Family member and their partner getting ready for their Valentine's Dinner out. Looking amazing all done up. He's smooth, she's stunning. Amazing couple. It's delightful taking their pictures and sending them off in their ride.

Seeing them together, happy and gorgeous; it makes my heart wain. I love being joyful for them, and I'm so happy they've got their person. Inside I'm hurting for me, selfishly perhaps. I covet what they have together, I've never found it for me. Most of the time I don't even bother to try because I don't really want to. I can't handle setting myself up for the inevitable hurt that will come from trying to pursue any form of a romantic relationship with either gender. I cannot do it. Someone is going to get hurt and I'm going to lose so much. What would I be losing exactly? I have no darn idea.

Right now it feels better to only go through the short and occasional bouts of internal heartache privately, after I am with happy loving couples. It is very easy and important to me that I am genuine in my happiness for others, that is very real and honest. When engagements and weddings, birth announcements and the births themselves have happened, and will continue to happen in my life, there is always, always ecstatic contagious joy. I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I could not be more over the moon for great and wonderful news that is happening to the people I care about and love, and even for the acquaintances I know. When good things are happening for people I am right there with you in your celebration.

It will be later, in private, and sometimes it won't happen at all, where the reality and the mortality of human life sinks in for me and I feel overcome with sorrow, regret, and despair with my own life and the choices I made and the circumstances I am in, most by my own responsibility, and others which are out of my control. Loneliness has a massive part to play in these feelings, how much sleep I have had or not had before an event like this also hugely plays into the outcome. I'm afraid there is is depression involved, I don't want that to be true. These bouts are not often, and I feel really good most of the time.

What concerns me is if I start feeling this way after every single time I am with couples at all. Right now it happens only after large celebratory events or intimate exclusive nights. I knew things were bad when I had a really deep feeling of being heartbroken after watching a FICTIONAL WEDDING on a tv show. That has only ever happened once, and I don't think will happen again. I don't want to become some sort of recluse that has to live away from couples forever to avoid feeling so alone.

As I was writing these above paragraphs, it came to me in a lightning-bolt kind of revelation, that another angle to when I feel heartache isn't about being single, but feeling alone because I feel unseen. I was going on about how I am a genuine happy person for other people and I wish the absolute best for them, and my brain says to me: "but no one will ever be joyful and happy for you. You have nothing worth celebrating, you have nothing to succeed at so no one is hoping you'll do well. No one is going to return the favor for you, why are you giving so much of your heart and yourself to people who won't do anything back for you? You're giving yourself away and people are just using you, they don't genuinely care the way you do. Your family cares cause they have to, they are obligated to, sometimes begrudgingly, because they are your family. Your friends are superficial and the moment you are nothing for them to take from, they will abandon you."

I know it, and I say it other people who are feeling down: Your absolute true and real friends will never abandon you. They have made the choice to stick by you in every good and bad thing that happens. For some people, their friends mean more to them than their own family members, so I know deep in my heart that I have solid people in my life who do fucking care about me, I know my brain is telling me some lies. Others I feel might be part true. I really don't have anything going on that is worthy of a celebration, and I do feel like there aren't a lot of people who are happy for me because there is nothing going on to be happy about. I'm just boring normal, with a waging war of internal feelings.

Catching sight of myself in the mirror, that reflective surface which tells no lies and offers no hiding. I hate what I see, what I've become. Gross. I'm Fat, Disheveled, Alone. Wearing jeans with a tear in the crotch and a pilled shirt a size too small that accentuates my largeness.

Am I happy this way? Truthfully no. I'm not doing anything disciplined to change though, so I seemingly do want to be this way. How twisted is that? I have no schedule, no work to give me one. I've let myself go by the wayside again.

It's a gross loop of feeling sorry for myself and chiding myself for being a lazy ass who just wants to sleep. I wish I could read books faster so I can get on to the next one. I wish I could watch movies without feeling like I'm wasting time, that should be doing something else.

Nothing actually goes into bettering myself than the occasional shower and chipping away at a million micro-projects to form some kind of feeling of progress. Haven't drawn art in just about a month, any really good art longer than that. The desire is a ripping fire inside.

It never gets past that though cause I freeze up and think about how many hours one drawing will take me and it's only for practice and no one will see it for years and that dredges up the thoughts of the hundreds of arts I've yet to post from 5+ years ago.

My sleep is off, my days are drudgery and I'm desperate for the predatory affections of my friends and crushes. Yeah the people I really like that don't even know I like them, cause I just wish they liked me and always wanted to tease and fluster me just because they love to.

Trying, more like wishing, so hard I could build a presence in this community that would inspire others and excite them to take part and collaborate and express themselves. I don't want to be the one doing all the work, it's tiring and brings down my spirit.

I wish I had this figured out better. I wish I knew how Twitter worked, how the algorithm would make my posts get seen. How to discipline myself, and focus on one task at a time. How to manage my time, how to be a better artist, how to be a better prey, how to be a better friend.

Seeing them all dressed up tonight inspires me to go get cleaned up and look nice. I enjoy looking nice. It's a lot of work, and takes a lot of time, so I don't do it every day, then I slack off into comfortable casual average. No wonder I'm not getting anywhere, I'm so mundane.

Good vent journal, sorry if it brought anyone down. If you read it all, kudos to you, you're something special and dedicated to the ramblings of a lost human. I think after I post all this I should go have a shower, or a fresh air walk, eat some veggies, drink water.

Really need to work out again. Contemplating joining my local YMCA, it would be a cash incentive to actually go and use the place for bettering myself. I'm so stingy when it comes to spending money. All I want to do is earn it and hoard it. Need to buy that house, one day.