some people speculate that hell, rather than being a physical place of fire and brimstone, is actually a void where one will acutely experience the absence of God.  i think that's probably true.  i think the gnashing of teeth, the pain, the burning, the torture, the loss, the despair, will come from having seen God at last and felt peace and happiness, joy and exhiliration and then being suddenly and abruptly and forever removed from it.

and i think that i'm in a similar hell right now.  it's the closest analogy i can think of, and it seems utterly appropriate.  having known and felt love, having given love and received it, having felt it would go on no matter what, come hell (pardon the pun) or high water, come good times and bad.... having been in love through said good times and bad, having made it work, coming to be so utterly involved, and now it's just....... gone.

i am in the darkest of voids.  i am still so incredibly in love, but in love with a person who can't reciprocate it anymore because he doesn't love himself, and he's falling into a void of his own, one that i can't get him out of, and one that he wouldn't let me near to help even if i could.  so i am surrounded by blackness; i am gnashing my teeth; i am feeling loss and despair.  i've been crying every day for the past month.  sleep, when i can actually manage to fall asleep, is filled with nightmares, and when it's not, when it's filled with good dreams, are worse, because then i wake up and realize that none of it is real.  i am stuck in a real, unending nightmare.  i woke up today just completely defeated.  i keep thinking that one day i'll wake up and it'll be ok.  i keep thinking he'll wake up and we both realize that this is stupid, that we'll work again.  but we don't.  and he doesn't wake up.  and i am still in love, and so is he, but he is stuck in anger and fear and hate and scorn and spite and stupid people and stupid decisions and everything.  and he is stuck there by CHOICE!  and no matter how hard i try, i can't understand that at all!

and i am so mad at him and me and God.  i've yelled at God i don't even know how many times, and i've begged Him, and pleaded with Him, and cried, and felt the weight in my chest grow heavier and heavier every damned fucking day.  i can't breathe anymore. 

and i torture myself with memories, with fragments of images and smells and sounds.  i make myself remember what he kissed like, what he tastes like, what he smells like, what he sounds like, how he laughs, how he pouts, how he sleeps, everything.  and i drag myself further into that void and fall further into hopelessness.

and through it all i torture myself with the worst thought of all, that if he would just WAKE UP then we could go back and try again.  and i give myself false hope.

god, i miss him.

and god, i hate this.

my heart has been broken and my soul has been ripped apart and here i am walking around amputated and impotent, trying to smile and fake it.  crying whenever i'm alone: in the shower, in the car, in my bedroom, at work when i think no one is looking.  i'm bleeding a crimson trail of despair and everytime i think i've started, just barely started to work up enough strength to just try to get better, i fall and crash again.

and i'm still in love.  like a fucking pendeja!

and i miss him more than i ever thought i could.

and this hurts more than i ever thought anything could ever hurt.

and i am in hell!

so it's almost a week since my last blog.  so much for daily.

i don't have much time to write, seeing as how i have to be at work in about 40 minutes. 

speaking of work, one of my regulars, a sweet lady who has taken to bringing me different colored hibiscus flowers every week came by the day before yesterday with the most beautiful pinkish/purple hibiscus flower i've ever seen.  i didn't even know they came in that color.  she said it was called silvered purple.  so i asked her if hibiscus plants grew well from cuttings.  she said yes, so i asked if she'd bring one by next time.  a couple of hours later, she comes by and asks if i can take a break:  she'd potted four cuttings for me, and brought along another four branches that could be cut down into even more potential plants.  all of them were for different colored flowers.  yellow starburst ones, red and violet ones, red ones, the silvered purple ones, and a couple of others.  i'm excited.  i cut and potted the rest of the branches, but they were a little dry by the time i got the soil for them but still, hibiscus is pretty resilient, or so i'm told.  anyway... isn't that super sweet and awesome?!  i think so.

ok, i'd better go if i don't want to be late.

tomorrow roy and i hopefully take part in a march against the border wall.  we shall see. 

so i was exploring some old xanga haunts and i found a familiar survey on a friend's site.  i had taken it myself a couple of years ago and figured why not take it again... see if things have changed.

woah ho ho... did they.

here are the results today:

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 20% Conservative, 80% Liberal Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal Personal Responsibility: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal Fiscal Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal Ethics: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal Defense and Crime: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

nah.  just weirdness.  after a two year absence, i think i'm returning to xanga.  seeing as how myspace is more conducive to myspace-stalking, lack of thinking, and general BLAH.  i've blogged less than a dozen times on myspace, and i miss it, quite frankly. 

that, and i've been thinking about tons of stuff lately.... bloggable stuff.  so here's the update:

in the past 2 years i have:

        -been completely enamored and in love with the greatest guy on the face of the planet, roy.  we've been together a little over 2 1/2 years, actually.  one of the reasons i'm back here is because i feel like i haven't recorded enough of the awesome memories roy and i have created together.  whether in words or in pictures.  i can count on my hands how many pictures we have of us together and that makes me sad.  so, further resolution to take more pictures, too.

      -been promoted at my job, then fired from it for standing up for what i believe in.

     -been unemployed.

     -been re-welcomed by starbucks, where i currently work.

     -been perpetually broke.

     -built that darkroom i was always talking about, but still have yet to actually use it.

     -strayed away from artmaking in a kind of sadistic self-induced purgatory because i'm an idiot.

     -decided to stop retarded artless cycle, kick myself in the ass and get to work.

     -returned to school.  sort of.  taking classes in order to get my certification as a teacher.  high school art, hopefully.

     -made some fantastic new friends.

     -lost a few "fantastic" new friends.

     -lost touch with too many truly fantastic friends.

     -thought CONSTANTLY about said truly fantastic friends. (mostly lots of baylor people).

     -kissed in the rain.

     -started a massive painting and left it unfinished.

     -bought a sweet twin lens reflex camera.

     -broke my first love, my original baby, the camera that was the extension of my hand and my eyes, my nikon n65 TWICE.

     -fixed camera once, but now too poor to fix it again.  need new lens for it, and perhaps repair on the mounting ring on the camera body.

     -crashed my car on the same day my house flooded.  everything turned out ok.

     -tripped out on caffeine.  something seemingly impossible for me to do since i work at a coffee shop.

     -fallen asleep snuggled up in the warmth of another.

     -fought too much with a person who only knows love as a fight and a demand for things to go her way.

     -fought silly fights with the boy i love and then learned how not to fight.

     -realized that i love my boyfriend's parents, especially his mom.  and that they love me.

     -had sporadic reconnections with my cousin.

     -enjoyed the friendship i have with my sister.

     -read at least 20-30 books, including the Dark Tower series by stephen king, the Otherland series by tad williams, the A Song of Ice and Fire series, by george r.r. martin, parts of isaac asimov's foundation novels, lots of other stephen king, some terry pratchett, some chuck palahiuk, and a bunch more, with lots of suggestions from c.j.

     -and so, so, soooooo much more.....  this turned out to be a longer update than i thought it would be.  c'est la vie.

more updates, more thoughts, more everything soon.  my brain is ready to explode.

xanga, oh xanga, thank you for your warm embrace!

the palms of my hands carry the distinctive smell of stale cigarettes 15 minutes after being smoked on a cold night.  the smell is different from a cigarette smoked in summer sunshine.  then there's the tang of acrid sweat to go with it.  the smell is warmer, strangely.

i don't smoke.  never even tried a cigarette.  yet tobacco, tar, arsenic, mingled and laughing, lingers on my hands, on my fingertips. 

i was just hugging someone who does.