I've realized recently that there's someone in my life that continues to hurt me, but I continue to allow her to remain a part of my life because I care about her. I feel pathetic and weak.

Fall...

How do I feel? Like I should defriend everyone on Facebook and live in recluse.

 I should have died that night in December with the tequila. And the only reason I'm still alive is because I'm some kind of secret agent out to ruin everyone's lives...

When you get into a relationship, the goal is happiness for both parties, right? So what happens when nobody is happy?

I'm tired of everything I do being questioned. I'm tired of second-guessing everything. I'm tired of not being able to make a single decision on my own because I'm afraid of hurting someone who is convinced that they deserve to be hurt. Everything is crumbling.

Everything. I feel the numbness welling up inside. And once everything is numb, I can never go home again.

There's this emotion called love that I'm supposedly comfortable with. I'm not...

I am going to give the rest of this relationship my all, even if I know I'm not going to be happy in the end. If I can keep even one person happy, maybe I won't be such a failure.

Love

 1 Corinthians 13:4-13 reads thusly:

"⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

How can I say I'm happy when I'm not?
But how can I say I'm not happy when I am?
How do I explain my twisted state of mind?
We're not good for each other...
We drive each other crazy...

Every day I fight thoughts of running away.

The Best Intentions

You say you heard every word, but I watched you turn away
Your eyes grew colder than winter
"Love is so intrusive," I thought I heard you say
And laugh so unconvincingly

Famous last words, "I'm not ready yet"
"I won't be gone a minute"

Narrow is the road and too high a price to pay
When loneliness is such a sanctuary
Empty are the musings and wasted are the days
When you say you were only waiting

And famous last words, "I'm not ready yet"
"I won't be gone a minute" and I won't forget
Famous last words
If tomorrow never comes, will I ever know that I was in love?

I was in love
In love

You say you heard every word, I watched you turn away
You were only waiting...

Normalcy and Something Else

I run my life by routine, mostly. Alarm goes off at 6:30am, I judge my back and see if I have the pain tolerance to walk the dogs. I'm up and moving around by 7:45am if I haven't walked dogs. I make plans in my head of things I'm going to do, and for the most part I follow through. I've never wondered if I needed someone with the same kind of routine-setting, but now...

Plans, order, routine, follow-through... It's a flow I follow. It helps keep my stress and my moodswings/depression manageable. And when someone I care about disrupts this flow, I start second-guessing myself. I lose self-confidence. Everything I do deserves an apology, because everything I do is uncertain and probably destined for failure.

I feel like I've been stripped of every muse I ever had, and every stroke of genius I've had up til now was either dumb luck or... no, just dumb luck. I can't write; who the hell do I think I am, dreaming about making it as a published author? I have trouble finishing stories, and I have a ton of ideas I'll probably bury under more WIP ideas before I even dream about taking one and running with it.

I want to write adult scenes, but my own experience is lame and inexperienced at best. Someone once told me that "cybering is good practice for the real thing." I was young; I believed that. I was almost 20 before I quit that particular behavior, and less than a year later I'd have my first experience. And I fucking sucked.

And I still suck, even today.

You know what kind of a letdown it is for your partner to tell you they're bored? And then top that with this chicken-shit atitude that I just can't seem to get past that prevents me from trying anything new because I'm afraid to fuck up. What is there to fuck up?!

The fear is debilitating; it's there in everything I try to do. I can't even send a text to someone unless I've gone over every little detail in it to make sure there's no possible way to upset the receiver. Except that I fail in that a lot too. I can't fill out a simple job application because, among other things, I'm afraid I'm going to do something wrong on it and it'll be thrown in the trash first thing.

It's something in my head. There's something wrong with me, and I need help before I get so afraid I can't live anymore...

I'm tired of waking in the morning with stomach cramps and pain rendering me incapable of doing shit...

So... I Hate My Life

On Monday I went with a friend to Magic night. While in Bowling Green, where our Magic night was to take place, we ate at a KFC. I've always been wary of KFC because I have yet to have a good eating experience from this particular franchise. Before Monday, the past two times I have eaten food from KFC, it made me sick. I wanted to give them one last chance.

I ordered a honey BBQ shredded chicken sandwich. And ate it. And woke up 8 hours later with stomach cramps and blood in my stool.

I have all the tell-tale signs of salmonella poisoning.

