my own sanity.

My number one rule, when I was whoring around some years ago, was to never give too much to a girl because then they wouldn't want you.  They want what they can't have.  They want to fix you.  If I put myself out there for her, she will not want it.  It will be too much. 

But now this seems like a game.
I have no interest in games. 
If you like me, like me.  If you don't, don't and stop wasting my time.

I really don't know. 
I really like this girl and that means she has the power to hurt me.  That scares me. 
I need to take it slow.  I just don't know how.  I don't know how to move slowly and take my time developing a relationship.

Maybe it's time to learn.
But no games.
Fuck games.
I'm too old for that.

I just hope something works out with her.  I really do.

An Irrational Insomnia

I really hate myself right now.  It's after 3 and I can't sleep because my stupid brain is racing.  I keep seeing conversations with this girl.  She keeps telling me she is back with her ex.  I keep running all these scenarios about her.  It is so irrational of me.  I don't talk to her for one day.  Why do I have to talk to her everyday?  What the hell is wrong with me?  I have his feeling in my gut that something has happened, but I don't know what it is.  I think it is this not knowing that is fucking me up.  When did I become so fucking insecure?

I think I know the answer to that.

Now I have to wait to find out if there is, in fact, anything to be not sleeping for.  I may be back here in the afternoon cursing myself for being such an idiot because nothing was wrong. 

I feel like a crazy person.

What if she is thinking that I did something?  What if her not talking to me is due to her own insecurities and I am thinking it is because something happened with her and she is thinking that something has happened with me and this whole night of not sleeping is full of shit?

This is how my mind works!
I want to take it out and set it down so I can stop being so irrational and ridiculous.  This is stupid.  And so what if something did happen and she doesn't want to see me?  Why does that have to ruin anything?

Because I like her.
Because I set hopes too early.  I always fall hard and quick.
I am not saying that I am in love or anything, but the idea is the same. 

This is dumb. 
My mind is dumb.
I am going to try and sleep.

I Feel Good

I am still living in fear.  This time it is different though. 

A lot has happened since my last post, the deletion of my blog, and now this.  She and I have finished.  It was horrible.  I saw a side of myself that I didn't even know existed.  This beast came up from just under the surface and filled my apartment with more rage than I have ever experienced.  She drove me to the edge and I couldn't seem to back away.  I fell.  I asked her to leave and she wouldnt' leave and I asked again and again and she wouldn't leave and then I started to scream.  There was this voice in the back of my head saying "what the fuck are you doing?  This is out of control."
It was out of control.  It was ugly and horrible.  It was the face of our relationship rearing its head.  After she left I cried from somewhere deep inside.  I sobbed.  I couldn't stop.  All the rage that welled up had run its course and all I was left with was emptiness.

Then the change had to begin. 

A few days later I began to feel something I had not felt in a long time.  Calm.  I was calm inside and out.  The feelings that were coming up from my marriage were manageable.  They were all I had to deal with.  So I did. 
It has only gotten better since. 
I have had to take steps I never thought I would, but they had to be made. 
I don't talk to her anymore.  I can't.  It brings up so much anxiety.  I can't breathe. 
I have begun to move on.  It is better.

I met someone.  She is great.  Cute, fun, nice, confident and strong, petite, blue eyes, great style, intelligent, and there is a passion that lies beneath the surface.  It will come out, I think, when she feels safe.  She is coming out of something bad as well.  It is moving slowly, which is good, but is a big change for me.  I always dive in head first.  I can't do that this time.  She is taking it slowly which means I must as well.  It is better this way. 
It also feeds some of my insecurities.  I haven't talked with her today and all the voices come up and whisper their little beads of bullshit into my ear. 
It is fear again.  Fear.  I hate fear. 
Fear that she doesn't like me.  That she doesn't want me. 
Then the voice of reason comes out and says "hey shithead.  Have you done anything bad?  Didn't you have a good conversation last night?  Isn't it possible she is just chillin out?"
I am such a woman. 
I have a hard time helping it, though.  Every time there is a woman that I like, that challenges me, that I like whether she likes me or not, she leaves.  Jill, Krissy.  They fucked me up.  They are my baggage. 
I must get over it.
Give it time. 
Time. 
This one could be good and it scares the shit out of me. 
I like her and it feels good.  It feels warm, not hot.  It feels kind.  It feels good.

I feel good.
People have been saying that it is good to have me back. 
It feels good.
It really does.

The Past Renewed

These are the old posts.  I deleted them for a while because writing them indirectly caused me more grief than the relief I felt in writing them.  I got away from them so she would not have anything to attack me with.  Now that her attacks can't hurt me, I am starting again.  

Here they are.....
---------------------------------------------------

I Deserve Love?

"Live like you deserve to be loved."

It's like I am reading another language.  I just don't get it.  For a long time I didn't understand how one did that.  Live like you deserve to be loved.  Baffles the mind.  Well, my mind anyway.  Looking at many of my recent self discoveries, I think I know why it is so hard for me to understand.  I don't feel like I deserve to be loved.  Maybe that is a bit of tragic self loathing, but it is an honest feeling. 

And here enters that tragic ass hole, again. 

Damn this caricature, this tragic me.  My biggest challenge as of late has been trying to pinpoint the source of my unfounded bullshit belief that I am no good, that I don't deserve to be loved.  This same fucker that forces his way into my head and emotions and threw away my marriage.  When the options were laid out, I could have worked at it, talked it out, perhaps even recognized that my life was good, really good.  I had a beautiful wife, a house, a dog and a cat.  My job is stable, more or less.  I have a great family and some really close friends.  So what the hell do I have to bitch about.  I am loved.  Why don't I feel I deserve it?

I am a real ass sometimes.  Here I am with this semi-charmed kind of life and I seem to enjoy taking a sledge hammer to it and rocking the foundations whenever I get a chance.  I have to add fuel to my fire of self deprecation so that I can never get too comfortable or actually experience happiness or contentment for too long. 

