I have a great many things that I thought I wanted to say. Many things that I think, or that I feel. I've been very quiet, I hear that a lot lately. Many ask me recently what's wrong. Why I'm avoiding them. What's going on.

I've nothing to say. No anger. No rage. Nothing. I'm not at all peaceful, to be honest. But I don't have anything productive to say. There is petty drama going on, in my circles, none of it anything I have any control over. It's not my life, it's not my problem.

None of your problems are mine any longer. Such were the choices you made. You fear to anger others, fear to anger me, don't want to cause strife, don't want controversy. All of which is fine. You don't want to be my lover. You don't want to be my friend. Honestly, I don't know what anyone wants from me anymore. I don't want to be a friend to anyone anymore. Being a friend has become something that's become a minefield, or perhaps that isn't the correct analogy. A boggy marsh, perhaps?

Not dangerous, just dirty. A place where if you step in the wrong spot, you end up sunk into your knees, covered in something dirty and disgusting. And I don't like to play in the mud. I prefer to be neat, and clean, and orderly. And aren't boggy marshes usually dark as well? Covered with foliage, so it's always twilight, and dusky?

I'd prefer, now, to come out into the sunlight, and stand on solid ground. Even if I need to stand there alone. I like trees. But I'm tired of the pitfalls of a marsh, and would prefer solid, safe footing, and sunlight.

I want to be able to see what I'm looking for, when I glance around me. And if I need to stand alone, to know that what I see within my line of vision is clear and bright, then perhaps that's the way it might need to be for a while. I'm tired of shadows, and wondering what's going to pop out from around a dark corner, and have it cover me in grime. It's depressing, and it's tiresome. And I'm tired of that.

Wondering who to trust, and who wants to hurt me, and why they'd want to keep doing that? It gets old. Whether it's intentional or not, it still gets old. And bloody hell, but if I'm going to be alone 90% of the time anyhow, I might as well at least not be guarding my back from everyone around me. I might as well simply *be* alone entirely, instead of quasi-alone, and wondering when it's going to end up being something I regret.

I'm tired of regretting things. Choices I made that haunt me. Decisions I was forced into, because there were no other options. In the last ten years, I've lived a lifetime of regrets, and now those regrets have finally been narrowed down to a handful. I've rectified what I could. Apologized for what I had no control over, that I knew about, or what I did wrong, that I know about. And my regrets are now down to just a few. And I can live with that, and with those.

But I see no reason to keep moving forward, and racking up more, and adding to a tally sheet more that I don't want. There's no room for regrets in my life now. No reason to feel ashamed of things that I do. I don't feel ashamed of my past anymore, because to a certain extent, my past doesn't define me. It makes me stronger, and I am who I am because of it.

I'm going to cook something tomorrow, and possibly bake. I'm going to work on my next speech, and work on the rest of my reading comp assignments. I should be able to plow through those during one day. I haven't yet decided what else I plan to do. But I think it's time to start making plans, and filling them in, with actual goals, instead of far-off ones.

It's about time to figure out some things. And I'm well on the path to that. I suspect people won't like that.