Eeek. So much raw unbridled emotion. I finally got enough out last night to fall asleep, but I don’t think it did anyone any good other than getting me to sleep. I suppose it’s something I can go back to read and assess when I’m feeling better. Heh, “feeling better”, oh the irony. Sometimes, I wonder if I should talk at all, because I feel like I’m not understood. Then, I’m staring at the coffee pot, not understanding what I’m forgetting, and I think about how unfortunate understanding is, and how easily we get it wrong.

And in a surge of empathy for everyone I’ve ever dated, I’m lying in my bed crying at 8am. Last night when I woke up my mother she made a comment about my feeling helpless and that I still got to decide what actions I take with my emotions. Well, I’m not doing anyone any good, including myself. Back to self introspection I suppose. It still feels like such a waste regardless of the reality of it being appropriate or not. I want to hug my father. I want to tell everyone else that it will be okay.

I’ve never had to deal with this much emotion before. I’m completely lost about what to do with it.

Mom and Tori relate, and say to give it time. I worry about the incapacitating nature of it. I’m sleeping with a trash can next to me now, how fucked up is that? I’ve never been so suddenly ripped open before. Why, when people did terribly things to me in the past, was the pain so much more shallow than now, when I’m not even being wronged?

I almost wish I didn’t have plans to go camping in the morning, as I’d go for a bike ride. Part of me wants to ride north and find a place to spend the night oustide now. I shouldn’t. I’m not in a condition for that.

I’ve fallen to wildly, exasperatedly, saying and doing things I shouldn’t be.

How the hell did this become the worst experience of my life? Where did so much meaning and emotion come from in so little time? I feel like I’m a teenager, wildly acting on my emotions. I don’t know what else to do. I write. I talk. I distract myself. I write more. I yell, and rant. It keeps coming. I’m still fighting it. Acceptance is a long ways off. What to do about that. Nobody seems to mind me being this way. School and work suffered a little. How do I feel so alone when I have so many people so close. Why is this so important? Why won’t it stop?

A lot of thoughts run through my head. Some of them become words. Some of them get written. There’s no sense of order yet. It’s just a flow, a flow, waiting for someone to harness it. Can anyone? Will anyone? This is part of why I feel alone. I’m sitting in my room with a whole in my chest, unable to sleep without thinking about everything upsetting, with noone to hold and listen.

How did life become so backwards? How was I so okay before?

Now I am a burden on everyone. I’m not unsure that I don’t deserve it. Huh. How to channel this much emotion without a relationship?

I’m just rambling now, trying to turn feelings into words. I’m too upset to make any sense, to think, which I want to do. Now is not the time to open up in any direction.

I can’t wait to go to sleep. I napped earlier I guess, I have no idea for how long. When I went to sleep at eleven I had trouble clearing my mind. I listened to some music, but it was still too close to home. I nodded off only to snap awake a half hour later from a terrible train visage. I gave up, and came downstairs to see what Tori was watching, hoping it would be distracting. Henry Rollins spoken word, entirely too real and visceral. Over the computer to try to work on a project, but I don’t have the heart to get one started. It’s not a lack of motivation, it’s like the depression of high school.

At one point on one of the videos Henry explains that he writes to vent when he’s emotional, reads aloud a note to an ex-girlfriend, and says “anyway, that’s what I was doing at 2:30 this morning”. Look, it’s 2:30am, and I’m still up. Funny.

Mother said “loss is hollowness that will be filled differently”. Last night turned out pretty awesome. After the company meeting I got out as soon as I could so I could let me emotions out. I wavered about where to go and what to do, meeting Tori at home being the plan. Instead, I stopped at Squid and let her know I was there. Jen was talking to her roommate who was using the computer when Jen said, “who do know that has a weed-whacker?” My hand shot up. Mom bought one the other day because her lawn mower was in the shop. I leant her my lawnmower though, so I still had the weed-whacker. A short trip home, fired it up for the first time, loaned it out and headed back to Squid.

I couldn’t eat much, my stomach wasn’t right yet from wanting to vomit earlier, but I had some mashed potato and we started drinking Squid out of beers. Turned out it was the first “Bingo Night” with a poster, so we stuck around for that which turned out awesome. Everyone from Squid was there (except Howie, where was Howie? I think I heard, but forget). Jason came by on his way from work, and a number of other kids from neighborhood houses were there. Granted, I was getting drunk, but it felt like community. Which was a wonderful way to deal with feeling so alone. I won cool prizes, like inflatable basketball hat party games. I think Jason won socks? Tori won slippers! It’s excellent being a part of this community.

After Squid closed, Tori, Jason and I went to the 9lb. After a game of pool, Jarrod and Cinder showed up. Tori and I joined them for a game of Sorry and Scattergories. Again, I felt really good about this. We’ve been being silly about wanting to hang out with them, and I’m glad it happened, even if I was actively getting plastered at the time.

