I have

started reading Mountains Beyond Mountains today.
Oh Lord.

Ya'll do it, you'll enjoy it. And it's real inter-esting.
They got it at that there amazon.com, I hear tell.

Its friday again.

Today is that same day that comes every week somehow intrinsically designed to make me feel awful.
I have no strength left (did i ever) with which to face the possibilities of relationships. There is not enough courage or faith, not enough gumption or confidence, not enough lust for adventure left in my soul to warrant me trying. Or to warrant even being around, really.

Likely that I should stop giving off the impression that I am available for friendship. I want to be, and I know in my mind that is what a healthy person does, and so I pretend that I am there and available for relationship with you, with him, with her.

But I am not really. I don’t even really mean it, deep in my heart, when I talk to you.

I am crippled generally by a lot of things, but one of them is fear that people do not like me. It is not unfounded. Sometimes, perhaps even often, I am unlikable. I do not like walking into a room full of people and talking to various ones of them. I hate it. I do not like meeting people, I do not like talking over beer with my friends. I am afraid that they will not like me. I do not enjoy being alone, and I do not enjoy being with people. I would like, so much, to have a friend.

I also do not understand how I can love people and they can just not love me back? How does this work? How can I stop? I’ve got to stop.

Anyone that might be tempted to take this seriously please do not, because I do mean it quite seriously and it will be just another burden to keep everyone happy should you decide to become concerned.  I of course will keep trying to live and love and be loved just the same as before. What else would I do? This is it. And none of this is anything new.

#brutal honesty

big.

Tonite and also yesterday.

Sometimes, (all the time)
when i am thinking about it, (consciously)
I feel very alone.

(Like I am pretending at life, like the notes and pictures pinned on my wall are mocking, like the forest where there is no one to hear the tree fall, like I must be louder and more colorful to even be able to see myself and believe that I am real, and that I matter.)

Tonite in particular no one knows
what I am doing or if I am doing at all,
my parents just drove away concerned by this same knowledge, bless their hearts,
and I want to go see The King's Speech
but Patrick is too small and too wiggly
and I want someone to go with me in the car
and to hold my hand
to talk about the movie with me tomorrow when they remember a thought they had about it;
I would love and cherish that thought so very much.

Instead I will make a plan for what to do-

I'm thinkin' of you, I'm thinkin' of you...

It's a grey, cold day in Knoxville, I tell you what, groundhogs notwithstanding.
I'm on the phone with the Sevier County Sheriff's Department, speaking with the sweetest little lady...she's having trouble locating the incident report I need. She has "gone to look."

I appreciate organization, order, planning, logistical successes, jobs well done, determination, obstacles overcome and problems solved, so much, and I just  now realized it. Weird huh. I even love the process of organizing the obstacles to be overcome, making plans for doing the jobs well, and thinking about the problems to be solved. I love the whole damn process, and I feel slightly bereft in life if I don't have things of this nature to chew on. Maybe that's why I like cigarettes. Nervous slightly bereft energy gone vastly awry.