Everyone who would have a problem with this doesn't understand.

They don't understand solitude. They don't know what it's like not knowing what to do with yourself night after night after night.

I used to have to change the oil in my car once a month. Driving was all I could think of to do with myself. I distinctly recall one time when I drove up to the lake in the middle of the night on a Wednesday. There I was 60 miles from home, in this tourist town off season, having to be to work in less than 6 hours, and I'm on the end of a dock screaming at the frozen lake.

That was four years ago. Nowadays I drink myself stupid most evenings. This is a low point. I have somehow become fatter and skinnier than I've ever been. My arms are spindly twigs. I have a distinct spare tire on my waist. I'm so hungover at work that if it wasn't for the railing gravity would have taken over as I was walking down the stairs. Something has to change.

I have to change.

I understand the concepts. The methods. I know the psychological and evolutionary reasons behind the steps. I understand why this will work. I just can't pull the trigger. Comfort is holding me back.

I long for the warm embrace of inebriation mixed with solitude. While I'm there I feel everything more intensely, but I just don't care. The positives and negatives of my life resonate at the same frequency: indifference. I read old chat logs and fondly reminisce about times of my life that actually sucked.

My interactions with the opposite sex are usually so embarrassing that they leave me with great amounts of humiliation and shame which hang over my head for months at a time. When I think about them it makes me want to cringe so tightly that I no longer have volume or mass, only location. When I'm alone I don't have those moments, I'm at peace with myself and everything around me. It's really quite zen. So it's hard to convince myself to leave this comfort zone for what will only be degradation.

But I have to. At the end of the night I'm always at the same place: out of my mind intoxicated looking at pictures of girls I've had crushes on. Sometimes I want to lash out, call them bitches, prudes and cockteases. I want to deride them in a chorus with no one in particular and mock their driving ability.

But I can't. I just can't bring myself to insult something I want so badly.

So here I sit. At the raggedy edge of my pathetic life. This will undoubtedly take me longer than most. But I have to succeed. I cannot go another year like this.

This is a requiem for myself.