Free Toy with Every Click

I wish I had been a villain. A villain is motivated, strong, driven. Their goals are immediate, and they play against heroes.

I just deleted three paragraphs more detailing why I won't be posting anymore. I got a little lost again with trying to communicate my own self-definition. I am not going to be posting anymore, because attempting to define myself to others is pointless, and that's the only reason I have this journal. I was using it to try to echo out to the world, when what I need to accept is that I am on my own.

I know that you won't be coming back Jenni. I don't want you back, I want the past back.

The only time I ever feel happy and calm and like I have a purpose is when Zoe is here, and needs me to be her Daddy.

I am so very, very glad that tomorrow is Monday and she gets to come over. She is the only thing left that is actually good in my life. Every other aspect can pretty much get bent, but Zoe alone is worth treading the muck.

It's not always smiles when she's here, we definitely have moments of contention (like whether she'll be eating dinner or a bunch of candy: real example). But every moment is worth it. I am so proud of her, and I am so lucky to get to be a part of her life.

And I'm the only one allowed to say that :-)

I'm done with Warcraft. My account will run out some time next week. This was one of the last vestiges of friendly interaction I really had left. I still have Mike via lunch. I still have Mouse, though rarely now. Jenni has made sure that she cannot be my friend.

Today I received an email from Jenni. I was so excited, because it was an invitation, and I was just lit up to think that maybe she wanted to talk to me, or do something with me. Anything. It was just a calendar item to act as a reminder for debt payments.

She is still an emptiness.

When I first met Jenni, she was introduced to me via a friend. Jenni had been told she was cute, and she responded with, "have you ever wanted to just kill a puppy?" This was such a big deal, because she seemed so much like me. Someone who didn't want to be just another everyone. Someone who could produce the ridiculous yet still somehow mean it.

Jenni doesn't want to be special anymore. She wants to be just anybody now; special like Mister Rogers told everyone we were, which is to say absolutely normal. Because that's "healthy." She isn't the bright spark that wants to do more than she is supposed to be able to do. She doesn't want to answer questions that might not have an answer, or think things that might not make sense. She doesn't want to act in a non optimal adult manner. She wants to be a magazine mommy.

Or maybe she doesn't. Who knows, she's opaque to me. The only Jenni left in my life is the one in my head, the one I emulate from the pieces of the real Jenni before she became a part of the crowd.

I can't be anyone's friend anymore. I'm sorry, it just won't work out. I am going to become a militant misogynist and write columns about the feminine aspects that control our lives, and how the only way out of the cloying, enveloping madness and control is to force our way through. No matter how it woos and lulls us, we cannot release ourselves into slumber. Anger, drive, hatred must be our blood.

Or maybe not.

If she would have me back, I would submit to her, and I hate that. I miss her that terribly. But if I cannot have her, than I will not be had. Do you understand? She would say she doesn't know, and that is her safe word. Because she does not know, she can never know, and hence has no reason to think about it. An answer will never come to her, because she does not know.

My father is in hospice again. For real? Who knows.

Every aspect of my life has fallen off of me. I know who I am, because I am everything. My mind goes wherever it wants, and I can be whoever I deem appropriate. Stripped of everything, I am content that in my own mind I am correct. But I am lonely, because there is nobody like me. Nobody hates like I hate, nobody loves like I love. Nobody considers their oaths. I am alone because humanity has failed me, and so I disown you all.

Jenni once wondered if I was playing games with her, and I had a hard time answering. What is life, but a game? It has a flexible set of rules, but like any game, striving to get to the end isn't the point. The point of every single fucking game is always and forever will be to play it. When you lose at Tetris, you have still won, because you played and that was the point. Of course I played games with her, all interaction is just a set of steps towards a goal. And the point is to be playing, not to win. She has no idea of the distinction; the phrase is only in her vocabulary as a series of syllables, something that you say at a certain time. She didn't think about what it means to actually *ask* that.

Where is someone who would consider this? Where is a soul like a pillar of dark clouds?

