Mr. Brightside.

"I just can't look, it's killing me...and taking control. Jealousy, turning saints into the sea. Swimming through sick lullabies, choking on your alibies. But it's just the price I pay! Destiny is calling me, open up my eager eyes. 'Cause I'm Mr. Brightside.

I'm seeing a counselor again. She seems like a nice lady and everything, but I think I can tell what direction we're going to take. It's the same conclusion that my last counselor and I reached - that there's nothing to do, that other people and the world are what they are, and all I can do is become stronger, more tolerant, and carry on.

I am convinced that who I am is good. I really care about other people and am empathetic to them, and am a far better listener than anyone else I know. That is something I will never try to change, even if it makes me so lonely sometimes when I want the same in return. Even if it leads to periods like this where I want to disappear forever.

It is also true that every time I go through a period like this, I become more tolerant of the next one. I am beginning to feel better already, and though I know I am not even close to where I was last October, when I was probably the happiest I had ever been in my entire life, this is still a relatively quick recovery for me.

But I don't want my life to be all about being Mr. Brightside and just hoping for things that won't come. It would be nice someday to know that all I hoped for really was going to come true. That true, loyal, loving life-long friends will be mine. That I can get married and make a family. Unlike in the Killers song posted above, it would be nice to not watch while other people receive what I want from life, while I watch and hope for my turn.

I know there is nothing to be done, except to be a stronger person. At my mother's funeral, that was one of the things I quoted from her during the eulogy. "Don't pray for an easy life, pray to be a strong person." OK, Mom. I will.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to be a strong person.

Railroaded.

"Maybe it's time to change...And leave it all behind! I've never been one to walk alone, I've always been scared to try. So why does it feel so wrong, to reach for something more...to wanna live a better life? What am I waiting for? 'Cause nothing stays the same. Maybe it's time to change."

I feel like many of the changes and choices I've made in the past year and a half were not my own. My career has never been my primary concern in life (perhaps a fault) but yet, in the past year and a half I've completely changed my career path, and made it a reality...almost effortlessly. I applied to a competitive program late and got in...two years later, I'm going to graduate. I passed both my major exams to become a counselor, with barely any effort. I've been getting congratulated on passing them, but honestly...I barely studied. How did I succeed?

Yet, the things I've put the most effort into the last six years have been mostly unsuccessful. The things I chose for myself, the things I wanted most were always out of reach. My career was always something off in the corner...a necessary burden. But yet, I've succeeded in that effortlessly.

It feels like a path has been chosen for me. Sometimes I wonder how I ended up where I am. It seems like just yesterday, I planned to ask my girlfriend to marry me within months, find a job in English, and keep in touch with all my friends...two and a half years later, I don't have any plans at all, but it looks like somehow I'm going to go off alone to a distant city to be a counselor with no plans to date anyone ever again. I could have never planned this. In fact, I didn't. This wasn't the plan at all, and I have done barely anything at all to push it this way. Quite the opposite. I've fought it every step of the way, laying down my own plans...good plans. I was very methodical, very intentional in everything I did. Yet here I am.

I accept this, now. I don't like it, but I accept it. My good friends tell me I should like it. I agree, I wish I could. I wish I could want what God apparently wants to give to me. But I don't. I don't yet understand or know how to want something that I don't really want. I'm just not there.

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream to unrail.

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.

Happiness and memories.

I've noticed there are two types of people: those who see a happy picture from long ago and feel happy, and those who see a happy picture from long ago and feel sad.

I am one of the latter. The difference between myself and those who see old pictures with happiness is that the happy ones are the ones who know that those times will come again. Me, I don't. The future terrifies me.

Why? Because I know something other people don't. I have discovered that when people have a good group of friends, they don't look for more friends. They don't care about friends that have gone before them - at least, not in any real conscious, present way, just in the abstract "I hope wherever they are and whatever they're doing, they are happy." As long as my friends have plenty of other friends, I am disposable. The only way it is ever different is if I do something to make them feel guilty - or their other friends leave them. And neither of those are solutions that interest me. This is the truth.

My time is over. It has been long over, in fact. My senior year of college was two years ago, and now I am all washed up, even if am still a student - a graduate student, but a student nonetheless. I look around me and see happy people who were first brought into this community by my class - some of them by me personally. It has never really seemed to matter. So long as they are happy, they could care less how lonely I am. They can certainly pretend to care - they have to in order to feel OK about themselves - but in the end, if I never reached out and asked people to spend time with me, I would probably talk to people a couple times a year. There are a few out there who are legitimately busy - I understand that very well, indeed I do - but there are others who have their band, their group, their "one from many" of which I can never hope to take part. I'm too old - even when I do somehow spend time with people here, I feel like an outsider. I belong to a group of people who have already left me behind.

The times I've been happiest in life is when I really felt a part of something greater than myself. The times when I wasn't just a friend, but part of a group of friends. Those were the best. And now, I am on the verge of leaving behind every good thing I've had on earth. All that I ever really had was here, at school. If I couldn't make friendships that last here, what hope do I have out there, where it is so much harder?

There was a dream that I dreamed, a dream of constant memory.