[Author’s Note: this Blog Post was heavily changed and repurposed to function as a chapter in the TMR Novel. This is the Revised & Refined version. Toggle under the title to read the Original & Unedited form.]

I will write no resolution.
I say this every year~

Who was I writing to? Maybe this blog was always going to happen. Patterns, symmetry. Tidbits of kismet. I was talking about being stuck in the Infinite Loop even back then. I probably started thinking about it after Jevandre committed suicide. Does anything really happen if it was always going to happen? Does anything ever really Change?
It felt like things Changed at least, after that entry. I had reached the zenith of my framework. ’Twas an embarrassing showing at the end of 2021, but what can I say? I was crashing out. I went back home to Kent battered and bruised from the summer of “Happy, Healthy, Well-Adjusted.” The song went viral, Jevandre had died, I was still hopelessly smitten with Codename: Emily, and she still didn’t love me back. I was determined to be done with her and put the dreadful summer behind me. I tried to flush it all out by hooking up with Codename: Palo Santo, who I didn’t really like but I knew liked me. Looking back, I feel like a total dick. I was self-destructing. Now it was winter, I was stuck in Kent, and I was about to feel even worse.
It all started with Codename: Jenny Jones. My first doomed Romance. We grew up together— nearly-literal Girl Next Door, 3 houses down from my childhood home. In 2021, it was snowing, and she and I were just supposed to go sledding as friends. But I made a move and was left looking like a fool, just like the first time I tried when we were kids. Only this time was colder. I walked home alone and beat myself up, then as further punishment, my flight got snowed in and I was forced to stay in Kent for New Year’s Eve. It’s probably a good thing, too, because despite how ready for Change the 12/31/21 entry seemed, I secretly hoped that I could make it back to LA in time to plant a big ol’ simpy smooch on Codename: Emily when the ball dropped, even though I swore I was done. God must have stopped that from happening. And it’s good, too, because that lonely night in Kent I did some of the classic Psychotic Shit I’m wont to do.
As the clock struck midnight, I locked myself in the bathroom and stared at the mirror until I Truly Saw myself. It was a bit scary. After ~10 minutes, you get a sense of how you appear to others in the world. Good Lord, I looked tired. The year was weighing on me. I swore the next year would be different, and this time it seemed like it would. I wrote no resolution, but as soon as I got back to LA, I decided to move out of the garage. Okay, well really I had one more teensy backslide with Codename: Emily. I wrote her a letter, she ripped it up, I got locked out of her bedroom, she fell asleep, and I scootered home. And then I was actually done.

— I never learn my lesson —
Always Never Again, mirite?

So, after that briefest of detours, I got my own apartment on Hollywood Boulevard and was determined— No More Women! Time To Focus On Doing Music! No More Distractions! The dreadful summer was over. I’m Doing My Own Thing™.
I hadn’t even started moving out of the garage by the time I met Codename: Didi. My unwritten resolution wavered. I just had to see about it. The first time she visited the Melrose house, I Truly Saw it for the first time: as a dingy railway house with a detached garage in which I slept. Not as this magical place in LA where Doing Music was a dream I had. It had been so long since it felt that way, and I somehow just noticed. I wrote no resolution, yet attempted to line up Change with the New Year. Futile. We corporeal beings try our hardest, but our bodies betray our sense of timing.

— Allow me to explain —
We are always the last to know when the time is up.

The Melrose house was perfect, right up until it wasn’t. By the time I left the garage, I had not only outgrown it, but recognized that I had outgrown it, so to be there was stifling and sickening. But leases and all that. When Codename: Didi came into the garage, it was like someone from the next chapter appearing the page before they’re supposed to appear.
The first time I noticed this phenomenon was with my college girlfriend, Codename: Apples. We, too, knew our time was up, but by God, we kept fighting it. After graduation, we delayed breaking up until the day she started vet school. We left Arizona in a sort of post-relationship limbo, and both ended up in Washington; Codename: Apples because vet school was starting in Pullman in the fall, me because I went home to save money before moving to LA. We were in the same state, so even though we knew the relationship couldn’t last beyond syllabus week, we at least had to try to keep it going until then.

— For the non-Washingtonians —
Pullman and Kent are 6 hours apart.