Does Jenni read this? It's hard to tell. I haven't blocked her from it. I would be proud of her if she did, because she wouldn't just be hiding from the things she doesn't want to see. I suspect she doesn't read it, because the last actions from her exhibited the kind of naivety that would make her feel safer for not looking. Or is she the spider, recording it all for use against me, handing printouts to her lawyer? Or is she reading it and crying to herself, sharing it with her therapist and friends, oh how horrible I am to make her suffer? Perhaps she's reading it gleefully, aroused to be so powerful, proud of the damage she could do.

Who fucking knows which Jenni is real, but they are all in my head, and they are all standing in for her. And when I send out a pulse of love in my loneliness, I get varying answers from all of them. Some want to come back, others mock me, and others still turn away sadly. When she talks on the phone, each word is spoken in the voice of a different persona. Which is she? I can never know, but my emulations persist without her.

Perhaps one day I will form a tulpa, combined of how I believe she should be and how I wish she should be, and that Jenni will be my only Jenni.

I am running out of steam.

I have to give Jenni credit, she knows how to forge an unrecoverable path. When she decided that our marriage was boring her, she just had to have sex with strangers, and she knew that would be a big enough offense in my mind for her to reach escape velocity. And then when I started to calm down and I wanted to work things through with her, she knew how to keep me stoked up and angry with rejection after rejection. She knows how to make it so that even if she were to question her own direction, it would be incredibly difficult to change course; her friends and family have helped her to reach this separation, how could she possibly return while they were watching? Every step she has taken has been to trigger events that further and further drive her more permanently away. But at the same time, it is as if she was simply going with the flow. When she reaches the end, she can sniff daintily and say that she overcame such hard times, so meekly.

I am the bull, and she is the toreador. She taunts me then dances aside gaily, to cut me over and over. I was destined to die the moment I stepped into the ring. But she is not invulnerable. Perhaps my horns will gore her before I bleed out.

Alright, I'm completely lost. Someone tell me what level of bullshit this is, please?

http://ifat-glassman.blogspot.com/2009/02/whats-inside-womens-mind.html

Because if this is even remotely like reality, I'm going to kill every last person on earth, and that's the end of it.

Today I found a four leaf clover.

And then I took a few steps and damned if I didn't find another one. I scoured over the clover patch to see if maybe this was some freakish group of four-leafed things that just happen to look like clover, but the rest all had the more standard number of leaves.

I gave the "spare" lucky sprout to Mike; I figured the first one should be plenty for me today. Now I am thinking that perhaps I should have kept both as a ward against the funk that has descended as the night progressed.

It's 11:30 pm on a Friday night. I have nothing worth doing. I have nobody to do anything or nothing with. I feel this horrible ache that isn't quite like the time I took Welbutrin, but is distressingly similar. I don't want to feel like this, ever, yet here I am.

And how is she doing? She's just fucking fine, of course. She's always just fucking fine, now that I'm not there to bring her down anymore. She's got her new mother figure telling her she's wonderful (for a small fee), and she has my daughter, and she has my last name, and as soon as I sign on the dotted line she'll be split from me even further.

I want someone beautiful to tell me they love me. I don't want to have to find them, so I get *nothing* because that's what unwillingness deserves. I want to fuck but I still feel that I should be faithful. I want Jenni to suffer because I suffer, but I have no power over her. I want everyone to feel how I feel, but no matter how much I write I will remain alone in my own head, just a character on the fringe of everyone else's stories. I don't belong in anyone's life but Zoe's, and she's not here. (Warning: the only reason I mention her here is because someone else would bring her up otherwise, as a lever against me. I resent it greatly when people use my daughter against me like that, so I'm beating you all to it. Zoe has no place in how I feel about myself, do you understand? So shut the fuck up. She's not a convenient talking point for you. You don't get to dictate anything to me by invoking her name. Jenni did that all the time too; whenever we'd talk about staying together or separating, she'd whip out Zoe to protect herself or to change the topic. And when I tried to beat her to that punch, she had the fucking *gall* to demand why I would try to change the subject to Zoe. Stab you all in your eyesockets, don't dirty my daughter's name with your filthy whore mouths. Who is the imaginary audience I am writing this to? I don't know. Nobody reads my livejournal who would do this. But then, I never do know the entirety of who reads, that's the thrill. Maybe there is a Devil, and she reads it.)

