fluffy marshmallow clouds

I realize that I haven't written anything of note here lately. I've just been filling my page with fluff in order to make it seem like I was making some kind of effort at keeping it updated. I started to wonder why I haven't been writing about things that are going on with me, because honestly I feel like things are moving in a very positive direction for me right now. Then it occured to me that in order to talk about how good things feel now, I would have to admit that things had been going very badly. And that's one thing that I have an incredible amount of difficulty doing, admitting my weaknesses. Somehow, I've convinced myself that I have to maintain this front of strength and power, as if showing anything else will chase people away. So I tried to keep all this pain I had been feeling to myself, only occassionaly sharing it with people and feeling like I was chasing them away in the process. I was exhausted, holding all that in was robbing me of my will to continue this life. Then around Halloween, the tiredness and seriousness with which I was taking my life just combusted and I hit rock bottom. I was totally confused about everything. I had all these expectations of how the relationships in my life should be, I had expectations that each encounter I had with a person should somehow evolve into a deep and lasting connection, I thought that if I was aggressive enough that I could make all these things happen. And it just wasn't working out that way. So I fell, and fell hard. I'd convinced myself that I needed things I didn't. And I've been working quite hard to recover from all of that. Now it feels like that work is starting to pay off, I feel like there's been a definite shift in my life and myself. And I'm realizing that I don't have to take it all so seriously. Certainly not everything is as I wished it were. And I still sometimes feel like I want more than I've got. But I'm learning to let go of my old shit that I've been dragging around and trying to get out of my own way. I'm trying not to analyze each and every encounter to death and then blaming myself when things don't quite turn out the way I had hoped. And I'm accepting my hopefulness rather than wishing my hope would die a fiery death. I'm relearning to laugh and smile, if it's at nothing or at myself. Frankly, it scares the shit out of me to write this, and I'm debating whether or not to hit the publish button, but this is it. It is what it is...I'm warty and scarred and damaged, just like everybody else. It's no secret and I need to stop acting as if it were