You know, I always felt a little envy for "army brats." The notion of travelling all across the world, never more than a year or two in any one place, seeing wonderful locales, experiencing astonishing cultures, the whole shebang...

Well, so far, I've been all over the USA, Canada, Mexico, and I've lived in a half-dozen states so far. So I guess I've at least approximated that wish of mine. But now I see why they hate it so much.

A couple weeks ago, I was feeling really down. You know the kind - that borderline melancholy malaise... that sense of "who really gives a s**t, the world just keeps on spinning..." Thank the gods it didn't last long, because I personally can't STAND myself when I'm like that. The weird thing about this time was that I got shaken out of it by the realization that I had NO IDEA who to talk to about it. First time that ever happened, that I could recall.

It's not to say I've led a life, surrounded by friends, loves, family and admirers - that's not really the case - but it's just not something I was aware of. Oh, sure, I went through my black period when I was 13, and toyed with the notion of offing myself when I was 16, but this was something different. I just didn't know who to talk to about my mood.

Mostly, it stems from the fact that I HATE whining. (and no, I consider whining different than venting, so don't go there) I just don't want my friends to ever think, "God, Ren's such a whining bastard." All part of that strong as steel illusion I like to create, I guess. At any rate, I used to have friends that I could be weak around. Friends that accepted the brokenness within me and would patiently await my struggle to rediscover my way.

Now, this is not to say I don't have friends. I do. But... I don't know. Sometimes, some friends aren't the ones you want to unload on. And sometimes your significant other is in the middle of their own shadows, and you don't want to pile on.

I also read something or other a while ago that spoke about men internalizing their complaints in order to resolve them, while women tend to express them to resolve them. I don't know how much I believe that (have I mentioned I'm a disbeliever?), but sometimes I do fit that mold. Sometimes I just don't want to talk about things.

[No, moron, its better to write it on a public journal. I'm such a tard.]

Okay, I knew I was going somewhere with this. On to the summary.

So what I mean by all of this is that something started happening a few weeks ago, right after this blue period. I woke up, feeling like this is home. We just got a house of our own, I'm doing the occasional wrestling match with the backyard, we have a pair of himalayan kittens (Karma and Tashi), and our 18 month old has a lot more space to ramble about. We're choosing interior decorations, furniture patterns, I finally get to keep my keyboards set up... the list goes on and on.

I looked over at the relatively small stack of yet-to-be-unpacked boxes, and thought, "Something's still missing."

Well, I know what it is, now.

I have to reopen that circle around me. The friends. We've lost touch with the best friends we had before we moved, and, as usually happens, we've all kind of gone our own ways. It sucks, but, as many times as I've seen this, I'm getting kind of used to it.

Now, there are jam sessions with new musician friends, barbeques, video game afternoons and even the occasional guilty pleasure I derive from role playing games (my current fave is the d20 system game of Spycraft).

But it's just the beginning, I know. These things take time. The last place I lived I had lived their for 9 years straight. Just long enough for one of my best friends to die.


Gods, that was the wrong thing to think about.... maybe I'd better just jump off that train for now.


It's worth getting out of my system, I guess, but that's for another day. For now, I'm done. I'll write more later.