There's this truck that sits idle outside my window every morning. Sometime in the evening too. It drives me crazy.
There isn't anything in the world that grates in my nerves more than a diesel truck idling. Well, nothing that I can
think of at the moment.
For some reason, on this page, I feel compelled to turn this into some sort of metaphor for Life. I can't think of
anything. It just bugs me, is all.
I'll be honest, I've been feeling pretty crappy lately. There's this cold to start with. My grandfather died two weeks
ago. I'm still not sure how I'm dealing with that one. We weren't very close, although I made an effort, these last
couple years, to spend more time with him when I was home on the occasional weekend or holiday.
I didn't know him very well, I suppose. One thing that surprised me was when I was told that I'm exactly like he was
when he was young. I'd never noticed, except that we're equally talkative... Which is to say we aren't.
I know I'll miss him. He was always such a nice guy. It's a shame I didn't know him better.
I had a thought, yesterday, to track down one of my old co-workers. The reason was that he was in the "unknown" section
of a "where are they now" list that was circulating the office. He had seemed to me to be a nice guy, and I was
wondering where he was at right now. Doing so made me rethink something I'd written recently on another site.
The Internet, in many ways, is a wonderful thing. Google especially. I wasn't having a whole
lot of luck, though, so I tried a different tack. I came across his wife's online diary.
A little nagging voice quietly whispered "don't go there." I never listen to that anyway. I read her most recent entry,
written the day before, saying that she might reconsider getting a divorce after all. And that nagging voice got a
little louder.
I read some more. I was compelled—drawn in. For one thing, she seemed funny, sincere, poetic, thoughtful, likes the
Powerpuff Girls, liable to sell herself short, frustrated, resentful of her own timidity and other shortcomings... I
found myself relating. Even if she likes Buttercup and I'm more of a Bubbles person. So if, as I said, her husband
seemed to be a nice guy, what was up? I was driven to ask out of fear, I suppose. I can't imagine anything worse than
being stuck in a life without love, but knowing I couldn't do anything to change it without hurting someone I care (or
cared) deeply about, even if doing nothing meant I and everyone else were hurt repeatedly, slowly and methodically until
something really bad happened. I think most of my fear of connecting with others stems from my fear that this might
happen. A life without love on my own seems the lesser of evils.
So I read the entry about their going into therapy. And I read some more. And then I read about how she was raped as a
teenager. Several times.
I felt numb. I had to leave the office, because I was afraid someone might see me crying.
I had already invested too much into it, I suppose. I had been thinking that this might be an interesting thing to write
about here, and when I found myself thinking that she and I weren't all that dissimilar, I was lost—totally unprepared
for what I'd find. After all, I don't know her. I didn't really know her husband either. He was just someone I saw at
work every day for a year or so.
Now in some ways, I feel awful. Not just for the guilt of invading someone's privacy, no matter how public she made it.
I also feel guilt that I'm using her pain to fill up this web page. I'm writing this anyway. I don't know why. It's too
much to keep to myself. That's probably why she wrote about it herself. When I compare it to anything I'd be able to
write here, I feel empty. It's not that I wish I had that kind of pain to express.... It's just... I don't know...
complicated.
I was going to come to a point right about now. I can't do it anymore. I've debated whether I should post a link, but I
don't think I can. Being a pimp is somehow much worse than just being a voyeur.
I've been meaning to do this page for a while. It's my home away from home. I have this horrible habit of winging on
about things on the web page that has my name on it. This, I occasionally think, may be a bad thing. What I mean is, I
want to be able to write down what's on my mind at the moment, but I don't particularly want to give people the
impression that I'm a complete loser. Solution: divorce my whiny winging page from me personally, and assign it to the
handle that I've been using for self-analysis and introspection for nigh-on three years now.
So here we are.
I don't yet know what all will go on this page yet. I'll keep my own identity a thinly-veiled secret (most of the people
who will find this page likely know who I am anyway).
I hope that removing my real name from these little bits of text will make me a little less inhibited. Which means it
might even be interesting. Don't get your hopes up too high, though. It's still all me, which, to be honest, isn't
inherantly thrilling... unless, perhaps, I start making stuff up. Now that could be fun.
So here we are... a new domain name; a new beginning. Are you all as excited as I am? No, I didn't think so either.