So, here is a real clincher, a doozy of a fuck job on my life. 

One of the sparks that ignited the gunpowder used to decimate my marriage was a woman (how cliche).  Though our relationship did not enter the "inappropriate" during my time in that house with my wife, she awakened feelings in me that I had been squashing down for quite a while.  She was a passionate woman and she awoke that passion in me.  Suddenly, I needed something more than what I had. I felt like I was the unhappiest man alive - but I felt like I deserved to be happy, to have that passion that had been on simmer for too long, which is a good thing in some ways.  Don't we all deserve to be happy? 

After my marriage broke up, this woman and I found something pretty powerful together for a short while.  I was legitimately happy.  But the shadow of guilt has an amazing ability to block out any and all rays of sun.  Guilt rained on me with gale force winds.  I threw this new relationship away because I couldn't stand the guilt.  I didn't deserve to be loved by this woman, or anyone.  I was a liar, since I couldn't tell anyone about this woman for fear of disapproval.  I had smashed a loved one's life to pieces.  My family and friends didn't even know who I was anymore.  I was piling shit upon the trash I was using as an excuse for being depressed. 

I don't really know why I did what I did.  I followed my heart without referring to my brain (which my father wisely warned me about).  Thanks to my destructive nature in terms of my own happiness, I have a mountain to dig through to figure out what my damn problem is.  I can be a real douche bag sometimes.

There is an epidemic in my life, a pattern that has messed with me for a long time.

I have spent a long time blaming anything else but myself for the things I do.  My father, my astrological sign, my age, my upbringing, and the list goes on.  I have had the epiphany, recently, and have discovered who is actually to blame for the storm inside my head.

Me.

All the bad feelings and pain and guilt and promiscuity and depression and sadness and happiness and laughter and crying are on me.  It is so easy, and often encouraged in our society, to blame everyone else for the shit we go through.  But the only one who controls what we do and feel is the person doing and feeling.  I realize this now and life has a different shade to it.  Things aren't so bad when we take control of our actions.  Sure, we can't blame others for the fucked up things we do.  That is motivation to stop doing stupid things.  Being an Aries is no excuse for being an asshole.
Once I realized this I also realized why I had such a hard time with the quote.  I have done some things that aren't so nice, some of them fairly recently.  When we shove the blame onto any number of excuses, we don't actually get rid of anything.  It still sits and brews within us and whispers unhappiness into our ears every day.  I am tired of feeling crappy about myself, so I need to take responsibility for what I do.  If I mess up, I will acknowledge it and fix it and move on.

The best thing I have ever read was in the book "The Joy of Living" by Yongay Mingyur Rinpoche.  The most powerful line for me said that we are all already perfect, we just have to clear out the debris to see it.

Live like I deserve to be loved.
I'm working on it.

The Greener Grass

How often to we search for happiness in fleeting moments? 

I may be more guilty of this than anyone.  New is like a drug.  The problem with new, is that "I" am always involved.  The issue with fleeting moments of excitement is that when it is all over, this guy is waiting on the other side. 

It is unfortunate that new thrills and travels and new stuff doesn't really bring happiness on any sort of long term level.  That stuff is easy to do.  Okay, I'm depressed so I am going to jump from an airplane - depression cured.  Sorry.  It doesn't work that way.  Boredom does not cause unhappiness.  That is caused by something much deeper.  You. 

I have a friend who believes that moving somewhere new and getting a new job and a new start will bring her happiness.  She believes that a new relationship could be the key to whatever is missing.  I used to think this way too.  But again, the problem remains that no matter where you go or who you are with, you are there.  Since you are the source of your unhappiness, moving or getting a new job will not cure anything on a long term basis.  Until you find that happy person that you really are, it doesn't matter where you go. 

I have always looked on the other side of the fence and stared longingly at the green grass I wasn't standing on.  It has been a self inflicted curse for the majority of my prepubescent to adult life.  When I was in grade school I believed that I was unpopular because of the people I hung out with.  It was never my fault.  Well, truth be told, I don't know that I was all that disliked at all.  When my best friend moved away for a while, I thought that I would be skyrocketed to popularity.  It didn't happen.  I was still who I was, but minus a really good friend.  This blame thing continued for many years.

My unhappiness was the fault of everyone else. 

The eye opener for me was when I used to blame my misery on my wife.  She was holding me back.  She was making me mad.  It was all her fault.  The black pit inside of me was her doing.  Of course, she knew none of this because, like I said before, I never talked.  It wasn't until a month or so after I left her that I had "the breakdown" and realization that all of my depression was on me.  If our marriage failed, it wasn't just her, it was me.  If I was unhappy about work, it was because I wasn't pursuing my dreams.  I am more miserable now then I ever was with her.  Sure we had problems, but they didn't have anything to do with why I was not happy being me. 

The depression lives inside of me.  I have to deal with it in order for it to go away.  Buddhist thought says that acknowledging the sorrow and letting it go will lead to happiness.  This is a much simplified example, but the idea is there.  The emotions that drag us down only have the power we give them.  This goes for people too.  The only people that can hurt us are the ones we give the power to.  Through practice and meditation, we take the power away from the emotions and the outside world and begin to find some semblance of peace within ourselves.  Believe me, this is easier said then done.  For me, the outside world is easier to shrug off then the emotions.  When you live inside your head like I do, emotions create the world.  But, as I step outside of my head and begin to see things more clearly, I find myself a little bit happier. 

Once I began to take responsibility for myself and for what I was doing, everything seemed a little easier to manage.  Since I was the only one who was making myself miserable, and the only one capable of doing so, I can take control.  When it was the fault of everything else in the universe, it was out of my hands.  The only thing I can control is me. It is also true that in this realization comes a ton of responsibility.  I used to blame being an Aries on my behavior.  I can't do that anymore.  It has created some new guilt, but as I deal with that I can see that by correcting my behavior I can stop doing the things that caused the guilt.  I have control.

