Empress of Mars: Undisputed @zebratron2084@awoo.space

Thank you for the support. I'm feeling less alone and less against the wall now, and I can work on tying off the loose emotional ends. I'm sorry to be so cryptic, just a clumsy attempt at damage control.

But I got hurt too, and I won't pretend I'm not disappointed that's probably never going to get addressed. I want everyone to get along again someday, I really do, but in the meantime I've GOT to withdraw from people and things that remind me of this situation. I will always do my best to be there for you, ALL of you, in an emergency, and if I vanish for a bit, it's not out of anger or as punishment, but out of shame & recognition this stage of my life must be gotten past at all costs.

There is no war and no hate here, just aton of confusion & frustration about how exactly it got to this point, and a lot of questions about the events that led up to it that I'm giving up on getting answered.

Basically, I wrecked up a good friend's boundaries in the search for answers to old questions and I now realize that even that was a huge mistake and imposition. I can now work on putting all this behind me like they wanted and that's... fine-ish. I'm so damn tired of people hurting.

Thanks to everyone who's checked in on me. I will get through this physically intact. At least a huge amount of painful, frustrating ambiguity has finally been resolved, and that's something of a relief. The final exchanges at least left some hope of a reconciliation someday, and I can finally stop guessing at whether I'm supposed to be looking for hope or not.

Yeah, worst case scenario, end of an era, social life is at least dramatically simplified.

Let the record show that I did the best I could up to the end, and am putting a lot of things aside in the name of peace.

If there's one thing I've learned from my past relationships, when something is over, it's over. (Peg and I are fine, great even, FWIW. It's... not that.)

I'll be okay. I've been ready for this for the better part of three years, just feel dumb for not accepting it sooner.

I've learned something kind of heartbreaking and I've got nobody to talk to about it, because I feel like I've exhausted every possible confidant I have on this issue.

I really don't know what to do, and it's been a big day-to-day drag on my mood. I'm even scared to post this, and I'm doing it because if I don't at least leave a marker that it's happening, the sense of bottling it up will totally cripple my productivity. Again.

I really, really tried to do the right things. *shrug*

...Which always forms, when dropped, an ampersand,
Are found in Heaven by the newlydead
Stored in its strongholds through the years.

--"Pale Fire," Canto II, lines 525-536

(cc: @anthracite, with love)

And I'll turn down eternity unless
The melancholy and the tenderness
Of mortal life; the passion and the pain;
The claret taillight of that dwindling plane
Off Hesperus; your gesture of dismay
On running out of cigarettes; the way
You smile at dogs; the trail of silver slime
Snails leave on flagstones; this good ink, this rhyme,
This index card, this slender rubber band...

So why join in the vulgar laughter? Why Scorn a hereafter none can verify:
The Turk's delight, the future lyres, the talks With Socrates and Proust in cypress walks, The seraph with his six flamingo wings,
And Flemish hells with porcupines and things? It isn't that we dream too wild a dream:
The trouble is we do not make it seem
Sufficiently unlikely; for the most We can think up is a domestic ghost.

--Pale Fire, Canto II, lines 221-230

There was a time in my demented youth
When somehow I suspected that the truth
About survival after death was known -
To every human being: I alone
Knew nothing, and a great conspiracy
Of books and people hid the truth from me.
There was the day when I began to doubt
Man's sanity: How could he live without
Knowing for sure what dawn, what death, what doom
Awaited consciousness beyond the tomb?

--"Pale Fire," Canto II, lines 167-182

"Morally, democracy is invincible. Physically, that side will win which has the better guns. Of faith and pride, both sides have plenty. That our faith and our pride are of a totally different order cannot concern an enemy who believes in shedding blood and is proud of its own." -- Vladimir Nabokov

Meanwhile, turns out my huge work project is only half as huge as I thought -- the figure I was given was the whole shebang, not my share, and my boss-in-law is braving half of them. So I might not disappear _completely_ this month, though part of me, an inner Lisa Simpson, is perversely disappointed at losing the excuse for panicky all-nighters. Some of the best altered states of my life happened during those, 'cause there's no drugs like sleep deprivation and mild fear. :>

Just a little melancholy today, mostly from some headlines and some random conservative garbage that made Reddit's front page. (Encouragingly, that's actually fairly rare these days.)

Been reading Pale Fire. It's more fun than I expected from its reputation, and is actually reminding me a lot of the British black comedies I'm into, especially Inside No. 9. There is probably a literary puzzle there, but I'm just enjoying it as a satire of a puffed-up academic narcissist.

no comment necessary, just a spot of envy

https://i.imgur.com/ZlyzlgH.jpg

Also, I just used the expletive "bootynogget" in the process of cussing out a buggy Google Maps feature.

This can only be a sign that I've been spending far too much time with @anthracite. #fudgepuckler #bazzfazz #fartsausage #thingsanthysays

I... I am even more confused by birbs than I was before. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/woodpeckers-brain-damage-good-thing-boston-university-a8193771.html

Also, I got 100 karma on Reddit this morning just by telling a Nazi to fuck off, so I got that going for me. It wasn't even a good one-liner, I literally just told him to fuck off, so I feel like I got a small reward for being on the side of the angels. ^__^

A good couple rounds of dragon cuddles and some simulated post-atomic violence later, I am in much better shape. Peg's also got a full draft of the "red" half of the first Parallax story in, and I'm pretty excited. Currently holed up at a cafe with a caffè Americano and feeling reasonably optimistic about my future if not necessarily America's nor that of my host species.