Single

Demisexuality means that I will know why I am always going to be single.  Because most people are not.  They are sexually attracted to people normally, right away.  They meet people have dates with them and categorize them into slots: 1) Have sex with and have a relationship with them, usually quickly.  2) Not have sex with them, but become friends and then there they shall forever sit.  Once in the friend zone, in the friend zone you shall always be.  3) No sex, no friendship, go away.    How they can decide after one date which category someone fits in after one date, mystifys me.  That living too far away means that you can't ever be in the first category even if things change; no job, no car, whatever, something that could change later, it does not matter, the categorization can only occur once.  Then it is done forever.

I don't understand.

MPTR

MPTR is my ex girlfriend.  I hated her when I named her MPTR, but I don't now.  I did not really hate her, it was just frustration.  I understand her and I respect her again.  I still like her, but I don't expect anything from her.

I also don't expect her to change.  I don't expect her jealous boyfriend to change, which is funny because they are often on opposite ends of things.  I encourage her to be herself and he encourages her to be what he wants her to be.  She continues to confide in me, to tell me when she is doing stuff that would anger her boyfriend.  She still loves me, which he would kill her if he knew.  We still talk on the phone.  It was her, that I first told that I was hit by a truck last week, it was her that I needed to be close to, but could not be.  

She will tell me how much she loves me, but I know that we will never be together again.  I still forgive her, I wil always love her.

Supergirl, super suck

I am not sure if it is a form of misogyny to treat female centered television shows differently than male centered ones.  What I mean by this statement is television producers, television writers and the entire industry.  I am a big fan of Superman,  but not a five star geek variety.  I consume all super hero stuff, but Superman will always be the best.  BUT why the Misogyny?  It is very subtle, but when you see it, it sticks out like a sore thumb.  

There is a new television show called Supergirl.  It really sucks.  Let me list the reasons.  Supergirl, not Superwoman, might as well call her a sidekick along with Superdog.  Next the casting, okay I don't care who they cast for the role, but the key to a good Superman and therefore a good Superwoman is being believable as a bumbling mortal and a strong superhero in a moments change, like Christopher Reeves could do.  They selected the perfect bubble headed girl for the secret identity, but with no Super alternate identity, the bubblehead puts on a costume and is still a bubblehead.  It is not the actress, it is how she acts, and that I assume means the director wants her to act that way.  Part of the actress that is a problem is that she is physically flawed, she has a forehead scar, the character would be perfect if she was a true Kryptonian.  Makeup could cover that, airbrushing too.  Am I being misogynist?  No, it is the character, I could care less that she had bad acne or a close encounter with a door when she was young.

The character has a pose that she does when she is flying, that serves no purpose other than it is something that makes her look like a girl posing.  Superwoman is a woman, not a little girl.  If she was a little girl, then that would make sense, but the role she is playing is not a little girl.  

But this is not just the director, it is not just this show, it is the industry.  The production value is low and the budget is low.  And it looks it.  I wanted to be sure so I looked at a couple other shows.  I looked at Smallville.  That was a high production value show with good actors.  If I were to compare the two it would be clear that Supergirl has gotten the short end of the stick.  But there is The Flash and Arrow.  They are both campy contemporaries to Supergirl, they have the same poor production value, or do they?  The acting is bad, but the special effects are not.  And the characters are the correct person for the job.  The Arrow is in its fourth or fifth season, I think it sucks, but people like it.  The Flash is in its second season and I think it will go longer.  Supergirl, won't, unless something changes.  

There was a Supergirl movie.  It came out after the Superman movie.  It really sucked hard.  Does the entertainment world know that women can be strong leading characters?  Except in cartoons, I have not seen that, unless they are villains.  

Demi Moore? Nah, Demisexual

People sometimes go through life thinking that their situation is unique and that no one else has the same problems.  Sometimes these problems that they have are sufficiently different from the norm that they appear unique and no one talks about them so the person that has this problem, feels alone and no one else can understand.  Sometimes people how feel alone like this become depressed because they feel like no one can understand them and they have a real problem.  Something that is broken in them.

