from 7...I'm always late. Can't let them win-I can't have something admittedly wrong with me that I can't control, otherwise they win. They'd be right, they would've been right all along, they would've been right through their wrong actions, they would've used me as their scapegoat for all their wrong actions and bad decisions. And they don't deserve shit, that I know is true. They can't have the luxury of knowing that I failed, that I ended up just how they expected me to. But of course, at the moment, they're winning, and I'm on a downward spiral to nothingness.

If hear one more of you jerk-offs pooh-poohing about this politics-war-bombing shit, I'm gonna blow my top and start my OWN war. Your pretension is killing me. You clowns sit leisurely in coffee shops worthlessly moralizing, you put catchy anti/pro-war bumper stickers on your fucking Volvos, and you watch CNN with glazed eyes and a vacant mind. Just be honest; you really don't give a shit-if you did, you'd either have a gun in your hands, or you'd be a body shield for Saddam and his 'stache. You're just so fucking bland that you've got nothing else to talk about.

It's 3:40 am, and I've just gotten home from my lovely job. It's quiet now, too quiet, so quiet that I'm afraid the piercing cacophony in my head will wake my roommates. The last five days, due to some special requirements of work/school, my daily rhythms have become totally fucked, so I'm not sure what the hell I'm supposed to be doing right now. My hate has pierced new depths of my soul, my life's gravedigger has pushed his poison-tipped spade ever closer to the core of my being, and I languish under the growing mound of cares and fears.

To say I'm innocent is to say a bald-faced lie. It's in no part of my being. I talk high and mighty, I talk pretty, but my actions never follow my words. My passion for my dreams is lackluster. My love for my friends and my mother is less than that for the nonexistent images in my head. I do what I do at work to make people dependent on me, to make them subject to me, not to do what is best for everybody. I look to love, but all I end up doing is fucking, if even that.

I was close two-and-a-half years ago. Close...all I needed was one more desperate night with a liter of cheap-shit gin (of which I had two), and I wouldn't have been here to bug any of you any longer. Sometimes I question myself if I made the right decision that night...I haven't been a good investment, to say the least. But I thought of my mother, and how it would've hurt her more to not have a son at all as opposed to just having one who was a loser. That shit just ain't fair to my lovely self-destruction, is it?

Look, I'll be honest. I don't know how to do the date thing-a movie, dinner, the usual ho-hum small-talk is the closest I get to normal. I just copy shit that I see or hear-nothing's truly my own. I'm not even that good at seduction; all the women I've fucked for the most part threw themselves at me (God only knows...) and all I did was follow my dick. Even then, I wasn't that great a lay-never could bust that third nut. Just short and done and asleep, ladies, and don't expect anything else, because I can't do anything else.

Sometimes, I just ain't got the energy to get out of the bed and face the day. This week was one of those days. I know it's that I don't have the energy to actualize my ambition, and that breeds a frustration that keeps me scared of the world. Maybe age, maybe a chemical imbalance in my head that's worsened with age. I know I've got to get through this life on my own, because otherwise they win, and I can't fucking let them win-they don't deserve it. They don't deserve their rightness birthed by my demise. They can't win.

No wonder my relationships have always had a limit around a month; I never learned how to listen to another person. Never learned how to sit down and talk with a woman openly; all I did was imitate shit I'd seen before, what my friends did, what I saw on TV and in the movies, anything and everything that wasn't my own. I suppose there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this-how humans learn is by imitation. But I feel cheap, like a pretty window dressing in a shop with nothing to sell. With nothing to sell, no one's buying a thing.

These words, these thoughts, MY word, it's all fucking bullshit. My word is worth less than a stingy, tarnished penny dissolving in a puddle of day-old dirty rainwater. I don't know why I even bother to talk to anyone anymore, since the shit that spews out of my mouth is like air, nothing. It meant nothing, all the things I said I'd do but didn't, it meant nothing to all those who I'd made promises to and broke. I think I have broken every single one, and every single instance was just adding to the string of my life's lie.

It's four in the afternoon, and the beers go down so smoothly, they ease me into a stupor where I don't have to think or rectify. I'm a fucking dead man, a dead man with too many lives and near misses, a dead man still breathing. Funny-I'd die a million deaths for you, I'd kill a million men for you, I'd conquer worlds and minds for you, anything I would do for you, with one unfortunate exception-I can't live one simple, decent life for you. I can't just wake up every morning and be the man you need and deserve.

