Niall’s virtual diary archives – December 2000

Friday 1st December 2000: 5.06am. Ruth came round tonight, and finished our relationship. I had been expecting it, no intelligent person would be clever being in a relationship with a crazy person. How have I reacted?

Well, my present thoughts are much as those at the time - relief. Her not wanting me is a way out of this situation, and it allows me a chance to see if she was really the cause of the hallucinations or whether I am just crazy. If the "my subconscious was ringing alarm bells about her" hypothesis is true, then I should notice a speedy recovery. My current thoughts are that if this is true, it was her unwillingness to fully commit to our relationship, exposed at Easter, which was the cause. I believe that she is not ready to be in a relationship with me. She is someone who always wants more than she has, and that is a dangerous thing. I hope she doesn't suffer too much when her world collapses and she ends up losing what she has but for now doesn't appreciate.

Whoah, I'm in danger of getting spiteful and slandering her in public. I'd like to emphasise that I still think she is one of the most wonderful people I have met, I still think that she has the potential to be the one I spend the rest of my life with and I know that she can make me insanely happy just by her simple presence near me. But at the same time I know that there's no point being with her if she isn't absolutely sure she wants to be with me. There can't be that doubt there, that constant holding out for a newer and better option. Not for the kind of relationship which would be between us anyway, we're not that sort of couple.

Maybe when I wake up tomorrow morning, I'll feel more bitter and resentful, maybe this is just a numbed bubble. Or maybe I'll be further convinced that I've supposed this for ages now, but didn't have enough decent hard evidence to be certain of it, and it was driving me mad. This feels right, it's felt right for the last four hours. But who knows what happens tomorrow?

Anyway, I'm here to stay, I like it here. Now all I need is a job!

Until next time, be happy ...

Tuesday 5th December 2000: 11.55pm. I've just cooked myself a breakfast omelette, and it was very nice. My sleep pattern's all screwed up, went to bed at 4pm, up before 11pm tonight. I've been programming, fairly solidly since the last entry.

Anyway, more on that as the project nears completion. I was very much reminded of Canada tonight, this feeling of being totally alone in the world is familiar. It's like also my brain is definitely working again, and I feel like I am working really well right now. In Canada last year, despite the long hours, I usually had at least two hours every night with nothing to do. Sometimes I'd watch the really mind-numbing US TV (and it really is bad out there, all television is bad but the American's have it real bad), but for a lot of the time I would sit in my hotel room thinking about whatever, and I think it showed in the diary entries of that time.

Well, here I am in Spain, with a definite lack of things to do other than what I make for myself. And I certainly have been thinking lots. I've also amazed myself with a spurt of programming, and this isn't easy programming, this is hacking into Win32 stuff, and I've regularly surprised myself at how good I really am. Sorry, I don't want to sound vain, but it's like it's been so smooth sailing that I can really say I've mastered Win32. I have done everything right at the right time, no stupid mistakes at all. It's been a joy.

It's nice you know. I feel strong again. After so much time of feeling weak, I feel really strong. Even though I've been giving Ruth a hard time (I told her I didn't want to have any contact with her except when necessary, and I know that really hurt her), I think she did a good thing. I don't know if she did it for the right reasons, and I suspect strongly that she did it for all the wrong ones but has deluded herself into thinking it the right thing, but anyway I think it was the correct thing to do. When will I lighten up on her? Yeah, probably before the end of the week, but I know I'm still angry and likely to say nasty things and that's why I said I don't want to see her, because if I did I'd be very bitchy and she nor I need that. I'll keep this until I've calmed down enough to be civil.

So what now? Well, I'm quite attracted to the idea of spending more time totally alone, I have Spanish classes to go to now so I still get some human interaction. But I know it's likely that soon I'm going to miss talking to people, much as I've always done in the past and it'll be interesting to see exactly what I do about that. I would imagine that in a few weeks, the situation will be much like it was a week ago, except me and Ruth are merely on a friendly footing. I hope so anyway.