With all of that in mind I see that doing new things and experiencing the greener grass is not a source of happiness, but a source of new things and greener grass.  It is what it is.  The happiness is up to me.

Finding the Love

I have heard that you can't make others happy if you are not happy yourself.

This creates quite the conundrum for a person like myself.  I tend to draw my own happiness from making others happy, but since I am not happy I can't make others happy which in turn prevents me from being happy and on and on and on.  This little cycle is especially prevalent in my life as it is right now.  Thanks to my hasty and generally stupid decisions as of late, I am damn near miserable and have made quite a few others unhappy as well.

So, how to stop this cycle?

I have tried the Buddhist thought that we are all perfect but we can not see it.  Generally speaking, this has worked for me on a temporary basis.  I will be all well and good for a bit and then it all goes to shit.  But I like the idea.  In terms of spirituality, that kind of thought is very uplifting.  It also puts the responsibility of your own happiness on you.  If you don't think you are a good person, it's your fault.  Change your thoughts.  Clear the clouds to see the sun.
I also like the idea because it gives the hint of something good.  It's within your reach, because it is already there.

I think the biggest realization that has come to me was that my pain is my own.  "My pain is self chosen," or so the song goes.  When I find myself getting down and beating myself up, it can help to think that all of the negative feelings I am experiencing are the product of my own mind.  Of course, after 33 years it is hard to simply let them go, but I am working on it.
Every day I am trying to break my habit of living in my head.  There is a whole world out there that I have been missing because I live in the world of my dark and depressing mind.  I used to have whole conversations in my head instead of having them with the people I needed to have them with.  This is obviously not healthy or productive in any way.  I have lived a huge portion of my life in my head.  Again, not healthy or productive.  It might be different if my world was a happy place, but it tends to be pretty negative which then spills out into the real world.  It is frustrating to say the least.

Clouded in Guilt

Guilt.
This may be the single worst emotion available in the human lexicon of emotion.  It sits like a knot in my chest, choking out any chance of seeing things for what they are.  My vision is clouded and distorted.  My friends are strangers, my family ghosts.  A diamond is coal.  What do I have to give?  Nothing.  What do I have?  Nothing.

Guilt.
My world is a wasteland.

I was recently in a relationship of sorts.  It was ugly.  Fighting and yelling and hurt feelings everyday. But there were spots of sunshine and something beautiful.  Like really beautiful.  The simple presence of each other was air, breath.  Separation caused storms of anxiety.  It was like being burned by the sun, wishing it away and when the clouds rolled in, all you want is to see the sun again.  There is no respite.  Burn or freeze.  The thoughts of that sun in someone else's life may as well be a shovel for a grave.

This must be heartbreak.  The thing I always passively aggressively pursued and I now have.  Some days I want to die.

I am melodramatic.

I am finding it interesting that I want everything I don't have, throw away what I get, and want it all back again.

This little relationship of sorts came to a halt recently.  Fighting and crying and pills.  The rest of the world sees that it was unhealthy and I did too.  Now I only see it as gone.  I miss her touch and her warmth.  I don't sleep in my bed because I smell her.  It was destructive, that relationship.  I drank and wallowed in my self pity and sickness from the things she said.  When things were good for a few days she would tell me that I wanted to bang chicks.  Back to zero.  I felt horrible at the end.  Suicidal at times, knife in hand, I would be certain it would be easier.  In the beginning, it was sitting at sunset watching the colors of the sky turn to fire.
Both of her hands fit into one of mine.

It was guilt that started the knife moving into our chests.   I couldn't escape it.  I shoved her out of the line of fire, but she kept coming  back.
How do you deny love?
I destroyed her.
I destroyed me.
I am lonely now.  I think of others and see her in their shadow.  Then I see the storm over head when I begin to approach.  Maybe I need to leave, run away.
I am weak.

I wonder how much of my loss is her body.  Her closeness.  Her attention.  I love her.  No question.  But we destroy each other.  How do you get around that?

Lost in Stockholm

Confusion is a constant state.  I feel like I am wandering around some pitch black highway without a clue where I am going or where I have been.  I have no idea who I am.  This quivering mass that I have become is a far cry from the man I used to be.  Laid back and laughing, rolling with the punches the best that I could.  It's not that I haven't hit bottom before, but this time I have lost sight of where I am bouncing back up. 

I cry, a lot.  Like a little kid, blubbering and sobbing and being an all around emotional mess. 
I miss her. 
Till I have her.
Then I miss me.
Till I have only me.
Then I miss her.

I have a habit of ripping my heart from my chest and tossing it in the trash.  I wish it would stay there.  I would rather not feel.  Feelings are causing confusion. 
She opened my heart.  Caused me to feel.  Now I feel all the time.  Why is it always so bad? 

I don't understand why I feel so good when I am with her in my memory.  Even when I remember the bad times, of which there were plenty, I don't care.  I don't care about the pills or manipulative jealousy when I don't have her here with me.  I only think about the way she would laugh without changing her face.  I think about the way she would run around crazy and come back to me and take my hand.  As long as I was where she wanted me, it was fine.
Which makes sense.
I told her once that she only wanted me to be happy if it was with her.  She agreed.  Is that okay?
I used to say no. 

What is it about her that holds me?  I can't move forward.  I want to.  Then I see a picture of her.  She is beautiful.  No arguing that. 

I think I keep killing it because I can't face what it would mean if I were to admit what I really felt.  What I really feel is shrouded in the guilt of feeling it.  What I really feel is strangled and choked under the weight of what I believe the world wants from me.
I am weak.
I used to think she was weak, but she held on through all of my storms.  I don't know why.  She says it's love.  Is it?  Isn't it? 