There's a Difference

Sometimes I feel worthless, and sometimes I feel useless. And sometimes I feel them both. But they are not one in the same.

Worthless - A feeling I get when I don't care much for myself. This is my typical state of mind, and how I see myself in the world in the first place.

Useless - A feeling I get when I either can't do something I'm trying to do, or I try to do something and I fail miserably. This includes attempting to cheer someone up.

When I feel useless, it adds to the fire of my feeling worthless. But when I feel worthless, I don't always feel useless, and my feeling of worthlessness never feeds my feeling of uselessness.

Currently, I feel rather worthless (in my own eyes) and useless.

Waves

I hate myself today. I don't need a reason, I just do. I've had many days where I wish I had pulled the trigger, but today was the first time I've ever considered walking out into traffic. I even had the scenario in my head: sometime in the middle of the night, while everyone else slept, I'd wake to go to the bathroom. I'd get dressed, sneak out the front door for a walk, and head up 9^th Street. It's the annual Emancipation Proclamation Celebration, so there's quite a good bit of traffic, and I know semi trucks come through here often. All it takes is a late night truck coming down the 9^th Street hill quicker than the speed limit, and one false move on my own part. *SQUISH* And then I'd be nothing but a splatter on the truck's grill, a spot in the pavement, and no more trouble to anyone else ever again.

Of course I'd be trouble. When I'm here I'm trouble, when I die I'll still be trouble. I have no purpose other than to cause shit for people. You know that animal shit those homeless kids with no shoes inevitably step in? That's me.

I might still go for that walk. Maybe it would clear my head out. I'm told I think too much. That wouldn't be so bad if I ever did anything with it... Obviously I don't feel like myself.

The waves of pain have returned. It feels less like a stroke and more like I'm just a pathetic wimp trying to hold back crying. TWICE, so far, writing this out I've felt tears start to come, but they get to the point where it hurts for me to have them form and then they stop. So I just get waves of pain and nothing else... Like I deserve? Maybe.

I don't know why I'm so hard on myself. No, I can't say that.

I wish I knew how to be hard on myself. I wish I knew how to do more than scold myself for fucking up. I get angry at myself for failing, and then I make no attempt to rectify my actions, instead preferring to just give up. It's all I seem to be good at; I give up and I run away. I have no problem solving skills, no stress relieving skills, no real... anything.

THREE times.

Maybe if I grind my teeth enough they'll all disintegrate. Then I can be toothless too. 26 and toothless. Instead of just 26 with holes in my teeth everywhere.

Maybe I can disappear into a sinkhole collapse. Just be walking along and *GONE* and by the time help arrives I've already begun to rot. I don't expect it to be painless.

I don't expect to get away with a painless death. I expect my life to end suddenly and violently. Without rhyme or reason. I expect to be taken in a tornado or horrifically murdered. I expect to be the subject of a thousand different horror stories, a hundred different scary movies.

No, not really. I expect to attempt suicide and fail that too. All I'm good at is failing.

A List

I suppose this list may get me yelled at, but if you're yelling at me for being "irresponsible" then you obviously don't know me very well.

This is a list of things I wish to try purely for the experience. Whether or not I continue to do the things on this list is another story, but for now this is just a list of experiments I want to try.

This list is a WIP. As I experience more, the list will be updated.

1) LSD

2) DMT

3) Ecstasy

4) Exhibitionism

5) M/F/F Threesome

I Suppose a Normal Update Should Suffice

I looked over my past entries to this blog and am quite appalled at the content. I rage a lot. I have had some seriously stupid shit happen to me, in the name of "life experience." What has been keeping me from posting normal, non-rage journal entries here? Hm.

So get ready to read.

I have had trouble with my memory for a little bit, so I don't have an exact timeline. I know that in the past three years, I (that is, just me) have moved no less than three times. In 2010, I moved from my mother's place into a friend's house. Also in 2010, I helped that friend move out of that place and into a place in Bowling Green, and I stayed in Russellville, moving in with another acquaintance named Natalie who wanted me to watch her kids for her while she was at work, probably to avoid paying anyone. I stayed with this woman and her kids for at least 18 months.

