Once you touch the sky......................

..........................there is no coming down.

Why me?

I'm so tired of living like this.  I want to know why I've been so tortured my entire life.  Why am I so easily mad sad?  Why do I so easily become depressed?  Why every time I think about my past pets, especially those when I was growing up at home, do I get so sad and feel guilt for not spending more time with them.  I would give anything for one more day with every one of them.  I try to put into words the sadness I feel when I think about them and I just can never do it.  I think sometimes of the last time I looked into my boyhood dog's eyes, when I left to fly back to Atlanta.  I cried and cried when I left because she looked so frail and I knew it might be the last time I see her.  I cry because I wonder what she was thinking, wondering if she hated me for leaving.  She was my first real pet and she was so wonderful for fifteen years.  Unfortunately, I was not there for her the last four years of her life.  22 years later, I still cry every time I think about her.  See?  Here I am torturing myself over this stuff.  I should be over this stuff by this time in life.  Yet so many things from my life still just crush me when I think about them.  It's always been this way, so easy to get sad and so easy to get melancholy.  So easy to hear a song that takes me back to home and just fall down emotionally when I hear it.  I never wanted to grow up.  I just can't take all the memories.  Memories like this have sunk me into depression and sadness my entire life.  I just want to go back and live my life over again, basically doing all the same things I did back then.  I never got enough of anything.  I never experienced enough of my home or Buffalo.  I went away for college and was too busy in the summers to enjoy the city when I was home.  I suffered through three years of college where I was not able to experience any fun in the outside world.  I never went back enough to visit and have fun.  I married too young.  Now, I look back on 48 years of very little.  I've been able to do so many neat things over the last 25 years, but the only things that matter are the two dogs that I've given happiness to.  Other than that, I look back and wonder where the years went and why I let them pass so quickly.  I have little other than regrets to show for 48 years.  And now I'm too old to do it all over. And it's too late to start over.  What a fucking wasted life compounded by sadness every time I think of all the things I missed out on back home and all the past memories. I've missed out on so much.  High school friends that I haven't seen since high school.  College friends I've never seen since college.  A brother, and especially a sister, that I never got to become an adult companion with, feeling like a lonely, only child for the past 30 years.  You can't imagine how bad I wanted a sister to hang with.  Do you have any idea how it kills me inside to not have a sibling that I am even remotely close to?  I feel like a fucking freak.  And I think, "Where did the years go?". And how much more regret and sadness will I have in twenty years when twenty more years of distance from home have passed.  Again, I ask, why was my DNA saddled with this penchant for sadness over memories and lost opportunities?  I'm so sick of being sick.  I did not fucking deserve this in life.

The Cult - Nico

Rain, finally.................yet...............

It started raining yesterday for the first time in forever.  It continued through the night and the morning.  Made me melancholy.  I love gray, rainy days, as long as it isn't too cold.  I could sit on the deck and listen to it rain all day long.  It would've been a perfect morning for staying in bed and cuddling, listening to the rain fall in the darkness, with that special someone who understands just how you feel.

Wearing The Inside Out - Pink Floyd

This draws me so much.

Look at this beautiful scene.  This is outside Lawrence, Kansas.  How happy and at peace I think I would be if I could live here and leisurely drive this road with my pick up truck girl.

Rush - The Pass

Tough day

No matter how I try, no matter how busy I try to stay, I just can't stop looking at my BB and thinking and missing.

"Far out, - What a day, a year, a life it is!"

Again, I wonder....................why did I have to wait so long to figure things out in life?  Why has it been such a slow progression in life?  Why did it take so long to realize how special just walking a quiet road bouncing a super ball could be?  Why did I not realize how much I wanted to be home when I was young?  Why, even though I can look back and say I always longed for that special ONE who would only need me, and vice versa, did it take so many years for the reality of it to really sink in and for me to finally define the criteria for that special person? 

Why did I not go to my first OSU game in Columbus until I was 35?  Why did it take so long to discover how much I loved being in Columbus on a fall Saturday afternoon drinking, walking around, taking in the sights and sounds and smells?  Why was I 35 before I first had that mesmerizing feeling of being in Ohio Stadium watching my team play?  Fifteen years later, I still have to fight back tears every time they run onto the field at the beginning of a game.

