Day Two hundred and thirteen - Nightmare heaven

Nothing made sense. The readings were all wrong. The calculations revealed only impossibilities. First, it was the Pleiades - those perennial seven sisters that filled the night sky with such magnificence. They were - how best to describe it? - suffering from rapid onset of aging. It was like they were growing a million years older with every passing day. At this rate, nothing could ever stop them from using up their core hydrogen and evolving off their main sequence. But that's not even the weirdest thing.

The weirdest thing was when we started receiving transmissions from a fallen star, once known as Arcturus. Fallen, and dead lo these many centuries, we were baffled when the messages first reached us. Though it took a while to decipher, we understood the language used to be human in nature - it sounded like an ancient dialect no one could speak, yet seemed to be just within reach of understanding. I would have found all this extremely challenging in and of itself, but soon we'd discover just how much more complicated things would get. 

You see, the transmissions that were coming from that dead star started to be directed squarely at me. I was being asked by name to speak to the dead speaker. The voice that came from the other side of the void was eerily familiar - like I'd listened to it before in my dreams and it stayed there at the edge of consciousness all this time. Sometimes its timbre sounded like mine, sometimes not. We tried to get as much information as we could from the phenomenon, but there was intelligence we could not fathom behind those missives. It was trying to tell us something of some terrible importance, as if it was trying to warn us about some terrible fate. I swear I could sense a dreadful guilt in that voice, as if by talking to us it found the anotement it sought. 

One night, as I sat looking at a screen that captured those distant frequencies and translated them into sounds, the voice asked me if I knew who it was. I did not. Though a part of me feared the answer. It told me he was me - another me, that is. A me that was calling from another universe, one where he'd found himself cursed to be the last creature alive in the entire universe. He urged me to exercise caution, for he knew what experiments I had in mind. He knew I had notions to traverse the gulfs of time and space. He warned me of the dire consequences my actions would bring, not only to us, but to all. He begged me to burn all my notes, destroy all the copies, and pleaded with me - painful though it was to us both - to forget about them. He knew what he was asking, the weight and ache of it, and I could sense it in his voice. Still, he asked me, knowing that he never did as he wanted me to do.

There was still time, he said. I could move on. I sighed.

More fool he.

More fool I.

For I had already done what he didn't want me to do. It was already too late. For me, for everyone. 

Long moments of silence followed, and thereafter only the word 'why?' echoed in that room.

Eventually, even the word itself stopped. 

But for many, many thousands of years after it was always there, a dull sound in the background.

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Day Two hundred and twelve - Teleconnect Pt. 2

A couple of interesting things that went through my mind and / or happened to me as a kid : one, I used to think that 75 years was the ideal age for one to die - meaning that by then, I thought, someone would have enjoyed life to its fullest and was at the right age to leave this all behind. I stuck to this reasoning for a number of years - well into my teens - and I even decided that if I wasn't dead when I was 75, then I'd kill myself. Of course, we change, we grow up, we learn, and what we thought when we were kids stops making much sense. I now look at 75 years in this life as so very little time - and yes, as my old pal Rudy once famously wrote : 'If you can fill the unforgiving minute with sixty seconds’ worth of distance run', then for sure you can make the most of whatever time you're allotted. Sometimes you get much less than 75 years, sometimes you get more, and how you choose to live your life is ultimately down to you. You allow or don't allow the hurdles you face to bring you down. Which sort of brings me to the next point.

When I was fairly young, I tested highly on an IQ test - so much so that I was considered 'gifted' and for a while there was talks of me going to a 'special' school. Shit, I never thought myself as such, it was just that my young mind had a stupid ability to retain loads of stuff. I'd read something, remember the gist of it, not necessarily understand it, then it would be stored somewhere deep in my mind waiting for the moment it proved to be useful. When I was in my eighth grade, a teacher I had gave us all a list with a bunch of words for us to find out what they meant - I looked at the list and there wasn't a single word whose meaning I didn't know. This was meant as homework, so I just skipped it. The next time we had class he went through the list and asked people for the definition of the word. When it came to my turn, I said I didn't do the homework - I didn't need to, seeing as I knew all the words. The guy looked me square in the eye, then looked at his list of remaining words, and asked what 'Superego' was. 

How easy was that? Together with the ID and the ego, it's one of the three components of the human psyche. And how did I know this? It was in an episode of The Simpsons. Again, I was just the kind of guy whose mind retained useless information. Or mostly useless, anyway. After that class, my teacher asked me to stay behind, and again he came with that 'gifted' spiel. I wasn't, I told him, not in any way, shape or form. He and him never really got along after that - maybe he saw something in me and had failed to fan those embers into a flame?

I was never, ever special. And, by the same token, having lived my life the way I have, having made the choices I made, I'm not ashamed of myself either. Do I have regrets? Goddamn right I do, there are a lot of things I wish I've never done. Not because they were detrimental to me, but rather because they were detrimental to others. I regret much more those things than everything I never did - and know I could have done. Even now, if I so chose it, I could do different, edifying things with my life. I just choose not to, at least not at the present moment, and nor in the near future. 

There's the feeling that I could have fallen in line anytime I wanted, that I could have chosen contentment. That I could have played the game, and if I look back, there would have been at least a dozen contenders for that chance. I wouldn't ever have been happy that way, and worse still, neither would have anyone. All them living souls are far happier now, and thank the baby fucking jesus for that. I chose a path years ago, from which steering away from is neither easy nor advisable. And that, in and of itself, does not make me unique - I'm just another ship in the night.

Day Two hundred and eleven - LNDP3

There were things that I had to learn how to deal with as a kid - by dint of my very nature since very early on, I was never the most sociable person, and that brought directly to the fore things like being alone most of the time, doing things alone very often, and generally staying away from whatever everyone else was doing. I had to learn that being alone, that having time to spend all by myself, that realizing that all I loved, I - mostly - loved alone, was not an easy realization. Already I'd find myself wondering what it was that I was missing, what part had I been born without, why I couldn't just be like everyone else. That translated into me being somewhat of a distant kid when I was at school, and though I've previously written about this, it helps to illustrate the point I'm trying to convey. 

When I grew up, I didn't really change the way I was. I've always been content with taking a backseat to everyone's 'main quests', and I've rarely felt the need to deviate from that course of action. Not having to justify my actions or provide people with explanations has always, by and large, served me rather well. However, while I've always been more of a secretive recluse, I was born with a heart that was always so full to the brim with hope and love. I couldn't imagine, as a kid, any of the dreams I had for myself as an adult ever happening - to me they were always the fanciful imaginings of a naive boy. As I grew, and some things that I had dreamt about did come to pass, I realized that they were circumstancial events - things that happened more by accident than out of design.

The concept of 'destiny' was something that my young mind found fascinating - I legitimately thought that every one of us was born with their fates laid out before them. Some would die young, some would die old, some would know nothing but happiness, others would live out their lives in abject misery. How fate was attributed to a soul, I couldn't fathom, but I was more than convinced of it. In 1991 though, I was 14, and fall that year I went to the movies to watch Terminator 2. That movie lingered long in my mind - not only did its visual and special effects blow my teenage mind away, I went home with one of the movie's central motifs etched into my imagination - 'The future has not been written. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.'

Had I never considered this before? Or was it something that I did not, alas, want to consider? Did I already feel that I was worthy of some divine punishment for sins I'd commited in lives past? 

I never changed the fate I thought was in store for me. I never changed my nature - for good or for ill. But I hoped... I hoped that fate would be kind to me. That after the tribulations there would be times of peace and love in my life. I believed that hope, once upon a time. I would have always believed it. For one brief moment it was as if the universe stood still and revealed to me that I had been chosen. That I had been blessed with this love. How could I not welcome this grace in my heart? If I had to do it all over again, I would choose to do it time and time again. The love, I would come to find out, was always greater than the pain.

Day Two hundred and ten - Twilight twilight nihil nihil

I walk the streets of this city at ungodly hours, and some streets I do not walk alone. No, when I walk them, I walk with ghosts all around me. Not the ghosts of others, but the ghosts of past iterations of myself. Here, a very young version of me stands outside a toy store and looks with longing at all the toys he knows he's never going to get. There, a seventeen year old leaves home very early one monday morning to catch the train that would take him to start his military training. I am exiting a subway station on the way to meet the love of my life. Some blocks ahead, I am kissing her for the final time. These ghosts are everywhere, and the streets they walk no longer exist now as they were, so they themselves are the ghosts of streets.

These echoes, these wraiths, converge and become my present myself - someone who exists in the quirky dichotomy between hope and nihilism. I once told Carina - my last attempt at a relationship, as chronicled some posts back - I had come to believe that everyone alive was worthy of love, save for myself. I deserved nothing. That's what I'd been telling myself for years, and it made sense to me. It made sense because I reasoned it was just atonement for my sins.

