Who Am I?

I used to be the good guy. The one who could be the perfect boyfriend and the one you could always trust. I've been slipping. If you were to look back even two years in my life, you would not recognize me. Some changes have been good. Some bad. And lately it feels as though the bad has outweighed the good by a large margin. From someone who would never even dream of having a girlfriend, to someone who cheats on them, even if it is virtually. What have I become? I've been left with a bitter taste towards women and have beaten myself up over what I've done more times than I should have. The lies, the masks, the screw ups; I'm just scared I'm drifting too far from where I was happy. Sure I was an introverted, fat little guy, but at least I knew I was a good person. Now, I'm not too sure any more.

Vikki really screwed me up. I'll admit that I played a role in our demise, but what happened with her has damaged my views towards women and the ones I've met since have not helped my negative outlook. I know a few women read this blog, but I'll be blunt - my encounters have shown me that women, despite the tradition, are just as unintuitive and flawed as men. I'm not saying men are any better, because they're not, but women are supposed to be the sensitive ones. The caring and compassionate ones. Vikki and Jess showed me what it's like to be lied to. What it's like to be undermined and kicked to the curb. To be hurt. Maybe I'm just too damn sensitive. Some days I feel like I'm the most sensitive person in the world.

In these past few years I've been through a lot. It's no excuse for how I've been drifting lately, but I've been through a lot of new experiences which have left me reeling for a way to react. Deaths, suicides, the loss of my family and friends, schools and clubs, fights and love and heartbreak. I've lost weight and grown up and have really started to enter the adult world of university and work. I've made mistakes - huge mistakes - and lost a lot as a result. And I've cheated. Whatever has happened in the last few years I can excuse, but cheating I cannot. Even the most marginal of infidelity I cannot excuse when the perpetrator is me. I continue to come back to that moment again and again. I know the effects of adultery first hand. It ruined my childhood and shaped me in ways I shouldn't have been. And yet I still did it. A girl I was frustrated with in a world that wasn't real. It was set up for me to fail and I walked into it like a fool.

So who am I? As if having my masks wasn't hard enough. Now one of them is not one even I like to wear. Or is it me? Have I really turned into the person I don't want to be? Maybe I should give myself a break. It was a terrible mistake to make granted, but maybe I should stop beating myself up about it. The only one hurt was me; I'm just glad that I was able to learn from it during a relationship I wasn't involved in physically or emotionally, rather than one with someone I really loved in real life. If I've learnt from my transgression and won't do it again, then why can't I forgive myself? I need to know I'm still a good person, and if I keep nailing this cross into my mind, then I'll never get that back. I know for certain that I'll never get involved online again; it's too easy to slip up when you can't see your lover's face and how they hurt, and ultimately, always ends in heartbreak. I never proclaimed to know myself, my capabilities to hurt and be hurt, or that I knew anything in life. Maybe in time this feeling will go, and maybe, just maybe, I'll know what it's like to have confidence in myself and my actions again. To know I'm a good person.

Long, Hard Look...

I've really been taking stock in my life the past few days. Maybe I'm just not the person I thought myself to be. Once again, as if it were ever going to end any other way, I've driven away yet another person I cared about. The last I heard from Jess was that she "had to go" a few days ago. It seems to be the tagline of my life - another passive aggressive rejection. Whenever I get too close to somebody, somehow, some way, I managed to push them away. Maybe it's so I can see if they care enough to come back. So far I've not met anybody who has. In the end, either through my fault or theirs', I end up holding the pieces.

I decided to end things with Jess. She was not impressed from what I managed to gather during our final brief conversation which she quickly ended. The problems had started when she asked if I'd missed her - apparently I was her "hon". Maybe Vikki has ruined things for me permanently, or maybe I'm just not the tolerable partner I once thought, but I definitely did not want to get into a serious relationship with someone online again. At least not one where I was made to feel guilty when I answered her question with a "no". As cold as it was, I wasn't thinking about her. I didn't want to either. Life is complicated and maybe I just wasn't ready to be intimate with anyone.

I've soldiered on. Even if it's with the knowledge that I'm a cold-hearted bastard who has a bitter hatred for women now. I guess all my life I've been expecting love and partnership to be this wonderful thing where two souls combine. But twice now I've been shown that it is nothing more than a brief candle that doesn't combine two people any more than oil mixes with water. I've actually really given up on girls. Even when I was totally clear and said I wanted nothing more than a bit of fun, which was a huge milestone (or step backward depending on what you see) in itself, it still turns into a game of cheesy love talk and annoying girls who I eventually find fault with and lose forever.

Will I always have this anger towards women? I want to love women. I do love them. But I hate them so much. Every girl I've ever asked out and been rejected by. Vikki. Jess. They're all the same. "We're not like the others - we're here to stay". And then they leave. They act all confusing and then leave just like the rest. And every one which does just throws another log on the fire of my burning heart as they walk out the door. Every log another reason why I resent them. Will I ever find that one special girl who is perfect for me? The one who can say "I love you" and the one who will stand up for me. The one who can read my mind. And even then, will I only push her away too?

It seems there are only two people in my life who don't hate me. My parents. And those who I haven't met. I guess I'm just one of those people who others must have an opinion about. And that opinion just happens to be dislike more often than not. I've always been close to my parents. They're my best friends. I know that even if I was to tell them everything on this blog, they'd still love me and respect me as a person. But what happens when they're gone? I know it seems morbid, but every day I can almost feel a counter above my head, counting down to the day I must die. The day my parents die. I can count in my head the approximate number of days I have left - only so many weekends I have to spend with my father. Or the number of my mother's birthdays left to celebrate. The number of years before the chance of me having a family are gone - and believe me, I know that I probably already halfway through my life even at such a young age. To think I'll have no loved ones left behind though? That depresses me.