Why, at age 28, did I feel I'd really found my life's calling...............competing in triathlons..........and then have the good fortune to fall in with a group of world class triathletes to train with and become national class myself?  And why did I then, looking back to now see it for what it was, give it all up seven years later to pursue a career?  I still contend, I've never been near as happy as I was in the mid 90's when I was on top and a physical machine.  I've never been that happy since.

And why, for all those years, was I not going home every chance I got to just hang and have fun doing the things around the city that all my friends had been able to experience but that I had never done?

Why did it take all these years to realize the utter contentment that would come from sitting out on a dirt road in rural Kansas, in the back of a pickup truck, surrounded by high corn and sunflowers, splitting a six pack and listening to our music and laughing with the only person in the world that mattered?

Why did I believe that I could not leave this crappy city?  Why do I want out when so many other people think it's the greatest place on earth?  Why do I want so little, when so many others want so much?  Why do I just want to be left alone in life?  Why do I just need one other companion, when everyone else needs a host of friends and action and parties?  Why do I just need a front porch and boombox after dark with that one special person to make me happy while everyone else needs so much action?

Why must I know look at older people and think that I will be like them...............unhappy inside, though half of them don't know it, never figuring out what's important in life,...........................finding out that all I needed in life was that one special companion and partner who only needed me?  The painful difference is, I figured it out.  How I wish I had not.  Now I'm terrified about what my remaining years will bring, knowing it's too late to live my dreams...................and too late to put that mind-blowing smile on that special, one-in-a-million partner, never experiencing what it's like to make someone else truly happy and content.  That will be my biggest failure in life.  My only claim to fame in life was being able to make three dogs happy.  Other than them, though, I have failed miserably.  I hope you will forgive me.

And I'm homesick and I just want to cry.

Fool's Overture. How sad.

This is my wonderful Ipod.  I have over 14,000 songs on it.  I'd have more on it..................if I hadn't lost all interest in music recently.  Not only lost interest, but actually can't listen to anything.  I'd been inspired by a special friend over the last year to reconnect with music that I hadn't cared about in years, specifically classic rock, and connect with music I didn't like in the first place.  Motivated by my friend, and given the discovery of dirt cheap downloadable music, it was amazing how much music I was downloading from bands that I heretofore had no interest in.  Now I was listening and enjoying and looking forward to downloading a ton of new classic rock.

So many old songs I hadn't cared about in years.  So many new songs that I now gained a special appreciation for.  And numerous playlists that I was inspired to begin developing..............and dreaming of using those playlists someday at the right moments and in the right places.  A new playlist for different special places and future times back home.  Music to lose yourself with that special someone.  Music to hold, cuddle and dance with.  I'd name them here, but it would hurt too much.  And so much music to burn and share.  Listening to music had become fun again and sharing it had become even more fun.  But now I can't listen at all.  I don't think there's a song that won't remind me.

So much of it took me back to my days at home.  I'm so homesick.  I want so much to go home and live my fantasies.  I'm so bitter. 

Numb again.

I know I can make someone ultimately happy,...................or so I believe.  I know I could bring the truest smile to someone's face.  I believe I could make this person cry with joy.  You have no idea how it tears me up inside to not be able to make it a reality for that someone.  Giving is so much more awesome than receiving.

Another Sunday late afternoon and evening.

I wonder what it's like to not be fearful every Sunday evening of your life.  I remember so many Sunday nights in college.  My two best friends and I would go pick up a large, rectangular sheet of NY style pizza at Pizza City.  It was awesome.  But I always remember it being dark outside when we'd go to pick it up, then end up eating it in one of our dimly lit rooms or in a dorm stairwell.  Being with my friends was the only way I could make it through Sunday evenings.  Of course, I couldn't tell anyone how rotten I felt.  No one would've understood.  No one can even begin to understand how out of place and lonely I was for the three years I was there.  You just cannot imagine.

Where I long to be and what I long to do

Some incredible scenes in this commercial.  I would love to live in places like this and have an ATV which would give me freedom to escape and just ride and see the beautiful landscape and dream.

Maybe the lowest I've ever been in life.

