Hello people! I wrote the original message, and as some of you may have noticed I was feeling a wee bit melancholy. Thanks to the people who've expressed concern or wrote in to pass on some advice. Several have been very astute.

Something Amazing Has Happened.

No, I'm not in love. I didn't meet The One. I didn't find any Answers.

What's happened is this: I just don't care anymore.
(there's a BIG dopey grin on my mug this very minute as I type this :) )

I don't care. I don't even care that I don't care. A year ago when I wrote the original post, I would have wrote "I just don't give a fuck" or something to that effect. I was ANGRY. But now I don't even care enough to feel that. All the dark passion has faded somewhere inconsequential (like a moving book you once read when you were a kid)

How did this happen? Many reasons I guess:
Time: it's been 6 years, 6 YEARS since I lost this girl I fell for. I haven't, and probably won't ever, feel that true innocent happiness that I was lucky enough to savor once, and perhaps that's one more time than some people who've already died. But I don't miss the joy, I can't - I can barely recall it, I've changed so much that it happened to somebody else. I remember the pain, but I can't remember the reasons I felt it in the first place. I can't remember what it was like to believe in something.

Sex: I'm in an open relationship, a fuck buddy, with some chick now. She's the dumbest thing I've ever met, so I (and I'm sure a few other guys) can chat her up with my brain switched off (need the blood supply for other parts you see). Not bad looking really, fairly plain, nice skin, nice smell bla bla bla. She's 6 years older than me, though shes more immature and self-absorbed than most teens. I couldn't really give two hoots about her. Or her me (though shes tried to get me jealous a few times while talking about the other flings she's been having - was a bit pissed that I didn't get mad). She's been used by violent asshole guys her whole life, in fact I think it's driven her quite daft. I'm probably one of the few non-violent fairly-pleasant guy whose ever used her, poor thing. Don't get me wrong, I AM nice to her - I take her out to dinner, compliment her, agree as she trashes her friends, spend hours stroking my fingertips up and down her back while she gasps in my face. It's all just a pleasant facade you see. She is my cat (or maybe I am hers) a rub, a purr, some coochiecooo baby talk, but I don't LOVE her, anymore than I would a cat. I don't think I really even LIKE her.

Deaths and Goodbyes: I've lived with twenty or so people in four different houses in the past four years. At one stage I slept in my car for three weeks. I've worked with forty-odd people in a stack of different jobs. I've said more painful goodbyes to people than I can recall in one sitting. My sister got married to some poor sap and I didn't even bother showing up for the wedding. I'm estranged from my parents and both my grandparents died recently, my grandmother feeling like she'd failed because she couldn't re-unite us. At the end of this year, I'm moving out again to another place. I don't care anymore. I have become a cat, I drift into people's lives, I drift out again, and I've seen most people's lives are rather grey little affairs(really rather sad) with that ubiquitous splash of hypocrisy and a dollop of dodgy self-justification. There are GOOD people out there, less in churches than you would believe, but they are the glorious exceptions that I bask in before heading back into real life. It doesn't bother me anymore.

New Job: I've found a new job. I'm a telemarketer. I work for a scam (which is, of course, what all telemarketing jobs are). It's not the first scam I've been an underling for. My position depends on me chatting gaily to closeted housewives over the phone to screw them out of several thousand dollars. I enjoy it immensely. Joining in while they rave about their kids. Asking them how their day has been in my everso-polite-young-man-goodnessgracious voice (When a woman becomes a mother, Everyone else on the planet becomes a child to her you see - animal instincts in action), I imagine her explaining to her husband how great my product is, what a nice young man she spoke with before he got home. Imagining that tired look on his face, having to yet again pick between giving up a shitload of money for another of the missus' whims or enduring several weeks of hinting, nagging hell as only a wife knows how to draw out. Just spending the evening in busy room listening to the best co-workers deliver their spiels, admiring their artifice, with their little bags of tricky phrases and innocent questions, quietly jotting down every detail they mine on their pads, names, kid's names, schools, occupations, hobbies, favourite sports teams, recent birthdays, parties, renovations. Anything to make complete strangers feel relaxed and trusting. I even enjoy hearing the bad workers, the brute questions, accusations, pleas, desperate jabbering, obvious ineffectual recitation. I picture the mother on the other line, harassed, saucepan in one hand, todler clinging to the other, too nice to hang up, using every excuse she can to squirm out of the conversation, in some small way less trusting, more jaded. I love talking to my boss. I know it's a scam. She knows it's a scam. But neither of us will say it. It's a non-topic. She'll tell me what to say, counter arguments, paths to take the conversation, and of course she has all the subtle answers I should give to my customers to avoid their suspicion. She has to teach me how to play the game without mentioning how the game works. She's very nice to me, as all scam employer are to their underlings, you really don't want a lot of disgruntled former employees who know your game you see. I smile. Mutual dishonesty I admire.

Have I become a fatalist? I still intend to die young. A dramatic teary gesture or some mindless vague accident. Doesn't matter. The thought of either brings a smile to my face. The thought of my mother wringing her hands, lost, lost, and then the inevitable explanations, the stories, the narratives, the blame. And before long she too will be gone, and shallow individuals like my dear sister will continue to spread the selfish genes as tradition demands. Who I am goes when I go and whatever stories they've concocted will be passed to my nephews and nieces. I would never even have existed. Truth will be gone so that lies can do their vital work instilling hope into the next generation, the naive, the inexperienced, so that they too may go forth and multiply.

Or maybe I won't have the guts to end it. I've heard that with gun to your brain, once the trigger is pressed you are dead before you even realize it, there's no time. But what if I don't have the guts to pull that trigger? Will I just grow older and older until time does the job for me. Will I be a lonely old man, now so very far from the happiest times of his life. Why does that thought make me smile?

The world is here just for the sheer fuck of it. The more twisted it is, the more I applaud it's artifice, the endless hypocrisy, the glimmers of innocence and beauty and homeliness that are always and only built upon lies upon lies, layered and delicious as ice-cream. Maybe I've gone mad. I've look in the mirror and I see a madman. A slightly twisted smile, staring eyes set in faded sleeprings. I look the way I used to feel, lost, torn, spent. Will I eventually look the way I feel now? How is a fatalist supposed to look?

Everything makes me want to smile.