WARNING: The following entry is extremely personal and therefore full of self aggrandisement and bellicose melodrama. But then, that's why we read blogs, right?

[excerpt from my journal. July 27, cir. 1997. Stacey and I had been dating for one year.

"...I spend a lot of time thinking about Stacey, and it seems a lot of my motivation comes from her. Even when I do something for myself, I have her in mind. Tonight I've started writing this journal again -- and somewhere in the back of my mind is the thought that she might read it. Dependence!" ]

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A little self reflection. What got me thinking about this? I was thinking about how I had changed since Stacey and I split. That day. If my New Years is Burning Man, than that day must be my birthday. The day I was torn from my self. I thought I couldn't breathe, then somebody slapped me and I started crying.

Stacey said it best I think. "I needed you first and you needed me last." She needed the kind of person I was when we met. Then we needed each other. Then I just needed her. I even needed her to leave me, which she was kind enough to do. I just didn't know it. I didn't see how much of myself I'd let go of. I force-fed myself into our dying relationship until I wasn't me anymore. And Stacey kept asking me "what do you want? What do YOU want?" and I didn't. Want. Anything.

I can't stay here anymore. There's nothing for me here. I can't be a fucking waitress all my life. I'm going to Ohio and I'm going to grad school. What are you gong to do?

I'll go too.

What will you do there? I don't even think you can get a job in Athens. What are you going to do?

I don't care. I'll work in a gas station. I'll be happy. I don't care what I do I just want to be with you. I just need to be with you. I need. you.

That all ended on a rainy night in my old saturn in Ohio when somebody pulled the rug out from under my universe. Parked at a cemetery in the middle of the night like high school kids making out. But we weren't at all. I remember staring at my hands, at the plastic glove compartment. At my own hollowness reflected in the absolute black of the car window. Getting out of the car. My car. I didn't drive. I had given it to Stacey. Standing in the rain and realizing there was nowhere to go anymore. Nothing to do. Getting back in the car... happy birthday.

Fast forward two years.

So I guess I'm all better now, huh? Got no strings to hold me down, make me smile, make me frown?

I'm a thirty-one-year-old functionally illiterate bachelor in a dead end job making under forty grand a year. I've jumped ship from a lucrative and successful career. Most of my friends here are in their twenties. Most of my friends at home, with one or two exceptions, are married and now have children. I live in an apartment the size of a casket. I live alone.

But here's the thing. I got here myself.

And I know who that is now, or at least I've got a better idea. Which I think sometimes when I look around that maybe not everybody does. I'm more open and vulnerable now, because I can afford to be because I'm stronger. I'm too lazy. I need to get back in shape. I enjoy teaching. I'm good at it. I have a strong need to express myself, to share stuff. I'm lonely. I still don't know what I want... I'm a lot of stuff with a lot of problems. But it's nobody's fault but my own.

Sometimes we don't meet ourselves until later in life. Maybe we see ourselves on a train platform. We're passing by and we just see ourselves there. Standing in a jacket with our hands dug in our pockets. We've got our hat on and our head up and we're looking at the people in the trains passing by... Our eyes meet for a second and then we're gone.