I'm numb.  I'm physically sick all the time.  My body is worn down and weak all the time.  All too often now, my chest gets heavy and I feel like I may hyperventilate.  I don't see anything positive in my future health.  I "fear" what may happen in the future.  I've been warned that I am heading towards something very bad.  On the one hand, I don't care.  I'm tired of living life as I have existed for the majority of it.  I'm tired of living in fear.  I'm tired of never being understood.  I'm tired of not being able to be myself.  I'm tired of yearning and longing for so much........................yet so little.  I've never asked for much.  I grew up with little and never knew the difference.  I was satisfied with that.  I really only wanted one thing.  I didn't ask for material things.  I drive a car with over 200k miles on it.  I don't own a nice TV.  When I finally broke down and got an Ipod a few years ago, it was a major purchase.  I think I was the last person on earth to buy a DVD player.  I don't go on expensive vacations.  I'm a very simple person.  I only asked for one thing.  All I wanted was that one special companion and lover who didn't need anyone else. Yet the one thing I asked for was the most elusive thing in the world.

I sat next to a young kid (29) in a bar yesterday.  We talked about a lot of things.  But our bartender was the subject of much of the conversation.  As cute as she was, I kept telling him she was "trouble".  As he drank more, the more he opened up to me about what he wants.  He didn't care if a girl was trouble.  He wasn't looking for a life with someone.  In fact, according to him, he bragged about having several girlfriends.  And then he told me, basically, all he cares about is F'g a girl at the end of the night and, if he doesn't think a girl will do it, he's moving on to someone else.  29, and completely without any sense of what true love means......................or caring to find it.  As he talked, I felt myself getting nauseous.  I was sick.  Here I am, well on in life, still longing so bad for that one thing I wanted, yet here was a 29 year old still not understanding what is important in life.........................and going in the absolute opposite direction, just thinking that life is nothing more than F'g a different girl every night.  And all those girls who acquiese to him, thinking there's nothing more to life than giving up yourself to a new guy each week. I was so depressed listening to him, I just felt like blowing my brains out.  And all I ask for is to GIVE my body and mind and heart to ONE other person in life who will do the same for me.  I want my body to be used by that one person for her complete pleasure.  Yet, here was this 29 year old thinking that the meaning of life is to see how many different girls you can bed and discard.

Kaskade - Step One Two (OFFICIAL HQ VIDEO)

Tali&Meth-Thinking Of You (Dezrok Radio Edit)

MUSE - Resistance

Something so simple.

This is a 2" super ball (or at least that's what we always called them as kids back home.) that I bought from a vending machine in rural Kansas this past Saturday.  It brought back a whole host of emotions.  I frequently had super balls as a kid because, for something so simple and small, they provided me with so many simple ways to entertain myself.

As I was virtually an only child for much of my childhood, I had to entertain myself.  I was good at coming up with games that I could "play" by myself.  One such game was with a small super ball.  We had a blacktop driveway.  I would "whip" the ball down on the blacktop as hard as I could to get it to fly as high as possible.  The object of the game was to be able to catch the ball in my baseball glove when it came down.  Easy, right?  Too easy.  That's why I had to enact rules and points to motivate myself to make it challenging and fun.  Soooooo, while you got a point for catching the ball while on the driveway, you got more points for catching the ball off the driveway.  It went something like this.  One point for catching the ball on the driveway, two points for catching the ball out over the lawn but with your feet still on the driveway.............and three points for leaving the driveway and catching it..............BEFORE any part of your body touched the lawn. THAT is where is got fun. First, controlling where a ball goes after it bounces is no easy chore.  As such, you were motivated to develop your "whipping" skills in order to get the ball to end up as close to where you wanted it to go (If your ball went too far into the yard for you to reach it before touching the lawn............zero points.).  It was always easier to direct the ball straight up and catch it on the driveway.  But that was only one point.  The real fun was getting three points on a throw.  It required athleticism too.  And I frequently ended up with grass stains on my jeans.  I'm sure neighbors wondered what the heck I was doing out in the front driveway.  It had to look very retarded.  But it was a blast for me and I could do it by myself.

Anyway, over the years, I've seen larger super balls and wanted to get them and just have simple fun with them.  It's so easy, and fun, for me to just find a parking lot in a small industrial or office park and just throw a large super ball against the wall and have it rebound back to me and catch it in a baseball glove.  Now, though, I just want to walk streets or a long parking lot and simply bounce the ball.  Bounce and catch, bounce and catch.  I think I could do it all day, every day.  It's so simple...............yet it would provide me with so much peaceful relaxation.  It's amazing that something so simple could be so inviting to me.  I believe I could live the rest of my life with no other games or material items but a super ball.  I should have been doing things like this my entire adult life, letting myself be myself and have simple fun.  I don't want "things".  I just want peace.

