After putting a few miles on a bike with a freewheel, it usually takes me a block or two for the muscle memory to revert to sustained pedaling when I get on one of my fixed bikes. I was looking forward to the IRO, my daily bike, after the weight of the Volpe and everything on it. I tend to over pack. The funny surprise was standing up and my body wanting to throw the bike over sideways from being used to managing the weight on the Volpe whiplashing back and forth this weekend. For a while, I couldn’t even notice there was a bike under me. I want to lay down and hug it right now.

I’m ready to get to work, but I woke up with so many thoughts that I had to take notes to remember them all.

Father saying “I know you did.” is still resonating in me. My mind pictures a galaxy of bits of feeling suddenly being sucked together into a solid mass. I’m still tempted to bold “know” but then feel it doesn’t capture it. I want to bold more words, and notice I’m considering setting the entire thing to bold and realize that the words don’t convey how it made me feel. Which is why the words are resonating in me, it’s literally the feelings that they invoke that are resonating. For my father, who took little interest in my dating life, to pick up on the importance of this person to me, is simply striking. It’s not that it was really a secret, or difficult to notice. I had a hard time keeping my mouth shut about how I felt. But it’s particularly meaningful to me coming from my father.

Waking up early despite being up until two or so in the morning while camping made me open my blinds before going to bed last night. I didn’t get the seven or eight hours of sleep I usually aim for, but I woke up with a lot on my mind and in my heart and after a couple minutes knew it was an exercise in futility to try to go back to sleep for a little longer. I’m still waking up with a pretty upset stomach and it takes a little time (and maybe the couple Tums I take in reaction now) for it to settle down. Yesterday was more difficult, because of the mishmash of food and booze that I had put in my system throughout the course of the day. The feeling of wanting to vomit is getting too common. I consider that I should cut back on soda, coffee, alcohol, and get some solid food into me one meal at a time, but many of my actions right now are a crutch to get me through this, and I’m reluctant to get up on the table and start chastising myself for these things because I understand why I’m leaning on them.

I’ve been thinking off and on about the appropriate way to deal with how I feel. I made some overly emotion fueled attempts to get answers. This was a bad choice. I’ve always thought that trying to communicate when angry was a bad idea, because you’ll say things that aren’t exactly what you mean or how you feel. I see now that trying to communicate when emotional at all is risky. This shift also brings into focus that you can’t simply walk away when you’re too upset to deal with a problem at the moment. I leaned in that direction in years past, because I was overly focus on allowing my anger to subside before trying again. With so many emotions at play in the circumstance though, one can’t really wait that long. Dad, after disclaiming that he wasn’t trying to place any blame, offered that she had over committed herself, and that maybe she likes living that way. There was no presumption in his voice, and therefore the disclaimer wasn’t necessary, but it renewed thoughts about how I ended up here. My desire to understand is still usually undermined by the acknowledgement that none of this is understandable alone, and I am severed.

I’m not sure it’s worth arguing, or outlining even, if this is really for the best. It’s common and easy to jump to the conclusion that distance is best because it reduces the amount of reminders that trigger feelings. This is clearly negated by the regular reminders that my heart derives from connecting the smallest event in a day to a emotion filled memory. With her priorities being what they are, it’s likely best to minimize this at whatever cost.

I’m still troubled by that. Even with the above in mind, I’m tempted to explain why this happened this way. I want to be able to say something like “the feelings were too much for her and she ran away from me”, and have all of this be that simple. It isn’t, it won’t. This kind of rationalizing feels common in people to me, but I still believe firmly that what was between us was special. Because of that, there’s a touch of magic in it that I had no desire to explain at the time and in deconstructing the tragedy I have to acknowledge and let lay.

I’ve been unwilling in the past to let go of commitments. This was incapacitating a couple of times, and through process, I’ve learned to deal with it better. How we react to expectations, or assumed expectations is likely telling in some way. I think we have a tendency to believe what we want, because we need to order the world in such a way that makes some sense to us. There is of course, no “right way” for everyone to live, to feel, and to deal with the combination of the two.  There are the ways that we have convinced ourselves that we must act to cope, and it’s likely this is really a staged event for our own benefit. So be it. “I have to do this, even thought I don’t want to…” should be a warning sign to ourselves to stop, breathe, and evaluate importance at least.

