It’s gonna hurt like a sonofabitch when…

So I finally did it today.

Anybody that’s been following me on my blog or on twitter knows that I’ve been struggling with a recent break up. What’s been hardest about the breakup is the abruptness and the finality of it. Not even a post break up “hey let’s get together for coffee and talk about this” sort of thing, just a “go the fuck away” e-mail and then pretty much nothing.

Well, not completely nothing, that’s not fair, but a fair amount of surfacy shit. Frankly that kind of crap pisses me off. If we’re going to try to be friends afterwards, be my friend. Don’t give me small talk. I hate that shit. If you want to talk surfacy bullshit, find someone else to talk to.

But that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve been trying for weeks, nay, nearly two months now, to try to get a little time to talk about things. She seems dead set against that. Having dropped the meds that seemed to have been giving me extreme anxiety and obsessive tendencies, I’ve returned to a slightly more normal frame of mind. It’s a good thing, but there’s been a few side effects I wasn’t happy with. Like the good memories starting to fade. I wanted to keep those, but… well, what the fuck. I think trying to keep them was making things harder for me to handle.

I had a bizarre dream about her last week as the meds were starting to fade. It was very strange. I don’t often remember my dreams, so when I do, you know it was somehow kind of jarring. In this dream, we were actually having the post-break up talk. We were in a house, for some reason, I think this was a house we were going to move in to. Don’t ask me, I had no plans or intentions to move in with her, but there it is. In the dream, she told me she had been pregnant, and she had an abortion. Within the context of the dream, this hurt. In fairness, I had mixed feelings, but the strongest one was that she had kept this from me. It’s the sort of thing I would have wanted to know, know what I mean? She was a little harsh about telling me this too, like there was some kind of simmering anger just under the surface. It wasn’t apologetic or caring at all. I’ve kind of come to see her this way somewhat. Side effect of the last couple of months, I suppose.

So as little as a few weeks ago, I would have woken from this dream and immediately felt despair. That was me from a few weeks ago under the meds and obsessing and anxious. When I woke up, I was a little sad, but mostly annoyed that I had had another dream about her. I kind of want that shit to stop already. I’m ready to move on now. Would my subconscious please fucking cooperate now thank you very much?

So I’ve written a couple of notes to her, but I never sent them. I waited, then deleted it later. I wrote several of these. Each successive one a little less crazy than the last. Finally I lost all desire to do this at all. Until today. In my therapy session today I told the therapist about the dream. Basically what he said was that everything in a dream is some kind of metaphor for what’s going on with us. His best guess was that the pregnancy and abortion was the relationship. It started suddenly, and just as suddenly she ended it. Yeah, I can see that.

At the same time, I’ve been starting to see how me-on-the-meds must have seemed to her. In a way I can’t really blame her for freaking out and cutting me out of her life. I was probably a little…. ahem… intense. That’s not me so much on a normal basis, so at the same time I kind of feel like I didn’t really get a fair shake, but who the fuck said life was fair, eh? I had my shot, I blew it, it’s over. Too bad, so sad, get the fuck out.

So I wrote one last note today, basically saying that I get how I must have made her feel, and apologized for it. Sent it, and now, well, I think I’m done. That’s as close to closure as I’m going to get. I doubt she even read it, but that wasn’t really the point. I had my say finally, and she’s free to respond if she wants to. I always make time for people who are important to me. The opposite isn’t always true though.

What’s most surprising about the last week or so is how my attitude has basically turned to “Meh”. It’s over, I know it’s over, and it doesn’t really bug me all that much anymore. I’m finally starting to move on with my life, do a few hobbies, actually get work done at work. Somewhat. The open office bullshit at work is fucking killing me. I need a little privacy to get anything done, but that’s a whole nother rant.

The “Meh” attitude is cropping up in other places too. Without going into too many details for various reasons, someone else did something that just a few weeks ago would have hurt me severely. This last week, it bothered me for a little bit then I pretty much said “meh, fuck it” and moved on. Another potential relationship was shut down I was ok with it. Well, not ok, I just feel sort of numb to it all now. Sort of like watching this shit happen to someone else in a movie.

I’m still suffering depression, but it’s just depression now. More of a general malaise. The meds I was on increase dopamine, which might be good for me a little later down the road, but I need heal now, so I’m going to stay off of them a little longer.

So, I suppose that was my good-bye letter. I’m ok with this relationship ending as much as I can be, and I wish her well. I hope she finds that right guy she’s hoping for, but I think she’s got her own issues to deal with first. I would have been happy standing by her side as she did so, but she didn’t want me there. What’cha gonna do?