Why can't this be me?

BIKING AND HIKING IN DEATH VALLEY

A NICE PLACE TO VISIT Death Valley’s
landscape is stunning, but unforgiving.
Don’t try to get comfortable.
MICHAEL HANSON/ GETTY IMAGES 

One day (or hour) in Death Valley is enough for most people. But six? You must have something to prove. Or you just really like sweating. A lot. Black Sheep Adventures will shuttle masochistic explorers from Las Vegas to their hotel in Furnace Creek and on to some of the most dramatic spots in one of the most otherworldly landscapes on earth, a place where temperatures once topped 90 degrees 205 days in a row. It starts off easy with a 1-mile hike through sand dunes, but come day four, your body will despise you. That’s too bad—there’s an 8- to 14-mile hike up mountain peaks ranging from 9,064 to 11,049 feet ahead of you. Day five brings a 38- to 68-mile bike ride from Dante’s View to Badwater, during which you’ll likely be hot enough to drink your own copious sweat (and/ or tears). Take the last day’s relatively gentle hike through Golden Canyon to reflect on the personal issues that caused you to subject yourself to this sort of grueling punishm... er, vacation. Oct. 24-29

Marillion - Just For The Record.............It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this.

ATB 'Dont Stop'

The Cure - Cold live..........another song of pain.

My pick up truck girl.

I wonder what it's like to live in a rural area and have in your life centered on a partner who is thrilled to be with you......................as your "other half"................in jeans and a T-shirt..................put her hair up in a pony tail.................cuz she knows you love it that way................and ride next to you in the middle seat of your pick up truck.  She is the total center of your universe and you are the center of her universe.  You could never see another human the rest of your lives and you would both be totally happy with just each other and at peace.  To get in the truck next to each other, snuggle up, then drive out to a remote country road in the flat landscape, where you can see for miles, sit there in the cab or in the back of the truck, splitting a six pack, listening to our music, every once in a while jumping off the bed of the truck and dancing to a song, admiring the tall corn and sunflowers, scanning the horizon in the early evening and laughing.  Or lay down in the bed of the truck after dark, looking up at the stars in the dark sky and laughing and talking.  And to do that every Friday evening for your entire life.  I wonder what that's like.  I wonder if anyone knows what that is like.  I wonder if anyone on the earth, besides me, wonders, longs for it or cares.

I'm losing it.

I smoked seven cigarettes during a two hour phone call this morning.

I'm so tired, so physically and emotionally exhausted.  I want to go to bed so bad,......................but I'm scared to go to sleep.

I need to get away.  I need to go back to Albuquerque and spend some time alone in my hotel room.  I need to be alone, where no one knows me.  I need to die in my sleep.

The most wonderful fantasy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9vcZ4PwJZc

It's never been difficult for me to fantasize.  So many good, so many bad, but always fantasizing.  My mind is damaged and I cannot stop it from racing.  I "discovered" this song while in Florida over Christmas '09.  I went on long walks in the heat and sunshine listening to it over and over.  It could be such a happy song to revel in.  Instead, it just brought more pain.  But what it also did was put the most incredible fantasy into my head.  I still relive the fantasy in my head every time I listen to it.  It was a fantasy not so much for me, but a fantasy of making someone else happy beyond words and seeing a display of incredible joy on someone else's face.  I'm not bragging, I just believe that if I was ever able to carry the fantasy out, it would produce unbelievable joy for that person.  I've played it out second by second in my mind.  It makes me want to come out of my skin.  I just want to be loved and wanted by that one special person so bad.  I've longed for it and yearned for it all my life.  There would be nothing better in life............EVER.............than bringing true, complete joy to a special someone else.  If I could ever achieve that, then I will have found the true love I've been searching and longing for.

Sunflowers

Just a few comments regarding my new blog art.  One year ago, I could've had this painting stuck in my face and been hit over the head with it, and I still would not have noticed, let alone appreciated, it.  But, NOW, when I saw this online two months ago, I was mesmerized (I use that word alot, don't I?) by it.  Like Pierce Brosnan in The Thomas Crown Affair, I could sit and stare and examine this painting all day long.  Why?  It's so simple, so elementary, some would say, boring.  And why now?  Why after years and years of not noticing art, do I now find some art mesmerizing.  What has changed in the last year to make me think this way?  I now notice the most "hide in plain sight" things.  It's like I can stare at a brick wall and notice the minute, porous holes in the mortar...................and appreciate them.  It's as if so much now moves in slow motion for me.  And it makes me think of one perfect piece of art in this world......................that I would spend days, weeks and months pouring over, inch by inch, in extreme slow motion, taking days to examine every single pore and square millimeter of skin.  Life would be completely suspended if I was able to stare at that work of art.

