singles and liches...

Was interesting catching up with the ex today. Turns out we have very different perspectives on what the facts are.

Strange feeling I get when I find out he's been dating someone. The sensation is a bit like finding out you have an exam you forgot you had to take. Not quite jealousy, definitely not envy. Maybe frustration? But even then not quite.

The other revelation is that I have absolutely nothing going on in my life. There's no love, there's no money, and the job actually is kinda boring, when it doesn't suck. The one possible glimmer is that I might be getting a better offer next week. But we'll see.

Don't know why I bother doing the body beautiful, considering my rather lacklustre results so far.

It's another reminder that I've been ready to quit this game for over two decades now. Just never found the means. A friend, who spent most of her teens and a lot of her early twenties trying to dissuade me from such, has herself finally seen the point.

They say that to create true misery, you do not cause a great catastrophe. That only inflicts shock and numbness. It is sufficient, and necessary, to inflict many minor difficulties. Enough to break the spirit. I have long given up the ghost. I'm left with a highly intelligent but unmotivated corpse. Does this make me a lich?

triangles...

And so someone is sleeping with someone else, and someone else has been seeing somebody for awhile now. Turns out someone is also interested in somebody, but wants to keep the screwing around with someone else.

Someone also told someone else that someone wants somebody as well.

Somebody is amused by someone, but appears attracted to someone else.

All the while, somebody may or may not know that someone is interested, even though someone has very plainly stated it.

Is this a weird convoluted love triangle, or is it just the way things work?

non-conformist confessionals...

Was reading about some rather messy coming out events. I always wondered about how other people did their big gay confessional, and the aftermath.

I was present for two, the first a bit remotely.

The ex was actually forced out of the closet by a visiting screaming hysterical dowager empress of a mother (always had been more than a bit of a bitch, but that's more a function of having lots of money and not really having had to work for it). The poor boy had been positively petrified about being outed for years (also having been blackmailed over it before). Not shocking considering he had been repeatedly threatened by both parents and otherwise loving sister with disownment. The surprising supportiveness of the other two players at the event aside, the blubbering dowager left my (then) poor rabbit quivering in the bathroom, where he panic-called me in a rather uncharacteristically morbid flat but wavering voice to inform me that he may have to start living with me shortly.

Things ultimately turned out stable, but the dowager's continued state of open denial and constant pestering for him to find a girl to knock up has kept the ex in an interesting state of accomodation. He has taken to living in the closet with doors wide open, something I continue to chastise him over till today.

The second was my own "coming out".

Convinced that I was well and thoroughly gay (having, at the time, held a steady boyfriend for five years), the older of my two younger sisters urged me to have a grand speech over dinner for our visiting parental units. She was either fairly confident that my parents would be able to handle it, or secretly hoping they would force me back on the "straight and narrow"; she was a classical bible-thumping, church going, hymn singing, err, person. To this day, I cannot say which, but her rather impersonal supportiveness of my in-and-out-again romantic situation says that we will at the very least be civil about it.

The younger, being more greatly influenced by more enlightened and insidious minds as I, was generally of good disposition towards the idea, although not particularly forceful in calling for it. For her, she was glad enough to have an older scapegoat for a lot of the unwanted parental attentions typically foisted on wayward teenagers.

Now, as a quick aside, I have never really felt the need to "come out" for the simple reason that I don't feel particularly strongly about sexing men or women. As a teenager, this used to confuse me greatly, and caused a fair bit of consternation for the girls in class who would decry my lack of gentlemanliness in not treating them with the deference apparently due to ladies. Indeed, I could not feel the need to bend over backwards for either gender. It was only later that I discovered that there was a term for this, but in a world typically so starkly polarised, things like ambidexterity, dual-wielding, and bisexuality are not commonly known or understood.

