Or what's left of you, anyway.

I'm massively heartbroken. I'll explain why if I decide to (probably won't; you know what I'm like), so don't ask. Just post some to make me feel better.

Also hi. I know I don't spend much time here anymore, but, I've been through a lot in the past few years, and of course the site itself has seen better days.

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Imagine a perfect beach
Without a mermaid
Imagine a perfect hideaway
Without a time
Imagine a perfect Eden
Without a friend, without a serpent
"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe, is a rare kind of happiness"

Don't worry, we'll get you back up on your feet.

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Good luck with whichever problem(s) you have. Maybe one day you wil be comfortable sharing.

Eh, I'll live. Just with regret now is all.

__________________

Imagine a perfect beach
Without a mermaid
Imagine a perfect hideaway
Without a time
Imagine a perfect Eden
Without a friend, without a serpent
"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe, is a rare kind of happiness"

I hope you've kept your gorgeous flowing locks

H...happy belated 13th anniversary!

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.

.Legendary themed months are back! Maybe.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Had them most my life at this point; don't see a reason to change that.



Well, hell, that's a long time. I didn't even notice, to be honest.

__________________

Imagine a perfect beach
Without a mermaid
Imagine a perfect hideaway
Without a time
Imagine a perfect Eden
Without a friend, without a serpent
"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe, is a rare kind of happiness"

Good to see you, Eadwulf. Sorry you are feeling down.

__________________
We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.

sounds like you're spending too much time in the past and future, which are an illusion and a hazy dream, my friend. focus on the only thing you have, the present moment

anyway, zilla, are you still a total milf? how's the little one?

Um...not sure how to answer that one.

But hi. The little one is now 8...

__________________
We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.

That sucks, Eadwulf.

Dave King always cheers me up.

Pretty good advice, i think. But definitely, it's hard to not have anxieties, since we're human after all. Other types of animals seem luckier in that they are usually only stressed about the present, as far as we can tell.

It's definitely current events that are causing this. I'll live. It'll just take a while after I've finally stopped crying more than I ever have, however long that takes.

I appreciate the responses. Not sure what prompted me to post something here; I do have closer people I to talk to. Perhaps some part of me decided to regress. Might explain the bizarre combination of Sentenced and Pat Benatar I've been listening to lately.

__________________

Imagine a perfect beach
Without a mermaid
Imagine a perfect hideaway
Without a time
Imagine a perfect Eden
Without a friend, without a serpent
"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe, is a rare kind of happiness"

Even if in heartache, we're glad to know you're still up and at 'em. Yours has been a unique, irreplaceable flavor in your presence here; I'm sure real life won't bust your balls forever, not someone as bright and capable as you.
Chin up, sir. We're still here for you in what ways we can be.

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Goten is dead!

My best friend, perhaps now my oldest friend, someone whom I've known since we were both very young, was wed last month. I have not seen her face-to-face for nearly half a decade now, though we still talk almost every day. She has her struggles, as I do mine, but we keep each other company. And I know she's found someone whom she loves, and who loves her, and with whom she can share her life, wherever it may lead.

I think you can already see where this is going.

There are no words that could possibly hope to truly express just how much I love her. Believe me, I am a writer and a linguist; I have searched.

Almost eleven years ago we ran into each other at a fabric shop near my hometown on a late summer's day. We were rather young. We'd been friends for years by that point, but I'd been in and out of school, and we hadn't seen each other for a while. It was unremarkable in itself. We caught up for a few minutes, and then I gave her my email, and we went on our ways for the day.

Yet, a while after that, I realised I couldn't stop thinking about her. And not a day has gone by in my life since where she wasn't on my mind.

We kept in touch, though she's always been the busy sort. Lately, poring over the old email and chat records alone, which somehow still exist, I suppose I pestered her a bit, drunk on her attention. And looking back on that time of a couple years, I suppose it was obvious to everyone just how much I adored her. It really was rather sweet.

Yet I never said a damned thing. At that time, I suppose it was because I was still quite young. I'd never been in love before, and I didn't know what I was going through. And those among you who may be reading this probably know of my innate cynicism. In my life, I have seen what love has brought, even at a young age. Little of it resembled happiness. I had, and still have, such a dear friend in her. I didn't want my desires to change that. And I said nothing.

Then, a while after that, she became involved with another man. One who eventually turned out to be an absolute , but that was beyond my judgement at the time. She'd met him living quite far away from me, when she went to live with her father. I heard about their relationship, and I panicked. I wrote her a letter explaining in rather simple terms that I was in love with her. I simply had to tell her. I also told her that I did not want her to feel any obligation toward me.

Remember that, for it represents what I now know is a disastrous trend I've followed for ten years, and for naught.

She understood. It's... Rare that a woman should stay close friends with a man she knew was in love with her. And yet... nothing changed. The man she was with was having a toll on her spirit after a while. To this day, I regret that I said nothing. Everyone else told her to run, not be involved with that idiot, even after she decided she wanted to marry him. I didn't trust myself to be impartial, even though I knew I should have joined that chorus. Too young, both of us. And too painful for me. When she said she was going to marry him, I didn't speak for a week. I still remember how even opening my mouth threatened to let the tears out in front of my family.