I long to remove my heart and lock it away.  It would be safer that way.  I am tired of feeling and being human if being human means I feel the way I do. 

I would trade it all for just a little peace of mind. 
I am going to make a beast out of myself.  It gets rid of the pain of being a man.

Facing the Addiction

She is my drug.  Exciting and scary, I feel like she is in my veins.  The withdrawal is painful, so I take another taste, close my eyes and fall back into her. 

She is what I want.
She is what everyone wants.

Weak and powerless, I face her.  Every kiss is shot in the veins, a sweet warmth that fills me, satiates me, takes me away.  When I fight against her, the trip takes a bad turn, walls start melting around me, anxiety becoming my name.
For a long time I didn't tell anyone about her.  Sneaking our love in daily doses I fell apart and was washed away in her emotional tidal waves.  It was a dirty secret, one that threatened to bury me.

I walked away.  Just not far enough.

She is my addiction and like any addict I can't sit in the same room with her or I begin to feel the cravings rise up inside me.  Trapped like an animal, I salivate at the thought of sliding insider her, her words slipping into my brain sending me floating on bliss.  


I thought I could handle it this time, but I can feel the need closing in again threatening to consume me. 

Does she do it, or is it me?  Am I my own dealer?


My thoughts, once clear, begin to cloud over.  I have taken too much.  I need to take a step away.  Let my soul detox from the emotions she stirs up inside me.  It used to be guilt of being with her that was destroying me.  Now it is guilt of needing to turn away from her.  Confusion is the name I take when I enter her.  I can't leave her, though I know I should.  It was too ugly last time.  I can't stay with her.  I know that we aren't forever.
She deserves forever, doesn't she?

She has taken steps to find herself.  Our last attempt at fucked up love nearly killed her.  She knows that now.  She dates.  She talks.  She flirts.  I don't care - then I care again.  I walk the thin ice over an ocean of jealousy and soul rotting emotions.
She is finding her path.    Her way is lit by hope but shadowed by me.  She needs to stay out from under me.  I need to be on top of her or I can't breathe.

They tell me to get away and stay away.  Like it's that easy.
Does the addict riddled with punctured veins just turn around and roll down his sleeves?


She is my air.
She is my drug.
I am addicted again, only this time I see light amidst my drug induced haze.  
Ignorance is bliss.  Knowledge is confusion.
I have lost my name.

Waking From Dream

I can feel an urge to grow up now.  It's almost like I am ready to wake from a bad dream where I can see that it is a nightmare and I am now aware.  But it's all in slow motion, a fog that only lets me see so much and even then I am not sure what I am seeing is real.  I am scared, though.  Really scared.

A choice has set my mind to maturity.  I chose to pursue something with the woman I write about, my drug or maybe my prescription.
Is she an answer and not a question?

I am scared.  Fear is sitting in my chest, but not just of her.  I do not fear her, but fear her hold over me.  She has only the power that I give her, but I give her a lot and I give it willingly.  I fear my friends and family as well.  What will they think or say?  I would like to believe that it will be all support and love, but there will be anger as well.  They have seen what she can do to me and what I can do to her.  They see the destruction that we can cause, but they don't see the flowers.  They have only seen the mushroom clouds because I have only given them an idea of an idea of her, a glance through shaded window.

If I prayed, I would pray that they give me a chance and that I have the strength to tell them with honesty.  They are good, but even the best would be angry to see a friend running on hot coals hoping to not get burned.

But I love her.  I will tell them.

Perhaps she will set me in motion beyond my thoughts.  I may be able to begin living some semblance of life.  It will be slow going for me.  She says she is okay with that.  I pray that she is.  But as I move forward I am beginning to see the trash around me.  Irresponsibility when I had no purpose has left me in a messy room.  Time to clean up.


Money, job, bills, friends on the wayside, family in the blind.
I am tired of mess.  I am actually just really tired.  I thought I could grab a nap, but life has other ideas.  I could use some sleep, a lot of it, but maybe staying awake for a while longer will stop me from missing the show.

Finding the Why

To move forward, the past needs to slide away.
But, how do you let go?  How do you let go of emotions and memories that changed your life, made you who you are?  I can't remove an arm and still be whole.  I can't take out my heart and leave the emotions on the floor where I set it.  The pain and the crying and the happiness and laughing and the sleeping and waking and daily blah blah blah are part of me.  They always will be.

I spoke to my ex wife yesterday amidst a storm of shit and hale.  She is good, moving along and finding her way.  I am lost in the weeds that have grown over the grave of my life.  How does that work?  I left and she is happier than I.  I don't want to take that from her, I never would.  She is a good person and a strong woman and deserves all of the sunshine she can muster.  Perhaps that is why she is happy.  She sees that.  She can see that whatever treats she can find amongst the cluster of fuck are there to help her.

She does have one advantage over me, though.  She doesn't have to forgive herself.

I can't take a step forward without doing that one little thing.  As little as it is, it is the single hardest thing I have ever had to do.  I find it hard to forgive myself for nuking Hiroshima.  In the silent moments, I have begun.  I could smell a fresh spring breeze.  But then something sets me back and I tumble back into crater of fallout and must once again struggle to climb out of the wreckage of my life.  I can see the trees, feel the sunshine.  I just can't get to them.
It doesn't seem to matter the ropes dropped down, either.  For all the helping hands and supportive words, I am the only one who can find my way.  I have found friends amidst all of this.  Great friends.  And I can't ever truly show my love for them and for what they have done for me.  I don't know where I would be without them.  I might not have set the knife down next to the bottle.   But they can't make the journey for me.  I have to do it.  I'm not scared, I just don't know how many times I can press reset without getting tired of starting over all the time.   Each time I falter, I find it harder to love myself.  I forget why I even want to try.  Without loving me, all I see will always be shrouded in something I can't cut through.

Now I know.  What's the next step?  Doing it, I suppose. 

