Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
no chance
And even though it's impossible, even though there's no way on heaven and earth that it could possibly happen, she lingers in my mind. I dreamt of her last night. But even in my dreams, I can only long for her from afar. It's like chasing starlight. Fairy dreams.
What kind of life is this?
What kind of life is this?
Sunday, October 5, 2008
retrospective
It's been more than a month since my hope was torn and shredded into tiny little pieces, stomped on, then lit on fire, and with time, my vision is a little clearer, and all I can think is, "What was I thinking?"
Oh, don't get me wrong. I am still enamored with [redacted]. Who could actually know her and not be? But it's clear, oh so very clear, oh so painfully clear, that she is way out of my league. That I would've been nothing but a burden and a hindrance to her. That she deserves way better than the pathetic pitifulness that I have to offer.She made the right decision.
The future looks extraordinarily bleak for me right now. I can't see beyond that dim horizon, and I fear that whatever is beyond it is more darkness. Perhaps even something worse than the oppressive gray that I'm swimming in right now, that clings and weighs me down.I just have this feeling that where I'm at now is not survivable. That if I have to wallow in this despair for much longer, I'm just not going to make it. Really, this is beyond desperation, even.
All I have to do now, is wait, and if I'm lucky (which I haven't been), nothing worse will happen to me before the inevitable kicks in.Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Monday, September 29, 2008
paralyzed
I don't want to go home. But I don't want to be here. I currently feel extremely ill-equipped to deal with life right now.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Thursday, September 18, 2008
dread
For the past four weeks, and for most of the past four years, my phone has been nothing but a source of grievous dread for me. I remember that summer evening when I found out my dad had had a heart attack, had been admitted to the ICU, and was in heart failure. In ways that I still haven't mapped out completely yet, that particular incident really warped me in a lot of ways. Part of it is the ever-ticking-clock. It isn't my mortality that I fear, necessarily. It's really whether I'm going to be able to make the most out of whatever amount of time I'm granted. I'm not going to wallow in self-pity completely, and say that I haven't accomplished anything. But is it enough? Is this all there is, there ain't no mo'?
Then there was that time when I got that 3 am call that everyone knows is never any good. When J called me to let me know his sister, my cousin, who was born a year after me, had died. That incident really messed me up good, too.
Very little good news has ever come to me through the phone. These days, it harangues and harasses me, reminding me about all the things I'm responsible for that I haven't yet taken care of.
I like to joke around that I don't really need a girlfriend. What I really need is a secretary. I need someone to shear away the rough edges that the world will throw at me. Today I almost had a mental breakdown simply because I couldn't find my car keys. I was just about ready to just call in sick and go back to bed. I remember my heart was racing, I was sweating profusely, and I was on the verge of tears.
The fact that there is no one I can turn to in these moments of desperation really makes me sad. One of these days, life is going to hit me hard where it hurts, and all I'll be able to do is take the punch, and just sit there dazed and stunned.
I guess it's true. Whatever doesn't kill you. Though sometimes I think I'm secretly hoping that it will.
Then there was that time when I got that 3 am call that everyone knows is never any good. When J called me to let me know his sister, my cousin, who was born a year after me, had died. That incident really messed me up good, too.
Very little good news has ever come to me through the phone. These days, it harangues and harasses me, reminding me about all the things I'm responsible for that I haven't yet taken care of.
I like to joke around that I don't really need a girlfriend. What I really need is a secretary. I need someone to shear away the rough edges that the world will throw at me. Today I almost had a mental breakdown simply because I couldn't find my car keys. I was just about ready to just call in sick and go back to bed. I remember my heart was racing, I was sweating profusely, and I was on the verge of tears.
The fact that there is no one I can turn to in these moments of desperation really makes me sad. One of these days, life is going to hit me hard where it hurts, and all I'll be able to do is take the punch, and just sit there dazed and stunned.
I guess it's true. Whatever doesn't kill you. Though sometimes I think I'm secretly hoping that it will.
a recap of the last seven months
I don't know how I end up in these weird situations that never come to fruition. These situations somehow manage to occupy my mind entirely, despite knowing from the start that nothing was ever going to transpire from it.
I write, naturally, about my impossible crush on [redacted]. Recalling how this all started is actually kind of depressing, but I suppose I ought to write it down somewhere.
I remember this started sometime in February after my gastroenteritic trip back from the Bay Area, which was one of those times when the thought that I might actually die crossed my mind once or twice. As I drove a little less than 400 miles from the Bay to L.A., not only did I feel like my entrails were trying to crawl out through my rectum, but I miscalculated badly and managed to end up driving through a snowstorm. It's a wonder that I didn't just slide off the road.
Anyway, after a few days of recuperating from that adventure, I made it back to S.D., and back to work. And I would run into [redacted] from time to time.
