the internalistic blatherings of the spot-filled mind ...

OK ... seems as if I didn't make myself as clear as I thought I did in the post below, and looking back at it now, with fresh eyes, I can see how that might have happened. I started off trying to make one point and got a bit long-winded and rambling, as I sometimes do when I blog straight into the Blogger interface and don't look things over with my editorial eye.

Oh well ... c'est la vie.

To those of you who offered support, thanks. To those of you who offered advice, thanks also.

Here's something most people don't know about me.

You ready for it? You probably won't believe it, but I swear to you that it's true.

Are you sure you really want to know this?

OK ... but don't say you weren't warned.





I don't like people.

There. I said it. Well, wrote it.

Now this doesn't mean I don't like any people; there are certainly some that I do like to different extents. There are even some I love.

I mean in general. MOST people. Mankind in general.

My Favorite Person has often said to me that I'm a snob, that I'm snobbish. Perhaps she's right. But it's not that I think that I am better than other people; I readily recognize my many flaws. My problem is that I AM very smart ... and no, that's not bragging, that's just a fact. I'm not always the smartest and I have known people and had friends who are/were smarter than me. I know there are a hell of a lot of people out there who are much smarter than me.

But you know what? There are multitudes more who are not.

Now I don't look down on those people; well, not MOST of them. But I don't suffer fools well. I can't stand people who choose to be ignorant, who are inflexible in mind and rigid in thinking. You know those people -- the ones who, even if they are presented with overwhelming evidence that they're wrong, that things aren't how they see/interpret things, they won't, they CAN'T, change their minds. They refuse to budge.

And, unfortunately, too many people, both stupid and smart, are annoying. Sometimes they can't help it, it's just who they are. They don't mean to be irritating; they just ARE. They grate on you, work your last nerve, and are oblivious to it. They can't be helped, won't change, don't see any reason too.

If that makes me a snob, to some degree, then I guess that's what I am. Mea culpa.

I used to have lots of friends. I learned to make friends easily and quickly because I had to. My dad was in the Air Force, which meant we moved about every two or three years. If you don't learn this skill as a child of a military man, you're screwed. You become a loner, an outcast.

So every time I moved I quickly made news sets of friends. Some I kept longer than others, depending if they moved or we moved.

But things always change; that is the nature of life, of the universe. Nothing remains static or it becomes stagnant. Friends you hang out with all the time for several years move, get married, have kids, get different jobs, develop different interests. Friends drift apart without ever meaning to or wanting to do so. It just happens. You start seeing less and less of each other. You try to make plans, but their new things get in the way of the old things you used to do.

You can't -- and I don't -- fault people for changing, for moving on with their lives in different directions, for getting new priorities. You both/all try to keep things at least partially the way they were, hang on to the vestiges of what once was.

After experiencing this again and again and again over the years, it begins to wear on you. You start seeing and experiencing the signs of the same things happening that have happened before. That's when you get to that "what's the point?' stage. You start to accept what you get, to take what happens and just let it. You don't fight or struggle any longer. You just go with the flow. After all, why should it be YOU who are always the one doing all the work to preserve and extend and sustain the friendship. You start thinking that if they don't care about your relationship as much as you, why should you bother? And so you start not to ... bother, that is.

As for romantic relationships ... do I really even want to go there?

OK ... why the hell not? Basically, it boils down to this: There's only so much sustained and repeated rejection that a person can take. Every successive instance makes it that much harder to try again another time.

The question that is often posed is: "Is it better to have loved, and lost, than never have loved at all?"

For me, that's not the question. For me, it's: "Is it better to have BEEN loved, and lost, than never BEEN loved at all?"

The answer to that query summarizes my "romantic" life quite plainly and succinctly. There are only so many times someone can hear, "I love you BUT ... (not in that way, as a friend, like a brother ... take your pick)."



Geeze. I did it again. I'm sure this post will elicit similar comments to the one below. Feel free. But please spare me the whole "there are plenty of fish in the sea" and similar trite aphorisms. I've heard them all before.

A lot of the rationale behind this post and the previous on is that I like to whine, wallow, sulk, pout ... again, choose the definition that you think best fits. Part of it is to expunge and purge. And to just blather.

In any event, I'm done ... at least for now.

After all, I have $570 in poker winnings that I have to figure out how to spend.

We now return you to your normal Diatribe.