My night really began with half an hour of being derided and chastised for a wide variety of things, from my hair, to my general demeanor, to what I idly do with my hands when my head is empty. It was mostly amusing, really, in a sort of smug kind of way. Then it got kind of shocking, when I said something with complete sincerity and it was the wrong thing — and really, who’s to know that saying, “So, is your dad still kickin’?” would be the faux pas to break the Camel. And no, there is no dead father in this tale, just someone who is apparently deeply offended by certain wordings of typical “so, how’s life?” small talk questions. Or, I’m just a idiot. This, I’m beginning to realize, is certainly a possibility.

I’ve always been concerned that I was slightly more inept at social situations than I was aware. Then I started spending a lot of time with people and I’ve caught myself saying things like, “You know, in the last year I’ve really learned a lot of things about how to function socially within intricate groups of friends,” since then. I believed this, but now I’m not so sure. Ever since I’ve become more social within the realm of reality, I’ve…

This is boring.

I think I’m getting worse at cultivating and maintaining decent relationships with people. For a while I just thought, you know what, these are my friends and they are this way and hey, that’s whatever, I’m fucked up, too. For a long while I thought that. Now I wonder if I am the problem, too. I know I’m not the only problem, so I’m not worried about that. I know the people in my life are all crazy in their own ways and we’re all fucked up and quirky and maybe everyone is that way, I don’t know. But maybe I’m fucked up, too.

I think I am.

I’m not sure what it is… maybe it’s a few things. But, back to my night.

Then nothing happened. I called about ten people. The first eight didn’t answer the phone and haven’t returned my calls. I even drove to common hang-out locations trying to locate people randomly, but no one was around. Even Andrew, who almost invariably calls me randomly or answers the phone — and even told me to call him later, didn’t answer the phone. I hung out with Becca’s brother. Then, later on, Becca. Then I went home. Now I’m sitting here. The end!

I spent, I think, a good two years utterly convinced there was a God and a Jesus and all that in an attempt to justify all the horrid shit I felt was happening to me. Something about catching your woman in bed with another dude just has this weird power of putting Jesus inside you? I heard a rumor once. I don’t know. But, I got The Jesus. It’d been hanging around a bit, thanks to Philip K. Dick and Gnosticism and my own curiosity about my Quaker heritage or whatever, but then one day I just got The Jesus.

The Jesus was my justification for bullshit. The Jesus is why I got into a fight with someone today. The Jesus is why some asshole ripped me off for $100. The Jesus is why I did not get laid, etc. The Jesus was a good scapegoat, and in many ways I am thankful that I had The Jesus in my life for a spell.

But I think I am over The Jesus. There is no justification or reason for anything that happens. There are no scales that balance out. No karma, not that The Jesus comes with Karma, The Karma is something separate that acutely affects certain individuals. I’m not saying that people don’t deserve shit, on occasion, but I’ve seen plenty of assholes and cunts who still live charmed lives despite the assholes and cunts they are.

I deserve, for some reason, the things that happen to me. I say “for some reason” mainly to subtly display that I’m still not sure about positively declaring that I deserve everything that happens to me. I’m open to the idea, but I know if I think really deeply about it I’ll begin to feel really fucking gypped and then I’ll get all pissed off but since The Jesus has left me, I have nowhere to deflect all the anger and rage! What’ll I do then?

I’m a shitty person. I have almost no conscience at all.

I think I surround myself with other shitty people who each have no conscience for various reasons specific to their own upbringings.

As a side note: I’ve been thinking a lot about what make us Los Angeles natives possibly different from people not from Los Angeles, as I’ve certainly identified that Bay Area people are distinctively different from Los Angeles people, and San Diego people, who are then distinctively different from Los Angeles people. Perhaps it’s this lack of conscience that is distinctly Los Angeles about me, and everyone else who peppers my life. This is something I’ll have to watch closely. (I’m going to say that Bay Area are motivated by deeply rooted cores of self-loathing, and that San Diego people are motivated by tiny sunshine generators located in their solar plexi.)

But I get what I deserve, and as a shitty person I deserve shitty people, and just by my own nature I surround myself with… you get it? See! It’s all so simple.

So, obviously, I’m totally wrong. Whatever.

The revolution is never coming. The apocalypse came and went — and left us yawny.* We’ll see the end of oil, and maybe that’ll affect us. I don’t know.

Matt said that out of everyone we know, I am the person who is the most motivated by fear. I still have absolutely no idea what he means. He gave an example by saying before Sarah came down the last time I got all panicky and started hocking all my shit to make sure I had enough money for us to have a good time. To this, I said, I don’t think I hocked all my shit until after the last time Sarah was here, and I did that because I felt like I needed to hoard money, and two, how is wanting a bunch of money to entertain a girl an act motivated by fear? I mean, alright, sure, I guess, but that’s not FEAR. Fear as a word is like hate, it’s strong shit.

I mean, I wander through abandoned mental asylums, man. I lead people into them! I map them out in my head and run from cops and shit! How am I, to Matt, who wont even go and check it out once, a person motivated primarily by fear? I don’t know. Now I’ve just confused myself.

Fear is a bunch of shit. I’m way to analytical to get consumed by fear. The only time that fear can’t be explained away is when you’re dealing with the supernatural, and the supernatural ain’t real, so I don’t have anything to worry about. I mean, alright, if someone is going to throw me off a cliff in car, I’ll know what fear is, but until then, fuck it.

In short, my day and night sucked. Hello, Sunday. I’m hope you’re not a fickle bitch as well.

*(Thanks, Bird.)

I’ve been wearing the same shirt all weekend — and it’s Tuesday now, and I’m still wearing it. I somehow managed to not shower yesterday, and I’m pretty sure it’s just because I slept through the whole day, and I’m not sure how that happened either.

Last week’s hip cool fear of meaninglessness is slowly seeping from me. My desire to run in some random direction is fading as well, though as that fades I feel like I am losing grip on some important part of myself that I know is just going to crop its head back up at some point and take a chomp out of me blah blah blah.

I told Sarah that I was willing to try to get the funds to spend the summer in San Jose, in an attempt to see if we’d work as a “real” couple and to see if I could make a go of living up there. She told me no, that she didn’t believe we had long term potential and that (melodramatically) nothing good can possibly survive or come to fruition in San Jose. This was rather unexpected, though I guess stupidly, and to say that it crushed me would be to imply that there was something left of my remains at the end of it all, but no, there were no remains to be found.

But then, of course, she comes to me (through the wire) and tells me she’s reconsidered and she’s totally down to commit to three months of me being there. I tell her that no, it wasn’t about three months, it wasn’t about just being together for three months, and I’m not going to go up there for just three months, unless that’s just naturally how long it can work out — though I guess I don’t really say all that, because I can’t think of it until later when I try to figure out why I felt so terribly hurt when she had the nerve to… misunderstand me? I guess? I don’t think she misunderstood, though.

I guess we just don’t want the same things. Or she does and she’s scared. Or numerous other excuses I can make up on her behalf to spare myself the simple thought that maybe she just doesn’t actually like me that much?

But I’m not depressed. I am unshowered and ill-motivated and there are three days until I can officially declare myself as in the process of drowning under a torrential downpour of school work and I’m chain-smoking and overdrawn in the bank and some days I just can’t seem to get far enough away from myself and I’ve just got to wonder if astral projection is the answer and maybe if I concentrate hard enough I never have to return to my body? Is that what death is like? Astral projection forever? Can I still feel my cock if I am astral projected? Astral-ejaculation? Is it possible? Is it real?

But I’m not depressed, you know? Depression is so passe. Emo is the new Hip and I am so post-hip.

I think I just called myself emo.

I don’t know what is going on! That’s the truth. Before I fall asleep and when I wake up I am overcome with the realization that I have no fucking clue who I am. Throughout the day I ignore it and it’s no big deal and I hang out with other people who seem to know something about me and I guess that stabilizes my head for a bit but once I am lying in bed, all by myself, spinning around in the sheets, I have no clue who’s life this is. I am witnessing the body and actions of someone else through a small hole and this writing right here is how I communicate to the world and dissect the actions of it looking for understanding.

I suspect that if you spend every waking second of the day within a person you can begin to build some sort of portrait of who they are, right? Why is it so hard? If I defined myself as I watch myself interact in the world, my Lord. Maybe I am not ready for prime time.

Brad
all i do now is read, when i am alone
and i am almost never alone. this is nerve wracking

Trista
I don’t really get to read much anymore.
It’s sort of sad.

Brad
i’m on my third Douglas Coupland novel, now Generation X
before this i read three Jim Crace novels
so we’re going for… six novels in two months? maybe more? this has to be some sort of record.
wow, maybe eight novels in two and a half months.. pretty cool. i should get a prize or something.

