So did she agree? Hah. Of course not. I must say that despite all my rough talk about my fundamental worthlessness, my actions betray a rather different sense of the self -- one laughably inflated in the other direction. It's why I now find myself feeling undone, where my past writings might suggest a complete lack of surprise to be the only logical response. I suppose I was one up on myself with those self-portraits dripping of deprecation and despair; that's clearly a much more honest picture of myself, at least, in how I am viewed by the outside world. What do I expect from a lifetime of sitting in the corner, avoiding eye contact, and going out of my away to shy away from any non-superficial interaction? It's only reasonable that my pathetic attempts at reaching out are seen as what they likely are, a last ditch attempt at grace by someone who doesn't seem to realise that he was damned a long time ago. So I hold no ill will. Thankfully, my little corner of the universe remains faithful to me. There's room enough here for me to spend the rest of my time, fading away bit by bit, day by day.

Away at last from the swirl of people running around, making excited plans for the future, proudly displaying to the world that they are in pursuit of a higher purpose. Their energy always gets me down, reminder as it is that maybe I was once like that. Or not; I don't really remember that well, but I'm not particularly inclined to get to the bottom of that matter. In any event, what matters is that right now, energetic is what I'm not. This evening, like many evenings, I feel like a piece of driftwood, aimlessly floating to whatever shore happens to be closest. Even writing down these thoughts takes up dangerously close to all the stamina I have left.

The glimmers of hope that trap themselves in my mind ever so often are swiftly exhumed by my overpowering sense of cynicism, which is now indistinguishable from my sense of reality. It's admirable to try to escape your fate, sure, but tonight, I wonder whether I'm not better off just accepting a few things once and far all. This journey I shall travel alone; my life's course isn't likely to change anytime soon; and happiness, while never totally elusive, is simply not mine to hold with any permanence.

That last one is particularly worth fronting up to. It's now 12 years since last I remember having a year where there weren't blocks of time lost to some combination of extreme self-loathing, misanthropy, and lack of any positive external influence. I don't doubt a lot of this is circumstantial, but those other two points are such that they mean these circumstances are unlikely to change radically. The pragmatist in me thus asks to simply be thankful for the days where I wake up with something to believe in, and to not be too dismayed to find myself confronted with gaping holes where the future is supposed to be. I ought to be used to that by now.

Why do I always seek the rip in a silver lining? I don't remember being born this way; rather, I seem to have grown up all wrong, never content with what I have, always lamenting what I have lost. I certainly wouldn't suggest to the bright young faces that such flaws can't be rooted out. But only while you're still young. Fat good all these trite realisations do me now, as everything I could've held onto has been taken away. My bed is made, and someone is forcing my eyes shut.

One of the uses of poetry is certainly in providing a glimpse into an inner life, both as it is lived and experienced. But is that the only use? I should say that this question is purely academic to me, because what I produce isn't poetry in any serious sense of the word -- these are private rhymes, secret phrases that carry weight in my memory. They serve no greater purpose than recording the moments that produced them, and have been a success measured solely by the fact that I can re-read them and remember an episode or emotion vividly. But hubris tempts me to ask whether they could ever be something more.

In asking that, I am immediately shut down by a familiar reality -- to write something personal is trivial; but to write something externally emotive is not. Certainly others have shown that the two can be present simultaneously, but their creation remains a mystery to me. How does one get outside one's own consciousness, hopelessly warped and solipsistic as it is, and even hope to convey something to another person? Whenever the hopeless fantasy of sharing these writings crosses my mind, I think of any normal reaction to their content and context, and am forced to conclude that if judged by how clearly they express feelings for others to digest, they are an abject failure.

What does any of this matter, you ask? I don't actually think there's anything wrong per se with keeping writings private. I do suspect, though, that like with most things, there is value in having thoughts converted from the personal to the universal (or something resembling that). For a start, it might convince me that there is a world outside my own, and that there's nothing particularly special about my view of it. Whether this hypothetical mature version of me would have anything useful to say, though, is up in the air.