"We have to forgive our fucking selves.  No one can do it for us."
 - Hank Moody

The Icarus Complex

I have chosen to fly to the sun. 
It wasn't all that long ago that I had the taste of something amazing.  At the risk of sounding like an over romantic ass hole, I felt alive.  I don't know that words can really explain it.  If you have ever felt like every step was a cloud, like your heart could explode from your chest and you are filled with wonderful agony and bliss with every breath, then you will know the feeling.  I am not pretending that it will be just like that again, but I can hope.  There is nothing wrong with hoping.

The hole that I have torn into my soul has begun to heal.  There is fear and trepidation in my voice, but I want to find love on my tongue again.  Is it too soon?  Maybe.  But I find a new strength in myself.  Upon the rubble of my life I am picking up the foundation one stone at a time.  I set one down and find the next.  At this point, I can only begin to climb up again.  If there is a deeper hole than the one I have been living in, I would rather stop breathing than to see how far down it goes.

I am scared.  I can not live in fear anymore.  I have always been afraid.
Afraid to get "old"
Afraid to be hurt
Afraid to lose myself

I walk a few steps and take a breath.  I would like to believe I can turn my back on living that way.  I can do it one step at a time.  My tendency to take off running pulls at me like a dog on a leash.  I resist.  I practice patience.  I breathe.  I take a step.  I breathe.  I can see the edge of the cliff ahead of me and know that when it comes time to step off the edge, I will either watch my wings spread and fly or see them melt around my shoulders.
But, I won't live in that fear.

The Breached Hull

What is this creeping inside me? What is it that is causing me to write again, today?  I am not sure.  Bad feelings have surfaced from my past few days.  Perhaps it is just the crater and I need to take my steps forward.  That must be it.  When I fall, I fall hard and until I catch my wind again I will feel this pressure in my chest that threatens to suffocate me.  I wish it would.

I am still looking to the future.
I am still looking to the future.
I am still looking to the future.

I can't even write my heart any more.  The integrity has been breached.  Now what to do? 
I find myself subconsciously editing.
I must get over it.
This is my only outlet.

I am hurting today.
It's more like a gentle ache that had become familiar for quite a while now.  It is circling my soul, but not ready to land and tear my gentle flesh.  I won't allow it.  Shoo, vulture.  My pain is not yours anymore.  I own it.  I control it.  I will help it grow into something beautiful.

A simple pain grows quickly amongst the dried twigs on my soul.  Nothing burns on low.  It's a ravaging fire at all times, or it is a calm ocean with only possibility in front of me.

I am working to getting my head turned around to face the open horizon.  To see the gentle hand.  To move forward again.

maybe I am just tired.

I could use a nap.
Sleep is my friend.

I wonder what California is like?

Weeding the Garden

Jealousy is a starvation that is never satisfied.  It destroys all that it feeds upon and it never stops feeding when it has been let in.
I am not a jealous person unless I really care about a person.  Then it burns in my chest, a constant pressure of heat and pain boiling in my blood and feeding my brain with dreams and visions and anxiety.

Next to guilt, jealousy sits as queen of shit.

Today I am floundering under a flood of both.

I don't always know how to ask for forgiveness and when I have asked for it, I don't always understand why I don't get it.  I know that I am thick when it comes to emotions and feelings.  Maybe this is why I don't understand.  Trust comes easily for me, but it isn't that way with everyone and I have to realize this.  There are times when I deserve to be punished for my lies.  I accept that.
How can I apologize and make it mean something?

I lied.  Again.
It has torn at my soul for a while now.  I admitted to my lie and felt relief for that, but then felt guilt for lying instead of not telling the truth, if that makes sense.
A lie is a constant cycle of self deprecation.
I'm not going to lie anymore.

My heart is aching today.  Under the weight of a lie released and of jealousy and anxiety it is suffocating.  She is having a hard time forgiving me, not of my lie (at least I don't think), but of the actions of the lie.  It is hard when you know that someone you love has touched another, whether you were with them or not.  I know this.  Dreams and visions project onto my world in a display of hardcore torture porn.  It is not easy.  My chest is a hole.
So I can imagine that her world is hard right now.  I wish I could help her, make it all blue and clear. 
I am an ass, though.  I find it hard to see past my shit to see how it is all affecting her.  Is this wrong of me?  I just want this chance that we have been given to work, for at least a minute.  I thought she wanted that too.  She said she did, but that was old-her.
As she said, the world is against us.  Or maybe I said that.  I don't know.  I think it is more a case of we are against us.

I see her texting and I want to scream and rage as jealousy fills my brain.  Sometimes I see the names on messages when her phone lights up.  I turn away as it isn't my business.  Or is it?  I don't know.  I don't know much these days.  When I do feel like I know something, it crumbles away like an old photograph that hasn't been taken yet.

I am trying.  I don't know how to do more.
I have forgiven.  I can't do anymore.
I can only wait.  The end will go one of two ways. 

I feel like she is starting to be finished.  I cry.  I really thought we had a chance.
It's all so hard.  I thought love was easy to slide in to, like a warm bed.
I guess not. 
Maybe it's more like having lived your life deprived of food and you are used to hunger pangs.  So you work to grow a garden and bring it to life and watch it overflow so that when you finally eat, you feel you can never be dissatisfied again as long as you water and weed your garden.  And sometimes insects will destroy your fruit.  As long as you can kill each of them, you can grow again.  If you can't.....

Or maybe it's all shit.
Sorry for that turn, but devil's advocate is always in my shadow.

I have no answers.  Only hopes and anxiety and the true anguish that is love.

She is All

She burns in me.  A fire constantly ablaze.
It is her passion
her wild eyes
the way she makes the world live with every breath she takes.
When she sleeps, she twitches in my arms
When she opens her eyes she smiles the sunshine
She is the hand that stirs the silt and the current that washes it away.