Trista
Indeed.

Brad
Douglas Coupland seems to write everything I am thinking. Life being meaningless, disillusioned with the rat race and/or a future within the rat race, and how can that possibly mean anything and why doesn’t anyone else seem to be going completely insane thinking about it like I am?
and how can one live a day-to-day life just making it and be ok with the fact that the only reason they do is because they’re just terrified of what would happen if they stopped?
is life really just working yourself into a corner where you have no choice to keep working because you fear the consequences of difference? bah!
maybe not the best thing i can be reading at this point
but i can’t stop
it’s like there are answers in the fact that someone is giving words to questions i’ve been unable to articulate

All this Douglas Coupland I am reading is leaving me in a state slightly worse than the state I was in before I started reading his shit. The two things I have read by him now (consisting of Life After God, and I am 1/3rd through Girlfriend in a Coma) are about people whose heads feel a lot like mine, except they’re in their thirties and feel this way. I’m twenty-three. I am not sure if this means I am just, I don’t know, fucked up ahead of time, like I am running the track a little faster than everyone else, or if this is really all there is and when I am in my thirties I will still feel this way.

The feeling is this, or something like this: there is no meaning. Coupland’s characters struggle with the fact that they’ve made it to their thirties and feel no different than they did when they were in their twenties. They might be better off: they’ve got jobs, money, places to live; but inside they’ve persisted through life unchanged when all they’ve expected is some sort of great awakening, as if they’ve been slumbering in some unaware state and on the other side of daybreak they will find golden, fertile lands, rich with substance and meaning. They’ll — no — we’ll rub our bleary eyes and step out of bed and suddenly feel whole, connected to something deeper than ourselves. It doesn’t even matter what it is, it just has to be something more than ourselves.

But maybe that day never comes. Life After God ends with a revelation that isn’t even so much a revelation as it is a declaration of defeat. We’re not self-sufficient and internal salvation (not a typo) isn’t just going to find us; we have to open ourselves to it and, even then, what we receive is nothing but ourselves, again, just a more vulnerable version of ourselves.

Is that the real answer, though?

I try to pay close attention to the mood and behaviors of my friends and the other people in my lives. I feel like I am always fractured in some way, that if you examine me closely you will see bits of light emerging from within. But, no, the light is darkness; it is the things inside me that I don’t share — those things are still rare even these days where I’ve learned that while sincerity is not pornographic, the truth will almost never set you free — the sadness and contempt that I hold for myself and my surroundings. I watch for other people’s fractures, I try to identify their sadness and when they keep the gaps well caulked with whatever addiction suits their fancy — and there is such variety! — you can basically predict what their inner turmoil is based on the addiction itself.

I came to a realization a few months ago — while I was bellyaching about Sarah being far away and my potential future with her being so far away and all my infinite dissatisfaction with everything in my life forever and ever amen — that I don’t know anyone who is genuinely happy. There are people who hide it well, who seem to live their little lives of routine in a state of bliss, but deep down you know, you just know, they lust for change or something interesting.

It seems to me that the people who laugh the loudest are the ones who feel the most trapped by the routine and dissatisfaction of their lives. Laughter, fun, drugs, sex, and rock’n'roll, are just distractions. Sometimes we get so trapped that all we are is distraction, we become distractions for other people, and maybe that is how some people convince themselves they have meaning. But, I don’t really know.

And that’s not my point, and three erased meandering paragraphs later, I can’t even think of what the point was.

I spent the last month and half, two months, maybe even three months, wrapped up in thoughts of suicide or disappearance (Maura Murray, where are you?), and as of right now, this very moment, I feel totally fine. This isn’t to say that in an hour I wont feel like death again, and even last night after scoping out an abandoned asylum and getting shouted at by the cops and feeling young and care-free and tough, by the end of it I felt tired and worried, thinking, “Is this all there is? Will I spend the next forty or more years of my life rambling through derelict buildings in order to feel somewhat alive and happy? I’m twenty-three, which I know isn’t necessarily old but in a way…”

In a way, suicide and disappearance are the same thing. They’re just lust for some drastic change, for something to happen. Neither are fulfilling, however, as the desire is for a great change that is outside of our, my control. Give me nuclear war, give me zombie invasion, give me something to fight against, give me something to live for, even if the only reason to live is to keep living, to survive. Give me a fight, give me someone to protect, someone to love. Give me a close-knit group of people and make us enough. Give me stacks of abandoned library books to make beds out of (those huge What Is Scientology? volumes will make great bedding) and construct walls to keep away the drafts which can become deadly with the post-apocalyptic chill.

Give me meaning. Give me a reason! When the world ends, we can all be certain that there is no God, so at least we’ll have that squared away. At least with an answer we can move on: how do we live for ourselves? How do we live life without — after God? And, therein, I guess — misquoted, lies the rub.

I think we, generation XYZ, whatever the hell we are — OK, I guess I should speak of myself, not of everyone, because I don’t know who or what everyone is, or what they are feeling — I think I look inside myself, always introverted I have been, and I find a whole lot of nothing. I want to eat, fuck, and sleep. I want to spend money and have things that act as a distraction to the fact that when I look inside myself I see an endlessly revolving list of “eat, fuck, sleep” and I’m having trouble coping with that. Maybe it’s my age, maybe at twenty-three this is what I should be like, that my thought cycle should be an endless loop of “eat, fuck, sleep”.

Don’t get me wrong, I want other things, but in the end they are just things that make those things easier to attain. I want money, and thus a better job, maybe a career, I want to succeed in life, so that I can eat whenever I want, whatever I want. I want to fall in love with someone who really seems to understand me, or at least somewhat, someone that I love and can maybe understand, maybe some girl I’d even want to take care of and spend all my money on, but in the end that is just a romanticized version of fucking. I want to get all my shit in order, mainly by sorting out those two above things, so that I can fall asleep at night without a head full of anxiety and dreams full of torment, lost hopes, and death.

I don’t mean to sound depressive, because, really, I insist, I am not right now. Having identified this about myself, however, has left me feeling rather hollow. Where’s the tortured artist with the soul full of wonder scratching at the veneer of stoicism? Where’s the dreamer who wants to fall in love with some leggy long-haired beauty and spend an evening under the moon on a blanket in a field miles from nowhere? I guess he’s around, but somewhere along the way to here those things have become more realistic and boring, almost like they are inevitable, but only in some lackluster and broken form: Yeah, I’ll write that novel, or short story, or something, some day, it’ll happen, no big deal, whatever. Yeah, I’ll meet that girl with legs for miles again, and maybe it’ll work out, but maybe it won’t, and maybe by the time it happens I just wont even have the capacity for love… I will eventually mindlessly fuck the concept of love out of my head, maybe.

What does it all mean, then? I’ve spent an hour clacking away at this keyboard. I’d think that maybe, by now, I’d have the answer.

But, no.

All I know is that I look for meaning within myself, every single day, and I find myself completely devoid of it. I get up and keep moving each morning simply because I know that if I do not, the things that distract me from the minutiae of my life will slowly vanish one by one and I’ll be left completely alone. These days the idea of an existence all by myself, alone in my room, endlessly doing nothing, is absolutely terrifying. To spend more than twenty minutes absolutely alone inside my own head would probably leave me crippled for life.

What went wrong? We discuss it, on occasion, my friends and I, and we’ve come up with that we’ve been over-saturated with choice and entertainment from birth. Perpetually distracted by toys, video games, television, et al, we never spent any serious time bored in our youth. The few valuable thoughts we should have directed inward at ourselves were spent, instead, killing zombies or gangsters. The conversations we should have had between friends, in person, were instead spent miles apart, sitting on the internet, typing useless drivel about shit on the internet while we stroke our adolescent cocks to pixelated quicktime clips of gyrating hips and “wet, split beavers”. Where would we have ever made time to actually contemplate our own existence? How could we have known that people would eventually be important to us and that maybe, just maybe, we should have focused instead on making ourselves somewhat decent as functioning members of society, whatever the hell that means exactly?

But is that all of it? Half of it? What of our parents? Can we blame them for anything? Can I blame my parents for anything? Should we? If their lives are as devoid as meaning as ours are, then would it even be fair to them? Can you really blame someone who, for all intents and purposes, remained blissfully unaware of what they were doing? How were they to know!

Then, what of ourselves? In our youth we knew nothing better, but now that we are adults we know, or at least we’ve heard from others, or from some distant voice in our heads that speaks in an unfamiliar tone, that there is more to life than what we are currently. Why is this, alone, not meaning enough? When you analyze it, through jaded, cynical, embittered eyes and mind, you end up with the conclusion that all the infinite futures lying ahead of you, me, are completely bullshit.

