Just heartbreak. No hobos. No shotguns. Some crust. And going to the southern hemisphere. Two posts today. This one is the maudlin philosophizing emo one, so skip it if you want to see a hobo with a shotgun and read why I think 300 is racist garbage.

So I can still get passionate about stuff like silly movies about naked dudes with spears and my professional life which I take as a good sign as my personal life has been an absolute disaster. It's been hard to get worked up about anything. I've never been so heartbroken before. It's amazing how it's a physical pain. You can't sleep or eat or think about much else. The thing that sucks is it's so clear right now but at the time you apparently have to hit rock fucking bottom to see you need to get out of something. It's odd how potent a mixture you can have of love and damage. I've definitely witnessed it before, but never been through it myself. Admittedly with me it got so bad friends were worried about me. I'm glad to say to all of them reading that I am probably hiding because I feel like a jerk to you all, and I can honestly say I'm ok now. I even have my fucked up sense of humor back.


this should be in one of those time life mysteries books as it was taken pre-breakup

I think the sad thing is that most people go through an experience like this and become bitter and jaded and decide never to open up to anyone again. Most of the people I know seem to be able to trace their sense of guardedness to experiences like this. I don't think that's right. You should give completely to the people you care about it and if they take and use it, it may hurt, but it cannnot be wrong on your part. I don't understand why people are scared of that. I think letting damage become permanent is how people get to the point where they assume kindness is always insincere. That's really sad. Then everyone is just mean to each other and not themselves.



The strangest thing I'm finding is how a breakup redefines your sense of time. A past has become absolute, inaccessible. The future has doors that are closed forever, possibilites that have ended. And the present becomes something you have to kill time over to get by. That's the worst part. I think they should really crack this hibernation thing. Fucking bears do it, come on. And when you have a particular bad breakup, they inject you with bear hormones and you knock out in a cave for six months and when you come back, sorted.

Why have I been trying to find someone to blame, or how come so many relationships devolve into that? No one is perfect in a relationship. After all this I only believe more strongly that the most important thing there is in relationships is an ability for two people to forgive one another and be ok with each other's faults because everyone has shitloads of them. As Chris Rock puts it:

"'Cause if you can't share what you're like, you'll have problems.
When you love somebody, you got to love everything about them.
You got to love the crust of a motherfucker.

You can't just love the white part of the bread.

You gotta love the crust, the crumbs,
the tiny crumbs at the bottom of the toaster.

That's what the real motherfucker is."

If you don't have that you don't have love. You have a form of madness that's based upon need. People in the throes of what they call intense love when their brains are mapped have cortical activity most closely resembling cocaine addicts I read once. Maybe that's it.


actual image of brain activity of someone in love, or high on cocaine

But I think as unromantic as it sounds, if you can find someone who is okay with your farts, the fact you get boogers hanging, the weird things you say in your sleep, what you look like at 3am eating garbage from the fridge with fucked up hair - and then not just the trivial stuff - whatever weird ass health problem you have, your mood swings, your bad habits, the things about you that aren't kind or good (because we all have that shadow self), overlooking stupid and completely idiotic political beliefs you have, tolerance for the odd passions you have... If you can find someone who can deal with all that you have found ideal love. With the wisdom of Chris Rock, bear juice and time I can now move on from what was close to it.
_

For lots of reasons then, I'm leaving the US in a few days here. I am going to Singapore, then Perth, before going to Brisbane to go scuba dive the Great Barrier Reef. On the way back I'm going to spend some time in Tokyo and Kyoto though. I'm lost right now, which I think you can fix some times by getting even more lost. And broke, too. And I'm glad that I won't have a phone that works. I'm going to want to blog this trip though, so I'll try and get my act together. Please share experiences of these places if you have them.