It's raining outside now.

Earlier it was a sun-shiny morning, but now… now it's raining.

It must be the part of me that I count an optimist that makes every morning as shiny and as fraught with possibilities as a kennel club show must be to a dog without a leash. Tell me what part of me makes the skies rain melancholy. Point at the part of me that makes it rain down from a shinning sky?

I'm flawed by my emotions.

I try so damn hard to be entertaining to people, and I'm not here more than a week before a girl from across the hall literally said, "Oh, you're so funny!"

I really like to be liked, and enjoy being enjoyed. I just wish I was more than amused by being amusing.

I guess I'm just greedy... I have all these things, but I want to be wanted, too.

So I fume like the steam rising from fresh, hot pavement. A man on a steamroller with an umbrella in one hand and the wheel in the other sees me and looks away. The rain pours down on me and the steam rises, black as the void, and lingers about me.

I'm worst with the physical with those I'd like to be the best at it with.

The consummate actor, I can play a role as long as everyone knows that's what it is... a role. I can't lie to others… very easily… but I manage to pull the wool over my eyes every day like I pull my comforter up to my chin as I lie in my bed and no one else's.

I can't say something unless I believe it, or it's safe, or it's funny. I believe in love, sure why not? But it isn't safe and it's only funny after it's sad. So I utterly fail to express my feelings to others. Entirely fail to say an original word about how much I care, or would like to.

Maybe I hope I can just skip over that part, but I only manage to communicate interest by paying more attention. And when I pay more attention to that person it usually means I come up with more pithy, humorous, and, more times than not, insulting things to say to them.

It's always meant as a compliment… I so desperately want to say something, but I know that if it communicates anything it is not affection.

So I have to convince myself I feel nothing and further more, that I felt nothing. Every time I divorce myself from my emotions I die. Still, they come back again and again… they were only "mostly dead."

Why can't I just hug someone… I wonder if I'm not one of those unhuggables. I guess I'm so good at making impassible barriers that I can't take them down if I want to. I go cold when I sense the smallest suspicion of interest from someone I have rashly decided as unattractive.

I'm luckier than shit that the people I do shut out are better people than I. A wonderfully intelligent girl with more personality and more to say than other more attractive ones was nice to me. Oh, but she wasn't entirely attractive, kind of short. Nope. Freeze. Don't say more than you have to in a conversation.

She was my daughter in a musical and so we had to be near each other. She tried so goddamn hard to engage my attention… to get me to want to talk to her. And thank god she did. I think perhaps that was a step in the right direction.

I was the lecherous and licentious hypocrite and my object of desire at first left much to be desired. How fucking harsh was I? Why was I so mean? I acted to the hilt in front of an audience, because it was all a sham, a performance, but before… in rehearsal… I was the most reserved and silent I could be. I didn't want my Elmire to think I was interested. How fucking arrogant was that? It may have been true, I don't know, but how arrogant nonetheless.

So, I'm silent. I'm silent and pensive, and brooding and despaired. I know I could be aggressive if I knew it was an act, I know I could be affectionate if I knew it was wanted, I know I could be good if only I had some practice. But I don't practice piano and I don't practice love.

I had a dream the other day. I see myself lying in my bed as my alarm goes off. I see myself sit bolt upright and I'm suddenly snapped into my own head. I lie back down and fall to sleep again. It happens again. One moment I seem to be hovering over myself when I sit suddenly upright. The next moment I'm looking through my eyes again. I'm breathing really heavily, but I lie down again and pull clammy sheets over my body. I sleep again and see myself again, but I start to make out the outline of an arm around my waist. It's not my arm... I don't think... but I don't know whose it could be.

That's hopeful thinking, I suppose… that's the disappointing (perhaps disappointed) optimist in me. Saying "everything is all right."

I am an optimist, because I know I can survive. But I'm a depressed optimist because I so often see my own life being thwarted by no one but myself.