Today brought the much anticipated hangover, more tough shit happening (like reading about Angel), too much thinking for my emotional state, etc. I got up when I could, and left the house on a couple errands, but my stomach wasn’t feeling it, and neither was my heart. After hearing about Angel, Mom drove up after work to give me a hug and be around. I thought about going out to see Adam and Jim, or going on the Point83 ride, hoping either would be distracting, but I just wasn’t physically or emotionally up to either and ended up spending the evening watching Star Trek and Star Wars.

I’m still going to try to go on the Ben Country (Point .83 camping trip) this weekend. I have very little available energy for tomfoolery, or rather, anything not going smoothly. But I need a couple days of not thinking about how I feel I think, for these things to settle.

How do I feel? Sad still. My mind is still full of too many reminders that make me sad. I can’t be upset with circumstances. I never really hold circumstances accountable I suppose. I live in the moment, easily, what is, simply is. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about how we got there. Although so much of who I am was shared with L, it’s difficult do much at the moment without a relevent memory popping up.

I’m once again doubting the appropriateness of opening myself up that much. The track record is solidly that it’s overwhelming. I’m sure I’m oversimplfying this. Still though, I don’t feel like I’ve ever had the problem of burning out, but I’m definitely a handful. People struggle with how to express it, underscoring that it’s not nessacarily a bad thing. But it’s complicated. It brings up complications.

I don’t know where I’m going to focus this in the future. I can’t go back.

Shit. I just realized my birthday is Thursday, and that Star Trek opens Friday. And both of those things made me incredibly sad. This is what I’m talking about, these haphazard memories of things I was looking forward to having threads intertwined with my relationship. My birthday shouldn’t make me sad, but it does realizing it will be spent without her.

Which is all probably more evidence that I take all of this entirely too seriously. Or I mean it entirely too much. My heart does live viscerally. It is a fucking burden. It is a wonderful burden, if you’ll have it. It’s complicated. It always is.

The future? I can’t imagine the future. I don’t try. I never have. I have empty hopes that try to help me cope in the short term, but aren’t set in reality and need to be set aside for the long term. This will take some getting used to, and some thought. It’s difficult focusing so acutely on thinking about the things I want, finding an absurd number of them present in someone shortly thereafter, and feeling like it won’t work out due to logistics. I know that’s not true, but it is a matter of timing. So it’s partly true. Folks seem to think when I say something like that, I mean it in the grimest way possible. But I’m not really that grim of a person. I don’t think the world is out to get me. I just try to live honestly based how I feel, the best way I can tell how I feel. I try really hard at this. Times like this, I feel like it only serves to hurt me. But I like being this person, I believe it’s the right way to be.

Everyone seems to have to deal with their parents giving them a hard time, like about settling down and finding the right person. My mom just gives me a hug, says “I wish I could tell you something to make it better” and sighs. This is reality. I’ve spent my entire life in it. Welcome.

What I value in life is not tangible, really. A product of growing up repeatedly being told about the different between the things I want and the things that I need? Maybe. I think my heart drives value. You can see it in nature, or even in complex systems, but you know, honestly, it’s value is derived in what it does for people. Something incredibly valuable to me is missing, and it’ll slowly fill in like when you shovel some dirt out of a stream. You did this right, played in the mud in the woods (backyard) growing up? I don’t know. Not everyone’s backyard was a thousand acres of forest and lake I suppose. That’s too bad. The swirling of the water and silt, both natural and calm, but a distrubance all the same, into the hole. I know I can’t replace that person, and for now, I’m sort of coping with that I suppose. As I said, I don’t know about the future. There was a time in my life that’d I’d be reluctant to write about this, hoping that I could take two steps back and everything would be right again, but it would actually be forward. I’d be afraid of saying how I felt and alienating people from me more. I’m past that now, mostly. These days I spend more time worrying about how I need to apply different filters to my personality around different people, and across different mediums. Can I talk to the lady in accounting about my fears of being a burden on other people? Should I talk to ex-girlfriends about how I feel today? Does the internet really still need to know this? I struggle with these questions whenever turmoil develops in my heart and I have to find a place to express it, because nobody wants to sit and listen to me talk for hours about whatever’s on my mind, interspersed with many apologies for forgetting what my point was. A date once told me my stories were better than television; at least television has a schedule.

I remind myself I need to get up and do what needs to be done. That’s dangerous close to an echo of my father’s misguided mantra about paying the bills. I got a refund check from Harborview for an overpayment recently, and cynically laughed at the irony of paying me back $72 when I still owe them thousands. I’ll put this behind me some day, I hope it’s in the next few years though.