What interests us? What is our passion? What do we want to be for the rest of our lives?

I don’t know. I don’t know anyone who knows. I’ve heard of people, I used to know people, who have gone on since high school to actually make something of themselves, but then you also hear that that they are just as miserable as you are, deep down. They’ve got the job, and sometimes the girl or guy, husband or wife, and they’re living on their own and maybe, some day, if they move out of California — maybe to Montana — they’ll be able to own a house and have kids, and good for them, but they’re still fucking miserable.

It’s not a question of success, in the end, but one of meaning. But meaning is elusive.

Why isn’t in born into us? Genetics should give us the gift of meaning. One half of Dad’s meaning, one half of Mom’s meaning, and before you know it you’re performing vaginoplasties on Alaskan seals. At least that’d be something. But we don’t even know what our parent’s meaning is, and if you ask them — well, you’d rather not — but you can assume that they don’t know either, and actually knowing that would be far more depressing than anything else.

I am middle class, and so are all my friends. We are, like Coupland’s characters, neutered by our nearly neutral status. We grew up uneventfully. We live lives of quiet tedium, thinking we’re making noise when all we’re really doing is muffling the static in our heads with drugs, alcohol, food, sex, and the relentless ignorance of our own internal plight. This is how we get by, I guess, seeking internal salvation in things that we know, but deny, will never help us get anywhere but stoned.

When it comes down to it, though, being stoned is better than being bored and unhappy. It’s just too bad there isn’t any real permanence to it. Then the joke is that we have to live the lives that make us feel like it’s necessary to shirk sobriety in order to shirk sobriety. It’s just one endlessly repeating joke. The laugh track is broken, looping, skipping like a record, and I think we’re all pretty sure there is no one around to shut it off.

“i don’t want to get all emo, but damn. you ever have such a good time with someone somewhere that going back there without them seems like bullshit?

“like, why even bother, what’s the point? there’s no way it’ll ever be as cool as that one time…

“my own bedroom feels like that now. i’m never home, usually. this is a rarity. i get tired and sleep, shower, leave…”

If you’re wondering what has been up with my twitters lately, I don’t know what to tell you.

Actually, I can’t tell you. If I knew, I wouldn’t say, and I don’t know, so I just can’t.

Am I getting over things? Am I moving on? Sometimes I think so, but then sometimes I don’t. I really don’t know.

In some ways I am getting worse. Relying on crutches. The crux eluding me! I am so, so poetic.

I am functioning, to an extent. I am still doing better in school than I ever have, and I don’t really know how. I think I can safely say this is the worst mental and emotional state I’ve ever been in during my time in school, and I’m still holding on, doing all my work. I guess I know that I have absolutely nothing better to do. It’s hard, sometimes, to not just say fuck it and lie in bed and not do anything, but I know that would only make me more miserable, and the worries and anxieties would plague me endlessly. Besides, if I don’t do it now, I’ll just have to do it later.

The end of all this is uncertain again. It’s scary and smug, laughing and pointing, waving its arms, but darting from view when I try to stare at it.

I am getting tired. I am getting very, very tired.

There’s a funny thing about depression; it likes to breed itself. Any attempt it can take to make itself larger and more overbearing, it takes. This whole week I have done nothing. I was sick at the start of it and that worked as an excuse not to do anything (and for about a day I was honestly incapacitated) and then as I got better (still not 100%) I just wasn’t ready yet to go back to living.

This Sarah situation has been killing me.

So, today I woke up and I was determined: I am going to move on today. I’m going to ignore all the pain and ugly hurt and just get used to being alone and, hopefully, stay that way until I can hopelessly and romantically find Sarah again one day and sweep her off her feet, but until then not think about her at all and just, like, spend all my money on an Xbox that, maybe, will distract me so much that I wont give a shit about the hulking void.

And then Sarah emails me and tells me she wants to come down on the 27th and spend her spring break there, and she was sure. Then, a few hours later on the phone, she tells me to wait til tomorrow to buy her ticket, so now it doesn’t seem so sure. I just don’t know how to feel. I want to see her more than anything. All the reasons not to see her aren’t really important when you look at it from a certain angle, the hopelessly romantic angle, where this is just a clear sign that things between us are for realz and I should hold onto hope. Every other angle, I think, says that it’s a bad idea. But I want her. Bad.

And the whole thing made me feel kind of sad. If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that the last thing you want to do when you’re depressed is anything. You sit and think, man, I could do shit right now, and feel good about it, and accomplish things, and I’d bet that’d make me less depressed so let’s get to it! But, no. No, I don’t want to do anything but feel sad. Feeling sad is all I can accomplish today. I have to think about shit, you know, I have to think. And so on, and so on, until the day is over and nothing got done. Even then, you can’t just go to sleep, no, man, going to sleep would be a waste of time to do more shit you don’t do so you sit around and get sad some more. It’s like insomnia, caused by something that makes you want to sleep. So ridiculous.

I sold my Wii. I’m not sure how I feel about it, because I feel like I should be upset, but I don’t feel anything. I just don’t have an opinion, but I think I should, and I think it should be bad, but I don’t care. Does that even make sense? It makes me wonder if there is something wrong.

What to do…

I’ve written four introductions to this entry and none of them have come out right. This is clear sign that while I don’t really have something to write in mind, I am doing it to escape from something else.

Sarah woke me up this morning with a phone call, which she has been doing since it was about the time she was going to bed. It’s our goodnight phone call but at 11 in the morning when I wake up, when she goes to sleep. It was nice, when she wants to talk to me, and it fills me with a terrible longing but it’s worth it to talk to her…

And she said, “Doesn’t it make you feel a little better to know there are women you could have sex with just lined up?”

And my response to this, which has been my response to everyone else who has said something like this (though Sarah is the only one who says it so flatteringly) is, “No,” and, “That’s not really the point.” I just, I don’t know how much clearer I can make it. Sarah says, and this is kind of hurtful I guess, that emotionless sex is who I am, but she doesn’t grasp what she’s turned me into (a pussy, apparently). I can’t undo all the bullshit of my past, and even if I could, it doesn’t matter.

I don’t even know what I am saying.

I don’t want to do anything. I wake up and all I want to do is lie in bed. Today is Monday, it was supposed to be wake up rejuvenated and start working on all the shit I need to get done day, but instead after I got off the phone with Sarah I kinda just wanted to go back to bed, but I didn’t let myself. I sat on the computer, though, until eventually giving up and crawling back into bed. Then it dawned on me: I can do other stuff I don’t need to do but want to do, and decided to go out and hike through Turnbull Canyon again and take more pictures… but that’s a lot of work and walking and stuff.

So instead I sat here to write this journal entry that means nothing.

I function OK with my friends. Matt says that aside from the weird emo shit I post on my Twitter, I seem to be just fine. To which Mike tells Matt, “No, man, Brad is dying on the inside,” which is only half true.

I am not dying, I am just stagnating. Sarah filled me with such a joy for life, such a motivation and a goal to reach for, that I was just running high off my ass on it, doing all this school stuff and working and just trying to make money and a future so I could dash toward her as quickly as possible. It’s sad to say but now without the promise of her, without the goal of her, I feel completely aimless and empty. I knew this was going to happen, but I had some vague feeling that I’d be able to fight through it or there’d just be something left after that would keep me going.

But there isn’t. I want money, yeah, and I want a career, yeah, but I also want to sleep forever and do nothing but hang out with my friends and never worry about anything ever again. There is nothing to back me up against the stress, so I just crumble and decide it is best to not care.

So today, which was wake up rejuvenated and catch up on all the shit I need to get done Monday, has become yet another day where I want to just hunker down and forget about everything, forever. It makes me feel like such a loser to think that a girl has ruined me in this way. I’ve been way worse over breakups, I’ve been crushed and destroyed and set on fire and I’ve made it obvious that I was burning through all the screaming I’d do over it, but this time it’s all small internal defeats.

I can’t go back to who I once was. I don’t say this in an effort to convince myself it is true, or to reinforce, but just as a statement of fact. There is no comfort in sex with girls I don’t actually love. I’ve seen something different and now I’m all fucked up over it, and it’s annoying but I do feel somewhat good about it, like it’s a step in the right direction, but I don’t know how to get over Sarah so that I can maybe start the long arduous process of looking for another version of her.

And that sucks. I am looking for another version of her, and I can’t find it. There are tall chicks all over OKCupid but none of them are Sarah. There’s tall girls who are somewhat cute in the way Sarah is, but their personalities are stuck-up Los Angeles bitches who make out with their friends. Or, there’s tall girls who don’t look anything like Sarah, but are passable, but again, personalities are absolutely nothing like her at all. I guess, when it comes down to it, there is no one out there like Sarah, and that kills me. I’m looking for Sarah, and I’ve found Sarah, and now what do I do?