But women, one parting piece of advice. If you’re going to break up with a guy, for whatever reason, fucking talk to him. Don’t break up over e-mail then refuse to talk in any form with him other than text. That’s fucking bullshit, and it’s chickenshit.

Alone in a roomful of people

The last week or so has been a little bit of a roller coaster ride for me. I’ve been introspective lately, and that’s usually not a good thing for me. It has a way of deepening whatever depression or anxiety I might be feeling at the time, but it also tends to produce some interesting insights into the human condition.

Sometimes I’ll send these insights out into the the twitterverse. Sometimes these tent to resonate with people. When it does, it has a way of making me smile. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Maybe it’s just nice to know that I’m not the only human on this little rock who feels this way. Misery loves company I guess, but it makes me feel a little better to know that I’m not alone.

It does confuse me how there can be so many people on the planet and so many of us have absolutely nobody to keep up company. I can sit in a coffee shop for hours and speak to nobody except the guy who takes my order.

Before recorded history, when we were tribal bands roaming the plains, we stayed together for safety. Our need to communicate with other humans was served by the very fact that our small tribes were always together. Now we put ourselves in little boxes and never talk to each other. This is better somehow. Personally, I kind of miss the plains.

I desperately want something to happen. Anything. I would make something happen, but I don’t know how or what. Sometimes I can’t stand sitting in my little box any longer, so I get out and go somewhere. Today it was a coffee shop. I sit here reading and writing for hours, hoping someone, anyone, will want to connect with me in some small way, but that’s not how we work anymore. I’m an introvert, and this condemns me to solitude.

Maybe tomorrow will be different.

Please let me keep this memory, just this one…

I’ve noticed something over the past couple of days as I’ve stopped using my depression medication and my anxiety and obsessiveness have slowly dissipated, so have my memories of my ex girlfriend. That was an unexpected side effect. I had some great memories of our short time together, and I wanted to keep them. But, inevitably, I remember less and less of it. Maybe this is what’s helping me to move on, but it’s not how I wanted to do it.

I wonder if the anxiety was helping me to remember those memories. Perhaps my obsession and constant remembering of everything I wanted to hold on to was what was keeping me from moving on. I frequently wish I were a psychologist, so I could understand these things. I’ve always found the study of how the brain works to be fascinating. And everybody knows that any good psychiatrist/psychologist is quite crazy themselves, so I totally fit the bill.

I’m a little sad about this. I truly felt happier with her than I had in, well, as long as I can remember. I didn’t want to lose that. I feel a little like Jim Carrey’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as he’s undergoing the procedure to have the memories erased, he sees ones that he doesn’t want to lose, and he tries desperately to hold on to them, but they’re still gone. I know that I’ve lost some of the better memories already, but obviously I don’t know what they were anymore, only that I know that I’ve lost them. Unfortunately, since she won’t see me, I can’t make any more to replace them.

Maybe this is how all relationships work. You gradually lose memories over time, but in the successful relationships you make more to replace them. In the unsuccessful ones, you eventually heal because you gradually lose nearly all of your memories of the relationship. This seems like a terrible tragedy of the human condition. As I think back over other relationships that I’ve had, I notice the same thing. I’ve lost most of my memories of them. Even with my ex wife I know there were some good memories even there, but I can only remember a handful of them. Even the girl who broke my heart when I was a teenager, I can barely remember that relationship at all, only how it felt when she left me.

It’s funny how the negative memories stick with us better than the positive ones. I can still remember clearly the pain and hurt I felt over our confusing and abrupt breakup, but only vaguely remember waking up next to her and holding her. Kissing her neck in the morning… So much is gone already, but with it goes much of the pain. Perhaps the pain of a breakup is really just the pain of loss. As my memory of what I’ve lost fades, so does the pain. The only thing that seems to stick with me is the memory of how much it hurt when the memories were still fresh.

The Force is Strong with This One

Today was a noteworthy day. There were two main things I wanted to write down, mainly for myself to be able to look at later. I know, it’s a blog, so this shit is all public and whatnot, but let’s be honest: this blog’s primary reader is myself. It’s cool, I’m not out here to become famous. Does one become famous for blogging anyway?