Who will I be when I wake up tomorrow?

So around the beginning of this month, Saga fell apart. I'd been in Saga since the release of Wrath of the Lich King. It consisted primarily of members who had transfered from Anvilmar to our new server, Eldre'Thalas. It was sad to have the guild fall apart, but completely understandable under the circumstances. Our backbone had always been Bigredslayer, and he was tired of having to be the leader.

Now I (and many other former Saga members) am in a guild called Faceless Men. It's alright so far, though I find there to be some personality conflicts. We've been raiding more regularly than before. We got Sartharion heroic +2 drakes, and Malygos heroic for the first time this week, and that's a pretty big deal.

Tonight I picked up my last piece of tier gear (the helm) and have placed my FigurePrint order with all of my lovely matching gear on. I'll post pictures of the model as soon as it arrives.

( Model Preview )

My Warcraft account will finally expire in April. I'd originally let the billing drop when Jenni left, but had missed it by a bit, so I actually ended up with the three-month credit. I started playing again when I realized that without that bitch around I had no reason to not do so. However, I think I may back off a bit again. I've seen all of the 10 and 25-man content now (though Sarth+3d has yet to be done), and until the next content patch, there's not much to do except PvP.

I'm running out of Warcraft to distract me from the horrible failures of my marriage and the massive disappointment that is my adult life! Blizzard, hurry the fuck up and release a new raid!

As I was making Zoe her breakfast this morning (Cheerios and milk), I chanced to gaze out upon the back porch and beheld a dead cardinal staring blankly back up at me. I froze, in my drowsy early-morning state, and stared back. Surely this is an omen, I thought.

Later, Zoe had finished her cereal and was coming over to tell me about what she was going to do at daycare today. Already full of energy, she put one hand on the couch and the other on the arm of my chair and jumped up to hold herself aloft. She chattered with me, jumping and wiggling, about how her mother would pick her up from daycare today. Then she kicked off again and swung back, and splat! She started screaming and crying, and in a panic I jumped up out of my chair to see what had happened to her. I didn't notice anything at first, so I picked her up and sat down again with her in my lap. I tried to joke and asked her if she needed a new face now, but she sobbed and said no, that her "floor" hurt. And then she started bleeding like crazy from her chin.

So I rushed her over to the bathroom and put some tissues on her chin to see where the blood was coming from. There was a break/abbraision hidden just underneath, and a lovely bruise forming around it. I was very frantic, and I told her that we might have to go to the hospital. She did not take that well at all, and started sobbing even harder, saying she didn't want to go. All the while I poked and prodded at her to try and gauge exactly how badly she'd been hurt. The bleeding stopped completely after a bit of daubing and cleaning, and Zoe was calming down, so I told her that we wouldn't have to go to the hospital after all. I stuck a band-aid with neosporin on her and told her that we might need to buy her a new face if that didn't work.

I wasn't sure if she'd hurt the inside of her mouth. She said that only her chin hurt, but I wasn't sure. So I gave her some hard chocolate chip cookies, which she happily munched up without complaint. No broken teeth, at least.

I dropped her off at daycare, and mentioned to her teacher that she'd face-planted earlier, and requested that she please check the bandage and possibly replace it around nap-time.

An hour after I returned home, I received a call from Jenni: the daycare had called her, worried. Apparently Zoe's chin started bleeding heavily again, but had stopped with just a little bit of attention. They put a new bandage on, and will call me if it happens again. I've never run into a wound that can't decide if it wants to bleed or not like this, so I'm a little bit worried that it might be worse than it seems from the outside, but time will tell.

So try to take it easy when you find a dead red bird staring up at you in the early morning. It's apparently an indicator of imminent toddler damage.

So I received a draft copy of the separation agreement today.

I'm not going to bother to relate how I feel, because it's probably illegal to feel that way. Society is based upon people giving up, on submitting. I will never submit.

In the end, this society has limited my rage to nothing more than text. I am not even real enough to cause actual harm. Social boundaries have made me too weak.