I need to get over this Sarah girl. I don’t know how, really, and, personally, I don’t really want to. I just don’t want her to get over me, either. I want to keep us transfixed on each other until the day that I can bring us together, somehow. So far it’s been going well but… man… I want to stop feeling like this.

I just want to go back to the way things were. I was unhappy a lot of the time over her doubt and uncertainty, and admittedly none of that would be any better now, but at least she was mine, something to strive for, something to want to provide for. Now what? Myself? I am supposed to think that way for myself? Fuck that, I can just shut down and live a peaceful life inside my head doing absolutely nothing.

Such a fucking livejournal post.

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.

I feel like something is broken within me. I am torn, perpetually, between a recklessly hedonistic lifestyle and one not so much. I just don’t know. I can’t even write about myself, that is why I am so confused, why there are no journal entries here like there should be. I bought Super Smash Bros Brawl last night and regretted the purchase before I even made it. I was just relentlessly see-sawing between feeling good about it and feeling bad about it, something that continued for the next five hours that I played with Mike until about 3 or 4 in the morning. It’s a lot of fun, and when the online play works, I’m sure that’ll be fun, too, but for $55, there are a lot of other things that are fun, too.

That’s really my problem. I can’t figure out exactly what is worth money and what isn’t. Then, another part of me wants to horde all my money just in case I get the chance to see Sarah again, which, I hope to God, will be this weekend. If she doesn’t come, then I don’t know, I guess I’ll buy another video game and smother myself in the trash that is slowly building up in my room… except by the time that I know she isn’t coming, my room will be clean and I will have torn out all my hair rushing through work-work and school-work.

…and then it’ll be my spring break. A whole week in which I have nothing to do. I guess I can work a lot? More things I don’t want to do. Maybe I’ll just lie in bed all week? No, I don’t want to do that, either. Coke binge? Might be an idea, need money for that, and I think I’d rather buy a video game or three with that money.

I want to stop being in love. It doesn’t even feel pleasant now. It’s this gargoyle that sits perched on my shoulders, weighing down all my actions and constantly reminding me of its existence. “Hi,” it says to me. “Have I reminded you lately that there is this girl out there in the world that you relentlessly adore who refuses to be with you? And even if you were together, you would still be far away from each other and would get into fights about it and there’s no way that you’d even be able to hold on until the time that you could be together? Have I mentioned that I’m not leaving. No, sir! I am here to stay, because you can’t come up with any good reasons to dislike her. You can’t even begin to think of someone who could replace her. So, here you are, with me on your shoulders. I’d like some mineral water, please.”

She’s been not talking to me, somewhat, or at least less. I don’t understand her, really, so there could be a great number of reasons, and all of them are probably true to some extent. Maybe she’s trying to wean me off of her (not working!), maybe she’s trying to wean herself off of me (maybe?), maybe, maybe, maybe, it’s not worth listing I guess. I miss her all the time. I wish I could remember how long it took for me to stop missing Trista. I remember, even, that one day it occurred to me that I went the entire day without thinking of Trista once. Sure, I spoiled it by thinking of it then, but it happened. It’s a specific kind of think, though, that lonely broken feeling comes on with the memories and your chest ache and it blows. I feel like that a couple times a day over Sarah, plus a general feeling of apathy and restlessness that I am not sure is her fault.

I don’t want to do anything. Getting around to school work has been just short of torture, which I am about to rely on if I can’t more easily motivate myself to sit down and do this shit. Worst part is that the majority of my work is Algebra stuff and I just don’t get graphing. I can do it, yes, it’s easy, yes, but fuck if I don’t hate it. I like things that make sense, that are useful to me, and Algebra, already hardly useful, is at least somewhat such and so, I do it, I do it well, and I don’t mind it. Graphing, however, is the spawn of Satan. There is something built into my mind that sees a graphing problem and thinks, “Yeah, no thanks, I can do you easily and in seconds but I’d rather fellate a calf.”

Not to mention this business legal class that would have been awesome had it just stayed on the internet, but no, I have to go in sometime this week to do 6 hours worth of tests in an uncomfortable desk. Not sure when I am going to do it, either. Wednesday, I guess, and it would be helpful if I read the 7 chapters the test is based on but, c’mon, who needs reading when it’s open book, open notes? (What notes?)

To bring it back around: there is no stability in my thinking. One second I want to spend money on all kinds of useless shit I don’t need, and then I realize it’s all useless shit I don’t need. I want to stop being in love with Sarah, but then it’s probably one of the most real and true feelings I’ve ever had and I just, not to be melodramatic, I just don’t see how I am supposed to find that feeling with someone else when I never have before. Will there be another five year interval of shitty broken relationships before my next Sarah? How am I supposed to march into that battle headlong? Should I not fight? (I shouldn’t! I should! I shouldn’t!) How to fight, even? (Don’t let go! Let her know you love her! Just give up and fade away, Brad!) I want to rewind eight months or so and go back to the openly selfish (shellfish!) person I was, live strictly for myself, spend all my money on shit I don’t need, pretend that I am happy, awkwardly fall into unexpected pitfalls of loneliness and depression over the fact that I have no sincere emotional connections with anyone, women especially, and then buy more shit in an effort to get over it but then just spend days in bed trying to will myself out of existence. (It’s not suicide if you don’t use utensils!)

I want to go back to that, I was ignorant of what I am knowledgeable in now. I didn’t believe in love anymore, I didn’t believe there was a woman out there who wouldn’t make me hate myself, (not that Sarah didn’t eventually make me hate myself, but that was because of who I was, am, whatever). I was twenty-two and completely content with the fact that I could be alone, and still get laid, and be happy about that. Now I can’t imagine going back to being with someone and not being with them, and I don’t really know… What I thought was happiness turns out is absolutely nothing like happiness, but the movement toward happiness is such a painful and scary process. Again, five/six years, four lousy relationships, do I want to go through that again?

Am I better off alone? Alone, but with the knowledge that there is a positive feeling out there to find? Alone, but waiting for that opportunity to grab at it again and, hopefully, not fuck it up this time? Can I even live like that? If there has been a constant in my life that wasn’t cigarettes, it was women, even if for a time it was just a silly crush I carried around for about six or eight months (Jesus, Brad). I don’t know, I don’t know.

There’s two periods, eight months ago, and two months ago. I want to go back to either one. I don’t want to be here, not as I am. I don’t even feel like I want to see the future. I just want to rewind and either undo mistakes I made or just avoid the entire situation. I want a do-over, a mulligan, a tag back, whatever. I want to stop feeling this way, and sure, it’s only been a week and a half… but it hasn’t changed shape or gotten smaller. It’s the same as it was. If anything, it’s gotten worse, because I feel things, her, slipping away from me slowly.

I wish I wasn’t such a fuck up.

This is why I don’t journal. Who wants to read this shit? Who, ever, in their right mind, wants to read this shit?

If I edited this down to its bare essentials, it would just be another Twitter.

“Bought Super Smash Bros Brawl. Don’t feel any better for it.”

I don’t ever want to talk about this, what happened, how it happened. I’ve spent my whole life up to this point revealing everything about myself to people, every ugly detail and painful memory. I am an open book. Some say I enjoy misery, that I chase after it, that I thirst for drama and bullshit and I would agree, those things are true. Well, they were true.

I hurt more sincerely than I have ever hurt right now. My exes, all the “broken hearts” I have suffered before now, are nothing compared to this. It’s always been painful, but this is so much harder. I’ve always had some sort of hate to grab on to, or some foreshadowing, or I was able to tell myself things like “there are others” or “you can do better”… I can’t even… There just aren’t any words for this stuff.

Sarah showed me what it felt like to actually be in love with someone, to feel completely comfortable with someone. I felt like I was willing to do anything and everything for her. I didn’t think that my fifth relationship with someone would be the one that makes me realize that the four prior to it were absolute and complete bullshit. The connections I’ve had with women before now seem tenuous in comparison to what I felt just by standing next to Sarah. I have never felt so intimate with someone.

Well, writing that made me break down into the worst crying I’ve ever done. There are some things I just shouldn’t write, and I know that is probably one of them, but, whatever… Maybe this’ll be the last time I ever write about this, or have to, I hope this can be my recovery but I know it wont be, so whatever.

