So, this chick, Sara, told me we had to talk today. She said "this" wasn't "working". I stopped her before she could launch into what a "great guy" I was and how this "wasn't easy" and all that bullshit. I was pretty stoic and said (rather cryptically, I might add) I wasn't surprised and that I hadn't really felt anything.

I couldn't stop her from saying "I hope we can be friends" (because I was busy secretly feeling sorry for myself and got distracted) but I did tell her that I wasn't interested. I'm not big on dates-into-friends. Also, I'm not accepting any friendship applications right now. Who has the time or the energy to carefully fold up your sexual attraction and stow it away, before making forced attempts at seeing someone in a new light. It serves the asker, not the askee.

Besides, I wanted to bang her and since I didn't, the feeling has gotten stronger. Becoming friends with her would have been the emotional equivalent of blue balls.

I'm a little bummed out by all this, though it could have been far worse, but for a number of factors:

36% The good side of depression is it also stops you from being sad
22% When you're older, you develop an immunity to being fucked over
19% I secretly believe I deserve it...or, it was a secret until I blabbed about it here
12% I believe the reason she dicked me over was because I was nice to her...women are like that, despite all the pc-ness.
08% My feud with my family convinces me love exists, just not for everyone; another thing religion and polite company fail to discuss
03% I know I'm a good friend and a good lay...everything in between is lost on me

I dropped her at home and said thanks for everything. Then, I went home and played with my dog, who was pissed off because I was late feeding her. Then, I sat down and started writing this post.

Tomorrow, I'm going to work. Partly, because I have an obscene amount of work. Mostly, because if I didn't go to work, I wouldn't have anything in my life.

New Years is coming up and I don't think I'm doing anything. Not because I'm not lonely and don't want to spend time with "friends"...but because I don't think I have the ability to disguise my bitterness and disenchantment any longer. I'd drink too much, get belligerent with people I didn't know and snappy with people I do know. I would probably also get into some kind of fight. I would also wish that the person I fight with, would kick my fucking ass. I really wish somebody would. It would feel like I had it coming, but also it would be a nice change to feel something. Pretty much anything.

I really can't feel anything right now. If you've ever read Leslie Thomas, say "Tropic of Ruislip, you'll know the sadness mixed with bewilderment that he infuses in all his male characters and that'd be me. Also Thoreau's "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation" quote is fitting here.

I don't want to be dramatic and suicide is definitely not on the cards (please don't even think about leaving a comment or phoning to "check in"..I'm just talking here and besides, I don't give a crap what you have to say) but it's tempting to think of an absence of life. I mean, this existence is just such an undignified, thankless, toilsome (if such a word exists) tapestry of disappointments and letdowns. What is the fucking point?

Of course, the comedy of how my entire outlook would have been altered had Sara remained, only to sleep with me, only to fall for me, only for us to build lives together, have babies and give them happy little lives...it's a really bad cosmic joke, but that's how things work. But it didn't pan out that way and here I am.

Another school of thought (the Egyptian one, I think; possibly the last time the words "Egyptian" and "thought" were used in the same sentence) is that it's high time I picked a good girl, married her, had babies and distracted myself from thinking solely about myself.

Yeah, right: have more kids in this world so they can deal with all the ugliness we can scarcely conceive, much less explain.

I'm just going to sit here on my couch and wait for my mania to come back, to fool me into thinking things are ok and to carry me through a few more seasons of this dreadfully tiresome life I live.