Actually, now that I think about it, it may have been around the time I found her MySpace account. Anyway, we wrote each other little random comments. We'd run into each other in the hallways. We'd text each other.
So, granted, part of it was the fact that I probably haven't made any lasting friendships while I've been down here. For various reasons, I've stayed out of the social scene, and have not really participated in the fray. I just didn't have it in me, to try and make new friends.
My soul has been fermenting a long time.
[Redacted] was—is—probably one of the best friends I've had down here in S.D. Leave it to me to screw myself up by falling for her.
Now I'm not so pathetic to think that these little things meant anything. I mean, people meet, they become friends. We've actually known each other for a couple of years now, mostly starting from that month we spent together working with each other. She always tells me that she feels better when I'm around. I've always thought it was pretty bizarre. I'm not the type who inspires confidence in people. But I've always taken what she tells me at face value.
And, like, we're friends. So whatever. She would text me asking me if I wanted to come by and hang out with her and her friends. Or call me up if she needed to know something about work.
I suppose major stress played a part in my fraught emotions, too. In March, her grandfather, whom she was very close to, died. This really got to her, and we talked a lot then. It so happened this was around the same time that my dad got admitted to the hospital again. Not as serious as the last time, but it did stress me out pretty significantly. It didn't help that I was working 80 hour days and taking call every five nights. And we talked each other through some tight spots. But what are friends for, right?
I remember that last day, though, when I was completely fried from my month at work, and she asked me if I wanted to watch the sunset with her, and how could I not? I remember thinking then, though, what the hell am I doing?
She really is an awesome person. The usual things: she's smart, she's beautiful. She's incredibly compassionate. She is patient. She is realistic, and yet incorrigibly optimistic. Who wouldn't fall in love with her, really?
So we hung out at the beach, and then we hung out at her apartment, and we probably would've talked for hours on end, but I had to go because I had to do something for work the next day. And I remember leaving there, wondering how I had gotten there, knowing that I must be dreaming, and wishing that it would never end.
That sense of forlornness never really left me, I think.
It goes without saying that I am an extremely damaged person. I'm pretty sure a lot of that damage has been self-inflicted. Not all of it. Certainly I've had quite a bit of help along the way. But a good part of it is probably unnecessary suffering that I manage to cart along where-ever I might go.
Never mind the fact that I'm not particularly attractive. Ultimately, I may be an OK friend, but I would be a terrible boyfriend. That's just the way it is, and I feel completely powerless to change that.
It is what it is.
So I vowed never to fall in love ever again.
You know how well that works.
But we still ran into each other, and texted each other or called each other almost every day. And the whole time I was too bewildered by it. There was no way. So I naturally never asked her out. I naturally never told her what I felt. I mean, that's just the ways things go for me, why even try?
She is clearly out of my league.
Oh, she knows that I think she is beautiful, that is I think she is an amazing person. All of which certainly didn't require me to point it out.
I know, I knew, that eventually, it would wear out. I mean, she just wasn't into me that way. You know what I mean. So it was a matter of time before I was assed out, before she would find someone she did feel that way about.
It's funny, though. I knew precisely when that happened. I don't know how I intuited it, but now that she finally told me about her new boyfriend, it all makes sense in retrospect.
I miss talking to her every day, but thems is the breaks, I've got no one to blame but myself for wishing for things that could never come true.
Oh, of course there's a part of me that keeps thinking that, maybe if I actually tried, maybe. But deep down I know that it wouldn't have mattered. That feeling which, for the longest time I disavowed, was simply not reciprocated. Whatcha gonna do?
So here I am, in some ways worse off than I was back in February. By then, I had pretty much given up all hope. I knew then like I know now that I am going to be alone for the rest of my sad life, which I'm hoping won't be too excruciatingly long. But to have even dreamt of those possibilities, however remote, however impossible. In retrospect, it's kind of torturous. I could've just floated on through the past seven months just completely numb.
I don't know. I guess you can't undo what's been done.
I've never been a believer in the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
I write, naturally, about my impossible crush on [redacted]. Recalling how this all started is actually kind of depressing, but I suppose I ought to write it down somewhere.
I remember this started sometime in February after my gastroenteritic trip back from the Bay Area, which was one of those times when the thought that I might actually die crossed my mind once or twice. As I drove a little less than 400 miles from the Bay to L.A., not only did I feel like my entrails were trying to crawl out through my rectum, but I miscalculated badly and managed to end up driving through a snowstorm. It's a wonder that I didn't just slide off the road.
Anyway, after a few days of recuperating from that adventure, I made it back to S.D., and back to work. And I would run into [redacted] from time to time.
Actually, now that I think about it, it may have been around the time I found her MySpace account. Anyway, we wrote each other little random comments. We'd run into each other in the hallways. We'd text each other.
