Terror without Virtue is bloody.
Virtue without Terror, impossible.

Maximilien de Robespierre




This has been a very stupid year.

I had, and have, thought about reconsidering returning to my old nick. Whether really I had been killed, or not.

But I have. That fateful day and week in February did kill me.

I am not happy anymore. I am not hopeful anymore.

For a moment I tried. For months I thought that although previous eras were bygone, not all of them was lost.

But maybe it is.



The girls I loved are dead.

There is a cellular continuity in them three, but only that. Whom I loved are dead.

I just realized it. That is what happened.



In the meantime, nothing is going right. Family has been problematic. So has my mother's job. Friends have been (figuratively) stabbed. Politics doesn't seem to be going very well - and I am speaking personally, not as a GLer. My projects are constantly delaying. Which in turn means I still have less money than I would need. And I have had the worst of luck in electronic devices for the last few months. I am not sleeping well. And it's not the hours; it's that I can't fall asleep at night, I am waking up in the middle, and I can't wake up well in the morning. My eyes look like those of someone four times my age. I am on the edge of depression. I am starting to drink again, and it's not even been relieving enough: my liver has increased resistance so much that I need too high a dose: that is very practical in cocktail parties where you're expected to drink a lot and not pass out or worse, but totally impractical when you're trying to find relief.

I am not denying any of this to myself. But clinging to the belief that my girls compensated everything was in the end wrong; wrong as in false, and wrong as in leading to bad outcomes.

My girls are dead. And I took forever to even notice.

The only one I regret it about is the littlest. It's even ironic that being the one who needs me the least, she's the one whose love is most sincere, most unconditional, most thankful, and most anxios.



And of course I am dead. I wasn't sure for some months, but I am now.



People here admire my seemingly supernatural grooming ability. But there is a cost and a flipside. That I have too many girls to feel hurt over or by. And inevitably one or many will.