Sometimes there is a name for what they have and that is wonderful!  It is wonderful because now they know that they are not alone and that they are now more normal.  What that mean is that they can now use a word to describe themselves and not a series of awkward situations.  They can also haves word to research what is wrong with them, or their condition. 

For me, knowing that I have Autism, meant that I then also had a way to deal with it and a way to focus on my problems and figure them out and hopefully change my situation.  

So, I was cruising over Facebook the other day and a friend had posted a article about the different forms of sexual expression that there are in the world today.  And I clicked on it.  I click on about half of her posts, well closer to 75%, but I clicked on this one.  I was there.  I previously had explored my sexuality in detail trying to figure out why I can't have sex like other people and came to the conclusion that I had a weird Fetish.  Fetish meaning something that has to be present in order work correctly.  A lot of fetishes are things that people throw around saying that they like to do it that way, it gives them more pleasure, but a true fetish holds them down completely.  That is what a fetish is, it is something that ties people down.  The very word evokes a feeling of deviants in most people.  

So I read the article and there I was, described in a single word with a short suscint definition.  Demisexual, someone who needs an emotional connection to have sex.  When I read the definition, there were aspects that I did not agree with completely, they did not fit with me at all, but on the whole it was a close fit and later the article stated that "although most Demisexuals are Asexual, there is a sizable portion that are not".  A fit.  The article I just googled went on to say that when friends start talking about which celebrity they find sexy how Demisexuals often feel uncomfortable because they have no sense of sexual attraction with any celebrity, because they have no emotional bond with them.

What the article solidified in my head was that it is okay for me to be me, that I am just another slice of normality and not one more deviant.  For more information look up demisexuality.org  

It means when a coworker points out a hot woman walking down the street and I feel nothing, I am normal still.  It means that when I look at all the women around me and recognise that some people would find them sexually attractive but I don't have that desire, it is normal.  When I see a hot woman walking beside someone that I have known for years, it is okay that I find my friend, more attractive than the hot one.  It is okay for me not to want to have sex as soon as it is availible.  It is okay be me.

Paradolia

Everything around me shouts out to me saying here.  I see black cats in every shadow.  I hear my cellphone ding twenty times a day that it did not ding.  I hear my ringtone when it does not ring.  It vibrates when it is not vibrating.  Every creak in the house is a footstep. Every twitch in my vision turns into something that is not there.  I hear my name all day long.  

Technically this is a very successful evolutionary trait.  Means that I am always jumping at shadows and in the past it meant I was jumping and ready for when that shadow was actually a tiger or something and I was more likely to survive than someone who never jumped.  

Today though I am super skeptical I doubt everything I see, all the cats I see I know they are shadows, except for the ones that are cats.  I do see a lot more cats.  And it is odd that I check my cellphone a lot just after I got a message.  On the whole I would rather not, I am very distracted all the time.

5000km

5000km!  Wow!  On my bike commuting to work.  I lost 60-80 pounds at 2/week! And now this!

I got clipped by a pickup truck who slowed then sped off.  When I say clipped, I mean his mirror hit my elbow knocking me off my bike.  I got to call 9-1-1 and they sent an ambulance and two cops.  Nothing broken.  No one could help me because when you are hit you are not really concentrating on the things you should be concentrating on, like the car's licence plate.

The cops offered to drop me off at work, but after dismembering my bicycle in the sub zero temperatures, it would not fit; too much equipment.  So, I had to bike the remaining distance on my undamaged bike, with my damaged self.

The impact did not hit. One millisecond I was thinking about stuff, the next I was being pushed forward really fast right beside a truck and then I was airborne and the truck passed me and I hit the ground.  My bike was a few meters away and I was on my back.  In a daze I got up, felt the pain in my elbow and saw the truck take off; no harm done I guess.