So the biggie was an on again off again thing that I wasn’t sure was going to happen, but it did. My oldest son, who was still being homeschooled due to wishy washy court rulings, told my ex wife (may the fleas of a thousand camels infest her pubic hair) that he wanted to return to school. Surprisingly, she enrolled him, and today was his first day back in school. This is awesome news, because once he’s returned to school, she can’t take him back out. This is the only fucking issue I won on in the divorce. Well, that and holiday time. On every other issue, mainly financial, I got fucked up the ass with a telephone pole. Still, this whole thing was about my kids from day one. I didn’t expect that the price for protecting my kids would be so steep, or that I wouldn’t be able to actually get custody to protect them from indoctrination into extreme religion, but you take what you can get. I won on a couple of fronts where it came to my kids. That makes the ridiculously insane amount of alimony I pay worth every penny. That and actually being divorced. That’s so worth it too. Jesus fuck if I was still having to live with that woman I would gouge my eyes out with a circular saw.

The second is really only important to me. I’m two days off the depression meds and my obsession with the ex girlfriend is waning quickly. I think the therapist is right, they were making the anxiety worse, not better. Today, for the first time in over a month, I was able to concentrate on something other than her, even if only for a while. Seriously, it’s been major fucking with my life. My house is a cesspit, I’m pathetically behind at work, and I haven’t been able to focus on anything I like to do as a hobby, which is sad given that hobbies are about all I have left now when my kids aren’t here. Today I got some work done, I looked at my phone a lot less, and I actually smiled and joked with people. I was even able to carry on a small meaningless conversation about pumpkin spice lattes with the insanely hot woman from two rows over who I can’t figure out if she’s with someone or not. Someday I might even work up the courage to ask her out for coffee. Maybe.

This is significant though. My feelings about her have changed dramatically in the last two days, I finally feel like I’m moving on. I still think about her a ridiculous percentage of the day, but it’s not this constant mopey “oh I wish I had her back I don’t know how I can go on without her” bullshit I’ve been stuck in for the last month. I’m starting to put it in perspective and see her a little more realistically. That’s a good thing, by the way.

It’s still kind of sad, she’s had more or less no good relationships, and I really thought I could be the good one. I wanted to try, anyway, but now I really don’t anymore. If she called me up tonight, I would still be tempted, but I don’t think that will be the case a week from now. She’s not going to, it’s just one of those things I obsess on. My resolve won’t get tested on this issue.

There’s one drawback to this though, I think the meds were actually helping me to quit smoking. It’s an antidepressant that’s actually the same thing as Zyban. Being off of it for two days has sort of thrown me for a loop on the smoking issue. Maybe once I’ve got this whole ex thing in place I can go back on them to quit smoking again. We’ll see. The main thing is that I really feel like I’m pulling back from the brink of absolute disaster. I need to get that under control so that I live long enough to quit smoking.

All in all, a pretty good day though.

Dear World

Fuck you.

Sure, Let Me Debase Myself And Lie Down In This Puddle So You Can Walk Over Me My Dear.

This is going to be another post about my relationship issues. If you don’t like those kind of posts, feel free to go somewhere else. You know what, fuck you. This is my fucking blog, and I’ll blog whatever the fuck I want.

So basically I had a really shitty day today. I found out that not only had the short sale on my house fallen through, but that today was auction day. In other words, I found out exactly too late to do anything about it. Even if I could have done anything about it. So I am no longer a home owner. In fairness, I hadn’t lived there in two years anyway. The worst part about it is the major hit my credit rating is going to take. Foreclosures stay on for ten years, not seven. My ex wife fucked me pretty good on this one. She did it intentionally, I’m sure, but the best part of the whole thing is where she says it’s my fault. No, I’m not kidding. She refused to find any kind of work whatsoever, or to support herself or her children in any way whatsoever, stopped paying the mortgage, and made sure the house went to foreclosure. And it’s my fault. You seriously can’t make this shit up.

Add to that the fact that she wants to move out of district so that she can move somewhere she can afford to. The unbelievable injustice of the fact that a father who wanted his children and was perfectly capable of supporting them and could have easily kept them in the good school district in which they live lost them to a mother who refuses to support herself or her children in any way shape or form and cannot afford to keep them in the school district, but wants to move them to a poorer school district. Somehow she has been determined to be the better parent. Again, you can’t make this shit up. If somebody put this in a book it would be deemed implausible. But yet, it happened.

And just for good measure, I found out my copay for my therapist is so high that I can’t afford it. So not only am I dealing with a ridiculous divorce, an insane financial situation as a result, and a difficult breakup with my ex girlfriend, but I can’t even afford therapy anymore. At times like this I start to wonder if there is a god, because if there is, she hates me. It seems implausible that all of this could happen to one, basically good person. Yet, it did.

