Why I must force life to be linear and predictable, I do not know, but it is surely the root cause of much of my unhappiness. It is unfortunate that it is easier to be miserable than to be content, but like I’m implying, life really isn’t all that linear.

Today the new beginning preceded the old ending. At least in my mind. To choose a date would be otherwise arbitrary, and I suppose all things are ending once they begin, much as we all start dying once we are born. But I’ve this too many times to hope to have any meaning, and it irks me that I have no choice but to make this linear.

The pathetic, bitter part of me is willing to close this journal forever, maybe even hide it. Which, the more I think about it, the better it sounds. But the more sane part—no, [“sane” is] surely not the right word—the more rational [non-depressed] part of me fingds this somewhat entertaining. And a good learning experience. And very illustrative of the next cliché I’m pulling out of my ass:

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

But there’s more to it than just figurative lanugage. Let us tread the paths of my obviously warped mind.

I can’t help but meta-blab about how problematic it is to represent a tangled network of neurons in my brain as a linear narrative. It’s futile, it really is. But I believe in Sisyphus. Or Calvin. And Hobbes.

The woman who was the entire [inspiration for] this journal now has a boyfriend and it seems increasingly unlikely that I will ever have a chance to speak with her again, and it takes a mighty effort not to just [write this off] as another episode in the sad, apparently—ostesibly, unbreakable pattern known as my life.

But I know it’s not true. I can change. I am changed. It’s unfortunate that I have to resort to extreme psychological displacement tactics. I envision that my former self has died and I (the one who writes this at this moment) am merely a simulacrum who has downloaded my predecessor’s memories….

Let me get in a gratuitous memoment of self-pity, though. Despite my relative enlightenment, I’m notnetheless perturbed by the fact that the inimical madness I have suffered for the past two years has simply abruptly ended, making a lot of what I have said or done completely meaningless, and not just a little silly. It was nothing more than a vehicle for me to reach where I am now. It’s like writing a story and developing this torturous plot, only to have it end with no resoultion, simply for the sake of depositing characters [in a particular setting] for a sequel. Yes, the reader may have picked something up, but I’m sure that they’d be utterly pissed off.

But that’s the end of that…. I can’t deny what happened, what I felt, what I thought, and surely I can improve upon this [most recent] sad iteration of my life.

…

OK, my faux-enthusiasm for life seems to be running out, but the amazing thing is that I’m not drunk or on painkillers. Small, baby steps.

We’ll talk briefly of my theory of probability and time before I give up for today. Sometimes I think I should’ve died—just twice this past week or so—on my plane trip from Chicago, and just last night when I hydroplaned on the freeway. And I really think (maybe “hallucinate” is a better workd) that I did, it’s just that I kept going in some alternate universe. That’s why some things seem so discontinuous, like I’m waking up from a dream, or it feels like it’s the first sunrise I’ve ever seen in my life.

OK, OK, more likely, I’ve got some misfiring neurons in my brain—similar to déjà vu—[like how Joseph Heller describes it in Catch 22] Yeah, maybe it’s simultaneous[ly] déjà vu [and] jamais vu.

OK, I’m tired.