“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of hot babes.”

Happy Independence Day!

It seems fitting that my credit card balance would be cleared in time for today’s celebration, and hopefully by this time next year my car and college loans will be paid off as well. Hard to believe my credit card debt was as high as $8,000 only a few months earlier, partly because I had to pay for the costs of new hearing aids, but I just kept furiously paying it down as much as I could, until by some sheer miracle the balance finally read zero for the first time in 4 years.

Once my car and college loans are taken care of as well, I’ll be completely debt free and enjoying a near perfect credit rating, especially since I will have paid off the car loan at least a year and a half ahead of schedule. So, debt-free, no ugly history with exes, no kids to complicate things, stable job with superb medical benefits, and I drive a sleek black fully loaded SUV. Girls should be lining up the door here, and yet nobody wants me. At least nobody sane that is, and just that one criteria seems to eliminate a good portion of the female populace.

*Sigh*

That’s part of the reason why I want to travel, and once my debts are cleared I’ll have to decide then whether to throw caution to the wind and quit my job so I can roam the country as a working nomad. I’d like to believe that there’s a place in this vast nation of ours where I can truly feel like I belong, a place I could finally call home, because it sure as #@$%ing hell isn’t this sewage dump of a New York town. I’m never gonna know for sure though until I start putting myself out there.

At the very least I’d be free from the shackles of a dead-end office job, with no ties to anything and the freedom to pursue any course I desire, and embark on any adventure I wish. Maybe then I’ll finally find…. her, and by then I wouldn’t have to worry about the trials of a long distance relationship, because I’ll be able to go to wherever she is. Unless of course, she’s in Australia.

Ah well, for now I’ll just celebrate this little victory over VISA, in the hopes that this will signify the beginning of my very own personal independence.

I am a square peg trying to fit into the circle that is life.

At least that’s been my feeling lately. I’ve always had an eclectic personality that precluded me from being able to fit in anywhere, whether it was a church, a social club, or any kind of informal group that shared a common interest. While it made me unique, I do think there is such a thing as being TOO unique, ya know?

Not that I minded being a loner too much, but I hated the fact that my life (with all its eccentricities) all but guaranteed that I’d never find anyone who could really understand who I was as a person. Sure, they might be able relate to one aspect, but then find another aspect of me so totally foreign to them that it scares them off. And trust me, I can be a very scary person, indeed.

There have been times when I tried to simply fake my way into a community’s good graces, but it never seems to last long. Whether it’s trying to cheer for a sports team just so I could relate to their fans (Let’s go Mets!! LET’S GOOO METS!!! LET’S GOOOOO… ah they suck), or whether it’s trying to relate to the Deaf community (where I’d be shunned simply because I’m not deaf enough), or whether it’s feigning “getting slain in the spirit” at a holy roller church so as not to draw suspicion from the congregation, there just seems to be no place on earth where I could truly feel at home.

I’m either too conservative or too liberal, too Christian or too atheist, too normal or too weird, too smothering or too distant, too emotional or too cold. Whatever it is that separates me from the rest of humanity, I either have too much of it, or not enough.

Is it ever going to be possible for me to meet a girl who could understand me through and through, or at least enough of me so that I don’t completely freak her out? Or am I really destined to walk this earth alone until death finally puts me out of my misery?

I believe I can survive without a large support group of any sort, but I don’t think I could carry on without the love of a good woman who could be both my lover and best friend. It seems sappy, but of all the agony and suffering I’ve endured in this life, this one always hurts me the most.

Oh well… there’s always castration.

Had a bad dream last night.

I dreamt of having a chance encounter with the very comely Mary Katharine Ham, the conservative journalist and blogger from Townhall.com. We were inside the lobby of a museum, and I somehow managed to engage her in a conversation. Only problem was, I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. My hearing aids completely failed to pick up her speech patterns, so I was left there to helpessly either nod while she talked or give blank stares. She quickly lost interest and blew me off, thinking I was a retard. All I could do was watch while she walked away, knowing I’d never be able to convince her otherwise.

