The Errant Venture

I'm so sick of being mentally attracted to people and then being physically unattracted. I dont think my standards are too high, maybe i just dont find the kind of people who are mentally attractive physically attractive. Or maybe i just have really bad luck *sigh*

What a beautiful day. When i left for Ann Arbor this morning, and in fact all the way there and half the way back it was raining, but now that I am back it is a cool sunny day. I really want to go play catch, so much so that i retrieved my mits from my parents' house and bought a ball. However as always, i have all the pieces of the puzzle save one : another person. Anyone want to play catch?

Why is it so hard sometimes for me to do things. Why is it that sometimes a simple task will be almost, if not completely, physically beyond me. It may even be something I need to do, but I will be absolutely unable to make myself do it. Stuff like going up and talking to people I don't know is one thing, i mean thats mildly scary even for someone without the kind of problems I have, so my inability to do that at least makes some semblence of sense. But simple stuff, maybe household chores, why are those sometimes so difficult. Its inexplicable.

What happened to the days where I could have fun on my own. For the last week i've pretty much isolated myself, not by preferance but more by circumstance. I've been trying to get together some people over to play DnD but the vast majority of them aren't friends, its just something to break up the monotony of life. My house has fallen into clutter at my lack of attention. Its not dirty so to speak, because nothing is unclean, its just cluttered. This is made worse by my occasional mad attempts to find something...anything to do. I'll go through the house like a whirlwind pulling things off shelves, then dismissing them and tossing them aside trying to find something, anything to do. Nothing seems to have any enjoyment, everything is void of all but the most instantaneous entertainment value, often gone before i've even begun.

For the last two hours i've been doing some cleaning around the house. It has gone well, except for the fact that its beginning to dig things up. As i've been alone, sitting here feeling bad about myself i've kind of become numb, as i start around the house again and begin to get my spirits up, i realize again all that I have and how i have no-one to share it with. I want to share what i have with others, I don't want to watch a movie by myself, i want to watch it with someone so we can discuss it. I don't want to play video games by myself, i want to play them with someone so we can laugh and have fun together. I know when i'm having a really good time because my smile muscles begin to hurt, and that hasn't happened since a girl i dated almost 3 months ago. I dated her for two weeks. Before that i know for a fact it hadn't happened since 06. I know life has its ups and downs, and as i look into my past i see periods of lonliness, of course, but this one has lasted so long, much longer than any of the others. Since i was 16 i havn't gone this long without a relationship, and that bothers me. I even have less friends now than I ever had, seeing as how i dont even have aquaintences. Perhaps that isn't true, maybe i have the same number of friends but its more crippling because i dont even have aquaintences. Either way I am so very alone here.

Alright well after being off all my meds for a little more than a month its clear that i have some sort of anxiety disorder. Depression? Well that remains to be seen, i'm certainly exhibiting symptoms of depression, but am I sleeping better? Not really, so if that problem isn't fixed then i cant begin to hypothesize on anything else. Anyway this social anxiety disorder is only one of many problems working to cripple me right now, and it needs to be fixed. I'll have to call the Dr. tommorow and see what he thinks I should do. I don't really want to go back on the Lexapro, perhaps he will have a different suggestion for an anti-anxiety medication. So i guess thats just about all there is to that. Maybe more later, things aren't all bad, not a lot of hope, but things aren't all bad.

Why can't I forget her. Why can't I keep myself from thinking about her at least once every day. I can't forget her bright eyes, her soft hair. I can't stop thinking about that feeling of pure joy that shot through my entire body when I saw her smile. I miss how she understood, and so did I. I miss hearing that unique tenure of her voice that made me smile every time i heard it. Do I want to forget? What a question. I really have no choice, since i have no chance, this is simply torture on myself. The biggest question i ask myself is 'if i have never met anyone like her before, will i ever meet anyone like her before again' and 'if not, how could I ever settle for second best'. What should I do.

