Comfortably Numb

I just got off the phone with BA. We were going to go to a New Year's party, but we decided not to, which is frankly fine with me. I'm fucking exhausted. I've haven't been sleeping for shit lately, and I just don't feel up to dealing with a bunch of noise and drunks and loud music. Or with her, for that matter. Having to manage my feelings and manage my people-pleasing tendencies and manage the awkwardness of our potential physical relationship and watching what I say and trying to be witty and trying to be funny and manage manage manage...I think I'm really OK with just sitting this one out and ringing in the decade with my computer. I love you, computer! You're always there for me. Will you marry me?

I got a massage yesterday. I have a really good, young, female massage therapist - and no, it's not that kind of massage. I don't live in Tijuana. Anyway, I hadn't had one for awhile, and I noticed how much better I felt afterward. How much more alive, more energy, and just an overall sense of physical wellbeing. Since I'm currently single, massage time is the only time I get any sort of extended physical contact with another human being. Oh sure, I get hugs at meetings and certainly I feel loved and cared about by my friends, but that deep, physical yearning never gets met. The only creature I have significant touch with is my dog. She likes to cuddle up on the couch and watch movies. I'm glad I have her, because if I didn't, I wouldn't be getting ANY touch. Plus I don't have to pay her.

Having some physical intimacy with a woman made me realize how shut down I've become. I'm numbed out, living mostly in my head because trying to be in my body and cope with how I'm feeling is too hard. Until yesterday, I guess that strategy was working because I felt...not a hell of a lot. Blank. Empty. Not in pain, just...nothing. It's a weird feeling, especially for someone like me who's used to always feeling so much. I think I'd rather be in pain than live in that blank, robot state. That seems worse than pain for some reason. There's something creepy about it. It's like being dead.

I'm not numb today. I'm feeling again. It's hard, but I think I like it better, even though it hurts. Mostly I feel exhausted. I'm so tired of coping with all this fear, always being afraid. And trying to keep up at work and make enough money. And taking care of the dog. Cleaning, for God's sake. And taking basic care of MYSELF. Diet, exercise, meetings, forcing myself to go be social. It's so hard to find any balance. Where is the energy supposed to come from? I've been overwhelmed for so long I've just kind of accepted it as normal. And it's getting harder, because I'm getting weaker as I get older. I feel more and more debilitated by it all and don't know how to get adequate help coping. How do single parents do it? Christ, I'd be dead in a week!

I guess that regular physical contact really does improve your health. That's why the weird lesbian who lives on the top floor of your building has 11 cats. She wouldn't have the strength to keep going otherwise. And the type of contact I crave lately is not sexual, which is also a very new and weird thing for me. I shared at a meeting recently that pursuing women and romance and fantasy and sex was what got me out of bed in the morning for the last 25 years. And it's true. That's what I lived for, for a long, long time. SallyMandy commented that her addictions loved her until they abandoned her. That's exactly what this feels like; the longterm love affair with sex and love is over. Now what?

Stay alive and try to find another way to live, or go numb?

Who's Watching Now?

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
- Oscar Wilde

I'm a very self-conscious person. I'm anxious and tend to assume I'm being judged for the worse. I believe people don't like me and will attack me if I show my true face. I'm so good at pretending, sometimes I don't even know what my true face IS (Give me back my face!)

I've been thinking about the issue of self-consciousness and judgement quite a lot lately, trying to come to terms with self-judgement and my fear of others' judgement. I've been trying to look at it from a nihilist perspective. Nihilism says that reality is devoid of intrinsic meaning or purpose. Most people assume this to mean a world that's despairing and empty, which is certainly one of nihilism's "faces". But, it's easy to forget the word "intrinsic" in the definition. Nihilism doesn't say reality has no meaning, merely that it has no INTRINSIC meaning, a vast difference. I believe the meaning of life, its purpose, comes from US. I also think the answer to the question, "who's judging me now" is: no one but myself.