To not want, to not long, to not desire... to not even feign an interest or let others know that you are a living, breathing organism was a choice. A choice I made because I decided I didn't have a choice. That these things would happen to me and become me naturally. But not having a choice, I discovered, was also a choice. I had to choose all this - either bit by bit or as a totality when  everything became far too compllicated for me to bear. And if I had to pinpoint the point in my life where I ceased hoping, I'm not sure I could figure out where it falls on the timeline. I've had a fair amount of people in my life that truly disappointed me, but I didn't allow them to steal the best parts of me. Not when they lied, not when they dissembled, not when they left. I grieved, to be sure, but I always picked up the pieces after. 

I was out with friends today and afterwards I walked slowly back home. On my way I stopped by a place where, in a midsummer's night over twenty years ago, a girl I was dating laid her breasts bare for me to kiss. A decade later I would find myself in the same spot, weeping a love that had fled over the hills and far away. It was the loneliest day of my life. Maybe then I started to lose my faith in hope.

Still... even as I write this, hope beats with every beat of my heart - it becomes a fire that begs to be kindled and stoked to an incinerating roar. But the fire especially, especially does not save, the fire only destroys and though it may purify it takes takes takes and gives nihil back, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil, nihil.

Day Two hundred and nine - We don't just disappear

What if I hadn't written anything? What if I had chosen another direction, and not told the skewed story of my life? Would our paths have crossed again? Would we be speaking again after almost a dozen years? Would our lives have gone on as they have these past many years where we were no more than a passing thought in each other's mind? Would fate have conspired to have us meet again? I don't know. I have my suspicions that we would have lived out our days without seeing each other ever again.

But my decision to write about my life put in motion things that I had never intended. First, it granted words that I thought I'd never read again. Then it granted the unlikeliest of days, us meeting for the first time in many a year. It granted stories I'd never known. It granted further conversations. Would I have still written our story, had I known what it would cause?

I had, in the years that followed, to learn how to protect myself. That meant being hurt and damaged in the process, but I eventually learned how to build these walls around my heart. How to create a suit of armor around my soul. And throughout the years they have held. Sure, some got close, but they never hurt - they just disappointed. My defences were sound. And then when we met they all came crashing down. I wasn't me anymore. I was that 2012 me again.

I was thinking about things that I had not thought about in a long time when I wrote about us. Now, I had so much more on my mind. Thoughts were coming to the fore, memories were being unearthed. Everything, keep in mind, out of my own doing and my own choosing. I had to know, I had to understand. And now all around me I see ghosts - the ghosts of us past, where we ate breakfast near my house, Schrödinger versions of us walking around hand in hand in the forever that we are not, the needs we burned is the child we never had.

Some months back I began my great purge : I was fast running out of space, and there's only so much stuff I can have. I was trying to figure out what I could do without, and I turned to the first place I wouldn't have considered before - my book collection. I looked at shelves upon shelves upon shelves full of books I'd never read, some I'd never read again, some I'd read so many times before. I always thought I'd have them forever. But I decided to let some go. As I started to whittle down my collection down to what I thought I wanted to keep, I grabbed a certain book - at once, and unbidden, memories came flooding.

I remember once we were looking at this book, and you'd told me that we'd have a framed map of Westeros in our house. I was so... not naive, no, but so wildly in love and so filled with love and hope that I believed. I believed that these normal things so many people have could be somehow coming my way. Moreover, they would be coming our way. But everything became just another ghost, hasn't it? There was never our place, only the ghost of a dream of it. There was never our library, nor our stereo where we'd listen to our music. There are echoes of ghosts of it, nothing more.

And I know I shouldn't hope - I don't, I can't, I dare not - but I can't help but wish that things had gone different. I wish you'd stayed. I do. I wish you'd picked me. I wish I'd seen you that day, though it would have destroyed me. I wish you'd made it to me, just like you intended. I wish the hand that kept you from making that beeline to me hadn't been there. But life is not made of wishes, it's made of choices. My own choices doomed me to being a pathetic loser, and I accept that I screwed up everything I ever touched. How I wish I had been better - in all ways. Someone who was deserving of you staying. 

But it's too late, far too late. For me, for everything. I had to learn how to make my peace with life. I had to learn how to deal with the loss of what we had. I know how to do this. I know how to keep things in and go about my way pretending it doesn't hurt. Have I not kept a façade all these years? 

Day Two hundred and eight - Happy man

There's a specific type of guy I never really got - nor for a long time. It's the kind of guy that would be mostly indistinguishable from anyone else in the street, but people would seem to get along well with him. He would be courteous, somewhat silent and would keep to himself. All this, in and of itself, aren't what you would call unique traits, right? But then, after the guy had crossed paths with us, or we saw him across the road, someone - usually my mother or my grandmother - would comment about how that person had not had somone in their lives for many years, and these would still be fairly young people - in the 40-ish range. 

They were these long-term bachelors that for whatever reason had elected to live their lives alone, and when I, as a kid, learned that there were people who lived like this, I always felt incredibly sad for them. It also didn't help that they were always talked about in these hushed tones, as if they were someone to be truly pitied. But I couldn't understand why someone - anyone, for that matter - would choose to live their lives that way. Where I live, there were maybe a couple of people who fit that bill, and they never looked happy to me. I wouldn't know it yet, but the air they had was one of contentment, of resignation.

My young mind couldn't comprehend not wanting... not desiring... not craving. I wanted so, so much, as a young boy. Surely everyone did as well? Ah, but such are the follies of a young and naive mind. And as we grow up, and learn about life, and get fucked over... you start to understand. Some years back I found myself questioning if whether all the effort I was putting in was worth it. The romantic part of me thought it was. That it was just a question of trying. And if I failed? Then I'd try again. But in time that part of me began to dwindle, it began fading into the background. Another part of me - the jaded, cynical part - began to tell me it wasn't worth it. That I was better off by myself. 

And I believed it. I believed it so much that I began giving up on everything - well, almost. But when it came to people, and indeed, myself? I just gave up. I stopped wanting the complex things from life. The compromises. The commitments. The chase. The game. I wasn't having any of that. I never spent so much time by myself since I was that young kid who knew nothing - he just knew not to have friends, and keep his stupid head buried in books.

How would that boy react to the fact that he would become that kind of man whose life choices so mystified him? Would he have clung to hope more fervently? Or have I been turning myself into this person since that lonely childhood? Maybe I was always fated to give up. Maybe.

I have shelved the audacity of hope, but that romantic heart of mine sometimes beats in time to a song it used to know oh so well.

Day Two hundred and seven - Hope

Something that I do every now and again here is take a breather and talk something else. As I start to see the end of the line for the story of my life so far - I'll be lucky to have a week left of stories to tell, if that. And I still have no idea what will come after that - I'm still juggling some ideas to see what would fit here and what would better fit a different project of mine.

So, to say that this past week and a half or so has been wild is an understatement. There's a story behind this, and I may or may not tell it in the future. Suffice to say that it has left me thinking about a lot of things : some I thought dormant, others I thought gone for good. It's also left me thinking about life, and how people just come and out of it so often. Be it friends, lovers, co-workers, whatever - you end up getting to know so many people, and granted - you'll not necessarily get along that well with most of them, but the beauty of it is when you do meet someone that brings something good to your life, even if it's something so small as someone sharing new music with you, or helping you out out of the kindness of their hearts.

But there's a weird thing that can happen - something called 'life'. You'll get a new job, or you'll move to somewhere else, or maybe it's something as simple as you reducing the time you spend on social media as your priorities change, and so many of these relationships fall by the wayside. Drifting apart from people is not an uncommon thing, we've all had that person who we got along with great at work or at the gym, and then one or the other would just disappear. 

That's the relatively easy part though, having someone come back to your life isn't as easy to process. Maybe it's because reconnecting isn't as rosy a thing as the movies portray. In the meantime you've changed, you've grown, and you see that whatever stupid thjing that connected you both isn't there anymore. Or maybe you go the extra mile and open up and tell them that you've always had a crush on them and that ends to be completely damaging because the timing was incredibly off. 

There's a not so small part of you that wishes that things hadn't really changed between then and now, and when you feel like you want things to be as they were and you reach out you sense that in fact it's the other person who has moved on from what you had, and you feel somewhat abandoned, somewhat betrayed. 

But the truth is that nobody really owes nobody anything.... sometimes the choices we make include leaving people behind, or being left behind by people. One shouldn't demand of someone that things be as they were. But hope? Ah, one can always hope.