So, granted, part of it was the fact that I probably haven't made any lasting friendships while I've been down here. For various reasons, I've stayed out of the social scene, and have not really participated in the fray. I just didn't have it in me, to try and make new friends.
My soul has been fermenting a long time.
[Redacted] was—is—probably one of the best friends I've had down here in S.D. Leave it to me to screw myself up by falling for her.
Now I'm not so pathetic to think that these little things meant anything. I mean, people meet, they become friends. We've actually known each other for a couple of years now, mostly starting from that month we spent together working with each other. She always tells me that she feels better when I'm around. I've always thought it was pretty bizarre. I'm not the type who inspires confidence in people. But I've always taken what she tells me at face value.
And, like, we're friends. So whatever. She would text me asking me if I wanted to come by and hang out with her and her friends. Or call me up if she needed to know something about work.
I suppose major stress played a part in my fraught emotions, too. In March, her grandfather, whom she was very close to, died. This really got to her, and we talked a lot then. It so happened this was around the same time that my dad got admitted to the hospital again. Not as serious as the last time, but it did stress me out pretty significantly. It didn't help that I was working 80 hour days and taking call every five nights. And we talked each other through some tight spots. But what are friends for, right?
I remember that last day, though, when I was completely fried from my month at work, and she asked me if I wanted to watch the sunset with her, and how could I not? I remember thinking then, though, what the hell am I doing?
She really is an awesome person. The usual things: she's smart, she's beautiful. She's incredibly compassionate. She is patient. She is realistic, and yet incorrigibly optimistic. Who wouldn't fall in love with her, really?
So we hung out at the beach, and then we hung out at her apartment, and we probably would've talked for hours on end, but I had to go because I had to do something for work the next day. And I remember leaving there, wondering how I had gotten there, knowing that I must be dreaming, and wishing that it would never end.
That sense of forlornness never really left me, I think.
It goes without saying that I am an extremely damaged person. I'm pretty sure a lot of that damage has been self-inflicted. Not all of it. Certainly I've had quite a bit of help along the way. But a good part of it is probably unnecessary suffering that I manage to cart along where-ever I might go.
Never mind the fact that I'm not particularly attractive. Ultimately, I may be an OK friend, but I would be a terrible boyfriend. That's just the way it is, and I feel completely powerless to change that.
It is what it is.
So I vowed never to fall in love ever again.
You know how well that works.
But we still ran into each other, and texted each other or called each other almost every day. And the whole time I was too bewildered by it. There was no way. So I naturally never asked her out. I naturally never told her what I felt. I mean, that's just the ways things go for me, why even try?
She is clearly out of my league.
Oh, she knows that I think she is beautiful, that is I think she is an amazing person. All of which certainly didn't require me to point it out.
I know, I knew, that eventually, it would wear out. I mean, she just wasn't into me that way. You know what I mean. So it was a matter of time before I was assed out, before she would find someone she did feel that way about.
It's funny, though. I knew precisely when that happened. I don't know how I intuited it, but now that she finally told me about her new boyfriend, it all makes sense in retrospect.
I miss talking to her every day, but thems is the breaks, I've got no one to blame but myself for wishing for things that could never come true.
Oh, of course there's a part of me that keeps thinking that, maybe if I actually tried, maybe. But deep down I know that it wouldn't have mattered. That feeling which, for the longest time I disavowed, was simply not reciprocated. Whatcha gonna do?
So here I am, in some ways worse off than I was back in February. By then, I had pretty much given up all hope. I knew then like I know now that I am going to be alone for the rest of my sad life, which I'm hoping won't be too excruciatingly long. But to have even dreamt of those possibilities, however remote, however impossible. In retrospect, it's kind of torturous. I could've just floated on through the past seven months just completely numb.
I don't know. I guess you can't undo what's been done.
I've never been a believer in the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
make the pain go away
I'm really hurting here. I'm tired, I'm lonely, and there's nothing on the horizon to make me think things are going to change any time soon.
No matter how well I manage to get things running, minor details always manage to escape me, and these things end up spiraling out of control, and eventually taking down anything I accomplished. Whenever I think I did something well, it seems that I manage to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Just when I think everything is going to work out, something comes out of nowhere, clocks me on the head, and everything manages to go wrong in the worst possible way.
After all the defeats I've suffered, you would think that I'd just stop trying, and just lie here and rot. That actually sounds like a reasonable plan of action, since I fuck up anything I try and start. And yet my soul can't rest. Even in this pit of despair, my soul writhes, struggling to strive again for some form of sunlight. Even here buried in the rubble of my folly, something in me stirs, believing that somehow everything will turn out right in the end.
Sometimes I wish I could just kill this part of me, so that I could rest, and wallow in my mediocrity. But I know this is the only reason why I've survived for as long as I have. I know for a fact that I've suffered worse than this, and I still managed to survive. For better, or for worse, I have always managed to survive.
