If you've taken the time and the effort to get to know yourself, and I mean really know yourself, know your ways, know your cycles. Not that recognizing those things means you have any chance of stopping, modifying or evading them in any way shape or form, but it at least lets you know what's happening, why and if there's anything to be done to make your way through it.

When we last left our hero he was awash in the insufferable indifference looming greatly after a lost love, perpetually peering in the pervasive purgatory of deep, dreadful despair. Not really, but having successfully moved through the inevitable crash of getting dumped, we now move into a searching and longing phase. Let me tell you, this is an interesting ride.

Human beings, I've decided, require a certain amount of outside validation of their existence. When one has been on their own for a long enough time they find that external validation in the form of their jobs, their pets, the place they live, the things they have. Frankly, I feel like that's fairly healthy, it generates a certain amount of self-reliance that people should probably have. Now, unfortunately, when one enters a relationship they tend to shift some of that external validation reliance onto the person with whom they are involved. Nothing wrong with that, that's part of the reason why we get involved in relationships. The problem comes when that relationship ends. The source of the external validation is gone, the piece depending on it gets burned.

So, here I sit, that little bit of appreciation from an outside source vanished. And man, can it get hungry. At this point I'd normally join a dating site and look for more. I'd get disappointed both by the selection I'm faced with but also at the lack of attention I get from it, knowing full well that it couldn't possibly do anything to sate the feeling. And really there isn't. Finding a replacement is bad news all around.

What ultimately, for me, latches on to this affection-seeking is that fervent insecurity I have fighting for a piece of control every... fucking... day. An incessant little beast it takes the lack of affection and attention to heart and insists that every non-response is a slight, the I am unlovable, I am unattractive, I am unworthy of the affections of any other human being. That I will forever be alone and there is nothing I can do about it, because no one, absolutely no one, is ever really going to care about someone like me.

And. Man. Is he convincing.