She did not go through with it, thankfully. The guilt remains, nonetheless.

Sometime that year, before things fell apart, I acted on a strained impulse, and tried to end our friendship so I could "move on." Thankfully again, that decision perhaps lasted a few hours, when I realised that I was forcing the very thing that I feared might eventually happen. I explained that I was afraid I might hurt her, or just drive us apart. She promised me that she knew that wouldn't happen.

I have no idea just what wondrous thing I could have ever done to deserve her friendship.

But I didn't listen. Even now, I don't know why, though I do know I didn't want her to say "I'm so sorry" because of how I was feeling ever again. She was right. She was right about many things. I've come to realise that most see a great deal in me, and she always knew that the horrible things I thought of myself were not true. She knew that me wanting her to love me would not have been an unspeakable sin...

That day, I said I would be honest with her from then on. I haven't been dishonest. But I never had a conversation about it to her face in the eight years that have now followed. I remember the next year, when things had declined, and she came back to visit where we grew up again, for a time. I alluded to it. I said that though waiting for the "right time" to say some things was folly, it was the wrong time to say anything.

And I don't think I've brought it up since. I was still convinced that if I was intimate part of her life, I would bring her to ruin. I was wrong. I made a mistake. I've spent years making such a terrible mistake because I did not listen to my heart...

My love for her is the only thing in my life that always felt right, at its core. Felt like me. And I don't think I can really say how much she means to me. I could say "the world", but that seems like such a petty and insignificant thing by comparison. She has brought me a world of worlds of happiness from her friendship. I have never had an entirely well mind, I know this. Every day of my life, I have been an ocean in a storm. Yet, when I talk to her, it all melts away. The anger, the anxiety, is gone. She is such an exquisitely human person. And she makes me feel human. Normal. There is no other person on earth where when I see them, it becomes impossible to resist smiling. And I have always missed her every day she's ever been gone from my sight.

I remember the last time we met. It was over four years ago. The winter solstice. The last time my mother really made it a celebration at her house. I was there, and my friend of friends, upon my insistence, came to visit me. She drove out into the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the night, just to see me, and stare at a fire in the hole in the ground on my mother's old farmstead.

I would like to think that I have read far too much into that night since then, and that she was just tired from travelling during the holidays, and just wanted to get away to see an old friend. Yet, I swear something was different about her.

She brought me a gift, a clumsy, adorable gift of a blue scented candle that I still haven't taken the ribbon off of. We were just happy to see each other. She wanted to see my bedroom for a while to get away from all the other people. We talked for more time than I thought, and I barely wondered at the time at that look in her eye. Troubled? I don't know. And then, later, she had to leave. We hugged for... ever. I looked into her eyes so, so many times that night. And... I still didn't tell her... All I did was mumble something about the weather when she had her arms all around me, and the only thing I could say to show that I cared was that she should get some sleep. She was tired.

And then she was gone.

Her family left my hometown shortly after, and she didn't have the means to return. And then everything started going wrong. Finding work proved to be impossible and even took a toll on my mental health. My family started dying all around me, my grandmother, my mother's fiancé, and a man who might as well have been my grandfather. Money was hard to come by for all of us. I took to living on my mother's homestead just to help her and my sister. Though I was torn between holding my strained silence and running to my dearest friend, I was broke, I had no work, and I couldn't travel. And... by the time I could... My father was dying, and she'd found someone else...

These things are ultimately excuses. I know that. Even though I had suspected she might have been seeing someone else when she came to visit that last time, none of them had to keep me from telling her.

She announced she was engaged last December. It was a most bittersweet Christmas for me. I felt pain, of course, much the sort of pain I'd felt all along though. I truly never asked to feel love, and after so many years of failing to find someone else, I've had to resign myself to the fact that I may never stop loving her.

I was happy for her. I knew I'd cry again when she got married, but I was convinced that I could live with it.

I was wrong.

I honestly did not know what pain was until April of this year. Even after years of heartache, I never truly admitted to myself just how much I needed her.

This age of mass communication and social media, it allows one to experience anything in as much detail as can be had by proxy. It was a fine, simple, and happy wedding on a lawn, one that suited her so well. I saw pictures, of course. She was so beautiful. Smiling in the sun, flowers in her hair. In the arms of a man with a weak chin whom I know nothing about. Ah, but I know he is a good man, for he makes her happy. What else would I ever need to know about him?

My heart, locked away in its grim little cage for so long, shattered. I never saw it coming. This hurts so much. I cannot describe it. I honestly cannot. My upbringing was not happy, and I have been through utter, sheer hell far too many times to count in my life. My blood has been spilled so many times, and my entire body is riddled with scars.

And yet, all of that was nothing. All of it could have had no hope to prepare me for even the faintest sliver of what I have felt in the past few weeks. After surviving so much pain, I have finally come to experience grief for the first time in my life. And even from what I had seen of the heartbreak of so many people in my life, this seems so impossibly intense. For a week or more of this time, I was inconsolable. I have cried far more than I thought it was ever possible to cry. And the illness. I have felt weak in all of my limbs, my chest feeling as though it was about to collapse, and I have descended into ruin. Weeks later, and it is taking all of my broken will to lift myself up from the cold ashes of what was once a man.

