I am not happy.

I feel nothing, absolutely nothing.

Don't get me wrong, I am so grateful to be back in San Francisco as opposed to Florida where I was even more miserable. This past June, I spent an entire wk traveling by Greyhound from St. Augustine, Fl to San Francisco & while on the bus, I came to the conclusion that I've spent my adult life trying to gain my family's approval when I should've been out creating my own family. Not necessarily w/ a wife & children per se but in the form of closer, deeper friendships, relationships, a greater, more supportive community; all the qualities I couldn't find in my family. I'm never going to get their approval, or the kind of love & praise that I desire from them. I've accepted this & I'm trying to forgive myself for not accepting this 15 yrs ago. They're not going to change & I can't be angry or sad about it because what's the point?

After high school, I went to a small performing arts school & thoroughly hated it. Tho I could be a classclown at times, I was mostly a doormat who grew to hate the majority of my classmates & the teachers. I carried resentment for an insanely long time & would satiate my hostility by writing barely coherent letters & emails to former teachers & classmates basically telling them what assholes they were. Only now do I recognize the insanity of those actions, the cruelty & I am sorry. Just like I don't necessarily want to be judged for who I was 5, 10, 15 yrs ago & that's what I was doing to them. I can only imagine how I'd feel if some of the people I crossed or disappointed over the yrs felt a need to send me letter telling me what an asshole I was. Fucken wow. Just like a bad wife or husband that constantly holds past mistakes over their spouse's head, it is unfair & mostly I've had to forgive myself for not being tougher in those days & be grateful of the lessons I learned for today I am about as assertive as a bull & if provoked, just as gentle.

However, the carrying an inexhaustible amount of anger, resentment has been killing my sanity, causing me intense self-hatred, great mental instability & forcing me to absorb various vices & behave in terribly self-destructive ways & thus, this has became my reputation. Coming back to San Francisco & seeing my old friends, I often feel like they speak to me in the sweet concerned voice that one uses for children failing at school or elderly relatives imploding w/ ill-health & loneliness.

The dynamic Alpha male writer - performer they met over 10 yrs ago has morphed into a pitiful character who no longer performs & barely writes anymore. I've written 2 novels & the first I don't think will ever get published as I no longer have a copy of it anywhere & tho a pro-editer has expressed an interest in editing my 2nd bk but I've not heard from her in mnths & I am about ready to give up. In the past yr & a half, I've not been able to focus on a single literary project. There's a part of me thinking of giving up writing altogether.

However, something funny has happened to me as I've dropped the anger. I don't know what to do w/ myself. As I've never looked forward before because I was always looking back (in anger,) I've got no idea what to do. I don't know who I am. I don't know what makes me happy, truly happy. I have no idea what to do w/ the rest of my life. I couldn't tell you what my passions or major goals are. I simply do not know what I want. I don't know what to think about, what to talk about, what to write. I've got no idea of what to focus. I'm scattered as Jackson Pollack painting & just as ugly.

If you pointed a gun to my head & said, "Quick, tell me your life purpose."

I'd tell you to shoot.

I've also come to realize that w/o my anger to motivate me, I'm a coward & a crybaby whose self-esteem & self-discipline reside below the gutter. The anger I felt for so long felt like me, it felt like life & tho it caused incredible pain, pain that broke my heart a 1,000 times, it still enabled me to feel alive, even when the mental instablity got too much at times & I'd attempt suicide.

You'd think making peace w/ my past would bring me peace & in some ways it has, less tension in my body for example, -patience, too, but I feel exposed vulnerable & numb, so fucken numb. I found myself several wks ago standing on Mission St on a cold wet night flipping a coin, tails = suicide & heads = life. It was heads & I was disappointed. Do I miss the fear, the pain, the struggle? I guss.

I've got no clear or definable ambition.

While wallowing in numbness & self-pity a friend I've known for 15 yrs conned me for 800 dollars. He got other friends, too for a lot more money than me. A simple wisdom in life, Do not start a fight w/ a man who likes to fight.

That's true but don't cross a man who has no life because he'll make getting back at you his life. When I knew I had been conned, I went to his apartment to confront him & found him hiding in his closet, -this 35 yr old man.  On another occasion, I found him curled in the fetal position crying in a corner of his bedroom. It was then that I liberated his cash from his person for 240 dollars. Later I acquired his expensive silk tie collection which I plan on wearing for future job interviews next yr & also acquired a baseball card collection & promptly sold it to an east coast collector. Lastly, I saw his drop-dead gorgeous Russian-born fiance' who is 3 mnths pregnant w/ his child walking one day in Washington Sq Park. We made eye contact, we stood & had a long conversation, ...then she came to the North Beach hotel I call home & fucked me.

This former friend enabled me to start feeling stuff again; anger, resentment, desire for revenge, lust & the satisfaction that I got somebody more emotionally & financially than he ever got me.

But I don't want to feel those things anymore & I don't want to be that guy anymore tho, I must admit, out of the people he ripped off, I'm the only one who got his money back & then some.

Now that this newest adventure is over, I feel numb again.

I want to feel something but not anger, not revenge, not just lust.

The expression, No money - No honey, does not mean No cash - No sex, it means, If your shit is not together, you are not entitled to love. Even depressed & battling mental illness, I still get laid w/ relative ease but it has been yrs since I've had a relationship & even longer since I've had a relationship w/ a good person. In retrospect, most of the women I've had relationships w/ have not been nice people, simply put. Every 1-night stand I've had in the past 10 yrs has made me feel even lonelier afterwards than I was before & it has been a really long time since I've slept w/ someone I cared about & that type of emotionless sex is killing me, making me feel unattractive & worthless. However, daily I see dozens & dozens of women & immediately think, I'm not good enough for them. For example, I do not think I'd have had the balls to approach the gorgeous Russian woman if I wasn't being fueled by the anger I felt towards the man to whom she's engaged. I'm giving up the pursuit of sex. I will not pursue any woman just for sex again. If I invite you to lunch & conversation, know I want lunch & conversation. I am not trying to get in your pants. If I ask for your phone , I am trying to make a friend. I'm not trying to turn you into a girlfriend right away because I am not in the place for such a thing. I'm just trying to make more friends of both sexes. In time, if the chemistry is there, absolutely but fucking for fucking's sake is a thing of the past for me.

Finding myself on a date over a month ago w/ a woman who represented everything I've ever desired in a woman, an entire package; looks, smarts, persoanlity & so I spent the entire meal telling fart stories & fight stories designed to turn her off. Why? Because I did not think myself worthy of her company, therefore by rejecting myself, she doesn't get to reject me. I've got to cure this part of myself before I even consider pursuing a woman for anything more than a friendly conversation.

My future? I don't know. Do I want to buckle down & take my writing more seriously & really pursue it? I use to be an actor & a performance artist? Do I want to do that again? Do I finally want a much better job that pays me handsomely, 6 figures,etc? Is there a reason I can't focus on all these things & more?

My New Year's Resolution? To find myself, to learn to love myself, like myself, to find my passion, to define my goal, my ambitions, to focus, to learn why I get out of bed in the morning, to finally find a life, to finally visualize a future & to know exactly what I want.

It has been an extraordinary ride thus far that would've killed others but I'm still here.

"You are not tied to the foolish self of yesterday. You are only wrongly tied to an unhappy memory of an experience of yesterday." -Robert Collier.

"Very often, those who are lost come back better than those who've never been lost in the first place." -Nelson Algren.

Thank you for reading this far.

-Zeke Brett Tyrus.