GIMUSGDM.

No longer "so alone". Now just alone.

You can't imagine how many emotions and thoughts and the most painful thoughts about the future are going through my mind every waking minute.  Torture is not even an accurate description.  Torture is temporary and something you know will end at some point.  This will never end.  NO ONE knows what I am going through..............and will continue to go through for the rest of my life.  I can't listen to music.  I can't watch TV. I can't do anything.  Every song either reminds me or has painful lyrics.  I see TV commercials that remind me.  I saw one this morning that had a quick five second scene that had affected me for weeks.  I never shared it because of the context that would've only spread the emotions.  I would've loved to have shared it, but under the circumstances, it would not have been fair.  It would've only inflamed emotions and longings and desires.

I am so scared of the future.  How can I do this?  How can I make it?  The separation will continue.  She will grow farther and farther from me.  I know what will happen in the future.  I don't know how long it will take or how quickly it will progress, but it will happen.  I have no doubts, none whatsoever.

It's only going to get worse.

Fall is always my favorite time of year, cuz the weather is cooling and leaves are falling.  I can think about putting jeans back on and wearing my long sleeved, hanging team shirt.  I can be comfortable and not worry about sweating all the time.  But it also affects my emotions deeper.  I'm more hyper sensitive.  And the days are getting shorter.  Which means it gets darker earlier.  Which means there are more hours in the day for me to be scared and emotionally down.  As I was flying east across the country late yesterday afternoon, I had my face up against the window the entire way, just staring at the landscape below.  As always, the wide open spaces and farm fields of the midwest had me mesmerized.  Everytime I fly over the midwest and southwest, I look down and stare.................and dream about how much I want to be down there, living a peaceful, quiet, simple life, secluded and free to walk and walk and walk.  I dream of a simple life with room around me.  As we moved east, though, those beautiful landscapes were replaced with people and buildings.  And then, as we approached and flew over the Continental Divide, the shadows were now being cast on the east side of every hill and mountain.  I could feel my fearful emotions tightening the rest of the flight.  I absolutely hate it when the sun goes down.  It will only get worse this fall.

Another difficult day

My good friend and former boss sends me a phone video from the game yesterday.  Then, he calls me.  In the midst of our chatting, he tells me that, among their activities this weekend, they "went over to Buff State".  WTF?  Why did he have to mention that?  There's no way I can get away from this.  The reminders are everywhere.  I don't know how I'm going to do this.

Beautiful mosaic

I  saw this tile mosaic in the airport this weekend.  It was so beautiful and mesmerizing.  I fell in love with it.  One year ago, I would've walked past this and not thought a thing of it.  Nowadays, though, I am more and more often struck by simple, beautiful art and beautiful things and beautiful landscape.  The smallest and often boring things now can captivate me.  I could sit and stare at this mosaic all day long.  I sit and stare now so often.  I see peaceful, mesmerizing beauty in so many things now.  Why, after all these years, have I only begun noticing and being captivated by such things?  Why the change over the last year?  Why only now do people sometimes ask me, "What are you looking at?".  Last night I stood outside a gift shop window on an old, downtown street in an old midwestern town.  I stood and stared at and examined beautiful, colorful candle holder plates.  Had people not been calling for me to leave, I would've stood there for many minutes just staring at them.  Had I told them what I was doing, they would've thought I was crazy.  I don't know what is happening to me.

Trying to purge

I removed my hometown's weather page from my web favorites yesterday.  I'm doing my best to avoid watching my hometown's game today. I will now try to avoid mention or discussion of my hometown or upbringing with people.  I am praying I will never be forced to return home ever again. If I am, it will not be by choice.  I'm beginning a new phase of life with as few interests and memories as possible.  I wish I could be hypnotized and erase my entire past from my memory.

"Where would you rather be?......................

