Alright, I need to write all this down somewhere to get it off my shoulders, but here's where I let you guys know that no matter how dark this gets, it's not a suicidal post so you can leave it here.

Recently I visited the town I grew up in, took in the old memories of everything and evaluated what might have stuck me where I am today, in my dark place. I realized that I hated that town, and though there may have been a good memory here and there, the bad ones are larger in individual density, and volume.

Then I got back to my current location, away from stupid Hickville, in the city. I feel differently about where I am now. I hate it here. Oh wait, that's the same... no, there are just different reasons why life tortures me here.

Anyway that's just a stupid side story, not the whole thing about why I feel like there's no way out of my sadness and despair. In combination with the fact that I've become a disingenuous person, various circumstances relating to my location and current situation are just ruining my life.

I looked back a long way on my trip, all the way to my childhood. Mainly when I passed by my school, that's when things hit me. It didn't mean anything to me that my teachers told my family that I was the smartest math student they had ever encountered... nobody liked me. I would look in the mirror, and see someone that didn't seem to have a flaw in appearance, I acted like myself and tried not to care what other peoiple thought, I just didn't fit in for some reason.

Then I grew up. People started to realize that the small town football players that put me down all the time were going to end up worthless people. I lost my virginity to the first girl who ever gave me recognition past being the guy who you should go to in math class. I started realizing I could use the various things that I had going for me to advance myself. I was good with words, I could make people do what I wanted if I just played my cards right. If someone bothered me (this is one I learned a lot earlier), I could make them feel stupid. I realized that I knew how to act the "right" way, and say the "right" things. So I started doing it.

I'm not the nerd who grew out of it, I'm the one who realized how to be a disingenuous jerk to mask my insecurities. And now, I have no real friends. I've realized that I can't function socially. I use a few superficial things that worked out for me, I use them to advance myself, to get by in a world where social acceptance seems so necessary.

I don't like these people though. I hate the associations I've made with others. I've told women I love them, sometimes knowing and other times not knowing that it wasn't true. I've gone out to dinner with people I couldn't care less about, but at least I did something that night instead of sitting at home being pathetic.

I must sound like a really nice guy, right? You better have sensed the sarcasm there. I've realized though, it's not that I have all these terrible intentions. It's that I can't make myself comfortable, I"ve realized I'll never have what I want. I've started crying nightly because I can have stupid flings left and right just because of my status, but I've figured out whom I love, and that she's the one girl I'll never have. The family hates me without knowing me, she's too young, I'm too much of an antisocial, type B jackass. I'm not a jerk, I'm just confused to the point where it would be easier to end it all if I had the audacity (which I sure as hell don't.

I hope someone is going to give enough of a crap to read all this, I really need some help from any of you who will offer it. I feel like people have used and abused me my entire life, and I'm not following any lame "golden rule," I just learned over time to do it right back.

And now, my current status:

Again, I'm in love with someone I can't have. Every second I'm around her I feel like for once I'm acting natural, and that maybe she likes me for who I am, if I even know who I am anymore. But, here we go again, she's already attached, to someone different than me. Someone people accept, someone her family approves of. and she doesn't have to deal with all the time. She's the amazing friend that's willing to deal with me. When I go on a drinking binge she'll listen to the resultant stupidity and try to make me get my act together. When I get out of a relationship I didn't want to be in, she'll tell me it wasn't my fault. When something good happens to me, she'll say she's not surprised, and she'll remind me that she told me it would work out eventually.

Why am I talking about her so fondly though, it's never going to happen. We're not star-crossed. We're two electrons (except she doesn't seem negatively charged), and it would take me an amount of energy I can't absorb to share even the same shell with her, the same degree of perfection she is. We repel each other by all the laws, and I'll never have her. I can't be happy. When I reach for her I'm just short of anything happening. And she scares me to death, I don't think I deserve anything like her.

So there you go, until the circumstances allow us to show our feelings, I'll be without a lover. Now what about friends? I don't have any real ones. There are two sets of people, and A(intersect)B is congruent to the null set. Set A are people who tolerate me; set B are people who I can tolerate.

I feel like I don't belong here. No one accepts me, and though I know some ways I could be happy, it's impossible to make them work and the sacrifices I'd have to make would just make me unhappy again. It seems that nothing will ever work out. I wasn't happy where I grew up, and I'm not happy where I am now. I'm not happy with the people I used to know, nor the ones I'm burdened with now.

Now before you guys say that it might be a good idea for me to tell people my feelings, I'll tell you the results I've seen there. Anytime I just let loose, I act like my depressed self and tell people what's going on... that's when I lose even the people I'm friends with on a shallow level. "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out," don't even bother listening to the song, the title says it all. People don't care about me. I'm well recognized among others because of the skills I possess, and other positive traits I supposedly have, but nothing important. Nobody ever says I'm a nice guy or I'm their close friend. I'm distanced from the world, alone, and sad.

I just feel like this is it. I've had one chance to shape the person I was born as into a person like everyone else, someone who could if not succeed in the world, at least get through it. I failed though, I feel like it's over. Take the unalienable rights of an American for example... "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

I've given up on life, my life is terrible. I have no liberty, I gave it up to fit in with the rest of the people who define which use of liberty will gain one social acceptance. As for pursuing happiness, I tripped and fell long ago, and if I ever get up again I'm hoping I can at least cross the finish line beside stoicism.

This is ridiculous. I've become some kind of freak, a depressed loser that no one else wants to deal with. Unloved by those I seek love from, talked about behind my back by those whom I thought respected, and generally spurned by anyone or anything I think might make things work for me.

What's my one virtue you ask? Doesn't seem like I have any. Well, how's this? I'm enough of a coward not to end this right now. I'll still be here tomorrow, I made it through New Year's Eve despite the very attractive thing that's common on that day. Again, I'm too much of a coward to bother with it so that's why I got to post this. Well, despite the anger inside me right now that I want to release, I'd prefer not to be accused of crossing the line here so I'm going to stop before I say anything against policies.