Valentines Day.

This is no fun, no fun at all. Those who know me, know that I've 'suffered' from a lifelong androgen overdose. I'm unsure where it ends and my attention deficit begins, but they have very different genesis and eventual results. I have very strong metabolitic drivers, even when I do nothing for months. I have strong emotions(which I have fought to master all my life). I am unceasingly kinesthetic and love doing physical things, in stark contrast to my personality, which is mostly intellectual and contemplative. I am too fond of conflict, my drives and talents let me excel at things that could only be used to hurt people, and to my regret, I have been in too many fights in my life, and too many of them pointless. I try to hide that aspect of myself, shamefully. I can't think of too many good friends that I've let see myself like that. I can't sit still when I'm incompletely captivated by something. Everyone I know has seen me pace watching a movie or tv show.

I am deeply, almost constantly, sexually aware. This has caused it's share of problems. But I like to think that I both indulge and control this aspect of myself better now. But this intersects with something else a few people know. I am romantic, and deeply flawed in view of myself and people I am lucky enough to know romantically. I am deeply and bitterly lonely. I have tried, with varying success to find someone who engages me on as many levels as possible. Who makes me feel like everything within me has a partner.

Yesterday, I got to see my ex-girlfriend Carrie. She lives here in LA, and two weeks after I moved here, I got to see her for about two hours. I don't have great expectations of seeing her very often. She has her own life here, and a boyfriend named Tom, whom I've never met, and likely never will. He's said he doesn't want to meet me. This will have a great effect on Carrie, she cares about him, and I'm operating on memories of attachment. But it's not surprising. She broke up with me, after all. She must have had her reasons.

Carrie was probably the person that came the closest to making me feel like I wasn't alone in real life(as opposed to dreams or imagination, both of which I've led very successful romances in, thank you very much). For some reason she was interested in almost everything I was, even if she hadn't encountered it before. She was strong, perhaps as strong as me, emotionally; and physically she was nearly perfect, fast, aggressive, strong, sexually attractive to me beyond all girls. She is in raw intelligence, among the smarter friends i've been privileged to have. But her knowledge is only defined by what has impacted her personally, she lacked the driving, obssessive curiosity and attention to detail that really encyclopedic knowledge requires. She learned everything very fast. And very well. I don't think there is a single day I have known her that she hasn't impressed or attracted me more; in kindness, physically, or with her decisions.

About a year ago I realized that our relationship was going to end, and I was going to lose her. I can honestly say, that despite all my paranoia, and intelligence and low worse if wiser thoughts, that it had never occurred to me before. But any probability, stretched to long enough time-scale is a certainty. Anything possible will happen, given a long enough wait. And something had come up that could end our relationship. She was committed to moving to go to USC. It wasn't that I thought that would destroy us, but that it had a chance to. I thought I could fix that particular problem. to get past it. But that there was a chance, meant that it would happen, certainly, someday.

It was the closest I have ever come to real suicide. Not desperate attention-seeking, or flailing to escape, but deliberate, aiming to die to stop my life now. I walked to a ten story car park, and sat and thought of ways to ensure that I would hit the asphalt head-first. I must have stayed up there, leaning against the wind, and avoiding the eyes of the drivers parking and leaving, for at least an hour. I was saved by no decision of mine. My limbic system kicked in, and increased my fear and desire to live on until I had to back down. It has been a secret shame of mine that I'm alive today not because I chose to be, but because, shaking and full of hormones and adrenaline, I couldn't force my body to do it.

I walked to the University computer lab, and asked the smartest person I knew for help. He appealed to the rationalist in me, and showed that she was only a portion of a larger set of goals that I had. that some portion of me would survive, and grow and eventually be larger and better(if not unscarred) than I was now. I didn't tell him about my desire to end my life. It would have complicated things. It was after that I decided not to. Perhaps if he had been there up on the car park, I would have felt more like it was a part of me, rather than being reduced to a tiny part of this shaking, sniffling animal that didn't want to die.

I left, and I went and walked for a long time. And then I came home, and I lay down next to her, and touched her with trembling fingers and cried, facing away so I wouldn't wake her. Having faced the larger crisis of eventual loss of her, and by extension, everything I held dear, I went to work on the local crisis. I tried, for the next few months to ensure that I wouldn't lose her at that time. I failed miserably, of course, doing exactly the wrong thing. But that's a subject for another day.

Strangely, despite all this, when she finally did break up with me, I was taken completely by surprise, and spent the next few months in a black hole, that I still can't fully recall. It's only relatively recently that I began to try to tear myself from rethinking and planning and desperate attempts to distract myself. I even started to look at other girls as something other than just people or lust objects. And most recently, I tried to go on dates with a very nice girl named Crystal, whom I am probably hurting by writing all this. It is only the oddest of chances that led me to be here now in LA. Maybe if I had the chance to give Crystal a chance, she could have been for me, a place of safety and comfort and companionship. But I don't think I'll know now. She's now very far away. It is a note of mystery and regret in an otherwise good decision.

It's been a year since I realized, and six months or so since she dumped me. And I am more or less reconciled. On odd nights I dream, and wake up sad, and when I see her I always have wonderful times until it's time to say goodbye, which is always like being dumped again. I have gotten re-acquainted with jealousy. I never worried during our relationship, now, beyond my control, it's a rising tide of directed anger and suspicion. It would be a close tie which was more painful, the fact she doesn't want me, or the fact that she's so happy without me. I at least have the decency to be shattered and quiet and lonely, most of the time. But she broke up with me, so I guess it's to be expected.

It's valentines day, as everyone keeps reminding me, and emails and spam and advertisements proclaim. I guess it's a decent day to examine all this. And I accept it. Since I can't change anything, I can only be happy about what I've gotten. I think I've done better than most people. My sadness isn't relative to them, though, it's relative to my dreams. So in some way, I'll always be sad. But, also in some ways, so long as I keep doing what I want to, I'll always be happy.

Happy Valentines Day, don't let anyone take your loves away from you, no matter how far-fetched or illconsidered. It's what makes you who you are. And try to find a way to be happy.