I was midway into my rant when I suddenly realized I really wanted to shut up. Like, badly. I had no sense of what I was saying, or where I wanted to go with it. There was no point I could make.

But how do you just shut up halfway through a semi-coherent monologue about life, love, fate and soulmates? Shit, how do you even line up the thoughts correctly, translate them into words, and get those words out?

By the time I talked myself into an impossible corner and no longer had enough steam to keep going, the only thing I knew for certain was that I had no business talking about these things, and that I, to put it mildly, needed to shut the eff up.

Later on, alone in my bed, reviewing with horror that insane outburst of mine, I laughed at myself. Because the truth is, I don't at this moment have the luxury to think about life, love, fate or soulmates (a term I now despise and have banished from my vocabulary). I know and can speak of what I've always known and felt - but this is a new reality under which I'm living, and my previous feelings no longer apply. To speak of these things now - it just makes no sense.

Maybe that is what I was trying to tell him - that everything I thought I knew no longer applies. I am at zero, back to nothing, with beliefs that have done nothing but fail me.

I stare at my life now and think about all the things I so fervently believed were true, to the point that I perhaps forced too roughly that they be real in some way, somehow, without stopping to fully consider what that could mean, what the consequences would be. I don't know if I was wrong all along; or if the problem is that I have a need too vast and deep to fill; or if the fear and guilt that have ruled over so many of the bigger decisions I have made set me up for this. All I know is that in the end, this is where I am: with nothing to show for myself and nothing to offer, in this place where my vision of happiness was clearly not something I could make a reality.

I don't know what to believe in now, what I should dare hope for myself. I don't know why some dreams persist even as I take inventory of all the ways in which I just can't seem to communicate or be the very things I want. Where did I end and any one of the others begin? How much of it was me and how much them and their endless issues? How much of it was my reacting to their emotional unavailability, their bullshit; and how much of it was me fearing the very real happiness I felt at times?

I go back to zero. And zero offers me a chance to do the one thing I want most right now: to not think anymore. I don't want answers to my questions; I don't want to ponder my past and its many failures; I don't want to worry about what may or may not be; I don't want to fret over how worthy I am or am not of someone else's time, attention, affection, etc.; I don't want to wonder if I will ever find someone who will look deeper and see me for all that I am and can be, or cry when it seems like the only possible answer is "no"; I don't want to miss everything before me for fear of all that I've left behind me.

And so I happily, willingly will shut my brain down. I will take a break, be easier on myself, and not let so much hinge on every little thing. I will finally allow myself the luxury of enjoying for enjoyment's sake.

I told him, somewhere in that crazy little rant of mine, that I have nothing left to lose. And if that is true, then the one thing I can believe, the one thing I can hold on to before letting all this go, is this: I now have everything to gain.