Foreword: this'll all come out as a vent, because I don't even know what question I could be asking right now. There's nothing left to want from where I'm standing, at least nothing realistic. This doesn't mean I want it to be a monologue, so if anyone has anything to offer, or to add, or if my words simply resonate so much that you'd want to vent, please do so. Sincerely.

Trigger warning: nothing specific, just heavy language and a lot of howling at nothing in particular.

All I know with certainty is that it's not depression. I wish it were, actually, because depression is, at this point, familiar to me. I know the routines, I know the words, I know the slow-roasting anguish, it'd feel like going home, as fucked as that sounds.

No, this is... I don't have a word for it, it's just a swirl of overwhelming and contradictory voices yelling all at once. I feel exhausted beyond comprehension, yet I feel like a nuclear reactor that's fully functioning while not being connected to anything. I feel sadness like I haven't felt before, and an anger which makes me want to smash myself against everything and anything around me, to destroy, to demolish, to ruin, to chew everything to shit, spit it out, then chew it up some more. I feel the need to burst into flames and scorch everything in my line of sight.

I feel rage. Pure, unbridled rage, and the only thing I fear is losing control enough for it to slip out of my grasp, even though I know that'll never happen. I feel so... so much hate, so much frustration, I want to scream myself to pieces, but even that wouldn't be enough. I feel done, sick and tired of everything, sick and tired of having to live here, on this planet.

I feel alone and lonely, but don't want anyone around me. Not because I fear them, there genuinely is no fear this time around. It's because I feel I don't have the patience to deal with bullshit anymore, and most people I've known so far have been so out of touch with themselves, that I feel I've never actually had anyone. Just sacks of meat desperately pretending that they know who they are so that they won't have to face who they actually are, what they actually are. On the other hand, I know what I am so fully, so thoroughly, that I simply cannot see anywhere else I could 'take' myself. I can't see where I could elbow some room for myself, and I actively don't want to. Not as a resignation, I actively feel that I want to not even bother with that shit anymore.

I feel the need to love something, someone, yet I've given so goddamned much to everyone that I have Nothing for myself now. And I'm holding on to that Nothing as if my life depended on it, because that emptiness is the only thing that's left and which still stinks of me. I don't give a fuck about things, I don't give a fuck about material possessions, I don't have and don't even want to have ambitions, I want everything and nothing at the same time.

I genuinely wish I would lose my mind. I wish I could lose my mind, but I've never felt more sane than I do now, as messed up as that is. I feel so concrete and whole, so goddamned functional, that it's just making things worse, because I can't even fucking blame myself for it anymore. I don't want to blame The World™, because I'm so sick and tired of it, I'm so disgusted by it, that I just want to be done with it.

I don't want to die, either, even though I can't find a point to any of this shit anymore. This rage is keeping me moving, it makes me WANT to keep moving, it's more motivation than I've ever had in my entire life, and at the same time it's the thing I hate the most, because in it I see every ounce of crap I've had to swallow from my family, from supposed friends, from so-called lovers. But I don't hate myself, in spite of all of this shit being mine, from me, of me.

I'm a marionette who's cut off its own strings, who's freed itself of the puppeteers trying to steer it all its life, and is now dancing out of its own volition and no one else's, without a hint of direction. I feel sick to my stomach, yet I can't stomach anything other than bile.

She's one of my former workmates from my second-to-last job. She's a fucking weirdo, but she's my kind of weirdo. All grim and trash Goth, deals with crystals and Wiccan stuff, which I like as lore and nothing more, but I love about her. She annoys me in all the right ways.

We had instant rapport, and my jaw was on the floor the moment I saw her. Wasn't just me, you could hear chins hitting plywood all across the office. And rightfully so, she's... forcefully beautiful and raw, don't know how else to put this. She has such a way about her, she's almost aggressively herself and knows what she's got, a very earthy person. I still don't know why I had the courage to even broach an interaction with her, but I'm glad I did, because my gut was right.

We had a rough friendship for the first couple of years. I struggled to reconcile the fact that I was falling desperately in love with her with the deepening bond of genuine friendship which developed. Luckily, my desire to see her happy trumped my myriad wants and I reached a precarious balance with this stuff, which I'm still somewhat maintaining. We went from long stretches of time during which we went out almost every day, either the two of us or with our work group, and equally long stretches of time where we didn't even text each other for, I think, even a year.

I've been a dick to her more times than I want to admit. I understand why I dropped so low as to splash a bit of my shit on her, but I still feel so ashamed of it every time we see each other now. We also had sex once, after emptying a litre of gin between us. The last thing I remember was sharing our suffering, then she was on top of me and we kissed. Then it's just flashes of disbelief and emotional (yes, just that) fulfilment of a sort, but they're just the backdrop to some incredibly blurry snippets of memories. I didn't feel proud of it the next day. I did one of the stupidest things I believed I never would do with one of my dearest friends, whom I love so much beyond friendship, that an immense sense of respect is intrinsic to everything. I can't believe the level of complete self-abandon I've allowed myself to reach with her.

And I can't believe that we're still interacting, that we've even grown a lot closer since then. And, yeah, I love her. It's as clear as day to me now, I've grown to love this woman. Deeply. Voraciously. She's been there with me through some of my worst mistakes, as I've been there for hers. I genuinely don't think anyone else alive really knows me as much as she does. We've seen each other ugly-cry multiple times and our arms know each other's anguish. We've seen each other brought low and defeated, denuded of pride and dignity. And that just made us draw each other closer in, somehow.

I'd be lying if I said that this whole thing didn't scare the crap out of me. I can feel the pangs of lack still going strong after all of these years. It's the knowing, the understanding that we'll never cuddle, I'll never get to wake up to her, to kiss her lips, to devour her, to more constantly bask in her presence - this is not just a pretentious metaphor, I genuinely feel like I imagine a lizard feels on a hot rock under a glaring sun. There are moments when it drives me up the walls, I'll be honest. It's why I won't allow myself to drink with her ever again. It's why I'll never agree to spend the night over ever again, even if it means sleeping on park benches. I don't want to even risk doing anything to endanger our friendship, because I don't want to picture my life without her in it in one form or another.

Edit: now with 100% more Correct URL!