I've always felt destined to be alone.

No matter how hard I try, It seems like I can never get along with people for a signifigant length of time. Sometimes I have insane fits where I go around screaming, banging my head on things, breaking things, despite the fact that i'm far too old for that sort of thing.

I can never find the right words to express myself in a conversation. Sometimes I fumble things i'm saying and I end up horribly offending people.

I've never been smart enough to hang around with that other class of introverts, the geeks. I don't have the specialized knowledge, the ability to use my graphing calculator to play pong, the experience playing dungeons and dragons.

Any friend I have is usually my best friend. They last for a couple of months. They find me too clingy, or depressing, or cynical, or we just stop talking and I don't know why.

I can't take a joke. I'm too conditioned to take offense at every little chide that comes my way.

People always joke that i'm going to be the guy who guns down the school. The one whos going to go columbine. Even teachers say this, although supposedly in jest.

I always have to be right. If i'm not right, I have to be a victim.

If people aren't kind, I have to be mean.

I'm not cute. When someone tells me otherwise, I become convinced they are lying.

I mumble, even to my cats. They stare at me like i'm speaking gibberish. I am.

Sometimes I don't mumble. This is when I am temporarily convinced that human lives are worth nil. That I shouldn't care what other people think of me, because other people are inherently worthless.

People fall apart. Within themselves, with others. Some people were never togeather to start with.

I was excommunicated from my church. I'm the only unitarian to ever have been excommunicated from anything, even though the nature of unitarianism means that I was essentially excommunicated from nothing. A mere shadow, a faceless facade of faith.

I'm not perfect, and i'm not human. I'm not normal in any sense of the word. I'm not even the same in that i'm diffrent. I'm just there. I'm the guy in your history class who gets decent grades but never talks. I'm the guy at work who has an expression that makes him look like a minion of the undead. You don't know these people, and you never will. We don't know these people, we only know ourselves, and even then we only know the parts of ourselves that we aren't afaraid to explore.

We don't exist. When we become killers, dictators, terrorists without a cause and the like, it's the result of a descent into the depths of our depravity, but people say things that aren't true yet are. You say things like, "No respect for human life." This is essentially true, but it is merely disrespect for human life which does not respect human life. Of course, these killers are not killing the great evils of the world, they only think they are. The neighbor, the mailman, the pizza guy, all become agents of evil in our minds. There are other examples, but this is the most dramatic, the most important. This is what we can become.

I like to believe, although sometimes I have a hard time believing what I believe, that when we meditate on our we also can become great men. People like Ghandi, Martin Luther King, and thousands of other visible saints and invisible saints. But it's hard to believe that when you are close to the bottom. But maybe sometimes to get to the top, you have to start from the bottom. Maybe these people were so tempered by their previous depravity and proximity to the abyss from which there is no return that when they realize whatever it is they realize for themselves, and realize themselves, they cannot be swayed by threats of death, impossible odds, and dangerous enemies. That is not to say any saints were ever depraved or close to the abyss. But i'm sure at least one of them was. But I have to be sure.

For everyday I realise I am a horrible wretch, and I wonder why god does not strike me down.

And this wonder makes me wonder if I am that close to falling into the abyss after all.