Then I picked myself and my bike off the asphalt and called 911.  A whole bunch of cars sped by me.  Maybe they could not see me.  Maybe the thought I was sunning myself on the side of the road in the snow and the dark.  I guess no one wanted to be late for work.  Great excuse though, "I was late because I saw a cyclist on the road after an accident and I stopped to help."

I went to work and tried not to tell anyone.  I wanted to continue on as before.  After an hour or two I called my parents.  They told me that they were worried about me, worried that I would fall off my bike, or the a white pickup truck would hit me, so I did not tell them.  Right I called my exgf.  I told her, and I cried and cried.

Desperate

Desperation, I feel it is something people can smell and run away from it.  Which is funny because it goes away as soon as they get it.

I am desperate for a relationship, but I can't get one because I am desperate.  If I got into one, I would not be desperate anymore.

Because I am desperate, I am dying on the inside.  I am not going to attack anyone.

A New Deal

You see this is the thing you have to keep in your mind at all times: people are exactly like you and your friends.  Let me say that again, people are good, people are selfish, people are smokers, people are stupid, people are neurotic, people are fun to be around, people are desperate, people are kind, people are generous, people love other people, people can be mean, people can be frightening, people can do things that are more extraordinary than you could imagine ever; in short everyone in this world is exactly like your friends and family.  

People want to go out and see the world and then go home, they don't typically ever want to move more than a days travel from everyone and everything they know.  But people are people, they will move if they have to, but generally it has to be something extraordinary, to get them to move.  When you see someone who has left home forever, something extraordinary has happened to them.  My friend WaifGirl has decided to leave her home for another country far away because of something extraordinary for her, love.  Millions of people are fleeing their homes because of extraordinary fear of death.  

The key here is that they are people.  They are strangers, they are different in many ways, but primarily, they are people.  People like your friends and family. They love, they are kind, they bleed, they get cold, they are afraid.  They are people like you and me.  I will not say there is nothing to fear from these tired and scared people, because they are people.  Because people sometimes do horrible things to each other, families sometimes do horrible things to each other.  The overwhelming majority of bad things that have happened to people by people have been by people that the person knows.  So, you should not fear these strangers anymore than you fear your family and friends.  

These people are not typically driving or flying to safety.  They are walking or actually running.  Sometimes they get on boats, but they are mostly just walking.  And they are trying to get to safety, but they also want to go home or they want to be in an area that is familiar to them, places that are familiar, places where people speak the same language and share similar beliefs.  So, most of the people who are fleeing their homes, flee to a neighbouring less dangerous place.  Most of the refugees from Syria, fled to Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, and Turkey.  There are millions of them though, there are over a million refugees in Lebanon, population 4 million.  Look around you, every fifth person is a refugee.  Jordan has 670 thousand, population of 6 million; every tenth person is a refugee.  Turkey has 800 thousand refugees, with a population of 75 million, or one in every hundred is a refugee.

Europe has 680 thousand refugees and a population of 742 million people, that is one in a thousand people is a refugee.  Canada is now bringing over 25 thousand refugees, it has 35 million people, that is less than one refugee per thousand people.  The USA, a nation built on migration, is accepting 10 thousand and it has over 300 million people in it.  Ontario, has a population of 13 million and is accepting 10 thousand refugees.  Most of those will head to the Toronto Area, population 6 million.  But really, they don't want to be here, they want to be in the home that they started with five years ago.  They don't want to be in Europe, Canada, Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey.  Most of them would go back if there was a chance, for some going back would be worse, back to the place where they saw people they knew and love butchered, murdered and gassed; do you know anyone who would?  

Last Saturday, I was sitting in a Tim Hortons and a a woman in a hijab came in, she had dark skin and the men who came in were also very dark, so they were probably Pakistani or Bangladeshi or Indonesian, but they could have haled from southern Iraq too. There was a very brief visceral concern for my safety, I mean she could have had a suicide belt under her clothing.  It ended right there, it was just for a second, beneath the form obscuring clothing was a thin woman, a person.  A person like me or a friend.  Someone who was more like me than not like me, she was in Tim Hortons after all!  

