How did I get here? What train of damnation brought me here so swiftly? Why did I so readily ignore the pavers on this road to hell? I so readily supplied those pavers, a willingly blind accomplice to my own personal destruction. How anxious I was to sublimate my supposed eternal agenda in favor of the dark secrets of my heart. How utterly foolish I was to think I could aspire to those lofty peaks as I wallowed in the gutter of self-satisfaction.

Cast all of my upcoming psycho self-analysis aside and think on my own about the root of my problems. What do I fear? Of what am I uncertain? Why am I reluctant to face or concede my shortcomings especially when there exists the possibility I could break the chains that bind me? Do these musings of late bear any worth or do they just mask or shelter me from yet again facing the truth? I should bear in mind they ought never become more than a means and never the and itself.

Mine is the life of the damned, the life of the miserable, lonely, unhappy, unfulfilled, discontent, disquieted, abandoned, the life of the damned.

I am alone.

How I got here may some day be a lesson to others how not to live. But really, what did I do so wrong that would engender such misery? Am I really as bad, repugnant, despicable, and without redemption that I deserve such punishment? If not, then how did I really get here?

What did I really do to get here?

Where is here? Here is lonely, alone, unhappy, single, nearly friendless, neglected, forgotten, bitter, and, once more, damned.

If I don't self-implode of my own doing it will be due only to the elusive grace of God.

Happiness is elusive. So is lasting peace. So are true friends, caring friends, unconditional friends. Do they exist? It's doubtful.

Where can I turn for peace?

If the time should come that I can think about dating again, I'll have a fundamental problem to overcome: the plague. Yes, I have the plague or something equivalent to it that makes the softer sex run away, screaming for life. I can recall at least four instances of such terror-runnings over the past twelve months.

The cause of this fundamental and monumental problem is both obvious and murky to me. Obvious because I can hear a professional making the cause and effect link after suffering through an hour of listening to my sad tale; murky because I just don't' get why behavior A leads to outcome B. Thus I flounder and fight the tide that would bring me home to the sheltered harbor I dream will protect me from the frequent, sudden, violent storms I new endure.

Dating then is a distant, sometimes pleasant, often forgettable, memory, not a present hope. And my pain grows.

When it comes to interacting with others, I know I can be an ass. I know that even as I try to avoid this tendency, as I try to be a nice person, people tend to think of me with ill regard. I don't mean kind, charitable people; rather, I mean worldly, do-it-on-your-own people, the types who are subject to their daily changing personal whims.

This all flies in the face of the kind of persona I try and think I exude. In spite of my easily offended nature, I think of myself in terms of being a thoughtful, considerate, jovial person. I go out of my way to offer the types of common courtesies to my coworkers I hope they'll offer in return. I am more patient and forgiving than most. I almost daily seek to initiate conversations and interactions that will promote and build on common ground.

So I take severe exception to people who appear to take long-term offense to me or my behavior. I cannot help but take it personally, deeply personally, when others shut themselves off to me under the guise that I am impossible to work with, especially when they do so without so much as attempting to seek a common ground or understanding themselves.

Of course this rant all has relevant context. Excluding the drama of my problems with C. some months back and dismissing the ongoing but (I hope) improving problems with the K.T., I feel embroiled in yet another growing misunderstanding between S. and myself, which would be bad enough by itself but it's spreading to the reasonable, stable half of that partnership, G.

And I'm faced with the same problem I always encounter in such situations: should I act and proceed as though I don't care, that it doesn't bother me, and as if I'm completely ignorant of the change in the other person's behavior or should I instead confront the problem and, in this instance, the dreary, tedious, dull, reactionary, contrary, small-minded, frumpy, borish perpetrator of said problem?

If it's possible to feel worse about myself, I'm sure I'll discover it. I don't just feel physically fat, I feel obese in all my other selves: emotionally, spiritually, and more selves I can't think of.

Why did I allow myself to be led down this path of misery and loneliness? Why did I slumber? Why did I permit so many powerful opportunities to go unrealized? Why do I yet go down this path?

Was I really so lazy, incompetent, and/or stupid to think I could procrastinate my salvation 'til the time felt right? I think that's it: in the end, I was just stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Yet I still go down this path. Sometimes I even run. Do I sprint? I've been a f*** little s***, haven't I? Who else has squandered so many rich blessings? I have spent them all, like so much expendable capital thinking (rather not thinking) there wouldn't be an end to them. What an idiotic thing to do. What a childish, stupid thing to do.

Yet I still go down this path. I curse the lost things, the vanished chances. I curse the day I set foot on this path. I recall it too well. F*** that day.

Yet, I still go down this path. The kind people, the chances to grow and advance, the chances to serve and love and show charity - I spit on them all. I reject them, squander them, spend them, all to save myself the inconvenience of leaving this path, this path with the all-too-well-worn rut, and striking out into the unknown.

The unknown. I'm such the adventurer, right? Then why this 10+ year reluctance to take on the most eternal of challenges, this life altering (if by God's grace I could get it to work) self-peace process?

I live in self-imposed, solitary confinement, in the midst of a sea of people. When I muster the desire or the courage or the stupidity (no hard task) to venture out to interact with others, the smallest infraction is all it takes for me to give up. Were anyone to accuse me of not trying hard enough they would be right - though it feels I've become raw from trying. Remaining open and vulnerable in spite of the harshness of human(not-so)kind - what could possibly be harder? I'm damned, aren't I?

I am empty. I am lost. I fight to resist the endless surge of loneliness that ever strains to swallow me whole. My resistance wears thin. My defenses are vanishing. My hope is fading, fading...

What can I do to renew my hope? Where can I turn for help? How can I realistically expect to find a solution to my pain and loneliness? How can I possibly believe that I'll recognize it if I find it? In the name of God, what will it take to make me successfully use such a solution when or if I find it and recognize it?

If I dwell for more than a moment on the sheer size of my failure, the darkness, the abyss, fills my breast with terror. I am horrified when I think what I've squandered. How did I allow so many opportunities to slip away?

I stood at the crossroad, dazzled by the endless number and infinite variety of choices, baffled by the implications of the choices, mystified how I could ever make the right choices, and the opportunity to choose well slipped away.

What a fool I was. What a failure I am. What a hopeless, pathetic caricature I've become.

Heaven help me. Who else will?