I ranted a bit about this because through the power of social media - something I'd been straying away from for a long while now - I reconnected with an ex, someone who was a co-worker and an old friend of mine, and all these experiences were different from each other. Some of this has filled me with dread, some of it has left me with hope. Let's just hope I'm wise enough to pursue what's right.

Day Two hundred and six - Sear me MCMXCIII

Around March 2021 I was informed by the powers that be that my position at work would de made redundant. In fact, what happened was that the entire department got restructured, and a lot of people got shuffled around. I was given two options, none of them immediately appealing to me : the first was to go to a different team altogether, but the stuff they were tasked with doing I found to be anathema to me and my mental health. Second option would be to return to my old team. I naturally chose that one, I knew the team, I knew the job and knew I could easily excel at it, so it became like the lesser of two evils.

In theory it seemed as if this 'demotion', so to speak, would be bad for me financially, but it indeed proved to be otherwise. Because I was working from home, it meant that I ended up putting a lot more hours than I normally would, and every bit of extra work added to my productivity, which directly impacted how much more I'd be getting as a bonus every month.

Before I went back, though, I had to train a new batch of people that were coming into the team I would soon be leaving. It was, after all, my duty to do so as long as I was part of that team, and I tried to impart as  much knowledge and to leave the newbies as well prepared as I could. They'd soon be someone's headaches, and not mine...

In a sense, I didn't really mind leaving that team. The last few months I'd spent there weren't really good, and it seemed to me that I had been unwillingly placed on a collision course with one of the knowledge management supervisors, who had taken a look at the content I had created, and deemed it to be quite divergent from what the guidelines stated. Trouble was, I created content the way I had been taught by her bosses, and I'd never heard a peep abouy my work not being up to par.

It was like I had been taught a new language by the native speakers, and I was able to clearly communicate with them, only for an outsider to tell me that I was taught the wrong language, and here's how it really is - too bad for me I really couldn't seem to grasp her explanations. She'd often ask me to create some test content so she could review it, and they never passed muster. We were at odds more often than not.

My return to my old team went swimmingly - though some things had decidedly changed since 2019, and I had to get used to how some things were now done. But none of it was hard, nothing was complicated and nor did it it hold any secrets to me. I had to do things I'd done thousands of times by then, so at a certain point muscle memory takes over.

As a warning, and considering we're fast approaching the present time, be aware that everything now will be extremely dull. Nothing new, or indeed, nothing much actually happened in my life.

Day Two hundred and five - No surprises

It's 2020 and the world would be soon halting to a stop. None of us could have foreseen what was going to happen, and all of us, I imagine, came out of this a different person. I'm not here to discuss politics or socio-economical issues that became prevalent during that time, I'm just here to tell you about how my life was when we were (mostly) all sent home.

As, I suppose with anyone else, when the order came through for non-essential workers to work from home, it was a shock. And I hated it - the first couple of months I spent at home, I did so under heavy protest. I did not want to work from home, but I would have gladly worked alone at the office then. I pleaded with my supervisor, but she wasn't having none of it. 

I really couldn't get to grips intially with the idea of working from home, and the overall weirdness of those first few months of the pandemic was getting to me. I remember thinking how weird it was seeing the city I lived in all but deserted, how strange it was to be experiencing an almost sepluchral silence in the street I live in, which is always pretty busy. I started spending a whole lot more time online - I guess we all did - but even that eventually started to wear thin. It was like life, for me, had lost another of its layers. If, prior to this, I already felt distant from everyone, now I felt moreso.

I took everything that was happening as an opportunity to start fading away from people's memories - I recall spending quite a few days trying to erase my digital footprint as much as I could. Pretty much all of my social media accounts got deleted, and the only thing that remained were my blogs, though they too mostly languished in limbo.

As for work, I found myself struggling a bit - it was so happy helping out anyone who needed help back at the office, but this online only way meant that often things would take me longer to take care of than otherwise. Inside, I was praying that we could ride this pandemic out as quickly as possible, even though a few months into it I'd already have made my peace with having to work from home - I'd come to much prefer it really, so much so that I'm still working from home. The rest of the year, I think, was mostly uneventful, other than having spent some days in Switzerland for my birthday in August, once the travel restrictions had been somewhat lifted. But other than that I can't recalll a single thing that happened in my life that merits writing down. That year saw me continue my self-destruction, I was drinking - well, not more, but more often - and what with not having exercised in years, I was truly putting on the pounds. 

Things didn't change in the slightest as we moved into 2021 - but in the first quarter of the year I'd be having a not so welcome change to my professional life. Nothing bad, mind, but certainly a step back.

Day Two hundred and four - I can change

My decision to accept that offer would prove to be a very rewarding gamble. The five or so weeks I spent on loan to corporate were fairly uneventful - my tasks were simple and dead easy. All I had to do was collect some documentation from the client's employees, give them any additional info they might require, and update an excel sheet with my progress. Easy peasy.

But I still wanted to put on a good show, nonetheless. I knew I was being watched and I was being taken into consideration for something. So early 2019 I return to my old team after that spell at corporate, and I keep on doing my job to the best of my capabilities. Just after I returned, I was asked if I wanted to have some specialized training for the knowledge management part of the business. I was intrigued enough to accept that offer - I figured that any further skills I picked up along way would only help me. That led me to being then asked to be a part of a team that would be responsible with creating content for our internal knowledge management site. Me and a few others were given a list of documents to create for the website, and in a month or so we'd done it.

A couple of months or so after that I was being asked if I wanted to help out with a particularly boring - but financially advantageous - task for another team. Naturally, I said yes, and that went as well as it could - until management decided that that task had been deemed unnecessary, and terminated that position. I thought I'd be heading back to my old team, but in fact I got asked to stay at this team I'd be helping out. I was to be working clsoe to the team leaders and help out the team with any doubts they might have, but also to create training material fro the team, and then to publish it online on our internal site. I was also tasked with the training with every single new person that got hired to work with the team.

The hard work had been paying off. I got offered a new position with a nice financial incentive, and I took it with gusto. And I have to say - challenging though it was, seeing as I had no previous formal training or, indeed, experience in training people, and I had to learn a lot on the fly and adapt quickly, I loved that time I spent doing my job. It was new, it was different, and along the way I would be given even more responsibilities. Things were on the up and up, things were going good, and I thought that hey, maybe the future can be bright for me too.

So 2019 wound to a close, and no one knew just how different 2020 would be. No one knew just how weird and awful things would become. I know I didn't. Sometimes I think that year ruined what prospects I had professionally.

Day Two hundred and three - Song for Zula

I had make a mistake. A huge mistake. I truly disliked my new job, I felt lost there, and out of place, and with the paltry training I'd been given, I felt completely unprepared to give the kind of IT support I was supposed to be giving. I had to ask people all the time how do something or the other, and the team leaders never seemed to have the time. I was feeling frustrated, but even so I decided to give it at least a month.

What a long month that was... nothing got better, I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere near the level I hoped I'd been, and soon enough I began having panic attacks before heading out to work. But this time I wasted no time and went straight to the hospital, where I was prescribed meds again and was given a medical leave. As can be imagined, this really didn't sit well with new employers, but I couldn't care less - this time I could afford to get that partial pay for a couple of months or so, especially as I'd gotten my severeance check from my previous job, which was a not so inconsiderable sum.

The way I figured it, I was giving myself a couple of well deserved months off. But I had a plan. Oh yes, I had a plan - and that was to return to the job I never should have left. So I kept being on medical leave until September or so, and then I called my previous manager - a guy who I always got along really well, and who had told me, when I left, that should I ever want to return, the doors would be always open to me - and after I tendered my resignation at the new job, I went back to my old one.

And let me tell you, what a relief that was. At least that part of my life had reverted back to normal. I imagined myself staying there for as long as I could - it was safe, it was stable, and I was pretty good at what I did. I needed a few days to get into my regular groove, but soon it was like I'd never left. And then sometime in November I got offered a chance to do something different at work.

My manager's boss asked me if we could have a conversation. She said that she'd thought that I had the right profile to help out with a corporate client, and if I agreed, I'd be working with them for the month of December, all expenses paid. including travel and accomodations when I had to go out of town. I jumped at the chance I was given - I wanted to show that not only I was back, I was ready and willing to maybe progress inside the company.

And though I didn't know it yet, the seeds for the next few years of my professional life were sown when I accepted that offer.

Day Two hundred and two - My life is a succession of people saying goodbye

It's first quarter 2018, and I'm feeling defeated. I'm feeling empty. Emptied. Like I had nothing left to give. Worse, like I didn't want to give anything anymore. Carina had been just the latest in  a succession of people who flitted in and out of my life, taking way more than they gave in return. I was losing myself. I was losing.