..............Anywhere, anywhere but here.
When will the time be right?
Anytime but now.
Where would you rather be?
The doubt and the fear I know would all disappear.
Anywhere but here. 
Anywhere but here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KelCUoFQDpo

That WAS me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJqs3D2vv4I

How long?

My Blackberry has been my constant companion.  I am joined at the hip with it.  It is never beyond two feet from me.  It has been my medium for my companionship.  So how long before I no longer walk by my Blackberry looking for the red blinking light?  How long before I stop jumping and getting nervous every time my Blackberry buzzes?  How long before I'm able to put it down and walk away from it for hours?  How long before I no longer think about my Blackberry because I've realized and come to terms with the fact that there's no longer any personal reason to be near it?  How long before I get used to the fact that it is only a tool for business.............................and no longer THE means of emotional connection?  I'm trying to set it down and walk away now.  I'm trying to turn the ringer/buzz to quiet whenver feasible now.  It's the only way I will be able to get away from it and further the transition.  I wish I did not need it for business.  I would get rid of it immediately if I could.  Since I cannot do that, I will just work to put it down and walk away from it except when I absolutely need it.  I loved my Blackberry.  I've had one for five and a half years.  Now I hate it and would do anything to be able to throw it in the trash. It was my vehicle for communication.  Just looking at it now reminds me and is unbelievably painful.

And how long before no one is looking at this painful blog?  How long before I check my viewing stats and see that it's been a week, a month, three months, since anyone has viewed it?  How long before I maybe stop typing here because there's no longer any viewership?

There are so many "how long" questions.  None of them end well.

"My love and best friend"

This came at the end of a text several days ago.  What unbelievable words!  There's nothing more that could be added to that.  It sums everything up.  Yet they stick in me like a knife.  What beautiful words.  Yet words I will never be able to benefit from or respond to in kind.

I am so scared of the future. How can I do this? How can I make it? The separation will continue. She will grow farther and farther from me. I know what will happen in the future. I don't know how long it will take or how quickly it will progress, or exactly the depth of events, but it will happen. I have no doubts, none whatsoever.  My only hope is that I can somehow learn to be glad for her happiness.  It will always hurt, but I have to find a way to do it for her.  The ONLY thing that matters is her happiness.

Clearing clutter

Trying to cut things out of my life.  Not emailing stupid shit and not responding to stupid shit emails from friends.  It's a good place to start.  I hate everyone anyway, so why waste my time gratifying myself with stupid nonsense emails.  Why mask what's going on inside by maintaining the status quo?  I'd rather just cut it all out diplomatically than hide behind the illusion.  I wonder if anyone will realize I'm no longer emailing constantly.  They will get over it.

Next, i have to work on my past.  That's going to be a chore.  I believe, though, if you don't do something long enough, you eventually get to the point where you won't need it any longer and you will no longer miss it.  Do I really need football in my life?  Do I really need music in my life?  Do I really need to think about home?  I know it will be a slow transition, and I know I will probably be questioned about it along the way, but I can fake or lie my way through it.  Faking and lying is going to be a staple of life for the duration.  "That is so sad.  That is no way to live.  You CAN be happy.  Whah, whah, whah.".  BFD!  Shut up!  Worry about your own damn self and quit thinking you know what's inside me and can tell me what will and won't make me happy.  I've lived my entire F'g life being told what is good for me.  No one ever seemed to ask me what I thought. Has anyone ever given a shit about what really "moved" me?  Does anyone care that I've been embarrassed to "show my true self" to the world for all these years?  Yeah, now all of a sudden, there's a huge interest, but where's everyone been for 40 fricken years??????  Ha!  Everyone thinks I don't like to dance.  What fools!  I want to dance every minute of every day.  But I can't show it to people.  So I dance in private sometimes and in my head all the time.  I'd love to front porch dance in the dark, but no one's ever made me feel the liberty to do it. It's a little late now to think I'm going to all of a sudden come out of my shell and feel free to expose myself just because you say I can now do it.

I keep thinking about my trip to Albuquerque.  I was really at peace for three days.  I knew no one.  I had contact with almost no one.  I was able to be myself and not worry about what one damn person thought of me.  Was I lonely?  Yeah.  But I was able to live free from any constraints on my feelings or emotions.  Buuuuuuttt, that's not real life.  One more memory I need to cleanse from my memory bank.

Going through the motions.