I feel empty. I am scared. I’m terrified that I will never find that feeling again. If it took me five years to find it the first time, will it take me another five to find it again? I don’t feel like I could have that with anyone else, that there isn’t anyone else, there is no comparison or equivalent, I browse OKCupid now and I just find endless amounts of boring looking and sounding women that I can’t imagine I’d have anything in common with or would even enjoy being around. I feel hopelessly broken, far more broken than any stupid hateful opinion ever made me.

I thought Trista ruined women for me, by treating me like shit and betraying my trust, I sincerely felt like as much as I adored women I also hated and could probably never trust them again… And now, it’s actually worse: I now know what a woman is capable of making me feel, and Sarah didn’t break my trust or give me anything to sever or invalidate the way I feel about her, and now I feel like there is no point in anything but trying to find that feeling again, and I just don’t think it’s possible. Why even bother going and looking for other potential partners when I know from experience that I am absolutely incapable of finding that? Sarah was a fluke! A random chance encounter due to the strange paths I like to take through life, and how am I supposed to LOOK for that? I wasn’t even looking! She seemed interesting and I introduced myself and I had no fucking idea she would be so amazing. I just wanted to find someone to spend some time with in San Jose, and instead I found someone I wanted to spend all my time with, forever. How do I find that again? Where do I go? The internet is a cesspool of bullshit and I found the one diamond in it and then I fucking smashed it with my ignorant selfish stupidity.

I am talking in circles.

Sigh.

In some ways this is easier, the long distance makes it easy to get used to potentially never seeing her again. Eric said this, that there is no drama of trying to separate our lives after conjoining them. And, shit, I guess that is where the ease ends. Sarah and I have shared probably over 3,500 emails between us. My Gmail account is almost entirely emails from Sarah. There wasn’t a day in the last eight or so months that my phone didn’t vibrate loudly with an “Attention!” signaling that I had an email from her. She kept me company at almost all times. Before we were dating for real, we were friends across the internet, able to talk to each other about anything and everything. She was my closet friend, period. And then she was my girlfriend. Maybe that is the trick… I don’t know. I don’t know how I am supposed to lose her as my girlfriend and as my friend at the same time. How does one cope with that sort of thing? It’s like I’m losing two people at once.

I learned things about myself. I learned things about myself that I feel like I would rather not know. If I could go back to being ignorant, to thinking all a woman is capable of doing is hurting me, then I’d like to go back to that time. It’s disgusting to say this, but I can’t deal with these feelings of hopelessness that are so unfamiliar. It was so routine for me, you get hurt, you suffer, and then you get over it and come out of it just the same or maybe better than you were, you move on, you weren’t effected, but this is entirely different. I have been effected, I have been changed, and I feel like I destroyed something very important and I don’t know how to recover from that.

How do people talk about things like this in anything but big dramatic statements? I don’t want to go on. I don’t. I don’t want to move on. I don’t. I don’t see how I can live in the state I am in emotionally. How are you supposed to get over someone when you can see nothing wrong with them? How can you recover from someone you love, who loved you, leaving you? I have never, ever, experienced this.

It is hard. It is very, very hard.

I don’t feel like writing about this yet, although I’ve talked about it with people and Twittered about it and basically I’ve done everything but discuss it internally. I can rattle off with the facts and how I should feel, but I just don’t really know how I am reacting to all this.

If Sarah lived down the street from me, this would be impossible, but I don’t think it would be happening if she did.

I can’t talk about this yet.

So, I got dumped yesterday. Or, I should say, I got told that there was planning of dumpage going on. But, I guess the point is, I got dumped yesterday. I don’t really know what to say about it. This is, so far, my least emo reaction to the ending of one of my relationships that has occurred within the last three years. I saw it coming? I don’t know. I was dealing with it really well, and I guess I still am, but I just woke up all alone (no change from usual except that I am alone in my head now) and found out I don’t have to go to work today and the small amount of sadness I am carrying about this has completely sapped any will and motivation I have to do anything.

I felt helpless about my sadness before this even happened, before there was some actually palpable truth to the reason. It was just, I’m lonely, I’m alone, she’s far away, but at least she’s there and if it gets bad I can go see her, but you’re worried she’s deciding not to like you, but that’s stupid because you know she loves you, blah blah. Now it’s, I’m lonely, I’m alone, she’s far away, and there’s no relief! I mean, there is recovery, sure sure, and I know from experience that eventually recovery comes along, so I am not worried. I wish I could just wake up recovered, go back to being happy with myself.

There is this imaginary time I hearken back to where I was single and I was happy. It existed, but it also hinged on a lot of things I don’t have now. I can’t go back to that. I wish I could, but I can’t. So, I don’t know where I am going to end up, mentally, emotionally. I think this whole situation was the end of my recovery from all the shit I went through with Trista, and I’m grateful for that, I guess, but now I have to get over this and figure out my life again? I mean, what the fuck.

On the upside, Sarah motivated me to quit smoking (though last night I almost asked Verne if I could bum one), and motivated me to plan my escape from community college, and by that I found a possible career path for me. There’s other improvements, too. I just hope I can hold onto them now that she’s not going to be around.

This sucks.

I turn 23 in eight days. My friends and I all view this age as the official “oh shit, I am getting old” age. I remember when I turned 20 or 21, I thought, oh man, I am no longer a teenager, and I haven’t done shit with my life. Now I’m turning 23 and I’m thinking, holy shit, I haven’t done shit with my life and I am, seriously, an adult. I know people who are working on their masters degrees, you know? I know people who have been graduated from college and have careers now. None of them are personal friends, but I know of them. As far as my group of friends go, I have gotten further into the “normal life” process than anyone else, but I pretty much feel less successful than them. It’s just because I am poorer.

In a year I’ll be 24, and possibly finally transferring to a university. A year after that I’ll be 25 and, fuck, I don’t even want to think about that. I might be 26 when I graduate if I do it on time. By 27, shouldn’t I be married? I’ll probably still be in school, trying to get my CPA. I’m going to be rapidly approaching 30 before I even have any sort of career.

Yeah, this sucks.

And I still don’t feel any different from the day I turned 20.

I quit smoking a little over three months ago. I figured it would be interesting, or useful, to write up my feelings since I’ve quit smoking. I haven’t really talked about it much aside from in my Twitter, so here goes.

I am no longer a smoker. I smoked for about six years, from the age of 16 to 22. I quit once before this time, for a period of three months, but at that point I went through a nasty breakup and started smoking again. That was about the time I turned 20. At that time I always felt a little like my being quit was temporary, as I did it mostly to make myself look more attractive to a woman I was interested in. I ended up with a different woman, and when that went south I picked up smoking again.

I was never a very heavy smoker. It was very rare for me to finish a pack in a day, and that only happened on days that were primarily social with nights that were spent at bars. It usually took me about three or four days to finish a pack. I attributed this to the fact that I am a relatively thin guy. I smoked because I enjoyed smoking, it was something to do that helped pass the time. I didn’t smoke because it helped me relax or it reduced my stress level. It was a social activity for me, for the most part. When I first started going to college it seemed like the only time I ever actually talked to another student socially was when we were smoking. Now that I am a non-smoker, I can confirm: smokers talk to strangers more frequently than non-smokers. I think this is because smokers have a common bond immediately, just by being smokers, which causes you to be more comfortable with the other people. Non-smokers at school never mingle socially unless they have a specific question about class. This is disappointing.

I quit cold turkey. I made up my mind, and I quit. The first time I quit, I did the same thing, and I used gum to replace the cigarettes. When my friends at work would take smoke breaks, I would spend time with them chewing gum while they smoked their cigarettes. I was so certain that by quitting smoking I would get laid, I had no problem with it. About a month into quitting, however, I went through a period of time where I was easily aggravated and I would get so overwhelmed by stress that I would often have to leave the room or just shut down and sit on the floor at work until it passed. After that period passed, I was fairly OK with being a non-smoker but I still chewed gum often to replace cravings that almost never ceased.

This time around I decided to chew gum, but after about a week I no longer even thought of chewing gum. There were no cravings to replace, for the most part. I am not sure if this is because I was just more certain about quitting, as I was quitting partly for myself (I was tired of smelling like cigarettes, and smoking always made my mouth feel kind of grungy) and partly to impress a girl who didn’t like cigarettes but never actually told me to quit (Hi, Sarah).

At about the month mark I went through a really lousy state of depression and anxiety. I can’t remember the specifics of it right now, but I felt really low. I wasn’t experiencing cravings, so it took about a week of it before it dawned on me that perhaps this was due to quitting smoking. I’d say it lasted for about two weeks and I’ve been fine since.