And I was changing... in truth, I had already changed somewhat, and all this just helped make that change complete. I had gone from being that guy who wanted so much, so much more than I could dare hope for, with an unquenchable desire for life itself, and now... now I'd become the guy who no longer wanted. I didn't want people in my life, I didn't want burdens, I didn't want pain, I didn't want hope. I just didn't want. Didn't desire. 

I was becoming more and more withdrawn - and soon, I'd stop doing everything that was non-essential to my life. I'd go to work, come back home, load up on booze and munchies, and drink myself to sleep. Rinse and repeat every day. On my days off I'd just stay home and sleep and do nothing. Nothing seemed worth the effort for me anymore. It just wasn't worth it. I was tired of it all... so I gave up.

It wasn't hard, not as hard as one could imagine. Oh, I knew, deep down I knew, that there would be things that I'd miss - things like sex and companionship and the excitement of something new. But one gets used to not having those things, one gets used to not wanting those things. 

To make up for this, I decided that I should take a look at my work life - by 2018 I had been working at the same place for four years, a record for me, I'd never worked somewhere for longer than  about three years. And while I liked doing what I did - so much that I still do it - there was a part of me that maybe wanted a new challenge. And it just so happened that just before summer that year, a friend of mine called Joana asked me to send her a copy of my CV so she could have it delivered in a big, famous computer company she'd worked for. I had to think about it for a while, but I went ahead and sent her my CV.

Soon enough I was being called for an interview, and I got a job offer that seemed to good to be true - and it was, I just didn't crunch the numbers as carefully as I should have. But I was enticed, and accepted that offer. I quit my job the next day, put in my two weeks or whatever, and started to work at the new place.

And as soon as I started there I regretted it. I was supposed to be providing IT support, and I was assured that I'd be given in depth training beforehand. That didn't happen - we had only a few hours of training before we were thrown to the lions. I felt completely lost there, under-prepared, and thinking that I'd made the greatest mistake in my professional career. 

Day Two hundred and one - She will always be a broken girl

Red flags, red flags, those god damned red flags. There were so so many, and I took far too long to notice them and take them serious. Out of the top of my head - and these would have been close to the very end - the most egregious ones would be the fact that she'd explicitly told me never to tag her in any social media post nor to share anything on her page. As if she was wanting to keep something secret... or someone. One time I forgot about that rule, and if it was like I had opened Pandora's box.

But by far the worst of all - and this was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back - was when in late January 2018 her favourite singer came to town and she attended the show. Me, not really being a fan, didn't even offer to go with her, because I couldn't even do that courtesy - not only had she told me that she wanted to go alone, but as we approached the line - I had been allowed to walk with her there and wait with her until she went in - she told me that there could be no hand-holding, kissing, or other types of public displays of affection. I don't know what felt worse - the sense that she was so ashamed to be seen with in public, or the realization that I was just one of her side hustles.

I left that line - naturally only after she'd went in, good little bitch that I was - absolutely fuming. 'What the actual fuck was all that about?', I thought. 'I don't deserve this shit.' - something had changed for me that night, and I was decided to reach some sort of resolution.

Not long after, I had a trip booked to London with my son - I hadn't been there in years and he hadn't been there since he was a baby. I had saved up some money, and we were going to spend a few days there and have fun, just the two of us. Before I left for London, though, asked Carina what the hell we were. And what we were was a whole bunch of nothing, but she wasn't inclined to discuss if further. 'Fine', I told her. 'We'll have that conversation when we return.'

Funny thing is, when I got back, and we later met, she sort of acted like everything had been just peachy between us. But I told her I had to know where we were headed. The conversation started just outside the train station she was going to catch her train home at, and it invariably went into the direction of 'you know, I'm gonna regret this so much, but it's probably for the best'. I know the spiel, I heard it plenty of times, and again - all of this could have been avoided if she'd just been honest with me and told me that she wanted out of me was to rail her now and again. That, I would've understood. The gaslighting not so much.

Carina walked me to the another train station - just a few minutes away from the one where we were talking, and closer to where I lived. There, on that platform, we kissed goodbye and I never saw her again.

Day Two hundred - Martius / Nauticus II

It's a generous thing, calling what Carina and I had a 'relationship'. It never was - it was something else, and I would have respected her that much more if only she'd been honest with me and what she wanted from me. But as is so often the case, it was something short, wild, and intense.

And things got intense right from the get-go : not very long after we had that first kiss, I was being invited to come over to her place. While she didn't really live next to me, she lived about twenty-five minutes away by train, so I quickly made my way to where she lived. We weren't alone - she has a small child, but he was fast asleep by the time I got there.

I would be lying if I didn't say a part of me did not expect us to have sex. But that wasn't the reason why I went. I liked Carina, and she brought me a sense of peace I had not experienced in years. And now that we were just the two of us together, I felt that even more. We lay naked, entwined in one another in her sofa, our bodies pressed close to one another. I liked that. It was good.

But there was no sex that night - and that was ok. I didn't need it, neither of us did, to feel how we were feeling. And what we were feeling was something that was no more than an illusion, brought about by disenchantment, loneliness, and yes, horniness. The shadow of 'love' loomed over us, like a heavy sword dangling over our heads, poised to strike at a moment's notice. But it was never - it could never be  - love.

It's strange to look back on the time we had together - it was short, and we weren't together that often or those many times, really. Maybe at first, but certainly less as time went on. 

In the beginning, though, it was pushed to the max - we spent new year's eve with our kids over at some friends of hers, we had started to have really good sex, and it all but looked like we had something good going between us. Didn't it?

And yet... and yet there was a feeling that something was wrong. Something was amiss there. Now, I knew going into this that she'd been in a relationship prior to meeting me. I never enquired much about it, to be fair, I'm fine either way about knowing or not knowing what went down before. Doesn't bother me none, it wasn't me, I never cared about whoever came before. But sometimes Carina would say weird stuff.

Red flags, you might call them, though I am far too naive to spot them. But she'd tell me how she still talks to the guy. How he's still around. She even told me once that she'd been in her place. Oh, she didn't tell me what they did, and though I thought it, I couldn't put the words together. How stupid can I be? Very, as you'll soon see.

Day One hundred and ninety nine - Iter impius

There's something about writing down these stories : some I can remember some things so in depth and in so much detail, though they happened decades ago by now, while some others, though far more recent, have become a source of mild confusion for me.

Case in point, the Carina story. I was dead certain that our story had begun fall 2017, and he were through by late that year, but alas - that timeline is off. Now, I can't be certain whether or not it might've actually been fall 2017 when we first met through Tinder and started talking. Probably not, it might have been just a tad later. Possibley November, pushing on December. This was a new thing to me - I had never met anyone through Tinder, and was unsure as to how things were going to play out. 

Our initial interactions were nice enough that we eventually became facebook friends, and from there we'd even get each other's phone numbers. However, though, there was an initial reluctance on maybe both our parts to meet just yet. I knew I had no self confidence left in me to go meet a very good looking girl, and she had things of her own to deal with. Again, there are stories that are not mine to tell, and some details I'll just leave out.

As christmas was fast approaching, and by then we were getting more curious about one another, I asked her if she wanted me to go and meet her after work. She entusiastically said yes, and I made my wasy to where she worked - I had worked quite nearby a decade prior. We met, and I found her even more stunning in real life - tall and svelte and looking like she didn't come from this era at all, but rather had a 70's-ish aura about her. She entranced me, and all I could think about were her beautiful lips - already I felt like losing myself in them. 

A while after we met, she asked me if I knew where a certain music store was, and out of the top of my head I did not, but after looking up a map for it, it was fairly easy to point her there. We went there so she could pick up a guitar she'd placed an order for. Nor for her, but rather for a 'friend'. I can tell you it was a not so inconsiderable sum to spend on a 'friend'. But theses were things I wouldn't know about yet.

After the purchase was done, we hopped on her car and she drove me home - as we were saying goodbye, and I was about to peck her on the cheek, we half kissed on the lips. I aplogised profusely, thinking that she was leaving thinking me an idiot and a creep.

Alas, it was not so - we kept on talking throughout the next few days, and on christmas night I got a surprise I could never have expected : she drove to my place, told me that she wanted to spend a few moments with me, and right here in the street I live in, we kissed for the first time.

Day One hundred and ninety eight - A realness

First quarter of 2017, I'm coming to grips with the fallout of the Silvia story. Not only because of her, naturally. but also because of everything and everyone else that came before - those I wrote about and those I did not write down a single line but still happened nonetheless - I had begun finding myself... less. Lessened by all this. Not only as a person, but also from what I wanted. I found myself wanting less and less, thus also being contented with less and less. And even that, in its due time, started giving way no not wanting at all. Not wanting, not desiring, not craving, not nothing. I would start feeling like I was emptying myself of, well, me.

