Yes, I am one of those people who obsess over work in order to avoid the psychological demons haunting my dreams and spilling over into the waking hours. Now that I no longer have to spend 16-36 hours in the hospital every day, I have begun fretting over the specific regrets of this year. A long December indeed. Christmas is in little less than a week, and the year is starting to gutter like a spent candlewick.

So I still waver. The reality of the situation is that I have no specific hope at this time, so why even bother despairing?

Oh yes. What am I talking about?

Women.

Naturally.

I suppose it is mostly for entertainment value that I retrace the fruitless paths that I have trod. There is some satisfaction in discovering why I was so doomed in the first place, there is some solace in knowing that I was destined to fail from the start, due to insurmountable factors that were hidden at the time of my suffering.

And yet. The neat trick that I've always wanted to learn was how to stick the shit back into the horse, so to speak. You know how they say it doesn't make a difference if the girl knows or not? Oh, there's a difference. Sometimes it is painfully bittersweet (and the sweetness is still, still, worth the pain.) Other times it is ridiculously perplexing, and now that I have a favorite loony theory to latch onto, it is absolutely hilarious.

OK. I wanted to outline the scenario which I was subjected to once upon a time, and even to this moment, I'm not certain that it is completely played out. But I will let it lie, for now. To explicate it may rob me of being able to savor this lunacy. I'm sure it will continue to wake me in my sleep anyway.

But I suppose, deep down inside, it is not about being unattractive to the opposite sex, it is not about being too cowardly to ask a girl out on a date, it is not about having a snowball's chance in Hell. Active issues, to be certain, but I would still call them details to contend with, dwarved by the larger issue.

Regardless of whether it is a romantic relationship, or whether it is a friendship, there is the sad fact that true connections are hard to form, harder still to keep, and I can't help but logically conclude that in the end, you are alone. And still, my heart yearns for companionship along this long, dark road ahead. Whether it is the camraderie of my fellow travellers, or whether it is the deep and intimate secret that is another person that I seek, in the end, I have only myself. I am too afraid to count on anything else. And so my life will always have an essential emptiness to it until I can conquer this fear.

This wretched state of existence. Ptui.

In the end, I think that I am just tired of all this futile madness. How many years will I spend whiling away the time with my silent rantings and ravings, never finding someone who not only accepts what I have to say without judgement, but also actually cares? And not just that general sense of being interested and patiently listening. Oh, I will repeat this phrase ad nauseam: I need someone who has a stake in what happens to me. Someone whose fortune is tied to mine, and thus, whose trust I am sworn to keep. I don't mean to sound so co-dependentâ€â€I really do think I'm more complicated thatâ€â€but in this sense, I need to be needed.

And the years will accumulate like so much snowfall, hard and unmelting, untouched by the warmth of the sun, and I find that all my little gestures here and there seem to be completely worthless, and all I really have are these stories of what-might-have-been, and in the end, these diatribes that I have written down may all be that remains of my singular existence.

Times like this there is some comfort in knowing that I will not live forever.

Sometimes I get the feeling
That I won't be on this planet
For very long
I really like it here
I'm quite attached to it
I hope I'm wrong

â€â€from "Don't Change Your Plans for Me" by Ben Folds Five