When she'd had the last straw from the owners of the sub-par trailer park in which she lived, we moved into the house of one of HER friends, who was named Jim, at which point I began to see habits of hers that would drive me insane. I stayed in contact with the first friend that I helped move, and he, in turn, became my marijuana contact while I was living with Natalie. The stress relief offered by smoking pot was sufficient enough that I could maintain a somewhat healthy emotional/mental balance while trying to ignore most of the things that Natalie did and get on with life.

We moved from Jim's place into another house just before the summer of 2011. What should have been a piece of cake to afford turned into a struggle because of Natalie's constant spending habits, and the fact that she has no idea that saying NO to your kids every once in a while is a good thing to do. I make almost $400 a month, and that's all, and I had no way to set money aside for savings for myself because I was giving her $300 for her to be able to pay bills.

That last sentence doesn't make sense, does it? She got almost $600 in child support, was (and more than likely still is) ripping off the state for another $150 in K-TAP support that she shouldn't be getting (but has been getting for nearly two years now), made at least $200 a week working under the table for Papa John's, and I still had to give her money. I could go on and on, but I won't. I'll just say that she eventually messed up in hiding her manipulations and I got to see her spend that $300 I gave to her one month on absolutely useless bullshit at Walmart no more than 15 minutes after I gave her the money, and within two months I was gone from her house.

While living at Natalie's, I met a totally amazing young woman named Amanda who lived in the same town as I did, and we shared so many of the same interests and behaviors it was almost as if we were the alternate dimension counterpart of the other. I started hanging out with this girl most days after she was done with work, and she became the reason why I even got out of bed in the morning.

I moved from Natalie's house into another friend's (Chris, his brother Joe, and their mother... it was Chris' mother's) house, and began to save money so that I could move out from there into my own place in the Russellville government housing. It was while I was at this friend's house that I finally asked the girl out, and she said that I could move in with her. I was at my friend's house for about two months before I moved in with Amanda, and have been living with Amanda ever since. I moved into her house during the last week of June, so I guess "ever since" doesn't really seem like a long time, but I feel like I've lived with her and been with her my entire life. I just wish that were true, because then I wouldn't have had to go through the shit I did with Natalie.

Chris still lives in his mother's house, but is trying to find a place of his own now that he has a job.

Natalie, I am told, had to move out of the house in Russellville and moved back in with her parents in Greenville, in what is yet another attempt to live somewhere while paying as little of her own money to do so as she possibly can. She still works at the Papa John's in Russellville. I am also told that she is spreading rumors about the people who tried to help her, including myself and another friend of ours, Kristin, who let her and her kids move in with her for a little while before finally moving back to Greenville.

So... yeah. Normal update, with minimal details. I don't want to write anymore, otherwise this will become just another rage update.

DXM: A Journey

Imagine walking through your house in your own body and feeling detached, as if you're viewing the world through someone else's eyes and it's all a movie. Kind of like this: http://youtu.be/o4f0qaciIMk?t=1m25s



Every time you close your eyes, the darkness is permeated by surreal images driven by your imagination. Everything behind your eyelids is in black and white, still, focused. Time freezes and speeds up at the same time. You open your eyes and it's still 1:30am. You're sitting in bed, nursing a slightly nauseated stomach and enjoying the fact that you can't focus on anything around you.



For the following description of my Friday night/Saturday morning, I ask that you not leave comments ripping into me because I did something that could have been potentially deadly. I've done my research, did my planning; I know my limits. I make sure I know what I'm doing before I do it, and have back up resources in the slim chance that something does go wrong. If you know me, you know that I don't rush into things like this. What I'm about to describe to you is a low-to-middle 3rd plateau DXM trip.



DXM is the abbreviation for Dextromethorphan. From Wikipedia:



Dextromethorphan (DXM or DM) is a cough suppressant drug. It is one of the active ingredients in many over-the-counter cold and cough medicines, such as Robitussin. Dextromethorphan has also found other uses in medicine, ranging from pain relief to psychological applications. It is sold in syrup, tablet, spray, and lozenge forms. In its pure form, dextromethorphan occurs as a white powder.



Recreational Use: Since their introduction, over-the-counter preparations containing dextromethorphan have been used in manners inconsistent with their labeling, often as a recreational drug.[12] At doses much higher than medically recommended, dextromethorphan is classified as a dissociative hallucinogen, possessing certain effects that are somewhat similar to the dissociative agents ketamine and phencyclidine. It may produce distortions of the visual field - feelings of dissociation, distorted bodily perception, excitement, as well as a loss of sense of time. Some users report stimulant-like euphoria, particularly in response to music. Dextromethorphan usually provides its recreational effects in a non-linear fashion, so that they are experienced in significantly varied stages. These 5 stages are commonly referred to as "plateaus."