Quitting was easy for me. I hate to say that, because I know it is hard on a lot of people, but I’ll say that I think the trick is simply to convince yourself that quitting is more valuable to you than not quitting. I think a lot of people quit because they think they should, not because they genuinely want to. It’s hard to convince yourself that something you’ve done for so long, something you sincerely enjoy, is not something you want to do anymore. I’d say the whole battle resides in determining that you really are better off without cigarettes and believing it. I know when I quit the first time, I was doing it because I thought people would think better of me. This time I did it because I would think better of me, and I do.

So, I’m quit. Here we are.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything under the journal category. Oh, it’s been over a month since Staires! was started. Pretty cool.

Last night something strange happened. I got a call from a 404 area code number (Atlanta, Georgia) that hung up on me. Then, a few minutes later, I got a call from a 760 number that was really weird, as it was some guy asking me if I was the person he was talking to through craigslist. I said, I don’t know, for what item? He said nothing. I said, for the video game or for the carpet? He said neither. I said, then I think you have the wrong number. He said he didn’t think so, but OK, and hung up. Minutes later I got a call from a 480 area code, which is parts of Arizona, that also hung up on me. Another couple of minutes, I got a call from a 808 number, which is Hawaii. This time, though, the guy talked to me and said he was in Yuma, Arizona, which is where this girl I know lives. He said he was talking to some girl from the internet and she gave him my number. After this, the 760 guy called me again and told me he was from Yuma and gave me the same name the other guy gave me.

Turns out that, yeah, the girl I know from Yuma ended up posting two “I’m a hot and horny chick” advertisements on Craigslist and then talked to them all for a bit before giving them all my number. I was really stressing before I found out it was her doing it, because I started to worry that someone I know personally was fucking with me maliciously, and it made me wonder how far it could go. Could someone potentially have some drunk and horny guy show up at my house? Could that person tell them something like, “My brother might answer the door and he doesn’t like me to have dudes come over, he’ll deny I exist, you might have to kick his ass.”? I mean, ugh, really kind of worrying.

I spent an hour today taking pictures at Timothy’s house. She has a lot of plants and weird crap in her backyard and I’m still learning my dad’s Coolpix 5700. I guess it’s an old camera now, but it’s still pretty fantastic compared to what I am used to. Expect to see a huge flood of pictures soon, if you didn’t already have to scroll through a ton to get to this post.

I should be in San Jose in five days. I’m excited. Maybe it’ll get canceled, I don’t know. I wish I could do something about anxiety. Oh well. I thought I had more to write about, but I don’t.

So Eris and I made up. Or, I should say, she messaged me angrily and I responded with apologies, things like, “I stepped out of line and you didn’t deserve that, yadda, yadda, yadda,” and now I’m hanging out with her and I’m not sure why. This is terrible for me, really, because there was a time I really wanted her and fancied myself as being in love with her–ha!–and deeply respected her as a close friend, and now I just kind of want to stop my car and order her to get out.

I am taking her to her first competitive pool game. Eris is inheriting Cerberus’ hobbies, as the one thing he seems to enjoy in life aside from drinking is drinking while playing pool. There are a lot of things that bother me about this. Eris is only 20, so she has to use a fake ID and pass for 24 in order to get in, and on top of that one of the bouncers is on the team. It’s an hour away from the start time and she doesn’t know where it is or how much it costs. The entire situation oozes irresponsibility and poor decision making and for some reason I am in this state with Eris where these things resonate with me so many times worse than they would with anyone else.

She’s also being very terse with me. I pulled into a driveway of an apartment building about three buildings away from where she was, and she somewhat yelled at me as if I fucked up in some grand way, and even when she got in the car she copped some sort of attitude. I also don’t know who’s apartment she was at, and for all I know it was one of her former drug fiend friends, but now we’re at El Pollo Loco and she’s eating so at least I know she’s not all strung-out on meth.

I am just annoyed that she messages me to give me a hard time, and I apologize to be nice, and it all seems to be some scheme so that she could get a ride to this pool game. If I didn’t feel so justified in what I said that made her upset, I would be fine with this being my atonement for the things I did. How unfortunate then that I feel this is completely undeserved.

I’m troubled by the fact that there was a time I would have been OK with this sort of thing. Many times did I give Eris a ride some random place, even if it was far away, and for nothing in return. Now I am just annoyed. I know why, and it’s because I have no respect for her at all.

When she first started dating Cerberus, I was disappointed. He was obviously far below her in a great number of ways, but it was her choice and I supported it. Then she started complaining about his alcoholism, his somewhat selfish sexual nature, and his tendency to be slightly abusive–e.g. play wrestling and continuing to do so long after she tells him to stop. At that point I started to feel like the girl I was friends with wasn’t who I thought she was. I didn’t think Eris would ever tolerate any kind of abuse, physical or mental. I didn’t think of her as a person who would deal well with weakness, especially in a boyfriend, but here she was, being accepting of all these flaws in Cerberus that I consider completely inexcusable.

Now there is this, this ridiculous longing for a man in jail. Now she just disgusts me. Things that I could look past, like the drug use, the attraction to friends who are lowlifes and losers, the poor choice in partners, and the general desire to be viewed as less of a person she actually is under the service, and brought into harsh relief. Who I thought Eris was isn’t who she really is, or at least the girl I was friends with has vanished as a result of surrounding herself with someone like Cerberus.

I guess that’s just what happens in the context of a relationship. Sarah’s effect on my life has been purely positive, thankfully. I’ve quit smoking. I quit MySpace, ah-ha-ha-ha. I’ve quit being so goddamn bitter about women and cynical about love. I am no longer so apathetic about my future. I am more confident, partly due to seeing her clear skin made me want to solve my problems with acne, and although progress is slow, there is definite progress there. (If only my red marks and scars would fade.) I guess if you want to sum up Sarah’s effect on me, you can say that since meeting her I’ve stopped having things I want to stop doing.

It’s too bad Cerberus’ effect on Eris hasn’t been more positive. Eris has always been kind of hedonistic, but now it is all-consuming.

Now I’m sitting in the parking lot of the bar she’s playing pool at. I’ve got some school stuff I can work on, some books to read, and music to listen to. The only thing I am missing is my laptop and my cat, otherwise my car is no different than my room at home. For the next few hours, this is home.

Update, 9:43 PM: That reunion was short lived. I ended up taking her home and on the way we launched into a discussion on, well, what I wrote here, basically. She said the words, “I don’t want someone perfect! I love imperfection!” at which point I groaned involuntarily, a sound that I think signaled the end of our friendship until she wakes up from whatever trance she is in. I remember back before she was with Cerberus, she would talk about how when she’s in a relationship with someone she’s not herself, and that she becomes the person she is with, and that I wouldn’t like her when she has a boyfriend. It’s true, I guess, and it’s sad I didn’t remember those words of hers until now. I was friends with a girl who treated guys like Cerberus like the shit they were, like all they deserved was the chance to grovel at her feet. That girl is nowhere to be seen now. Now the imperfections that would have repulsed her in the past are what attracts her. Sad, that.

Oh well. Whatever gets her through the night. The end.

Sarah’s been having problems with her computer, so at my insistence that it would fix all her problems, I tried to guide her through formatting her computer and reinstalling Windows XP. She didn’t get far, but far enough to completely erase her hard drive and find herself unable to install Windows. The setup kept throwing an error about being not having enough memory to verify the format, but it would continue, but then it would throw an error every time it tried to copy the initial files for Windows setup. I’ve seen this sort of thing before, as a fucked up burn of a Windows CD will cause it, or a slightly wonky CD-ROM drive will cause it, but the point is: it’s not something I can fix from 400 miles away.

Now I just feel like crap. I destroyed our most consistent and reliable form of communication, and something she relies on to get through her daily life, and there is no way for me to fix it. I have school the next three days, and then work on Friday, so I can’t even pull an emergency drive up North to try to fix her computer for her. The next planned trip isn’t for another three and a half weeks. I can sit here and burn setup discs and copies of software and collect spare CD-ROM drives all I want but it doesn’t do any good.

I feel like a piece of crap. I am a lousy boyfriend.

This is how you lose friends.

There’s cliché ways to open journal entries, and sometimes there is no way to avoid them, so I’m just not going to try.

I’ve got this friend; let’s call her, uh, Eris. She’s 20.

Eris has a boyfriend. Let’s call him, uh, Cerberus. He’s, hm, 23?

Eris is a good friend of mine, possibly my best friend. Eris is a good, smart girl. She can sing and play guitar; she’s better read than I am. In a lot of ways we’re similar; she’s held jobs and lived on her own before. She’s younger than me, but in a few ways she is more responsible, or at least I thought so. She met Cerberus while working at Olive Garden. Initially their relationship consisted of him pining for her and her treating him like shit because she knew that he was a worthless drunk piece of shit and it entertained her to watch him lust after her like a kicked puppy.

