I've said here quite often that I should just shut up. Now I seem to have done just that, but I've done too good of a job. I'm not even explaining my self to myself anymore. So I'm confused.

I owe myself an explanation. A big one.

I'm not sure where to start, though. Maybe that's what's been holding me back. It's just too daunting a task.

Things are what they are. I've done what I've done. And the reasons are, well, I can't think of the word I want.

Next to a million flinches, that's where the reasons lie. Among cruelties, and disappointments, and a few lies, that's where the reasons lurk. They keep fear and pain as their confidants. They hide behind incredible beauty and unimaginable joy, but they're always there, and I lost hope that they would ever go away.

I repeat this mantra to myself. "I'm better off, I'm better off, I'm better off, I'm better off..."

Sometimes I even believe this to be true, I really do.*

But I forget that truth every few seconds, and I don't know the reasons for how things are, and I falter. Whenever I breathe, for example. Or whenever I blink my eyes, and that ever-so-brief moment of darkness lets her face intrude into my consciousness.

It was just too much. After all that time, all those years of waiting and hoping and trying oh so hard, my seemingly infinite patience proved to be finite after all. I felt myself wearing down more quickly than I could regenerate. Changing, mutating into a person I neither recognized nor even particularly liked.

It had to stop. It had to end or I was going to end. And, even though it seems to me that I did end, I really didn't. I'm still here, barely. What's left of me.

It was just too much. Maybe that's the explanation. Maybe that's the only explanation there will ever be, because better words escape me...

* - poet and don't know it.

I hate it when I'm misunderstood.

I suppose most people are like that. I especially hate it when that misunderstanding stems from emotions and motivations arbitrarily assigned to me by others.

I mean, I'm an open book. So what's the reason for all the guesswork and the assumptions?

Anyway.

Disappointment and resignation. That's it.

No anger, or malice, or disgust. Certainly no hatred.

I'm disappointed in how things turned out, but I'm resigned to the fact that they did turn out this way.

There's no mystery. There's no hidden agenda. There's no scheming.

It's all pretty boring, actually. So maybe some people should find something else to fuel their fires.

Kinda feeling weird today. Detached, I guess, would be a good word. Unless I can think of a better one. Like I'm detached from myself and from the reality that's surrounding me.

I mean, I know that there's this big giant chunk of my life that, well, is no longer a part of my life. I know that I should still be upset about the loss that I'm experiencing, and I definitely still am upset. But, I'm not as upset as I should be. I dunno, maybe because the sadness that I should feel would simply be too much for me to bear. So, as a self-defense mechanism, I've detached myself.

Whatever works, I suppose. Whatever can get me through this. Eventually. Maybe.

I'm so tired all the time. What's up with that? I know that a big part of it is that I'm getting up at 5:00 every morning, but that can't be the only reason. I should be able to last beyond 8:30 or so at night without feeling like I'm about to fall over. There's probably some kind of clinical depression going on, what would be just my luck. Something else to be wrong with me.

I will be so glad when this month is over. November sucked, but I think December is shaping up to be much worse. Too many opportunities for me to think about how things might have been. Could have been. Should have been. Whatever.

I'll get over it. I always do.

I have no idea why, but I've managed to convince myself that I'm going to hear from them both today, and they're both going to be nice.

I'm actually sitting here excited about it.

Where did these stupid expectations come from?

I don't get it at all.

Very weird.

I'm going to end up feeling very disappointed later.

In other news, I forget what paragraphs are for.

I also seem to like ending sentences with prepositions.

I don't know what I'm doing. I don't think I've ever said that I did. What I've always said is that I'm just muddling through.

This is all just so weird to me. So unusual. So unexpected. So fucked up.

Things end all the time. I understand that. But how do they end when they never began? And how does that make it a million times worse?

How can I be so wrong about the one thing in my life that I was positive about? How could I get to this point? How could I let this happen?

I'm just trying to get my thoughts together, somehow, when I write crap like this. It's tough. My thoughts are all over the place.

I know what I want but I don't want to want it. I'm pretty sure I've said that before. It's not true, though. Sometimes I lie to myself. The truth is that I just don't want to be the only one who wants it. I'm so tired of being alone in this.

Expectations and hopes and desires can either be the best of friends or the worst of enemies. Circumstances vary. Sometimes circumstances crumble into dust. You deal with it. And, if you can't deal with it, then you do the best you can.