Friday night, at approximately 6:00pm, my girlfriend and I began to take our legally purchased Robitussin in a not-so-legal manner. While eating bland food in an attempt to keep our stomachs strong during the procedure, we also consumed four Robitussin pills. Over the course of the next couple of hours, we consumed 60 Robitussin pills by fours, in intervals of ten minutes. Research on my part has shown that doing so in such intervals helps to lessen the strain on the stomach, as well as taking vitamin C (we used Tang for this). The entire operation should have taken 4 hours to finish, but we ended up rushing ourselves at the halfway point, and it only took us 2 and a half hours.



I have had a single previous experience with DXM, but because of how new it was and how different the experience was, it was so shocking on my system that I cannot remember the entire experience. What I DO remember is that while I took it slow and tried not to rush around (as per instructions researched), Pet grew irritable and restless and ended up causing herself to vomit at least half the amount of pills she took.



In an effort to not repeat the events of the previous DXM trip, I was put in charge of Pet's actions by her say-so. It helped that she's my pet (another topic for another day), and per my instructions, I helped her stay still and kept her movements to a minimum. She still suffered from intense gastrointestinal pain for roughly half an hour, but that was her only pain. I, however, wouldn't feel any kind of pain or discomfort until the next morning.



At roughly 9pm, we thought it would be fun to take one of her dogs for a short walk to a nearby park. The trip itself took only about five minutes, but during the trip Pet was hit by the first bit of gastrointestinal pain and began to freak out, thinking it was going to be a repeat of the last trip we tried to take. After sitting at the park for about ten minutes, we returned to the house where I told her to sit calmly on the bed and relax.



I began to feel the effects of the drug by 10pm. I figure that because medicine works differently on my system than most other people's, that would explain why it was hitting me so slowly. Pet's pain has passed by this time, and I can tell she's affected quite heavily already as standing takes effort and is usually followed by a little bit of unbalanced wobbling. Within 30 minutes, however, the full effects of the amount of drug I took began to effect me.



The first effects were barely noticeable. Upon standing, I felt light headed and woozy, my balance was thrown off center, and gravity felt heavier than normal. I'm told I looked pale and my pupils had reduced from their normal size to about pea sized. I wasn't having any trouble focusing, but my words were beginning to slur together as if I were a little drunk. Any emotions and feelings I may have been experiencing were replaced by feelings of peacefulness and nonchalance.



Pet was feeling nauseous and carefully took herself outside to calm her raging stomach. She returned fifteen minutes later, all sick feelings calmed. She told me she felt euphoric, and I recollect her words not slurring nearly as badly as my own.



I didn't gain much more feeling until about 11:30pm, and by this time the drug had peaked on me (I thought) with blurry vision and lightheadedness, as well as invading closed eyes with hallucinogenic visions of black and white. The most frequent image was that of what I called 'the moon,' as it most resembled the landscape of the moon as was produced by the game Mass Effect. I didn't like to keep my eyes closed for very long, but once I closed them and concentrated on this moonlike landscape, and found it was very much like a lucid dream. I could manipulate the things I was seeing to a point, but eventually the drug and my imagination took over.



I remember the images very well; grey rock as far as I could see, with nothing but black and scattered stars overhead. I manipulated my own body into the scene, folding my hands in front of my face and looking down over my chest to my legs, but from there the willful manipulation stopped and my imagination took over. The scene moved forward through no will of my own, and stopped me in front of a decorative red box. The box was the only thing on the entire landscape that was colored; a very deep, dark red reminiscent of a firetruck color rather than blood or anything menacing. The box began to open...



"Bryan."



I opened my eyes and looked at Pet. She was smiling. "I feel incredible. You were right, I just needed to slow down..."



Looking at the clock, it was revealed to be only 11:45pm. I closed my eyes again and was greeted by the scene of the red box, but nothing was moving or opening. I opened my eyes again and looked around, my eyes not able to focus on much at all. I was very talkative, about everything and nothing all at the same time. I asked for a back rub using a shoe shine brush I had found earlier in the day, and after rubbing on my back with it for five minutes or so, Pet put it to herself and I listened while she moaned in pleasure from the sensations.