So my "coming out" was rather unspectacular. I announced over dinner that I had romantic dispositions for men as well as women. My parents seemed confused at the idea, and so asked for elaboration, and further queried about having any male partners since the last youthful liason with a lovely lady I had met through writing this very blog. Having told them of him and how things seemed a bit off due to his need to "find himself", my mother was quick to quip that maybe I needed to find myself, too. My father, to his credit, seemed his usual nonplussed self, and said I should just stay safe and be happy.

The only remarkable change since then, I guess, was the total lack of interest expressed by either of them in any facet of my romantic life. It used to be that they asked after all my friends, as well as if I was seeing anyone, or how things were going. Now, after three years, still radio silence on the topic. I'm pretty sure they are aware I have been out and about, but the lack of official curiousity on the topic has proven to be a deafening silence. This is especially so when they quite openly and actively question the girls about theirs.

Further noticeable is that their decreasing queries about anything not job-related at all. It is, admittedly, a refreshing break from the horror stories of friends (and some enemies), but one can't help but wonder if I am entirely comfortable about this lack of confrontation. I would surmise this is their way to maintain a little Christian diplomacy and tact, but it does make me wonder if they're hoping against hope that my next fling would be someone of the vaginal variety, and that the fling would turn out quite permanent? It worries a bit to consider that they may be sabotaging my stock of prophylactics if it were ever the case to make marriage a strong argument (not that I'm the particularly responsible sort, nor am I in anyway against abortion).

Certainly, their occasional ribbing about my vehemence against the idea of marriage is certainly indicative of their preference in the matter.

sexciting...

When I finally walked away from the wreck of mediocre disappointment that was the shambolic remnants of an ill-advised relationship, I had the distinct impression that it was pretty similar to watching a cake bake. A dry, crumbly, and disappointing cake. You can see it slowly rise, browning ever so marginally, before popping out of the oven full of promise, only to disappoint. It is, after all, a mediocre cake.

So I had made my rather expensive goodbye. I've always been the one to do important things right, and 3,000-odd Ks would nary dissuade me from a proper face-to-face breakup. Especially one that had been a couple of years coming.

When I bid adieu to the treasured, but now-forever-placed-beyond-my-greasy-grasp bunny boy, I was pretty damn sure I had signed away any sense of romantic pleasure for the next odd years, if not for good. After all, that's what a seven year moratorium on fishing does to your baiting and tackling skills. 

As luck would have it, not four hours after landing did I get offered a project that would take me to some obscure side of our local pond. A series of similarly mediocre, if purpose-filled, events later, I was to find myself placed in somewhat sexciting company.

Being nothing but blind to any external opportunities during the duration of my match, I was quite caught unawares at the value placed upon my personal equity. Truly no blue-chip stock, it turns out that I was worth some fair bit of fun-time coinage in the market I had long eschewed.

A nap and a grope later, I now find myself in the surprising membership of a "time-share" arrangement. How delightfully sexciting.

place...

It used to be our place.

Now it's just his place, and I have no place.

It's good. It's refreshing.

Don't think I miss it anymore.

talking to toys...

I have spent a lot of time talking to a lovely little stuffed wolf doll. It was the most significant thing, I think, I have ever received from him.

Fluffy Wolf represents the sociopathic, unfiltered voice in my head that even I have to modulate outside the confines of the company of witty folk. In the stark, but padded, halls that I spend too many hours a day, I find myself speaking in a stilted, meaningless babble. The words are coherent, but the truths are not.

In a way, talking to a stuffed toy is cathartic in a way a therapist could never be. Of all the incredible hurt and rejection a person as remarkably outsider-ish could receive in one lifetime, it could never really compare to that a concious stuffed toy would suffer.

Fluffy Wolf keeps me sane in a way that no drug or therapist ever could. The saddest thing that could then happen, of course, is if I should end before setting him on with someone else. After all, human lives are far shorter than that of a simple toy.

eating in front of starving men...

It's true what they say. You notice most acutely that you are missing something only when it's painfully being pointed out to you in example.

