Love's Headstone.

It's been a hellish few days, buckaroos. I doubt I'd be back so soon except that I somehow managed to complete an article for work by some sort of primal instinct for writing that manages to operate -- sometimes -- no matter what's going on around me, and I figure I can do the same here.

Besides, I'm not ready to start my next assignment tonight, so I have time that is otherwise unusable.

But something has died inside me, and needs to be given a decent burial in the hope that a replacement for it will one day appear in a different form.

Simply put, the stress level here has gone beyond critical mass, and the only solution (a temporary one, at that) is to try for a state of overall numbness. What has happened has happened, and what will happen will happen. What the hell.

There are times when my gut feelings and instincts fail me, and this has been one of them. Not because I didn't sense certain things (which I did), but because I refused to give them credence. Ignoring them would have been exactly the right thing to do if they had been wrong, as they would have hurt someone else. But as they were correct, I was raked over the coals a bit for not jumping to conclusions.

Doesn't matter. As of Monday night, I'm alone again. Naturally.

And I find that as hurtful as ever.

It's not that I pick unworthy people to care about. I didn't do that this time, let me tell you. I've been there, done that, and have learned many of the questions that need to be answered before getting close to anyone. The ones most of us might ask, regarding marital status, whether other men are hanging around waiting for their chance at a share of the, well, "action," and so on.

Now I've learned a couple more, which apply only in selected instances.

Fortunately -- and I mentioned this in the previous posting -- there was neither malice, treachery or anything even remotely dishonest involved, and I remain as respectful and fond of the lady in question -- in all respects save one -- as ever.

Nonetheless, I am again without the kind of company I so desire, even if no fault was involved, and it is not nice. I can't help missing her, despite the circumstances.

This would be bad enough, but there are other annoyances, large and small, that have come to feel like hot nails being driven into my head.

There is, of course, the continual lack of income, though the work continues to go out. I've explained that in great detail in the past, but I'm getting damned sick of it.

Now that my situation has changed, I want to get my tired butt (and the rest of me) out of here more than I can say, as Where The Ghetto Meets The Sea has more Ghetto than Sea in it for me these days. But with $97.30 in the bank, I judge escape to be impossible.

Then there is the so-called "manager" of this dump apartment building who has decided that all FedEx, UPS, DHL and other couriered packages should go to his apartment when tenants aren't home. The problem, of course, is that the delivery folk find it easiest simply to take them all to him no matter what, and this angers me. I'm waiting for a FedEx package that should have come today; it did not, I was here virtually all day, and Mr Manager isn't answering his door.

Want to know how trivial things are that can bring me close to a screaming rage? The program I use to listen to CDs on this computer has been superseded, and each time they "improve" it, the old version gets crazy. It switches itself into "shuffle" mode without any input from me, and I would rather eat boiled okra than let the program pick the order in which tunes are played.

So there you have it. I know this doesn't read as well as the story I wrote today -- which actually turned out pretty damned well -- but them's the breaks.

At least you know I am alone, unloved, unpaid, and beset by what amounts to a squadron of metaphoric mosquitoes, each sucking their tiny droplets of blood from me.

But I am still alive, even if desperately unhappy.

Whoo-freekin'-pee!