On top of this, I started having some health issues : one happened when I hurt my leg one day while jogging, and instead of stopping, and resting, and taking care of it, I kept on running for a few days more, until the day came when I could barely move that leg. I had to go to the hospital and the doctor who saw me stopped short of calling me names when I told him the story. The next few months would see me having to do tretament on that leg, and as a result I stopped going to the gym. It would be a domino effect that would have effects on my health on a number of different levels.

That was the year where I started to drink heavily : what had started as a post-gym ritual I'd do every week, where I'd run a very hot bath, and I'd buy a bottle of red wine to be drank whilst I was soaking in said bath, became an almost daily habit. I started having to drink to get some sleep done. And it felt good, it felt real good, let me tell you. I loved the feeling of inebriation I'd get just as I was about to drift off to speed. Sometimes I'd drink some beer as well, especially in the summer. Much later - and this would have been only during last year - I'd be drinking two or three bottles of wine a night, some days. 

But it was at this junction that I started veering towards all the problems that are now present me to deal with. Everything else, during that time, I just managed on a daily basis. Work was fine, my relationship with my son was good, I had started to, more and more, spend my free time at home, shunning the mobs and throngs. I kept to myself, I was massively into Instagram back then, and interacting with some nice people I'd met along the way was good enough for me.

I didn't want anything more. I didn't want anything more. And then - because there's always one of those, isn't there? - I up and meet someone. Through Tinder, of all places. So, by now you'll have read about a number of different names. What I can tell you is that this is the last one. After Carina there wasn't anyone else.

Day One hundred and ninety seven - Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

Silvia had asked something of me once, something so important, so monumental, that I stupidly ignored. No, ignored isn't the right word... it was more like when we two finally spent a night together (though it wasn't a night, it was only a few hours) I was so immersed in her grace that no thoughst crossed my mind. But months before that night, she once told me 'make love to me, and you can fuck me all you want'. Of course I didn't make love to her, we fucked our brains out.

But her request lingered with me for a long time afterwards. I'd never even once considered how many times she must have asked this of others - I learned, fairly early on, that I wasn't the only one. And I'm not even talking about her husband, she told me there were two other guys she had sex with. Why I didn't see this as a red flag is anyone's guess, but then again, I am notoriously bad at detecting them. Or I just plain ignore them pesky things.

That night we shared happened on the eve of me leaving town for a few days - I had been writing occassionally for an online music magazine and I was scheduled to travel to go cover a gig. It also helped that I was having some time off from work, so my travels would be not only for 'work', but also I could spend some time away and get some rest done. We had been talking all day, and I'd told her that I'd love to be with her before I left. But that was all I meant - to be alone with her. I would have been happy just to be with her alone in her car, just the two of us. However, she asked me if I knew someplace where we could rent a room and be together. I did, but even so all I imagined that would be happening was us lying in a naked embrace.

And of course, this is not what happened.  When the goddess undressed, I became instinct. I became desire. I became sex. We became sex. We became. We came. It was good - very, very good. And yet, it could have been so much better. I knew deep down that this would forever be our one moment together, and for a long time I wished I had done certain things differently. Not because I hoped that we'd be together again, but because I selfishly wanted her to always remember that night fondly.

We spent a little time together in bed, in that naked embrace I had so longed for. I'd dreamt - daydreamt! - so often about that moment. Me, lost in wonder at the sight of her, her hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm. Us, closer than ever before. Our skins as one. Our breaths as one. But our hearts... ah our hearts, would never be as one.

She had her car parked nearby, and as I walked her to the corner, I finally realized that our steps would never rhyme. I would never again be with Silvia, after that night, and we rarely talked afterwards. That's no way tp say goodbye, but it was the goodbye we got.

Day One hundred and ninety six - Was hast du mit meinem Herz getan?

I'd have said that Silvia and me were going nowhere fast, but that would imply that we were going somewhere at all. We weren't. We weren't anything, by and large, other than two people who would sometimes meet up and make out for a few moments - that's all that happened between us until our very last time together. It was always good, but there was a part of me that started to want more. It started to want the impossible. Because what I wanted, Silvia would never be able to give me. She'd have to give up on way too much just for me. And, knowing all that full well, I couldn't blame her. So I did the logical thing.

I started to keep my distance from her, started to talk less with her, started not having that initiative to ask her if I could be with her. And it worked for a while. 

In the meantime, me and Isabel were still firmly doing our 'fuck buddies' shtick, and though by then I knew that feelings were involved, we were managing to keep it going. I was spending more time with her, had nothing to distract me, and in all fairness - she was looking like a good prospect. But fate... fate is a motherfucker. Early December 2016 me and Isabel went out to see a band we liked a lot play live. We'd met early to grab a bite to eat before the gig, andit just so happened that some moments before the dorrs opened, we actually walked past Silvia - though I hadn't noticed her. She'd tell me a few minutes later when we actually bumped into each other that she'd seen me with my girlfriend. I told her Isabel was not my girlfriend - and that wast a lie. I did tell her, though, that she was a friend, though I omiited the 'with benefits' part.

Silvia's pull was magnetic. Though I was there with Isabel, yes, I had to be with Silvia again. I had to kiss her again. I had to feel her tongue snake around mine. And it happened in two occasions. She had me. She had me good. 

For the next few days, she was all I could think about. My desire for her had grown a thousandfold since that night. We talked daily, we texted all the time, and then... then came our very first - and final - night together.

And I have to be honest - I wasn't intending on having sex with her. No, I wanted something more romantic. I just wanted to lay in bed next to her, feel her heart beat with mine, feel her skin touching my skin, feel the warmth of her breath, feel her chest as it rose and fell. I wanted an intimacy, so sacred, so silent, so utterly unspoken, that neither of us would ever forget it. I had never felt desire such as this - to just be with her in a timeless moment - a perfect moment - where my hands ran through her golden locks.

Day One hundred and ninety five - Dance me to the end of love

And then came Silvia. A different one, not the same Silvia from years ago, mind. And, if in Isabel's case there'll always be a lingering 'what if', when it comes to Silvia that would have never been the case. I mean, I never deluded myself into thinking that we could ever be in a relationship, let alone that we were in one.

So how did this Silvia story come to be? Well, I'd met her through the same facebook music group where I met a bunch of people who, in either a minor or major way, did play an important part in my life. But Silvia was always the one, who above all others, seemed to be so far out of my reach. Not only mine, but pretty much ayone else's - or so it seemed to me. This would have been sometime in late 2013, when we first came across each other on facebook, and throughout the next few years we'd have a very cordial, friendly relationship. She liked my taste in music, and I'd often share music with her. I got to know her somewhat well as time moved on, and that feeling I got that the was some ethereal higher form of being gracing us mere mortals only grew - I could never hope to even be with her one day, much less harbour some sort of romantic aspiration. 

But eventually we started getting a bit closer. The conversations had gotten more intense, more personal. A desire to be with er started to grown in me, and sometime in 2015 we agreed to meet in person. I'm guessing this would have been circa summer 2015, it was after me and Sonia had split up. However, I agreed to meet her knowing full well alll the caveats that came with making that choice. I knew and understood that she was married. I knew and understood that she had a family. I knew and understood that, though we were extraordinarily similar in terms of culture - books, records, films, these things matter - we were widly different when it came to our socio-economical status. Both Silvia and her husband worked well paying jobs, and they lived a high-end kind of life. I had to be aware, and understanding, of all these things before anything else.

So one day off I go to meet her, she'd asked me to meet her at this big bookshop near where she lived. I found her in the first floor,  sat on a sofa, reading something. I sat down next to her, and after a few moments, sparks started to fly. We were electric. Livewires. When we kissed for the first time barely a few minutes into our first having met. I could have sworn we'd outshine the sun. Something rather complicated had begun that day, something that would last until 2017.

Of course, what with all these caveats, I realized that I could never be in a relationship with her -  she'd never give up what she had for me, and I fully accepted that. It also meant that we weren't together that often. Sometimes some months would pass before we next saw each other. But seeing Silvia, being with Silvia, always made me feel incredibly fortunate. 

What, I wondered, did she see in me?

Day One hundred and ninety four - All along

I never intended to develop feelings for Isabel, for a few reasons. First, we had agreed that it would just be sex. We had no agreement about being exclusive to one another, and if she wanted to be with someone else - and she was - that was fine by me. That also meant then, that if I so chose to be with someone else - and I was - then I'd do as I pleased. But therein lies a tale not for now, but for the very near future. I also didn't want to relinquish a certain freedom I was enjoying from not being in a relationship - my previous experiences made me aware that there was always a fairly substantial of me that I had to compromise away... and I did not feel like doing that, not again, ot at least not yet.

