A recent posting by the Ignoble Experiment got me thinking about a Disney favorite of mine, Beauty and the Beast. Back in the days when Disney was still making animated films that were actually good, they churned out this beauty (no pun intended), a story that centered around redemption and true love. I was too young to fully appreciate the movie when it first came out, but in subsequent years, I began to see myself in the Beast. The years had made me bitter and angry, harboring a quiet rage against a world that I felt did me serious wrong, just like the Beast. Some of it I brought on myself though, I admit, just as the Beast was in no small part responsible for his own misery. And yet part of that rage had to have no doubt been fueled by the despair that he would never be freed from his curse, as each petal that dropped from the flower brought him ever closer to his doom. It took the love of a caring, gentle soul to bring him back, a woman who taught him how to love again, despite his imperfections and grotesque appearance.

A gentle, caring girl, willing to get past looks and appearances so she can see the wounded man behind the beastly image? Yep, quite obviously a fairy tale. If you think this does indeed happen in the real world, then you my friend live in a fairy tale of your own.

This is one of my pet peeves about women too. They complain about guys being shallow and dating on looks alone, and then claim the higher ground by insisting that they NEVER do that. Nope, it’s a guy’s inner qualities that attracts them. It’s the damnedest, most hypocritical crap I’ve ever heard come out of their filthy, lying mouths.

Honestly, the mass of women today have proven themselves to be the shallowest, calculating, back stabbing, most judgmental heartless gobs of human flesh to have ever graced this planet. They will pass eternal judgment on you based on nothing more than the color shoes you’re wearing. They stare right through you as if you were nothing but a ghostly apparition they can barely see, refuse to say thank you when you hold the door for them, and only feign interest in you when they want something. God may have created Adam, but it was Satan who created Eve.

This mass of self interested, self indulgent whores of Babylon have made finding that gem of a woman who really is a cut above the rest virtually impossible. There’s little doubt even if I could find one, she would be taken aback at my beastly rage. Would she be able to get past that? Past the imperfections, the open wounds that cause me such most perpetual pain and grief? Will she be the Belle to my Beast?

Who am I kidding, she obviously doesn’t exist. And unlike the Beast, who found redemption and a happy ending, I can feel the last petal beginning to slip through my fingers, as a lifetime of unredeemable rage awaits me. Alas, in real life, there will be no Belle to save me.

Last weekend my town had a Columbus Day festival, which culminated in a fireworks celebration Sunday night. I happened to get a good view of the fireworks from my apartment, so I watched for a few minutes… by myself of course. I could hear the faint sound of the cheers of delight in the distance by the spectators. I could have gone to the festival myself, but I’ve been in this town for a long time, and in that time I’ve made very few friends, while the rest were people I’d just as soon not see again if I could help it. I suspected some of those people were at the festival too. Ironically enough, the very first time they started the Columbus festival, I was a freshman in high school and played in the marching band for the Columbus Day parade. My love for the town’s fair (and for the town itself) has since waned over the years.

As I watched the fireworks, all I could think about was that I was watching it alone. I was a single rocket, firing off into a lonely sky. And yet, I used to love fireworks, especially as an adolescent. Today, it brings me nothing but pain. The pain of knowing I have spent so many years going to festivals, watching fireworks, hitting the movie theaters, visiting parks and beaches, and yet, doing it all alone, unable to share those experiences with that special someone.

So I couldn’t enjoy it anymore. Instead of taking in the dazzling display, my mind wandered to all those people at the festival, many of who no doubt were holding hands and playing suck face while the rockets soared. I burned with envy and hatred as hot as the fireworks that were currently going off, which soon gave way to a deep despair. There may have been a time when I enjoyed being single, but I realized that time has now come and gone, and now all I’m left with is a sense of melancholy that precludes me from being able to enjoy any of life’s recreations. In short, I’ve stopped living. I can’t go out and enjoy life anymore, because I know I have to do it alone. I’m tired of having to say “table for one” every time I have dinner somewhere, or take in a movie and be unable to discuss it afterwards. I was tired of going on vacation and doing romantic things such as taking a steamboat cruise, or walking down the beach, and yet having to do it all without “her.”

In years past, the despair I would feel at being alone was usually buffered with a sense of hope that soon, someday soon, my suffering would at long last come to an end, and I would finally meet the woman of my dreams. But as one year gave way to another, my hope began to wither and die. It’s no wonder I exhibit so little effort to take care of myself. The loss of hope has given me a loss of will to carry on. It’s like a slow way to commit suicide. I won’t do it outright, so by letting my health deteriorate, this is a round about way for me to accomplish the same goal. The world succeeded in crushing my spirit, and it seems I’ll never be able to recover from the devastation.