When she places her hand on my neck, kisses my lips
or holds me as I cry from words delivered from her tongue
the world makes sense for a brief moment.

She is the sun and the storm
the rain and the blaze.
with every word that raises me up
there is a look that can break me down

she is agony and bliss
she is torture and release
she is everything and nothing

and in all of this, she is love.

Power in Words

I am in wonder at the power of a few words.
I have spent a morning in near agony from my dreams and ungrounded visualizations.
With three words she takes the anxiety away.  I have given her power over my heart and I don't know if this is good or bad.  Imagining the repercussions is mind blowing.  With a look she can crush me.  With a word she can leave me in a desert and destroy my hopes in love. 

Is it wise to grant this power to a single person?  Is it possible to stop myself?  Could I take it away if I wanted to?
I don't know any of these answers for sure, but I feel like it is no.  So why do I?  Why does anyone?

Love?
Possibly.
It is hell and heaven, agony and bliss.

I am at a loss.  I feel like a child, a baby trying to learn to speak so I can say I am hungry or scared or cold.  The romantic poets were all right.  Love is terrible.
I live and die and breathe and suffocate and starve and feed and bleed and heal all at the drop of a word or a look.

There is so much aching in my heart.  I would like to put a door on my chest so I can take it out and set it down when I need to and put it back in place when I am ready to feel again.  Then her eyes couldn't break it or glue it back together again. 
I am so tired.  Mentally, emotionally, spiritually.  Tired.
A moment's rest is all I need.  A moment's reassurance that after this Winter there will be a Spring. 

Are there flowers under the snow?

My Personal Cthulu

There is no point to paranoid jealousy.
It stops me from taking deep breaths.  My heart feels like it might explode from my chest.  All of it is ungrounded, or is it?  When you know that there are shady things happening, is it silly to feel paranoia or jealousy?
I know that the best thing to do is to talk it out.  And talk I will, though it is hard for me.
I don't talk.
I lock it up and wait for it to die.
It never dies.  It just waits.  Eventually, it will rise up and destroy me....again.
It haunts my dreams forcing me into an ugly mood from the moment I wake.
I dream of blank faces, but they have names of people I know even though those names are never spoken.  They come in and out of a room where she is and she sits on their laps or holds their hands or kisses their mouthless faces.  The whole time, she is talking to me.  I can't walk in the room.  I can't move but slowly, almost frame by frame. It is agonizing. 
A man in New Orleans read my palm once and told me that I have psychic powers in my dreams.  I don't know if this is really true.  I hope it isn't.

I hate when you can feel something slipping away and aren't sure what to do about it.  I am me.  I do what I do.  Isn't that good enough?

Buddhism teaches us to let go of the negative emotions that swirl in our brains.  Acknowledge and let it slip away.  I am trying that.  It is not easy when it is the only emotion that I am feeling.

I have no power.  I have no control.  I have thrown myself to the winds like a kite on a string attached to a hand that can let go at any moment.
I will not survive the year.  Not as the man I am.  Something big is going to happen soon.  I can feel it.  It will change me.  I feel like my skin will become stone.
Survival.  We do what we must to survive.

I feel kind of silly.
These are my problems.  I don't run from bullets or fear exploding people day to day.  I have food and shelter.  I have friends and family.
These are my problems.
Money and an aching heart.
I have it pretty good, actually.
This seldom visited blog is my savior.  This virtual wall filled with my ridiculous rantings of vomited honesty is a life line.

I have it pretty good actually.

Walking to Frisco

Anxiety is a weight that sits in my chest.  I don't feel hungry, but nauseous.  I don't want to breathe, but feel my lungs taking in air.  The beating behind my lungs reminds me that I am awake, though sleep would be better.
I can feel something slipping from the precarious perch on which it was set.

As amazing as it is, I am surprised that I feel this way.  Ready to give it a real chance, able to see that the world doesn't really give a shit who I spend my time with, it feels like there isn't a future.  I am not ready to believe it though.  I can't.  I have to believe that there is something, even if it is just for a minute.  I have been through fucking shit, wading knee deep in misery and depression.  Now that I can finally see a ray of sunshine through the looming clouds over head, how can I possibly believe that love is going to dry up with all the puddles.
Now I sound like her.  She says things now that sound like me. 
It seems unfair that at a moment of clarity and decision has led to a complete turnaround.  Is it possible that two people are always meant to be on the opposite side of a merry-go-round constantly moving in the same direction to get to each other? 

I miss the way we would hold on.
People change
We have to or we don't grow

Our love was born of fire, can it survive without?
Did our meeting have a purpose or was it all coincidence?
I want to believe that we found each other so that we could remember that there is love and passion in us.  I want to believe that something else is there. That can't be all it was. 
Or can it?
Does the universe play cruel games on us?  Does it even care enough to do so?

Why so many questions with so few answers?

I want peace of mind.
I want to know what is happening to me.
I want to know how I can walk away from long time and still want to live with myself.  
I want to know why I have to write everything to be able to see it.
I want to know why I am 33 and still wandering amongst the trees, lost like a foal covered in spots and barely standing on shaking legs.
I want to walk to Frisco and sit on the ocean where the answers to life are laid out in the waves and sparkle of the sun.  Sitting on the beach, a hand would find mine.  It would be a hand that I would accept without fear.  It would be a hand that understood and accepted.  It would be a hand that would shut my mouth when I was being an idiot and stroke my hair when I was in need.  It would be a hand that I would take with me to all my fucked up places and that I would follow to all the places it led.  Maybe I already have that hand.

I want to know if we have a chance.


I want, I want, I want.  I sound like an asshole.
Someone needs to beat my ass.  I doubt it would be too hard to find someone to do so.