Well another day much like the others. I've made a bunch of concerted efforts to meet people and they have all failed. I am getting depressed by that fact which is effecting the rest of my life, and its a downward spiral from there. In the last 8 days i have driven 2100 miles! That makes me a lot of money but its long depressing work, it seems like all i can do while i'm on the road is think about failed relationships and get depressed about how i have no prospects. I'm also having trouble getting foundations done, i cant get ahold of any of the stupid people who are supposed to mark the graves for me, and my deadline is coming up. Stress + Lonliness = beginning of another breakdown. I deal really well with stress usually, but my other problem isn't getting any better, and even though i am trying my ass off the concurrent failures i keep suffering almost make things worse. Not helping matters is the fact that my throat seems to be taking forever to fully heal so my sleep apnea is not any better, and the fact that yesterday doing dishes i sliced my right index finger open bad enough to need to go to the ER and get 3 stitches. Things just keep turning up Ben o_o

Alright, well I make a lot of money. For someone my age I make a hell of a lot of money. I'm generally happy and quite proud of this fact, but recently something has become more and more obvious: it in and of itself is not making me happy. What makes me happy about money is being able to share it with people. Sure i love my TV and my gaming systems and surround sound and all that jazz, but like i'm going to sit there and watch a movie by myself? Thats just depressing as hell. Even video games don't have their spark anymore. Yes i have a dream video game set-up, but playing them all I can think of is: god i am lonely, why cant i find a girlfriend. I'm guessing that if I had someone, even some good friends, i would feel less lonely and other things would feel fun again, but as it is the lonliness literally crushes everything. As I drive to Ann Arbor for work all I can think of on the 5 hour drive is how lonely I am, thinking about friendship opportunities lost, past failures, etc. I can't seem to curb this, and i'm not even sure I should, its my body's way of saying STOP BEING LONELY I AM LITERALLY DYING HERE. Anyway just a rant, if anyone knows anyone single drop me a line, i've been on a lot of dates lately and they have all been horrible, but i'm more than willing to try again. At least I am not 'desperate' yet, i am just going through a little personal hell.

In the words of the great Ozzy Osbourne, my haunted head wont leave me alone. I've been waking up on the hour every half hour for the last 5 hours, and now its 4 am. I'm haunted by dreams, specificly of friendship lost. Every time i close my eyes i relive the pain of rejection, of being utterly shunned, and it hurts like hell every single time. I dont want to go to sleep anymore, but i cant stay up. Well 4th time is a charm i guess, even though no-one says that, maybe this time i wont be mysteriously shrunken down and chased, that was unpleasant.

Alright well i'm home again. Life isn't the drastic change I had kind of hoped it will be, but maybe once the swelling goes down i will be able to notice some changes. I am hoping so. Overall still pretty lonely here, just kind of chilling by myself each day, trying to make it through until bedtime without falling into that pit of depression. Doing pretty decently, but I'm also not acomplishing as much as I had hoped I would once I got home. I got a bunch of the stuff I wanted to do done, i guess thats a step in the right direction, though i obviously have much farther to go. Recovery is coming along quite well, i am able to eat pretty much anything as long as its a few hours or more after i wake up, i'm obviously not taking any meds while i am sleeping, so when i wake up my throat is kind of tender and swallowing isn't really pleasant but i can do it. As soon as i get my first pain medication of the day flowing i can eat anything, and i am able to space the pain meds out quite a bit without any loss in function. Well thats it for today, time to turn in, tommorow is another day, maybe it will go a bit better than today. I can only hope each day gets a bit better as i put one foot in front of the other. Progress.

I'm alive for those of you who were wondering. My mornings seem to be uniformly bad, i think thats because of the long night of no meds and no liquids down the throat, so it takes me up to 4 hours to really get back to a place i can even regularly swallow anything, but by about 3 today (I took several unintentional naps this morning that threw my progress way back) I was doing so incredibly much better i felt i could have eaten some simple regular food. When i got home i had a ton of jello, a ton of shaved ice, and even some macaroni and cheese. I've also been loving olives because they are so salty, my taste buds are kind of numb i think its from not having much to eat lately. Anyway things are looking up, every day for the last three days things have gotten insurmountably better. At this rate tommorow i will be able to have some real food, maybe from Arbys!

Well last night went great, I was able to eat a bunch of Jello but better yet a thin slice of ham. I also managed to have a bunch of 'gatorade slushie' I made that had been burning my throat too badly. However as always another day means a near commplete re-set of my throat. I can barely swallow water again, i'll have to spend another 4 hours diligenty working my way back up to where i was, without passing out which i've done already once this morning. When that happens i sleep for a while ruining all progress.

I go to see the Doctor today at 3. He will decide whether or not to admit me or not. The last visit i had with him he was really rude, he literally blamed me for still being in pain. Even if it is my fault the last thing you want to hear is 'your choices are force more water down or I am going to admit you'. He also told me he wouldn't listen to what i had to say unless i spoke to him. Awesome!!!!

Anyway still terrible right now but hoping to get better very soon.

