I still feel so broken some days.  I guess this will go away eventually.

I don't know if I should bother writing about this stuff or not anymore.  It doesn't seem to help; if anything the more I talk about it, the more confused I get.  I talk myself into corners where suddenly this whole thing is my fault, and that she's just bored of me or sees no future in me or whatever.  It's entirely possible the whole thing is just broken in her head and she has to get through her stuff, and most of the time I see that, but when the wall cracks...it breaks.  I'm sure it will get better, and I need to learn to just let it go so I can be better if/when she gets through.  Of course, maybe by then it won't even matter.

My tooth is still kind of bothering me, but I've been putting off going to get it looked at since I need to go to an endo for it.  I don't exactly have insurance, so the prospect of the root canal/crown is scary financially.

Starting trying to fix up my resume the other day (I'm not digging up the code for the accent on that, bugger it).  Hopefully I can figure something out in the meantime to take my mind of things.

But I feel so empty and confused about why this happened.  I think I want to make it my fault so I can accept it and move on, and I don't think I can because deep down I feel like it really has nothing to do with me -- or at the very least, nothing to do with her feelings for me.  I don't know.

All I can do is hope when it comes to her, and work on the things I can change.  It's just hard not to look in the mirror and say "can you blame her?"

Cycles of Musings

I've been contemplating writing more, both here and just in general.  The trouble is, unlike a lot of bloggers, my life is often extremely boring and I can't think of much worth actually writing about.  My days are most often filled with feeding my family's horde of animals or typical retail work woes (until I find something else, in which case I'll just replace it with those typical woes instead).  I'd post my thoughts, but most of my thoughts are just fears, and most of those are pretty typical themselves.  How do I get into a better line of work?  Is she coming back?  What did this mean when she said it?  How will I afford to pay this bill?

It's all very trite.  The problem with writing fiction, on the other hand, is that I'm still often plagued by that sensation that everything I write is just going to be stolen from something else I've read, or a game I've played or movie I've seen.  I always wanted to write a book, but I wanted it to have some kind of seemingly original element to it.  Naturally there's likely to be someone out there who would read it and say "Oh, I saw this in so-and-so's book," but I'd like it to at least be someone whom I've never read and can at least honestly say "Yeah, sorry, I didn't steal it from them."

So instead I mostly just play Final Fantasy XIV all day and deal very little with anything else.  I think, to an extent anyway, that this is probably okay for now.  I'm mourning a loss, one that was rather heavy to me, and while it isn't okay for me to do nothing about it forever, there's an element of time that I think should be just spent on me.  Unfortunately (and in many ways like her scenario), making no progress in anything is just going to continue to keep me in a cycle of being depressed about things.  More than likely, for example, I need to go back to the dentist and get a root canal on this tooth, but since I saw some sign of improvement after he trimmed the tooth down (apparently my bite was all out of whack), I just sort of assumed it was okay to ignore it.  It doesn't hurt nearly as much since, but I think it probably should have gone away completely if that was the actual problem.  Of course, the actual X-rays showed nothing, and were grotesquely expensive without insurance.  The root canal combination will be significantly more.

Getting a new job would help some of it.  Or deciding on going to school.  I was about ready to start doing the first one ( wanted to get three months in on the current one, and that just passed ), but then the great catastrophe happened and my motivation in dealing with it has reset to zero.  This is probably indicative that I put too much weight on this relationship in some way -- but I truly feel so back to square one now.  I had the beginnings of a plan for a life I decided I wanted, in a place I wanted to live, and yeah, maybe those plans are just sort of on hiatus and will be back.  But at the moment, treating it as if its over and done with, I'm left feeling that nothing I do will change anything in any sort of amount of time that will make me happy.

Honestly, there's more whining I'd like to do about the thing, but I'm trying to not make everything about her right now.  I still just sort of pray she's going to come back.  I'm still super worried she's not okay and I wish I could be there or do something for her, but I'm scared to contact her because I may make it worse.  And I'm still circling all around it thinking I'm missing something, and then reading into things and creating these other scenarios which probably aren't even close to true.  I guess I'm the sort that thinks maybe she had other reasons and just said what she said to soften the blow.  But she's never lied about anything else; why lie about this?  Why even assume she's fallen out of love when she said she's just got things to deal with so she can get on with her life?  The optimist would say "this has been coming for awhile now, and it needs to be done so she can have any sort of chance with you, and its totally normal."

Okay, holy hell, I have no idea where any of this is going and I don't feel any better getting into it, so I'm done for now.  

To Whom Mine Heart Beats For

I want to believe that you will be back.  I doubt you're reading this, which is probably a good thing.  At the moment, the two of us being apart is probably what is best for us.  Still, I feel like I understand what you're going through, and I feel like I understand why you made the decision you made.  I wish I could be there for you now, when I think you need someone to be there the most.

Deep down, I'm hoping -- sincerely hoping -- that the reason this isn't working is because you're still stuck where you are.  I want to believe that you still love me and that the stress has just become too much and its buried beneath.  I want to believe this for a few reasons:  mainly, I want to believe this because you loved me so much.  You were always the one that pushed me; you were always the one that said "your head is doing this to you because you're giving it too much power.  Beneath it, you love me.  I can tell.  And when you stop giving it so much free reign and let yourself be happy, this is going to work for you."  You sent me cards, you sent me gifts.  You told me things you didn't tell others; I told you the same.