So moving on, my ex girlfriend and I are occasionally talking again. Yesterday she had some crap happen, so being the good friend that I am, I stopped what I was doing and made time to listen. Because that’s what I do. It actually wasn’t all that convenient for me to do so, but I did anyway. And not just because some part of me still hopes that I can salvage a relationship out of this. I would do this for pretty much any friend.

Then today all of this happens, and I need someone to talk to. Guess how many people were available for me? Yep. Nobody. Not even my therapist, because… well… fuck you republicans and your fucked up privatized health care. This system only works for the wealthy. Fuck you. And if you’re not wealthy and support these fuckers, fuck you too. You’re fucking me as well as yourself, and that makes you a fucking moron. Fuck you.

So I’m thinking tonight, because, well, the only person I have to talk to is myself. So if you say I’m crazy for talking to myself, fuck you. You weren’t here for me either, fuck wad. And I realize something: that was my whole relationship with her. She would get frequent headaches, I would rush over there and give her a long backrub. Number of backrubs received: 0. Even my ex wife had a better record than that. Every time she had something going on, I would patiently sit there and listen to her. When I felt the need to unload about something, I got some variation of “shit or get off the pot”. If I got irritated about that, her feelings got hurt.

And then I think “Exactly what about this relationship am I missing?” It was a little one sided. Actually it was a lot one sided. Yet, I still miss her and would probably go back if I could. Fucking why? What about this woman am I missing? Why am I so drawn to her? These are questions I can’t answer. My only guess is that there was more to it than that for me. She was at least an intellectual equal, and probably an intellectual superior. She had her own career and life. She was independent and strong. She made a difference in peoples lives. She was good at what she does. And something about her is magic. Her voice, her mannerisms, everything. I can’t explain it. Basically it’s not a good relationship for me. I know this intellectually. My heart will catch up eventually, I just have to be strong for now. That’s the real trick though. I’m not strong.

Anyway, just random thoughts. I had nobody to share this with, so of course it goes out to the world on my blog. I suppose it’s all part of learning to be alone. Being alone sucks ass, by the way.

The Question I Never Got A Chance To Ask.

I was despondent for days, weeks, months. I was alternately angry, dejected, and confused. I believed every lie you told me wholeheartedly. I trusted you and gave you my heart unconditionally and without reserve, and you tossed it aside like a dirty rag without looking back. And up until about 20 minutes ago, at the slightest word, the merest mention that you would want to start again, to spend even the smallest amount of time with me, I would have gladly thrown my pride to the wind and followed you around like a stupid puppy. Because I’m just that fucking pathetic.

But I’m not stupid. I won’t vie with your other ex for your attention. He wins. Congratulate him for me. I no longer want to see you. I no longer want to hear your voice lie to me. I no longer want to know about the trivial interactions between you and your cats. Why, you wonder, the sudden change? I’ll tell you. Because fuck you.

Oooh, I HATE that guy…

I’ve been reading a book called Quiet about the introverted/extroverted personality types. My ex girlfriend had recently read it and described it to me, and the topic interested me. Anybody who gets to know me intimately knows I’m an introvert, but it’s not always obvious to everybody. I’m certainly not the “Hi how ya doin lemme kiss your baby” type of extrovert, but I try to not be too soft spoken at work. Maybe it’s more obvious than I think. When I told my ex girlfriend that I was an introvert, her response was “Duh!”.

What’s most interesting though, is that I’m getting a better handle on exactly what kind of introvert I am. It’s not all good news. The most recent chapter revealed to me that I’m the kind of introvert who adjusts to social situations based on cues. I get my ideas about how to behave and interact with others based on cues I receive from them. In other words, I’m a different person to each person I interact with. Kind of like that salt monster from the early Star Trek episode. Put me in a room with too many people and I don’t know who the fuck to be. This is one of the reasons I have this blog and my twitter account, it’s about the only time I really get to be the real me, however pathetic that might be.

I found myself in orchestra rehearsal the other night being the extrovert. Socializing with this person, then with that person. To be honest, I hate socializing. I’m not half bad at it when I have to be though. I can be quite animated and entertaining when the situation calls for it.