Ok well this is definitely the worst thing i have ever had to personally go through. Still no food since last week tuesday, i am so hungry i am having trouble focusing on the screen. Still virtually no water except what I have been taking some pills with. I went to the doctors' office today all but praying that he would be able to give me a stronger pain medicine. Before it just hurt to drink water because of the pressure on the throat during swallowing. Now however that has evolved to something far more sinister and unable to be dealt with. Now there is very little pressure on the throat, and initially nothing hurts, but then my throat begins to burn. I dont know if anyone out there has ever touched a strong hot sauce or a hot pepper then accidently touched the corner of their eye, but it burns like that, and for about as long. At least with the aforementioned buring you can flush it with water to dull the pein, in my situation the problem IS the water, so i dont really know what to do.

Anyway the doctor's office. He basically told me i sucked for not drinking more water and it was my fault it hurt, and that my choices were to admit me to the hospital which he said would not help my throat and would probably be a couple day stay if not more. So i have to force more water down even though drinking water literally feels like squirting lemon juice in my eye. I dont if I can do this. Every 5 minutes rubbing salt in the wound *sigh* Thanks again for everyone's support, i should be on and off AIM today.

Thanks everybody, i feel pretty cared for, something i dont really experience all that often : ). My recovery is going pretty poorly mostly because of the uvula reshaping, its bleeding quite a bit and i cant seem to get it to calm down enough to swallow much of anything. Even ice/water is nearly impossible. And since its such a bitch to swallow stuff i cant get anything to eat which means i havnt had anything to eat since tuesday. I'm not hungry, but the pain meds are kicking my ass on an empty stomach. Well good to hear from everybody! Hopefully i will be able to see you soon.

Alright well in about 14 hours i'll be doing the whole surgery thing, so wish me luck i suppose. If anyone wants to visit me i'll be at my parent's house and would love a visitor. I am blatently fishing here since i'll be having to live with my parents for at least a little while, and theres virtually nothing to do there, i'd love another person to play boardgames/2 player video games with. Hope to hear from someone.

So it turns out my mind has been essentially waging war against my body for the last x years i've been suffering from sleep apnea (at least 3). I saw a neurologist and a psychologist today to discuss the operation and just life in general and they really put a lot of stuff into perspective. Things i have been blaming myself for, or previously unable to understand were clearly defined as a more or less common secondary symptom of sleep apnea.

As i turns out, and as i probably could have logically figured out, when you lose sleep your body goes into a kind of survival mode. In my case, that is sometimes getting no REM sleep, and any other sleep being only about 60% as effective, pretty much means i've been losing sleep. If on the occasion i don't get any REM sleep, i dont get any fully restoritive sleep. At any rate my body is in a sort of survival mode. This explains a few things.

-Increased Appetite: Over the past, oh i dont know year or so i've noticed my appetite has been increasing steadily. According to the neurologist when a body cant get the energy it needs from sleep, it does whatever it can to get energy from other sources, food being the main and readily accessible one. This same principle also explains why I have

-Mild Weight Gain: My body is storing the precious energy it has to very little of. The survival mode causes the body to attempt to conserve and store to keep vital functions running. Not that my vitals are in danger of crashing, my body just thinks it might be in the forseeable future, so its taking action. This also explains:

-Ineffective Exercising: Specifically in regards to toning and building, my body's metabolism is geared up for storage. The last thing it wants to do is expend resources to build muscles. This also explains why I am sore for up to four days after a workout, normal recovery is about 48 hours, since my body isn't working to repair/build muscles, it takes much longer.

-Lack of Motivation: This hits hardest in the physical aspect of my life. I cant seem to get myself going, especially with regard to physical activity like exercise, though it can even be something as simple as household chores. Its clearly not that i have anything else to do, so it often boggled me as to why i cant get myself to do things. In survival mode the body wants nothing more than to remain stationary and conserve energy. My mind however wants to get up, go for a bike ride, lift weights, go for a walk, hike, anything, but i often literally can't force myself to do these things. Even if i can, after starting i become so physically tired i feel as if I am out of shape. After a mere half mile of jogging i am drentched in sweat and panting. My body refuses to give up the energy to not suck at physical activity.

-Excessive Persperation: This one is covered in the previous explination.