One thing which is becoming extremely important indeed is getting some kind of work. I've run into a brick wall regarding new ideas for finding suitable companies to apply to. Maybe embedded work is out of the question? Device driver works kinda goes with that. What would be needed in Spain, something that is viable here? Not an easy question actually.

Anyway, I'm off to upload this and search for work again. Then I have to write the docs for my new project, I have a few days while the beta testers do their stuff! Cool, see you all later, be happy!

Thursday 14th December 2000: 8.45pm. Well, we thinks we may have found a job. I went for a second interview with a company today, and they made me an offer. The work involves making test kit for the EuroFighter, I'll be almost singularly responsible for the instrumentation of the spanish contribution to the euro-project. Should be interesting. I've been reading Noam Chomsky's New World Order recently, and it paints a bleak picture of the world today. I have found some faults with his reasoning, he over-assumes the power of the powerful, but then he is writing it from an American perspective and things are much more dipoled over there than here in pseudo-socialist Europe. He also so far into the book has failed to recognise that capitalism is an inherently unstable beast, even the rich and powerful can find it working against them despite every attempt of theirs to prevent it. I can myself quote a number of instances of this. But I suppose in many ways, it doesn't matter if the boys at the top change positions every few years, it is the nature of this system in which we live to cause the majority to live in misery and the few in prosperity. Nevertheless, it's a good book to make you think, and even if his logic is a little off sometimes and he contradicts himself, by and large he makes a good point - our governments do fuck the third world over something rotten, but because we in essence don't really care, or even know much of the details, it doesn't change.

In many ways, what the Americans do is worse than what the British did during colonial rule (although Britain does much the same as America nowadays). While the British may have starved and killed populations, or destroyed native industry competing with british industry, at least they were upfront in saying what they did - there wasn't this veil of lies and propaganda. I have always been surprised at much of the mainstream news pumped into us daily, it reports things which don't make sense, or indeed it continually seems to be telling less than the full story. I have noticed this particularly in the last few years, especially as I have had more conversations with people with non-mainstream views, and it's partly why I now avoid television news which is particularly prone to biased reporting. The newspapers are marginally better, but it's a hit and miss affair.

Especially now that I have come to Spain, I can no longer use television or newspaper news as it's all mostly unintelligible. Hence I have begun to rely more greatly on the internet, and I must say it's surprising the difference it makes. There one chooses one's own news as it were, and it's interesting to see that the news agencies are much more complete in their reporting than the news media's reporting of it. Clearly there is a well-defined selection process used, which is probably why the news in one newspaper is much the same in every other newspaper. I also don't doubt that similar forces play to prevent reporting of scandals such as MI5's killing of newspaper tycoon Robert Maxwell, whose death is so clearly of foul-play (I have looked at the two autopsy's of his body, one carried out officially in England and the other independently in Egypt I believe, and I can't see how two reports could really be much different) and yet no news source anywhere in the western world has the balls to report it. Of course, the internet is not subject to the fear of editors, every users finds their own news, and believe me when I say I've read some amazing stuff recently, even if some of it is likely to be untrue.

I especially like the anti-gravity theory stuff, it makes sense to me that gravity is linked to the other forces, much as the flow of charge creates an electric field, and the changing of flow of charge creates magnetic fields, so therefore gravity being created by the existence of mass must surely be related given that mass is of course also energy. It then follows that anti-gravity would be some way of either bending the gravity field to cause repulsion (in that you lessen the gravity field between you and the attracting object, causing the field's effect on the opposite side to pull you away) or perhaps there is anti-gravity. If we could only determine a quantum mechanical definition of gravity, we'd be away. Tom Bearden may be right in saying that work can be done just through the existence of electrical potential rather than the equalisation of that potential, it seems possible given that using appropriately positioned magnets to create an appropriately curved magnetic field one can cause a rotor to go nearly full-circle with no input of energy whatsoever. Effectively, one is getting work "for free", the problem is that the energy gained is not greater than the energy required to reintroduce the rotor back into the front of the curved magnetic field - nevertheless, it is still far more efficient than typical electric motors, and the japanese already have them in production electric vehicles.