In the film Watchmen, a group of dark superheros watch over humanity, protecting us and exacting justice. They do a pretty piss-poor job of it, because most of the "heros" are sociopaths who are far more screwed up than the people they are supposedly watching out for. Also, why does every superhero have to wear a cape? I don't get it...

Similar to the alternate reality of Watchmen, we all want someone to protect us. To love us, to pleasure us, praise and approve of us. Someone to be the parent/protector we never had, although I'm glad none of these "heros" were MY parents (I have enough problems already).

Maybe the price we pay for the continual seeking of others' approval, to be "filled up" with another's love, is that we become more vulnerable to their and our own judgement. Think about it. Basing your self-esteem on someone's approval gives them a huge lever on you. Everything has an opposite. Love / hate. Praise / scorn. Hero / antihero.

Lately, I'm preferring to keep the opposites inside myself. I'm tired of projecting the lover, the destroyer, the redeemer onto other people, asking them to play out the roles that are really just projections of various internal selves. Like Dr. Manhattan says when he tells his story, "I am tired of Earth. These people. I'm tired of being caught in the tangle of their lives."

Who's watching me? I am.

Post-Christmas Shit Mood

Ragnarok, motherfuckers!

Thank God the Holidays are almost over. Just need to get through New Year's and then we can put this fucking cocksucker to bed! 2009 SUCKED ASS!

Speaking of life SUCKING ASS, AKA "The Human Condition", no one speaks more eloquently and poetically about life's basic fucked-upedness than E.M. Cioran. Since I'm so goddamned pissed that I'll probably start throwing things and screaming if I have to somehow keep forming coherent sentences, I think I'll let good ol' Cioran speak for me.

Take it away, you cynical Romanian fuck, God of my dreams, poet of my soul!

"To be is to be cornered."

"It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late."

"My mission is to suffer for all those who suffer without knowing it. I must pay for them, expiate their unconsciousness, their luck to be ignorant of how unhappy they are."

"Nothing makes us modest, not even the sight of a corpse."

"Suffering makes you live time in detail, moment after moment. Which is to say that it exists for you: over the others, the ones who don’t suffer, time flows, so that they don’t live in time, in fact they never have."

"When we have glimpsed, by an overwhelming and readily renewable intuition, anyone’s own uselessness, it is incomprehensible that everyone has not done the same. To do away with oneself seems such a clear and simple action! Why is it so rare, why does everyone avoid it? Because, if reason disavows the appetite for life, the nothing which extends our acts is nonetheless of a power superior to all absolutes; it explains the tacit coalition of mortals against death; it is not only the symbol of existence, but existence itself; it is everything. And this nothing, this everything, cannot give life a meaning, but it nonetheless makes life persevere in what it is: a state of non-suicide."

"A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech."

"God: a disease we imagine we are cured of because no one dies of it nowadays."

"If each of us were to confess his most secret desire, the one that inspires all his plans, all his actions, he would say: 'I want to be praised.' "

"If we could see ourselves as others see us, we would vanish on the spot."

That's Just Christmas Sneaking Up On You

I thought I was OK today. And I was, but it's still Christmas and I'm tired and lonely. I miss BA a lot tonight. I miss how things used to be. Mostly, I miss how I used to be. I've been thinking about that saying, "ignorance is bliss" off and on lately. The ways I used to act and the things I used to do for comfort when I was lonely don't comfort me much anymore. This is the double-edged sword of recovery. It offers freedom from a certain kind of pain, but does not offer freedom from life. There was an innocence, a comforting ignorance about myself that recovery has largely erased. I used to be able to claim I didn't know any better (I didn't, really), that I didn't understand that everything still has to be paid for, one way or another.

Like Joni Mitchell says, you don't know what you've got until it's gone. The ignorance of addiction was, if not bliss, then certainly a weird kind of blessing that I was ignorant of until I became more fully aware of the consequences of my choices. It makes me wonder what blessings I'm overlooking right now. But now I know, am acutely aware of, the price I will pay if I choose addiction.

