The unholy combination of Twitter, Google Reader, and raging insomnia brings me to this blog post about weighing the pain of loneliness vs the suffering of heartbreak. I kind of wonder if it just isn’t the distinction between chronic disease and acute disease. Isn’t loneliness just a more diffuse, protracted form of heartbreak? Loneliness is what heartbreak turns into, given enough time.

I feel like I’ve been in an emotionally stunted state for the last 15 years, actually.

There is nothing so horrendously futile as wanting to be in love and not even managing to get that right. We’re not even talking about reciprocation here. Much less revelation. The issue is that even the unrequited variety has been near damn impossible to sustain. Every time, the idea that it’s probably just going to end in tears sends me catapulting back into a totally cocooned state.

My heart lies closed, and is as cold and silent as stone.

And yet, that which fails to bend will break. That which fails to yield will shatter.

Rigidity, and certainly frigidity, can actually be a rather tenuous and fragile state.

I found myself digging through scattered sheets of paper containing random things I scrawled from about 10 years ago, and I must admit, I was a lot more melodramatic back then.

But I guess that’s around when all this started. This mind-crushing, agonizingly excruciating feeling of hopelessness. Of numbness. The only real difference is the intensity. It actually doesn’t actively hurt most of the time, although I’ve certainly gotten twinges now and again. But the pathophysiology certainly continues inexorably, and unabated.

I guess I never really appreciated how much of an emotional cripple I’ve become.