I forced myself to get up and swim this morning. I didn't want to.  almost quit numerous times during the swim.  an interesting thing happened about 400 meters into the swim.  I was in my usual lane and I knew at least two of the girls who typically are in my lane had gotten in after me.  People were still getting started.  As I turned to swim the 50 meters back to the end where we always start, I was breaststroking and was able to see where everyone was.  I suddenly realized that my colleagues were no longer in the lane and I was the only one in it.  I immediately had this intense feeling of fear and loneliness come over me.  i could see our coach at the other end and other people milling around.  I knew one of my best friends was a few lanes away.  Yet, I was still overcome with this feeling that I had been left by the world.  I was able to take a few seconds and reason through the fact that, they, for some reason, must have switched lanes.  As I approached the end, our coach yelled at me to move over one lane.  she had already asked them to, I just had not seen her do it.  why would something like that strike momentary fear into someone my age?  but this is so typical.  I don't remember feeling like that in years and years.  It was something that would've happened when I was a kid.  It should not have happened as a child, and it certainly should not be happening now.

I am now alone.

I now have no one I can talk to.  No one to confide in.  No one to share my feelings and pain with.  Wasn't so difficult when you didn't know that person actually existed.  Now, though.............

The loneliness has returned.  Wow!  I remember some of the feelings of loneliness and despair when I was a kid, and even sometimes in college.  I felt all alone in the world, even rejected by my own parents at times.  Keeping as busy as I could was the only way to survive.  Never slow down, never let your mind sit idle.  I will have to use that now, as I have for years.  Silence will kill me.  No wonder I've never been able to relax.  No wonder I've always needed constant noise and stimulation, even when I sleep.

There are no words for what I'm going through.

I was so disappointed when I woke up this morning and realized I was still alive.   I have ruined lives and I have lost my best friend.  She did not deserve any of this.  If I could take it all back, I would.  If I could not have made that trip that day, I'd take it all back.  How close I was to not going.  She will get over me eventually.  While that kills me to say it, because of the selfish rejection I will feel, I have to pray to God to help me know that all that matters is what is best for her.  And what is best for her is for her to be happy and get over me.  I have caused so much pain and disappointment to those close to me throughout life.  And now I've added another person to that list of those I've hurt.  A precious, wonderful, unbelievably incredible person that I have hurt so bad.  I have faith that time will heal her.

Why the difference?????

For the first time in my life, after all these years, I finally really, really took the safety of another person seriously.  I really cared.  I was really anxious to know if they got home safe, if they got to the office safe, if their plane arrived, if they got back from a ski trip safe.  I never cared before.  Why now?  Why?  And now I will spend the rest of my life worrying about them.  Always wondering and always worrying.

Numb.

I am numb and I am sick.  I want to die so bad.  I must will myself to death.  I don't care if anyone thinks this is nonsense talk.  I don't care. I don't care if anyone thinks I'm sick.  I hope it turns everyone off on me.  I hope it makes everyone think I am sick and causes them to leave me and put me behind them.  I'm no better than when I was when I was young or at other times in life when I wanted to die.  I think I was damaged goods from the time I was a young kid.  I remember having extreme feelings of dread and wanting to die when I was ten and eleven years old.  I remember being so afraid of night time coming that I would literally keep my Mother up listening to my guilt nonsense until I collapsed in sleep.  I remember similar bouts of fear and dread in college, of all places.  When the sun went down, the fear and dread set in.  Staying busy was the only way to work through it.  No matter how well things go, I always seem to end up back here.  This is fucking sick what has happened to me.  I did not ask for this.  My dad would say that God is punishing me for my sin and for my refusal to do His will.  He actually will believe that.  How can so many other people be so happy in life, yet I am so sick?  How can that be?  God, I was given so much. Yet I was also given a damaged brain and damaged emotions.  I always wonder what it would be like to live without constant fear and dread.  There's no doubt I'm sick.  I just wanted one thing in life and I didn't get it.  And now I want everyone to hate me.  I don't want to interact with anyone.  I have to travel this weekend and spend the weekend with friends.  I will have to fake every minute of it with people who are happy in life and who live without fear and who don't cringe in the dark. I've brought it all on myself.  If I had only done what my parents told me to do.  If I had only forced myself to live like they said I should, I'd be happy and at peace like my brother is.  Of course, my unbelievably emotionally solid sister killed herself after going above and beyond what my parents wanted, so what does that tell you?  My guess, she failed, committed an "unforgivable" sin and could not live with the guilt.  Sound familiar?  Only I've been sinning and disappointing those close to me my entire life.  It's only going to get worse.  That's why I beg everyone to forget about me, in fact, hate me.  I want everyone to hate me.  Pile on me the punishment I deserve.  Get in my face and tell me what a wicked, evil piece of shit I am.  Maybe I can "get through this" if I know I am hated and reviled.  I need to retreat from everything, from friends, from emails, from football games, from concerts, from my home and my past, from everything that distracts me. I just want to lay in bed and go to sleep and never wake up. Wow!  Anyone who reads this will believe I need to be committed.  BFD!  So I'm sick.  I hope this will allow sane, precious, incredible, beautiful people to turn their back, walk away and move on, to look forward to much better things in their life.  It hurts to publish this and know that I will turn some off.  I don't want to be thought of as sick and be pitied and be forgotten.  But I don't know what else to do?  My life is over.  I just wish it didn't have to continue.  So many years of fear and misery and inner turmoil.  And it's only going to get worse.  I've touched perfection, I now known that it is out there, that it is possible, yet been denied.