Back when I had the vague (but it turns out extremely misguided) notion that I was somehow still attached, I did not very much notice how paired up (or lack thereof) the peasantry were.

As my not-so-newly-but-fairly-recently-hammered-into-me-found singlehood has begun to settle in, it has been brought to my attention that I am, well, single. It has been "seven" (well, really it's been five before and the following two floundering in some sort of limbo nether-zone) years since I was last single-single. Naturally, this whole measurement of seven is mostly in my head, for it has realistically only been 3 years, or actually 6 months, of any real relationship-py stuff, and the rest of the time up hoping against hope, paying-full-fees-but-only-getting-visitors-only-section-benefits.

Digression over, it has been slapped upright into my head in the past month how alone I really am, even in a crowd. Some time ago (the fabled seven years), I would be fine with that. I guess you could even say it was the relish on top of the hot dog. But the years have not been kind to my ideals. The job even less so. I have taken all sorts of human weaknesses and failings, having only a moderately prettier shell to store all this additional weaknesses in.

I am lonely, and here and there people are finding others to cuddle. Even the purportedly single ones have something to cheer about; Our-Lovely-Lady-of-Spring herself, no stranger to spreading her legs for the somewhat decent flight, has found the delightful benefit of enjoying work, spinsterish-but-horny as she is. Lady Lamb has herself recently rejected a pair of suitors, but finding relief in the therapy of paper and plastic.

In a fit of self pity, I can only write to myself as to how impossibly alone I am. Alone in having a job I despise (which is, strictly speaking, very good on paper, and certainly several shades brighter than the other blighters who are bludging onward with only a minimal compensation). Absolutely alone in not having a warm body in bed, to hold in my sleep, to cuddle while watching not-teevee, to kiss goodnight.

Indeed, the only one to share bedtime with is a stuffed wolf, a gift from him. This Fluffy Wolf has been the best friend I could ask for in times recent, and certainly a refreshing chatting companion. There is, however, a slight worry that our back and forth banter has been lately causing a development of some sort of schizophrenia. But still they talk me on, only encourage the talking to stuffed toys.

Why do they keep eating in front of a starving man? Is it because they wish him to know it will be better? Perhaps they are less charitable, and is an intentional infliction of anguish. Or is it as innocent as the fact of NOT realizing it?

being a weed and living alone...

Another one married, and is just as well. They are lovely together, and you can only see good things happening for them.

The wedding was better than your expectations allowed. You knew there was a reason you were friends. They had rather impeccable taste in just about everything, even in the head waiter.Shame he left before you could summon up the courage to give him your number proper.

Like the weekend past, everything was lovely, and besides little imperfections brought upon by your own inability, or anal-retentiveness, things were, as far as they go, flawless. And from such, you cannot hope but to be painfully aware of your own solitude. How alone can you get surrounded by a sea of people who know you and see you and understand you?

On that rooftop overlooking this tropical nightmare of a city, not an hour ago, they all noticed your melancholy. Even those who had no reason to understand your history. And you, past your prime and tact, had no sense to stay on good taste and deny the all-too-truthful barbs of history.

Tomorrow he returns, bearing gifts. You don't know how you should greet him. He still showers you with the same affection of a generation gone by, but you have a niggling feeling it's more out of habit than any true emotion demonstrated by the habit.

You find that you still love him, though you are both ready, and forcing yourself to be ready, to accept new guests as and when they come around. That, and cheese.

52 pickup...

It's been a long time since our last revisit. For posterity, it is good you write it here while the musings are morose again.

Since we last left off, the job search in the lovely city South was of to minimal avail. For the record, you are far too picky. Sure, solar panel company operating from B-grade horror movie set may be a twitch dodgy, but it's probably far better a place than you are in now.

Your hopeless optimism is offensive to your own sense of self, but you had nothing left but empty promises. Next time, go with your gut, for it seems far better at this game than your brain does. Consulting had promised to be everything it did not turn out to be. That should be the last time you do a paper evaluation.