I have absolutely no control over my impulses, my actions, or my emotions. I have absolutely no loyalty to my mother and my friends and my responsibilities. I have very little energy left to fight the decay of my life. I can't stop the voices or the delusions in my head, I can't stop the consistent, dull ache in the pit of my soul, I can't stop the assuaging that booze brings, I can't stop my hatred and disgust and frustration at what this fucking life has become. And I languish, I languish through every second of this fucking existence.

My mood has mellowed since the first few beers. Unfortunately, I need these beers, because otherwise I don't think I can make it through this night. Pathetic, that my only consolation is the numbing comfort of booze. But that's it, motherfucker, just my Rolling Rock and this fucking writing torture that I've put myself through AGAIN for a second time.................................................................. My dreams and hopes were just mildly entertaining thoughts to occupy my idle time while I waited for work or class.................................................................................................... I am a ghost that walks through streets and stores, transparent, less than a breeze that riles the dust.

I wait for rain, and maybe an epiphany, but really, nothing else. The former may come, the latter, never, and still, I wish for the snow to come. It doesn't, not any longer, because I'm too low, too low to be cold enough, and you always have to be just enough, know what I mean? I remember the white stillness, I remember the stinging cold, I remember people fighting to get their cars to move, and mine, miraculously, moving freely, across terrain that others knew nothing about, but with which I was intimate, like a cheap lover, in another's world.

I still think about my father, even though I continually try to banish thoughts of him from my mind. Sometimes I think of him with hatred, rarely longingly, often with pity, often with regret, and always with frustration. We both beat each other up pretty good, that's for sure. We didn't consciously mean to do what we did to each other, but I think our war was a result of the frustration created by switched roles and unmet expectations. He wasn't a very good father, and I sure as hell wasn't a good son, so I killed us years ago.

I still think about my father, even though I continually try to banish thoughts of him from my mind. Sometimes I think of him with hatred, rarely longingly, often with pity, often with regret, and always with frustration. We both beat each other up pretty good, that's for sure. We didn't consciously mean to do what we did to each other, but I think our war was a result of the frustration created by switched roles and unmet expectations. He wasn't a very good father, and I sure as hell wasn't a good son, so I killed us years ago.

I wrap myself in this blanket of alcoholic warmth, soothing my headache and assuaging my aching soul. No thoughts, please, just a little time where all can't touch me, where I can't touch me, and I can't touch anybody else. I need time, time to wash this heart of its pain and its desire and its bullshit and its delusion, time to clean it with this engine degreaser in this here bottle. No I don't want to talk, no I don't want a helping hand, I just want to fade, and be a shadow in this world, untouchable and unseen.

It's been a good two weeks now of heavy drinking and isolation. Just too much work that needs to be done, and just not enough time. So, I awake around 3:30 on my days off, go to the liquor store, the fast-food joint, then drink away my reality, cloud it under a smear of booze and brainless television. Let others catch the beautiful girl, let others turn a decent buck, let others own a nice home in a safe neighborhood. Just give me the darkness and a well-stocked liquor cabinet, and I might make it through the night. We'll see....

I fear I have an almost tragicomic resiliency. See, no matter what kind of abuse I put myself through, I always come out unscathed. I rolled my truck, drunk, on a hairpin curve by a mountain cliff at 70 mph, and?... a scratched hand. So large a quantity of booze and drugs, and what happened? Just a little spacey the morning after. Crashed into a mountain sixty miles into the wilderness on a desolate road without a soul around? Just opened a hole in my CV boot. So many times, too many times, I have been forgiven for my carelessness...till?

Probably manic-depressive, without the manic, with full-blown alcoholism, throw in borderline schizophrenia, a fragmented socio-behavioral paradigm, then a little anxiety and insecurity, and voila! you have the frustrated, self-destructive actions of a middle-aged man in a nowhere land. The recommended treatment should include the following: lots of hooch every night to stave off reality; basic, boring retail work that any pathetic jerk-off can do; good, calming lies to those that care; and not a single fucking thing more. Money, time, and resources are better spent somewhere else, so let the faceless remain unseen. And keep the fucking remote control working.

When I look at you, all I see is sex. I want to follow you into the bathroom, push you roughly up against the tile wall, and kiss you, hard and with force. I'd put my hands up your shirt and rip it off from the inside, take off your bra, then run my tongue and hands all over your face, neck, and tits. Then I'd pull off your pants, tear off your panties, sit you on top of the sink, and fuck you fast and hard until I was done, then I'd walk out without ever seeing you again.