Okay, off that topic for now, I guess I've been thinking too much again. I haven't seen Ruth now in easily two weeks, and my sentiments have changed since the last entry regarding whether I should see her again. My view is this: I came to Spain accepting that she didn't want a relationship, which she had reiterated to me three weeks prior. When I arrived, she told me that she had changed her mind, and I being far too gullible accepted that and off we went. But then two weeks ago she says no, I only started with you because I felt an obligation to, but now it's over.

Now I believe she was trying her best to do the right thing and to make me happy, but what I cannot get over is that she lied to me, and I was living her lie for whatever number of weeks - it's likely that subconsciously I realised, and that would explain a lot regarding my mental state recently. She lied to me, then continuously lied repeatedly to me, building up my hopes and dreams and luring me into a totally false place, and then (and this is the best bit) she broke my heart, broke the world that she had created through her lies and caused (and still causes) me an immeasurable amount of pain.

It is only because that I believe she did not realise this, that these are the actions of someone who just did not know better, that I have not completely shut the doors to her. My god has she fucked up, and she has fucked me over something too, but I genuinely believe she didn't mean for this to happen. Ignorance is not an excuse, but it is a consideration. So as far as I'm concerned, she has had a red card given to her, she's currently sent off and facing a two match ban but after that, if she plays her cards right, maybe I'll forgive her.

She had the cheek today though to ask me if I was angry with her. That made my blood boil. I think I said something about "just don't mention that again ever", I don't know. Whenever I think about her I get this rush of adrenalin, this feeling of blood pressure rapidly rising and often my teeth clench together, and crazy thoughts of mindless violence surge through my mind. I have this almost overwhelming urge to attack, hurt her as much as I can, lash back and it's all I can do to stop myself usually. Hence tomorrow, which is her birthday, I will give her the present I have bought and then make a hasty retreat before I say any of the many things which zoom through my head at the merest thought of her. I think it's fair to say I now hate her as much as I love her. Given time, the hate will cancel out the love, and I'll be left with a vacuum. Back to square 1d, it's still square one but now I have a little extra knowledge than I did before - I must remember to watch for women who lie, especially if their lies are what you want to hear.

Okay, next topic - it's probably a very crazy thought, but it's been persisting for a few days now, although I'd expect it to vanish should I start work and have all this excess time soaked up. I was thinking of writing a book regarding my experiences at university. Maybe it's because I've been reading a lot of Hunter S. Thompson's stuff recently (he's the guy who did Fear And Loathing BTW), and his style of writing is slightly reminiscent of these diary entries - in that he continually branches off into tangents, and I do that here all the time. Hell, it's my web page, I can put whatever drivel I want onto it, and I don't need to give a toss what anyone else thinks. Thompson's trademark though is his very creative analogies, I guess it's what enthralled the Rolling Stone readership given that what he wrote was usually totally unrelated to what he was supposed to be writing. I would refer anyone interested to Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '73 which is Thompson's coverage of the 1972 US Presidential election for Rolling Stone. Suffice it to say he does talk about the presidential campaign, it's just that it's from a very different perspective that what you're used to. I personally think it's better, at the end of the book I genuinely believe I have a very good idea what the candidates were actually like, not what they wanted to appear as. I also have a good idea of exactly how horrible politicians can be, but then the politician's world is a horrible place and even the best of people are tainted by their surroundings. Suffice it to say that a lot of what Chomsky says America does to poorer nations is made much more believable when you consider what factions within the Democrat party do to other factions - god, Machiavelli would have been proud! And that doesn't even begin on what Republicans will do to Democrats (much worse again), and hence it becomes easy to see how the same people can sleep easily at night knowing that their actions in the name of America are killing millions of people around the world every month. After all, at least Democrats and Republicans are Americans ...

Okay, so far so good here. I hope wherever you are reader, things are good, and until next time I wish that you all be happy! Adios!

