I've had this thought sliding around in my head for a few days. It's a slippery bastard, though, and I never can seem to maintain a grip on it. Long enough to recognize it, but not long enough to really get a good look. I suspect that, eventually, this thought will be captured and dissected into a blog entry. But not today.

---

I'm at Denny's again this morning. I got here late, for me. It's 7:15 as I write this sentence. I guess I timed things just right, as I pretty much have the place to myself. I see an elderly couple out front. I bet they're going to church when they leave here. I hope they find what they're looking for.

---

KittenDamsel and I were supposed to go to Covington last night. But then I was reminded that there was a party at my sister's house, for my niece and her fiancé. So I went there instead. KittenDamsel didn't want to go because, she said, she wouldn't know anyone. Well, out of the 7.5 million people there, I only knew perhaps a dozen. Maybe I'll go to Covington today. Maybe she'll take Monday off and come with me. Maybe pigs will fly. We'll see.

---

I wonder what time Home Depot opens. I could buy some 4x4s and some Quickrete and work on my swing. I can't believe I've let it go this long, but I guess I've been distracted. I've never done anything with concrete before. I'm afraid I'll make a mistake and get trapped somehow. A permanent monument to my own ineptitude.

---

I guess there's just no way that I can go anywhere without running away from here. I'm coming to grips with that. I can run, perhaps because I must run. The thought of running away is not what's giving me pause. Nope, it's the stark realization that, by running somewhere else, I'd also be giving up on here. That's what scares me. I'm just not ready to give up, and I fear that I never will be ready.

I've written before that I think fate is a silly concept, but I just can't shake this feeling, this certainty, that there's a reason for all this. A reason that I'm sitting at a Denny's early on a Sunday morning and thinking about her, missing her. This series of events and emotions that was set into motion all those years ago, there is a reason. I just don't know what that reason is. Perhaps its purpose is to destroy me.

So far, so good.

---

The crowd is starting to pour in now. More church people, I bet. I guess it's nice to have faith in something. I can't say that their faith is any more misplaced than my own.

I'm at Denny's again. Couldn't sleep again.

DoableGirl is back. I bet she was hoping I'd be here.

This insomnia is getting very annoying. The hours and days and weeks blur together, just like all of my thoughts. I don't see how, but I'm somehow managing to survive on two or three hours of sleep every day. And sometimes less than that. I wish I could say that I'm getting a lot done, that I'm taking full advantage of all the extra time I have, but I'm not. Unless you count shooting pool. I'm doing a lot of that. But of course I suck because I'm so damn tired.

I wonder what DoableGirl's problems are. I'm sure she's got some. She's not perfect like I am, totally unencumbered by any baggage whatsoever.

It's too early to be writing this. I should wait. I should go back out into my garage and have another Marzen and then write this drivel.

But I'm inside now. And my garage is all the way out there.

Screw it. I'm going back outside. Nobody wanted to read unpolished bullshit anyway.

I have this thing that I used to do, years ago. I used to write something every night, before I went to bed. MixedSignalGirl was my muse, back then, though my own thoughts and feelings certainly put their two cents' worth in whenever the pressure became too great.

Now, I'm certainly not saying that I'm going to go back to writing something every day. I've said that before, and I've always failed to live up to that promise. But what I am saying is that I'll do better than I've done in the recent past.

---

Tonight I was thinking, as I'm so wont to do. Thinking was, as it has always been, a bad thing for me to do.

I was thinking about invitations. Invitations that I've received and invitations I've merely wanted to receive. And I was thinking about what my responses would be. And I was surprised and irritated at some of the realizations I made.

I would still, for example and after everything, rather simply hang out with the girl I love than fuck anyone else.

I've known this, on a subconscious level, for months. But tonight, it really seemed like a choice I might have to make. And, tonight, I once again realized that there would be no real choice.

---

I tried to be nice. I actually think that I was nice. But it was for naught. I was accused of being mean, basically. Of being an asshole. That same old assumption still ruled, and fuck the truth and the horse it rode in on.

Well, news flash; I'm not an asshole. And neither is the horse. It's a really nice horse, actually.

---

So then I made a phone call. I asked KittenDamsel straight-out. Her answer surprised me very much. If I go, then she'll go. She'll go and then we'll see what transpires.

There's this thing called faith, see. Not the religious kind, but faith in a person's goodness. I have it. KittenDamsel has it. HatGirl certainly has it. And certain others don't have it. Oh well.

That old saying, better safe than sorry, is all well and good except when it becomes the primary driving force for a life.

Safe, far too often, leads to sorry.

Failure to take any kind of real chance is, quite simply, a failure to live.

I'm at Denny's again. It's 5:15 Thursday morning as I write this sentence. I'm once again wide awake. I still feel like writing - I even blew the cobwebs off my notebook and brought it along - but I still don't have a topic.

I suppose I'll just wing it.

It's much more crowded here now than it was yesterday morning. Not that crowded is at all a fair or accurate word to describe things here now.