If you want to read about the terror attacks read this: https://plus.google.com/app/basic/stream/z12gyrah5xb0ilowl04cghl5dpa2ytui4wg0k?cbp=rce0ox1bc3fw&sview=27&cid=5&soc-app=115&soc-platform=1&spath=%2Fapp%2Fbasic%2Fa%2Fautoload%2F%2BYonatanZunger%2Fposts&sparm=cbp%3D1vl6lgyc9wrzk%26sview%3D27%26cid%3D5%26soc-app%3D115%26soc-platform%3D1%26stct%3DCg0Q8pOI3JekyQIgACgBEhQIABDgoYHei6DJAhiAtP_iiZTJAhgCIAwol-6U3Zqk45qZAQ

It is a very good more comprehensive take on what happened and why than I could provide.

What people have to understand is that people are people and that the people around you would never do anything like the people who attacked Beirut, Paris, or Yemen.  Yes the people who did those things were people too, but they were not average people.  And the things that they did are not unique to one group of people and not others.  The first airplane bombing was done in Canada, by a Canadian on other Canadians.  The Oklahoma Bombers were American born Americans.  Hitler was a white dude.  Because of them, do white people fear white people?  They should, but they don't.  If you don't fear white people you should not fear anyone else.  

There is a solution to end terrorism.  There is only one solution.  A two pronged attack.  Send in the troops armed with ballot boxes and freedom from oppression. Send money.  The root of these problems in Syria were obvious, they paralleled the problems in Afghanistan.   In Afghanistan, money was pumped in to the nation to resist an oppressor and vanished with the oppressor gone, leaving the people poor and under control of people with lots of guns and resentful of the people who used to pay them.  They attacked us and we attacked them and nothing was solved.  Troops went in and destabilized the country and wrecked the feeble economy and destroyed the peoples livelihoods.  

In Syria, people rebelled against oppression and were ignored.  Some of the people took aid from people who were offering it, the poor people that the West destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan and then the oppressed became the oppressors and attacked the West and then we attacked them.  And created more people that hate the West and pushed 20% of them out as refugees into the world.  And pushed another 30% of Syrians out of their homes to different parts of Syria.  We are creating the next set of terrorists by not acting correctly now.

We need to stop e oppression where it exists.  Syria for sure, Saudi Arabia as well.  We need to pony up with some real cash and raise the infrastructure of these nations, all nations.  A Modern Marshal Plan.  Trillions of dollars, wind farms, solar collectors, Family Planning, improved Health Care, luxury goods, education.  Do You Understand?  For the cost of The War in Iraq, we could prevent the need for other similar wars, keep people in their own countries and focus on the truly scary stuff that no one can focus on because of this minor stuff.

Refugees fleeing war will be nothing compared to refugees fleeing environmental collapse.  130 dead will be nothing compared to billions littering the ground due to starvation and affixation. 

Date, she has an infectcious laugh.

I met this woman online.  I chatted with her.  I went out on a date with her, but I live too far away from her, so there it will end. 

Again.  

I am not sure if it is just because of the distance.  That is a factor, but it might also be that I am not really a whole person yet.  

When you cross a room in a restaurant, do you see all the people as adults or peers.  Are they?  Sometimes I see them as adults and I scurry to avoid notice. 

This adult that I went out with made me feel complete and grown up.  I had a very good time.  But the longer people talk to me the more they get to know me the more they are likely to see my flaws and pull on a thread.    One of my big threads is that I don't like myself.  I am a little too selfless.  I put others before me and belittle my own pains to the point of not accepting help, freely given.  

Maybe if I lived closer to her it would not have happened, but I think it would have.  

I ask myself is this something I should factor into my move choices?  Am I ready for a relationship with someone?  Am I mature enough?

Will I ever be?  Should I just give up and Move back?  Is that me not living my life though and living my life for others?  I still don't really know how to date people.  Am I mature enough?