Sunday 17th December 2000: 2.38am. Today's been an interesting day. I've made some decisions I had always hoped I wouldn't have to. I've decided to give up smoking cannabis. After two and a half years of pretty much constant use, my love affair with the herb is to take a short hiatus. Believe me, it is not because I don't like the stuff, or grown away from it or anything, it's anything but, and this decision has killed me in making it. But it has to be done, and as noted here in this diary previously, a good reason to be in Spain is because here I am able to give it up if I needed to, I would never have been able to in Hull because most of my social life there, if not all of it, revolves around the use of the substance.

But what would drive me to such a decision? Well, I saw Ruth for the first time in two weeks on Friday night, and again last night at a birthday party for a friend of hers which I was at. At the end of the party, I told the two friends of hers who dropped me home that it would be a while before I saw them again, I found it difficult to be around Ruth and if I was going to be around them, I would have to be around her, and I don't want to create a problem. From every factual evidence I can see, they aren't just her friends anymore, they seem to like me and I like them, so they are my friends too - they have been very kind to me even after my breaking up with Ruth, and they didn't have to do that. So that pains me, that I have had to take that decision too.

But you see, something happened at that party which spooked me, I got the distinct impression Ruth was talking about me to people there. Was it merely the voices again? God, I don't know anymore, it's totally possible she was talking about me to people there, I didn't get any negative vibes off anyone else there except her and people she was talking to. And it wasn't attack-like like normal (ie; there is a period of time, say a half hour, where everybody is brimming with bad vibes), it was little incident things all night - like when Ruth and one of her friends vanished for twenty minutes, then came back and later her friend knew things which she wouldn't have - or maybe it was me just being paranoid? Again, later in the night, her and a male friend sat alone on the other side of the room and occasionally both her and the friend kept looking at me, and even if my spanish isn't good I did catch my name every now and then. Or maybe I was just being paranoid?

Hell, maybe it was real, maybe it wasn't, but it spooked me. I can't be sure of what I hear anymore, and the situation last night seemed like it wasn't an attack (I haven't had any since me and her finished, but then I haven't spent much time around other people so therefore there isn't a chance for it to make itself felt), but it does get aggravated by drugs and tiredness, so maybe the weed was aggravating it? Still, as I say, it was little occurrences throughout the night, not a long spell like normal, so maybe I'm not mad?

If I am though, then it bodes badly for me. It means Ruth wasn't the cause (although why then did it center around her last night and no one else?), so it could just be that I'm crazy. Either way, it seems I need to give up the herb, I can't keep my head clear enough to be sure what's going on when I'm stoned. It has to go, at least for a while.

On Friday night, Ruth's friends were talking about her. They were annoyed, because apparently Ruth keeps doing "this" to people she gets into a relationship with, apparently I'm not the first. They said they were getting really tired of it, every time someone loves her she fucks them up. That really surprised me, I expected them to side with her, but I have to say I have noticed a lot more of her friends coming up to me and talking to me - maybe it's because my spanish is better, but they always ask how I am. It certainly seems that they all know people she has gone out with before. Has she fucked up that many men?

Hell, I don't want to slander the girl - I don't think I'll ever stop loving her in a way. Everything she has done to me, the lies, the deception, I genuinely believe she can't see why she has done wrong, all she can see is that she has really hurt me and she honest to god doesn't really understand why. She always said that she would hurt me, she said she always hurt every man who got close, and I never believed her. But now I do. Now, I understand that she does good things for the wrong reasons, and like when you build a good house on bad foundations, eventually the house will crumble and fall down. She turns good things bad, not because she intended to, but because bad reasoning will break things.

This is such a difficult one to call. How do you treat someone who hurts you not because they intended to, but by doing what they thought was right? When someone does bad things but think they are doing good, what do you do? What do you do with someone who literally doesn't understand the consequences of their actions?