Sure don't make things like they used to. I bought this fucking mouse three months ago, and already the assembly that houses the ball is falling apart, and I'm rarely on the computer. It's all this fucking plastic and photocopy-type production-just like copying a copy, the more you produce with the same machinery, the less fine the products are, hence the less functional and lower lifespan. That seems to be a common theme in this modern world, and I sure as fuck ain't the first to say...I just have little else to say at all. It just ain't worth much...

The rain colors the streets black, as the hues that make up my soul have faded and becomes dull. No, I don't feel what you mean, I'm sorry, I have no sympathy, whoops, I forgot to cry when I ended up laughing. I didn't mean to...but then again, I guess I did, since we're all defined solely by our actions, and never our intentions. Or ideas. Or hopes, dreams, nightmares. And we shouldn't be................................................. The rain has stopped, and so the clamor in my mind can once again begin its bellowing. I am potential that can never be actualized. 100.

Isn't this the first day of spring or something? Either today or two days ago, I just can't remember if it's the 21st or 23rd. Either way, it's usually a turn for the worse for me-as I said long ago, my demeanor and temperament seem to be more even and consistent in the late autumn and winter. Hopefully, Winter will stick around a little longer, but I doubt it-already, the flowers bloom, the sun is warm, the grass is green, and my soul continues to dissolve. I really do miss those quiet morning hours with the snow and my coffee.

I've always bullshitted everybody that I am an honest man, that what flows from my lips is a 100% truth-laden gospel of reality and cause. But I was wrong-my vision of why things happen as they do is clear, but my conscious, verbal realization only happens rarely. The majority of my time I spend in the whirlwind of the falsification of societal perception, and only occasionally do I step back and put things into their proper perspective, to see things as what they DO. It's rare that I put myself in that proper perspective, what most people would never do.

You do know that I'm going insane, right? That the logical course of action of someone in my position would be 180 degrees different than my actions of right now? And that someone who has totally lost all grasp of the impact of their actions would do what I am doing right now? And that, that is itself the definition of insanity? For the first time ever, I have realized that my daily life is not normal, is not logical, is not moral. And for the first time I have to admit that my dreams will always remain just that.

It's amazing how quickly some things can backfire on you. When I first started with my present employer, I ruthlessly and single-handedly usurped just about every task necessary to make my division functional and successful. I did this for two main reasons, and neither quite justifiable: one, I judged myself only on accomplishment; and two, I thought I could do it better than anybody else. Unfortunately, I never planned for the day when I was the ONLY one that could perform ANY of those functions, and now I find myself buried under the weight of my ambition, selfishness, and shortsightedness.

It's amazing that my whole life I have really been broken like this. The fights and tears and pain have been appallingly consistent, while the smiles and those warm moments have been very far and few in between, to say the least. The bruises, the corner, the empty house, the wind howling outside while my soul howled on the inside, the never-ending "could be so much more" speeches, more corners, fumbling come-ons, placeless in the social strata, booze, then drugs, then fucks, then more fights and fucks, no money, my grandmother's deathbed, my mother's tears, and this nothing all alone...

A person's past, and its function, is an enigma. It's been said a million times before that it's certainly not good to dwell on it-you might miss right now. But on the other hand, if you ignore it, it'll keep creeping up in the present, creeping throughout your life in behavior, in mannerisms, in thoughts and relationships, it'll haunt you forever, and that is because you are made up of the past. You are the past, melding with just a sliver of right now. All actions of right now are allowed and guided by the past, ingrained in incomprehensible ways.

I'm not sure if I ever loved her, or if I ever loved any of them. I think I just loved the IDEA of the love, and not the actual person. I don't think I really gave a shit about my mother, but just the idea that I should've given a shit about her. Same goes with the old man, my friends, my family, my lovers-I just loved the idea of our conversations, our dinners, our intimate times. I've always cared so much more for the image, and my image, and I don't know why, I don't fucking know why.

What the fuck do I do now? If anything has been learned in the last three weeks, it's that I don't have tools necessary to actualize my dreams. I'd say fuck this school shit, and drink away my days off while barely making my bills, but when you dream of something that might be better, it's like a fucking poison, because if you can't attain it, and you go through day by day in mediocrity, yet know there's something better, the agony fucking eats away your soul, it makes the waking day a torture chamber for the emotion of hope.

This is a new day, full of promise and possibility for the masses, full of who knows for me. Most likely, the same old shit. The same shit I'm sure you're already plenty tired of reading about. I'm tired too. I'm tired of not knowing, and of this war, and of fate. I don't know what I'll do today-walk unseen as usual, an entity at the right place and the wrong time. Probably alienate more of my coworkers with my frustration and sullen mood. Probably won't answer any of my phone calls. Probably wish I was someone else somewhere else.