Am I mature enough to date younger women, but because of their experience level, not find them interesting, but see them as someone to guide? I feel that they are expecting someone of greater means if they were dating me, better job, better car, better life.

I feel like a lesser person than the women of my age.  They are better established, they know themselves better, they expect not to be holding all the cards, or at least the better hand.  

Time for a do over, if reincarnation works.

Beautiful idiots

Okay, there is a Climate Summit coming up.  The goal of the world is to reduce the carbon dioxide foot print of the world, that is less out gassing of the stuff, reduce, reuse, recycle.  Most of the focus of waste has been on recycling, and that was the wrong focus, but the initial cheapest way to do it and they are failing that.  We don't recycle well.  We should be focused on reusing and reducing.

Luckily, the world is trying to focus on reduction with the goal to reduce the use of fossil fuels to zero, eventually.  Reduction is the correct way to go, but it only stops carbon from entering the system and bumping up the Greenhouse effect and Climate Change.  And to be sure, we passed the tipping point for carbon a few years ago.  That is the amount of carbon has passed the point where the effects of the carbon are adding more Greenhouse Gases beyond what we are putting into the air— a runaway effect.  

Basically, the CO2 is affecting the climate enough to melt the permafrost, which frees trapped Methane gas, a more powerful Greenhouse gas.  The increased warmth allows marshes to dry out, more Methane.  Increased warmth means more water vapour in the air, water vapour is a strong greenhouse gas.  All these gases are making the world warmer and the climate change and increasing the natural greenhouse gasses being released and so on.

Reducing is important, but reducing greenhouse gases to zero tomorrow won't change anything right now.  Plus our economy, the world's economy, is based on oil.  So how do we get our economy off oil?  There are a lot of renewable options to produce energy, wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and other things like sidewalks that generate electricity from people walking on them.  This is cool and is great, but there is a lot of energy that has to go into producing these devices.  And there are detractors people who say that we need to have the power available when we need it and how do you switch our infrastructure that has been built for one kind of power system and switch it over to a new one.  

People have been talking about improving the battery storage capabilities of society, but it is unlikely that we will devote buildings to store energy for the neighbourhood.  That is what we need.  One big building for every ten thousand people, built to cover the times that the sun is not out and the wind is not blowing and the energy can't be brought in.  That is one option.  It is a good option, but it is one of those infrastructure changes.  The other question is how long do these batteries last and what would happen if something bad happens, do they explode, do they contain lethal chemicals?  

Another way to store energy is to make other systems to store potential energy.  One method would be to store excess energy by pumping water up behind dams and using hydro electric generation to retrieve the energy when it was needed.  This works and does not require any additional infrastructure if the infrastructure exists.  How do you store energy if there are no hydro dams?

One method, which is theoretical, is to make gasoline.  This would be ideal for a number of reasons: 1) We would not have to change the existing infrastructure much, our economy could be still based on oil.  2) We would be recycling the CO2 that we have put into the world's system.  3) We have over a century of technology and knowhow on storing it safely. 4) It is easily transportable.

Octane gasoline is eight carbon atoms and eighteen hydrogen atoms.  8CO2 molecules and 9 water molecules would be required to produce one Octane molecule and 12 and a half Oxygen molecules and when the energy is used the result is what you put into it.  It is Carbon Neutral. 

We need to Reuse Carbon as well, which is different than recycle.  There are industrial processes that use Carbon Dioxide to create things we use, but we don't use the processes to their proper degree because they are more expensive than other available products.  Off hand I can think one industrial process that has multiple uses that would improve our society significantly, but are expensive so we don't use them.  People who read my stuff before know it, Super Critical CO2.  

Super Critical is a state of matter, where a fluid acts as a gas and a liquid.  It requires two things heat and pressure.  CO2 is typically a gas in our atmosphere and it freezes into a solid at -78.5°C. There is a liquid stage but pressure is required.  When it is a liquid and more pressure is applied and a little heat, it enters the Super Critical stage.  Just 100 times the pressure around us and about 30°C worth of heat.  The temperature is easy to attain and really, the pressure is quite low too, any container that can simulate the pressure at 1000m under water can reach this pressure threshold.  