-Unstable Mood: My mental state is also tired, according to the neurologist and the psychologist I saw. They explained to me that a tired mind is less able to react properly to life events. Things that would barely bother another person can send me spiraling into a depression that can cripple me for the better part of a day. Its also more difficult for me to get out of that depressive state, because i cant get myself to do things that would help (see lack of motivation above). According to the psychologist this is technically considered depression, but it is not chemical depression. This sort of depression can sometimes be helped my medication, but with only about 1/4 efficacy. This explains why at first i felt that the medication was helping, i mean its an upper, but it also explains why it didnt help in the long term.

There was some other stuff too, its absolutely amazing how much stuff is affected by sleep. I guess its not that surprising though, in terms of personal maintenence its the thing we spend the most time doing by a long shot.

Well i saw 300 this thursday, what a good movie. I had heard that it was simple, or just another war movie, i did not find this true at all! Its such a story of overcoming insurmountable odds. I found it very inspiring myself actually, it has inspired me especially to change my workout routine. I've been shirking my goals of muscle building for more aerobics, not necessarily a bad thing but i really believe i will change the way I do things. I have really been thinking about working to finish part of the basement, at the very least the extra room down there. It really dosen't need much. At first i was thinking of making it into an exercise room, i could put up some awesome posters and stuff all over the walls, but then i remembered i have that gym membership i never use. Actually i'll probably be using it more now that I am branching further into weight training, but the point is theres no reason to make a room downstairs. Then i thought maybe a game room, i'm not sure of the room is big enough for a pool or ping pong table though, and thats clearly what I would put there. Soooo i'm not really sure, I could easily make it into another bedroom, but what would be the point of that, i have an extra room right now that can easily be used for an extra bedroom (computer room) and no-one is staying there. Perhaps i could rent the basement room out to make a little bit of extra cash. Always a possibility, that would defray the cost of finishing the basement, and increase the overall value of the house i suppose. At any rate its starting to get warm out again, which means its almost time to start repainting the house and working on the lawn. I will be happy when those projects get underway, it will give me something to work on, and hopefully some progress will come of it. Thats what i dont like about housework, no matter how hard you work you're always just returning the house to the way it was before, its a bloody uphill value. Something like repainting the house though you can really see a difference. Well thats for another time, enough rambling for now.

Things seem to be going much better now. I'm still pretty lonely but at least i'm not really depressed anymore. It took a bit longer than i thought it would for me to even out after the meds, up until about 4-5 days ago i was still hitting highs and lows. Now i'm evened out a lot and am really able to get some stuff accomplished. For the last week i've been doing a ton of work on the business, finishing the taxes and getting all the inventory prepared. I am still trying to work out prices with my supplier, they want to raise again, they raised me 30% last year, i havn't raised my prices in 3 years and they raise theirs every year. Unfortunately i dont have a lot of pull considering they are the only supplier within reasonable driving distance, so i kind of have to pay what they want, but the business has been working with them for probably 10 years before I took over, so we have some loyalty. Thank god its stayed nice, i could really start going out and doing installations any time now, i have about 10 orders in already that need to be done, that'd probably make me about 1k of profit, which i'll need to reimburse my savings from taxes. The house was doing really well, it got kind of messy last night as I tried to reset a bunch of stuff, but i'll clean it back up tonight. My drier is broken for good I think, at least I can't seem to fix it. I'll have to take my laundry over to my parent's house tonight. They are out of town which is unfortunate, it would have been nice to talk with them while i waited for the laundry to get done, i have like 5 loads probably. Well thats the report for today, back to the grind : -p

I just realized that at the end of last week i was thinking about what i would do for St Patrick's day. I had three options. One of the people i would have done something with seems to be ignoring me, i've sent her several messages and not gotten word back from her in a week or so. The second person stood me up for the second time yesterday, so i'm not really going to plan something with them. And the third is busy already. Looks like a lonely weekend on my third favorite holiday. So, that means i've spent my last 2 favorite holiday alone (halloween and fat tuesday) and it appears i'm going 3 for 3. Its seriously only a matter of time before i just cant go on any longer, i've been so lonely for so very long, its been over a year since i had a friend that i could do something with regularly, that really, really begins to eat at you. Being home alone for 95% of the time for the last year really messed you up. I just want some friends, or someone to love who would love me back, or both. God i would give everything I own for that.

I dont get it, why do all relationships, friendships and more, quickly turn out poorly for me. It didn't used to be like this, and it seems as though its not even my fault. People claim to like me, then suddenly break contact, stop talking to me, say they are going to come over then dont, are standoffish, etc. for little or no reason. Then when i ask why, i get nothing, maybe it is me, i dont know. I havn't had a meaningful friendship or relationship that lasted longer than a week since 2005. What the fuck is going on.