Strictly speaking, you are in a far better place than most, and should be satisfied with that. But again, you should realize that the best of a bad situation is unlikely to ever be as enjoyable as the miserable of a fabulous situation. So while this consulting gig pays better in nicer conditions that what your compatriots are settling for, it is not for you.

If there's any takeaway from this, it's that you gave it a shot, and you should have let it drop.

And finally, you have managed to end something that should have ended so many years ago. Rightfully, you made the call in such a way that he had enough control to know that it was the way he wanted it to be. The pathetic on-and-off you had let go on with him, love of your life he may be, could only mean to kill any sense of self you had left.

Now that you've called it quits, you think that things can move on. She tells you that you should give it time. It has only been a few months so far, anyway. She's had to endure years of seeing and not touching, so she'd know better than any other. But the big difference that, you suppose, she could never fully comprehend, is the fact that ultimately the pain is that you honestly did love him. Had he asked, you'd have given a kidney, liver, your still beating heart if he asked. And that you still would.

You take solace in knowing that you're doing this because he was not happy with you. In hindsight, he never was. He let you stay around because you were comforting. You were good at providing, protecting. But you were never what he wanted, and maybe not even needed. Seven years is a long time. In some jurisdictions, you may even have been common law spouses. But you know better now. The last couple of years were merely zones of comfort. It was as apparent to you then as it was to anyone else that he had no honest affection for you. The last year painfully so when you were no longer Love.

And soon he will return, as his annual pilgrimage dictates. You are friends still, since there was no real wrong. But can you honestly say there's any right?

Shocking then it should be that you should finally, after so many years, come across another someone who so quickly smote you, so different than any you would categorically find attractive. Too much of a Princess, this one. Too delicate, and certainly too much of an Oriental persuasion for your typical liking. And yet smitten you were.

After all, he was rather pleasant to the eye. A little shorter than you would normally find, but that added to the charm. He was of fine face, chiselled cheeks, with shoulders that belied the hours he put in, and, to put it directly, an ass that wouldn't quit.

They were only too happy to oblige you, since the whole notion of Princess in distress is a trope all too appealing, in all iterations, in all flavours. While you continue to thank them for their enthusiasm in helping in this pointless pursuit, you have found yourself in these past hours, pondering if this is merely a delayed rebound, a rebound from finally letting your internal turmoil set and say that things have already ended with him.

From their giggly interrogation, its obvious that you will likely not have a chance with him. At least, in no more or less certain terms as the impatiently-awaited End that you have been pursuing with inconsistent skittishness.

Your generosity in this final season of annual gifting was born of death throes of someone who has honestly given up on life. The promises of things unseen, of sensations unfelt, of loves not affected, of pleasures not experienced, holds far less dread than the idea of having to live a life in knowledge of the pointlessness of the whole pursuit.

You buy them expensive gifts because you cannot shake the feeling that you may not live out the following year. And hope against hope that this is true, because like all things that you know are meant for you, it will be cruelly denied, as the world deems it rightfully should.

You crave a labour that interests and rewards, and are granted false promises and perspectives, methods that offend your carefully crafted sense of self.

You yearn for a life simple as it used to be, uncomplicated by the treasons of "modern living".

You long for the touch of a love gone past, gone by your hands and deeds, gone by your affections, and gone by the lack of his.

You lust for a new one, another living body with a physical attraction so great as to be inexplicable, but so far away from your ideal that your body and mind are at constant odds.

And you reach for a grave that will not be filled by a body yet, only the hopes and dreams long left to rot by a world that is not ready or interested for them,

Thanks for the memories, and may they serve you well.

maybe...

Not going to jinx it, but a maybe is pretty damn close to a yes.

seeking perfection...

With the certificates all stamped and signed, bludging through a ceremony with an unusually surly mace-bearing university official (likely missing MasterChef), it doesn't get anymore official than that. Huzzah for having endured another Paper-and-Flat-Hat day.