People truly mean it when they talk about just how powerful love is. It's an unstoppable force. You cannot fight it. I am not the strongest person in the world, but trust me when I say I am a strong man. I come from a bloodline that has proven itself to be as unyielding as iron time and time again. I have experienced things that would bring grief to most people without even flinching. I have seen death, destruction, despair, and some of the worst elements of humanity in action with no justice in sight. I am a survivor who holds strength in his hands.

But I am so, so weak against this love. I was a fool to think I could ever fight it. I know that now. And no matter what becomes of my love for her, I have sworn to myself that I shall never again be the ignorant man who created this pain.

I don't know if there is a singular lesson to be had here. I won't trivialise all of this by making it into some sort of parable. I shall say, however, that you should never believe yourself if you ever feel you don't deserve love. That is wrong. It will always be wrong, no matter who you are.

I know in my heart, battered though it is, that no matter what, she and I shall always be friends. If the day should come that I must explain all of this to her, and I feel it most likely shall, then she will understand.

But that isn't today.

I don't know why I saw fit to type all of this out on this website. Perhaps I've just come to learn that not sharing such things is unwise. Indeed, until the grief struck me recently and I had to lean on another dear friend, she was the only one I truly told about my feelings for her. I may take this down after a while, either out of paranoia or just because I don't want to click upon another reminder of this painful story, but... Feel free to read it for now. I need to go cry again.

__________________

Imagine a perfect beach
Without a mermaid
Imagine a perfect hideaway
Without a time
Imagine a perfect Eden
Without a friend, without a serpent
"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe, is a rare kind of happiness"

If you don't want to read it again, I'd suggest you put it in a spoiler tag. The last time you opened up and shared yourself with us, by way of a vocal monologue uploaded to Youtube, it was a pretty pleasant way of being able to connect with the usually enigmatic charmer known as Eadwulf. Kinda sad to see it gone. That said, I'm glad you shared this with us.

In no way am I glad, however, of the pain described happening to you. Such examples of anguish are why I pretty stoutly believe against such things as fate, karma, and "everything happens for a reason". As I'm sure everyone who still frequents--or even visits--the forums anymore will admit the same thing. Despite all the dry sarcasm and piercing rapier wit that may have stepped on some toes over the years, there's absolutely no way you could deserve to feel a broken heart like this. Every hope I have for you goes into overcoming it and persevering, as you once voiced a hope for our community to do.

As risky as it sounds to suggest to someone in a vulnerable and pained state, I highly suggest you do not sever ties with her. An entire family was willing to voice dislike of and raise red flags about the same person is reason to worry, even to a stranger; it takes a good family to worry about someone's welfare like that, and a good person to deserve the worry. A good person also does not deserve to be stuck with someone who's apparently so blatantly terrible that everyone and their mother (including their own mother) says "no" to the idea. It may amount to nothing and truly just be a clash of personalities despite her delight with him. But all signs point to a distinct possibility of trouble brewing, and from what of your interactions with her have been shown, I feel your name is one she would consider voicing problems to.

None of that is a hope for her to have trouble. Nor, sadly, is it a glorified way of praying you can swoop in as a fairy tale hero. And believe me, as a bleeding heart white knight wannabe, part of me wishes it were. My hope lies in that if my prediction is true, your shoulder will not be withered nor your ear deafened by grief enough that you can't share any more of another's.

You've always been a one of a kind pillar of unique strength and charm. If there's one thing you have to be paranoid about after having shared all this, it's that we'll figure out you're human.

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Goten is dead!

I believe you may have, rather easily I'll admit, misread that meandering anecdote. Everything I wrote was essentially in chronological order. Her husband is not that fool she was involved with long ago. I believe she and her current beloved met a couple years ago, and as far as I know, they are quite happy together. And I'm glad for that.

I've also had no threat of the slightest intention of removing our friendship for the better part of a decade, nor shall I ever make such an error in judgement as to do so again.

Thank you nonetheless.

__________________

Imagine a perfect beach
Without a mermaid
Imagine a perfect hideaway
Without a time
Imagine a perfect Eden
Without a friend, without a serpent
"Feeling lonely and content at the same time,
I believe, is a rare kind of happiness"

Then I obviously retract my prediction, and am hopeful that her current husband is a much better man.

Out of advice to give, though, I can only keep assuring that we'll be here for you if it helps.

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Goten is dead!

Hey Ead,
Thanks for sharing. I know sometimes getting it out helps. I can't really offer any advice, as I haven't been in that situation myself. But as a consolation, I can try to send you a 6 pack of properly good beer.

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That is truly heartbreaking, Eadwulf.

There are lots of people who come in and out of our lives and that is normal and tolerable. Then there are the rare ones who change us forever and become part of us. Those we still live with every day, even when we are without them.

I don't know what to say other than thank you for sharing that beautiful, terrible story. I'm sorry for the loss you are feeling.

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We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.