Then I fucked things up by telling her we couldn’t hang out anymore for a brief period of time. Why isn’t important, but I do regret this now, because in her boredom she decided it was a good idea to start seriously dating Cerberus and somehow she managed to fall in love with him. At this point, I am not sure if Eris knows what love is, and wonder if love to her is the absence of boredom.

Cerberus is an alcoholic. He is an unapologetic alcoholic who has numerous DUIs under his belt and warrants for his arrest in several cities. His driver’s license has been suspended for I don’t know how long, yet he somehow managed to defraud his way into buying a car, then he proceeded to get an illegal amount of tint on all the windows, because, obviously, that’s the smart thing to do when you’re trying to avoid getting pulled over so you can avoid getting arrested and going to jail.

There’s a great story where Cerberus and Eris drove out to whatever jail Cerberus’ brother is in–yes, it runs in the family!–and on the way back they got pulled over. For what? The limo tint, naturally. This should have been game over for Cerberus, but he had a trick up his sleeve: he pulled out the driver’s license of his brother, the brother who they just visited in jail, and handed it to police officer. They look about the same, so he figured, why not? If I’m going to go to jail, I might as well try to make it worse by lying to a police officer about my identity, right? It especially makes sense to hand the officer the license of someone who is currently in jail.

The officer takes the license and returns to his squad car, and comes back a short while later and says, “Alright, it all checks out, I’m going to have to give you a ticket for the tint, but you’re free to go!”

No, I am not shitting you. Yes, this story is true. Apparently in Los Angeles County there is absolutely no correlation between police records and who is in jail. Cerberus and Eris walked that night, with a ticket under his brother’s name, who was in jail at the time the ticket was issued, so if he goes to court for it, it’s obvious there is no way he could have gotten such a ticket. If this story makes you feel very, very scared for the state of affairs that law enforcement is in, you’re probably a good, decent, responsible person. If it makes you feel happy, you’re probably someone who has somehow managed to escape from jail and appreciate the fact that if the police pull you over, they’ll have no idea you’re supposed to be in jail! How keen!

Cerberus doesn’t like me. He is one of those boyfriends who are jealous and possessive, and he’s positive Eris is fucking me, even though we never have and never will. If Cerberus already didn’t have a lot of things going against him in my eyes, this would be enough to make me hate him. He has made Eris miserable on many, many occasions over accusing her of doing things with me. He’s played a lot of games to cut short time Eris and I have spent together. It’s ridiculous and childish, and reflects back to me things I used to do to girlfriends and regret now in retrospect. On the upside, Sarah benefits from this, because I will never treat her this way.

Eris’ parents don’t even like him, and not just for the obvious reasons.

The first night her parents decided, OK, we’ll give him a shot, we’ll let him spend the night in our house, he decided it was a good idea to drive out to a bar and get royally shit-faced. When I say shit-faced, what I mean is that he came back to her house and proceeded to piss on the living room floor. Not only that, but in his drunken stupor he managed to wander into her brother’s room, who is sixteen and one of the coolest people I know, and piss on his favorite jacket. Talk about a great way to leave a first impression!

My point is this: Cerberus is a worthless zero. He’s one of those walking black holes that sucks in everything good in his life and swallows it and doesn’t even shit out anything. He just sucks, and sucks, and sucks, and sucks. There is no tower of feces and destruction left in his wake, because in some ways even chaos is creation. Cerberus creates nothing but a swath of emptiness everywhere he goes.

If you don’t get it by now: Cerberus has absolutely no desirable traits, unless you’re Eris, at which point he somehow makes you happy when you’re not talking about all his undesirable characteristics and the reasons you should breakup with him. “He makes me happy!” she says, and then turns around and cries over the fact that every time she’s tried to do something nice for him, he fucks it up. Twice now she’s wanted to buy him a present (his birthday & Christmas) and he goes out far in advance of whatever special occasion and buys what he wants, takes it, uses it, and then gives her the receipt and says, “Thanks, honey!” These aren’t cheap items, either, both times they were in excess of $400.

If there is one good thing about Cerberus, it’s that he’s finally stopped skipping out on going to jail. He’s in jail now, finally. He has a year sentence, but you know how that goes, he’ll probably be out sooner rather than later. I hope not, I am hoping he fucks up somehow and ends up in for the full year. Perhaps I am soulless and evil, but I am hoping and praying that Eris’ time away from Cerberus isn’t spent pining entirely, as it is right now, and is instead spent realizing how better off she is without him. Unfortunately, it’s not going that way.

The plan was that Eris and I would spend all our time together once I took Sarah back to San Jose. I assumed I would be all lonely and broken without Sarah, like how Eris is without Cerberus, but I am not. I am actually happy and content with the fact that I’ve found someone who I have no misgivings about, and I have no complaints about us other than the fact that Sarah lives far away, which isn’t really a complaint about her at all. Eris, on the other hand, is fucking miserable and pathetic. There is no nice way to put it, she’s a downer.

It wouldn’t be such a big deal if it wasn’t that she’s being a downer over Cerberus. She’s all upset and depressed over the biggest piece of shit I have ever met in my whole life. I’ve known women who smoke pot with their two year-old sons and Cerberus is still the uncontested champion of worthlessness. I just don’t want to hang out with her, and I think it’s somewhat obvious since Eris and I have spent little time together in the last week when the plan was to be consistently together.

Last night things hit a breaking point. I figured, even though I didn’t really want to, I’d hang out with Eris when she gets off work and maybe we wouldn’t talk about how shitty life is without Cerberus and we could be happy and have a good time. I was wrong.

I drove her and a co-worker through the parking lot to Rite-Aid and on that short drive Eris starts complaining about the fact that she put $200 on Cerberus’ books, he went to the jail store and bought a bunch of food for his cell, but then switched cells, and the food never made it to his new cell, and he got a receipt that says he only has $60, which is not possible because how did he buy $140 worth of food and then lose it all, and, “it’s just not right! I’m going to have to go down there and try to figure out what happened, and oh my god! His brother has to draw things on the envelopes people send out to their wives and girlfriends so that he can have food because his brother’s food keeps disappearing!”

Maybe I’m an unsympathetic asshole. Maybe something is terribly wrong with my ability to experience empathy, but I got angry. I didn’t say anything, but my perspective on this is something like this:

The son of a bitch drove drunk, repeatedly. He knowingly and willingly endangered people’s lives. He broke the law, over and over again. He made a choice, repeatedly, knowing the consequences, and landed himself in jail. In jail, you have no rights. He willingly sacrificed his rights so he could have a good time. He’s lucky they even allow you to have money and buy things in jail. In jail, bad things happen. He’s in jail and I have no fucking sympathy for his plight. He deserves what he gets, which should be nothing.

Am I evil? Am I wrong?

No, I don’t think so, but I am her friend, shouldn’t I be supportive? I can’t. I know that to be supportive of her is to enable her to continue a dead-end and worthless relationship. She is wasting her time, her life, and her love. “But he makes me happy!” she pleads. I haven’t said this, but I wish I would: “Don’t you realize you could be happy, consistently, with someone else? You could find someone else, someone who isn’t an alcoholic, who doesn’t drive drunk, who doesn’t make you miserable? Don’t you get it? You could be happy with anyone; there are several million people in Los Angeles County alone, Eris. What is your fucking problem?”

I kept my mouth shut as long as I could, but something slipped. She was telling me this story about her father. She drove his car to work, she has her permit and she is learning, so he was with her in the car. For some reason I still can’t understand, she slowed down and stopped at a yellow light before it turned red. Her father lost it entirely and started yelling at her unintelligibly until they got to her work, at which point he got out of the car and started shouting at her. “Eris, I am so tired of your shit! You just let life lead you around by the collar! You need to get your fucking bullshit together and Blah, Blah, Blah!”

It caught her off guard and she told me she had no idea how stopping at a yellow light could make someone blow up in such a dramatic and unrelated way. I told her, “Well, for some people all it takes is a small thing to reach that breaking point,” without realizing that I was on the way to reaching mine. I continued, “You have been kind of frustrating lately.”

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, well, I mean that your whole situation is kind of frustrating.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Like the whole Cerberus thing. It’s like, you’re on this path, and everyone knows it, and everyone can see where it’s going, and it’s not like you don’t know, and it’s frustrating, because we’re just watching you walk this line and, how can you do it?”

“What are you even saying?”

“Your life is like a made for TV movie, Eris. You’re doing these things that have these very specific ends to them and it’s sad to watch but we’re watching anyway but the problem is you’re a real person we care about and we don’t want to see what’s going to happen, happen to you. I mean, don’t you want to be happy?”

“I don’t want to go to school, I don’t want to get a career, and I don’t want anything in my life. Those things won’t make me happy!”

