Bitching and Moaning

I find myself suppressing a strong desire to bitch and moan very loudly about a lot of things that have happened in the past few months or are about to happen in the coming days and weeks. A few weeks ago I posted that I didn't care what anybody thought while reading my posts, but the truth is that I care very much. I'm very cautious about what I say and where I say it, knowing full well that there are a lot of people who care enough about me to check in on me, here and in other places, from time to time.

I suppose I'm a little bitter about how things have worked out for me lately. While I have a job that pays pretty well and has health benefits, I'm a little concerned about how I was dealt with during the process of being brought on-board. While I'm great friends with JJ, I'm still upset that he left me for someone else and didn't even try to hold onto our relationship. While I'm looking at moving into apartments in great locations around the city, I'm scared of living alone and in a more confined space.


I feel very alone and I am more than a little scared. I'm frightened beyond belief. Many of my friends here, most of the people I know elsewhere, have some modicum of comfort in those who live with or near them. JJ is moving home to live with his family, and he'll have Dustin waiting when he gets there. Rob and Vanessa have each other. Marco and Tony, too. Kent has Laura. Angi lives with her mom. Dan lives with Bill and Eric. My family lives together. Everyone has someone nearby who can be with them almost on a whim, giving comfort and sharing their joys.

And I am all alone. I don't know if I can handle that.

I've always been pretty independent-minded. I've always sought ways to get what I want, to achieve what I set out to achieve. I help others; I have been, I hope, a strong pillar of support for numerous people in tough times. But there was only one person I wanted - I needed - to lean on when I, myself, became weary.

Since that isn't a viable option - and after next week won't really be an option at all - I am forced now to do what I have done in the distant past: look within for the strength I need to find my own way, to forge my own path through this wilderness.

I don't know what that will mean for me now. I only know that, in the past, finding strength from within meant using my negative emotions as a fuel to positive ends: writing things that have great meaning to me through my despair and loneliness; finding the energy to wake up and get through every day by riding out my waves of anger at the world, and frequently the people, around me; and making it through each night by telling myself that anyone else is a fool not to see how amazing I am and that I'm worth their love or attention.

I will enter the ugly cocoon as I always do when I come to these points in my life, and I will wait again for something to draw me out, finding again my own inner beauty and strong sense of self-worth (as opposed to simply a sense of self-importance).

Don't worry about me if my words begin to take on a somber tone; I have trod this terrain before. I know my way about these dark lands. I don't fear what is here - I fear leaving behind any part of the great things I have achieved thus far. I fear losing part of my better self as I press on through the night.

It is, I suppose, no great irony that these changes in my life are punctuated by the changing of the season from Summer to Fall; I've never liked the winter much, but it is appropriate that, as my world becomes gloomy and gray, so too do the skies.