I am reminded, when I think about this, of my time in Trinity College Dublin. There, students bullied other students, and it led me to mount a crusade upon TCD - some of which I talked about over two years ago here. Those students did what they did because they thought they were having a laugh, that what they did was harmless, but they never realised what it did to their victims. As I concluded then, much as with many of the Nazi's who did what they did, and indeed with many of those in capitalism, these people are very dangerous - because when a person does bad things and don't realise it, it is hard to make them change their ways, or to punish them, or indeed do anything relating to them. Society had taken a brute force way of dealing with such people, to deny them their freedom through gaol, but in the end if a person does not understand why something is wrong then it is very hard to educate them not to do it again. Gaol doesn't work very well for this reason, it assumes level-headed rational human thought processes, and many truly evil men don't work that way. For example, if a paedophile abuses a child there are two main reasons why they allow damage like that to a child and the person they will become for the rest of their life - (i) they don't care or (ii) they don't realise the damage they cause. From what I have read, the most common excuse is "it would be good for them" or "it would educate them" or some other form of justification based on the child's well-being. Even Jack the Ripper thought he was on a holy crusade to purge the world of filth, he thought he was doing everyone a favour. It's rare to get a true cold-blooded bastard who happily admits he enjoys causing pain and death, and we can be thankful for that. On the other hand, the latter is more reformable, because that person understands right from wrong, and hence can be given incentives to not commit wrong in the future.

Maybe I have known it for some time, maybe since Easter when she first told me it was ended. Maybe then I realised that this girl has something wrong with her, something very dangerous to me, because how can one detect an enemy when that enemy has genuinely all the best intentions for you in the world? Let's think about my hallucinations for a minute. They were about people being nice to you on the surface, but plotting to hurt you underneath. I am constantly reminded of that party I went to just prior to the summer of 1999 where everyone in the room left me, my sister and the people we had arrived with alone in a room. I found out that night that those people hated me, but they had always been nice to me to my face but secretly they cursed me when I wasn't there. That has left an indelible mark on me, because I didn't see the signs which afterwards with reflection I could see, and that really hurt. They never told me to piss off or that I wasn't welcome, but the signs were there.

Well, maybe after that Easter I subconsciously realised that there was a problem. I've been through all this before, the entry of the 1st October 2000 went into various possibilities behind my malaise, and now of course it would seem that the old classic "alarm bell ringing because something is wrong" was true. Like with Kathryn, I subconsciously realised she wasn't good for me. It looks to be the same with Ruth.

If a straight-off "apply the form of the hallucination to the probable cause" is performed, then it would seem that on the surface, she is really nice to me - hell, inside she is doing her best to make me happy. She changed her mind when I came back here for good to go out with me because she wanted to make me happy. But she didn't change her mind because she wanted to be in a relationship with me, she changed it because I wanted to be in a relationship with her and she did want to make me happy. Like I say, doing things for the wrong reasons turns that thing bad, and if you do something you don't want to do because you want someone else to be happy - well, it will back-fire on you.

And that it did. From the constant suggestions that I should find someone else to not spending time with me, and indeed there are many other things which I won't mention here, I had a constant nagging doubt about how committed she was to us. And now I know that she never was committed at all. And that really explains a hell of a lot. And it makes me really angry, because everything I went through in those seven or so weeks, from the shouting at her father to breaking down crying to all those things I never wrote about in this diary - all of that wasn't necessary, and furthermore all of it was pointless, because all of it was based on lies and deception by her. In addition, all those things she told me, all those promises she made to me - while I still believe she meant them, this revelation has tainted them, taken away their lustre, and that has taken a bright shining light out of my life which used to illuminate my soul. And it is for these things why I now hate her.

