So here I am, the last hours of my 20s, and there are no answers, really.

Ben brings up the idea of feeling out of place amongst our friends who have families and romantic relationships, and, yeah, that’s been my life for a good long while now, this sense of utter alienation, to the point where I doubt my own humanity.

Because I know that it’s not normal to live life like this, cut off from any sort of intimacy.

Floating down this particular relativistic reference frame, I have no one.

There is the all-consuming void also known as the Internet, where I type out my pathetic screeds, with as much effect as screaming into the wind. No one gives a flying fuck, and why should they?

I do not seek pity. I do not seek consolation. There is only one thing I want to know, and I know all too well that there ain’t no answer to this one: why the hell am I here?

What is my purpose on this planet?

I have been given gifts and I have this general sense of understanding that these gifts are to be used in service of humanity, but the specific details escape me.

It’s easy to think of myself as worthless. It’s easy to think of myself as this pathetic sad-sack who has got nothing to offer the universe at large, and by and large, this is probably true, at least when it comes to touching another person’s heart. But aside from that, I’ve got something inside of me that demands to be expressed. Even if I tried my damndest to kill this inexorable flame burning within my heart, I know I would fail at that. Because what would it serve me? What would it serve this universe?

It’s (almost) all as pointless as trying to thread a camel through the eye of a needle.

What I am is afraid, really.

There are people in this world I would like to be with. I’m not just talking about the romantic kind of love (although there is a part of me that I have long tried to smother—a part of me that I cannot destroy no matter how hard I try—that longs for this, that wants to be in love, and to be loved in return.) There are people in this world whom I want to see change and grow and become more than what they are now.

And maybe that’s the only thing keeping me here, this damnable urge to keep turning and turning the page, no matter how heart-breaking and soul-crushing. No matter how it lacerates my innermost self, no matter how deep the wounds.

A part of me just wants to see how this all turns out, to see triumphs and defeats, the endless cycle of seaons, and of tides ebb and flowing.

And yet—what part do I play in all this? Am I just a passenger? Some sort of psychic parasite, supping on the fragments of other people’s dreams? What happened to me? Why is there this soul-shaped hole inside of me, sucking out any desire to keep on going?

I have known despair, and yet despair has still not been enough to kill me, at least not yet.

There is much more I can suffer, this I know, although I do not wish to suffer (even if my actions belie my words.)

Look. I don’t need an oath of everlasting love. I don’t need anyone’s undying devotion. All I’m looking for, all that I wish I could have even if for only a brief moment, is to talk to someone and spill all my awful secrets to. Someone who will listen to my story and not judge. Someone who, when asked if they’d like to travel this road with me, swears no oaths, promises nothing, but only says “OK.”

Because I’m weary of trudging down this shadowed paths by myself, finding myself locked away in labyrinthine mazes, fearing that I’ll never get out. (And yet, somehow, through the blood, the sweat, the tears, through the heartache and awful sorrow, I’ve still managed to get out so far.)

I just want to have someone around who will say “OK, sure, why not,” who will travel these roads not because of their hopeless devotion to me, not because of their self-sacrificing love, but because they want to. Because this is the road that they’re meant to take. Not because of expectations and demands and obligations and utang na loob. Not because of martyr complexes or pity for pathetic creatures like me. But because this Way might be fun. Because this Way might turn OK after all.

In this shadowed hour with my brain whirling, twirling, grinding, spinning, I long for something that I cannot do anything about. Because this sort of thing that I’m pining for is not something that I can do anything to achieve. She just has to be, and if she isn’t, then I’ve got nothing.

I’m tired, tired of these Septembers that offer nothing but disappointment and disillusionment. There have been so many of them, end upon end, that I don’t even really know what I want anymore. All I want is to stop hurting, to lie here under the open sky, and to know nothing but peace. In the end, all I want is tranquility and rest, and I wish I didn’t have to want what I cannot have.

I wanted to be optimistic, as my youth ends definitively, and the next stage of my life begins, but there is just too much woe that I can’t seem to be rid of. I can’t seem to drop all this weight from my heart, and so I end up dragging it along with me.

What I’d love to be able to do is start anew, and fulfill simple pleasures. Forget the big picture. I just want to be content with tending the garden, and doing my work, and not wanting anything that I can’t have. If I could just excise this aching desire from my heart, maybe I can find rest in this world.

Maybe.

All I can really expect is that tomorrow is another day. Opportunities abound, and, sure, it will always be interesting to see where I end up. But I don’t know if I can wander around in the darkness all by myself any more. I’m too tired and too scared, and while I have friends who I can trust to the ends of the earth, I just don’t want to burden them with the vast extent of my despair.

I like to pretend that the world would be better off without me, but deep inside I know that’s not true. The world could give a rat’s ass whether or not I was in it. I am an infinitesimal dust mote floating around a vast empty chamber, nothing more.

And yet, I can’t just hide my light under a basket.

There is something in this life that I was meant to do. I guess the trick of it is to figure out just what exactly that something may be.

Until then, there’s really nothing else for it but to keep turning the pages, and to keep tending that garden, I guess.