Men are prone to these things but I had hoped I'd found a way to avoid most of them. My recent deviations are primarily me working through things and I don't mind people "watching", as it were, but they're not directed at anyone in particular. Other than me.

I've been a shitty person in the past, and it's mostly due to how I handled my first two real relationships. My first girlfriend was emotionally abusive, bi-polar, and lacked any sense of good faith or decency. She left me wrecked and prepared to accept that I was a worthless individual. Someone deserving of nothing but pain and punishment. I felt like the most disgusting individual in the world for the shit I put her through after she broke up with me, how I cried at her and couldn't handle it. I felt like an ass the two times I slapped her during our relationship, feeling that she had gone off the deep end (especially when she actually attacked me). The whole experience put me in a position, emotionally, where I tried not to think too much about myself, about how I'd grown less adept and healthy in the relationship, how I hadn't seemed to accomplish anything.

My second girlfriend didn't hurt me so directly, but was a consequence of my own self-hatred. She was a child, a child just coming to know adult relationships, and I took advantage of that. I found little places to exploit and made her happy. Made her feel loved. I didn't create a situation she found happiness in, I flat out manipulated her to ensure her happiness. I never lied, I just knew what to say and how to say it. After I noticed she didn't feel the depth of emotions for me I thought she did, we started having harder conversations. I couldn't visit her as often, we drifted apart. She broke up with me over the internet, on a chat program, after I asked if she still loved me. I couldn't work the rest of the day. To this day, I feel like I've wronged both her and myself for my actions, and I've become much less...involved with what I say and how I say it. I use allegory for describing my love, but it isn't false in any way. I don't tell anyone how to feel, or how to interpret things. I barely even mention how I see things for fear of driving them away.

Now I see how these things have limited me, have constrained me, and how they continue to pain me. I'm two-faced, I'm manipulating, I'm distant and unfeeling. I take what I think I need and I leave them used, husks of what they were before me. This disturbs me. My latest entries are me examining myself; the first is anger at my first girlfriend given flesh, but a tirade against what I have become. The second, an apology to someone I hurt with the first one as well as a prayer for my redemption. The third...an examination, of sorts, of where I need to go. DA just happens to be a safe place for me to "put" things, to finalize them.

I am a broken person with the shadows of the cold, distant Emperor hanging over me and the Hermit's wisdom beckoning me into the shadows. I get the feeling that those close to me want me to heal, though, and not hide anymore.

~ Kuroi