What can you do with super critical CO2?  It is already used in industrial dry cleaning.  You can make Areogel with it, which is an extremely light weight, extremely insulating material; a thin sliver between two panes of glass has the insulation effectiveness of a wall filled with standard insulation, and it would let the light through too, granted not as easy to see through, but given the number of people who shut their blinds all day, who cares? 

You can use it in Power generation.  Typical power generators use superheated steam to drive turbines to create electricity, but super critical CO2 would use less energy to become useable and would have more mass than water as a gas or liquid, so more power for less.  More expensive to be sure, the equipment would be different, but would allow power generation in locations with poorer Geothermal sources.  

Carbon recycling is not enough though, we need to change the 3 Rs to 4Rs in the case of Carbon to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Remove.  If we are to slow climate change or if possible, reverse it, we have to be able to remove CO2 and store it so it can't interact with the environment anymore.  If we gain the technology to create Octane, than we will have one technology to store the Carbon indefinitely.  We could bury it as the oil that we take out now; it has been stable down there for millions of years, no need to worry that that would not continue again.  But we need to be able to store it around here.  It occurs to me that one of the things that when burnt, releases a lot of CO2 is Limestone and the curing process of concrete releases a lot of CO2.  If we could create a synthetic limestone, we would be able to remove Carbon from the air and the the environment and use it to build our civilization too.  A real win win product.  

What people don't know can and will kill them.  Besides warming the planet, the continued wide spread release of Carbon into the environment is killing us.  CO2 is very soluble in water.  Carbon that we push into the air very quickly enters the water and it is only when the CO2 levels balance in the water and in the atmosphere balance do the concentrations go up.  When they say 400 parts per million in the air, they also mean 400 ppm in the water too.  Water and CO2 react and make an acid, called Carbonic Acid, so the CO2 in the water is very slow to rise and so the levels in the air are also very slow to rise.  However, the levels of acid in the water are continuing to rise and this has an effect too.  The acidification of the oceans will affect the smallest lifeforms first. Like the small phytoplankton.  You know those little things that are responsible for fifty percent (50%) of all the oxygen production on the planet.  

I try not to think about that, I need to be able to sleep at night.  I need to earn money to live.  People think I am crazy to ride my bike everywhere, to ride in the rain, to ride in the winter, in -30° weather.  They are the crazy ones, those beautiful idiots.

Actions

Meeting women has never been tough for me.  Meeting lovers has always been excruciatingly difficult.  You walk on the street and half the people in this world are women, you smile and they might smile or they might run in fear of you; it might just be my smile.  You see a woman in distress and you help her and you will get a smile.  A couple months ago a stranger accidentally spilled a something at Starbucks and it was about to start dripping.  The counter person could not get to it and it was awkward for the woman, you could tell the thoughts going through her head were: shit or fuck, not now, why today, my day is just trashed.  Reaching out grabbing a bunch of napkins and cleaning it up for her, took almost nothing for me, it was less awkward for me to accomplish than for her.  I was rewarded with a smile and a thank you.  She was a very pretty young blonde woman.  She was petite and the scowl of frustration melting away on her face was wonderful, it reached her blue eyes and maybe her steps were lighter afterwards.  Maybe her day was crappy anyway, but I like to think that it wasn't and that she had a good morning, even though nothing I did impacted the people that talked to her for the rest of the day, but perhaps.

Almost every other person I saw that day did not see me.

Meeting women when there is an expectation is difficult.  It is like because they expect that I am expecting sex things are off on the wrong foot from the start.  But I am not sure anymore if I want sex at all.  My experiences in the past year, in the past five years have not been positive.  Is that weird?— that a sex obsessed individual is running scared from sex.