I feel a little silly reading about love on wikipedia, but there are things written there that I feel parallel my feelings that are expressed in a way that’s less tainted by my emotions. “Because of the complex and abstract nature of love, discourse on love is commonly reduced to a thought-terminating cliché…” I had to click on the link, and I had to laugh due to the swell of completely getting this and not realizing it had been said so clearly before somewhere that was so accessible.

I have to drop this portion,

A thought-terminating cliché is a commonly used phrase, sometimes passing as folk wisdom, used to quell cognitive dissonance. Though the phrase in and of itself may be valid in certain contexts, its application as a means of dismissing dissention or justifying fallacious logic is what makes it thought-terminating.

The term was popularized by Robert Jay Lifton in his book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism. Lifton said, “The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”

My thoughts about my parents lack of anything to say other than “Yeah, sorry” when I know that they’re deep and alive people (or were) have been intertwined with a bit of confusion as a result. This is a missing piece of a puzzle that’s sitting half completed inside of me.

Nearly twenty-seven years of being told I think too much just came to a head in that paragraph and brought me to tears. With this shift, my feelings have been reordered. I feel, exonerated, for feeling so much love and the world making me feel broken because of it. I’m going to end on that, despite having a couple more notes. (There’s been a minor attempt at organizing these thoughts to be fluid. My mind tends to wander as I’ve been writing, so they aren’t necessarily in the order they were written in).

I can’t help it,

So I would choose to be with you
That’s if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

I’ve thought a little be more about the hope inside me that she’ll miss me and decide life is too short to live each day without your heart. Or, I don’t know how to say that right and unbiased. Whiskey and Co. has some lyrics about staying up with a bottle waiting for a call, and while I’m not laying in bed drinking (I’ve drew some pretty hard lines years ago in regards to drinking due to the pain of growing up with my father’s drinking) these words still touch me in a place of relating.

Upon coming to terms with the reality that these feelings are not going anywhere, I found a little nest in there for this hope and stopped chastising myself for it so much because I see it comes from having these good feelings about her.

I’ve had a few people close to me in life that had pretty strong feelings, or, perhaps.. ideas about music. I’ve generally identified these people by how high their eyebow raises when they find out what I listen to. It’s as if they expected from who I was, that I’d have better taste. I’ve been turning to lyrics a lot lately for comfort, to feel connected, and a sliver of confirmation that I’m not alone or crazy in the way I feel. Not that I worry how I feel is wrong, but sometimes I feel like I’m alone in feeling it. I could post a good dozen paragraphs (meh) right now that I identify with. I won’t though. I did that once already in an email. I’ll just listen now. Even if the lyrics are a production and not a single person’s feelings that I can identify with… they are surely the sum of a group’s real feelings. Most importantly though, is that the words are a catalyst striking parts of me in the right way. They fit how I feel, and there’s beauty in that.

Ben Country was pretty great, will elaborate on the great. 120ish miles. I’m not… motivated to upload photos or look at my actual mileage (via gmaps-pedometer) today. The Nice Rack was, nice. On the ride out I had the panniers on it, and it was too much forward weight so I dealt with them on the back on the return trip, which was as lame as it used to be. I’ll have to get another set of smaller panniers and balance out the weight in the future. Otherwise the Volpe held up well. I’m pretty happy with it as a touring bike, although the front derailleur needs tuning. I knew this, and keep forgetting every time I ride it.

I came home and unpacked before the down pour, ate a little, and found myself severely depressed. I headed to my room to start writing this, only to find my off handed attempts at upgrading the laptop to Jaunty still haven’t been completed and left the laptop in an usable state. I’m fixing it now, as I get my mind started on writing.

This just showed up in my friend Annie’s blog. Proof that synchronicity/jesus/coincidence is real.

I must learn to love the fool in me – the one who feels too much, talks to much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool. — Theodore Isaac Rubin

So how do I normally make decisions.

I’m against setting anything in stone, and usually reluctant to have an strong opinion. In the past I’ve had strong opinions about hobbies or beliefs that I felt strongly about. I wasn’t devoid of opinions, as I was sometimes accused of, I lacked opinions regarding subjects that on average others had opinions about; music, politics and the like. As time has gone on, I’ve started expressing myself more and more. I’ve been overcoming the fear that I’d be judged into an steel box with never an exit due to something I had said, by telling myself that those people that would do such a thing are not people whose opinions of me I’m at all interested in. That’s worked.

