If I told you, friend, that I failed...

Thank god for the saints and saviors of my youth. They swept in to spite the restrictions and uncomfortable miscellanea of a smotheringly close-knit family and the oppressions of religion, along with its patented complex of guilt. If it weren't for them I would never have found the freedom to try at living; I would never have begun to understand the concept of friends. But where did I leave them?

I see people in the company of other people with massive, toothy grins. All appearances tell my eyes to notify my brain that they're experiencing the joy of social interaction. A part of me winces at that notion, for it realizes my shameful, self-imposed solitude. I know they don't quite get it, though, because they're on television - in some inane commercial - and they can't possibly guide me in the chore of sounding the depths of one of life's truest joys. There's a different sort of people capable of that, they're even in my native third-dimension, and I chose to forget about them to my intense regret.

Reality and life are gargantuan, and both seem to loom the most when I engage my incredibly perceptive hindsight. I have failed at other people. It's not my duty to give them everything they need, I've learned. My incorrect assumptions before that knowledge were damaging. Instead it is my duty, to those I am gifted with along the way, to try and ease their quest for happiness, support them when they require it, and love them in spite of the sap which pours off such a notion. Though, because I've failed I'm wallowing in the absence of real people. My way into an enjoyable reality, upon this realization, is beyond my grasp.

I've found love. I've given love. I still go looking for the various types of love apart from that which the central person of my life, my wife, has already gifted me. The darkness I climbed into once upon a time, when the world came crashing in, felt so very heavy. I've overcome that, though, and am now out, free, crying for the opportunities for love I neglected or foolishly tossed aside.

What's more, I let that dark idiocy mar my wife's ability to love others. My yawning void consumed her healthy flame. Panicked, passionate attempts at repairation, capable through the clarity of self-revelation, may never be sufficient enough to help in healing that slight.

In the end I'm left with questions. Weighty questions. I just need to let myself live with my hands out, grasping at what I hope are answers. Time continues and I am beginning to reach. Maybe they're still out there somewhere.