Man was I depressed when I woke up. I think it’s obvious that the new hearing aids I’m trying out has been causing a lot of grief and anxiety for me. I want to hear better so I can engage people in conversation and not be afraid of putting myself out there so I could meet new people and escape this solitary bubble I’ve built for myself. But so far the aids just aren’t living up to expectations. I’m hoping programming adjustments will fix it, but I’ll have to wait till my next appointment before I’ll know for sure.

That dream reflected my worst fears too. People have a tendency to form opinions about me based purely on my disability, and if I can’t communicate with people normally, or have trouble understanding them, it’s automatically presumed that I’m either mentally underdeveloped, or to put it quite bluntly, that I’m just a flipping idiot with the equivalent IQ of a cardboard box. Nothing I say about anything will have any merit. I’m talked down to like I’m 7 years old, and there are times when I’m treated like one too.

Normally I wouldn’t care. But what scares me is the thought that no matter how many single women I meet, they will all look at me the same way because of my hearing loss: like I’m a retard. A handicapped piece of trash unworthy of their attention, much less their love. Whether it’s in dreams or in real life, it’s always been something that weighed heavily on my mind. I fear I’ll never live up to expectations, that I can never be the “perfect guy” they’re looking for, and for that I’ll always continue to be passed over until I’m well into my 70s, living alone in some dinky apartment somewhere with only a few dogs and cats to keep me company.

I can understand why some people settle now. Why they give up all hope and just hitch on to the first person who comes along that pays any kind of attention to them, even if that person ends up being the next Son of Sam. Will that be my future as well?

Crap, I gotta get these hearing aids fixed.

Ahhh, Friday has arrived at last, giving me a little time to reflect on the failure that is my life.

I couldn’t help but notice how the entire world and God Himself blew me off this week. I got blown off by my boss when I begged him for help in working new hours so I could go to law school. I got blown off by my union rep in trying to resolve some of the ongoing issues at work, from the mouse droppings on my desk to the bigwigs’ initial refusal to accommodate my disability. I got blown off by personnel, who I inquired of for a transfer so I could get the *bleep* out of here. I got blown off by Uptown Girl, who strung me along for weeks before finally ignoring me altogether. I got blown off by friends, by family members, and finally God Himself, who I’ve appealed to repeatedly with many tears and pleas for answers and relief from my troubles.

And now, once again, it’s Friday night and I’m here all alone, with only the wedding photo of a girl I had a crush on here at work to keep me company. Evidently someone thought it’d be nice to leave a copy of our department newsletter on my desk, turned precisely to the page that showed a caption and photo of her recent wedding. Thanks dude! assface…

My latest failures, the problems at work, the loss of yet another career dream, the loss of my latest romantic prospective, all finally took its toll on me last night. As I went through my normal work routine, I suddenly broke down and started sobbing. A wave of depression came over me like a dark fog, draining all my energy and strength. I just wanted to sleep and never wake up again. A day later, the depression is still lingering around (and probably will for a while).

It’s times like this when I start to wonder if my parents can still collect life insurance from me if I commit suicide. But for the time being, I decided instead to enjoy tonight’s lineup of Stargate and House, and go to hell with myself by ordering pizza. With extra toppings. And a chicken roll. And some cheese fires. And baked ziti.

Yep, I’m going full on Italian tonight. To heck with you all.

While I was out getting my ride cleaned up at the nearby self car wash, I noticed a couple behind me in an obnoxiously large pickup truck. The guy got out to get some change, so I glanced over to get a look at him. Fuzzy faced, sports cap on tight, shorts down to his kneecaps, and keys with a neckband so long it dragged across the ground as he approached the change machine. I couldn’t get a good look at the girl riding shotgun, but I could tell she was cute.

Normally, seeing a scum sucking scuzzbucket (apparently emulating Eminem or some other pasty white rapper wanna-be loser) like that with a girl would get me upset, but then I stepped back and took a deeper look here.