The problem with this hole, is how much what was in it meant to me. I know this probably sounds foolish, but I challange that is a fucking stupid and unreal implication that should be burned in effigy of how we all really feel. It seems so rare that people want to admit to these feelings, they’re scared of them and deal with them by running away from them or in bizarre ways like with anger. Half the reason I started writing my journal online, what, a decade ago now, was there to be one more voice saying out loud how I feel and not being ashamed of it. It’s not a space in my heart that can be filled with more time writing open source code, that has its own place and the activity of doing such is likely mostly distraction. I suppose boundaries with friends are likely going to be pushed in the future. The last couple of weeks have seen some of that, realizing that this stoic cover is a farce, and pushing down cardboard walls with conversation and hugs.

That’s the big part of community, the amazing part, is opening up. I’m tired of slogans about accepting people for who they are as much as I’ve grown weary of people trying to be convincing about not being racist or sexist, while being just as judgmental as the rest of us. A man isn’t is own castle. This independance that we formed out of the necessity of our youth doesn’t have to remain that way. I’ve tested the waters, and there is warmth out there. Perhaps that will work better for me, spreading my heart out wider in thinner slices so it doesn’t feel like an assault to be protected against.

There’s little available time right now for the bulk of this. That’s sort of a copout though. There’s many opportunities that are passed up out of habit and fear that can probably be shapped into something different.

And so it goes.

This is the probably the most artistic thing I’ve ever done, and simultaneously probably the most passive aggressive. Oh well. My intentions are fair, more expression is progress.

Got a text from mom today.

Mom: Being angry is ok too. All feelings are valid and real. What matters is how we act on them. Loss is hollowness that will be filled differently. love you
Me: Just sad.

I got thinking about loss, and the internet lead me to grief, thinking about the “stages”. It calls is simplistic bullshit, which is reasonable enough.

I’m trying to decide what to do with this sadness. It’s changing so many parts of me from the inside out. Skimming the page, I saw a reference to grief counseling and thought about finding someone to talk to.

After I left Strategy I started meeting a counselor, Angel Bowman, once a week and continued for a year. She even came to the house after my accident when I couldn’t really get around. It was an incredibly therapeutic process where I finally came to level ground regarding my needs and boundaries. This was the forerunner into dating again, which has been it’s own process of moving past my needs and into my desire and the future. I’m torn between writing more about this because it’s distracting, and getting to the point.

Searching on the Internet, I found out that she died a year ago. I couldn’t handle this, today. The final gates of composure have broken. This basement has never felt so huge, everyone so distant.

Rereading the last email from L, the things that matter seem upside down. Why am I always feeling like I’m the only one that feels this way? Did achieving my career goals at a young age put me on the porch already, on the outside looking in, or out of the rat race? Do I let my heart steer me more than most? When did this happen? Has it always been that way? Jesus I need a hug.

too sick to do much, yet have to do something or my mind wanders. I’m such a fucker.

I’m pretty broken up over this whole relationship business. I’m feeling bothered by not feeling like there’s a good reason for it. I think that’s some shallow anger though. I know it’s all just trying to rationalize the sense of loss.

Of course the cost of a night with friends trying to make the things that mattered not anymore is waking up in no condition to do anything distracting. Plan A is to go downstairs and hide from everything on the couch for a while.

Nope. Turns out it is bright down here too. Sunnier. Why can’t it be rainy today? At least I have a bucket now.

Most of my life I had my father pegged as this stoic person. Life was full of things that needed to be done, because they needed to be done. Because someone had to do them. And while he was never particularly happy about them, although supposedly he once was, at that point they were hoops. Life was hoops most of the time, and I vowed to not live that way myself. When we’d go to camp, things I always figured made him happy, he wasn’t particularly happy about it. I can’t remember him ever happy about it. I can remember many times when he was angry. And I have forever etched in my mind the memory of watching him hug my mother through the window of my grandparents house after she told him the house had burned down, and feeling sad.

I’d have to guess it was mostly the way he grew up. His family isn’t particularly communicative about their feelings. They always look at me sort of awkwardly, unsure how to respond, when I’m frank with them about my own thoughts and feelings.

As time has passed, I’ve seen bits of the man he was through other people’s stories and photos, occasionally some shocking remarks of his own. When I was growing up, he was always seeming disinterested in my feelings, even to the point where he’d tell me that he didn’t want to hear about certain things because he’d worry too much. They all worry too much.

I’m made of many of the same parts. And I grew up around all of this, so I sort off get it. But I have to wonder, or rather, I just don’t get it… independence to what end?

I suppose we’re all looking for something different. We’re lacking different things, or at least believe that we’re lacking them. Myself, challenge, adventure, amazing people in my life. I want connection. Inside me, there’s this part of me that wants to be shared and valued.

