[x]...the more they stay the same.

This has been a weird month. Hard to put it into words really. It feels like that special effect in cinema where someone moves in real-time, while a crowd speeds past in fast forward. That is the best description that I can come up with. I watch life and everyone around me as they go about their lives, like some sort of human ant farm. I like to think that I can see most of every one's intricate inner workings, and the contrast of their relationships to one another. I like to think I see people in a light that most do not.

My intuition rarely fails me, if ever.

It's my ability to be fairly objective about myself that has been my saving grace. I probably spend as much time looking in as I do looking out.

I tend to draw like-minded souls to me, as do most people. However, I have discovered there is an additional filter to those I keep close to me. Emotional capacity and compatibility. None of the people who I could consider my close friends are selfish, and most are fairly compassionate. We do what we can to get by, and we try to take care of each other... or at least offer to. We may differ in our respective views, but we agree to disagree, and do not let it affect us. I have VASTLY different social, political, philosophical, and religious views (which I keep to myself for now).

There is a counter-balance to this though. I am drawn to certain archetypes of women as well, and though 1200 miles from Michigan, I find myself in some disappointingly familiar situations, even here in Florida. Which is a feat in itself, being that I haven't even been here a year yet.

Impossible muse? Check.

Crush on the girl with the boyfriend? Check.

Wasting my affections on a waste of time? Check.

Why does this happen to me? I think there are certain shortcomings in my soul. Holes that need to be filled in my heart. I will always find a muse because I need that spiritually and artistically. I will always have the crush because I will always want most what I cannot have. I catch myself wasting my affections on those undeserving as well... which I usually chalk up to being a proximity thing. Not sure why I even bother. I think I am better than that.

I can help having the wasted affection and the crush, but I will never be able to help having a muse. I always seem to find some amazing girl around, where I see an amazing beauty inside and out that no one quite pays attention to. I knew it immediately when I met her.

[x]Returning.

For anyone interested - I will be back in Michigan from early Sunday, December 7th, until late on Tuesday, December 9th. This will be the only opportunity that I will have to see friends and family for the holidays this year.

I plan on having a small get-together at B.BOOMER's in Allen Park on Monday night. Call me for details.

[x]Prominence.

Relevant - "The Torch Song" by Shady Bard (From the ground up)

Save me.

In 15 minutes it will be November 17th, and my 30th birthday. I will officially be out of my twenties, and officially my "Youth" will be over. Relatively speaking, of course. I spent about half of the last decade hiding, then the other half trying to make up for a life that I was never meant to lead... I guess it makes sense the older I get, having more to reflect on.

I don't feel 30.

Last night I had my party, which I think was a success (2/2). I made about 5 loaves of bread's worth of my world famous grilled cheese, which went over extremely well. Only one near-miss incident for the record, and everyone got home safe. I call that a win.

Thanks go out to Noel, because I couldn't have done it without him.

It's funny how you can feel the most lonely when you are surrounded by people. Pretty much ALL of my friends down here were there. It was nice to see everyone enjoying themselves.

This was a victory, but it still feels hollow when you have no one to share it with. When I watched the last person leave, and I was the last person standing, I was really lonely. I suppose the timing of the whole thing, or even the person set it off... When I shut the door it just hit me. I miss that connection of loving someone.

I'm more in control of my emotions now than I have ever been. But I am still drawn to people. Even when I do my best to hide it, and I can feel it just under the surface... I know they could see it in my eyes if they chose to look. Which scares me.

She says I thought we were all past this
I tell myself no
I say no
I just feel more guilty
And once again, I watch her leave

Redemption to detail
I will rise
when I figure out
how to forgive myself
for what I haven't done

[x]Purge.

Relevant - "Same Mistake" by James Blunt (All the lost souls)

I'm not calling for a second chance,
I'm screaming at the top of my voice
Give me reason, but don't give me choice
Cause I'll just make, the same mistake, again

I need to write this, to spell it all out. I need to see it in front of me for it all to make sense. Writing has always been how I cope, because I have nothing else. I always give you 100% when I commit something here. I don't know how to do it halfway.

This past week or so I have been ravaged (and I use that term lightly) by the Flu. My lungs feel like they are lined with lead from all of the coughing. I am having trouble talking on the phone, even though it's my job. The worst has past, I believe, but I still have a few days of working this out of my system.

Lately, I have been feeling really isolated. Obviously I don't want to expose my friends down here to what I have (even though I probably got it from them) but there is just something more. After this whole mess with Jessica I really turned myself inward to figure out who I am anymore. There are people around, but yet internally I feel as though I am walking through some barren, dystopian reality. This reverse eden. I've been struggling, and even more so wanting to know why.