Our Self Sabotage

Marriage is scary.  Everyone says so.
I don't think it is scary for all the reasons that we always say it is.  It's not the fear of being held down and not kissing anyone else for the rest of your life.  I think that it is the fear of failing at being married.
A friend told me he was scared that he would do something stupid.  He is afraid that he will amongst the 60% (or whatever ridiculous number it is) that get divorced.
I was never afraid of failing because I protected myself with a 5 year plan.  If after 5 years I wasn't happy, I would move on.  I put up a shield to protect me from the fear of failing.  I knew I was going fail.  In that "knowing" I made a choice.  In that choice I also made the choice to never really be "married."  We were two people living a parallel life.  I had control.  I always have to have control.  She had no idea, or maybe she did and was okay with it because she was scared too. 
I told him that failing was a choice.  If your marriage didn't work out, it was a choice.  Life is not against us.  It is for us.  We are against us.  Humans have no natural predators.  We are at the top of the food chain.  Nothing is trying to sabotage us except us.  If you give yourself to your wife fully and she to you, you can't fail.  I have married friends.  They find a way to make it work.  They fight and the are mad and the scream and things are thrown and said and people are hurt, but they heal.  They are brave.
To let it go without a fight is cowardly. 
I was a coward.
Maybe it's different when you actually hate the person you are married to.

I told him that if he ever contemplated divorce, he should hit himself in the nuts a dozen times and multiply that pain by a million.  Even then he would not get close the pain he would feel after seeing the face of his wife as he walked out the door.  I have spent the past months drinking, taking pills and contemplating suicide on a daily basis. 
I will never forget that face.  Every time I see it behind my eyes, I die a little.  It isn't as hard as it once was.  It has taken nearly a year to realize that I have to move forward.  I am.  I can't go back.  Things will never be the same.  Sure, I miss being a poppet or having treats or tea (I miss it a lot, actually) but that is gone.  I crumpled it up and threw it away.  There isn't any going back to pick it up and smooth out the wrinkles.  A good friend told me that, a couple actually.  Another person told me that it was okay to make new memories.  That is the hardest part.  But I will try and get there eventually.

Marriage is a big deal.  Not the institution, but the emotion.  The institution is a crock, a piece of paper, a tax break, a way to allow a loved one to see you if you are dying in the hospital.  Marriage the emotion is real.  It is two souls sharing a life, perhaps longer if you believe that kind of thing.


Marriage is scary.  But not because you won't ever fuck another person.  It is scary because you might fail.  It is scary because you might not.  You might actually be happy.
I know for me, that was one of the hardest parts. 
I also know that I would never have learned what I have learned if things hadn't happened the way they did.  Perhaps I will grateful for the lesson in 5, 10 or 20 years.
I learned that I am scared and immature, a controller, a child with a peter pan complex.  I care what the world thinks more then what my loved ones think.  I have learned much.  I am growing.
It is unfortunate that my biggest mistake was my greatest lesson.
Hopefully, he won't follow that path.  Sometimes, the people who love you can show you all the same things minus the self deprecation and thoughts of suicide.

Tired and Old

I feel good today.
I don't feel like I should, though.
The past year has seen me fuck up a number of relationships, turn my back on the advice and caring of friends, take a turn attempting to destroy myself, and walking out of a life that was good into a future that has been shit up to fairly recently.  I have seen close buddies fade into a clouded background.  I have seen the face of a woman I love filled with confusion, sadness and loss.  I have jumped into a relationship, scrambled to get free only to slip again.  I have seen a woman I love go to huge extremes to get my attention.
I have loved and hated.
I have screamed and cried.
I have walked and run.
I have been overflowing with regret.
I have grown.

Rebuilding should be deserved, right?
Do I deserve it?
Does anyone? 
Live like you deserve to be loved.
To do this you have to feel like you deserve it.  With all of the shit that I have shat into the world over the past months, I find it hard to believe I do.
But this is that tragic me speaking.  When I discovered him, we talked and I realized he is a dick.  But I let him back in for a while.  He is on vacation today.  Maybe he will stay away.

I am tired.
Tired of fighting.  Tired of ups and downs.  Tired of super happy and terribly sad.  I want that gray area now.  I'm not going to fight fate anymore.  What will be will be and I will drift along on this river of life where the currents take me till I see something I must paddle towards.
No more merry-go-round. 
I'm too old for those.
There was a time when I went with the flow.  I was happy then.  I went after the few things I wanted, but never placed expectation on life.
Life cares very little for what you expect.
I liked that path, that branch of the river.  The rapids are short, but exciting.  It's the calm flow that is the best.  With the people I love floating beside me.
I might actually be ready now.

Today I stand on a precipice that I have stood upon before.  Straight ahead and below is unknown.  It is filled with good and bad and uncertain.  Behind is known.  It is filled.  10 months of shadows and shit have faded all my photographs.  For all the good memories I have, the pictures have all turned to black.  How easily the sun drops away.  I can go back to feeling like that.  Or I can wipe the dust and wreckage away, take what I need and dive into the mist below.

Feeling like shit every day is getting to be tired and old.

I don't know in what direction I will step.  I feel like jumping, but don't know if I will.  I like the familiar.  It is comfortable even as it kicks you in the nuts.
One step at a time.  The edge is always there.  I will know when I am ready.

Sat Chit Ananda

What are the sacrifices we make for love?
I would like to believe that we don't have to make any, really.  I have had friends that gave up friends to be with a woman because she didn't like them.  But aren't friends a part of who we are?  They make up our past.  They make up a part of us.

I have set a friend aside for love.
Does this make make me bad or wrong?  My father told me that with every decision comes a cost.  The cost that I am paying to make this thing move forward has been to cease talking to a woman who was a good friend to me.  No one asked me to.  I just did it in an attempt to smooth things over.  This friend was a part of the lie that I told.
She is being punished because I lied.  How is that fair?
It's not really.