That noted, it's a pretty pathetic job market, or perhaps just sheer sloth on my part, that given how "desirable" my qualifications are supposed to be, not having been handed many "maybes", let alone "yeses" is rather telling. I guess it might just be the economy catching up with the headless-chicken frenzy that was characteristic of the rest of the world for the past three or so years. All still very frustrating with those "maybes" being left at that.

The idea of just dropping the conventional and seeking my own type of perfection has come up, but I'm not exactly a paragon of impulse these days. The insecurity of having no income stream and the obstinacy of refusing to seek help from kith, kin or the government is putting a severe strain on the creative juice bar, and THEIR prices are going up, too.

Even the simple pursuit of a flat mid-section, let alone rippling washboard abs, is increasingly daunting the more progress I make. Beefy I have down pat. Ripped is a more accurate description of my jeans than my body. And drugs to solve that are somewhat out of reach given the financial flow I've outlined above.

And when they say your career is down the crapper, your personal life could not be happier; sort of an inverse relationship. Since I have got no job, I would expect personal relationships and everything to be orgasmically euphoric. However, it's a veritable sea of non-committment a certain party, which, while pleasant, is abysmally frustrating at best. Turns out the opposite of null is mediocrity.

So as a quick checklist to myself, as few are interested and fewer still bother to read:

- got the bloody degrees
- got no bloody job
- got no bloody abs
- got a "we-ain't-in-Kansas-no-more" middle of nowhere type personal thing going, if it were moving

A quarter of a way to nowhere. Not a promising start to a non-existent neither here nor there career of world domination. A personal non-hellish type of Gehenna, perfect in the most imperfect way.

fame and tranquility...

I found it surprising that I could become angrier at the world. It's a common enough thing that people often have their perception of self-worth tied inextricably with their state of employment. The shocker was that I find being free of engagement being infuriating. It's become a situation that is driving my hostility towards the world at large towards an increasingly difficult to manage intensity.

I wonder if it's because I have always prided myself as somehow being better than everyone else. That said, the expectation of gaining easy employment is somewhat contradictory to that position - why should I, if I disdain the human standard, be at all comfortable with working for another? At the very least, I should start gathering my world-domination kit together, no?

In recent years, I feel I have drifted into the position of quiet obsolecence. If there was a saying, I don't know it, so I'll just make it up. Heroes and happiness are not part of the same equation. I think that, to make any significant change in the world, you necessarily have to give up on personal happiness; do not confuse this with satisfaction.

I often drift between flashes of the contented, if selfish, life of a 9 to 5 job with all the plum luxuries and dying a tired old stereotype, to starting a world-shattering doomsday cult (and to be honest, which of them aren't?) and tearing down the travesty that we call civilisation. At the end, I think it most comfortable to be somewhere in the middle. To wield sufficient influence to destroy several lives on a whim, but not so much to attract a lot of unwanted attention.

Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows.
-Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

pierced and recapped...

Today marks a year since I got pierced. Maybe it's time for a jewelry change.

Incidentally, this year's birthday has also been delightfully mediocre. A welcome departure from typical tragedy, although it certainly could be better. Loves me a lot of cash-money gifts. Could stand to win the lottery, too.

dying...

In wanting to die, do we ever get to experience the satisfaction of receiving it?

in summary...

... this year has been extremely close to being both the best and worst year of my life.

Did a double overload while holding on to a job, but discovered that the general idea of overworking is pretty much just average-ish for me.

Gained weight, but I think a lot of it is muscle mass. Then lost it again. Or something.

Threw out most of my clothes, but found that you don't really need that many, even existing within a stereotypically judgemental subset of the population. Or maybe it's a good thing.

Gained a few furry friends. And a few less furry ones as well.

Got a job interview with a big multinational accounting firm, but apparently didn't fit in with their rather rigid style.

Has no work offers on the plate, but has a paid PhD offer from current work. Academia is less than tempting right now, but given the right terms, it might be fun to do something totally unlike me.