When I first started my life in recovery back in Narcotics Anonymous, someone told me that a little bit of recovery really fucks up the rest of your using. How right he was, and not just with drugs either. The main manifestations of my addiction are drugs, food, and sex. But really, it's ALL drugs when it comes right down to it. It's ALL using, all about numbing, checking out, not feeling, shutting down.

The Holiday season is fraught with opportunities for addiction. Everyone does it. Everyone eats too much. Everyone spends too much. Many people drink too much. Some people fuck too much. This is a lonely time. A time of supposed "comfort and joy" that actually offers little of either, despite loads of gluttonous overindulgence and crass commercialism. Numbing out with addiction has been my comfort and joy, not just on Christmas, but every other day too.

What I really want for Christmas is not money, or new toys, or more stuff. What I really wish I had was someone I trust who would just hold me, you know? They wouldn't have to fuck me, just hold me, and soothe me, and tell me everything's going to be alright.

What mall, what store, what after-Christmas special can I go to to buy that?

Sony's New Stupid Piece of Shit

Just in time for the Holidays. I just got home from Best Buy and it made me think of this:



My favorite feature: "being goddamned ass-backward as fuck."


Merry Christmas!

Hold Still and Do Nothing

Fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck it fuck it...

Ever have one of those days where you just can't sit still? You fidget and fuss. You sit down to work at the computer, but on the way to your desk, you end up going downstairs to fold laundry. Should I take a Clonazepam to calm the fuck down, or should I just take vitamins and tough it out? Did I remember my Zoloft and Wellbutrin? I need to take a shower. It's too fucking hot in here. Oh look, I just got an email...oh shit! I don't want to talk to her. Fuck! I need to get this stupid Flash project done. God, I HATE Flash! How much longer can I put this one off?

On and on it goes. Why? One word:

FEAR

Fear is a learned response, much like optimism or procrastination or kindness or any other character trait. We learn how to respond to the world by modeling, or taking on, the behaviors and moods of our parents. We steep in them, percolating in them for years. They become our stance towards life, our vision of the world. They color our reality. They become our reality.

As a nihilist, I believe reality is mostly whatever I say it is. It's basic nature is formless, colorless, shapeless, empty, nothing. I give it shape. I give it meaning, and substance, and "truth", if there is such a thing. How do I do this? The sum experience of my life to this point, everything I have learned in both childhood and adulthood, is the substance, the essence, that I project onto the void around me. This becomes, for all intents and purposes, "reality."

The Glass is Half Full
It's interesting to note how the experiences of childhood become a sort of template to interpret all later experiences, even if the later experiences are completely opposed to the permeating childhood lens. Everyone knows someone for whom the glass is half full, right? My experience with these people is that the glass is half full even in the face of the most horrible tragedies, mishaps, and general shitball fuckery that seems to constitute most of life. When their child dies, or their husband leaves them for an Asian hooker, or they get terminal cancer, they STILL see the glass as half full. Why? Usually it's because one or both of their parents had this basic stance toward the world: "No matter what happens, no matter how bad things get, nothing can take away my sense of value, the sense that I am precious and lovable on some basic level. There is still beauty in the world. There is hope for the future. Tomorrow is a new day."

The child, being biologically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually immersed in this "reality", naturally tends toward a similar template filter. Huey Lewis wrote a song in the 80s called "That's the Power of Love." I don't know what the fuck he's talking about, but if I could re-write this song, I'd make it about transmitting "The Glass is Half Full" reality to your children. Now THAT's the power of love!