We moved from the shoe shine brush to an actual hairbrush, then to skin-to-skin contact, reveling from the intense feelings that we really weren't feeling at all. I had, by this time, lost half my sense of touch.



Imagine feeling the pressure of your touch on someone. You can feel the temperature of their body, the texture of their skin, the moisture of their sweat, but try as you might you just can not sense yourself touching them. It's a sense that cannot be easily explained by words, but you know that something is missing. You touch your own arm and still cannot feel yourself touching your arm, though you can feel the touch.



Both our faces were numb, though hers moreso than my own. I could kiss her and we couldn't feel each other's lips, but her skillful kisses weren't affected by the lack of sensation. We declared that maybe we should get to bed, and before doing so I went to the bathroom.



In my influenced state, the trip took forever. I was infected by the Tussin High Step, a mode of walking where you lift your knees far above what is needed in an effort to keep your balance. I got to the bathroom and looked at my face in the mirror, noticing my pupils were nearly pinprick sized. I finished my business and returned to the room, stripping down to nothing and climbing into bed. The time was nearly 2am.



I found I could not sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I was assaulted by a different image. Fluffy kittens. A brick wall. A stack of clean and dirty laundry. Broken glass flying at me like a Star Trek warp sequence. My body lying in a bed in a palace bedroom. Each image came in clear as day and unobstructed... it was like I had no rest from the images. I had no black eyelids to help me fall asleep. I closed my eyes and saw lights and colors I was unaccustomed to. I could not find sleep.



An hour and a half passed. I was zoned out for most of the time, closing my eyes and concentrating on the images I was being shown. Coherent pictures slowly gave way to masses of colors and shapes, no real forms given, no real idea or point made. I eventually shifted my form, and in the process accidentally elbowed Pet in the face (>.<), which caused her to wake up.



“Woah... Dizzles...”



“Yeah?”



“Everything is surreal. Was I asleep?”



“... yeah. I accidentally elbowed you in the face... sorry.”



“You did? It's okay. Thanks for waking me up.” She smiled.



Surreal. I never really understood the meaning of that word until that morning. I felt the same as her, as if I was outside of my own body and floating above it. My vision, in the time I had been trying to sleep, had become even worse, rendering me completely unable to focus on anything I looked at in the room, including things I had easily been able to identify and see only an hour before. I knew that if I tried to stand, I'd be unable to balance and would have probably fallen over.



I was incredibly talkative, as well as bluntly honest. I wanted to share things about myself; thoughts and feelings and past history that I did not have the courage to share while sober, because I feared the reaction. The only problem with me sharing was that I was slurring horribad, and it was beginning to aggravate me nearly to the point of anger.



Pet was patient and understanding. She knew how much I hated it when I stumbled and stuttered over words when I was sober, so I'm pretty sure she could see how much more I hated what the DXM was doing to my speech now. We talked about everything, and even shared an audio hallucination of a bell resounding with a single “DING!” as we lay in silence.



She related to me how much it meant to her that I made an effort to interact and care for her dogs. She told me that she had never had anyone actually make and effort. I told her how much I cared about her, how much I'd wanted to tell her that I loved her, and how afraid of the word I had been. I told her that I had caught it when she said it in a statement earlier in the week, and hadn't answered back... but now I can say it without fear, without hesitation, and I mean every word.



We stayed up for another few hours just talking, getting deep thoughts and fears and epiphanies off our chests. We relived memories of our meeting, of how shy and reclusive we were, and how much we had evolved through the things we shared since then.



At roughly 5:15am, she led me outside, helping me balance and walk, and sat me in the chair on the porch so I could experience and witness the morning light outside. It was refreshing and much needed, as I was still suffering from intense dizziness and nausea. By 7am, she declared she was coherent enough to walk and take care of her dogs, and I was still severely under the weather. At 8am, she left the house to take care of boarded dogs where she works, and I went to sleep. I slept til nearly noon, and was recovered enough to perform daily functions on my own.



It will be a long time before I do it again, but I feel privileged to have shared the experience with Pet. I still very much prefer to smoke marijuana, as the journey to getting high on weed is so much smoother and a lot less painful, but I will definitely be doing DXM again.

