I've got a little black book with me poems in... or actually, a website with some of my poems in. 

I can't do this shit today.  I started out this morning following my usual routine just like I do every day.  The difference is that today I started to deteriorate and I've been going steadily downhill all day to where at the time of this writing (3:00 PM) I'm about pretty close to rock bottom.  It's been a while since I felt like this, this bad, for no reason. 

I can't even think about the things I should be doing, you know, remembering what they are, listing them, etc. Let alone actually trying to do them.  So, I'm sitting here listening to Pink Floyd in an overly emotional (for me) state getting absolutely nothing else done but this post and staring at nothing.  For no good goddamn reason.

It's so frustrating.  I hate myself, I hate my life.  I hate everything and everyone right now and I just want to disappear somewhere and not come out.  Sometimes though, and this is the sick part, it's better than feeling nothing.  So.  There's that.

So, five years down this path and I’ve learned what? That I’m an idiot. That I am my own worst enemy. That the grass is not only not greener on the other side, but that sometimes the grass isn’t even authentic.

I have never inspired poetry, or a song. Though I have inspired strong, passionate emotions, usually of the negative variety. But, passion is passion. Right? I have inspired tears and pity, guilt and remorse, anger and rage, even lust. I have moved the unmovable with my words. And those words have failed me when I needed them the most. I have forced myself into a corner with the words I refuse to say and the apologies I refuse to make.

I didn’t always fight the right battles. My choices, more often than not, backfire in the most blindingly painful ways possible. Once, I could say I didn’t regret anything I’d done or choices I’d made. I can’t say that anymore. I have nothing but regrets now. All I ever wanted was freedom and all my life I’ve been running towards it. Ironic that now I’m a prisoner inside my own head and nowhere I go, no matter how far or how fast will get me any farther away from my own mental shackles than I am right this moment. I am consumed with the good intentions I had for myself that paved the way to the never-ending hell I can currently call my life. For this is my life. This is it. For the rest of it. I look around myself. What I have, what I don’t have, the loss of any previous potentiality. And I say to myself, “this is it. This is what I have left to look forward to.” I don’t have the options that “healthier” more “normal” people have. I know this and I don’t kid myself. I’m restless as I ever was, but I don’t have the resources, mentally, emotionally, etc. to allow that restlessness to influence me. I don’t have…. anything really. And with every year that passes, what I do have dwindles further and further.

And I’m tired. I’m too old to keep doing this shit but I’m too young to feel this way. I can’t get across to people who know me just how bad it is inside my head. They don’t believe it or they just can’t comprehend. I seem pretty high functioning for the most part. But I’m really not. I’m getting worse and I’ll continue to get worse. I wasn’t good enough for the ex when I was better, there’s no way I’ll ever get close to being good enough now, and I’ll just get worse as time passes but I can’t get that across to the kids.

Slowly dying and rapidly decaying. It all crashed around me about 5 years ago and it hasn’t gone right again since. When I think there can’t possibly be anymore fallout, I find out just how horribly wrong I am.

So, those apologies I won’t make? Yeah.

I’m so very, very sorry.

*Never Free Never Me So I dub thee UNFORGIVEN You labeled me I’ll label you So I dub thee UNFORGIVEN *

Every memory of looking out the back door
I had the photo album spread out on my bedroom floor
It's hard to say it, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye.
Every memory of walking out the front door
I found the photo of the friend that I was looking for
It's hard to say it, time to say it
Goodbye, goodbye.

A couple of weeks later, yesterday, he called me. It's been about 15 years since I last saw him or spoke to him, and there he is. He's still got 10 pages worth of poems I wrote, he has a cigarette case I don't remember asking him to hold for me. Andi remembers, but I don't. He wants to send these things to me. I don't know, maybe he's just cleaning out his closet and letting go of things that no longer matter. But still, it makes me wonder. Why did he hold on to them so long? Why didn't he just throw them out? And the big question: How did he know that was my profile?

It's been 20 years since high school. The reunion is Friday, but I'm not invited. I dropped out. He's been married 12 years, I just got divorced after 14. Our timing was always off. I'm still trying to get my head around it. Maybe he's here to remind me of who I was and help me find that person again.

Some people you just never lose.