The Glass is NOT Half Full
Conversely, "pessimists", as they're called, see the glass as half empty, or in some cases, totally empty. I am one of those people. That being said, I have a good life, at least on the outside. I have a good job, a nice place to live, and a dog that I adore. I live in a friendly collage town in the Northwest that has little crime, no traffic, and no ghettos, just the occasional meth lab. That beats Pittsburgh or California any day of the week. I have wonderful friends in the program, a fantastic therapist, and a pretty good relationship with my father, who also lives here in Missoula. I'm intelligent, well educated, and in reasonably good health, particularly taking into account all the substances I've abused. I'm tall, thin, and reasonably good-looking. I don't currently have a girlfriend or partner, but it's mostly by choice. I'm not lacking in opportunities. I sound happy, right? You'd think I was happy.

Wrong. Here's a partial list of the messages MY parents communicated about their "reality":

MOTHER

• You're here to make ME happy. You exist to service my needs.
• You don't have any real value. You're not worth much.
• The world is a dangerous place. You're not smart/strong/tough enough to survive it.
• You will never make it without me.
• I had you to become the man who would never leave me. Not like all the other cocksuckers out there. You're special. You're different.
• I'm attracted to you. I want you to be my surrogate husband. You turn me on.
• I can hit you, scream at you, and call you horrible names anytime I feel like it.
• I may even kill you someday if I get really upset or really out of control.
• You're nothing without me.

FATHER

• You're OK, but I don't really like kids. Nothing personal, you understand.
• I didn't really want to be a Dad. I mostly had you to keep your bitch of a mother happy. I hate that bitch.
• I really can't deal with the emotional needs of a child. I don't like deep feelings. Keep your feelings to yourself.
• I know your mother's a crazy, psycho bitch, but I won't protect you from her. I just want to get the hell out of here. What do you want from me, anyway?

End result?

FEAR

Fear of being hit. Fear of being touched. Fear of being killed. Fear of dying. Fear of abandonment. Fear of people. Fear of intimacy. Fear of my own body. You get the picture.

Living in chronic fear is very hard on one's health. Adult Children of Alcoholics offers some insights into this issue:

"Because we were raised in chaotic or controlling homes, our internal compass is oriented toward excitement, pain, and shame. This inner world can be described as an 'inside drug store.' The shelves are stocked with bottles of excitement, toxic shame, self-hate, self-doubt, and stress. Other shelves include cannisters of lust, fear, and worry. As odd as it sounds, we can seek out situations so we can experience a 'hit' of one of these inner drugs."

"Our actions as adults represent our addiction to excitement and a variety of inner drugs created to survive childhood. Many of our repressed feelings have actually been changed into inner drugs that drive us to harm ourselves or others."

Addiction to fear. Yup, that sums it up pretty well. I'm a fear junkie. I don't know how to live without it. Being afraid is keeping me safe, alert, watchful, and on guard against threats that are no longer happening outside, but have never stopped happening on the inside.

No wonder I can't sit still...

Tiger's Wood: The Long Drive

The Tiger Woods scandal is almost, ALMOST as entertaining as O.J. was 15 years ago. But O.J. still reigns supreme as the crack of true-crime TV drama.

However, no one ever considered making an O.J. porn movie after it was all over. That would have been in extremely poor taste, to say the least. Can you imagine?

Not so with Tiger Woods. I mean, the guy already has a porn star name, and was screwing ACTUAL PORN STARS! Is there any way this could NOT become a porn flick?

Tiger's Wood: The Long Drive is reportedly in production. Mary Elizabeth Williams, writer for Salon magazine, has the best snide, barbed, tongue-in-cheek quips about the whole Tiger "affair" that I've had the pleasure to read. About the impending Tiger porno, she writes, "That's right, pornography is at last going to explore the issue of black men getting it on with well-endowed blondes." Classic!

Other Williams jewels include:

• "In short, Woods appears to have more paramours than Nadya Suleman has babies. No wonder he announced Friday he's taking 'an indefinite break from golf.' If half of what's been claimed about the guy is true, we applaud him for still having the energy to type that message on his Web page."
  