But I don't think she knows what she has done to me, and I also don't think she can understand what she has done either. I even think that maybe she will never understand, because she doesn't think in that way. As far as she can see, she tried her best. And of course, she did try her best, but she used bad reasoning, bad logic, and that's why it all fucked up. I have an idea why things are this way inside her, why she thinks like this, but I have already said far too much about her here, I know I have already gone into far too much detail about her in public. It's why I have tried not to write this entry for several days now, I avoided it in the last entry. But for some reason I needed to write it down, I have a feeling this will be a defining turning point in my life much as the period following Kathryn was. So, as with then, I have endeavoured to keep it as me-orientated as possible, and hence I will speak no more of the insides of her head. If you are reading now Ruth, I'm really sorry for writing all this - I know I should have said all this in person to you, and instead I have just severed all contact and I know how much that must hurt you. But I do it because I don't want to hurt you. After Kathryn got her new boyfriend, I really lost it for a bit, I did some things I'm really not proud of and even though then I was doing my best not to repeat what I did with Laura, I still slipped at times and that wasn't good enough. This time with you I don't want to hurt you, and this is the safest path to prevent me hurting you so that I overall hurt you the least.

Let it not be said though that there aren't ulterior motives. Clearly, this way is better for me too for all the reasons outlined above. But it means breaking the promises I made to you. I am sorry for that, but I am keeping that promise that you made me make to leave you if you ever became dangerous to me. And you are just that.

Well, it's 4.23am now, nearly been typing for two hours, I have an interview at 10.30am and I'll need to get up no later than 8am. Less than four hours of sleep, hmm. And I still have my dad's boat to paint (it's his christmas present, I'm making it myself, but it's taking days more than I thought it would - needs a lot of time for the glue to dry and you can only do so much at any given stage :( ). Anyway, I gotta go.

Ok, farewell, not sure the next time I'll make an entry, my mother's anniversary is coming up never mind christmas, so it's likely around then. I get the feeling this year's holiday's aren't going to be a patch on last year's. If I had known me and Ruth weren't serious earlier, I would have flown home to Ireland - dad offered to pay - but it was too late for any reasonable price two weeks ago, I checked. So Ruth's lies have cost me christmas at home for a christmas here, where I will most likely sit here and eat a christmas meal for one while my family eat theirs without me. And that really really hurts. And I hate her for doing that to me and my family.

Ok, I must restrain myself from being too bitter. I need to learn to distrust women much more, in fact a good dose of simple women hatred wouldn't be too bad. If I never let them get close, then they can't hurt me. Sounds logical. Okay, off I go, see you all again soon and until then be happy!

Sunday 31st December 2000: 5.13am. Got back from Ireland this morning which my father kindly paid for, and just got back from Spanish new year celebrations just now. They're good people are Ruth's friends, her best friend fed me tonight with her family and then took me to a bar they and their very extended family had rented out for tonight's celebrations. And it was a good party, very reminiscent of parties we had in my second year at uni, especially given that there were plentiful supplies of hard drugs going around, though their use was being kept discreet. Twas very good actually, despite my extremely low mood on entry they managed to keep me there until 4am, despite my communication inabilities.

But eventually it got to me as people got more fucked, because you see I couldn't take anything, and there's nothing worse to be repeatedly offered free hard drugs by various plainly fucked people and having to refuse despite really really wanting them. Your eyes kinda bulge out of your head, you begin to salivate and with only the greatest of self-control you say through gritted teeth as nicely as you can "no gracias", and then do your best not to look like your dog just died because you don't want to ruin their happy trip. It sucks.

So I came home to make the last entry of the the year 2000. As I was walking from the bus, I was reminded of this moment three or is it four years ago now. I was walking home from a party in Cork, my home, and I was in first year and engaged to Kathryn. I remember the sun coming up on what must have been 1998, and feeling this amazing wonder at how lucky I was to be alive. It was totally natural, and boy was it good.

But tonight I think look at all I have done since then, look at the life I have led. I have done some amazing things in these three years, things most people will never ever do, and it has improved me greatly. But am I happy yet? No. Am I getting happier? No.