As I was going through the emotional process of my divorce, the friend was there for me to talk to.  She was an experienced ear, since she had been through what I was going through.  She asked for nothing in return.  I also listened to her when she needed a friend.
Then there was a drunken night.
Now all is fucked because I lied about it.

I am completely clueless here.  I don't know what the right answer is.  I have made my decision to move forward with a relationship, but in doing that I feel like I have to give another relationship up, a friendship.  Is that true, is it real?  Is that my cost?
It was my choice as all things in my life are.  Choices.  In times like these, I would like to be in a culture where choice is not something you have to worry about.  

I can feel some guilt crawling up again, but not like it used to.  Instead of devouring my thoughts, it is simply whispering in my ear.  I must be getting stronger.  I am looking forward to the future.  I know that I will have to make sacrifices to get there.  Maybe this is one of those.  I feel bad for hurting someone.  I don't like doing that.  What are my other options?

One of my growing pains has been the removal of the blinders that I typically put on when I am making choices.  In doing this, I see the destruction that I leave around me as I barrel forward in this fucked up life.  I also see that there is no other way.  Joseph Campbell said, "Sat Chit Ananda", or existence, consciousness and bliss - which he translated to "follow your bliss."  He said that in doing so, others will be hurt by your choices or they may not agree with them or they may tell you that you are wrong or stupid.  This is the nature of the beast.
What I want or believe is not what you want or believe and that is fine.  I love you for you and your choices are yours whether I agree with them or not.  I may be hurt or I may disagree.  Those are my choices. 

Now I must find my honesty and hold on to it.  Honest with me.  Honest with you.

So I will sacrifice and sometimes it will be a popular decision and sometimes it won't.  
It is hard to realize that not everyone will like you or agree with you.
How is it that I am just seeing that now?

Is Mature Old?

I fear getting old.
Not in the sense that I will age, but that I will mature and become that man who works and sleeps and works and sleeps.  The guy that has kids and a wife and pays bills and mows the lawn on the weekend scares me.  I used to see my married friends doing that and wondered how they could find happiness in any of it.  It all seems so routine.
But I like routine.
So, what's the problem?

I don't know.
I believe that one of the reasons I left my marriage was because I was afraid of losing myself, of sacrificing my identity.  The fucked up part is, I don't know who I am.  What is this identity that I am afraid to lose?  No one asked me to be something that I wasn't, but I created some kind of fear that wouldn't allow me to be married.
A college professor of mine told stories of the way he and his wife were married, but were living their own lives.  To a 20 year old with massive commitment issues, this was the Shangri La of relationships.  Looking back, I don't know how that was a marriage.  It seems to me now that a marriage is the joining of two lives not the parallel living of two people who are scared to truly commit.  That commitment is part of being in a mature relationship (I think).  In our society, it is expected.
Men are expected to date and woo and marry and have a job and a wife and a house and mow lawns and fix plumbing and all that cliche stuff.  But if you ask a guy if that is what he wants, how many would say yes?  Perhaps more, perhaps less then you would think.  I don't know.
For a long time I have fought maturity.
But my hair is getting gray.
Maybe it's time to suck it up and find my definition of maturity.
I'm getting tired of feeling lost.

I don't think it is possible to reinvent the wheel here.  Nor is it necessary.  There are aspects of "getting old" that I wouldn't mind sometimes.  The stability and the routine wouldn't be so bad as long as it received a bit of spice from time to time.  I am not so sure about the marriage part which means I am definitely not sure about the kids part.  I don't see myself marrying again.  What's the point?  I still view marriage as a piece of paper with some legal benefits.
Maybe this will change.  I don't know.
I would like a spicy routine.
I would like a house.  I like mowing the lawn and doing some yard stuff.  I would like a big dog to lay in the sun while I do yard stuff.  I would like to drink iced tea afterward and nap on a puffy couch with a cat curled on my chest.
I would like friends to stop by.
I would like to take vacations.
I would like a career that I love and wouldn't mind doing as I got older and grayer.

For now, those are the things that I would like to see happen as I get "older".

It has always been a challenge for me to answer the "what will you be doing in 5 years" question.  It's not so hard now.  I will be doing whatever I get off my ass and do.  I would like to be a professor in 5 years.  That's what I would like.  Maybe an author too.

The definition of what it means to be grown up is changing around me.  This is good, but it is confusing too.  There aren't as many rules that don't bend.  The choices are a double edged sword.  I guess I have to decide for myself what it means and go with that.

"I only wanted to be 16 and free."

My Self Flagellation

Do I do anything for the benefit of anyone but myself?
I know that I am no altruist, but I often wonder if any of the things I do have any benefit to anyone but myself.  When I have told lies, I would tell myself that I did it for whomever I was lying to.  It was for their benefit that they didn't know.  I recently filed the paper work to take my wife off of my health insurance.  I have dragged my feet on this for a long time because the thought of screwing her out of health insurance burned my heart.  But, is that why I did it?
I am not known for my motivated personality.  If I can push something off, I do.  Is that why I waited?  Or did I wait because it was one more thing that reminded me what a piece of shit I can be?
Just the act of taking her off the insurance has set me back a bit.  My self esteem has taken a dive.  I don't think this is undeserved, though.  Do I not deserve to be punished in every way possible? 
Am I just beating myself up now?

I find myself on the verge of tears and I don't know if it is because of the words from my ex that bite or from my own shit that crawls back up out of the hole I have attempted to shove it into?

Howdy, Frisco

It would be so much easier to run away.  Leave it all behind and grab a fresh start.
I don't really deserve easier.  My self flagellation can not begin to reach the level of punishment I should have.
My friends leaving me.  My heart being crushed and ruined.  The tears that ravage my face.  The pressure that stops my breathing.  Anxiety.  Guilt.  Self Hate.
I was always told to take what you want, but eat what you take.
This is what I have taken.
Now I get to eat it.

I am beating myself up now.
I will be better.  I shouldn't be.  I will be, though.  Undeservedly.