With hobbies, these are things I have experience with. There’s lots of information out there, facts and other people’s experiences from which to make a judgement on. I excel at this skill and use it not only daily in my life, but it’s core to what I do for work. I’ve mentioned in the past that I should have an AA in interpreting google results. With information and experiences absorbed, I go forth with my opinions. Like most, I realize I don’t like being wrong, so I’m reluctant to express opinions when I feel like there’s a good chance I’m wrong. This isn’t a great trait, although it is common. I think it’s better than those that express themselves and assume they’re right. But that’s really neither here nor there.

Almost all of my decisions over the last week have been made from my gut. Not in a trust your gut reaction or instincts way, but I’ve really gone with whatever I’ve felt like at the time. I’m pretty sure this was a mistake. I’ve apologized for it at least once since. As always, I did what I felt was right at the time, so I’m not kicking myself over it, but in retrospect it wasn’t right. Mostly because I’ve selfishly laid my feelings out on people who didn’t ask for them, or it was inappropriate to give them too.

On ranting

This was substantially made worse by how emotional I’ve been. It’s too easy from the way I write to interpret something I say when venting to how I really believe. That’s been my justification and back patting reasoning for being okay with the consequences of what I’ve written. This is a cop-out. More thought should have gone into my writing lately. Again, I’m not hard on myself about it. It’s expected that I’m upset, it’s normal. Perhaps my level of emotion has been above average, but I am more emotional than average, which forms an obvious connection.

An ex-girlfriend who I don’t talk about dating with asked me how I was doing at one point. The chat logs are on a windows computer at work, and my pipe is too filled with ubuntu packages at the moment to use remote desktop and not hurt a computer accessory with frustration, but I’ll summarize. I made reference to things I shouldn’t talk about being upsetting and she said that I always hint more than I need to and that I should just say “bad day”. This is the same thing, I say too much sometimes because I’m feeling directly and not thinking. Ranting is still fine, this specifically is a personal journal despite being public if anyone cares enough, but this is about more than just this journal.

Getting it

It’s hard putting yourself in other people’s shoes. There’s a bunch of reference to the sexism of Point83, colloquially called Datey3. I bounced my thoughts about this off Mom and/or Tori recently. If you break this down into “People who ride for bikes” or “People that ride for dates”, there’s this idea that if you’re a guy, you’re there for bikes first and any dating is a side effect because you’re just a guy. However if you’re a girl, there’s a strong push that you’re probably there for the boys. This seems pretty squarely an extension of the difficult “guys score, girls are sluts” conundrum.

Some girls rebel against this strongly. Some don’t. I have a hard time because I didn’t grow up with any (much?) negative bias due to my gender. Of course it’s not so black and white, but if you toss this out without seeing the inherent difficulty with it, you’re probably one of the people that makes the problem worse. Which doesn’t make you a terrible person, you just haven’t gotten it. And maybe you should. Or maybe, it’s not a huge deal. Anyway, I’ve put some time into thinking about this, because I think getting it may explain some other things to me.

There’s some of this in why L and I didn’t tell most of the bike kids we know that we were dating. In my emotional outburst after she broke up with me I mentioned it here without thinking, and now regret that because I realize I don’t fully empathize with the situation. I’m not interested in what good or bad judgements folks will fill their head with in response to this information, but I’m advantaged or entitled, and judged less, so it goes. I’m lacking the exact right word there.

The thin line between thinking and feeling

There’s this bridge between the two called empathy. Having gone through something similar to someone else, can make you feel empathetic towards them. Failing that, thinking about the situation for a while I think you can make connections that still lead to empathy, but it is sort of like a maze.

It’s pretty easy, as I expressed above, to feel without thinking, and to write about how you feel without thinking about it. I worry about people a lot that think without feeling, that remove the humanity from a problem in an academic crusade. So there we have two ends of the spectrum.

I’m pretty sure, and hopeful, that thinking about this more will slowly lead to being better at identifying where I lay on that spectrum at any given moment

Looking the other way

A friend this weekend that knew I had been dumped asked me if I was “pretty broken up”, which I responded with a sad “yeah.” I got a hug out of it, which was sweet and comforting. I’ve been needing a lot of hugs lately. Later in another discussion it was mentioned that “the best way to get over someone is to get on top of someone.” More on that later, but there’s been much talk about what I amount to distractions, filling my time and mind with activities and other thoughts.