What was I getting upset about really? Because he had a girl, and I didn’t? But was it because no girl could ever want me, or was it simply because I had standards? Truthfully, I could go out right now and grab up some back alley ho that I could wrap my arm around and show off to all my friends if I really wanted to. But I wanted something better. I wasn’t content to have some two bit slut with the morals of a brain damaged monkey on crack in my life, just to prove that I could get a girl. I was looking for much more than that.

What’s really sad though is that even though I think my standards are reasonable enough, 80 percent of the single female population probably don’t measure up. Under ideal standards, 99.99 percent wouldn’t measure up, while the other .01 percent appear to live only in our dreams. Women today seem to vary from being skanks, whores, sluts, tramps, bimbolinas, etc., to being hellish female dogs spawned by Satan himself. Those who are godly, intelligent, kind and honest are an endangered species bordering on extinction, and even if I happen to come across one of them during my travels through life, there is usually some factor that would prevent me from pursuing them (like being married, for one). This is what our world has sadly has come to these days, and it is in this mess that I must somehow find the true girl of my dreams.

Yet as much as it would pain me to be alone, I recognize just how much MORE painful it would be to date a girl so obviously wrong for me, that to be with her would paradoxically make me feel even MORE alone and lost in the world.

It would seem impossible that I would ever meet anyone right for me, and yet despite the insurmountable odds I face here, I still have hope that she’s out there somewhere, a sweet and wonderful angel who is waiting and praying for me to come into her life soon. Call it delusion, insanity, or psychosis induced by food deprivation, but no matter what, this hope never seems to die. And for now, that will have to do as I fight to get my life in order again.

Well it’s Friday, I’m by myself at work, and once again I have no plans for tonight other than twiddling my thumbs and watching WWE Smackdown. Guess it beats getting drunk at bars and waking up in stranges places the next morning, but maybe not if you like that kind of thing.

Back in the days when I had friends, on Fridays I would sometimes gather up my computer rig and stop by my best friend’s house, where me and a few other buds would set up a local network and game until 4 in the morning. Sometimes we went out to the movies or rented DVDs, but either way, someone (usually me) always made sure we stocked up on enough junk food to kill a healthy elephant. It was a nerdy way to spend a weekend, but still, we had us a time.

But then somewhere along the way, my best bud started juggling relationships with several different women, and because I was too much of a freak to manage getting a girl of my own, I found myself spending more and more Friday nights hanging out with my friend… and whatever stupid bitch he happened to be dating at the moment. Quite obviously, said stupid bitch would not be keen on some of the geeky things we liked to do, unless it involved renting a DVD from the romantic comedy section at Blockbuster.

Suddenly, Fridays were no longer as much fun as they used to be.

Nowadays, my idea of an ideal Friday night has become more romanticized since then, and ironically enough, it involves the very thing that started ruining my Fridays to begin with: women. Yet I liked the idea of renting a DVD from Blockbuster, and then cuddling up with a sweetheart on the couch as enjoyed whatever flick we decided to rent. Or maybe hanging out at my place or hers so we can spend a quiet evening discussing love and life over a homemade candlelit dinner. Companionship was what I really wanted.

But as one decade rolled into another, I realized the sad truth that it would never happen to me. Years of disappointment and unrequitted love had coagulated together to create a poisonous bitterness in me that I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try. Whenever I dwell on my loneliness and how I got to this point, I truly want nothing better than to just lay down and die. It’s as if my whole existence had been a mistake, but somehow fate had screwed up and I managed to be born, rather than become just another number in the miscarriage statistics.

Instead I’m stuck in the vicious cycle where my bitterness has deeply affected my personality, knowing full well no girl worth half her weight in salt would think to approach me in my current state, yet that very fact also perpetuates my bitterness. What came first, the chicken or the egg?

Hmm, maybe I WILL have that speedball after all.