Because what we had, as it was, was good - it was good enough for us to be together often. But... and because there's always a but... 'good enough' is always very subjective. For the longest part of this not-really-a-relationship, I didn't feel like either of us wanted more than this. At least not in a serious way, though every now and again we'd joke about doing something that 'normal' couples do, like going on vacations together or something like that. But those conversations would always be quickly brushed away. 

However, as the months wore on, it became increasingly clear to me that Isabel had feelings for me. And please bear in mind that these were mostly unspoken feelings, neither of us ever having broached that subject. But I felt them. I felt how she cared for me. Every time we were together. Every time I got to her place and she had wine and sushi laid out on the dinner table for us. Every night we slept together. Of course I felt them.

And how did I feel? Well, later on - and I'd place this realization fairly close to when we actually stopped seeing each other - I realized I had feelings for her too. I mean, I truly wanted to be with her. I thought about her all the time, and missed her when we were not together. It had become so much more than sex. I was in love with Isabel. And of course I had to fuck it up.

Cue the last time we were actually together - not the last time I saw her, mind, I bumped into her a few months later - and I actually ran into her completely by accident in a train station close to her place. She was coming from work, I was taking care of something nearby, and after we'd kissed hello, she asked me if I wanted to walk her to her place. I did. But... as we gotr close to her place, I felt like this urgent need to pee real bad. She told me that I could to her bathroom, and in any other circumstances that would have been just fine, but the trouble was that her daughter was home - and I really wanted to meet her, I'd heard so many great things about her - but this was really not the way I wanted to meet her for the first time. So I ended up going for a wee on a nearby shopping centre.

That done, we sat down in a nearby bench and were together for a little bit longer, but I already had plans. I couldn't stay with her - however much I wanted. I had to go. Because the next time we'd be together, so I reasoned, I'd ask her if she wanted to make it official and be my girlfriend.

There never was a next time. Isabel - and wisely so - let go of me, and soon enough she'd found someone else who deserved her, and loved her, and took great care of her. It could have been me, but I was stupid. 'What if', though, eh?

Day One hundred and ninety three - The new

As I go about writing these stories, my goal is to provide the key moments of my timeline. That means that I usually stay out of boring job stuff and that I sometimes have to contend with what content goes into these posts. Some things, and indeed, some people, were just too fleeting in my life for them to have had any real impact. One great example of that came right after Sonia, where I briefly dated another girl called Sonia. Now, this Sonia was a longtime facebook friend of mine, and we'd always got on really well. We had never met in person prior, and it just so happened that after the Sonia debacle, here I found myself meeting - and briefly dating - a different Sonia. But that story was so brief that it's not relevant in the slightest to how my life panned out. It didn't really work out because it was too soon after Sonia, I was still too raw... it just wasn't meant to be. 

But not long after that I'd get into a relationship of sorts with a girl called Isabel.  And Isabelwill always be one of the greatest 'what if' moments in my life. Again, we were facebook friends first. One day, we were talking about music, and she told me that on one the clubs I sometimes wentto, they'd having a special Arcade Fire night. She asked me if I wanted to take her there. We agreed on meeting close to where I lived - she would pick me up in her car - and maybe a couple of minutes aftre being with her she asked me if I was open to a change of plans. She asked me if I was game about instead going to the off-licence, get a couple of bottles of wine, and go to her place. I bit, and that's what ended up happening - us going to her place, dinking some wine, and then having sex. Which, to be fair, was my first time after Sonia, and I didn't think it went that well. I had hoped I'd get another chance to show my qualities.

And I did, may times over. We'd be together every other weekend or so, we'd either go out for a meal before or eat something at her place, and then sex. And by God, it was really, really great sex. I don't know whether or not it was the best sex I ever had, but it's high up there. We agreed that what we had would be sex-based only, I didn't want to have a 'real' relationship and neither did she. We were good that way. In a sense, we were happy that way. But somewhere along the line I started to realize that there were feelings involved. Initially on her side, and then later on, on mine. It had stopped being just about sex. We genuinely enjoyed each other's company, and I loved sleeping next to her. We fit together. But, as always, I waited far too long to act upon things.

Dasy One hundred and ninety two - Close to the edge, part III : I get up, I get down

To be fair, there were far more good/great moments in that relationship than otherwise, really. We were together often, and the sex thing aside, we had a pretty good companionship going on between us, furthered by the time I fell ill with a stomach virus, and Sonia was really good at caring for me while I was feeling ill. There was always the feeling that we genuinely enjoyed each other's presence and company - I always felt excited about being with her, she seemed to be the one. I even felt like the sex thing was gradually taking care of itself...mostly.

But the sands of time were running low for us. And the end for us came rather abruptly. We spent one last weekend together, and as far as I recall saturday went really well. There was a pretty good meal, and wine, and sex, and Sonia asked me to take pictures of her naked - she was into that sort of thing. We were good, things were good, we were happy. But sunday we woke up and I wasn't really in the mood and nor could I find it in me to get in the mood. So things got a bit sour then and there. And I can't remember exactly what now, but I think I said something she really didn't like. And she showed me a side of her I'd never seen before. She became withdrawn, distant, cold, barely speaking a word to me. Her traditionally smiling face has gone, now her countenance was a stone grimace. It remained that way until just after lunch, she had to go to the mall to get something, we barely exchanged a word, and as we were getting to the mall I was feeling more than unwanted - I was feeling dispised.

I asked her if she preferred if I went back to my place. She did, we didn't even kiss goodbye, and on my way home I started to get a sinking feeling. Sonia would not return my calls that day, and she'd barely reply to my texts. Though I apologised for whatever it was I'd said, she cared naught for it. Monday morning I wake up, get ready to go to work, and on my way there we started talking. Well, texting. She still wouldn't pick up when I called her.

She laid it down for me, plain and clear. Again, she felt like everything between us had happened too fast, too soon. And sure, I do get that. But then she got personal, attacking me for my 'poor performances'. She'd had enough of me, and five minutes before I start my shift she says we're through. 

And that was that - I's only see her once again ever, some months later at a gig we both attended. I met her new fella, we said hello, and that was that. It's a funny thing, though, because I questioned my own libido when I was with Sonia. She who came next would prove me dead wrong, the problem was never with me.

Day One hundred and ninety one - Lost in revery

The sex thing... the sex thing started to put sonewhat of a strain in our relationship. I tried to assuage her by telling her that I usually wasn't very 'responsive' in the mornings, and that sometimes I was just far too tired to perform, but she wasn't having any of it. It made me going to meet her harbouring a sense of dread deep within me because she was going to want sex, and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to perform. And to be fair, I never nor performed, I always managed to eke out enough of something and get to it, but to add insult to injury, Sonia would sometimes say very unhelpful things like 'I can't feel you', and though I never told it to her face, every time she uttered those words, it was all I could to to keep the melty man at bay. I wanted to tell her 'I'm trying here!', but I never did. Somehow, things always finished in a positive note. Well, for me it was positive that they finished - at all!

And the worst thing was how much of a failure as a man I was feeling.. it got so bad that I spent a lot of time online looking for ways to..erm.. 'enhance' my performance. I was 'that close' to actually buying a bunch of them blue pills that are supposed to give you a boner. But I decided against it. I knew I loved her, I knew I was very attracted to her and I knew that I felt great desire for her... I just didn't when we were together. Here's the thing : this is something that had never happened before, and has not happened since. I can't really explain why it happened with her. But happen it did, and that would be a sword of damocles that would hang over my head moving forward.

It opened cracks in our relationship, and though we never fought or argued, Sonia could be sometimes very cold and downright cruel to me. I remember I'd given her a book I adored and she hated it - which, hey, I can understand, but she tore it to so many pieces on a conversation we were having on the phone, that it left me in tears. It was all so unnecessary, I'd never do something like that. On other point where we differed greatly was in our taste in music. Now, I like to think that I have a fairly broad taste in music, but Sonia refused to listen to anything else but metal. And look, I still love the metal of my youth, I don't know hadly anything modern, but I generally didn't mind listening to metal when we were together. Some stuff I liked, some stuff left me cold. But something I learned very early on was never to share any music I liked with her, if it wasn't metal. She'd methodically pick it apart, and I would always feel like shit afterwards.

Day One hundred and ninety - Thela hun ginjeet

But I did love Sonia. She was exciting, she was beautiful, she was very smart, and she was fiercely independent. And, I liked to think, we made one hell of a couple. We looked good together. We looked like we belonged like together. And Sonia too, came to love me after a small while. But that took a little time to get there, and maybe things may have been a bit shaky for us for a while. After I dropped that 'I love you' bomb on her, she naturally withdrew a bit, and on our way back home I broke down in tears in front of her. I was feeling something I swore I'd never ever feel again - I was feeling ashamed for feeling this love I had for her, I was feeling guilty for having said the words, and a part of me thtought I had ruined everything. I hadn't, though the legacy of that would eventually come back to haunt us.