I love her. I love her still, and to be honest I don't think I have stopped loving her since we met. The other day I was shaving and I noticed the small scar I still have under my lip, where years ago I cut myself while not paying attention at work. I was so smitten after one of our early dates and how perfect it was, I couldn't even concentrate. I could still feel that kiss on my cheek, I swear.

It's so hard to love someone, and to be so utterly defeated that you can't even summon up the courage to say goodbye. The last time she called, I saw "beep" on my caller ID (that's her, inside joke) and just stared at it until it went to voicemail. I didn't even listen to it until later, because I knew that was going to be it. Like I could somehow delay the inevitable.

She's moving on. She has a date. She wishes me the best. etc. etc. etc. I always say that if you don't leave the knife in, they can't twist it. Easier said than done, because I can feel the hole in me as I live and breathe. She has hurt me, gravely and utterly.

I don't think she ever knew, but I loved her so fiercely that I bore every single wound she gave me without even flinching. I can never express the faith of being so sure, because you or she would never understand.

It's an odd thing for me, for my logic to tell me that she is the one who quit on me, and my heart telling me that I was the one who disappointed her. Logic dictates that it is necessary that I am here. My heart tells me it was stupid to leave when I had someone finally who I could have spent the rest of my life with. Love is nothing but open wounds that you bear for each other.

Looking at my phone when she called the last time, I felt the same detachment that I felt the first time we broke up years ago. I remember I was sitting on Joe's couch on Sunday when she called, and me saying "If that's what you want" in response. The same detachment when she broke up with me months ago. The same detachment when we got into a fight on the cruise.

It was the highest of highs, and the lowest of lows, yet I take solace in the face that somehow I maintained consistency in my feelings for her. Maybe she never knew. I realized on the cruise that we operate on a completely different set of emotional spectrum.

The thing is, I never had the heart to fight with her. Call me a coward for that, but I just loved her so much that I couldn't bring myself to even fathom hurting her. Now I have realized that I never did. All I did was love her, and she was the one who let that hurt. It killed me to disappoint her, which by final verdict is probably what I did by moving.

It's all moot now, and will be after this. She just never saw me sit around at work or wherever and just feel good inside. The many times I could catch myself smiling, literally feeling it on my face. Just feeling happy for once that there was someone out there that loved me. Content. I don't think I could ever express, even with my vocabulary, how absolutely huge that was for me. I actually let someone else in.

The difference, I now realize, is that she was never content in our relationship, and she put a lot of that on me. The thing is, how I felt about her has never even so much as wavered. I guess this is something she never saw in me. Which is a shame.

In one of the last conversations we will ever have, she asked me to move home. She told me that it may or may not work if I did. I told her no. I had offered previously to move home if that would have saved us, because we were both having a hard time being so far apart. I meant it too, at the time. However her "sell" of the whole thing just broke me, right then and there.

This last time, when she asked me... this was when I finally surrendered. I had realized that she had taken everything that that I had to give and beaten it out of me. You can only break a heart so many times before there are too many pieces to glue it back together. I suffer detachment as a defense mechanism.

It's hard to walk around, so defeated. To know you gave it all you had, and have it not be good enough. Knowing you love someone and not being able to be with them any longer. It has happened before to me, yet never in a situation where I have forced myself to withdraw. People break up, but this was like self-imposed exile.

I've run out of answers, and the fight in me is gone. I don't even know where we could go from here, even if we were in the same place. I wanted the world for her and I, yet I find now I have nothing left to give.

Necessity is the mother of invention. You cannot be reborn until you die. You cannot rally unless you are being defeated. This is who I am now.

[x]The crow said don't look!

Relevant - "To Heal" by Underworld (Oblivion with bells)

Something happened today. I would like to think after so long that I would have been prepared, yet the scope of this has overwhelmed me. Due to the numbness I would say my defense mechanisms are firing just fine. The last door I left (slightly cracked) in Michigan just closed.

The best metaphor for all of this would be slowly working up an immunity to some lethal poison that you know someday you'd have to take.

I knew this was coming. I'm a mess right now, because there are so many conflicting thoughts and emotions running through me. Which, due to recent events, pretty much takes precedence over this whole last month in the grand scope of things... How trivial had I let things become?

So, thank you for that, at least.

Even as I am writing this, I can feel something break within me. I used to know what love really felt like, I used to know passion and fire. How long have I been gone? All of a sudden this whole last decade has just snapped into focus for me. Physically, emotionally, and artistically I feel like I have been on the outside looking in.