Has a slight dent in the cash money department, but at least I can say I can survive another couple of months jobless.

Lost a lover but found a depth that extends beyond that. Maybe the future lies with things of no certain patterns, but a determination that nobody can put down on paper and make you sign. Or maybe it's just letting go of futile dreams of partnership and just letting live with going as I came.

Closing the book of old things, and opening a new sketch pad, because the future belongs to things with a bit more depth than words can say alone.

famous last words...

... it's perfectly safe...

... the dragon isn't home...

... I've done this before...

... what's the worst that could happen...

... it's just a small chilli...

... let's just listen to mom...

... just a little bit more...

... I'm done with uni forever...

old old, new new...

Was robbed about a month or two ago, lost just about everything that mattered. All the laptops were gone, as was my shiny new monitor. Took a stack of money, as well as left a mess around the place.

It shows how little material possessions are worth when we replaced them all within a week. Sure, I was broke as hell, but when you're shelling out half your savings replacing stuff, it tends to be that way.

Finally finished most of the remaining bits of voluntary hell. One more paper in two days, and then a presentation and poster a week after and it's all over.

Things have been cordial, and to a degree affectionate, with the Rabbit. He's done with this run of scholar-isms, but to my somewhat dilute amusement is thinking of throwing himself back in again. His plans of globe trotting for "networking, relatives blah blah blah", as well as his insistence on holding onto archaic notions of filial duty and religion assure me that there will be no steady future for us.

So, all fun and games it is, but much as I can ignore such crap in other acquaintances, I find it all intolerable for a mate, and even less so for a self-confessed scientist. He'll have a fun time explaining all his occult voodoo bullshit to the education board, if his plans get where he wants.

In the short future, I guess there are worse things to look forward to, although I don't think I could care enough to save the world. Idiots are idiots, even well meaning ones. From what I can see, even a nuclear apocalypse will not do enough to get them to think. Live life cool and short, and leave it quick.

small things...

It takes only a series of small pains to drive anyone insane. A huge loss we can deal with. We become numb, things are not clear.

Today it's increasingly clear that it only takes a few small things to set me off.

I find myself talking to stuffed toys, finding more comfort in the cotton and synthetic fluff than people whose sham lives are an equally condemning reflection of your own.

All you need sometimes is just a little good news to make a tragic day good enough.

Fuck you, 3G Hutchinson. Fuck you and your fucking abysmal customer service policies. The moment the contract runs out, you won't see a fucking dime from me.

quick paces...

Is like dealing with faces.

Deluge of workload and dealing with it like a rock deals with a flood.

Got robbed Thursday, got replacement items on Friday, still need things to help the girls because they're frankly not too good with dealing with the issues.

The enthusiasm of the police here is refreshing from the frothing apathy you would expect from police elsewhere.

Is broke broke, and doesn't look like I'm moving out anytime soon, although fortune might dictate bigass lottery win, no?

trust...

Today, I have come to the relatively un-startling conclusion that I cannot trust anyone. Or rather, there is nobody I can trust.

I can't trust my family because they are either too blind to see, or they just would rather now know.

I can't trust my friends because they will tell me things I want to hear, or things I need to hear in a way that is the same as not hearing it at all.

I can't trust my acquaintances, because they are superficial at best.

I can't trust my enemies because they are all dead.

I can't trust strangers because 80% of the people in the world are stupid, and statistically, that invalidates 95% of the things said to me by strangers because the stupid ones talk the most.

I can't trust my teachers because I am naturally distrustful of designated authority. So by extension, everyone who is "higher" that I am.

I can't trust religion, because let's face it, religion is stupid and FOR the stupid.

I can't trust people on random fora, because they are strangers, which draws back to the above.

I can't trust him, because much as his intentions are good, there are just too many good things that we had that he threw away for the inconsequential, and the occasionally downright insulting.

And I can't trust myself.

No, not even myself.