i'm annoyed at yet another silly failed expression of desire. I gave that guy from the diner, paul, my number and he has a partner. yes yes i know you win some you lose some but why do i only lost them all lol. I've only ever had one successful romantic endeavor, nate, and look what that got me. nothing but pain, annoyance, a poorer credit score, and three years of my life that i sacrificed to spending overweight in boring domesticity. i'm ready for the next serious relationship, it's been long enough and i've accrued so much wisdom since i stupidly stumbled into the last one. why is nothing aligning?? am I uglier than I think? am i off putting in a way i am just incapable of seeing? I don't undderstand it!

I put so much work into myself to be hot, to be funny, to be charming, to be interesting and all it seems to do is make me more socially secure and self obsessed. but nets nothing in the sex/romance department. I don't even want sex. i still would love to cauterize that stupid boring need that wells up like a sick dog whenever i least want it. I just want mutual obsession, melodrama, limerence. that's all. with someone equally hot, funny, and interesting. rarely does someone catch my eye, and whenever they do they're never into me. I'm swatting down dudes i have no interest in left and right, when will someone on my level be interested in me? i'm so bored, i'm so over it. I hate hate hate dating and don't want to do it anymore. it's all so silly, i wish i could be asexual/aromantic. it would just make it all so easy if the only social need i had was familial and platonic. those i have in excess.

like seriously, am i not actually hot?? like what gives? shouldn't a hunk have come around by now and swept me off my feet? what else do I need to do? and i know i know i know that's not how it happens, there's no romantic karmic scales that need balancing. that's all nonsense i'm just so frustrated and defeated and had an annoying day. and it's driving me to doubt myself which is the worst outcome of all.

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i'm still in my romantic crash out. valentine's day only worsened my condition. i've been feeling so pitiful and lonely lately. my daydreams have been noxiously lethal lately. filled with limerance and simple intimacy. i'm really doing well though on not being embarrassed or ashamed of myself. it's only human, and i am allowed to be human. it's not weakness. i just want tenderness. and i want to foster intimacy and closeness with someone that i could fall irrationally in love with. i want to be devoted, i want to feel my passion for another buoy me forward, i want to be head over heels over head over heels over head and all over again. i want to lay my head on his chest and make him laugh, i want to parade a hottie around with pride, i want to be dependable. (if anyone ever reads this i will be forced to hunt them down and eliminate this from their memory.) my frustration has abated and dimmed into a deep yearning. i just want the shelter of a safe person to be vulnerable to. and i want to offer that safehaven to another as well.

someday soon the next one will come along, i'm sure. it's just, i've been so patient now for the past year and a half since i decided enough time had elapsed post-nate and i was ready for the next steady affair. i've been doing so much work to make sure i come correct, i've done so much to know what my needs are, so much to know what i want. and i know exactly what i want. i know too that nothing will be absolutely perfect, but nothing has presented itself that could even be plausibly decent. i'm losing hope, i'm losing faith in the feasibility of meeting someone fitting under the right conditions in which a relationship could take root. i guess it will just happen when it happens, i can't rush it. i'm ready to start praying to venus or something. maybe i should do a ritual tonight. that may assuage my embers.

it's now been four and a half weeks since surgery and thus five weeks since i've been weightlifting. my body image is at a low, and i'm itching to get back to it. i know i need to do a bulk but that scares me. i think i'm really flirting with an eating disorder. my relationship to food is so unhealthy, and the importance i put on my body image is getting out of hand. i know to bulk i need to eat a caloric surplus, but that's so hard to do. it's reflexive to punish myself for eating, it's habit to withhold, to starve, to abstain. maybe if i pump up my lifting habits up to five times a week i can feel good about eating extra. and this is what it takes to become a twunk lol. i think i'll counteract it all by consuming a dumb amount of protein a day. i was thinking that if i were to do two protein shakes a day on top of a quest bar each morning that's an easy 80g of protein. then if i eat two meals on top of that that should easily be enough. i just hope i'm recovered enough to start back in on lifting this week. there's still some tenderness in my chest when i put bump into things. i'm going to start with back and leg day of course, but will even that be too much? i'm just tired of feeling slouchy and untoned. it's coinciding cruelly with this romantic crashout.

ugh i'm not done writing. i could go on and on about my romantic crash out. i feel it rippling through my entire body and mind, i feel on the edge of madness. and over what? yearning? i think it just makes me feel like an incel. i want to feel like a romantic poet, like a tortured novelist, an artist in my pining. i want to be a lover! i feel it ready to burst within me, i feel it's pressure building up against my temples. i do so much to laugh it away, to swat it down and explain it away. but this time i don't want to. i want to be pathetic in love, i want to beg on my knees for some man. my pride prevents me from this of course, my pesky pesky pride. deep down inside i am begging to be dashed upon the rocks of desire. i want to be prometheus being pecked apart and shredded. why can't i bring myself to be the archer then? why must i wait and wait and wait for him to hunt me, or for the perfect opportunity to be served on a platter? what sense of propriety is preventing me? i'm a faggot! the name of the game is lust, desire, and degeneracy! is my ego really so fragile that i couldn't handle it? it's all pride.

but do i really want to disarm all these prideful mechanisms? is this true pure artistic yearning or am i just horny? does it matter? i think to me it does. i must hold within myself some decorum, some code of behavior. i want to maintain a reputable and charming character. but yr boy is down so bad. and not just for anyone either, i'm batting for a catch. I'm tired of going below my weight class. i'm 90% sure i'm really hot, and i know i can pull a hunk. my standards are high and i can't compromise on them! that's giving up, that's giving in, that's dishonorable. i am enjoying waxing grandiose and poetic about all this. i think it's the genet working through me. after all, inside it really does feel like epic forces of nature whipping me around. and here's the thing too, i don't want to just get laid. i'm actively trying to avoid sex so as to raise myself up to a desperate insanity and focus. i want more than that i want devotion and passion! i want desire and obsession. i just have to trust that it will come, all the while continuing to sharpen myself into a more clear and refined self that i can be even more proud of than i am now.

i sound insane and i sort of don't mind, it's fun to give myself over to it all.