Yesterday some hippie dude and I had the entire place to ourselves. Now, there are five of us in the smoking section, and another half-dozen or so in the main eating area. The same hippie dude is here again. Or maybe he's stillhere. I never saw him leave, and he's sitting in the same place he sat yesterday. He's got his laptop and his paperwork scattered all over his table. He's here for the long haul, I suspect.

Moving my gaze around the room clockwise, I next see two old guys, sitting at different tables but each possessed of the same blank stare.

And, directly in front of me at the next table, there's a girl. There's always a girl in my stories, it seems. This particular girl smiled at me when I came in, and I smiled back. Now she's reading on her laptop and I'm looking at the back of her head and trying to remember how pretty she is. Tall, thin, with short brown hair pulled into a ponytail of sorts. Definitely doable, I think, though of course I'll be doing no such thing.

---

Food was good as always. I didn't eat it all, though. Perhaps my appetite has gone the way of my sleepiness. Oh well.

While I ate what I ate and picked at what I didn't eat, one of the vacant-eyed old guys left and the other one got himself a female companion. His wife or girlfriend, I suspect. Good for him.

Also, two youngish guys arrived, and now they sit in the corner booth talking to each other quietly but not quietly enough to keep from disturbing the ambience of this place at this hour.

The hippie dude is still typing away, and the pretty girl is still reading away.

Me?

I'm scribbling away in my notebook, of course. What a silly question.

---

It's 6:00 now, and the sky is starting to lighten. Though I can't hear them, I'm sure that birds are out there tweeting and whistling. And, I imagine, alarm clocks are going off all over the place as normal people begin their days.

I'll be going home soon, though I don't know why. I guess to type this entry into my computer. Not to sleep, that's for sure. I'm having lunch with HatGirl in six hours, and I can't risk missing that. I've flaked on her far too often lately.

I don't know why I go home at all anymore except to take care of my cats.

I've found that, for the last several weeks, that damn place nearly suffocates me with its emptiness. So I leave, all the time. I go to wherever there are people. Not to engage in any conversations, but instead to leverage the pressure of societal expectations as a crutch, to keep myself from falling over, or as a tight wrap, to keep myself from falling apart.

These people who I don't know and don't really care to know, they're some of my best friends lately. I should put them on my Christmas card list, thought of course I have no such list.

---

Well, DoableGirl has packed up her stuff and gone off to wherever girls like her go at times like this.

I suppose that's as good a cue for me to leave as I'm going to get.

I decided sometime this afternoon that I needed to write something relevant. Something to, perhaps, entice the last stragglers into sticking around this blog a little longer. One such entry follows. Don't read it if you don't like relevant things. This means you, by the way.

It should have been me.

I've said and wrote and felt those words so many times over the last several months, and it's pretty much the one thought that's remained consistent throughout all of this bullshit that I've used instead of a life.

It should have been me. Never before and, I hope with all of my heart, never again, will I ever be so certain about something. Certainty is fine and good, by the way, until it blows up in your face and splatters god-knows-what (certainty guts?) all over you.

I want to know where I messed up. I want to know what I did wrong. I want - no, scratch that - I need to know what was wrong with me.

There. That's relevant.

But wait!

There's more.

I see four options, if I squint my eyes just so and tilt my head at just the right angle. Four.

There should be one. That's all I've ever had, after all, since that unknown evening in the Fall of 2003.

Anyway, nothing, less, same, more.

Those are the options.

We've tried nothing. I've lived with nothing for almost two months now. It's damn near killed me. It may still kill me, if I'm lucky. Better that than to die alone and unloved in my fucking sleep in forty fucking years. A broken heart is a pretty noble way to die, I think.

More, well that is the only option that my heart has ever let me consider. Unfortunately, it's not up to me, or the choice would have been made a long time ago.

Same simply cannot happen. It was an untenable situation, and we witnessed the proof, as everything that we had toppled and shattered and scattered at our feet because of our stupid feelings and our stupid prides and our stupid fears, despite our stupid blindness and our stupid lack of acceptance and our stupid stubbornness

So now we're stuck with less. Exactly how much less isn't up to me, and I'm glad that it's not. Because I'm not up to the task of deciding. I'm still, after all these minutes and hours and days and weeks and months since everything fell apart, I'm still not capable of separating the fantasy of what I feel from the reality of what I see.

And I really don't think that I'll ever be capable. Nor do I want the job.

Cool. A relevant entry with not just one, but two relevant subjects. That ought to keep people around for a while longer.

Now I have a decision to make.

I bought cold Barley Island Barfly, introduced to me by LaptopGirl and very good even though it is an IPA. I also bought warm Left Hand Smoke Jumper, a yummy smoked porter that is actually what I went into the store to buy in the first place.

So, I could drink some Barfly right now, even though it's not really what I wanted, and even though it might make me think sad thoughts. At least it's cold and ready to drink.

Or, I could wait another hour or so for the Smoke Jumper to get cold enough.

This is a tough decision. I think I need a drink while I try to decide.