I have to wonder if this is a factor in my string of failed relationships. It’s certainly something to bring up with the therapist. This personality type can be viewed by others as deceptive and deceitful. I really don’t see myself that way, but I have to wonder if that’s how my personality type comes off. It’s really more about trying to fit in and not do social faux pas. A basic fear of rejection. An extreme fear of rejection. And I take it hard when I am rejected, like my recent break up. This could be a factor in why I stayed in a marriage that was obviously broken for almost the entire duration for far longer than I should have. Long enough to have two kids, and for those kids to grow up to be big enough to be damaged by the ensuing brutal divorce.

I’ve noticed a trend recently: people don’t seek me out. Let me try to explain that more. If I don’t try to start some kind of interaction with my friends, the interaction tends to not happen. It reminds me a little of the game The Sims. In the game, if you don’t constantly call up your friends, the relationship atrophies and they stop being your friend. However, in the game if you don’t call your friends for a while, they’ll call you and say “what the fuck, dude?” In real life that second part doesn’t seem to happen with me. The relationship still atrophies, but it seems like if I’m the only one interested in preventing that. If I don’t call for a while, nobody calls me.

This worries me a little. Is there something in my personality that repulses people? Is it this quirk of adjusting my personality to each person? Does this drive people off? Am I really that guy? The guy nobody really wants to hang out with but is willing to put up with so that they don’t come off as a jerk? Introspection never goes well for me. I keep coming up with this kind of crap.

I would really like to know, though, why this seems to be the case. There seems to be some basic flaw in my personality that makes people like me ok but not really want to be around me more than they have to. I don’t know what it is yet, or how to fix it. I need to fix it though, or I’ll never have a successful relationship. I don’t count my ex as a successful relationship. She was wasn’t in it for any kind of interest in me, she was in it because she could live off of me without having to have a life of her own. She still does. Thank you, state of Kansas.

Anyway, no great revelations in this post, just questions that I don’t have answers for yet. Maybe I’ll have some in the weeks to come.

It’s Wabbit Season!

I started therapy yesterday.

Let’s face it, I’m fucknuts. I was watching Looney Toons with my kids earlier, and we watched Rabbit Fire. That’s the one where Daffy and Bugs go back and forth with the “rabbit season” “duck season” bit. It’s hilarious, and I’m reminded of the time during an improv group when I basically did that scene by myself. There was one guy who ended up playing Elmer Fudd, and my spastic self played both Daffy and Bugs. He was a bit shy, and didn’t seem to know what the fuck to make of me. I think I scared him a little, but the end result is it was fucking hilarious. I was awesome.

Was.

I remember the guy who did that. The guy I was back then. 17 years of bad marriage will fuck you up, and that guy is gone now, and I can’t get him back. I know, I would be a different person now even if I hadn’t married the batshit crazy church lady, but I think there would be more of that guy left.

I’ve thoroughly trashed three relationships since the end of my marriage. Well, in fairness to myself I had a little help trashing them, but still… I can’t seem to pull off a successful relationship. Maybe I’m not dating the right people, but I was absolutely sure the last one was right. I’m still having trouble reconciling it a month later. I should be past it by now, one would think. But I have a fuckload of baggage, and I think I didn’t realize just how much until yesterday.

The therapist seemed to catch on immediately just how much the cult fucked me up. This is something that I don’t think anybody else ever has understood about me. These people did more damage in the couple of years they had me than my wife did in 17. I’m still dealing with it in many ways. On the other hand, had it not been for the cult I might have never examined my own belief systems, and realized that the whole thing is bullshit. I suppose I should thank them for that. But fuck if I will.

Most people seem to blow the whole cult experience off as trivial, except for one or two other people I know who went through the same thing. It’s not like we talk about it though. Former cult members don’t have conventions. We don’t chat on facebook about it. “Hey, remember that time that the one kid crashed his car because he was so tired from sleep deprivation and almost died? Yeah, good times!” There are exactly 0 people that I’ve been able to talk to about this over the last decade. My ex didn’t go through the exit conversion the same way I did. In fact, I’m not sure she ever went through it at all. She’s been looking for a replacement for the cult for the last decade, and I’m pretty sure she finally found one.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is I think this is going to be good for me in the long term. I may not be able to save my last relationship, but maybe I can make the next one not crash so badly. I’ve already realized about myself that my dating experience pretty much consists of my teenage years, a couple of years in my 20s, and the last year. I haven’t had a lot of time to figure this shit out. My marriage was pretty much fucking awful for most of it, so I don’t have a lot of experience in how a good relationship works. I do know that I really wanted the last one to. But first I have to straighten out some shit in my head.