  
• "Truly, it's like striking tabloid oil. It's pretty tough to strike oil, however, without getting coated in a slick layer of suffocating goo."
  
  
• "And, at last count, 12 other women who may have been on the receiving end of the golf pro's legendary stroke."

I feel bad for the guy. OK, that's a lie. What I really feel bad about is that I'm getting a vicarious thrill out of Tiger's exploits (how many guys WOULDN'T love to nail a few dozen hot skanks?) AND I'm enjoying watching his upstanding, squeaky-clean image get dragged though the mud. A friend mentioned "schadenfreude" recently. That's exactly what it is.

Sorry, Tiger! I'm (mostly) glad I'm not you!

What I Wouldn't Give For A Line

Last Wednesday, December 16th, I celebrated 6 months clean and sober. I'm an addict. This isn't the first time I've gotten clean.

The first time was in 1996 after a devastating break-up with a girlfriend that took about 3 years to get over. I relapsed ("went back out", in 12-Step parlance) about 9 months later near the end of another relationship. Soon after that, I moved from Boulder, CO to Missoula and stayed clean for 4 years.

I relapsed again sometime in 2001. Of course, my girlfriend and I were breaking up (do we see a pattern here yet?), and this time I "stayed out" for around 2 years. There was a period of 8 months or so during that time that I was abstinent - not using, just sort of taking a break from using, although intending to go back to it eventually, which I did.

When I did start again, it was at the BEGINNING of a relationship, not the end. I had found a sexy girl addict to use with me. Our relationship mostly consisted of smoking weed and fucking and me talking about how I shouldn't be smoking weed and fucking her. She disappeared 2 months later and I've never heard from her again. There's a good chance she's dead. Katina, I'm so sorry for how I treated you. I love you and you deserved better. I miss you.

I got clean yet again. The wake up call that time was my T-boning a county sheriff officer's truck on the way to my dealer's house. I wasn't stoned at the time (lucky for me), so there was no Breathalyzer test and I wasn't arrested. I got lucky because the "accident" was my fault AND I was driving without insurance (God, the things you do when you're getting high). Just imagine what could have happened if I'd hit him AFTER visiting the dealer.

I got clean AGAIN on a vacation trip back to Boulder. A kind hearted and gentle man with strong recovery agreed to act as a temporary sponsor for me. When I got back to Missoula, I got serious about working a program. I started going to lots of Al-Anon meetings and eventually worked the Steps with a man who's the best sponsor I've ever had and is still my sponsor today. Thanks, Chris. The gifts you've given me are something I can never repay.

I stayed clean for 5 years, from 2003 to 2008. That was the longest period of sobriety in my life, at least from drugs. I relapsed during a particularly hard stretch of a - wait for it - A RELATIONSHIP! Can't fool you, can I? You're just too smart. :-)

I started with alcohol and pot, my DOC ("Drug of Choice" for all you flat-landers), then moved to snorting Ritalin. This was a new and alarming behavior in my addictive life. I'd pretty much been just a pothead for 20 years. Pot is surely a drug and is addictive, but it's at least a naturally-occurring substance that's minimally processed, though it's been hugely inbred and is much, MUCH stronger than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

Ritalin is a wonderful drug. My brain just accepts it as cocaine, which I love, although I've never done a lot of it. I've always loved stimulants - very strong coffee and Mt. Dew are prime examples. I doubt I would have made it through school without Mt. Dew. Anyway, Ritalin beats out coke as a drug any day in my book because:

• It's legal - Even taking it "intranasally", as I was doing, is not illegal in and of itself.
  
  
• It's virtually identical to cocaine in its effects on the brain.
  
  
• It's CHEAP - Generic Ritalin costs about $15 for a month's supply (thanks, Wal-Mart). Of course, when I say "month's supply" I really mean about 5 days worth.
  