***

such a strange world
to lay this final ghost to rest
the rites are my reprieve
this mind over matters
numb and logic
my saving grace

a familiar reality
that was never meant to exist
i'll give that happiness back
to that other version of me
i don't need it anymore

nights like this
the loneliness
tomorrow
under a magnifying glass
in the sun i'll be ashes

i just had to know
even though
we are dealt only so much soul
yet i spend a third
when the murder told me not to look

even as the void embraces me
it has to look away
it may or may not be okay it says
i won't say i told you so
but i'm here for you
if you need me
my old friend
as it shoves me back into the light

i've always felt
if pull this last dagger i'll bleed out
as i take it out i wonder
did this damn or save me?
i don't know
am i finally trapped
or finally free
the only thing left within
burning with a long lost roar
this november blood

[x]De-evolve, and Co-Ex-ist.

Relevant - "Obstacle 1" by Interpol (Turn on the bright lights)

It's different now that I'm poor and aging, I'll never see this face again
You go stabbing yourself in the neck

It's in the way that she posed,
it's in the things that she puts in my head
Her stories are boring and stuff.
She's always calling my bluff.
She puts the weights into my little heart,
And she gets in my room and she takes it apart.
She puts the weights into my little heart,
I said she puts the weights into my little heart.

It's in the way that she walks
Her heaven is never enough
She puts the weights in my heart
She puts, oh she puts the weights into my little heart.

***

So I have decided that I want to get out there and find someone. The thing is, I know there is a certain amount of time and preparation that needs to go by before I am ready. When you spend so long co-existing in a relationship (or at least the semblance of one) - you adopt a duality of identity. You are not defined by who you are anymore, as you evolve into a hybrid of a shared personality.

When that's all over, that former partnership isn't who you are. You have to devolve and redefine/re-establish yourself as an individual. No one wants someone who is on the "rebound" per se (well maybe some do), and to be honest I think I would be cheating them if I brought baggage into something new. That duality is not who I am anymore. All of the accounts, emotional and otherwise - need to be settled befor a new venture. I need to be my own person. I need to make sure that I am free.

I know if I wanted to, I could go out and find someone to "pass the time", but really - what's the point? I have too much respect for women, too much respect for MYSELF. They deserve better of me, and I of them. I am a much more attractive person, inside and out - when I am not saddled with the ghosts of disappointment. I wear it all on my sleeve, and sometimes I just don't want people to see. There is a difference in telling yourself that you are ready, and believing/knowing that you are ready. My life has become more and more about faith, coupled with logic. My hands are steady, and there is no trace of the erratic.

So, lately - I have been diving headlong back into writing, novels, music, and cinema. These are my first loves, and they never fail to inspire. Sometimes you just have to rediscover what defines you as an individual, so you can then find what similar interests are shared with others. I have recently discovered that you need more than "having eachother in common".

Emotionally, I no longer desire to look back at where I've been. I just need to look ahead to where I am going.

[x]Terms of my surrender.
I'll let you have the last word
to let your contempt be a catalyst
defeated as I am
my silence
will be the terms of my surrender

[x]Mind over matters.

Relevant - "Another Door Closes" by Jont

Oh can't you see we're all crashing, in slow mo
Holding to this wheel we know
What's the use, don't want to be sleeping too long
Why can't we try to fly ourselves back to an old skin
Making do is no way to live
What's the use, we're only here
Then we're gone, gone, gone

Events seems to align themselves, sharing tones in myopic terms. Sometimes I don't know which way is up, when I have to balance what is with what could be. You figure the opposite of an upward slope is a downward spiral... These are the times when I feel those cancel each other out. I need someone to calibrate my empathy, lately I'm not sure why I feel what I feel, or lack thereof. My words are read, but do you really understand them?

your words
and my defense wounds
if anything i hide it too well
your words still hurt
though for my sake i cannot concede
i can't give in
because you'll never understand
how you've left me bloodied
how hard it is to know that i still love you
and have to say goodbye

[x]Signs.

Relevant - "Lost!" by Coldplay (Viva La Vida)

Just because I'm losing
Doesn't mean I'm lost
Doesn't mean I'll stop
Doesn't mean I will cross

Just because I'm hurting
Doesn't mean I'm hurt
Doesn't mean I didn't get what I deserve
No better and no worse

I just got lost

I promised myself that I wouldn't drag the negative energy down here with me when I moved. When I did decide to move to Florida, right around this time last year - my life was all of a sudden filled with positive energy and hope for the future. For the first time in my life, I started to look forward, instead of looking back. I had the support of my family and friends, because I think deep down they knew this was best for me. Jessica and I had gotten back together, with the plan of her moving down here after getting sorted up there. Needless to say she didn't quite make the finish line.