I may not be that guy from 20 years ago anymore, but maybe I can be someone else just as good.

Introspection

Today I pushed my boundaries.

Every few years or so I seem to go through some kind of change. The best way to describe it is that the answer to the question “Who am I?” changes. I couldn’t tell you what they all are, but I remember a few. A significant one was the one that led me to leave the cult. Another one happened a mere year later when I finally shed Christianity. Yet another happened in May of 2007. That’s the year this blog was created. Another in June of 2008 while I was in Minnesota. The most recent one was November of 2010. I filed for divorce the next month.

Now we come to August 2012. I’ve had a small handful of relationships since being kicked out of my house, ending with the most recent one. I gave her my heart. I couldn’t tell you exactly why I did. Phrases that I put no merit in like “soul mate” and “meant to be” come to mind, but the fact of the matter is I think she and I were a good match. Possible the best match I’ve ever had. We just… clicked. If I could describe my dream woman, a completely made up woman who embodies all of the traits I find attractive, she damn near hits them all.

Then it all went to shit.

Whaaa? Trouble in paradise? How can it be? You two were meant for each other!

No we weren’t. To quote Tim Minchin “If I didn’t have you I’d probably have somebody else.” Relationships start with physical attraction amplified by pheromones and from that point on they take an assload of work. I think that last part is where we ran in to trouble.

So I find myself suddenly single, emotionally hurt, and a bit bewildered. It’s moments like this when you do your best thinking.

I realized that I’m not ready for relationships yet. I got out of a nearly two decade long marriage a year and a half ago. It officially ended less than two months ago. I’ve been dealing with nearly constant insanity from my ex and the court system of the great state of Kansas for what seems like a bajillion years now, while helping my children deprogram themselves and realize that crazy extremist fundamentalist Christianity isn’t the only choice they can make, and trying to reinvent my entire life all at the same time.

It might not have been the best time to decide to invest a lot of time and energy into a relationship.

So the past several days have involved a significant reexamination of my life. I came to a few realizations.

Being single fucking rocks, even at 41.
Casual dating with no commitment is ok.
Friends with benefits doesn’t work. It just doesn’t.
I don’t know who the fuck I am.

Oh I know, I exude mucho confidence here and all aspire to even be a shadow of my cool, but the truth is, I haven’t had much time to figure out who I am after the last change. But I do know this: I feel dead inside.

Every day I get up, go to work, and spend the better part of my day in a felt covered box dealing with somebody else’s problems. At the end of that, I might get a little time to myself, or I might have my kids. There’s not much time left for me at the end of that and what little I had I was giving away. It seemed like a good idea at the time…

So today I got up, put on my hiking shoes, went to a local park, and got myself lost. Really lost. This is a big park, and practically nobody else was there. I’m woefully out of shape and I had one bottle of water.

The point was, I was not guaranteed of making it back alive. Sure, the odds were in my favor, but there’s that chance that I might not. That was the key. I pushed myself past my endurance point and found out I had more, so I kept going. I finally reached the end of my endurance again, and found out I had yet more, so I kept going.

By the time I found my way back to where my car was a few hours later, I was drenched with sweat (it’s over 100 degrees here with Kansas humidity), exhausted, thirsty, and a smidge on the loopy side. My legs were so worn out I could barely walk. A few hours may not sound like much to some of you, but I went from completely sedentary to hiking maniac pretty much today. I had no endurance level, and I pushed the fuck out of it anyway.

AND IT FELT FUCKING AWESOME!!!

I mean it did and it didn’t, but pushing myself so far past what I thought I could do gave me a feeling of being truly alive. I found myself laughing and the smallest things and just enjoying being alive.

Later I grabbed an old friend (“old” being a relative term since she’s 10 years younger than me and I’ve known her less than a year) and went back out at night to see the universe. It was awesome. It gave me a feeling of being connected with the universe. It’s awesome when you can look up at the sky, see a lot of stars (even in Kansas City they’re hard to see without getting out of town), and know not only what they actually are, but that your perception of them is really looking backwards in time to several different points time simultaneously. One may be 100 years ago, another only 4, another 6 billion. And every atom that makes up my body, every atom that makes up yours, every atom that makes up every thing on earth that we see was forged in a star like that. Not only that, but the star it was forged in died. It died so that I could be here. And it died over 4.5 billion years ago.

SCIENCE FUCKING ROCKS, BITCHES!

I’m still kind of figuring out where this is going, but I think this could be the most interesting change yet.