so i’ve found myself alone once again. it was an error, a grave mistake, to fall for the illusion of companionship once again. to believe in it only causes its dispelling to pierce more deeply.

but enough of this. after all, i haven’t really got any justified grievances with the world. to complain is to remain in delusion. a complaint harbors a hope that things might be different. that life is in a real sense improvable.

but then again, maybe it is? is quiet resignation all there is? can any demands be made of life? i do not ask anything of life except those demands which my inborn human entitlement have given me. i only want food, clothes, and shelter, a few friends, perhaps a romantic partner. i do not think this is unreasonable, but life does not care if one’s demands are reasonable. life does not acquiesce to quiet hope and inaction.

i am not sad but i am not happy. i do not know what i want. i have vague instincts and ineffable feelings but nothing so strong that it can be translated into a conscious act, only a quiet despondence and unconscious habit. i know how to relieve my feelings by proxy because cowardice prevents me from facing my problems squarely.

i subjugate all feelings into submission until they only vaguely resemble their original meaning, such that they either fade away from memory entirely or can be subsumed into the insipid nothingness where the rest of my consciousness resides. this makes it manageable.

in short, i am dispassionate. occasionally i fall under the spell of optimism, whether due to infatuation, drunkenness, or untamed desire. in these cases the resulting period of depression is exactly proportional to the strength of my feeling. in each case i invest a tangible portion of my soul into a hopeless endeavor. after the inevitable failure occurs, there is a brief moment of terrible, unassailable pain, immune to any painkiller, before this too fades into a vague memory. life cannot even leave me with the pain of loss, with which i might attribute significance to an otherwise empty life; i am left with only the knowledge that i once felt happy, or optimistic, but which is totally useless since this feeling is incomprehensible unless you are currently under its illusion.

what i really desire is significance; the feeling that i might imbue life with its own self-sustaining meaning. it just so happens that the only things i’ve ever felt were meaningful were contingent on the presence of other people. all sadness is the same: it is the feeling of being alone in the world. if i was truly alone in the world i would kill myself. to be completely alone is the same as to not have lived at all; if one is alone it amounts to the same if one lives for a thousand years or a single second. an event is only significant if it is observed by a consciousness, for this is the only way that existence may reflect on itself.

as it is, i am alone in a practical sense; i have a few acquaintances, people that i agree to see on occasion, and who agree to see me, and listen to some meaningless tripe that pours out of my mouth, and i listen to theirs, and we both nod. i have no love life. i have colleagues with whom i exchange pleasantries, and otherwise with whom i strictly carry on business. in other words, my relations with other people are a mutual prostitution of our time; this arrangement is enough that i do not go insane. but i believe it would be enough for me to gaze out at people in a bar, to see people as i walk morosely down a city street, to exchange dull greetings with a cashier. in each of these cases my existence is briefly recognized, and thus validated, and that is enough for me.

the only real reason for my sadness is my romantic isolation. but even this is an absurdity. the reproductive urge is the oldest instinct, thus it is the fairest. to be rejected by women is just a fair exchange: i can offer them nothing they cannot receive from another source, thus they offer me nothing in return.

i am neither handsome nor ugly. my face and body are entirely unremarkable. my personal charm is, likewise, unremarkable. thus, relatively lacking in these attributes, it is no mystery that i do not represent a viable romantic object.