I was in decent spirits when I got home, but immediately noticed the depression hit and came to the conclusion that as great as it was seeing friends this weekend, and making friends earlier this week, they are distractions, and not replacements. My sadness is still there, I’m just not thinking about it at the moment, and only time may ease all of this.

I had my regular conversation with my father today and told him about AwfulWeek. When he expressed his sympathy about the breakup, I said, “It’s hard, I really liked that girl.” and he said “I know you did.” Pow. I often tell stories about my dad specifically not wanting to hear about many personal things when I was younger to express the odd walls between us, because of his heart. I attacked this like it was the tearing down of the Berlin wall on a couple of occasions when I was dating Maria, which culminated in him crying over the phone once about loving me and it being too much for him and how we should talk about it when I’m home some time. That hasn’t happened yet, but I knew I had gone too far. Since then, most our chatter about dating has been offhand, but at least present now. The way he said “I know you did.” ripped me apart then, and does to recall now. I can’t think of a way of bolding specific words in that short sentence to convey how it hit me. For my father to express that means in my voice alone he picked up on how much she meant to me, understood it, and was empathetic about it. It opens up more in my mind about who my father was, and who he is, compared to what I’ve painted him out to be in mind. It’s also telling how much of my intentions he picked up from my voice, he being someone who knows me well and has always expressed that I have good judgement.

What to do with the grief

I’m lucky if I can go thirty minutes without thinking about her. Some thoughts touch me in relatively minor ways. That is, the feelings that it invokes aren’t too deeply rooted, like seeing a train go by and associating trains with her love for them. Others are moderately difficult, like seeing a child in a stroller today that reminded me of Nolan and recalled the way she moves when she’s being goofy, which I thought was wonderful and held close to my heart. Some are simply devastating, like the focus of the camping trip this weekend being on Ben’s birthday, which is the same day as mine. How much I was looking forward to my birthday, simply because she was in my life and I knew that she would make me feel special. Part of this is probably because my birthdays are essentially meaningless to me. One of my great grandmothers died expectedly on my birthday a couple years back, and now my counselor’s death will be remembered as the day after my birthday, and these two anniversaries touch me more than my own. Looking forward to my birthday was deeply meaningful, because I felt that way for the first time. Also, Star Trek opens the day after my birthday, which I am looking forward to and was excited to take her to.

My response to these has been varied. It’s relative to the above. I’ve tried socializing (with drinking), talking to my mother or Tori about it to let the feelings out, venting by writing whatever comes to mind, even if it’s wrong or bullshit. Sometimes I actually tell myself to ‘fuck off’ outloud if it’s minor enough, probably out of frustration due to the regularlity of the memories. It’s worse when I’m trying to sleep and I’m not particularly tired.

So far I’ve been writing until four in the morning when I’m tired, but that writing has been strikingly unconstructive and hurtful overall. It also messes up my day pretty well. I’m still waking up sick most mornings, drinking aside. I’m not at ease, stressed and upset, so it’s too be expected. I’m not used to my emotions physically affecting me in such a clearly negative way in the past though. Except for anxiety, on second though.

I’ve tried to rationalize it. I have an email draft from last week of notes and questions I wanted to ask her before we broke up, and some sent emails and posts since then of questions that were more the product of pain than progress. These aren’t going to go anywhere, as I decided contacting her was a mistake because it invokes feelings for her and disturbs her ability to deal with the problems and goals in her life that she decided were more important than our relationship. I also did a really poor job of putting thought into the whole process and most of what I’ve said was a fault before it made it over the net. Again, the reckless emotion is the cause, but I should have held myself to a higher and less self involved standard. To be safe, my last email expressed that she should call me if/when she wants to talk, and I intend to try very hard to hold that line. All the same, I still incessantly check my phone and my email with far more hope that she would that seems likely the combination after my failures, her personality, and her communicated priorities. “Lonely. Wishing you were here tonight. Too many words were said, you closed the door and turned out the light.”

I’m unsure of what to do with that hope. There’s nothing to indicate it would ever happen, excluding that we broke up due to timing, and not because she lacks feelings for me. Which, perhaps, is an overly simplified falsehood, due to my lack of clear understanding of how I ended up where I am. On deeper thought, I risk that has devolved to a fondness and closeness. Hearts work differently… more on that elsewhere. That hope is a feeling, as such I can’t really change my mind about it. But like I started to mention, there’s no reason it would ever happen, let alone anytime soon enough to change how I’m going to have to deal with all of this alone for a while. To remove that hope, I’d have to do something destructive to the reasons I have it, which is it’s own thought.

