Retrospect

Another one in the can, and so the time is ripe to assess what's come before. As if I need an excuse.

I can't leave well enough alone, and so we close out 2012 with an old-fashioned bridge burning. I'm a giant asshole for trying to preserve a friendship with someone I cared so much about. Fuck me, right?

Actually...yeah.

It was a false premise. Truth is I'm still in love with my ex-girlfriend. I thought I could be Joe Cool about the whole situation but that was clearly not the case. Ten minutes in and I'm nauseous. So I push "the talk." What did I want to talk about? Who the hell knows. I thought we could salvage something but it wasn't friendship. It was the same process of defibrillation we've used the last few times things slid into cardiac arrest. "Oh, you're not feeling it? CLEAR!"

A little nostalgia and a lot of vodka. Do not recommend.

So here we are, and there's decent odds that we'll never speak again. It's really a shame. Before I got pulled out by the pity undertow I was sincerely interested in transitioning into friends. I really cared about her - more than anyone I've been with for years. You shouldn't throw something like that away just because the romance failed. And let's face it, it failed long before the move. Neither of us was really satisfied and there was no indication that that would change. But despite whatever intentions I began with I wasn't ready. I should have waited.

The moral of this story is that being an adult means controlling your goddamn feelings. Being sensitive is not a license to roll around on the floor like a child. Man up.

Looking forward, there is much to do. The solution is not to find someone who can provide whatever resource it is that I lack, but rather to learn how to generate that resource on my own. Be the type of person who you would respect.

The self-loathing that characterizes so many of my poor behavioral choices, from social hesitance to excess drinking, is rooted in a lack of self-respect. The thing I'm afraid to say is that part of fixating on a particular girl is the belief that I can't do better. It's fear-based, and like all fear-based thinking it is as flawed as it is reactionary. I don't believe that I'm worthy of someone like Katie. And you know what? I'm not. It's time to stop lashing out at others and feeling sorry for myself. Don't like your life? Change it.

And so we move into Phase Three. From the initial tragedy of KotB we dropped weight and rewired a bit. It's now time to do the finishing work needed to realize my potential. Time is running out.

Considering migrating this blog to Tumblr.

Practice

I decided at the Christmas party.

I'd been considering it for a while. Today I knew. I took the couch and you sat on the floor in front me, leaning against my leg, and I couldn't speak. I wasn't ready. But I will be.

I will build a man who is good enough to be with you. I will build a man who deserves you. There is much to do. The rest of this doesn't matter. The rest of this is just practice.

Living Social

It will Hopefully darken the space
between me and the steady stream of community

It is the one nod to base people

The Crucible

reading his poetry
you wouldn't guess what happened to his relationship

grief and longing seem obvious
But there is something more.

I see compassionate fidelity
which was the crucible of this story

LXV

by Pablo Neruda

Matilde, where are you? Down there I noticed,
under my necktie and just above the heart,
a certain pang of grief between the ribs,
you were gone that quickly.

I needed the light of your energy,
I looked around, devouring hope.
I watched the void without you that is like a house,
nothing left but tragic windows.

Out of sheer taciturnity the ceiling listens
to the fall of the ancient leafless rain,
to feathers, to whatever the night imprisoned:

so I wait for you like a lonely house
till you will see me again and live in me.
Till then my windows ache.

No Special Hurry

by Ernest Hemingway

“That night at the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke so no one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once. I have been alone while I was with many girls and that is the way you can be most lonely. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”

Albert

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

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