Curb My Enthusiasm

"You have to move on," they say.  

That would be easy if there was something to move on to.  The moving part is not the issue.  It's the "on" part that is difficult.  It's not like picking up another book or watching another movie. There's a human element that makes the moving difficult, and the on worse.

Once I get my sights set on something, it is difficult to re-focus.  Mostly because there is nothing else to focus on.  Things come one at a time in my world.  I'm not a social animal (quite the contrary) and the sights are few and far between.

Now, I find myself staring down the gunsight at the horrible four months from November to February, where the world's focus shifts from the mundane to the holidays.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and Valentine's Day - a marketer's dream and a lonely man's dread.  I realize that 95% of America has something to do on most of those days, and I can't begrudge someone their pleasure, but still ... nobody wants to hear about the struggle, so I persevere.  That is to say, I struggle.

I used to hold out hope, because the saying goes, "There's a lid for every pot."  I have come to realize that I'm a metric system lid for an English system pot, and they just don't match-up somehow. It's OK, I tell myself; but in my heart I dread the coming days.

I don't know what it is.  I see people who have no redeeming qualities (at least to me) and they have families and seem happy.  I don't know their innermost thoughts, but at least on the outside they seem like their lives have some meaning.  Kids, wife, job ... whatever it is that glues them to the earth.

Me?  I go on day after day, mostly out of habit, putting one foot in front of the other.  There are moments of glee and times when I feel like I belong to something, but those moments are followed by hours and days of regret, uselessness, and wishing that there was some purpose to it all.

I guess the thing of it was that she didn't love me like I loved her?  That's what I'll tell myself until I hear otherwise, which doesn't seem possible.  That's the general theme of the past 40-or-so years - the unrequited love issue.  It's probably why I love animals so much.  They don't ask questions and just return the love you give them without question.  I haven't experienced that.  Somebody tell me what it's like, because I'd like to know.

But, I forget.  I forget the last disappointment and the latest time that my hopes were dashed, and I return to hope which, as we know - sucks.   I say that I won't let it happen again, but it does because hope springs eternal, as they say.

They are stupid, ignorant asses.  Stop listening to them, it says here.