It's That Time Again

The Fourth. Like it's some big, important holiday. But it's not. We're worshipping ourselves on this holiday, as if it were by our own power that our nation is "free" from England.

And all this internal shit continues to happen. The very things we "liberated" ourselves from England for in the first place is now happening within our own country, forced upon us by our own government.

The fruit, indeed, never falls far from the tree.

There Is No Point

We hide behind the search for truth, without actually searching. We wander around aimlessly, lost, convinced that we know where we're going. Our sense of purpose and sense of morals are skewered by our sense of worth and our need to be recognized. It takes great courage to admit that some of us don't need to be role models, and even greater courage to take steps to prevent it.

I hide myself behind a wall of fake, fantasy, and facade. When I see myself making a noticeable impact on another person's life, I disappear and hope that the influence wears off. I have no goals, no will, no determination, and am nothing in this life, yet by ending it I would be the most selfish person in the world, and would harm the most people.

I am the Straight White Male. "The easiest difficulty" with no checkpoints, no save spots, no extra lives, and no continues. I cannot access the shortcuts. I cannot wield the hidden weapons. Sanity is the only other difficulty I can unlock, and I have to get it the hard way. And if I complain the wrong way, the game resets. There is no beating the game, only making headway and then getting slaughtered by the final boss.

I am not the person you want raising your kids. I am not the person you want cleaning your house. I am not the person you need taking care of your pets. I am not the person you want making your food, doing your laundry, cleaning your dishes. I am not the droid you're looking for.

My life is a nightmare of reality, and my dreams are glimpses of alternate futures and timelines. I am the rock that split the stream of time, at least in my own life. I regret the things I've done, and I regret the things I'm going to do. I wish I could change the way my life will run, but I can't. I have the free will to choose what I'm going to do, but I've already made the choices. There is, indeed, a spoon.

I am nothing but a writhing block of emotional ineptitude. I regret not being empathic, not knowing what emotion to display to show the people around me that I do care. But the right song comes on and I dissolve into a sniveling pile of tears and wuss. I am not a role model. I'm not even a model citizen.

I curse too much. I hate my country. I bitch and moan and complain but I do nothing about it. I'm convinced that I can't do anything about anything. I'm not content to sit back and do nothing but I truly believe that there's nothing that I can do to actively change my predicament. I do nothing but sit on the computer all day, attempting to put thoughts to words, listen to music, play games, and smoke pot. My will and determination are directly related to me sense of self-worth, and here's a hint: I don't have any.

I write with no point. Who am I to dream of publishing my ideas, when I can't even be coherent with them? I'm too chickenshit to get started because I'm afraid of the ending. I don't want to see a published novel become the laughingstock of the world, and I am convinced that's what's going to happen. It makes me selfish, and conceited, and gives me that giant head I have spent the better part of two decades trying not to get.

I'm suicidal at best, a pussy as worst. Guilt drives me to starve myself, depression drives me to hermit myself. I erect walls within myself to hide the walls I've erected within myself. Most of my friends have never seen the real me, and I don't want to show them. I am afraid of scaring them off, or making them hate me because the image I portray is so different from who I really am. I convinced myself long ago that if I played the part long enough, eventually I would become the person I play, but it hasn't happened yet.

I am not worthy of trust, of secrets, of dreams. I am not worthy of breath, of life, of meaning. I deserve no love, no benefit. The dirt upon which I walk deserves to be lifted higher than I. I deserve no compensation, and no pity. Pain is my road, sanity my goal, and withdrawl and depression my only refuges. Love is a dream, happiness a fantasy.

My life is black and white. Blue and red, with no black. Grey, with no white and no red. I am a ballad with no fade, a country song with no happy resolution. My clown paint doesn't come off. My tweezers can't reach my splinters. I could chop myself into dust and still be afflicted by the specks in my eyes.

The brick flying through the window is destined to hit me in the head before it stops.

Toking (1st Visit)

I'm generally an honest person. And because I strive to be generally honest and non-hypocritical, I tend to be naive about honesty and the rest of the world, and expect people to be honest with me. And when I toke, that honesty is compounded abstractly... in other words, it doesn't really make sense unless you're open to the kind of deep honesty I'm presenting, or you're a little baked yourself.

Yes, this is a stoner journal.