All these years.....................

...............and what do I have to show for it?  As far as I can see, all I have to show for it is the fact that I've helped make life great for three wonderful dogs.  What else?  There's nothing.  All those games, all those accomplishments, all those concerts and events, a lakehouse, etc.  Yet, at the end of the day, I've been a monumental disappointment to everyone who loved me and to myself.  I've always hated myself.  No matter how special and unique you may think you are, if you can't love yourself, you aren't anything.  I am a person with nothing but potential, talents that others would love to have................yet I am an empty person.  My Dad kept warning me of this.  He kept trying to make me into something I was not.  Was he right?  I don't know.  All I know is you can't be something because someone is shoving a lifestyle down your throat.  I often wonder if everything I've done and tried to accomplish was because I was trying to prove that I was relevant.  All those games and concerts I just had to go to.  All the activities I had to get involved in, most of which I excelled in.  Training my ass off to be an elite athlete.  For what?  Where is it all now?  What will I be thinking when I'm on my deathbed?  Will I wonder what a waste my life has been?  Hell, I'm doing it already.  Why couldn't I have been born like most other people, people who just wallow through life never having passion or looking inside....................and living without pain and regrets and guilt? This is so unfair.  I did not choose this life.

Where do I go from here?

It's been years since I've been this low.  I just don't know what to say regarding my future.  How do you care about someone so much, yet live with the guilt of hurting them so much?  How did I get to this place in life?  Why have I been in pain and scared my entire life?  Why can't I remember a day in my life when I didn't have fear?  And, why do I keep hurting people?   Why have I lived with such guilt my entire life?  I have never felt comfortable or at ease.  Ever.  Even as a kid.  It was constant worry and fear.

I do not know what to do from here.  I have no interest in anything now.  I will go through the motions only to try to mask my depression.  And I will try to put on a happy face for friends to avoid the perception of depression.  No one would understand if they knew.  How do I listen to music ever again?

I don't know what I'm going to do.

New Order - Round and Round

A song that transports me.

Muse - Undisclosed Desires

Where to begin?

There's a line in The Bridges of Madison County which goes something like this, "How sad to die without anyone ever really knowing who you were.".  It's a paraphrase.  I tried to find it online and, strangely, with all the sites out there chronicling quotes from the movie, no one felt this quote important enough or deep enough to include.  How strange.

Sadder still, to go through life, yearning to be understood by someone, yet knowing no one does.  In their arrogance, they think they do.................but they don't.  I'm convinced 99.9% of people don't care if they are understood.  For them, there's nothing to understand.  They are empty and shallow.  They wander..................no, that's an inappropriate term...............they DO NOT wander..............they move through life with no passion and no deep, inner to be known or understood.  I often wonder, how many people would go to my funeral, think they knew me and say stupid things about me that are totally untrue, thinking they knew me.  Even the people "closest" to me don't know me.  Is there anyone out there who could?  Who does?  Yes, I believe there is one.  There is and there must be.  Why did it take so long to discover?  Why have I suffered so many years?  And now cannot make up for those lost years?

I  don't ask for much in life. I never have.  I ask for peace and love and acceptance.  I think I have found them.................but I cannot experience them.  I cannot actualize them.  I cannot be with them.