Today’s volunteer opportunity didn’t work out, but I’m still in line for work Friday – Saturday. NAMI Walk is going to be good, especially if there is a lot of turnout. I wish it were easier for people to be excited about mental health awareness.

In the “other” category, I find myself feeling a little down today. Those negative words I hear in my head are a lot louder than usual. I have low self-esteem but an excellent ability to fake being awesome for a time. Adoration is a really vital fuel, and the things that can be done with that energy are numerous. I do, in a lot of ways, admire myself and create my own forward propulsion. I’d be going nowhere in life if I didn’t have SOME pride and confidence.

I feel alone. I tried reconnecting with people who had meaning in my life, but I am unable to glean anything of worth, it seems. Idle chat is nice. Having someone checking in on you every so often is also a beneficial thing. What I’m looking for is something to invest in that has potential to be a flower pot with happy little plants in it. I’ve been throwing dirt and water onto dead plants for so long I really had no idea what the fuck I was doing. I was a poor communicator and an inconstant partner. I don’t want to give myself to things inevitably bound to become rotten. All the past is full of stinking decay. It infects everything with remembered despair and the agony of dead love.

Swallowing true solitude is a terrible, choking, gasping process in which the vital fire of lust and physical passion are stabbed in the stomach and left to die slow in the mud. It is a new type of death I must experience within myself, just as the love I had for the women of my life… I see the empty, cavernous and hollow spaces that were once so rich, beautiful and full and it tears me apart with sorrow to this day. I’ve died inside myself time and time again, as many different projected hopes, desires and lust-fueled fantasies all dissipated like piss in the shower.

There is likely something better out there without as much in the red column. Almost certain.

I don’t want to sulk. I want to improve. I’m still full of all this negative shit, but that’s no reason not to forge ahead alone. What the fuck else am I going to do? There are no other options that have stability and the hope for happiness bound to them. I could just give up and stop caring, but the guilt of irresponsibility would be a obstacle to overcome. I could go on dating sites and invest all sorts of energy into finding someone to relate to, and force the hand of fate to deal myself romance sooner rather than waiting for something of true value to materialize. What if nothing ever materializes? I go into that knowing full well that is a possible outcome. However, should being unloved make it impossible for me to give my heart and soul to helping people who struggle with mental illness? I don’t need to be loved to love, or, care, as they are just escalations on the same thread of word. I wish to impart real love to people, because it feels AMAZING to be loved.

I have been loved before. I will never forget how that felt, and the type of happiness I felt during those days. At several points in my life, there have been such beauty, closeness, and the outlines of what seemed to be unbreakable trust. I will never forget. It is so hard for me not to look back and hope something is still there. One last spark; some little buried, smoldering ember that cries out for a breath of air. There is nothing left. I feel the ash sliding through my fingers. I smell the acidic stink of death.

There won’t be days like those again, will there?

I’m sad. I have so much love and joy inside me. I’m all the way in the back of the closet under a box where no one is likely to find me. I struggle to this very moment with how I plan to peacefully reconcile that fact.