Sometimes I do wonder if I still have it in me to keep going. To persevere through all of this life stuff. I mean, I’m sure I do, but sometimes I really wonder.

How have I gone on for as long as I have? How have I been able to survive and keep on going? How have I been able to tolerate struggling for so much of my life and keep pursuing comfort and success?

I don’t like being alone, but I am fine with it. I don’t mind it, even if I don;t like it. It doesn’t bother me too much. I think that;s part of why I’m handling being dumped better than I did last time. But I can deal with being alone. I’ve spent a lot of time in the relationship alone. But to want to be with someone that I love and being unable to, despite all the problems there are; that’s what hurts.

Somehow I’m still going, though I say that as though it’s some dramatic revelation. The fact is, right now I don’t have much of a choice. I still have to get another job and not be homeless. My writing doesn’t make me money and neither does my photography, so what choice do I have other than to keep on going? To survive? To keep on struggling, and not really being able to deal with stuff that I really need to deal with at the moment?

Too many questions and not enough life right now, but it is something I’m going to have to keep on doing. I have to.

So I sit here in this empty room and I enjoy the quiet. I’m listening to Mariah Carey’s Butterfly, and it’s a great album, and it’s definitely of its era, too. But it’s beautiful and painful, and it’s not hitting me the way that I hoped it might. Not that I was looking to feel hurt – already am feeling that enough – but I’d heard about it being a sad album, and it is, but it’s also quite uplifting in a way. It’s very romantic in parts, I find. It’s nice enough.

So I’m in this empty room and it’s quiet and I’m listening to this music, and I’m trying to work out how I keep on going with things. I’m trying to work out how it is that I seem to be coping better with getting dumped than the person who dumped me. I don’t get it. I don’t understand. I’m not the fastest person in the world, anyway.

I’m having to rebuild my life once again, and I’m doing it in my thirties, and sure, that’s still young. There’s still many years left in me, but I feel tired, and I don’;t want to keep on doing this romance rodeo thing. I don’t know if I have the energy to give myself to someone else, and I know I know; early days. I get that. But I really don’t feel it, because I gave so much of myself, and felt I had to be emotionally and mentally strong enough nearly constantly for two people; for years, and I know that I don’t want to do that again. But of course you never know what will happen in the future, and it’d be wrong for me to swear off it completely, but I really don’t want to.

I do want to work on myself, and I want to think about things. I want to write more fictional stuff, and not this “dear diary” thing I’ve got going on right now. Most of my writing is more of the personal in some manner, of course, but this is getting a bit too much for me. I need space from it, but I have to keep writing as I’m preparing myself for something bit and I want to make sure that I cover it as best as I can. A lot of work and a lot of exercise it will require, and maybe at the end of it I’ll have written something worthwhile.

Most writing is worthwhile, really, but this is a certain kind of worthwhile that I’m trying to find and lock down. If I can do that, then I can do anything.

Or at least say I wrote something I can stand behind that’s not necessarily related to music or gaming or film. But we’ll see.

So I’m sitting here in this room and my lunch is nearly over, but I’m getting there. I’m taking small steps and working my way on up to something bigger. Well, maybe not bigger, but something that at least puts me in a better place. A lot of hope and a lot of trying. A lot of failing and a lot of getting back up, but I still wonder how I’ve managed to keep on going. How I’ve managed to keep on surviving. Dogged perseverance, really.

Some days I feel like I’ll get somewhere; like my writing will be successful and read by many. Some days I feel as though nothing will stop me. Others I struggle to press a few keys. I keep on going though. I keep on writing, and that’s something that seems to have never left me, and for that I am grateful.

I’m grateful that it stays around stronger than my music and my drawing, and my photography. It’s something that I can always return to, though I wish I were better at crystalising thoughts and making them clear and coherent. It’s all part of why I continue though, I guess.

And everyone should be able to express themselves in a way that’s healthy, too. It can be hard to do so at times, but we should be allowed. It is our right to create and do so in a way that helps us feel better. Sometimes it doesn’t, but regardless, we should still be allowed. We should be allowed to keep on growing and, hopefully, find some success along the way.

The time it took to write one thousand words: 12:48:84

Don’t know what to make of this. Good speed, but it’s a bit all over the place. Also focused, however.

Written at work.