I swear to God every day I can't believe I'm in Florida. It's been 9+ months and I am still here. This is the longest I have ever been away from home, in my entire life. Sometimes I grow so homesick that it literally makes me sick to my stomach. I miss my family so much that just writing this chokes me up. I know they miss me so much, and I carry around the guilt of not getting to see my nephews and niece grow up. God I miss them so much. Every time I get to talk to Logan or Ariel on the phone, or even David (not quite the talker yet) it tears me apart. I doubt I will ever have children... but I always took solace in watching them grow up. Now I will never be able to do even that. I just hope they don't forget me and how much I love them. I really hope David grows up to know that he has an uncle Johnny too.

In the wake of what I've sacrificed, I still believe I'm here for a reason. My motto has been "Life's all about having things to look forward to" and I keep myself busy. Work keeps me mentally busy, and I try to fill as much of the day as possible with whatever I can to not let myself dwell on everything. It's how I get through the day. Noel, Mike, My work friends, the Bartons... it helps having people around who care about you here. I wouldn't be able to this on my own, so thanks to all of you. Especially to Noel. Who would have though my unofficial little brother would carry me so far?

So, day to day - mostly I am fine. Lately, I have lost my way. I still stumble, I still look back. Especially over the last few weeks with Jessica, she has surely tested my faith. There's just so much more at work in the grand scope of things, and that is what I believe in. You have to have faith that regardless of your sins and failures, that you can find redemption somewhere.

I have always been a believer in signs. I believe in many things, including Karma. I have seen it happen, trust me. I have never gone into my religious beliefs here (don't worry I am sure one day I will) but faith has always been a part of me. I believe because my intuition has never failed me. It's my gift.

The thing is, they are always there and most times I like most do not pay them any heed.

I don't really pray (save for a few occasions) in the traditional sense. I have these one-way conversations with myself, where I try to work things out logically. These are held when I am driving around, or laying in bed at night (Believe me, it's less weird than it sounds) - and usually whatever it is is left out there for the fates to decide.

About two months ago, I was completely lost. Work was just treading water, I was horribly homesick, and extremely lonely. I was beginning to fall into some of my old habits of hiding again, and not taking care of myself.

One night I was lying in bed, and I just started to have this mental conversation on whether I should stay, or move home. I tried to weigh the pros and cons of both, and was left completely torn down the middle. I just needed a nudge, one way or the other...

The next day, I won the cruise. Which was at that time was a month or so in the future. Boom - a reason to stay, even if just for a little longer. Something to look forward to. Honestly, I didn't even try to win that contest, I just happen to.

When I asked Jessica to go, it just felt right - and necessary. I could never justify up until she actually got here other than "It's something I thought she would enjoy" but looking back I see now why I did bring her. Funny, because no one approved (especially my mom) of my decision (being that we had the messy breakup beforehand) but I didn't even flinch. I didn't know it at the time, but this was my way of seeing if there was anything left in our relationship. There isn't. This was to remind me why we aren't together. It's sad, and I do love her - but it had all run its course, and now it's time for the both of us to move on. I wish her nothing but the best, because she deserves to, and will - find happiness. I just had to know for sure, and now I do.

The latest of the signs stems from my favorite song of all time - "3 Libras" by A Perfect Circle. I have been in love with this song since I first heard it around 2001. Around that time, I got the APC cd for free for working for Border's in the music department. Coincidence? The song always makes me feel better when I listen to it, and the "You don't see me, you don't see me at all" lines I can especially relate to.

Sometimes, you just have to look for the signs. How about this one, (3) of the most beautiful girls I have ever met and worked with - Shelley, Andrea, and Jessica - have 3 consecutive birthdays this week, the 14th, 15th, and 16th. 3 libras in the same place, at the same time... all a part of my life as friends.

How's that for a sign?

[x] The new muse

The thing about a muse is,  

they inspire you out of desire -

because what you always want most

is that which you can never have

 

I believe I have found a new muse... though I am going to keep this one secret.  There's no telling how deep the damage could be.

 

"Replacement" doesn't really work in meaning, though it does in function.  I'm going to move on from the former, because there's nothing left to say, let alone write.  It's been almost a year since we have last spoken.

 

I have spent the last few days wondering what it is about a girl that inspires me...  It is the wanting to rise above and be a better person.  It's the attraction, or the impossibility of the whole thing.  She's the most beautiful girl I have ever met.  So much so that I find myself intimidated, for the first time in my life.

 

I'm completely fascinated.