I’ve never been sore from crying before. I mean, literally sore. My recti abdominalis hurt the next morning.

Like I said, my brief, strange, and confusing history with S was not the main driving force for my drunken bawling. If anything, my complete failure with A still weighs heavily on me, and if I let my guard down, all sorts of sad and twisted thoughts rise up like bile.

Of course, it didn’t help that I had downed three shots of Grey Goose in a row. “Ataxic” would be a generous descriptive term for my depraved method of ambulation as I extricated myself from the alcoholic depradations of the celebrants. I quickly passed out onto the rather luxurious bed in my hotel room.

And I found myself crying. Hard.

I don’t think I’ve sobbed that hard in my entire life.

Frankly, because I was quite nicely drunk, I don’t really remember what I was crying about. Only that it hurt very badly. No matter how hard I’ve tried over the years, I have done little to exorcise this deeply rooted sadness in my soul.

Was it the betrayal of my heart back in high school?

I don’t know. The shadow seems to extend farther than that. If I look at my childhood in a certain way, I almost feel like there were very very few happy moments. I know that can’t really be true, but no matter how many times I reason it out, all that ever comes back is this unfathomable sorrow.

I felt like I had been cut deep. So deep that it will never heal. So deep that I’m not sure it’s not eventually going to kill me. I just remember lying in that bed wracked and tormented by my aching sobs, trying to vomit up all this darkness that is surely suffocating my soul. The only thing I remember crying out was ”Hindi ko na makaya” I can’t bear it any longer.

Now, in all seriousness, I don’t want to kill myself. I don’t want to give in to this darkness that has been gnawing at my soul for as long as I can remember. I want to live free of this parasitic disease.

I don’t want turn bitter and angry. I don’t want my defense mechanisms to become so impregnable that I can’t get myself out of them, that they won’t ever let me get close to another person ever again. I mean, in all seriousness, I’m heading in that direction. I guess if I’m lucky, one of these days, I just won’t feel a goddamn thing. I’ll be invulnerable. From pain, from sadness. But also from love. From joy. It’s a bleak future, not really all that better than suicide. But I guess I’d be alive. I guess. Sort of.

If I were naive, I would say that I want to be happy, but we all know how intractable happiness really is. What I want is peace. Not resignation, not grudging acceptance of my circumstances. But acceptance. Not necessarily being always joyful, but always being receptive to joy.

One of the sad thoughts that flitted through my addled brain today was when I gazed at the brilliant sunset over Point Loma, coruscating over the San Diego Bay. I wondered to myself, why doesn’t this make me feel happy? Because I think it should. That is, if I were more sane.

I don’t know. It’s going to be a process. It’s going to be a pitched battle. It’s going to be an interesting war with myself. I hope I win.