I’m an idiot. I am a completely oblivious moron.

I’ve written stories about suicide, when I’ve felt suicidal. I’ve written stories about dying randomly and tragically, when I wished for the same to happen to me. I’ve written up ugly thoughts I’ve had as fiction, because there is no other place to put them. You can’t write a journal entry about hypothetical situations that haven’t happened to you, but you know yourself well enough to see yourself in them and react to them. It’s a way of planning for the future, to state the situation openly and realistically to yourself and see how you will react to it.

Last night I learned the hard way that, while it might be nice to get it all out, you can’t just slap a ‘fiction’ tag on something and expect people to believe it. The Physical Manifestation of Regret was a mistake, I guess. I had been carrying around the idea in my head for two days, adding pieces to it, until I finally got the tone in my head and decided to write it down. First and foremost: it’s fiction, for fuck’s sake. But, yes, it is about me. It’s my imagining of a situation that I have been contemplating for about a week now. I figured that after Sarah came down this weekend, it would be time for me to try to move on, to find some sort of solution, and there was a time that sex would have brought me comfort. Unfortunately, whenever I think about it, it makes me feel kind of ill. I know it’s not what I want but it seems like a possible solution.

So, I put myself there. I gathered up thoughts and memories of everyone I’ve been with and supplanted them into a single girl and shoved myself into a car with her. The entire base of the story began from this girl asking me that question, if I could do anything, what could I do? And although I am sitting there, with the intention of fucking this girl, the first thought that comes into my head is of my ex, of Sarah, and I thought that was profoundly sad and was the first of many little things I wanted to put into it. These are feelings and thoughts I have never experienced before, I don’t really want to experience them first hand, so I wrote it out as if I was there and it worked for me. I further fictionalized little bits and pieces because a small part of me was aware that someone could take it as truth, regardless of what it says, so I tried to distance it from myself a little… but you still only seem to write the things you know, so I was screwed from the get go.

I’m an idiot, really. I got it out and I felt better and then, well, then other people read it. Mike immediately jumped on the “oh this is probably what happened with Amanda the last time you saw her” (which doesn’t make sense because Mike knows how that situation went) and then Sarah read it and everything went to shit. Now she’s openly accusing me of sleeping with someone, and using this as further proof that I can’t be trusted and now it seems to be that we’ll just never see each other again. So, great, that’s great, for me. I write something about how I can’t really imagine going back to the way I used to be before I met her, and how all my thoughts of her will prevent me from doing anything about it, and she takes it as a declaration that I’m fucked up and already screwing other people.

Sweet. I don’t even have any defense. I can say that it was fiction until I’m blue in the face. I could probably dissect it and point out all the little things I grabbed from past experiences, all the pieces of Sarah, herself, that are in the story (although she caught the most obvious one, but again, the meaning is all twisted and warped), but it wouldn’t make any difference.

I’m realizing now that nothing makes any difference. I am slowly resigning myself to the complete loss of hope, a place I haven’t been in nearly a year. This is that stage in a break up that really fucks with me, because I feel like my entire will to live is draining from me. Any exuberance or joy I experienced in the past few months is invalidated and the stoic empty shell I was at one time is reemerging.

And it scares me. I don’t like it. It’s a comfort, yes, but I know it is a bad thing. Sarah told me once, in a way that I would have sworn I’ve seen written elsewhere or at least thought myself, that her depression is like a warm blanket, a comfort, that, sure, chokes you a little, especially if you venture outside, but as long as you stay in one place within it, it’s like being home. (Sarah, I paraphrased you, all apologies.) My emotional security blanket is shutting down, completely. Maybe this is what depression really is? Maybe it’s not about feeling sad, but feeling empty, completely empty.

When I lose all hope, I no longer feel anything. How can you feel sad about things when you don’t feel anything about anything anymore? I am just walking around with tunnel vision, now, completely lost within the confused confines of my head. Getting upset about things just makes me tired. All my worry about school, things I need to do, what does it matter?

It’s sad to say but my thinking really does fall along the lines of: well, there is no longer a Sarah, so what is the point? I am willing to admit this, how am I supposed to feel shame about my codependency? The thought of her, the goal of her, gave me something to strive for. I spent about a year prior to finally meeting her managing to somewhat live successfully for myself… in the sense that I did absolutely nothing and spent all my time hanging out with people I hated and spent money on shit I didn’t need. Since Sarah came around, I got serious about school, quit smoking, decided on a career path, saved money, and felt somewhat happy again about what the future might hold.

Then she dumped me, randomly, with valid reasons to show up in the weeks to come due to my, again, stupidity. I’ve held on this whole time, to the shred of hope that things will work their way out and even though I might not see Sarah for a long time, we’ll keep talking, we’ll stay somewhat committed to each other, and when I get out of college I will be able to find her and try to make some sort of life with her.

I am a stupid, temperamental child who refuses to see the truth. I don’t want to listen, I don’t want to accept, I just want things the way I want them and the sooner the better. Sarah tells me she loves me, and I take that as there is a chance for anything, a chance to redeem myself, a chance to be with her again. But, no, I guess not, I don’t know. I think, maybe, that she tells me she loves me still just to try to make me feel better. I believe that it is the truth, I know she loves me, and that makes it so much harder. How am I supposed to admit defeat and walk away from someone who loves me? Who I love back?

I’m talking in circles. I’m going to stop.

I think that the physical manifestation of regret is silence. Eventually you just reach a point where you are so screwed by your own actions, and there is absolutely no recourse for them, that there is no longer anything to say. I am reaching that point. The idea of trying to speak for myself, to try to rationalize my actions to everyone, just makes me feel hopeless and empty. There is no reason to try, no reason to speak. If I was sitting in front of a television camera with someone interviewing me, I would just sit there, silent, wordless, with wet eyes and a pained expression. Internally, this is the look I am wearing at all times. My mind is blank, my head is clear, and I’m simply no longer here.