Futility.

It's not so much what happened, it's how it happened.

If I fail at something, I want to know that it's a part of something greater, and that I could have done better - just not now. I want to know that I made mistakes that I could not have fixed before my failure, but that I will never make them again because of the failure.

I think I'm beyond that now.

Writing this blog has heightened my awareness of just how cyclical my life is. Compare the following posts:

http://jpsdream.blogspot.com/2014/01/on-regrouping.html AND http://jpsdream.blogspot.com/2012/05/death-exile-and-magus.html

That's just one example of the repetition of my problems. In the end, I really believe I don't care that I'm not dating anyone. I believe my present frustration and sadness has nothing to do with the fact I got snubbed again, after 5 months of preparation. I don't think I'm even really bothered that the only person I've been interested in a long time is dating someone now. Other empathetic, interesting, fun, intuitive women exist. I've met plenty (even if none of them liked me like that). But what I do know for sure is that I am so put out by the futility of it all...the futility of this cycle. It seems like nothing I do really matters. I have tried every strategy I've heard of, I've approached it at all kinds of angles, I've pursued women who were friends before I liked them and I've pursued women I just met. I've worked through fear, discouragement, and despair to do all of this, and none of it really mattered.

Is it really any surprise if I say that I would really rather not bother with it anymore, even if I want to get married?

The same goes for anything else, really. The only three things I really care about are friends, love, and God. And of course, those are the three things that I have the biggest problems with. It has never really made any difference how much effort I put into any sort of strategy or lack of strategy. Things always turn out however they were meant to turn out. And the result is rarely anything I'm pleased with.

If I'm supposed to only meet people who really don't live up to what I always hope for in a friendship, then why can't I just be someone who needs different things from a friend? Why did I become someone who craves a friendship based only on how people feel, and not something easy like a love of sports? Why do I want to have friends who reach out to me, instead of friends who stay in their own world? It just doesn't make any sense to me that I would become a person exactly unsuited to their environment, and then find it impossible to escape it.

I have really met my limit many times, and always pushed beyond it. I'm there now. I've had enough of life. Someday, I will be glad I am alive. And then I will suffer disappointment again, and realize that I just reached another point in the cycle. And in the end, nothing will change. Because nothing ever really changes. New job, new city, all the same problems. And none of my dreams have come true. It's hard to believe when I started this blog, I still believed in dreams. That's why I gave this blog the title I gave it, and end each post with a variation of the same sentence. But now, I don't believe in dreams anymore. I think dreams are a lie that serve as a foundation for false hope. I believe some people never get what they want from life.

I believe I will be one of them.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream that was no dream at all.

On why I write.

Writing can be a healing thing.

I would know, I have used it all my life. It hasn't mattered whether I was an introvert, like when I was young, or an extrovert, in my adulthood, writing has always been a healing matter for me.

When no one understood me, I understood me, and I could prove it to myself by writing about it. Having the words of how I really feel stare back at me was always satisfying, even if there was no one to read it. Here, at least, I can compose a perfect picture of what is going on inside me. There is no other way I know how to do that.

In my professional career, I have already used writing as a tool. Most of my clients would rather not write, but there have been a few that would. And I think they have found healing, too, because sometimes, there is just no one to talk to. No one that really helps, anyway. And that is where writing can heal when there is no other balm.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to write everything away.

On regrouping.

"Reform the line! Reform the line..."

On the battlefield, after a charge or just after a certain amount of time, things tend to get messy. Soldiers tend to go astray in their pursuit of the enemy. If they are allowed to stay like this, it is easy for the enemy to overtake many of these stray soldiers and kill them.

However, a wise leader will call for his soldiers to regroup. Soldiers are stronger in groups and far less likely to die.

Reader, I have been a warring nation. For the past seven years, I have never gone beyond perhaps a month without declaring war; I have always known what I wanted and been willing to try and take it. But I've only ever won a single war. For ten and a half months, I held my ground until I decided that my army wasn't compatible with the land and I abdicated it.