For a while in Canada, I was happy but I was not content - I yearned to return to England. But I would happily exchange what I am now for what I was then, because this nightmare I am living now makes me constantly wince with this inner pain. Now I'm not smoking weed regularly, its anti-depressant effects have vanished and I genuinely now feel pain all the god damn time. It's painful to be alive. The only thing keeping me from thoughts of suicide are memories of high-times of these past three years, and the thought that I should be able to reattain them with time. Unlike the aftermath of Kathryn, now I have experience.

And I feel bitter too. I have received all the pain of ending a long-term relationship with barely any upside. With Kathryn, I got sex and cuddles and emotional support and so on, but with Ruth I got none of these. I had a feeling of contentment because I believed someone loved me, and that's all I got from that relationship. It's not fair that I get all this god damn pain and don't even have any good memories to justify it with. It would be so easy to fuck it off and hate her and all women forever and never let them close to me ever again.

I got a christmas card from Elli this christmas, and that reminded me how I wouldn't let her in despite her loving me. Kathryn had burnt me enough that even a year later, it was too painful a prospect. So it ended, and I hurt her, but I'm very glad she's happy now. But it leaves me now with what to do with Ruth, because it was the hope of being with Ruth that partially got me through the Kathryn aftermath, and I let her in completely only to find she was slowly fucking me over because her concept of right and wrong is flawed. So what does one do when one has run out of hope? And let's be clear about this, I now have no definable hope that I will ever be in a successful relationship for the rest of my days, other than the usual lies perpetuated upon us by society that oh yes, there is someone for everyone out there, just wait.

Well that's bollocks. Just look at all the failed marriages, broken households and damaged children and tell me any of that bullshit is true. It is true for some people, but it isn't true for everyone. Some people find their life long love real early and never have cause for complaint. Most do the best they can with what they have or can get, but there's always some lies in there, whether it's lying to oneself or to the other person. And what happens to the person who won't lie, who always seeks the truth?

Simple answer: they get to be very lonely, forever. And maybe it's this realisation which leaves me so depressed at the end of the year 2000. For me I realise now there is no true love, there's just self-delusion. I will never be happy. And there isn't a single thing I can do about it. I am destined to have to lie continuously for like twenty years if I want children, and if I can't handle that then I don't get any. And how could I bring up children in a house where the love is based on lies?

I think I've been trying not to admit all these realisations for some time now, but as with world government, there is the perceived reality and there is the actual reality. Love is made out to be all that, but it's a gross simplification of the truth with most of the bad bits removed and the rest made romanticised. Just like world government where every peace mission to help some country diverts us from the truth that said little country is usually being screwed over and stomped all over by big powerful country. One can believe the romantic version for a while, but give it a decent testing and soon you'll realise it's nothing more than a dream.

Returning to the idea of fucking off all women forever, it becomes clear with this analysis that they're just as fucked as men are. So why blame them, they're the victims too. Which means Ruth is as much a victim as I am. Which is why, given that she is clearly still very concerned for my well-being, I have decided to give her a break. I told her today that whenever it's convenient for her, we should talk, something I had been denying up until now. As far as I can see, I can let her be my friend whilst not letting her close enough to hurt me, irrespective of what she might go and do. She had that privilege once - she fucked up, and she will never get it again. Maybe no person will ever get that privilege again. Maybe the closest anyone will ever get is about the same as a reader of these diaries?

That seems sad, but the guards on what I write in here are what is necessary to prevent me getting hurt. Doing the same as a minimum for all relationships would prevent anyone ever hurting me like Ruth and Kathryn and the others before them did. If I don't let myself get attached, they can't hurt me anymore. But can I handle the loneliness? Don't seem to have a choice really. I notice older people tend to keep a distance much more, so maybe it's time for the same with me?

I don't know the answers to these questions, and I have asked them before after Kathryn. Maybe one needs to accumulate pain in order to know for sure, it's not something which can be learned. In which case, after a few years, all this will happen again, but with another different variation and hence unpredictability?

Hmm, bleak musings, I'm not a very happy chappie, am I? No, not really. Anyway, wherever you are (and whoever you), I hope things are going better for you - happy new year!, and expect an update soon with the customary end of year review. Until then, be happy!