I have become closer to girls who serve me at Tim Hortons than to the women I talk to online, but I can't translate either in to anything. The servers are strictly servers and they don't really want to talk to me in their spare time.  I am just a regular who they can predict what I want by just showing up.  To them I am XLSTDDwC, 12GBwHGCC and a sour cream donut in the morning with the morning staff, XLSTDDwC, grilled cheese and two muffins in the evening with the evening staff and both with the weekend staff at a different Tim's because I am not going to work and can sit down and write this.  

Maybe the online people are not looking for the same thing as I am.  Maybe they are all over the place, looking for sex, looking for marriage, looking for specific qualities that are not apparent from a computer screen, that everyone has, but they are looking for the ones that can express it in five to ten words.  

Do I have a date in the next 36 hours?  I don't know.  I am a match with 99% certainty according to OkCupid. But everything depends on the first meeting.  And I am so unsure about everything.  Because I have such a great track record with all these things.

What is autism like?

It is like a game that you are playing, where you don't know all the rules, but you know the first rule is that no one talks about the rules.  Most people know enough of the rules to play the game, but you don't.  You have to play the game through trial and error.  The game is long and it is complex like chess.  In the end you can look back and see your mistakes and discover the rules.  After many games you can look back and see such rules are real rules and such ones aren't.

Makes you want to stop playing the game, but you are hooked and so you keep playing and losing.

Grounding fears

A woman asked me a couple simple questions the other day as a way of learning about me.  She asked what grounded me and what were my fears?  Simple questions but penetrating.  I had to think about them.  The fears came right away but grounding is not something I think about ever.  

My fear is being alone.  Not the fear of being alone actually, but being alone when it matters.  I am introverted, I like being alone but there are times in your life that you need someone there to listen to what you have to say.  There is the fear that your life will go unwitnessed, that when you have passed by, your life will have been unremarked upon.  That has been my fear since high-school.  It has mostly been realized too.  I have been alone most of that time and have thus become very self reliant.  There are times, though, where you need to tell someone something and have them just listen, not passing judgement and be there for you.  When they are not there, you are alone.  When you have friends and people around you that if you tell them these things, they put you down, make fun of you or tell others what you said.  You learn.  And when you have something to say, something you need to express, you are also alone.

People pair up for many reasons, finances, sex, raising a family, but it is to not be alone at those times where no one should be alone that is the underlying thing about relationships and when they are not there, the relationship ends.  

What grounds me was the tougher question, because I had not thought about it that way.  What is grounding?  Is that an anchor on reality?  That which keeps me sane?  The short answer would be everything that is not the opposite.  My Blog grounds me.  I use it as a relationship substitute.  I tell my blog the things that I can't tell anyone else.  The people who read it mostly don't know me so it is okay.  A few people I know read it and that is okay, I know they read it so I feel like I am telling them.  Some of them do not like it and they stop reading, which is fine.  My blog has evolved over the time I have had it to expand into what it is now.  

My bike rides ground me.  It represents an accomplishment or a labour that I have performed.  They are little goals that I regularly complete and make me feel good. I have little lights on my spokes that create a glowing circle as I whip around; it is so cool!  I have reflectors pasted all over the skin so people can see me at night, because guess when I do most of my cycling these days, night.  Whipping down the hill I ask if I can break the speed limit? I hit 60kph and I feel great, I hit 55 I feel great and a little stress lifts off me.

I read.  Lately that has been difficult.  I look at the book, crisp new pages, unblemished by light or air pressed together like a brick with three hundred leafs, printed on both sides and I see the commitment of time a head and I ask why?  But I do it and I enjoy it.  I feel the stress lift off me as I read only when I stop and things are better than when I started.  

My friends.  Some are real friends, the kind that could be more if there was not the spoken or unspoken barrier due to gender or some other culturally constructed barrier like age difference (or gender).  Sometimes it is my friend's children.  E. and B. are like unrestricted joy in my life and spending time with them is better than everything else multiplied by everything else.  Like when they hug me without prompting.  

Synopsis: fear being alone, grounded by forgetting that I am alone, surviving with being alone, reaching out to others while being alone and lastly unconsciously given love — that blows the others away.