I wish I could tell you the same thing.  I wish I hadn't been so shocked by everything and I could have encouraged you better.  I wish I could have stopped you from doing this, even if its the right thing.  I wish I could say the same thing to you that you said to me, because I think it applies.  I think you still love me.  I think you still want this, and it just feels so far away that you want to give up. I think when you say you have too many issues to fix and you can't focus enough to finish any of them that you're telling the truth.

I think when you sit down and actually fix them, it's going to be okay.  I want to believe that.  I want to believe that you'll message me and say hello, and we'll keep in touch, and soon enough you'll be free to live the life you deserve -- the one you showed me.  That person was shining radiantly in everything despite all the problems looming on her horizon.  She is beautiful in every conceivable way, and just by being near, makes me a better person.  That person is the real you, and when you're finally able to shed the things holding you down, it will come back.  I want to be there when it does, because you bring out the best in me, and the two of us together make a song no one else hears but everyone can understand.

Maybe you won't, and maybe I'm destined to move on.  Time will tell.  But hopefully time will tell me the story I want, because I deserve the happy ending this time.  And so do you.  I love you.  Be strong, and be quick, because I don't think you should have your life on hold any longer than it already has been.  You can do this.  I believed in a lot of things this last year; of all of them, I believe in you the most still.

(And don't hate me on the offchance you remember this blog and do read this.  I have so much I still want to say to you and can't, and this is how I choose to deal.  No one really reads this, and no one will know who you are anyway.  I'm allowed to hope.)

On the Nature of Internet Friends

This entry will be dedicated to the ever-awesome Corinne, whose blog is currently the only one I really read that often. She's probably the only person that really would even consider checking this one since it effectively could just be called Don Whines Constantly Like a Bitch and is updated only slightly more often than never. I used to blog all the time on the old one but felt like the things I wanted to discuss often included frustrated references to the things people had done in real life, which I soon realized I couldn't fully unleash since I had effectively given the link out to everyone I knew back then.

Yeah, that was dumb. Somewhere along the line I created this blog instead by adding "x2" to the URL (Isn't that a bit like no one recognizing Superman as Clark Kent when he takes his glasses off? I think that might be one of those "tropes," but I'm far too lazy to go look up the name). I transferred over every entry I had from the old one so I could read them at my leisure or whenever I felt the need to reflect on how much I seem to avoid looking at the good things in life and only focus on the bad.

No, I'm not going down that road again -- I promised myself I'd write about something other than self-loathing today, and I think that something will be the dichotomous (Is that a word? Do I care?) relationship with the idea of having friends on the internet.

I'll save you the boring paragraphs to come and summarize now: like many things, the key is not to overindulge -- you never want to be at a point where all your best friends are people that are hundreds, even thousands of miles away from you -- but there's no reason you can't have them and in fact, I consider myself somewhat blessed to have met so many great people over the years. While I do greatly wish I had spent way less time on the internet growing up, there are still a handful of people that I keep in touch with from those years when I first began; years of sitting in AOL chatrooms roleplaying in Rhy'Din, specifically in that bloated OCS guild that became a second job for awhile.

Hard to believe that was something akin to ten years ago, at least. I think I was ... 19? I'm turning 32 tomorrow? I don't remember. When did it become so difficult to remember things, by the way? Is it age or alcohol? I forget.

I generally refer to my non-internet friends as "real" friends but have long been uncomfortable with that title. Most of the people I still communicate with on the internet are people that I've shared so much with during the bad times. These people were there when my mother and father were divorcing and my father was pretty much a jilted asshole (something I didn't really understand until she who shall not be named left me for someone else several years later, and honestly there's another subject that'd be worth a post at some point, maybe -- examining the relationship between your parents relationships and your own), and I had graduated high school with no plan of attack for a future (Yeah, I really should start on that sooner or later), and they're people that you talk to at your best and your worst. And while the title of "real" friend and "internet" friend is more meant to be based on cosmetics, it still often seems like the "internet" friends get more out of me than the "real" ones do (which would be another subject to blog about sometime).

Ever notice I have a real difficult time staying on my topic? I'm a one take guy; I'm not editting this shit later. That'll happen if I ever get serious enough to do this on a regular basis maybe.

Maybe.

Its taken years to realize but if I'm just going to be sitting at home by myself most of the time anyway, there's nothing wrong with it. My "real" friends should get priority and do in most counts, but there isn't any reason one can't have both. Your net friends will come and go, but you'll always have the memories of the good conversations and connections you made, even if you don't remember the specific details of them. And as long as you spend time outside experiencing the world, you can log in to your messengers and social media sites and comment and like and +1 to your heart's desire.

Holy crap blogger has changed -- my post wiped there, but there's a menu to get drafts back out and make edits! That's probably been there for years and I've never noticed. Anyway.

So here's to the texts you exchange from people you might not have met, the late night phone calls to the girl on the opposite coast, the lifetime of possible meetups, the people in the chat room rolling fake internet dice with you, and the people you're teaming up with to fight screen filling dragons and such with. Yes. I want a better life off the computer, but having one on the computer has probably kept me going through a lot of the things that made me want to quit.

One take right there; that's how the pros do it.