Sex has always been a pretty personal thing for me. Partially due to growing up with a number of insecurities about it, partially due to it generally being an deeply emotional experience. All the same, my heart and my libido aren’t always on the same page. I’ve sarcastically refered to this in the past with friends as my desire to impregnate the world. Because of these under-explored reasons, it’s super risky to consider that having a sexual relationship or encounter would positively affect how I’m feeling as implied by others. I realize I’m different because of this… so it goes. I seem to get this sort of “it’s not you, it’s me” statement, put other ways of course, as that would be earth shatteringly cliche. This is followed by supportive statements of how great I am. I feel like any feelings of my self-worth being low are pretty minimal. It’s not that on the whole I feel unwanted, it’s that I feel rejected by someone special whose acceptance [something more than that] is very important to me. You can’t replace this with someone else’s feelings, or the implication that someone else should have those feelings. Again, it’s not that I feel like or believe that I’m a loser, it’s not being important to someone to whom I want to be. Anyway, sex without feeling, or sex without love [I need to talk about this word a lot somewhere] is a distraction. An intense one, no doubt, but I’d be a fool to think it’s somehow magically going to resolve troubling feelings.

After writing this section for a while, I realize I have no answers. There aren’t any new ones really. Time to mend my heart, or the characteristics of the situation changing (namely her expressing an interest in talking to me about all of this) are the only options. Perhaps I should have used the verb coping. It’s newly obvious to stop involving her in this process until[if] she chooses it. As well, to spend less time venting and more time making solid attempts to organize my feelings. Coping really has become “doing what has to be done”, as I’ve expressed in the past I had a distaste for because it feels less like living and more like dealing with life. There’s a compromise in that really, a middle ground. Really, I’m talking about not letting too much fall apart while enough time passes. I’ve forgiven myself already for some of what I let slip through the cracks. I hold my feelings for her in high regard and refuse to diminish(?) them or tarnish my memories to try to form angsty excuses about how its someone else’s fault. If there’s anything talking to my parents about this has made me realize fully, it is that life really is difficult and there is no easy way out of that. There is no magic answer that you believe they have when you’re younger and more naive (or at least, if you have awesome parents like I do and don’t assume you’ve transcended them from the start).

Part two, love and the fool

Getting back to Annie’s quote. I’ve oft been accused that I can’t love someone I don’t know [haven’t known for a decent amount of time], and as such folks have been weary of the honesty and integrity of my emotions. My girls (Mom and Tori) provided some insight, that women tend to have to be more sceptical of these things because of the occurrence of men being manipulative in this manner. I have this story of once sitting on the floor next to an ex-girlfriend at a friends house, and her later commenting on how glad she was that I was “willing to put myself beneath her”. She had to explain this to me, because the reality of power struggles simply did not exist in my world. Similarly, one of my first dates in Seattle made a joke (comment?) about how we were hanging out in a dark park and that was inherently dangerous to do with someone she just me. This thought, while it made sense when it expressed, simply didn’t enter my mind, and was just as reshaping. That I could be anything but honest about how exactly I felt, was an implication too far from where I was starting for it to come to me naturally.

I’ve argued in the past that emotions don’t translate to words well because we have to try to apply societal labels to feelings that don’t come with words. I suppose I respect and to some agree acknowledge the studies of love, I’m approaching this from another direction. I know how I feel, in the language of feelings. My trouble is translating this to the language of english. I’m okay with that not being that possible, I’ve embraced that some time ago. This generally isn’t enough in a relationship though, enter the struggle. I’m not particularly motivated to continue this paragraph. I don’t find it that important when I’m single, as this is an interpersonal problem and thus not something I can make a lot of progress on alone.

I feel like that quote says most of what I’d want to say here, but only because I can identify with it. It’s another way of saying what Mom has said about having feelings and struggling with them being better than not having them at all. Being the loving person that I am puts life into me. Without it, I’m a tool, meaning that I am without humanity. I can understand being hesitant or reluctant in regards to my love [or my emotions or your choice of label for this]. Without the weakness, you can’t have the strength. This struggle is eternal, and it’s why I’m sitting here. I feel like it’s too much to compare it to the saying that you can’t have good without evil, but it’s my love that rises me above to do great things.

