This is the first time I've come to this website in 10 months and been able to write anything.

After such a delay I do not know how many of you remember me.  Suffice it to say that my life somehow managed to get worse.  Since last I wrote a blog  many things have happened.  I had a complete breakdown, complete with a drunken late-January swim in a local lake.  I've spent 5 days under observation in a psychiatric hospital.  I've moved in with my retired parents.  I've been divorced by the person who was the driving force and inspiration in my life for the last sixteen years.  I've found a part time job that makes a nose hair above minimum wage and has no benefits.  I spend all my time either completely miserable, or working diligently to distract myself from, well, myself.

I quit drug treatment 3 months in.  I quit therapy as soon as it became optional (6 months in).  I was walking 7.5 miles a day, but I quit that too.

I am good at my job, though.  Such as it is.  I also seem to be attaining some level of acceptance from my co-workers.  I got invited out to one of them's birthday/Halloween celebrations on the 23rd.  I didn't drive, and from what I hear, my drunk ass did not try to jump out of the minivan when I opened the sliding door while going 65 mph on the highway.  That lets me know that I can be trusted to keep some promises I was forced to make, even when I do not want to.

Oh, and the student loan people have been trying to get ahold of me.  I guess I will call them after work tomorrow.  I have shitty hours, which is to be expected of a shitty job.

One of the frustrating things going on is concerning a coworker.  Her name is Nikki, and she is quite nice.  She is cute (not as attractive as my ex-wife).  She is also clever and amusing (not as funny or smart as my ex-wife).  She is frighteningly young (14 years younger than I am).  That's how fucked in the head I am.  I think of this girl in terms of comparison with my ex-wife.  She's not as smart, not as funny, not as pretty, but much nicer.  I think I could become friends with her, if it weren't for my other friends and family.

I have not mentioned her to any of them because they will all want me to try and date her, which isn't going to happen. 

1. I have no interest in being in a romantic relationship, no matter how appealing I find her. 

2.

This blog interrupted by my parents.  My father just wandered into my room (his computer room) and grumbled, "Did I leave my damn glasses in here?" 

I looked around and said, "I don't see them," at the same time he said, "Nope." and walked out.  Then I heard my mother ask, "Did you do anything outside where you might have needed them to–well! There they are on the coffee table!"  At which point my father looked where she was pointing and said, "Ah, nevermind, they're right there."

2. There are aspects of our relationship thus far which might give the wrong impression to an obeserver.  She mentioned in passing one morning, "I was going to text you this weekend, but I realized that I didn't have your number."  That is a disturbingly accurate reconstruction of a moment early in my relationship with my ex-wife when she told me (back in 1994), "I was going to call you this weekend, but I realized that I don't have your number."  She also let me know multiple times, in passing, that she didn't think it was going to work out with her boyfriend, and that she was probably going to break up with him, which she did.  She asked me to help her pick out clothes to make into a Halloween costume.  Assuming she doesn't forget about it, she will be going to lunch with me on Friday.  A lot of that section would seem to indicate that she is interested in me.  It does not.  I have no doubt that she likes me as a friend, and considers me clever and amusing.  I also have no doubt that she has no romantic interest in me at all.

3.  I know this because she has told me that she is kind of interested in a guy she knows in Pittsburgh, and that she is probably moving there in the spring.

4. So, even if I were not a shattered, emotionally crippled wreck of an excuse for a human being, she would be going away soon.

But I have people in my life who are quite eager for me to pull myself together, and move on from my failed life with my ex.  Were I to start dating, they would all take that as a great sign that I was making some sort of "recovery."  I am not.  My feelings for myself have not improved.  My desire to die has not abated.  Even knowing that my son woke up crying the other day because he dreamed I had died in a car wreck, I still think everyone would be better off in the long run if I were gone.  I still find myself crying at random times.  I still obsess over my ex-wife.  She is still the whole world to me.

But I don't come across that way.  I come across as a thoughtful wiseass who gets occasionally melancholy.  People who don't know me think I'm okay, and people who do know me think I'm getting better.  They think I'm getting better because I got too tired to give a shit about almost anything.  It only seems like I want to do the things I am doing, but I am only doing them because its easier than being pestered for doing nothing.  Do I want a better job?  No enough to go find one.  Do I want to get into shape?  Not enough to get up and do it.  Do I want pain medication?  Not enough to walk across the house and get it.  Do I want to be happy?  I don't even believe in happy anymore.  I must have used up my allotment of happy a few years ago.  The closest I get to have any more is bemusement.

Shit.  I'm rambling.  I've lost my train of thought.  There was a point to all this, but what was it?  I have had the option of death taken from me, even though it is what I desire.  In response, my attitude has largely become one of, "Fuck it."  It gives an impression of nonchalance that can be misleading.

too long, didn't read: Don't think that I'm getting better just because I've stopped screaming.