The only way to get what you want is to have the power to take it. Everything else is begging. I am beginning to understand the idea that power is more than just a means to an end. Power is an entirely different environment. To no longer be bound by anyone else's whims, to be master to a world of slaves. There isn't a specific goal that needs to be achieved, once you've reached that plateau it's a whole new type of life. Someday I will have that type of life. I will have power over everyone, and nobody will ever be able to control me.

My latest goal in World of Warcraft is to pick up the last piece of my Heroic Tier 7 set (the helm) and then get a FigurePrints model of Narlic made!

And for your viewing pleasure, I present a few candid shots of what happens when you're bored and playing on the weekend with nothing to do.

( Narlic and Ellrrond Hang Out in Orgrimmar )

This weekend, I am going to get some of the development work that I'd been thinking about (but never actually begun) started. I'm also going to try and get my web, mail, and ssh hosts replaced with VMs. What is everyone else up to?

Okay, I've got the sheer utter hatred mostly out of my system (or safely packed up). Now what?

The first question I need to ask myself is, am I happy with the current situation? No, not really. What am I unhappy about? I'm lonely. Now, part of this translates into, "I miss Jenni." It's ridiculous, and I've filled something like a dozen journal entries with hate and invective, but I miss her like crazy. I still blame her for being the one who left, but then I blame myself for being the one who made her want to leave.

So then what do I want? One thing I want is for my family to be back together again. I want to be the father and the husband again. I don't want to be the bachelor with a kid who visits. Does it have to be Jenni though?

I've had a lot of advice dropped on me that says, "no, and you must move on." This seems like a canned response to me, and I will not accept it at face value. The problem here is that my will alone does not provide a way. Jenni has to also decide the same. But not only does she need to agree, she also needs to do so in the face of a number of very opinionated people. I am genuinely worried that peer-pressure would keep her from ever evaluating the possibility of us staying together.

So my direction then must be to make it more attractive for her. What can I do to make it worth coming home again?

But is it even worth it to me to try and actually get her back? The Jenni that I miss is not what I would receive as a reward for winning her heart back. I'd also get the Jenni that annoys the piss out of me, all of her friends, and her family. I'd get her hobbies that I don't give a shit about, and I'd get her indifference to my own interests. In a fantasy story, the undercurrent of love is enough to sweep aside all of that other stuff. Unfortunately this is reality, where we are just self-important animals.

My alternative is thus to replace Jenni with someone else. What I have working against me are all intrinsic to my otherwise contented state of being: I'm thirty, lazy, skinny, uneducated, and unsociable. And of course I'm also lusty and have overly specific tastes in form and figure. What I have working for me is: I'm not terribly ugly, I've got a job and a house, my personality can be quite pleasant when I'm feeling up, and I have good table manners.

Oh, and I get nervous and ill when I go on dates because I feel like I'm cheating on my wife, which means I'll probably be acting very sketchily should I happen to actually meet someone.

So, let's say A is my loneliness and discontent. B is a relationship with Jenni and all the baggage. C is meeting and finding someone new. Let's call X the happiness delta from A to B, and Y the happiness delta from A to C. If Y is greater than X, then I should pursue Jenni. Otherwise, I should find new people.

Since A is constant in both equations, I could actually just weigh the cost and benefit of B and C, I suppose. So let's do that later.

I wish these pills came in doses that would make you sleep for an entire week.

There's not a lot of point to starting a family life over again. Any other mate is just going to do the same thing. She'll get bored, and she'll leave me. I wanted a family life. I wanted to have an exemplary trio. I failed her, she failed me, and it all fell apart. Zoe ends up tossed back and forth on a schedule of convenience. This isn't how it's supposed to work.

When I was younger and troubled, I had this vision of a berserk warrior. The berserker builds his black ball under his heart, filling it with loss, guilt and pain. He doesn't put these things there to hide from them; they are his battery. When he decides it is time, he finds how he feels about the task at hand and says, "many things, but not this," and ever bit of his energy becomes focused as through a lens, as though the application of force to that moment will make all things from the past right.

I realized that this was potential, and I took my own sense of grief and loss and converted it. I was surprised because upon doing so, the plague of feelings went immediately away, and I felt wonderful. I was so comforted to know that I had this bit of feeling stored away so that I could use it however I wanted one day. I had no idea what to use it for, and I still don't.

