why should i have expected anything different? this is what this whole thing has been about: making mountains out of mole hills, sometimes making mountains out of nothing at all. she wasn't there for any reason other than to assuage her boredom. once i left there was no change.

no one else batted an eye either. you try to be nice to these people. you try to be supportive and reassuring, but when the shoe is on the other foot they don't make a peep. it's no wonder they're all social outcasts. act like a ######6 human being and maybe others will treat you the same. wallow in your own self-pity and see how much time most people have for you. ######6 idiots.

but back to n. ###$ her. complete waste of flesh that one is. she's like a ######6 80s casino: drinking, smoking, and the loosest slots in town. my mind was vetting her in an attempt to find a replacement for s, but the projection can't stick to something that vile. it's only because she never said anything that my mind had hope. only because she was a completely blank slate did my mind find her at all appealing.

well, so much for that.

you know, what m said about me still sort of stings. "making this into something it's not." no, darlin'. i never did anything but tell the truth. see, that's the thing they did that made it all so hard. they constantly denied me who i am. at every turn they said, "you're who we say you are, not who you say you are." ###$ that. you expect me to be honest with you (i always was) but then tell me i have to be something i'm not?

the whole thing is a joke. they are the duplicitous ones. they are the pusillanimous ones. they are the selfish ones. they are the ignorant ones.

and yet they charge me with turning things into something they weren't. no, ladies, truth was my only watchword. always. my goal all along was to fight my imagination run amok. that is my burden, my illness. and yet you constantly said, "no, the falsehoods are reality, give in to them." ###$ you, you know-nothing idiots.

but here's the good news. as much as what m said pisses me off, i don't really feel angry towards her. it's like, "whatever, she's not so bad. let her have this one." i mean, i'm angry, but i'm not enraged. her actions don't necessitate retribution.

in and of itself that's a really good sign. but even more so, i have to recall that m was the object who preceded s. m, just 4.5 years ago, held the exact same significance that s currently holds. and yet now i don't care. she says something insulting and it's mostly shrugged off. consider the difference!

that is the silver lining in all of this. once s is replaced, or dropped, or whatever might happen, none of this will matter. in the moment, when the object has the emotional weight of a black hole, that can be hard to believe, but it has always been true and it will be true again. a, n, k, r, k, m, and m -- all of them, at one point, meant the same thing. and yet now their emotional weight is negligible. it will be the same for s. one day she won't make my heart sink to think of what a putrid creature she's become (or perhaps has always been). she'll just be someone i don't know. all that stuff that happened between us? fantasy. it meant nothing. it was nothing. ain't nothin' to worry about.

an excerpt from an S.B. short story:

"One is no longer oneself, on such occasions, and it is painful to no longer be oneself, even more painful if possible than when one is. For when one is one knows what to do to be less so, whereas when one is not one is any old one irredeemably."

they encouraged me to be something i'm not. my mind encouraged me to be something i'm not. and it was painful. more painful than to be myself. i have been fighting back for 4 years now, sometimes ineffectually, sometimes erratically, but always earnestly. i understand what i did, what i couldn't do, and what i had to do. now,...

[ Continued ]

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