All that is left is to hope for either a miracle, or a death that will come sooner, rather than later.

Certain events in the past have played a significant role in devastating my pysche, which by themselves really don’t seem like anything noteworthy, until you consider the context in which they happened.

For example, when I first started blogging, one of my secret desires behind my decision to blog, was that by putting my thoughts online, it’d give me an opportunity to meet a beautiful girl who thought the same way I did. Eventually, a reader who fit that profile DID start visiting my blog on a regular basis. Gorgeous, young, Christian and a staunch conservative, she was a rarity who might have been perfect had she not lived so far away. So what happens? She meets someone through HER blog, and they get married a few months later. What I had hoped so badly would happen to me ,happened to someone else instead.

Shortly afterwards, I met a pretty female co-worker who had recently joined our division. Now over the years, I had always fantasized about meeting someone through my job, where we’d end up working together and eventually falling in love. I even envisioned over what she might look like: long brown hair, beautiful brown eyes and a healthy mocha skin. We’d share the same interests and passions, while one personality smoothly complemented the other. A match made in heaven.

So when a pretty girl with long brown hair, brown eyes and beautifully tanned skin suddenly shows up in my division, I couldn’t help but take notice, especially since she was the first young woman to get assigned here in a long, long time (the kind of job done here is mostly filled by much older women in their 50s or 60s.) So after so many years of plague and darkness, I wondered: could she be…the one??

Alas, what I envisioned in my mind could not have been more out of touch with reality. We had NOTHING in common, which may have been aggravated by the fact that she had NO interest in me at all. While my passion were politics and religion, her passion was….boats. While I enjoyed visiting museums dedicated to history, her idea of spending the weekend involved attending the latest Bon Jovi concert. If I liked watching Fox News every now and then, she religiously watched the Real World on MTV.

Trying to have a conversation with her was about as invigorating and welcome as performing hernia operation on yourself using nothing more than a wooden spoon. I always had to carry the ball when we talked. She never volunteered anything, and when I couldn’t think of anything more to say, the air would hang in a kind of dead silence that could only be found at cemetaries.

Obviously, there were no sparks here. But what irked me more than anything was her total lack of interest in me. It wasn’t that she wasn’t a nice person, but that I barely registered on her radar. I would have rather she had been interested in ME, and I’D be the one who’d have to turn her down, not the other way around. It’s an ego thing, obviously, but it would have felt good to know that for once, JUST EFFING once, a pretty girl would find me interesting and attractive. Nope.

I remembered thinking at the time that the only thing that could have made it worse, was that she would fall madly in love with another coworker and eventually get married.

Welllllll, guess what. Not 5 months(?!?!?) since she started working here, she meets another coworker, falls madly in love, and is now engaged. What I had hoped so badly would happen to me, happened to someone else instead.

Are you detecting a pattern here? Imagine 20 years of this, enduring these series of unfortunate events, and you get my life. You know, it’s one thing when people meet and fall in love. I accept that, but when it happens like this, I simply can’t handle it. It’s like God is playing mind games with me, putting me in these kinds of situations where I have to endure getting speared in the most cruelest fashion possible, and yet still I must believe and accept that He is a loving God who cares about me. Yeah, sure.

This is why I am so angry at God, and cannot speak or pray to Him. It’s cruel the way I’m being treated: absolutely, despicably cruel. Maybe I deserve it though: in fact, I know I do. But I have seen some pretty bad people in my life get blessed in obscene ways that make absolutely no sense to me. I’m still trying to figure it out… still trying to make some kind of sense of it all. But I can conclude nothing except that God must truly and utterly despise me.

When I graduated college, I was filled with high hopes and expectations about everything, but the last 8 years since then has done its darndest best to utterly crush my spirit and squeeze every last drop of hope out of me. Today, I am a broken, confused and lost soul. Yet I’m still trying to find my way, still trying to seek answers for why things turned out the way they did, still trying to see some reason for it all.

In the meantime, I have to deal with the bitterness and anger I’ve been left with now. I had hoped so much that by this time I’d be in law school, if only so I’d never have to see the brown-eyed bitch again. Instead, I have to be forever reminded of what a failure I am every day that I see her. I hate her, not for who she is, but for what she represents to me: the reality that I will always be alone. I will never have a family, or anybody to love, because no one wants to love me.

To hell with you all.