Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three, four, five, or more times...you must be my kind of man!

That's what the sign should say. The sign above my door. Because no matter how well I try to scrutinize someone before I give any feelings to them, I always seem to pick the worst candidate. Almost two years keeping everyone at arm's length. Protecting myself from people who wanted to care for me. And when I gave up on it, when I said:

You know, there's nothing worth anything in this life except loving other people, and if you get hurt trying...at least you didn't live in fear. I'd be wounded, but not paralyzed.

With almost comic timing, when I said this, I lost. I wish I could at least say I was in love, my heart is broken, my muse has been restored. But all I feel is a slight disappointment that I could have done better things with the last couple of months, that I should have gone to all the parties I skipped so I could spend quality time with a non-quality person.

Although, like any other experience, this one has given me something valuable. It popped that cherry, I guess. I'm ready to try. I'm ready to really try, even though I'm scared shitless. Because there is nothing that makes me feel pity for someone more than knowing they are afraid, that they deny themselves real experiences, real emotion, for the sake of avoiding vulnerability. And I am ashamed that I ever behaved that way myself. It was a denial of my nature.

I am one big, raw, exposed fucking nerve. I wouldn't have it any other way. If I'm hurt more easily than others, I do not envy them. It is made up to me ten-fold in the way that I feel warmth, the capacity I have to love, the way that empathy is the tongue in which I speak to others.

So I'm putting this one in the jar. I'm screwing the lid on. And I'm looking forward to the joy and love I will feel, just as intensely as I feel this betrayal now.

I have so many scars--some that almost killed me. I am, literally, lucky to be alive.

This is a scrape. In a few days it will be a scab. And after that, it will be the faintest little mark, almost impossible to see. Maybe in the right light, I could find it for you. That's how I know it wasn't right for me; I'm looking for the one that could leave my head dangling. I'd rather be dead than living on the surface.