I don't know whether I should be happy about that or not.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
finished
By 3pm today, my brain was cooked. It didn't matter how much work I still had to do. All I could think about was going home and crawling into bed. At least I was done seeing patients in the office. Maybe I could take a nap. Then I'd think about having to go back and see the 17 severely brain damaged patients in the long-term care facility.
One hour. I'll take a one hour nap.
Something awoke inside of me.
The last 10 days have been all sorts of awful. The girl I've been mooning over for the past six months—despite knowing full well that I was firmly ensconced in the Friend Zone™ and didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell—finally cut me loose and told me she was seeing someone else. A patient I had seen a couple of times in the office suddenly collapsed on the street, went into asystole, didn't get revived until she was in the ER, and is now completely gorked and on a ventilator, with the family wanting to do everything. And I was on-call all weekend, fielding all sorts of bizarre and tiring calls—from some guy who was freaking out about his systolic being in the 150s without any other symptoms, to a lady who fell of a ladder and ended up having a rib fracture. And I even admitted another patient. By the time Monday rolled around again, I wanted to crawl in a hole and die.
In the direst of straits, there are a couple of things that always manage to lift my spirits at least a little. One is thinking about what I was like as a little kid. Sometimes me and my parents wonder what happened to that kid, who was fearless, who could talk the ear off of anyone, and who was always the center of attention. What a weird contrast to what I'm like now: anxious and fearful, quiet and unassuming, always skulking in the shadows. What did happen? It's like I'm a changeling or something.
The other thing is the story of the Valley of Dry Bones:
And what strikes me most about this passage is that God didn't just resurrected the dead with his own power. He gave Ezekiel the power to do this. And it reminds me of something a Jesuit priest told me: what if the reason Jesus became human was not to demonstrate the power of being God, but to demonstrate the power of being human? That by becoming human, he showed us that we, too, could perform miracles.
One hour. I'll take a one hour nap.
Something awoke inside of me.
The last 10 days have been all sorts of awful. The girl I've been mooning over for the past six months—despite knowing full well that I was firmly ensconced in the Friend Zone™ and didn't stand a snowball's chance in hell—finally cut me loose and told me she was seeing someone else. A patient I had seen a couple of times in the office suddenly collapsed on the street, went into asystole, didn't get revived until she was in the ER, and is now completely gorked and on a ventilator, with the family wanting to do everything. And I was on-call all weekend, fielding all sorts of bizarre and tiring calls—from some guy who was freaking out about his systolic being in the 150s without any other symptoms, to a lady who fell of a ladder and ended up having a rib fracture. And I even admitted another patient. By the time Monday rolled around again, I wanted to crawl in a hole and die.
In the direst of straits, there are a couple of things that always manage to lift my spirits at least a little. One is thinking about what I was like as a little kid. Sometimes me and my parents wonder what happened to that kid, who was fearless, who could talk the ear off of anyone, and who was always the center of attention. What a weird contrast to what I'm like now: anxious and fearful, quiet and unassuming, always skulking in the shadows. What did happen? It's like I'm a changeling or something.
The other thing is the story of the Valley of Dry Bones:
The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath* to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.’
So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.
Then he said to me, ‘Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act, says the Lord.’
—Ezekiel 37:1-14
And what strikes me most about this passage is that God didn't just resurrected the dead with his own power. He gave Ezekiel the power to do this. And it reminds me of something a Jesuit priest told me: what if the reason Jesus became human was not to demonstrate the power of being God, but to demonstrate the power of being human? That by becoming human, he showed us that we, too, could perform miracles.
Monday, September 8, 2008
then a sheer drop
It's kind of funny how I've listened to this song a hundred times, loving it each time, and yet today I find new significance to the lyrics:
This must the best song ever written in 5/4 time. I really dig when the bass starts up with "one by one"
And there's this quirky re-edit that is funny in a sick and twisted way, entitled "Morgan Freeman receives his Radiohead 'In Rainbows' Disc Box"
How come I end up where I started?
How come I end up where I went wrong?
Won't take my eyes off the ball again
You reel me out then you cut the string
This must the best song ever written in 5/4 time. I really dig when the bass starts up with "one by one"
And there's this quirky re-edit that is funny in a sick and twisted way, entitled "Morgan Freeman receives his Radiohead 'In Rainbows' Disc Box"
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
damn web 2.0
I hate finding out through MySpace or Facebook that women I'm into are now in relationships.
quite literally, no one
Today I felt like my iPod was mocking me. It kept playing versions of the song "No One" by Alicia Keys.
No one, no one, no one
can get in the way of what I'm feeling
My favorite version is this mash-up with "Soul to Squeeze" from Red Hot Chili Peppers.
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