We really are a lot alike in virtually all of this. But I don't really want to be touched, and I don't actually cry ever. Only a tear for my own sentimentality.

I've never cried harder, in my entire life, than when I did something critically beneficial for someone who desperately needed help, or for those who have been discarded by their family for being themselves, whatever the reason.

I have been thrown away too many times, from too young an age. Was never really treated whole, and it took me a lifetime of searching, in vain obviously, for something that I had never even lost. Either never knew, or had forgotten; but absent, all the same.

I had just had another female host take my whole check, break up with me, issue my eviction notice. I had just rescued my friend from suicide, told him what to say to make sure they didn't put him in the psych ward, moved him into our house, because he was also getting kicked out of his dig for being a blubbering drunk. How fucking shallow, right? I mean, so long as you aren't hurting anyone, what the fuck does it matter?

Anyhow, went to stay with my sister, again, found this book in her bathroom drawer. Tao Te Ching.

I read it in one sitting, which took a highly absorbant hour and a halfish. Finally realized the joke had been on me. Such a fool. Infantile pleb.

It didn't change my life, Broseph. I did. But it did help me make sense of the jumbled mess my life had always been. Hell, even still is.

Enlightenment was like a season. A long season. Struck in a flash, faded for a year and a half, until only my lessons remained.

I no longer seek out the needy. I hide away in seclusion, with no need to act happy. But I am also not miserable anymore, or lonely.

I keep myself busy though, even if I'm just lying down, watching a movie. There is always stimulation. Haven't meditated for years now, because these motherfuckers--I mean, my family that I love--are too loud.

I am content.

But there has always been that underlying sensation, even when I finally have all of the security that I have always been lacking. Something just doesn't feel right, I'm exhausted. I just want to fall asleep and never wake up dead. :)

It's like a parrot, or a splashy goldfish. Or like a cat who not-so-secretly hates you. Existing is like being an exposed nerve, like being a geiger counter in a box that is sure to be exposed to radioactive material, like trying to read a book in a pitch black room with a worn out light switch--flip it all you want; the hold slips, light dies, darkness wins. Worse than pushing a button for food pellets, infinitely more tedious.

I prefer to just experience life these days, let my story write itself. Like I'm rumpelstiltskin, AND goldilocks, or however the fuck, weaving porridge into gold nuggets.

Easy street is paved cheese graters, and I'm sure I must appear to be sliding down the escalator, running through the grinder, lumpier than a sack of potatoes getting ripped through the chipper.

Hot, cold.... Everything tastes like shit to me!