Death is so final. One may look at it flippantly, but if you actually take a moment and realize it, it's terrifying. The day when you'll never ever see that person again. The day when you find out that they're not always going to be around. My parents always tell me think positively and not wish my death upon myself. I don't want to die. I want children and I want a wife! I want to grow old and be there for my grandchildren and live a fruitful life. And yet there is a constant ticking. That constant ticking in my head where I can see where all things end. I just don't want the day to come where all I love dies. The day where I must stop, look around and see no one. The day when I realize what I really am...

Alone.

Complicated... As Per Usual

As if online hook-ups with strangers after lying wasn't bad enough! I am currently back with the girl, who we'll call Jess, but not only that, tonight I hit on her best friend Lisa! So not only am I still reaping the fruits of my lies in the form of online sexual encounters, but I now have been unfaithful too! As you can see I'm pretty confused and worried right now, so let's start from the beginning and unravel my mind together. Because let's face it, when it comes to the vast and varied enigma that is my fucked up head, you know as much as me.

"Why can't I have a little fun? Why do I always have to finish last and never get a little naughty?" This is what I was thinking when I spoke to Jess right before we began our relationship again. And really, why not? Why can't I have some fun and muck around with some girl? Sure it's not real in the physical sense, and maybe I wasn't entirely truthful when entering into it, but this time it felt right. It didn't feel so debauched. And indeed we've had some very intimate moments over the weeks we've been continuing our relationship. We know it's just a bit of fun. A bit of closeness for two wounded individuals in this cold world. But is a one night stand and casual sex in the real world the same as its' cyber equivalent? Can either be acceptable for someone like me, someone who supposedly respects women and nurtured relationships?

Whatever the morality, I was in the relationship once again with Jess, like an inevitable gravity pulling me ever towards her no matter how hard I tried to escape. But as you may know already, this is not the only thing pulling me (excuse the crude pun). For always in the background is the web of disaster and woe drawing me ever into its' tangled maze. Like a small child gazing at candy laid in a convenient line all the way to a gingerbread house, I am forever drawn to completely and unequivocally fucking everything up.

Jess lives with her best friend Lisa. Both have befriended me online and have become close friends. To tell the truth, Lisa is far more my type of woman than Jess will ever be. The irony is that Lisa likes me only as a friend and would never have an online relationship with me. As much as I hate to admit it, it seems that no matter my intentions, I have fallen for the easy one. I know it sounds cruel and I hate myself for saying it, but it's true. What little relationship we had outside of online sex, Jess made me promise not to do it with anyone else. So what do I go and do? Not only do I express my interest in a girl, I make sure that girl is, out of all 3.3 billion of them on this planet, Lisa, Jess' best friend.

Oh what a fool. I even knew Lisa liked me only as a friend before I asked her, which she confirmed after I had sufficiently made a fool of myself. "X". One little letter. An implied kiss and now I have broken my unbreakable vow. Don't cheat. Don't be unfaithful. I've witnessed the effects and the hurt of infidelity first hand through several years of my life. And now I have, even though it's only in the world of pixels and data, done just the thing I spent my whole like making sure I'd never. And for all the low morality I feel for me and Jess' "relationship", I still know there's a real girl on the end of that line. Someone with a beating heart. With feelings. Feelings to hurt.

I knew it was a mistake as soon as I told Lisa. Sure in real life, maybe we'd be best friends and maybe we could go on a date. Maybe me and Jess could too. But online, this can never be and I've put the only one who is willing to be intimate with me, the only one who is willing to share themselves and be vulnerable, at risk of being betrayed. And in all this is me. I feel lost in it. Foremost on my mind is what is happening to me. First online sex. Now I'm cheating. What's next? Will I continue to cheat? It was so easy. Just a slip. One careless moment thinking only of myself. Only to see if I could hopelessly fall in love with yet another faceless spirit through my lies and deceit. Is it even that big of a deal?

I feel compelled to tell Jess. Maybe because I feel guilt and want to confess. Maybe because I know it will drive her away and cease what has been a very troubled and confusing time for me. I'm still coming to grips as to why and what happened. Everything is pointing at me being someone far lesser than what I had imagined myself to be. I'm having trouble coming to terms with the fact that maybe I'm just as flawed as everyone else. I knew I was troubled, but never for this.

On the scale of cheating, I'd say this was low. I placed a letter and flirted with someone who did not return my glances. I knew it was wrong and I certainly do not wish to continue or hide my lapse. Perhaps in real life I might not be so foolish. Maybe the boundless edges of cyberspace have done my head in - too many new experiences and not enough familiar ones to reign me in. Regardless of the cause, I have but one question - what now? Should I even be in a relationship at all of this nature? Is the nature degrading my morals? Am I bad for even thinking that a nice girl should be considered as having lesser morals for partaking in such a relationship? Was it really cheating? Should I tell Jess? In real life would I still go for the "easy" girl or for Lisa who I get along with and like more?

Once again my questions bounce unheard off the glass of my computer screen, the incessant tapping of my keyboard the only thing keeping me from giving up completely. Maybe me and girls just do not mix. I'm sure other guys would see a way around this. Maybe just lie, find a way to have both or just not screw up in the first place. Hopefully when I tell Jess, I'll have figured out not only the words, but the cause too. And maybe she'll forgive me. I doubt it. For such a care-free relationship, I sure did managed to screw it up. A lot.