Meaningfulness? I can't say I have any idea what that really means. Not especially in the existentialist context anyway. But do I experience moments where I feel inspired? Always. Terrifyingly so, in fact. And the voice at the back of my head whispers incessantly to me in supplication to surrender. To stop trying so damn hard. To stop aspiring so damn romantically. Chances are I'll wind up less than average. I know that. I have been too weak for too long. I've lost too much time. I've wasted too much energy and even as I say this, I'm losing even more and believe me when I say I'm completely spent.

Over the years, this loneliness has only grown more immense and crippling and I'm so tired. And I know, the longer I go through this, the less likely things will get better. It is a hard pill to swallow indeed. Consolations and platitudes no longer seem any different. So I shake them off. They mean well but what they are essentially trying to make me believe is that the world is a fair place.  That all needless suffering and pain will be recompensed eventually. That all stories have happy endings. I refuse even for one second to be convinced of such a thing. Although it is a very comforting thought.

But everytime you hear a success story, there are hundreds and maybe thousands of similar stories with vastly different--and less comforting--endings. There is no denying that. You look at the world and you see all this pain and anguish and dying amidst all these pain and anguish. What could one possibly have done to have deserved such a fate? yet alone millions upon millions of individuals. This world is far from just. It is cruel and capricious. And I don't care how fuzzy it makes you feel inside to believe that there is some karmic justice in the world. Left alone, the world would only get more and more unjust. And that there are people, who are otherwise decent human beings, going around perpetuating this idea that people get what they deserve just makes me sick to my stomach. It negates the urgency of having to fight against all this unfairness and injustice.

And I want so badly to be able to mount an opposition against all these injustices but I can't. I'm too fucking weak. I'm too fucking tired. I'm too fucking lonely to muster up enough strength to go out there and try and make things a little better for the ill-treated and the downtrodden. I want so badly to be the voice for the voiceless and the hero of the helpless. I want people to believe the world is a beautiful place not because it feels good to believe as such, but because that is how the world truly is. And the fact that people lie all the fucking time to themselves and others just so they can relinquish their responsibility to make the world a little more perfect makes me even more weak.

I wish so badly for the strength to combat such evils. But sadly, I'm too crippled by this heartache and it haunts me every fucking day to know that I'm so weak and so powerless but goddamnit I will keep giving, no matter how little I have left, if it means for a chance to finally find the strength to stand up and make something out of myself. And in that alone, I feel meaningful.

Peering outside my window, I mouth goodbyes to winter and its snow flakes. They never fail to cheer me up. Now they are gone only to return in another nine months as they usually do. Light showers become mainstays in the daily weather report along with the mists as they make their seasonal haunts atop this mountain. Gloomy indeed.

It is February now and another year has gone by. Valentines day is just around the bend yet it no longer holds any significance to me. The then annual pangs of loneliness have transformed into daily ones much to my dismay. The transition occurred long ago but the bleak outlook remains. And so long as the pangs are recurrent, I continue to steel myself and bottle them up, sequestered from the harsh scrutiny of the world for the prying eyes that inhabit it laugh at weakness and their glares kill. And the tragic part is, the eyes which can save me will be a from one in the ridiculing crowd, unwilling to rescue should the gravity of it be known. So I shall trudge on, paying no mind to this metastasizing growth. Forcing it into the darkest recesses of my mind. Never letting light shine upon it for it would but prolong the agony.

Perseverance

I can't vouch for persistence as an effective means to an end. All I can say is that if you want something that much, persevere till that fire of yours gives out for you owe your dreams that much.

No wishes or resolutions. Just weariness. Gifts and goals only serve as distractions, as places to hide from the ghosts that haunt. Hiding places that have become weathered and torn from overuse are now unable to shelter from the raging storms. With nowhere else to run, I face these wretched wraiths once and for all.

The Criticism of Religion

As terse as Karl Marx's critique of religion is, it successfully encompasses the true problem with religious beliefs in my opinion.

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

Hmmm...

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.

-Neil Gaiman

You

I am stumped. As I always have been. That look on your face unblemished. Beautiful does not even begin to describe you. That sparkle in your eyes blinds me sometimes. Ironic I know. And I just want to kiss them so bad. Imbue you with hope in your bleakest moments, inspire you in your personal battles. Maybe tell you the cheesiest pick up lines but mean every word of it. Or sweep you off your feet as though it is the only thing I am good at. I want to tease you about your idiosyncrasies till you turn away in annoyance, just so I can wrap my arms around you from behind only to begrudgingly let go after you playfully elbow me in my side a couple of times. I want to be the one that wipes your tears away when you cry, kisses your lips when you smile, holds you when you feel alone and in heartrending sadness, your overwhelming joy.

I want you. I want you so much. I know I do not have the right to say these words. I do not know you. Not even the slightest. And I will never know you. Not even the slightest. And whenever I think I am over you I see you, only to fall for you all over again. And I'm crazy about you all over again. To me, you are riveting as you always have been. And I am riveted as I always have been. It is funny how the way you feel about me could not be any more different. You think I am revolting. You think I am a creep. You want nothing to do with me. You see me and you scowl at me. You fire off a spiteful glare. You turn around and walk as fast as you can. You would even run if you had to. After how I went about everything, I do not blame you. And I want to forget you. I want to move on with my life. I want to let go. I want to get out of this rut. I want to be strong. I want to pretend that I no longer care. I want to believe I can find happiness elsewhere. I want all of that so much.

But clearly, not as much as I want you.