“I’m not even talking about that. It’s just no one could ever understand why you would want to put yourself in these fucking shitty places and then try to thrive within them while it’s so fucking obvious you’re fucking miserable!”

“Can you be specific for fuck’s sake?”

“The Cerberus thing! You say, blah blah, he says he’s going to get out of jail and change his ways and stop drinking and driving and go to college and get things back on track for you. But you know, everyone knows, once someone goes to jail, and it’s not like he hasn’t been before, they just keep going back to jail. He’s tried to quit drinking before and it hasn’t stuck. It’s just sad, because he says these things, but you’re fucking kidding yourself if he’s going to get out of jail and not say, ‘hey baby, c’mon, I just got out of jail, let’s go get a drink,’ and then he’s going to get all drunk and go drive somewhere!”

“When he gets out of jail I’m going to be sitting there with a tallboy of steelies waiting for him!”

I lose it, “For fuck’s sake, Eris, what the fuck is wrong with you? Are you fucking stupid!?”

At this point she opens the car door, we’re sitting in the drive through of Taco Bell waiting to get her food, and I say, “Eris, fuck, seriously?”

“Out of all the people I don’t need this from right now, it’s you, supposedly my best fucking friend,” she says.

I’m speechless as she gets out of the car and slams the door and walks off. I don’t really know what to do. I know what the good thing to do is, and that’s to chase after her and apologize and try to make things better, but how can I? My words are true, my sentiment is genuine, and I can’t just take back the truth. She knows it’s the truth, she’s said all the same things herself at some point, and it’s so frustrating to watch her ignore it all on purpose under the guise of pursuing some shallow form of happiness.

I back out of the drive through and pull through this liquor store parking lot and see her go around the corner and disappear down Leffingwell. I pull up into the driveway and look down the sidewalk, which stretches down a hill, and is lined by a solid wall for at least a mile. She’s gone. I don’t know where she went, I didn’t see her walk into the liquor store, but she’s gone. I don’t know how she did it, but she managed to completely vanish. I sigh to myself and pull out and flip a bird at the intersection and drive down Leffingwell the same direction she went in, but she truly disappeared. In all honesty, I didn’t really want to look for her. I didn’t know what I would say if I found her, because once you remove the possibility of apology, what are you supposed to say? “I’m sorry I told you the truth about your loser boyfriend, get back in the car”?

Admittedly my timing was bad. I can apologize for that. I’m sorry I lectured her on the same day her father became irate and yelled at her incoherently about the exact same thing. I’m sorry I became specific when he managed to stay ambiguous, but I am her friend. It doesn’t seem to me that a friend should just sit by idly while he watches a friend he genuinely loves and cares about destroy every iota of emotional well being she has.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I should just sit on my words, I don’t know. I’ve never been in this position before. I’ve never had a girl as a friend; I know how I talk to my guy friends.

Guy friends are easy. If they’re complaining about their women being a bitch, you can easily say, “Well, man, sounds like she’s being a bitch.” They say, in response, “Yeah, I guess so, oh well,” and move on. In most cases you can just repeat what they say and then append something chauvinistic, like, “Yeah, she’s being a total bitch, but at least she sucks your dick, right?” Guy’s problems with women don’t even seem to progress to the level that Eris’ problems are at.

I’ve never heard a guy, outside of myself, dive into some lengthy problem with a woman. I’ve gone the whole, “My woman is cheating on me, this shit sucks,” route, and my friend’s responses to that consisted of, “Man, you gotta drop that bitch, man, she’s a fucking cunt.” My reply to that was, “Yeah, but I like her, but you’re right,” and then I went on my merry way fucking shit up for myself. It was a spectator sport for a lot of people, watching the train wreck that was my relationship at the time, but eventually it ended and I didn’t make my friends miserable with me, I think.

This shit with Eris is persistent and ridiculous. From day one she’s been admitting, while denying, that Cerberus is a dead end, and I just can’t deal with it anymore. With Eris, it’s not enough to say, “You realize Cerberus is a dead end, right?” because she says, “Yes, I know, but he makes me happy!” Then I have to sit there while she pines, and pines, and pines, after some piece of worthless white trash who isn’t worth her time of day.

I’m burned out. I’m assuming that last night I destroyed any future Eris and I had at being friends, at least until she wakes up from whatever silly trance Cerberus has her in. I was hoping I would be along for the ride, that I could subtly push her toward realizing that she shouldn’t be there for him when he gets out of jail, even if the only way to reach that end was to convince her that the only way he’ll change is to lose her. (This would be hardcore manipulation, because everyone knows that even if he loses her, he’s not going to change, and then hopefully she’d see that and move on.) Unfortunately, I didn’t have the patience or ability to see this through. It seems to me the problem is that I actually do care. If I didn’t, I could just sit on my hands and watch, but I can’t, it’s just not possible for me.

I suppose I’m relieved. I just wish I could have helped. It’s sad, I guess, that sometimes being a friend means not being a friend. Perhaps it’s inexperience with these situations, but I don’t see what else I could do. You can drag a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink, right?

The truth of the matter is that I am lost and confused. It didn’t hit me until right now, this very instant, getting ready to walk out the door and hang out with friends: I am not going to wake up tomorrow and find Sarah groggily opening her eyes to look at me. Somehow I managed to drive all the way home and sit around for two hours fiddling with this site and talking to people and not think about it at all. My eyes got all wet, no falling tears, no manic sobbing, just a brief filling up and draining out.

I’m sure it will fade in time, but my mind can’t help but worry about a long term solution. How do I get Sarah and I together on a more permanent basis? There are so many obstacles that seem insurmountable. The solution is clear, the solution is one that has worked so far this whole time: I find the way, I make the sacrifice, and then she and I hold hands and smile at each other. There is only so much I can do, only so much my experience allows me to achieve; although in the past I’ve always found some way to make it through, I rely almost entirely on the assistance of others and pure serendipity. Can that sort of thing really get me by when I am hundreds of miles away from everything I have ever known?

Love conquers all! Or, at least that is the rumor.

Each new experience, each new direction I want to run makes me regret a variety of mistakes I’ve made in my life. If I go back far enough: I regret the fact that I dropped out of high school. That I didn’t go to college immediately afterward, if I didn’t drop out. That I don’t have a degree now or some sort of career path in mind. Skipping all that, accepting the fact that I made those mistakes, I think: I regret that I haven’t worked some sort of steady job–outside of the veterinary field–for more than a year. That I don’t have skills that I can utilize to land me a job where ever I like; I can’t just pick up and leave somewhere and expect there to be a resume that will land me a high paying job in short order. I regret that I didn’t save money better when I had the chance to.

I regret that I am not rich, famous, hot as hell, and capable of anything. Well, that last one, I am capable of anything. If there is one thing I have proven to myself, it is that I can do whatever I set my mind to, even if it involves riding on the backs of others and stepping on the toes of fate. I just need to suck it up and stop being afraid. I need to stop letting fear turn me apathetic and ridiculous.

Think, Brad: if it wasn’t for your willingness to do something completely outlandish, entirely unnecessary, and unarguably foolhardy, you wouldn’t have met Sarah. You wouldn’t have found someone who feels perfect by your side. I don’t want to be melodramatic–you, Brad, be melodramatic? never!–but for fuck’s sake, how else are you supposed to describe these things? She makes me feel content in a way that none other.

So, then, the question is this: can you put a price on that? Is there ever too much risk to justify chasing after something, someone, so right? I think I might be getting ahead of myself.

The answer, then: chill the fuck out, Brad. You’re impatient, always have been, always will be. Your impatience causes you to cut off your nose to spite your face at every turn, and rushing into some hasty decision could possibly only hurt you in the long term. Slow down, breathe, and take your time. But–I say!–but if it wasn’t for hasty last-minute decision-making I probably would never have met Sarah. Sure–I say!–sure, but there was no risk then, you were just finding out if you could like each other, and then you did, so good on you. Making some sort of decision to throw away the last two years of your life in order to run away to what seems like a strange land–where you would undoubtedly be a stranger–is an entirely different beast than a late night drive to that strange land to meet a strange girl you think you could love.

Remember that, Brad. Take it easy, and enjoy her, enjoy your time and your experiences. The best thing you can do right now is try to fill the time between visits with her with things that will eventually prepare you for the grand finale… or, I suppose I should say, the grand entrance to whatever new life you choose to desire.

Good luck.

This is, technically, my third personal website. Maybe it’ll stick, maybe it wont, but all I know is that my life exists in multiple mediums and I need to integrate them in some way. Doing so on i have been floated does not seem appropriate. Let’s see how this business works out, shall we?