I had been forgetting to add to that pool. So today I tried it again. I said to myself, "save it for later, let it alone for now. It will be important again some day" and a stupid grin came to my face. I feel like I'm cruising along on a nicotine buzz. I don't want to call her anymore. I don't want to ask her, "you're not coming back, are you?" I don't want to beg her, and I don't feel like I need to cover it up with a thick mud of loathing. I still feel contempt for her, but it only makes me sneer now. I feel empowered again, as though she hadn't taken so much away from me when she broke her vows then left.

I am nobody special. Nothing I have seen or done is more or less than anyone else's experiences. But I am consoled by knowing that I have this battery of potential (as does everyone else) that might allow me to shuck off the mundane, even if only for one glowing moment.

Today's post is all about another player I encountered in World of Warcraft on Valentine's day. I saw her dancing around in Thunder Bluff, so I figured I'd say "hello." The resulting chat was well worth it, and I've collected screenshots of the beginning of it, which I have transcribed below. ("Narlic" is me)

[Narlic]: that's a fantastic name
[Sheelanajig]: thank you, i wanted the proper spelling but it was taken
[Sheelanajig]: now i worry people think im racist :/
[Narlic]: I don't recognize any racial slurs in there... ?
[Sheelanajig]: "jig" is apparently american slang for black people :(
[Narlic]: seriously? I need to get out more
[Sheelanajig]: for my people it means "dance"!! i had no idea
[Sheelanajig]: you're the first person to ever get the name, kudos to you on your knowledge of traditional irish statuary genitalia
[Narlic]: my ex-wife was going to have it tattooed on her sternum :-\
[Sheelanajig]: hm. that would be... interesting
[Sheelanajig]: was she a big pj harvey fan, or just irish?
[Narlic]: neither
[Sheelanajig]: my!
[Narlic]: she was "discovering herself"
[Sheelanajig]: ooh, i know a girl who did that. turned out she was a selfish cunt
[Sheelanajig]: good thing she found out, i guess
[Narlic]: What an amazing coincidence!!
[Sheelanajig]: parallel lives, et al

Needless to say, Sheela is now on my friends list.

Well, I was hoping to get some raiding in tonight, but that's not going to happen. I'm climbing the walls a little bit, and I think I'm just going to take some ambien and forget the world exists for a while. And if I wake up tomorrow and feel the same way, then I just might take some more and see if Sunday doesn't shine a little brighter.

I hope Jenni is happy with the life she's bought herself. No I'm not; I hope she suffers without end. But I know she's out there somewhere, surrounded in her various escapes and comforted in knowing that she has her way. I hate her so much. She can strut around in her new freedom, elated that she got away from the terrible trap of a mundane family life. She's a single and young woman, forging ahead on her own! She's the model of inner strength and health, her therapist tells her so! What's not to like about the shining new future she wrought from the shards of our once-shared dreams? She moves without resistance.

Is it just me or is eating the most inconvenient fucking necessity? Also, don't you wish you had four ears, so you could listen to music in stereo and have a conversation at the same time?

So do I want to be on time to the raid, or do I want to have dinner?

Tonight is heroic Naxxrammas. I'm running out of upgrades, but it's still better than sitting alone in this house wondering why I don't have a fucking wife. We got Malygos down in the Eye of Eternity, we'll be back to try it again in heroic mode this weekend. Which is good, because I'd hate to think how I could be close to an attractive woman, how I could smell her hair and put my hands on her waist. Repetitively stabbing a giant blue dragon who is trying to drain all of the magic out of an imaginary world is way better.

You know what I hate? How many people in my guild are pairs. Bigredslayer and Lacious, Plagues and Fignewton. Stolas and Harmone before they left. Artaymis and Tunaah, sorta. I am so goddamn jealous.

I miss her a lot today, for some stupid reason. Why is it that the idea of her getting remarried in the future makes me want to chew through a wall? I'm hoping the anger will kick in sometime soon to drown out the lonely. Never forgive, never forget.

It helps to envision her as "tra-lala" happy, smugly chatting with her friends about how right she was to get away. There we go, now I'm ready to kick puppies again.