Hey kids! It's ventin' time!

So, I'm back home now. Duchess and I had an interesting talk last night. She took me off to help feed someone's cats, then brought me back to my house, but just turned off the car and waited. I was cool with that, I guess. I was wondering if there was something she wanted to talk about- she usually does stuff like this when she wants to talk about something. Eventually she asked me if there was anything I wanted to talk about, and I said, "No." She said she didn't have anything either (why does she lie about that? who knows?)

Anyway... She thinks that I don't have a very good relationship with my emotions- that I just ignore and suppress them instead of letting them out.

I tell her that's what music's for.

She says I use music as a crutch (I never quite got out of her what she meant by that...). (Apparently she also thinks my great interest in so-called "pop music" is at least partially responsible for my loss of faith. It's distressing to hear that. She just doesn't get it, does she? I guess making her all these mix tapes to try and explain my feelings was a futile gesture... ("No. NO! They Might Be Giants are not Satanists. They are not posing as an easy listening Nazi rock band, trying to lure intellectuals into believing what they already know to be true. No!"))

She asks me why I sometimes kind of want us to be back together.

I say, "I just wonder if I'll ever feel about someone the way I felt about you, or if anyone will ever feel about me the way you felt about me."

This negativity, this inability to understand why people would love and respect me, she says, will sabotage all my future relationships.

I say "arrogance is a virtue best tempered with reality." (I plucked that quote out of someone's diary once about a year ago.) My negativity is the reality that tempers my arrogance, you see.

She seems to think I should expect people to love me. Not only does that seem much more arrogant than I could ever manage, it seems to me that to expect such a thing is to have your expectations fail.

And how much should I expect people to love me? I ask her, "Should I expect you to love me?"

She says, "I do love you."

I say, "Should I expect you to want to marry me?"

"No."

She also claims she doesn't want to talk to me about a lot of the experiences she's had in the last few years, because she thinks I will disbelieve and trivialize them (I'm just assuming she's referring to religious experiences here- when I asked her if that was what she was referring to, she said, "Everything is a religious experience to me." Oh... alright... whatever. This one of our classic communication problems. She will think she is being perfectly clear, while I will think she is just spouting a series of vagaries and evasions that it's hard to make any sense out of.). She says sometimes she's angry at me for not telling her what's going in my head and heart.

I tell her it's basically the same thing- I don't think she really wants to hear it.

She says this is why we can't be a couple- because we can't trust each other with our deepest thoughts. And apparently this is my fault.

She's attained a lot of pseudo-wisdom these last years. She's pretty damn condescending sometimes. I think she pities me.

I'm saddened that she feels she can't tell me about her religious experiences- I would not attack them or try to tell her she imagined it all. I want her to tell me. I still have this weird desire to be "fixed." However, she cannot possibly expect me to just believe them. How could I possibly, after all that's happened? If God exists, He's going to have to tell ME about it.

And I'm not sure exactly what she wants me to tell her about that I haven't already... Does she want me to list off all the reasons I don't believe, to enumerate all the problems I have with religion in general and this one in particular? She would just try to argue with me...

give in to greed you don't have to feed me
give up to fate you don't have to need me
so let it go
let it drown me

And of course, she decides she has to go when this conversation is really only half baked, and of course, she's working twelve hour days until after my family will have moved...

I'm not sure how to respond to this. I'm not even sure what the hell she was trying to say.

And, I'm sorry, Duchess, but the only person who will receive the skeleton key to my heart and mind is my wife (or perhaps a wonderful girlfriend). I'm not going to invest such things in you unless I have reason to believe the investment will prove worthwhile.

Junko just likes me as I am. Junko would never try to psychoanalyze me like this.

But maybe that's just because she doesn't know any better.

I feel like listening to Nine Inch Nails right now.

after years of waiting, nothing came,

greyarea

You don't know where I been, Lou! You don't know where I been!

Diaryland