Sometimes it's all you can do to simply endure. You breathe. You try not to think. You muddle through as best as you can.

You make mistakes, and you hope that you're forgiven. You hope with all your heart that the bad times will end. You wait for them to end, somehow, and you don't even care how they end, as long as they end.

The old saying is that "God won't give you more than you can handle."

To that I always respond, "Tell that to my friend WomanRepellant."

I don't know what I'm doing. Everyone on Earth tells me to do one thing, but it's just not me. What's more important, to be true to myself, or to give myself a chance at a life?

I'm not sure that I made myself clear. It's not what a person does, it's what kind of person they are. And, often, actions are the main clue you get.

So you examine the actions or the words or whatever, and you interpret them. You form an opinion, based on the available evidence, as to what a person is really like. Sometimes you're wrong. Sometimes you're right. Sometimes you're right, but you wish you were wrong.

Anyway, an action - or a series of actions - doesn't have to be some big terrible thing. It doesn't even have to be bad at all to the other seven billion people on the planet - it only has to be bad to you. Bad enough to shift your opinion.

And so, my opinion shifted. That's all that happened. My feelings haven't changed one iota.

Maybe I'm wrong. I hope that I am, but I can't ignore the evidence that's been presented to me.

Not anymore.

Yesterday some of us at Rich O's were talking about this special evening from 2007. Talking about this one particular mean drunk got me thinking about mean drunks in general.

I bet we all know at least one person who fits that description. They get a few beers into them and suddenly they're Russell Crowe. They try to pick fights with strangers and friends alike. They take great exaggerated umbrage at the slightest little thing. They get loud(er) and obnoxious(er). They're always right about everything, and anyone who disagrees had better be ready for a confrontation.

They're no fun to be around. At all.

Fuck them.

I think that, if drinking turns you into an asshole, then maybe you shouldn't drink. Or at least not drink in public.

Now, I'm certainly not one of those bible-thumping anti-alcohol people. I think that anyone reading this has probably figured that out by now. I don't stand on a pulpit and, upon seeing someone drink a beer, scream "OMG alcoholic! Protect the children!"

But I do heartily support responsible drinking. And that doesn't just mean don't drink and drive or don't drink and perform open-heart surgery. It also means that, if drinking turns you into an asshole, then I think you should abstain.

Nobody likes you when you're like that. Nobody.

And, if anyone says that they do like you when you're like that, they're only saying it so they don't get punched in the face.

Okay, last one.

I think the thing I like about this one is that I did a nice job writing about it.

I only turned my back for a second, and they all died. All of the hot girls, dead.

This party had suddenly taken a very bad turn.

What could I have been thinking? Rat poison is, by definition, poison, and who was I to say which small amount might be safe and which would not? Which would bring a nice high and which would bring death?

As I moved my hand over their bodies to check for any remaining signs of life, of hope, it was as if darkness flowed out from my fingers and onto everything around me. I could no longer see their faces. This might normally have been considered a good thing, what with them being dead and all. But this time, this time it was not. For as I reached to check for a pulse, I instead found the toothy grimace of agonizing death, seemingly about to bite down and rip at my flesh. Instead of the faintest of breaths, I instead found hands contorted by pain into claws that seemed to grasp at me, as if to pull me in with them.

But it was only my imagination. The dead do not bite. The dead do not grasp.

The darkness flowing from me continued to spread. The lamp in the corner served only to illuminate itself - its light no longer reached the walls, or the floor, or the ceiling. Or the grotesque scene on the bed.

I knew that I had to get away from there, from that macabre display, from the darkness.

So I ran.

I ran, and the darkness continued to flow from my body. It became an expanding wake of nothingness which I pulled along behind me.

I ran faster.

I ran as fast as my legs would carry me, but it was not fast enough. I bent forward, and I began to use my arms as well. I dug my fingers into the ground and I pulled with my arms as mightily as I pushed with my legs. I became something else. Something no longer human. A beast. Running from darkness that I myself had created, that I myself continued to spread.

A moment of clarity struck me.

I stopped.

The darkness caught up with me, surrounded me, enveloped me. It began to contract and flow back into me.

As I stood, panting, in that shrinking circle of darkness, I saw lights in the distance.

Then I woke up.