  
• It's easy to get - Gone were my days of white-knuckling it while waiting for my dealer to call me back. Gone was the nervous drive home, taking care to obey the speed limit and not attract any attention. Suddenly, my dealer was every pharmacy in town! Beat that, coke!
  
  
• You get A LOT OF SHIT DONE - In "More, Now, Again", Elizabeth Wurtzel jokes that a speed freak can water a plant for 3 days straight. She's not kidding. Ritalin is a web developer's dream. I've never had such focus or appetite for minutia in my life. I could work straight through, 16 hours a day. The 3 months I was snorting were the most productive of my professional life.

On the other hand Ritalin's NOT such a great drug because:

• It kills you - Taken in large quantities, Ritalin causes permanent damage to your central nervous system while slowly poisoning you. Ever wonder why meth addicts look like shit? Do enough Ritalin and you'll probably find out.
  
  
• It destroys your self respect - This was the first time in my life I've ever truly felt like a junkie. I got a little taste of what the guys who panhandle me in front of the court house are living with. I had visions of ending up that way. It could happen.
  
  
• Although the drug itself is not illegal, the method of procurement usually is - I was faking prescriptions, the most common method of obtaining large quantities of pharmaceutical drugs. I have some skill with PhotoShop, and Montana has weak prescription-monitoring laws. There was no centralized system to track that I was getting the same prescription filled at 9 different pharmacies simultaneously. Faking a prescription is a felony offense.

I totally get why Elizabeth Wurtzel fell in love with Ritalin. It's wonderful. It produces the most lovely, euphoric calm I've ever experienced. It makes all the fear and loneliness and depression and hurt instantly go away. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it, even though it's the surest path to death I can think of, short of putting a shotgun in my mouth.

I've been wanting it, craving it lately, even though I know what would happen. It would be so easy. Just one phone call...

I need to get my ass to some meetings.

Lonely Lonely Lonely...Comfort Comfort Comfort

Lonely lonely

Comfort comfort
How do you fill those bones when they're hollow?
What aches at the pit - love comfort's sweet embrace?

Comfort comfort
Lying hollow numb
Dumb mute censored
To love's trash heap of scares

fuck you - that's the best i can do...

Giving up on your heart's desire

Do you ever feel like no matter how hard you try, you will never have what your heart truly desires? And that it would be better to just give up on those things because your heart is broken and will never really be healed?

I had an experience today about this subject. It's bitterly cold here in Western Montana, but I decided to go for a hike anyway, because I could feel myself sinking into a depression and I knew exercise would make me feel better. As I was coming down the hill at the end of the hike, I was feeling deep sorrow; sorrow about not being loved, sorrow about not ever having a childhood, but mostly sorrow about never being loved the way I've wanted to be loved. My heart felt broken, and I felt a vast, empty weight press down on me.

Just at that moment, the clock tower on campus struck 5:00PM and the bitter wind whipped up and rattled through the dead leaves still on the trees. It was the most mournful, sorrowful, yet somehow darkly beautiful moment. For that moment, I felt like a ghost walking the hillside, that the wind was blowing through me instead of around me. It was a beautiful connection with my lost inner child. Fragments of words started forming in my mind, and this poem was what came out:

Giving up on your dreams
It's not as easy as it seems
Broken splinters of your glass heart
Trapped inside, everywhere, nowhere and nothing
Squeezed, suffocated, smothered to death in a soundless scream
That has no voice
And no choice

The emptiness that has no form. The heartbreak that has no apparent cause. The loneliness and isolation that persist despite friends, family, God, and pets. The hopelessness that is everywhere, inside everything, and yet cannot be described or defined. The world's broken heart beneath its cheerful, smiling face.

I think Morpheus says it best when speaking to Neo in The Matrix:

"What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad."

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

This is hard. I saw my ex, BA, last night for the first time since we broke up in June. I've been expecting to run into her for the last 6 months 'cause this is a pretty small town. Even though I've walked my dog past the building where she works numerous times, semi-hoping to run into her, and yet being afraid I WOULD run into her, it hasn't happened.