How did the accident happen?

Rationalizing the events… Doing this without her seems a waste. Sometimes it feels like an effort to convince myself that she made the choice for a reason beyond me, and therefore it shouldn’t bother me. Now that I write this, I recognize memories of it’s futility. My thoughts can not control my feelings, it generally works the other way around. Father immediately commented on her busyness, acknowledging it, accepting it, in a direct and surprising way [from him] that simultaneously trashed the implication of fault without even mentioning it. As it should be.

As such, I think I’m giving up on trying to make sense of why I’ve been left. The only remaining reason I can think of would be to help her, and I’m no longer in a position to be supportive.

I’ll probably think about this more all the same though out of my natural desire to help, even though I’m not in a position to anymore.

More coping

I’ve been drinking coffee to stay awake to get this out, so I’m going to have to cut myself short(!) soon. Summaries…

I’m looking for more outlets for my feelings that have limited backscatter. The xkcd mashup was good. I lack any artistic skills to being being expressive that way, so it’s likely this will continue to be central to that effort.

I’ve thought a little about what exactly I’ve lost. I’d love to write about this more. I tried to express this in an email, but feel unsuccessful about it. On one hand, it may be a little late for this to matter, but there’s a route to the source through this thought process. At the source, I think there’s a better understanding of why I value a relationship in a way that I feel is difficult/awkward for others to understand/accept, and some clues as to the meaning of life [in a totally achievable definition pointing to what’s important and how to live]. See earlier conversation about distrust of my love and feelings.

Okay, out of time, need to attempt to get some rest. I feel much better about this post than any other recent ones.

it’s good to ride bike and be amongst friends. huh. can’tg see the whole text box. will be brief.

there’s proven to be no constructive outlet for my feelings. perhaps believing there could be was misguided. i realize i’m resorting to only being expressive to vent and dull the pain now.

that’s okay. i feel hurt and alone still. my heart feels betrayed and there attempts at rationalizing why this happend are futile.

As i examine and pack up my camping gear, i’s a metaphor for my heart; to be put away until it’s prudent and useful again

that’s exaggerated and heavy, i know. but my partner in these feelings has left me alone and i feel like i’m wandering lost and hurt.

too unfortunate, sad and betrayed.

*sad face*

Eeek. So much raw unbridled emotion. I finally got enough out last night to fall asleep, but I don’t think it did anyone any good other than getting me to sleep. I suppose it’s something I can go back to read and assess when I’m feeling better. Heh, “feeling better”, oh the irony. Sometimes, I wonder if I should talk at all, because I feel like I’m not understood. Then, I’m staring at the coffee pot, not understanding what I’m forgetting, and I think about how unfortunate understanding is, and how easily we get it wrong.

And in a surge of empathy for everyone I’ve ever dated, I’m lying in my bed crying at 8am. Last night when I woke up my mother she made a comment about my feeling helpless and that I still got to decide what actions I take with my emotions. Well, I’m not doing anyone any good, including myself. Back to self introspection I suppose. It still feels like such a waste regardless of the reality of it being appropriate or not. I want to hug my father. I want to tell everyone else that it will be okay.

I’ve never had to deal with this much emotion before. I’m completely lost about what to do with it.

Mom and Tori relate, and say to give it time. I worry about the incapacitating nature of it. I’m sleeping with a trash can next to me now, how fucked up is that? I’ve never been so suddenly ripped open before. Why, when people did terribly things to me in the past, was the pain so much more shallow than now, when I’m not even being wronged?

I almost wish I didn’t have plans to go camping in the morning, as I’d go for a bike ride. Part of me wants to ride north and find a place to spend the night oustide now. I shouldn’t. I’m not in a condition for that.

I’ve fallen to wildly, exasperatedly, saying and doing things I shouldn’t be.

How the hell did this become the worst experience of my life? Where did so much meaning and emotion come from in so little time? I feel like I’m a teenager, wildly acting on my emotions. I don’t know what else to do. I write. I talk. I distract myself. I write more. I yell, and rant. It keeps coming. I’m still fighting it. Acceptance is a long ways off. What to do about that. Nobody seems to mind me being this way. School and work suffered a little. How do I feel so alone when I have so many people so close. Why is this so important? Why won’t it stop?