You see, after all the tears had been wept and after I had stopped being a blubbering mess of a human being, we started talking about everything. And Sonia, though she wouldn't deny she had feelings for me as well, she just thought that it was too soon. That I had rushed things. And though I completely understood her point of view, I had to let her know that after all the previous fiascos, I wouldn't want to waste any time, and if I felt I had something as big and good as this love inside me, then it would be my duty, nay, my privilege to let her know. And I am someone that when I feel... I feel. And I feel in large amounts. It's an unbridled torrent of love that comes gushing out of me, and I would nevermore feel shame or guilt over how I felt. But she still clung on to that 'too soon' bit... and a few months later, I'd hear all about it. But we're not there yet.

At that moment things were mostly solid : I'd spend my weekends at hers, we'd go to concerts together, we'd go out for a meal and a few drinks often, we'd go to the movies - everything was really great on that end. But what I did not expect, and nor could I ever have  expected, was that sex would be the thing that would start to drive a wedge between us. Now, I've been my women with very healthy libidos in the past. I always found that exciting. But Sonia... she was different. She expected us to have sex every time we were together. Moreover, she almost demanded it. And for the first time in my life... I started having performance issues. It got so bad, I started dreading having to go meet her, because I knew she'd want something from me that I was finding exceedingly difficult to give. And believe me, it wasn't something borne out of a lack of desire for her. Oh no, nothing of the sort. I wanted her and her alone. 

But at the time, going to meet her at where she lived meant a nearly two hour trip to where she lived, and I'd get there after a long day at work, so by the time I got there I was feeling exhausted already. And with the added pressure of the sex... jeez, sometimes getting the damned thing to work was, pun intended, very hard. Very hard, indeed.

Day One hundred and eighty nine - Teleconnect Pt. 1

There are two ways of facing something, be it a relationship, a new job, or, indeed, life. On the one hand, you can take what you have to deal with as an opportunity to grow, to learn, to evolve. And maybe this stance requires that you still have hope beating in your heart, because at the end of the day you want to see that light at the end of the tunnel. On the other hand, you can look at everything as an obstacle, you can have that mindset that if things don't just play out the way you want them to, then you just push away any suggestions that you'd stand to benefit if you compromised a little.

I am the former kind of person, mostly, whilst Sonia was much more of the latter kind, and that was something I learned fairly on in our relationship. But when you're in love - and I was in love with her - you just push these thngs away, you put these thoughts in the backburner. Maybe they don't really matter. Maybe it's all in your head. Maybe you have to adapt to someone while they do not adapt or are willing to adapt to you. Maybe.

But let's focus in the beginning - that first night we spent together we ended up in her place, and we spent that night together. When I woke up I saw Sonia lying next to me, just looking at me. After a few moments of conversation, she asked me if I wanted to be her boyfriend - there was nothing I wanted more. We spent the rest of the day together, and when night fell, she took me to a place by the beach near where she lived. That night, the people would be releasing paper lanterns into the night sky, and as per tradition, onr would make a wish as it went up.

We lit our lantern and together we let it go, as it rose up into the sky, I looked deep in her eyes and I wished - oh how I wished - that this time... that this time would be the one, that she would be the one. And for a while it seemed it was, it seemed she was. Because everything went great - really, really great - for the first few months. I met her daughter, she met my son, we were together every weekend, and soon we'd start planning our first time away together. We made plans to go spend christmas together, just the two of us, somewhere up north. It was perfect, it was a moment so sublime that, had it been locked away in an eternally recurring loop, I would not have minded at all. So how did I ruin it? I told her I loved her. 

And I did, I really did. I knew it the first time we were together. I knew that my heart would open up to her. For her. But she wasn't there yet... she thought I was too soon, going too fast. And from then on, all I could do was try and make up for it.

Day One hundred and eighty eight - Golden cage

The Lady Voldemort drama now finally and completely dealt with, I found it was time for me to live again, unfettered by all that had happened. Summer 2015 I was getting quite active on my social media, and it wasn't like I was really looking for something or someone, but I ended up crossing paths with a girl called Lia. We never were in a relationship, far from it - we had an understanding that whatever it was we had going on was purely sexual, and for a while we became these occasional fuck buddies. 

The problem with these situations is that no matter how much you think that there won't be any feelings involved, somewhere down the line they'll start popping up. And they did, though not on my part. She was decidedly invested in trying to snatch me, but I always knew I'd never feel anything for her - at least not in the same way. I mean, she was nice and kind, and the sex was great, but even that became a bore. Worst of all, sometimes she'd ask to sleep over at her place, and she acted like we were a real couple. I allowed this façade to continue well past fall and into early winter, but by then I was getting to know someone else - Sonia. 

Sonia will be featured in depth in the next few posts, there'll be plenty of stories to be written. I can safely say that it turned out to be one of the least gratifying relationships I've ever been in. I met her online as well - I knew she was friends with a group of people I knew because of a mutual friend, and we eventually became friends as well on facebook. There was never much banter between us, but I admired her from a distance. She intrigued me, so much so that I eventually started talking to her, though I did it out of concern. Now, bear in mind that I neither knew her personally nor knew aught of her private life, but she was always one to post pictures of herself on the regular. But she started to have a look in her eyes - so it seemed to me, at least - that looked like she wasn't doing that well. I reached out to her, and told her just that. I told her I'd been sensing an aura of sadness about her. And the way she responded to that blew my mind.

So Sonia tells me that she'd been eagerly expecting a message from me - she'd had her eye on me, and she was hoping I'd make the first move. But I had never even considered that to be an option, I knew she had a boyfriend. Well... not anymore, she didn't. And that first approach led us to keep on talking on a daily basis, so eventually we decided that it was tine for us to meet in person. 

We had such a lovely night together, we had Indian for dinner, and then ended up in her place. Things were looking very promising indeed.

Day One hundred and eighty seven - Dead inside

I have to add an epilogue to this sad and disturbing story, because after all, Lady Voldemort still had an ace up her sleeves. As if all the manipulation hadn't been enough, as if all the emotional discomfort she'd brought me hadn't been enough, as if her vile and baseless accusation hadn't been enough... she could still sink lower. 

And sink lower indeed she sunk, she resorted to physical threats against me and my family. One day, while at work, I started to get both texts from a number I didn't know as well as facebook messages from her. The texts seemed to be coming from a guy who she'd introduced me to maybe a couple of months earlier who she said was her boyfriend. He was aggressive - like he wanted to hurt me for some reason. Like I'd done him great wrong personally. And I understood the feeling - you see, when I first started dating this chick, she'd told me a lot of bad stories about her ex-boyfriend, stories that I would realize later were eerily similar to my experiences with her and what she accused me of. I realized this was her pattern of behaviour, and I truly felt sad for this poor sap, because once upon a time I was him.

I mean, I didn't even know that guy she dated before me, but in the beginning, as I was being told these stories - these lies - all I wanted to do was find him and beat him to a pulp. Of course I understood the poor idiot she was manipulating - there, but for the grace of god, go I. But his texts were getting increasingly more threatening, and it was interrupting my work day. I blocked his number, but the messages kept on coming from her facebook account. And in one of those messaged, they stated that they knew where I lived, that they could get to me anytime they wanted. Believe, they went on a neverending diatribe about what I'd 'done' and how I would 'pay for it'. 

I just told them that I had prints of every single conversation we had, as well as backups of every single text message we'd exchanged. I let them know how incredibly sad and disppointed I felt, to see them stoop so low. I felt threatened, not only for myself, but for my family. I, as politely as I could, let them know that if they ever contacted me again, then I'd reporting them to the police for harrassment. I promptly blocked them both on facebbok and on my phone, and that was the end of that. Neither Lady Voldemort nor her acolytes ever bothered me again. 

This story unfolded over a year, and is quite possibly one of my true regrets - that I opened my heart, my life, my house to such a unbalanced individual. Though I wish her well, and hope that one day she can be truly happy, my life might have been exponentially easier had I chatted up the girl with the cowboy hat.

Day One hundred and eight six - That's how people grow up

I have to wrap up the Lady Voldemort story, and this final bit will be the hardest for me to put down on writing. And it's hard because it involves a specific thing that I may have only told one or two people ever. So, as summer 2015 progressed, we actually were managing to maintain a very nice and civil friendship. But this one... oh my lord, this one. This one had plans. And if she couldn't keep me, then she'd try to destroy me. 

