Melee.

Melee: a confused struggle.

I'm in a melee. I'm struggling and I don't know who I'm even fighting anymore. Myself? Someone else? Satan? God?

It seems lately like every time I write one of these posts, it's to undo the last one. Am I just crazy, or does my life really change this quickly? Do I really gain so much only to lose it a few days later?

I don't know what I've done, but I'm getting punished anyway. I feel like the world owes me an apology. I am trying to cope and stay happy but this is really something else. As tempted as I am to blame one person, this is not the fault of one person...this is just a lot of people doing little things over time. I am worn out of it. I have talked incessantly about all of the things that have bothered me in my life. I am tired of it. All I can do is just wait until I can move on, and I can hold on to the good friends I have until they move on.

I did so much, and it never mattered. But I didn't know that I could get hurt by doing nothing, too.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to see the face of the enemy.

"You go on."

"Death, but not for you, gunslinger. Never for you. You darkle. You tinct. May I be brutally frank? You go on."

The frank, bitter, but thankfully (and finally) truthful comments of a friend(?) have led me to question my writing of this blog. What real purpose does it serve? I am quite sure I don't know, and don't really want to know. Yes, I do write of my feelings and share them on the Internet, of all places. The real question is, is it the right thing to do to write these posts? I am not positive I have any way of knowing that right now, and quite frankly I suspect it doesn't really matter whether I do or do not. The content matters.

So the content of this post is about going on. Really, I have settled into a sort of complacency with my place in life right now. Ultimately, it is a healthy, spiritual complacency. Deep down, though, I feel I miss some of the romanticism I used to espouse, however unhealthily I managed it. Life was more exciting when I let myself have expectations. Now that I have none, it seems that I just go on.

I'm not saying this is such a bad thing, considering that how things turned out when I let myself get excited about things that were ultimately not guaranteed and even improbable. There's nothing wrong with getting a little romantic about the future, so long as it doesn't get in the way of you doing the right thing in the present moment. I think that was my problem, all along. I've solved the problem by destroying the romanticism, not by just centering myself on the present.

As I write this, I suspect maybe I'm going too far. I feel as though I do have a reasonable amount of hope for happy endings in my future, but it's not quite the same flavor as the experiences I used to have in less sane times of my life. For now though, I'll leave my musing at that.

What is really pressing on my mind at the moment is friendship. I have spent so great a deal of time on this topic in the past four years or so that I am not sure what else I can say about it, but this: that I am now quite sure that friendships are not chosen, but born. They live and die, they can become sick or strong. I really wish I had come to this conclusion in another way, but recent experiences prove this fact to me, and I suppose I should be grateful.

Some friendships...well, they just go on too. So many of my own are going on in a way that makes me wonder whether I really have any at all. Why would I say such a thing, you might ask. Well, I feel as though there is really only one person in this world who knows who I really am. And I recently found out someone I trusted has secretly harbored an animosity of sorts to knowing who I really am. A repulsion, perhaps, is a more accurate term. No matter how I describe it, of course, this person would deny it. But I hear through double-speak, and it doesn't fool me.

I must say I know he was right on one account: I was a hypocrite...on one occasion. I complained that it sometimes bothers me that no one seems to really want to ask me about myself, and most of the time now when I spend time with people they dominate the conversation. I clarified that most of the time I don't mind - because I truly want to know people better. Well, I screwed up by doing that exact thing to him. However, that doesn't erase the fact I really would have liked to gotten to know him better...and really, that one time...that one time...I really needed someone to listen to me.

I don't want my friendships to stagnate. Now I have made both mistakes - I have been all the way the dominant person, and now I have been the submissive listener too. I want friendships where both people get to know each other better...not a friendship that stagnates. I want friendships that are honest - not like the friend mentioned who would have made me guess to the uttermost end that all along he was unhappy with me, instead of telling me.

I am certainly more grateful now for the friendships I have that I have clearly not chosen...because those are becoming my best friendships...to those friends reading, you know who you are.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream for full, exciting friendships.

Iron will.

I'm better now.

Sometimes the only reason I want to continue with something is because I can't stand to give up. I admire perseverance too much.

I like the hero of a story the most when he has his face in the mud but refuses to die.

For instance, one of my favorite moments in Dragon Ball Z is when Goku is being held under the water by Frieza, too hurt to fight back, slowly drowning...then he thinks about his family and finds the strength to beat his way to the surface.

I love the moment in the Lord of the Rings where Aragorn is quite sure that Frodo is dead and the Ring is in the hands of the enemy. Certain doom for them all. Yet, he clings on to hope and charges into battle against hundreds of thousands of orcs. Ready to fight, always.

For that matter, I love the part where Merry and Pippin are surrounded by Uruk-Hai, and Boromir rushes in to save them, literally taking them all on and winning...for a while, at least. He never gave up on redeeming himself...some of his last words being how sorry he was that he assaulted Frodo.

And what about Roland Deschain, last gunslinger of the line of Eld? Virtually all of his friends and family dead, murdered in the eternal war against darkness, the entire fabric of reality collapsing around him...the only one who can reach the Dark Tower and reverse the damage caused by the Crimson King and save all existence...yet he plods on. The most recognizable quote from the Dark Tower is "The man in black fled across the desert...and the gunslinger follows." His progress, like his will...inexorable.

In Star Wars, the moment where Luke is about to be executed via the long, slow digestion of the Sarlacc, lightsaber nowhere in sight, surrounded by Jabba's henchmen. When all hope was lost, he was prepared all along to fight for the freedom of his friends. Later, he shows that he never gave up on his father Darth Vader, whom was thought to be lost to evil even by the optimistic Obi-Wan, Vader's former mentor. Luke's love saved Darth Vader.

There are so many other examples that I love...William Wallace, the Elric brothers, Leonidas, Westley, Maximus...How can I give up when all of the fictional characters I admire never did? People who aren't even real. The characters I spent so long watching, reading about, wishing I was them...well, this is the way I will be like them. I won't give up, even on myself, on my own doubtful mind.

The example I know I should hold above all though, is the One who said, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" He never gave up, either.

He never gave up on me.

There was a dream that I dreamed, and that dream was for a fight to the end.