A lot of thoughts run through my head. Some of them become words. Some of them get written. There’s no sense of order yet. It’s just a flow, a flow, waiting for someone to harness it. Can anyone? Will anyone? This is part of why I feel alone. I’m sitting in my room with a whole in my chest, unable to sleep without thinking about everything upsetting, with noone to hold and listen.

How did life become so backwards? How was I so okay before?

Now I am a burden on everyone. I’m not unsure that I don’t deserve it. Huh. How to channel this much emotion without a relationship?

I’m just rambling now, trying to turn feelings into words. I’m too upset to make any sense, to think, which I want to do. Now is not the time to open up in any direction.

I can’t wait to go to sleep. I napped earlier I guess, I have no idea for how long. When I went to sleep at eleven I had trouble clearing my mind. I listened to some music, but it was still too close to home. I nodded off only to snap awake a half hour later from a terrible train visage. I gave up, and came downstairs to see what Tori was watching, hoping it would be distracting. Henry Rollins spoken word, entirely too real and visceral. Over the computer to try to work on a project, but I don’t have the heart to get one started. It’s not a lack of motivation, it’s like the depression of high school.

At one point on one of the videos Henry explains that he writes to vent when he’s emotional, reads aloud a note to an ex-girlfriend, and says “anyway, that’s what I was doing at 2:30 this morning”. Look, it’s 2:30am, and I’m still up. Funny.

Mother said “loss is hollowness that will be filled differently”. Last night turned out pretty awesome. After the company meeting I got out as soon as I could so I could let me emotions out. I wavered about where to go and what to do, meeting Tori at home being the plan. Instead, I stopped at Squid and let her know I was there. Jen was talking to her roommate who was using the computer when Jen said, “who do know that has a weed-whacker?” My hand shot up. Mom bought one the other day because her lawn mower was in the shop. I leant her my lawnmower though, so I still had the weed-whacker. A short trip home, fired it up for the first time, loaned it out and headed back to Squid.

I couldn’t eat much, my stomach wasn’t right yet from wanting to vomit earlier, but I had some mashed potato and we started drinking Squid out of beers. Turned out it was the first “Bingo Night” with a poster, so we stuck around for that which turned out awesome. Everyone from Squid was there (except Howie, where was Howie? I think I heard, but forget). Jason came by on his way from work, and a number of other kids from neighborhood houses were there. Granted, I was getting drunk, but it felt like community. Which was a wonderful way to deal with feeling so alone. I won cool prizes, like inflatable basketball hat party games. I think Jason won socks? Tori won slippers! It’s excellent being a part of this community.

After Squid closed, Tori, Jason and I went to the 9lb. After a game of pool, Jarrod and Cinder showed up. Tori and I joined them for a game of Sorry and Scattergories. Again, I felt really good about this. We’ve been being silly about wanting to hang out with them, and I’m glad it happened, even if I was actively getting plastered at the time.

Today brought the much anticipated hangover, more tough shit happening (like reading about Angel), too much thinking for my emotional state, etc. I got up when I could, and left the house on a couple errands, but my stomach wasn’t feeling it, and neither was my heart. After hearing about Angel, Mom drove up after work to give me a hug and be around. I thought about going out to see Adam and Jim, or going on the Point83 ride, hoping either would be distracting, but I just wasn’t physically or emotionally up to either and ended up spending the evening watching Star Trek and Star Wars.

I’m still going to try to go on the Ben Country (Point .83 camping trip) this weekend. I have very little available energy for tomfoolery, or rather, anything not going smoothly. But I need a couple days of not thinking about how I feel I think, for these things to settle.

How do I feel? Sad still. My mind is still full of too many reminders that make me sad. I can’t be upset with circumstances. I never really hold circumstances accountable I suppose. I live in the moment, easily, what is, simply is. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how we got there. Although so much of who I am was shared with L, it’s difficult do much at the moment without a relevent memory popping up.

I’m once again doubting the appropriateness of opening myself up that much. The track record is solidly that it’s overwhelming. I’m sure I’m oversimplfying this. Still though, I don’t feel like I’ve ever had the problem of burning out, but I’m definitely a handful. People struggle with how to express it, underscoring that it’s not nessacarily a bad thing. But it’s complicated. It brings up complications.

I don’t know where I’m going to focus this in the future. I can’t go back.

Shit. I just realized my birthday is Thursday, and that Star Trek opens Friday. And both of those things made me incredibly sad. This is what I’m talking about, these haphazard memories of things I was looking forward to having threads intertwined with my relationship. My birthday shouldn’t make me sad, but it does realizing it will be spent without her.