Since that time, things had gone very badly. I doubled my efforts. Tripled them. And still, somehow my charges would be broken, or the enemy would overcome me, or all would be lost in some confusing melee. And when all seemed darkest, I finally declared peace. For nearly 6 months now, I had fought no wars. I have often wrote of this in my blog. Sometimes when I wrote of it, I was happy. Sometimes, I was ambivalent. But at no point did I declare it a bad idea.

Recently, I fought again. Out of nowhere, it seemed, which made it all the more compelling to me. It just seemed right. I had lost a lot of confidence in myself, but I didn't want fear to hold me back. There were some confusing things going on, but even those I set aside, all for the sake doing what seemed natural. I had doubts about victory, and was at times certain that this, too, would end badly, but there were other things that encouraged me and made me certain that I would win this one. "If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight," says the Art of War.

But, as suddenly as it started, the war was over. I lost. And now my soldiers are scattered everywhere, dazed. It's up to me now. I must regroup. I must hold the line. Other people are counting on me to hold everything together, so that bandits don't burn my crops, or kill my people, or pillage my goods.

But it's hard. I wasn't sure that I could handle another defeat. I was sure that another defeat would destroy me for good. But here I am. As I've written before, I'm like the Gunslinger from the Dark Tower. "You darkle, you tinct. May I be frank? You go on." I will go on. Like before.

But to what purpose? Is this what my entire life is going to be? Here the allegory ends, and I will be frank. My job is to help people through their problems and for them to feel better. And among my friends, that is what I do, too. But at the end of every day, I am alone. I have no one. Everyone I ever had has left me behind for greater purposes, and I must accept it. But it just feels like no one really cares about me. For a little while, at least, that seemed about to change. But they're gone too. They have to go. And if they're reading this and not taking a break like I would, I want them to know I'm sorry, too. Maybe someday things will be different. But I don't know when that will be, and I don't care.

I just need to regroup for a while.

There was a dream that I dream, a dream of sure victory.

Requiem for a wedding.

I wonder why people make wedding receptions feel like a goodbye party.

I recently attended one for a dear, dear friend. Let me tell you about this friend. She was someone who, against all odds and reason, became my friend and was there for me during a difficult time in my life. Almost every day of last summer, she loved me as if I were her brother and helped me when I needed it the most. And I think I’ll probably never have that with her again. Things always change when people get married, which was all I could think about while I was at her wedding reception, and she was as beautiful and jovial and alive as always. Her story goes on without me. Exeunt: I have left her tale as a character, probably forever. Although I know we will probably speak again, it won’t be like it was in my last summer in the college town I loved…sitting there listening to her, and having her listen to me.

Sometimes when I wonder why it feels like the universe has conspired to make me exactly the strange person that I am, and destiny conspired to bring me to the people and places I needed to be at, that I was chosen for a role in people’s lives that brings so many mixed feelings. I met someone recently who sympathized with me on the feeling that our lives are not our own, but for her it was a joyful, pleasant thing. I would have to say that reading this blog would deceive my readers into believing that it is not so with me. I said mixed feelings: this is true. It was a joy to meet my friend, as it is a joy to have helped her in her times of struggle, and to have her in return help me last summer…all because of chance, it would seem. But the 'saying goodbye' is as painful as the 'getting to know' is joyful. I always lose as much as I gain. And that’s when I write about it. Because, what else is there to do? You can’t go back in time. So I immortalize my memory in type.

I do know that it is not truly destiny, chance, or the universe, but God that has done these wonderful things to me and through me. But as much as I wish it did, this has never brought me much comfort. Even when I sit in silence over the thought that God loves me and that my day will come, it never quite overcomes the feeling that the sort of happy ending I see at weddings is not for me, never for me. I darkle, I tinct, the Man in Black from the Dark Tower would say. It just doesn’t seem to “fit” the theme of my story. My life is about moving, growing, building an empire of love and friendship, watching it topple, and then building it all over again. Perseverance, not permanence; truth, not trust; cynicism, and not certainty.

But, of course, I still want it. Why not? It’s what I do. It’s all I do.

And so I go on as I always do, and I always make the choices that seem like they are the only choices…and when things go well, they go well. When things don’t go well, all I can ask is “what else was I supposed to do?” And there is never a reply.

For now though, I am happy. I am tired and happy, and I could not ask for better than that.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for a change in theme.