Every single time I smoke with someone, I have epiphanies about myself. And if I'm smoking with the right person, I can't stop talking. For example, my favorite smoke buddy lives in town with me. (4/20's too close, I'm not going to quit smoking until after that date.) Every time we smoke, I end up being the one with a lot to say and so little time to say it. I have brilliant ideas that I wish I could muster the effort to write down, or at least carry a tape recorder with me so I can record them. Half of what I say I'm sure makes absolutely no sense, but the other half might revolutionize the way we think. If only I could remember it!

For instance, the most recent time we smoked together, I was able to relate to her how I felt about one of my most favorite Thursday songs, Autobiography of a Nation. If you listen intently to the introductory melody, it sounds relatively soft and tame, and there's not much danger inherent within it. But then the vocals kick in and you're left with a kind of fearful feeling, like the split second of fear you feel when skydiving and pulling the cord to open your parachute and your subconscious asks, "What if this doesn't work?" And that's just when the vocals kick in. You haven't even gotten to the part of listening where you begin to interpret the lyrics themselves.

That song has always filled me with a sense of fear and anger. The anger was incredibly heavy when I was in the military, because for once I felt as if the song was speaking directly to me, and that I should be ashamed of my actions. And I was ashamed, for the longest time, especially after I was kicked out. I wasn't ashamed that I was kicked out, or that I had gotten in trouble, or even that I had spent so much time there and had nothing to show for it. I was ashamed because I had willingly devoted my self and nearly two years of my life to such a flawed system in the name of 'free schooling' and 'world travel.' I have come to realize that I have never stopped feeling that shame, which helps to explain why I hate this country so much. I hate my country because I hate myself. But it's a different kind of self hate. Less superficial self-loathing, and more deep down, committed hate... the kind you relate to an abusive father or something of which you have a phobia.

But when I'm stoned, I don't feel that shame. When I'm stoned, I can feel like I'm myself, but free of the inherited shame of being former military, of being a former 'defender' (READ: bully). It's why I open up more when I smoke. It's why I can talk more freely; I don't feel like every word coming out of my mouth (in its mumbled, jumbled stuttering) is worth less than dirt-covered shit. Hell, I don't care what the words are worth, I just say them because I feel like saying them. I get the same sort of feeling from being an online persona, but even that fails sometimes because I strive to be honest and be as much like my IRL self as I can stand to be.

I don't honestly remember where I was planning to go with this. It had something to do with fantasizing at some point, and friends, and fantasizing about friends, but because I'm sober as I write this, I can't bring myself to name names. So I'll just stop there and save myself further embarrassment, shame, and hate...

I'm Not Catholic

There's an event that happens every year for Catholics called Lent. It covers a month and a half, and during this time, a devout Catholic gives up luxuries and practices better self-discipline. Most Catholics give up eating red meat (or meat in general) for a month and a half. I hear it's a struggle, but it makes the person better in the long run.

I'm not Catholic, but I decided to participate in Lent this year. Lent runs from Feb. 22nd to April 5th this year, and for those corresponding 46 days (Lent is supposed to be 40 days, but Sundays aren't included for some reason) I've decided to give up marijuana. My reasons for doing this are two-fold:

1) My tolerance is far too high, and it is taking a greater amount of cannabis to affect me in the same way now than it did in the past.

2) I'm tired of having Natalie spend all my money, and so doing this will allow the THC to disappear from my body and give me a greater chance of finding a job, allowing me to have income other than just a military compensation check.

The second reason for doing so begs the question: If you don't want Natalie to spend all your money, why don't you just move out? Simple: I have nowhere else to go. I don't have any transportation, and I own too much stuff with no monetary value; ie. I can't sell any of my stuff in order TO move out.
That and Nat owes me a car.




I guess that makes me a little bit selfish. But I'm driving myself crazy staying here as I am and watching her spoiled brat kids while she's at work, so I kinda deserve to practice a little bit of selfishness.

"Will That Be All For You, Ma'am?"

Last night, it happened again.

I was referred to as a ma'am at the local KFC's drive-through.

It elicited from me a very odd response: I got angry.

I never get angry from these kinds of things. I always prefer to laugh about it.

But no, I got angry. And when a friend found it funny and laughed at me, I lashed out at her.

It's like I'm so stress-driven nowadays that I can't feel/register/project normal emotions anymore.

I vocally asked God for an answer to why I'm even here still.

No response yet...