Things started going south in that respect whenshe invited to go to a festival with her - she had VIP passes on account of being childhood friends with members of a band that was playing - and we had a lot of fun. I got to hang out and talk and get drunk with some really famous people. And just as I was planning to go back home, she asks me if she could stay at my place, she had nowhere to stay. And I felt sorry for her, and said yes. But I also told her that I had my son with me, so she had to be on her best behaviour. When we got home, I prepared a sofa for her in my room, while me and my son slept in my bed. But as soon as she laid on the sofa, she started complaining. Her back hurt. Her legs ached. She wasn't comfortable. And then my son - who'd woken up when we arrived - told her he'd stay on the sofa and she could sleep with me on my bed. I so wasn't looking forward to that, especially because the first thing she did was grab my wee man, if you know what I mean. I told her to stop, but the dumb broad wanted to give me a blowjob. I warned to quit with the antics, or I'd kick her out of my house.

We both went to sleep, and because the next day I had to leave with my son to do something together, I assumed she'd be gone by the time come back. How wrong I was - she ended up staying some two or three more nights. But I was making my discomfort with the situation be very well felt. I was already on tenterhooks by the time she decided to leave. I was pissed off, really. And boy, her revenge would be swift and harsh.

A few days later we were talking and she told me she didn't feel welcome. I told her that she was intruding upon my time with my son. And then the shit hit the fan - she accused of having raped her. I know, this is as crazy as it seems. I asked her when this would have happened, and hey - it was apparently during the last time we had sex, the one that gave her that phantom pregnancy. Now, believe you me, everything that happened that night was wholly consensual on both sides, and I now knew this was just another ploy on her part. But I just felt sad and disappointed with her. She had no need to do these things - she was fairly well known and successful in her own circles, she had plenty of adoration from a legion of guys, and I just wanted to somehow be happy. But it even that, so it seemed, she would deny me.

Day One hundred and eighty five - Three of a perfect pair

As I write all these tales, I realize that some stories almost fall by the wayside. Today I recalled that a little while after Patricia, there was Mafalda. And Mafalda, boy, let me tell you - her, I never got. I never got what happened between us, I never got what didn't happen between us. The best way to describe Mafalda is that she was like a runaway freight train. One that makes a stop, leaves as abruptly as it leaved, comes by some time later, then ups and leaves and rinse and repeat.

So who was Mafalda? Well, I knew her from one of my usual haunts back in the day, though we never met proper. We were never introduced. I eventuallyfound out that she'd been in a relationship with this guy I knew and got along well. But, yeah, even though I'd see her now and again when I went out, and to be fair, found her incredibly attractive, there was neverany interaction between us. But eventually we became facebook friends and would talk on occasion. And in one of those times I asked her if she wanted to meet, and she said ok. We met up after I'd left work - that day I swapped my shift so I'd be leaving at 4 p.m., and I went to meet Mafalda at the same spot where I'd first spent time with Sofia. There were no underlying reasons for that, it's just really a nice place, and It was the perfect spot for us to meet. 

I walked up to her, sat down next to her, and then the runaway train arrived. Now, Mafalda had an unbridled enthusiasm for me the likes of which I never seen before. It was like she had an insatiable hunger for me, and within minutes of us having met for the first time, our lips were locked in fiery passion already. Jesus! Who was this fiery pixie, petite, slim, graceful, and brimming with desire for me? I drank deep of those red lips of hers, hoping that I could return to that well time and time again. And then... after a few days, the runaway train left hastily.

I wasn't offered any explanation, she stopped replying to my texts, and didn't pick up my calls. She had unfriended me from facebook even. And I was stunned. Even more stunned did I feel when some weeks later Mafalda asks me to meet with her so we could have a talk. I met her, and we ended up going to see some french movie together - but we were making out halfway through the movie, and for the next few days all seemed possible. Then... she disappeared again. And then, after a while, in she comes once more. Of course, I believe her - of course I do, that's how gullible I am. But this time I was prepared for the worst, and when it came to pass I politely asked never to do that to me again - she'd squandered all her shots.

But Mafalda, god damn. She'll always be one of my 'what ifs'.

Day One hundred and eighty four - Lucretia my reflection

Before I wrap up the story of Lady Voldemort and her increasingly insane antics, now is as good a time as any to tell the Patricia story. It'll be a short one, because that's just how our relationship was - short. I can't remember now how I met Patricia - maybe she was a facebook friend, maybe we matched on tinder. Whatever the way we crossed paths with each other, I do know that on our first date things had gone pretty well : I felt really good by her side, and she did as well - at least I like to think she did. Soone enough I'd be meeting her young daughter, and she met my son as well. It seemed a good thing. And as the aforementioned drama unfolded, she was extremely supportive of me. She realized at once that I was being manipulated, and encouraged me to sever ties with Lady Voldemort.

One thing I realize now is that we weren't together that often - though we'd talk all the time, I'd see her once, maybe twice a week. Though she didn't live far from me, it was pretty out of the way, so I'd have to meet her halfway or she'd pick me up at home or somewhere else. She was quite busy, though she didn't have a full-time job at that moment. Rather, she was a budding baby photographer, who was making her name well known in that scene, and when she wasn't in photo sessions, she was looking after her kid, and a few weeks at night she'd go to a photography course she was taking to further her own skills. I was busy at work as well, so us not being together that often didn't bother me much back then. It's just funny, looking back now.

She was someone whose presence brought me immense peace, and I have fond memories of us having dinner and drinks at her house, and I adored sleeping by her side. A strange thing : we rarely had sex; though I enjoyed the sex we had, I don't think she did. We never talked about it, maybe because we didn't last that long, but I always got that feeling.

But the thing I'll always remember was the last few hours of our relationship. I was in love with her, and it seemed like she was in love with me as well. On our last night together, I went to the place where she was taking her course, and when we met and I saw her - she was so well dressed, so radiant, so beautiful - I fell in love with her even more. My heart really hoped she was the one.

We went back to her place, and when we went to bed, I was still swimming in the warmth of this feeling. And then I did the most stupid thing I could've ever done. I gave her an out.

So I tell her that I'm pretty much completely totally in love with her. And that if she had any doubts, or didn't feel the same way for me, if she felt it was best we called it quits... then all she had to do was tell me. I'd understand.

We talked some more, she said everything was great between us, we kissed goodnight and went to sleep. The next morning, she drove me to work, and just as I'm about to kiss her goodbyes, she looks at me and asks me if I remember what we'd talk about the night before. I said yeah, I sure did.

Why would I have been expecting for anything else but for her to tell she was taking me up on my offer and calling it quits? Truly, I am the stupidest person alive.

Day One hundred and eighty three - This night has opened my eyes

By early 2015, I'd made it abundantly clear to she-who-must-not-be-named that we were more done. I had, in fact, started seeing someone else - Patricia. But you'll learn that story in its due time. However, just because I thought that it was over, it didn't really mean it was...

So now, already in a relationship with someone - a far healthier one, at that - and us not making a secret of it on facebook, Lady Voldemort decided to turn her gaze towards us. She felt slighted. She felt scorned. She felt like she had lost a chump she had on the palm of her hands. And she wanted to hold dominion over me again. But I pushed away all her attempts, and that drove her to do something truly desperate.

And so it goes that one night, while at work, I get a text from her, and she's saying that she's pregnant. Not only that, but that it's mine, because I'd been the last person she'd had sex with. Now, I highly doubted that, and moreover, I vividly remember just the kind of sex with had. And without being too vulgar, let me add that it wasn't a type of sex that would be - at all - conducive to someone getting pregnant. But what do I know? Maybe I was unlucky, maybe some goo leaked and got in, I don't know. 

What I do know was... that I believed her. She even sent me a picture of an ultrasound she said she'd done. And I believed her. I did, because I am incredily naive and gullible. And, of course, I would soon find out that it was all a ruse, a lie. She was never pregnant, that was just a picture she got from the internet, and because, of course, I wasn't with her personally at all during that time, also helped me believe the fantasy. 

A fantasy, indeed, it was - one formulated by a sick, twisted mind, that went so far as telling me she'd had a miscarriage. And funnily enough.. she said that she had gone and done one of her gigs straight after that ghost miscarriage. This just completely opened my eyes and whatever she came up with moving forward, I just paid no heed. I was far more interested in my budding relationship with Patricia, and continue to spend my time with my son during the weekends. Those were my priorities.

I saw her a couple of times sometime after that - to her credit she did try to establish a friendship with me, and I wouldn't deny her that. We kept things civil between us, she got me tickets for her gigs whenever she played in town, and she eventually got me a backstage pass to a festival where I hung out with a bunch of famous people. That story will have a dedicated post to it, and quite soon, because the aftermath of that would lead to craziness the likes of which make this story right here seem perfectly normal.