Caitlin turns 26 today. Better the world is for having her in it. We had been working together a year and then around Halloween of this year decided we were infatuated with each other. It was very heated for several weeks. We'd count the moments between seeing one another. Now. Now its different. The gravity of our relationship set in and as she is already in a relationship for 1 year. I would like to believe I am not the type of man that would come between another man. There is nothing to celebrate when love is lost in the world. I am not sure what my next move is here. Her birthday stressed me out. Birthdays are important and they are a great way to share important moments in life. I knew I'd want to spend today with her. Then it dawned on me that that was gonna be a tall and selfish order. So I opted to hang with her on Sunday morning. It felt formal and rushed. She is in school, works 2 jobs and has 2 men in her life. And a cat. This is not for me. Not sure what to do. I am unhappy. She makes me feel very special when I am with her and she messages me way more than I message her. She reaches out to me. She wanted me to know that she likes me. But this bog of misery I am wading through now is a real test. Her birthday I am sure was special for her. It was especially challenging for me. I bought her some flower ciggarettes and Amethyst stones and some herbal soap to help calm her life. I am not big into crystals (saying so is too late?) but they are a facinating geological phenomenon. Amethyst is a stone supposedly related to our star sign Saggitarius. She and I were born 360 days apart across 12 years. Our birthdays fall within the same week 5 days removed. She turned 26 today, a Monday. I will be 39 Saturday. If all goes according to plan, I will be many miles away from here come Saturday. I was thinking of staying in town over the holidays at some point just to be around her but as the fun died down and things got more serious, I realized a bit of distance and perspective might do us well. When we first started connecting she indicated that she wasn't sure how much longer she would be in her current relationship. I thought she meant a few weeks and she was moving out. Then something changed. I might have been the kindling that helped reignite their relationship inadvertently. I can not stay if that is the case. I must move on. I am beginning to feel unwelcome in this job. Perhaps it is my imagination. I feel I have long overstayed my welcome. My adoration for this person is very focused and intense but mired with anxiety and uncertainty. I chase jealous feelings away and try to just focus on the happiness of her being. Its that simple. But jealous feelings call often. Its one thing for a person to share their body with more than one person but to share their heart with more than one is something else. She is very open and honest with me to the point that I want to know things. I don't ask a lot of questions to be honest. I feel like we could be good friends. We are decent friends. We help each other out. Not really ever bickered or fought. Its been quite a honeymoon since the day we started being friends to be honest way back in February or March. We would drink together pretty regularly. Talk about life. But she is still much of a stranger to me. I lost my way with her. I got very excited and overzealous and started foolishly stopped simply being myself and started acting a part. Now I am just terrified. I am terrified of this woman. She holds my heart in her hand and can let it go or ignore it at any given moment. I need to just chill out. We need to just chill out. I am not saying that I do not wish to pursue things with her, just that I can not continue in a scrambled scurry of emotions with her. I am strong-minded. We have big hearts and similar green eyes. We would make beautiful children. Yes, I said that. We have a lot of common interests. We have not really explored each other's talents or art very much at all. We don't really spend much time outside of work together. This is why I write this stream of conscious drivel full of I's and whining poor me because I need to understand the complexity and true nature of our situation. I have not spent any time with this person in a non-work related situation. Yet she has the key to my whole life which I don't dole out too regularly. This garbage diary is littered with musings and meanderings on the different women I have dated or pursued over the years. I've learned a lot about myself from the women I have loved in the past. The pain I have endured or put myself through. The hopes that I raise only to be smelted into disappointment and later made anew. Each time love is being sculpted in a new way. When I think of the women that mattered enough to be relevant to entries I have made over the last 15 years here, I think of Stephanie: who has died but taught me how dangerous love can be and how gentle a woman's heart is and that it is not to be trifled with. I couldn't do her justice to try and understand what her struggle was in life. She was very unhappy. I did not help in the least. Linda: bright minded and intellectual, she taught me to reach and better myself. She was a constant muse that inspired me to be a better human being. I stretched myself to keep up with her in the end, my feelings of inadequacy were tamped by Stephanie who helped rekindle a brief flame that ruined things further for both relationships. After Linda, I moved to Detroit and didn't really date anyone seriously for years. YEARS!!!! I was very single in my early to mid 20's. I was very very sad and confused and determined to change my life. Then I met Samra and she humbled me. She provoked my way of thinking about the world and different cultures. She taught me the value of respect and self-discipline. She was very funny and charming and I enjoyed our time together immensely. But ultimately, I did not see how I could permanently be in her life without becoming someone who I was not: a religious person subscribing to a dedicated faith. To me, that I was not enough without faith in a religion, (and truly just for appearances sake!), indicated that our paths could not continue together. I miss her much. But we live in different worlds. Isabelle. The first much younger woman I ever dated. She looked up to me and taught me that I have something to offer people in terms of support. She also taught me about the pitfalls of my own jealousy. She taught me that love with another human being is very very precious and can not be controlled. Love exists on a simple path and beats the notes that resonate the harmony between two people. And we can dance and be joyful in that. But we must protect that and not be jealous or spiteful. She taught me the value of patience as I was very impatient with her and jealous. I love her very much to this day. She showed me the value of controlling ones anger. She was quite a champion of stamping out all of the rage and anger I had inside. These are flames that we should simply not fan. It was a very dark time in my life when she came along and helped make things better. I am better for having been with all of these women. Jen. Jen isn't mentioned much here. She and I had a very simple a beautiful relationship. We didn't talk a lot. We spent very quality time together but in very brief amounts. We just enjoyed life and being silly and having fun. But always kept ourselves emotionally guarded. She was not one to entertain emotion or feelings very often whereas I am the opposite. She was the first artist I dated that really gave me an insiders view into her process. She shared some great beauty with me and expressed a deep appreciation for animal and plant life. She showed me that the creatures we inhabit this world with are to be cherished and celebrated even after they are gone. She is the first person I have been with that is consistently the same over time and we can pick up and drop off exactly where we left off at even after weeks and weeks of being apart. However, there is a flip side to that. In all of our isolation and independence when we are together and spend too much time together we begin to get very unhappy. We were never able to bridge being a couple. Neither of us made much of an effort to take things to a next level but our hearts were very much dedicated to one another. Our personal sorrows were quite resonant with each other and we found mutual comfort there. We got pregnant together. Out of fear we terminated the pregnancies although, I made the mistake of expressing my regrets or hesitation on the matter. Neither of us were sure we wanted to have human life binding us together for the rest of our lives. Little did we know, whether that life went on in our world or not, it didn't matter. We have that child together whether it exists physically or not. I have a deep connection to this person and although, I don't feel like we speak very well to one another on a very fundamental or functional level, I hope she and I stay in contact. Its been at least 4 years and although we are not intimate or see each other anymore, I don't think much will change between us to prohibit us from being friends for a long time. There may still be more to the story with Jen, but time will tell. She and I have a great love for escapism and that doesn't always bode well. We would use sex for that often until it became our only interaction. That becomes very disheartening sometimes when one or the other begins to experience real life stresses. I am going to put a pause on speaking about Jen.