Well, last night that all changed during First Night while out with my buddy D. Every month that I go do First Night, I keep expecting to run into BA because she LOVES art and theater and jewelry and basically all the things First Night is about. Before I met up with D to do the gallery crawl, I'd wondered yet again about running into BA, but immediately dismissed it as a possibility.

The Meeting
D and I didn't even end up going to any galleries like we had planned. Instead of being mobile like people tend to be on First Night, all we did was sit in a coffee shop and talk for 3 hours. The weird thing is that hiding out in a coffee shop significantly decreases the odds that you're going to run into any given person. And yet after about 2 hours, in walks BA, alone, to warm up and look at the newspaper.

I felt a shock and an electric charge go through me. Finally, there she was! After all this time, when I least expected it! She didn't see me, even though D and I were sitting near the door. Should I go over and say hi, or ignore her and hope she leaves quickly? After 10 or 15 seconds of automatic "checking in" with myself while ignoring D and staring at BA, I decided to go over and say hi. It felt like the right time and like I was in the right space and ready for it.

She looked great. BA is a beautiful, athletic blonde girl with long curly hair and blue eyes. I walked up behind her and said something like, "Gee, I didn't expect to see you here," or some such brilliant opening statement. She turned around, and crowed upon seeing me, "Oh my God, I can't believe it! It's you! You look so good! What have you done to your hair, it looks so groovy!" She then went on about how I looked like a cool European artist or something, and complimented me on my clothes and hair (it's a lot longer than the last time she saw me), along with noticing my new glasses. It felt really good to get complimented by a pretty girl, especially her, as I spent the whole year and a half that we dated trying to win her love and approval and be what I thought she wanted me to be.

The Aftermath
We chatted for a few minutes, which was very enjoyable and fun. It was great to see her because I still care about her very much, plus I was getting a nice little rush from all the compliments. Then I started to feel weird, like I was getting sucked back into the head space I had when we were dating, trying to please her all the time and win her affection and be "good enough" for her. I started to be aware of needing to set a boundary of not getting too close. She suggested we go walk around and catch the last bit of First Night, but I said I needed to get back to hanging with D and that maybe we could do something the next afternoon. Since BA is a radio producer, I suggested I help her set up to record the local symphony, something I had done regularly while we were going out. She agreed and we made plans to talk the next morning. We said our goodbyes and she left.

After I went back to the table to sit with D, I was on cloud nine. A pretty girl, my ex no less, who I'd been missing and longing after for 6 months, had paid attention to me and said nice things about me. She was clearly glad to see me and wanted to hang out. I'm really trying to work on NOT depending on female attention to feel good about myself, but I have to admit it did feel good, and that for the next hour D and I hung out and talked, I felt more energy, self-confidence, wittier, better looking, and much less depressed. I had been dreading going out but was forcing myself to do it so I wouldn't feel so isolated.

What a success! I rule! It had all turned out just

• Fucked up
• Insecure
• Neurotic
• Emotional

First Forrays Into the Blogosphere...

Well, I've finally taken the plunge and gotten a blog. Which is ironic considering I'm a web developer by trade and have built blogs for OTHER people, but never for myself. I took the easy way out and went with Blogger rather than setting up a custom WordPress site, which sounded too much like work. I just want to write stuff, you know?

I've been thinking seriously of getting a blog for the last several months. The thing that finally pushed me over the edge was finding out that my friend SallyMandy was writing a cool blog on a variety of interesting subjects. I've known Sally for over 10 years, but had no idea she was a blogger until a couple of months ago (thanks Facebook).

Seeing her write from her heart finally made me feel like I have something to say too, although I don't know what it is or how it's going to come out. I feel I have a lot to say about recovery, suffering, childhood, and family-of-origin issues, along with sexuality and emotional and spiritual growth.

Sally, you were the impetus for all this, so THANKS!