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.

Weird that I’d be in such a somber mood today, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders as I ponder just how evil the human race has been to me and those I love.

And yet no matter how much I try to get beyond that, no matter how much I try to climb out of this pit of despair and emptiness, there’s always some pig-f*&%er at the top just waiting for the chance to stomp me in the face so I end up free falling back to the bottom again.

Maybe I should accept the reality that failure seems to be my inescapable destiny, and trying to fight it is a fool’s errand that will only prolong the inevitable. Those who lie, cheat and steal to enrich themselves will always prosper obscenely, while my own moral conscience imprisons me from doing the same, all but guaranteeing that I will always be poor, pissed on, and shackled to a dead end job with no future.

The players get all the women, the cheaters get all the money, the liars get all the glory. There is no room left on this planet for a man who aspires to follow after moral uprightness and integrity, even if he himself falls just short of doing so.

For all my efforts, I remain alone, rejected and forgotten. In life I am a ghost, a scentless vapor drifting through the world, incapable of making its presence known, unable to leave its mark.

Unable, to be loved.

This might come as a shock to you, but I hate Valentine’s Day.

Ever since Donna Costello kicked me in the shinny after giving her a Valentine card back in the third grade, I knew this holiday was going to bring me nothing but grief.

It got worse during my high school years when some evil bastard of a bastard came up with the brilliant idea to have flowers and Valentines delivered DURING CLASSES. So I’m sitting there at my desk minding my own business, trying to learn the intricacies of the periodic table, when lo and behold there’s a knock on the door and in walks this delivery guy holding a huge bouquet of flowers, meant of course for the ONE girl I happened to have a crush on. And then when class is over I get to watch her throw her arms around her darling love while I grab my chest and try to endure the agony of having my heart get ripped to shreds as I made my way to Spanish class.

Year after year it was like this, even as I continued to hope in vain that maybe, just maybe, next time things would be different. Nope. Unfulfilled love, loneliness, pain and anguish continued to rule my Valentine’s Day.

Then a few years ago, something happened that would forever seal Valentine’s day as a day of infamy for me. I came home one night to find an eviction notice had been posted on my door. An evil relative had stolen the house that my family bought and paid for, and then had the courts rule in his favor to get us thrown out so his granddaughter could move in with her skank boyfriend. My family unfortunately had no money for an attorney, so we were left defenseless against this onslaught of pure hatred. And, (almost like it was his parting gift), our relative poisoned our pet cat, who died shortly before our eviction.

The worst act of hatred that had ever been commited against me (and left me homeless for the first time in my life) happened precisely… on Valentine’s Day. That experience changed my life forever. I no longer had a place to call home, and the ruinous trials that resulted in that destructive aftermath left all of us with no assets except the cars we drove and the clothes on our backs. My parents will never be able to retire, and even with our resources pooled together we had all been effectively priced out of the housing market. Even years later, I can still feel the dull impact of that devastating day.

So yeah, I f*&#ing hate this accursed holiday.

The only way I’ve managed to survive in the years that followed was to basically hide under the bed and pray the demon-spirit of Valentine wouldn’t come get me. Then when the morning of the 15th finally came, I’d come out and breathe a sigh of relief in knowing I would live to see another day.

Of course, last year I made the mistake of thinking it was finally safe to come out again, and met someone online (on Valentine’s Day) who seemed to be the perfect girl for me. Educated, funny, intelligent, had a good career, loved to travel, shared the same political and religious beliefs I did, and most importantly, had blonde hair .

The perfect girl ended up stringing me along for 2 months, and then after sending her flowers for her birthday, I get texted a terse “thank you” and never hear from her again. I mean sheesh, if you’re gonna be like that then at least pay me the difference for the flowers I bought you cheap miserable mother#*&%ing bi___

I hate Valentine’s Day.

But… you know, whether it’s because I’m a glutton for punishment or because I’m just a dumb schmuck (or both), there’s a part of me that’s still holding out hope that this Valentine’s curse will someday be lifted. That maybe, just maybe, there’s a special girl out there who can finally break the hex and make this day a day I no longer have to fear or despise again.

Until then, I will continue to hide under the bed and rage against the pink machine.

To the poor little boy who found my blog using the search phrase,

“i’m 12 and i like this girl who is dating another guy how do i win her heart”

Congratulations, you are now about to embark on what will undoubtedly be the start of a lifelong journey of unrequited love and gut wrenching heartbreaks, because that cute little girl you’ve been mooning over for months and leaving little notes for is in fact one vicious, bedazzled terrorist of a creature who was fathered by Satan and mothered by the Antichrist. There is no doubt that she would not hesitate for a second to claw your eyes out and bite you in the face just for daring to pollute her existence, and then going off to laugh with her spiky haired boyfriend about what a huge loser you are.

So give it up. No matter what you do, she will never, ever like you, and those freckles on your face that Mamma said made you look so adorable, in fact make you look like a genetic mutant freak of nature to the object of your affection and the rest of the real world.

Consider this your baptism of fire into a life of bitterness and loneliness, because things are about to get much, much worse. As women get older, they will have outgrown the physical biting and clawing your eyes out, because by then they’ll have mastered the art of psychologically screwing your mind over so badly that all that will be left of you by the time they’re done is a shell of a human being wrapped in a strait jacket, muttering incoherent thoughts in a padded room at the Sunshine and Happy Happy Home.

So, you can take this as an early lesson that women are not cuddly bundles of love, but are in fact hateful instruments of torture and destruction who will happily dance all over your carcass while playing suck face with their latest trailer park trash boyfriend who just made parole.

Learn this truth now my boy, and you can save yourself by writing off the female race altogether, and then throwing down a daily dose of Prozac to numb out your feelings so you’ll never fall in love again.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

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.

You know what I really hate? Humidity. I enjoy humidity the way I enjoy performing a hernia operation on myself using a wooden spoon.

Yesterday we had it really bad though. But come on, it’s close to October now, this heat and humidity crap should behind us as we look forward to cooler (and drier) weather. But nooooooo, summer simply HAS to hold on a little bit longer and vomit its digusting, oppressive moisture on us all. Sheesh. I think the bottom of the ocean has been drier than this.

I like temperate weather. I like seasons (minus summer), and I like being able to wear the kind of fashionable clothes that you can’t wear in hotter climates (especially a nice black leather blazer to impress the ladies). I like leaves changing colors, snow covered streets, and an excuse to snuggle down by the fireplace with my lovely during those cold, dark evenings.

If I HAD a lovely that is.

Great, now I’m depressed again. I think I’ll go to Blockbusters and rent a slasher flick. That always makes me feel better.