There is a woman who has been in my life longer than 90% of these women. Tiffanie. However, due to the fact that she does not exist physically in my life and may be a figment of my imagination I will not speak about her. Also because she may be reading this.

That brings us to Caitlin. What is the story? How will her presence in my life change me. Make me a better man? How will she think about me in the future. I fear that most of the women I have mentioned till now likely do not think very highly of me if they think of me at all. With maybe 1 or 2 exceptions. Maybe I am not giving myself enough credit. But I do want Caitlin to be happy she met me. No matter what happens. And tonight as she is probably making love to her boyfriend. I am saddened. I am left out and I am too proud to be taking a backseat. And although on some level it would be personally gratifying somehow to express my lack of appreciation to her for being left out on her birthday, (although she did give me the choice), I am going to sit on it. Patience is something I have come to value. I need to foster it. Squash the anger and don't fan the flames. Actually, my rage and anger is mostly embers these days. Barely glowing coals. I have purposefully cast anger out of my life. My actions and my consistency in Caitlin's life will inform her later if I am to become something more than a comfort now. Where do we resonate? What tones will we ellicit? There is a lot of fire now but fire for fire's sake? What is our message. I am here now and I know I just need to let go and be mindful that I make good personal decisions to allow our moments to sing out. I picked Caitlin just as much as she picked me. She believes in peace. She has a strong sense of justice. She is strong willed. She is sensitive. She is talented and educated. She is driven and can be detail oriented. She is human in that she knows not to take life to seriously. She enjoys comforts and taking it easier on herself when time allows. She is sensitive but I am not very clear on just how. She likes to be silly and playful. She is very beautiful. She is not too concerned about what other people think about her, including me?

I need to focus on me and taking care of me. That's how I found Caitlin. There is no machinations that I can inflict that will keep her in my life. I need to just focus on me. I hope she sticks around. She is present in my mind almost every moment of every day.

I need to decide why I want to live. And what I am going to do in 2017 to prosper not just sink. I have grown more and more in debt as the years pass. My wages have stagnated for almost half a decade. Despite good efforts and trying to achieve. I made attempts at bettering myself but became overwhelmed by the challenges of being a "busy" person. Fatigue wore me down. A lot. I felt mentally fatigued for over a year. I spent this past year just decompressing from how overencumbered I had become. I want to liberate myself. Be happy. Spread happiness and excitement for being alive. I truly do think it is crazy being alive. I remember realizing this when I was a kid. I thought it so remarkable that I was alive and no one was talking about it. It was very strange and still is to me to be alive and not be conscious of that fact in every day dealings with people. Often times when people speak about raising one's consciousness or awareness and or spreading peace through the world, it often sounds trite. There is a trope about peace activists. A culture shrouded in jam bands, new age, smoking weed and alligning chakras. To many these things seem unfashionable. To paraphrase something Caitlin said, we have many different emoji's related to war: guns, violence, bombs. But there is not much language to be representing peace.