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i've been trying to deny it but the yearning has been simmering so intensely the past few weeks. i'm craving intimacy and affection and obsession and passion. it feels so far out of reach and so unrealistic. i love the potential and possibility, i worry that i'll never be able to settle for the reality. and if i'm being honest i never really feel like trying. no one interests me beyond passing fancy (usually just lust). it all just feels so silly and frivolous and embarrassing.

i think i've denied in myself too long that i enjoy fruity romantic nonsense because i find it embarrassing. but when i sit with myself and am candid holy fuck i want that. i want sappy i want doe-eyed i want sentimental. i think i've denied the desire for so long because a perspective that it's pathetic to want and not have, especially when it comes to the romantic. maybe even most when it comes to the romantic. that and a pervasive all-encompassing evasive terror in the face of vulnerability and earnestness has had me cauterizing my romantic wants for years. or at least keeping them a desperately kept secret. why am i so afraid that people may know that i want to be held and loved and that i want to dote upon and be saccharine? is it a cage of masculinity? is it a power thing? do i feel the same when i hear other people talk about it in themselves? i don't think so. so what is it that drives me to keep it all locked up inside?

i also think i over-intellectualize my emotions and drives way too much. i don't think i know. i blame my air moon. emotions to me are mysterious and strange forces of nature that i try to observe and fit into pragmatic structures and flows. i feel safer that way. when i'm driven by an emotion to act before i can make sense of it it terrifies me. it feels like the wheel has been wrested from my hands and i'm left to deal with the aftermath. i love emotions and i'm so grateful for them, in awe of them and their power and inscrutability. nevertheless i find myself unable to give myself fully to their control. do i need to? i'm rambling. i'm just sick and depressed and a little burnt out. it's got me feeling to introspective and lonely. i just need bodily touch and someone to tell me i'm pretty. i am a creature.

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i've just spent the last hour wandering around listening to teenage crush music and book shopping. i love living in that romantic ache that used to be such a painful constant all those years ago. i'm getting better at tapping into it when i want to. i think i cut it off for so long precisely because it was so painful. i think back then when i had such a tenuous and shaky sense of self it was scary, that yearning. it made me think i might just be unlovable and that it would never happen for me. it made me feel not good enough, for why had it not happened for me? but now that my sense of self is built on stable foundations, it's delicious those pangs. it lets me remember that somewhere in me that lovesick little teenage boy is still cradled. still spinning daydreams of perfect romance and understanding. imagining so many perfect little scenes. i'm finally able to have compassion and love him, and i love him so. i wish he knew the power he had. but that's okay, because he grew up into me, and i know.

i'm having such fun parsing myself out these little glimpses into a softer way of living. i'm teaching myself slowly i don't have to be so afraid. i don't have to be so hard and protected all the time. it's going to take a long time, but i am beginning to see the possibilities. i just have to let my defenses down and know that i'm so much more confident and sure than i was all those years ago. once i can behave with that kind of strength that only true vulnerability allows, i think i'll be unstoppable. i'm getting there.

how can i balance levity and sarcasm with vulnerability and romanticism? are they incompatible? can i hold both ends of the spectrum together in both hands, palms displayed? i sure hope so.

also i can't decide how i want to format this. should i do pages like my usual blogs? or just let this grow monstrously long until it's unreadable then add a second secret blog page?

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on the heels of one of the worst dates of my life i am experiencing renewed romantic hopelessness. are my standards too high? am i asking too much? why does every choice offered to me feel so below any reasonable standard? as much as i know that my odd social limits are in my own way, i really don't understand how there can be no realistic potential options after all this time. am i really this unlucky? or is there some glaring fault in me that i am incapable of seeing that everyone around me is too polite to point out? i can tell that i am the focus of desire regularly, i see it in the eyes that follow and fixate on me. and i revel in it and am so grateful for it. but can that translate into care and affection?

pathetic thought i had today while stretching:"i just want someone to be patient with so i can open up and feel comfortable." i guess i shouldn't say pathetic. what's a more fitting synonym of how i feel about the sentiment i harbor? piteous? i need to have compassion for my soft sides, i just struggle to do so. all of these things i'm feeling are fine and normal, understandable human sentiments. why do i think that being so tough on myself will be enough to sand off these inconvenient needs? has that ever worked before? it wouldn't be so inconvenient if there were any threads to follow. i find myself in a void of potentiality. i am so ready to jump in head first, i really want to. i am begging the world around me to meet me where i'm at. i have been doing so much work emotionally, physically, mentally to ready myself to chase and be chased. i want to dive head first into desire but how can i do so when all i am offered is a shallow tepid wading pool? it's either all sex and no passion, or the absolute inverse: earnest emotionality with no levity or humor. my patience has been thin, and it will tear soon. it already has begun to rip apart. shredding me along with it.

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