Which is all probably more evidence that I take all of this entirely too seriously. Or I mean it entirely too much. My heart does live viscerally. It is a fucking burden. It is a wonderful burden, if you’ll have it. It’s complicated. It always is.

The future? I can’t imagine the future. I don’t try. I never have. I have empty hopes that try to help me cope in the short term, but aren’t set in reality and need to be set aside for the long term. This will take some getting used to, and some thought. It’s difficult focusing so acutely on thinking about the things I want, finding an absurd number of them present in someone shortly thereafter, and feeling like it won’t work out due to logistics. I know that’s not true, but it is a matter of timing. So it’s partly true. Folks seem to think when I say something like that, I mean it in the grimest way possible. But I’m not really that grim of a person. I don’t think the world is out to get me. I just try to live honestly based how I feel, the best way I can tell how I feel. I try really hard at this. Times like this, I feel like it only serves to hurt me. But I like being this person, I believe it’s the right way to be.

Everyone seems to have to deal with their parents giving them a hard time, like about settling down and finding the right person. My mom just gives me a hug, says “I wish I could tell you something to make it better” and sighs. This is reality. I’ve spent my entire life in it. Welcome.

What I value in life is not tangible, really. A product of growing up repeatedly being told about the different between the things I want and the things that I need? Maybe. I think my heart drives value. You can see it in nature, or even in complex systems, but you know, honestly, it’s value is derived in what it does for people. Something incredibly valuable to me is missing, and it’ll slowly fill in like when you shovel some dirt out of a stream. You did this right, played in the mud in the woods (backyard) growing up? I don’t know. Not everyone’s backyard was a thousand acres of forest and lake I suppose. That’s too bad. The swirling of the water and silt, both natural and calm, but a distrubance all the same, into the hole. I know I can’t replace that person, and for now, I’m sort of coping with that I suppose. As I said, I don’t know about the future. There was a time in my life that’d I’d be reluctant to write about this, hoping that I could take two steps back and everything would be right again, but it would actually be forward. I’d be afraid of saying how I felt and alienating people from me more. I’m past that now, mostly. These days I spend more time worrying about how I need to apply different filters to my personality around different people, and across different mediums. Can I talk to the lady in accounting about my fears of being a burden on other people? Should I talk to ex-girlfriends about how I feel today? Does the internet really still need to know this? I struggle with these questions whenever turmoil develops in my heart and I have to find a place to express it, because nobody wants to sit and listen to me talk for hours about whatever’s on my mind, interspersed with many apologies for forgetting what my point was. A date once told me my stories were better than television; at least television has a schedule.

I remind myself I need to get up and do what needs to be done. That’s dangerous close to an echo of my father’s misguided mantra about paying the bills. I got a refund check from Harborview for an overpayment recently, and cynically laughed at the irony of paying me back $72 when I still owe them thousands. I’ll put this behind me some day, I hope it’s in the next few years though.

The problem with this hole, is how much what was in it meant to me. I know this probably sounds foolish, but I challange that is a fucking stupid and unreal implication that should be burned in effigy of how we all really feel. It seems so rare that people want to admit to these feelings, they’re scared of them and deal with them by running away from them or in bizarre ways like with anger. Half the reason I started writing my journal online, what, a decade ago now, was there to be one more voice saying out loud how I feel and not being ashamed of it. It’s not a space in my heart that can be filled with more time writing open source code, that has its own place and the activity of doing such is likely mostly distraction. I suppose boundaries with friends are likely going to be pushed in the future. The last couple of weeks have seen some of that, realizing that this stoic cover is a farce, and pushing down cardboard walls with conversation and hugs.

That’s the big part of community, the amazing part, is opening up. I’m tired of slogans about accepting people for who they are as much as I’ve grown weary of people trying to be convincing about not being racist or sexist, while being just as judgmental as the rest of us. A man isn’t is own castle. This independance that we formed out of the necessity of our youth doesn’t have to remain that way. I’ve tested the waters, and there is warmth out there. Perhaps that will work better for me, spreading my heart out wider in thinner slices so it doesn’t feel like an assault to be protected against.

There’s little available time right now for the bulk of this. That’s sort of a copout though. There’s many opportunities that are passed up out of habit and fear that can probably be shapped into something different.

And so it goes.