I thought by now I would have finished HT and CP4 and been off to better things, things that would make me happy all through the Fall and coast me right into Winter break. Pfft, I'm never good at predicting the future.

Oh, I'll finish this shit, you can be sure of it.

But the process sure has been slow and grueling and mixed with personal drama.



This picture? I really only drew it because I've been feeling tormented by somebody. They very likely don't know they're having that effect on me, but right now it hardly makes a difference.

If somebody wants to read this story who I know in person, I usually try to keep them from doing so by "forgetting" to send it to them or bring it up again. A couple of my aunts know I'm close to finishing an aspiring publication. My mom knows. My school friends know. Pretty much none of them gets to read He's There. I'll probably never be ready to show it to them and have to have it revealed while I stand off to the side going "hm? oh. yeah. I did that."

It's a frustrating phrase, but I guess in this case I should be thankful that a lot of people think things are "just a book" or "just a story". So when anyone who I made sure only knew so much about me reads about the way the characters feel and the things they say, they won't all be suspecting it comes from the guarded part of myself that never finds any opportunity to be expressed.

Since Lily is unaware she is a character, it means something a little different when she can admit she and "Erik" are two mirrors facing, but for me it is the final declaration that they've always been two very sensitive and reflective areas in my mind and heart which are obsessed with seeing something so similar and think perhaps the other will help them understand and exercise that reservoir of passion (for lots of things; not just romantic). They make a double-edged sword and just hurt themselves trying to confront what they think they want/need.

And that is exactly how I have been feeling lately. I felt like them struggling together, them arguing about what love is together, them feeling like a victim of the other and of their own feelings, was a perfect image of the problems taking place in my own troubled mind.

* You don't do what I think you should because something is wrong with you.
* If I could just shake you by the shoulders, you would suddenly realize how much it's your fault that I'm this hurt and you would stop hurting me.
* I want to be loved, and for me that means someone obliges to take care of me because they feel bad about how I've been hurt.
* Seeing how much I deserve it should make you have feelings for me.
* Caring about others is essentially a bad thing that brings about pain, I just manage to pretend that it's wonderful and that I will become a better/happier person because of it.

I'll be honest and call those subconscious thoughts I've definitely had in the past years, even though I see how flawed in reasoning they are.

Why don't we just call the whole story a representation of what encounters with the opposite sex are idealized to be like and what they actually have been like (psychologically, not physically) for a 24-year-old loner who has never even been kissed, once, but who has been lured, teased, disillusioned, and abandoned. Almost exclusively.

But, still, because of all the things that keep swirling in my head about a boy I should let go of as quickly as I reached out, I sit in front of the final chapter and become immediately exhausted.