And so Dad’s alone. In a big house, in the woods. He’s got lots of channels on the television though. It’s not what he ever thought it would be, it wasn’t what all that independence was fighting for. Was it worth it? I’m sure it wasn’t. I think he has regrets now. Which, is something. Being the incredibly emotional person that I am, I think I can fathom the vulnerability that he was afraid of. Still is afraid of. I’m still embracing those feelings. Can’t help it, don’t know any other way to be. Perhaps my cynicism won’t be so funny some day, and I’ll end up jaded like him. Today would be the day to believe it. I don’t though. It just feels tragic.

I take care of myself well enough. Folks tend to assume that there isn’t anything that they can do for me, because I don’t really need any help. The point is missed though. It isn’t important that I can do something for myself, it’s that someone values me in their life enough to do something for me. There’s much in that gesture that makes life worthwhile… meaningful.

You can force people to bend, you can drag them along somewhere, but it’s they open their heart that life has importance.

Sometimes I think people value me for the wrong reasons. Sometimes I sit in my chair in the office, trying to solve some complex technical problem, and I focus in at a pixel on the screen and revel in how complicated life is, to what end? This is a “stop and smell the flowers” feeling, where I remember that while I like all of these things, and I’m interested in how they work, this isn’t my life. Yet so much of my life that isn’t the important part seems to get the time and energy.

There’s some value in maintaining an intentional state of innocence. I’m reluctant to try to make sense of people at times, and instead focus on trying to build empathy for their humanity. Problems at work are challenging, and they’re interesting. Other human beings finding a place for you in their heart is magnificent. Which is to say, I can’t make people like me, but I can be willing to let it happen. Because when you leave that door open, and someone walks through on their own accord, that’s love, and that’s what I’m getting at. It only matters when they choose it. This doesn’t make it any less devastating when they don’t choose it. That’s the cost.

The alternative? A gerbil wheel to some end until you’re just watching basketball on satellite alone in the woods?

No, I’m not going to end up like my father. I love. Nobody seems to know what to do with this. It’s been difficult living with that. It’s a burden on people. They don’t want to admit it. They profusely chant that it isn’t a burden. I’ve heard it before. I’ll likely hear it again. As time goes on, I’m less and less ashamed of it. I feel like my heart is a star alone in a dark sky, a bit of brightness surrounded by darkness. For so long I’ve felt alienated by this contrast. Folks want my heart to fit into their understanding of the world. It doesn’t. It won’t. That’s fine.

Where was I? Mom said to hold on to the good things. Sure. I still have many people I value in my life. The trouble is putting so much hope in your hands, and holding them fully outstretched, knowing someone could knock them down at any moment, but knowing what you want to build is worth so much more than that risk. That vulnerability, opening up and choosing to allow someone into your life, knowing that they could decide that they don’t value you that much, that your presence isn’t that important, and still doing it. That’s worth it.

You can keep stoic Dad, I like my heart.

too many things remind me of L. It’s tough seeing the trains roll through the hood, thinking about biking over to the Duwamish, or looking at the Suburban and thinking about driving out of town.

I did my best to stay distracted tonight. Props to Tori for standing by me, and Jason for coming out. I searched for so many people to carry me tonight, and only found those two that I could count on. But squid turned out to have bingo night, and a bunch of local kids were there. Later at 9lb Jarrod and Cinder played board games with Tori and I. It felt like family, which totally carried me through the night of feeling distraught from losing something so close to my heart.

I blew it on school this week for so many reasons, but I feel like if I take care of myself well enough for the next half hour I’ll be able to go back to work tomorrow without feeling completely sick to my stomach.

Mother reminds me to “hang on to what’s good”. When questioned about what’s good, her list is valid, but it’s not what’s important to me. My priorities are normally relatively rational and automatic. I rarely value something as irreplaceable. I lost something irreplaceable today. I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but there are parts of you inside that die when you give up on dreams.

I’m cutting off as many reminders as I can, but it won’t be complete or effective. Time….

bailed on school and work, came home. about halfway home I stopped wanting to puke and was just sad. stopped at squid and friends there were looking for a weed whacker so I came home to loan them mom’s new one. It was awesome to see friends that were full of happiness. I’m going out to prove to foursquare that tonight really is a bender. come out and drink!

bad week, out for a couple days dealing with skin infections of various kinds.

bad day at work, layoffs, economy whatever. annoying. meetings and whatnot.

I’ve been struggling with a relationship, fighting to keep it and just got an email expressing that it’s not going to work out. My heart is in my gut, and my stomach wants to puke to make up for it.

It’s, so destructive losing meaning. Making yourself so vulnerable knowing the risks, having been there before, and losing your soul to it for words that, are just words. Some day, I’ll understand? Someday never comes.

Remember talking about not looking for pats on the back? I’m getting really fucking tired of condolences about how great of a person I am. Next person that says that gets kicked in their pee hole.

I don’t know. I’m just feeling really hurt.