I remember writing something, a long time ago. It wasn't here in this blog, I don't think. I think it was somewhere else. Somewhere that no longer exists.

There's a lot of that going around these days.

I went, in an instant, from feeling useful to feeling used, from feeling needed to feeling taken advantage of. That instant is when it happened. It was a Monday night when the walls of my false reality crumbled and crashed at my feet. March 23rd, 2009.

I lived in a place of hope, and dreams, and love. But it was all a lie.

I worry about the things I'll write when I feel like I have nothing left to lose. I wonder why I don't feel that way already. Perhaps there are still lies waiting to crumble.

Go here and read it.

I'm sure it doesn't seem like that big of a deal, to anyone close enough to me to know what's going on, or I guess what went on would be more accurate. These hypothetical friends and theoretical stalkers heard or read my tale, and they probably yawned a little.

Well, I was there. And I didn't fucking yawn.

It's all about context, see. One person's distraction can be another person's reason for living.

And now, those same friends and stalkers would probably expect me to be angry today, having been ever-so-briefly shown the light, only to be (apparently) thrust again into darkness.

Perhaps, soon, I will be angry again. But not today. Today, I'm mesmerized by the afterimages of what I saw.

I've got this annoying urge to write something this morning. I just feel like I should write something. Shit happens, and I write about it. That's the way it's supposed to work.

Well, some shit happened. And, like I said, I feel like I should write about it.

But I don't want to, at least not until I figured out exactly what happened. And definitely not until I figure out if it was a good thing or not.

I guess I can say that I don't think I'm as sad as I was a couple of days ago, and a couple of weeks ago, and a couple of months ago, and a couple of years ago. At least, I don't think I am. I dunno. Maybe I'm worse.

Oooh! I just thought of something!

There's a tornado inside my head!

So there.

The last few times that I've awakened so suddenly and been unable to get back to sleep, it's been a little different. The last few times, I've known exactly what it was that woke me up.

Either a stray thought, or a snippet of a dream, about the one person in all this who is truly innocent. I have my thought or my dream-snippet, and it latches onto my brain and simply will not let go. Its claws grab hold and, for minutes or hours, my brain simply isn't capable of any other thought.

Maybe this is progress, this knowing. Hard to tell, maybe this is just the eye of the storm.

I'm not sure. It feels better to know, even though these thoughts keep me just as awake as all of the unknown torment did before it. At least this is reasonable. At least this is expected. At least this is normal.

I think that the thing is, out of all the anger and the sadness and the longing that I've done, there's one thing that I don't think anyone could begrudge me for doing.

I miss that kid, and it's perfectly reasonable for me to do so. If I didn't miss him, I don't think I'd be human.

So Sunday morning I found myself afflicted with a bad case of wanderlust. I didn't really know where I wanted to go, I just knew it had to be somewhere that wasn't New Albany. I looked at Nashville and Indianapolis and even Chicago, but eventually decided on Covington. It's not a big city, but it's got everything I need, especially distance from home.

I called KittenDamsel and invited her along. She declined, saying she'd had a long night. Then she said she might drive up there and meet me. I took this as "No way am I going to Covington" because that's how my brain works. Oh well. More beer for me then.

First thing I needed to do, however, was buy a laptop. I'll need this for when I travel, whether it's for work or play. When my former employer eliminated my position, they had the nerve to take their company-owned laptop back. Imagine that. So I stopped at Best Buy, looked at their selection, and bought an el-cheapo Compaq that would suit my meager needs. Thusly armed, I drove to Covington. It's only a two-hour drive.

After I'd arrived, and updated RockGirl with my location - RockGirl knows everything about my life - I settled into my usual Covington routine. I checked into the Holiday Inn, threw my shit into the room, and walked across the street to Skyline Chili for lunch. Yummy. Then I walked up to The Cock & Bull for a couple pints of yummy Moerlein OTR (463). While I was there, drinking my beer and watching a baseball game on TV, KittenDamsel called and said she was on her way. Yay!

I had some time to kill, so I went back to the hotel and messed with my new laptop for a while until KittenDamsel arrived. She wanted to hear polka music for some stupid reason, so we drove over to the Hofbrauhaus in nearby Newport and had dinner. I don't like that place. Not only is it too loud, it's too loud with polka music. The food was good, though.

After dinner, we walked across this purple bridge spanning the Ohio River, and dicked around there for a while. Then we drove back to the hotel, parked, and walked up to the MainStrasse area where all the bars are. After that the night got a little blurry. I know that I had three more OTRs (523) and a couple Newcastles (13818) as we walked around to various bars and clubs. It was a nice warm night, but not too warm. It was almost perfect, in fact. Especially the company. We drank too much, but neither of us got sick, so that was good.

Monday morning we were both a little hung-over. Not surprising. What was surprising was that KittenDamsel wanted to go to King's Island, a local amusement park. She'd already called in sick, and I certainly didn't have any reason come home right away, so to King's Island we went.

This was the first time I'd been there since I was 14 or so. It's much bigger now, and maybe not as crowded, and there were no dinosaurs to be seen. It was a fun few hours, except for that last roller coaster that went upside-down and made me queasy.

It was a really nice time up there. I'm really glad that I went, and I'm really glad that KittenDamsel could make it. She almost managed to distract me from thoughts of LaptopGirl. Almost. And I think I almost managed to distract her from thoughts of her ex-boyfriend. Almost.

It was kinda weird to spend all that time with her and then have to drive home separately, but oh well.

Oh yeah, I also bought a case of OTR and brought it home. So that gives me something to look forward to.