When I went to see off Codename: Apples the weekend before school started, I drove Dad’s shitty Dodge Neon¹ the long way over the Cascades and got stuck somewhere near Spokane when it stalled. It felt like I was going out of bounds in a videogame and the physics engine was crashing. The devs were saying, “Don’t you know the campaign is over? Why are you still playing? The map ends here.” But Christ, I loved her and I wanted to say goodbye. I had Dad drive all the way to Spokane to swap cars with me, and I drove the remaining 3 hours to Pullman. I didn’t even want to break up, but there was no choice. That was the shittiest part. Circumstance tore us apart, but we were stuck doing the dirty work. I had to move mountains just to do some shit I didn’t even want to do.
As soon as I got to her new apartment, and we walked around her new campus, and I got a sense of her new life, I knew I had come too far. I felt out of place, and I felt out of time. Like fuckin’ Billy Pilgrim. When the time came for us to say our tearful goodbye, and the universe popped our little pimple, it was already leaking. That’s gross, I’m sorry. But I’m serious. My soul didn’t fit in Codename: Apples’ little one-bedroom apartment.
Similarly, Codename: Didi didn’t fit in the garage in 2021. And half a year ago, when I went to Wales to visit her, I felt the same thing. We were a month away from breaking up, and I didn’t want to admit it was already over. We were looking out beyond the edge of the world, past St. David’s and across the Irish Sea, and I thought, Hey this isn’t real. I shouldn’t be here. I have to go. But anything I have left with her, in this moment, exists only here, and the second I walk away from this little bench it’ll all begin to undo itself. And it did. I didn’t think you could outgrow an entire country the same way you can outgrow a garage or a one-bedroom, but our souls don’t follow the same rules our bodies do.
So she’s seeing somebody now. So? I am too. SomebodieS. Hah! Sucker. No, really, I felt relieved to hear it. Honestly. I can’t shake the feeling that I woke up on the other end of something today. More moved on, more removed, more free. Changed. But maybe I don’t want that, this time? Oh, Alanis, isn’t it ironic. How can it ever have been Real if it can dissolve so quickly? I suppose it’s been a while. The strangest part of a breakup is understanding that you can have just a few weeks, months, years with someone and they leave you a lifetime of thoughts and feelings to make sense of. It’s like when you Truly Collide with someone’s soul, there’s such an explosion of energy that… well, it’s like a Big Bang, where the hydrogen atoms are still twisting and rearranging billions of years later, until it all falls to entropy. I mean shit, it’s been 5 years, and since then I’ve had 124 journal entries mentioning Codename: Apples. You meet someone, you fall in love, it ends, and then you’re left parsing through the atoms.
I’m a simple guy. I want simple things in life. Money, power, fame, world domination. But in love, I want the complex things like laughter and touch and kindness and smiles. I’ve been searching for that my whole life, and I’m getting pretty good at finding something close.
This year, I will write no resolution. I know that it’s been an extremely important 366 days. Despite Codename: Didi and me breaking up, there was a lot of good.
I overturned countless stones and found lots of worms and tons of slimy things.
I climbed a hundred hills and felt a dozen suns.
I took a thousand flights and saw 2 million countries.
I lived in 7 trillion houses and felt 10 gazillion feelings.
Yeah yeah, we packed it up and I lost my furniture but hey— At Least I Get To Keep The Dog Most Of The Time. And I guess I got some pillows. A couple towels. A jumbled definition of love that is now my intellectual responsibility to untangle.
Oh, and 10,000 spoons.

— The tragic irony —
All I needed was a knife.

Tough pill to swallow, huh?
—mbk

FOOTNOTES:
1. As opposed to my own shitty 2000 Honda Prelude, which I didn’t want to risk taking because I was afraid it would start overheating. Go figure. ↩

I will write no resolution.

I say this every year~

That’s actually a pretty beautiful entry. Good job, past me. It felt powerful, too. Things changed after that one. I reached the zenith of my framework that year. ’Twas an embarrassing showing at the end of 2021, but what can I say? I was crashing out. I went back home battered and bruised. Jevandre died, I was hopelessly smitten with Codename: Emily and I tried to flush it out by hooking up with [REDACTED] and attempting to reignite things with Codename: Jenny Jones. We were just supposed to go sledding but I was left feeling like a fool. And cold. As some sort of divine punishment my flight got snowed in and I was forced to stay in Kent for New Year’s Eve. It’s probably a good thing, too, because despite how seemingly self-aware the 12/31/21 entry was, I secretly hoped that I could make it back to LA in time to plant a big ol simpy smooch on Codename: Emily. God must have stopped that from happening. And it’s good, too, because that night I did some of the classic psychotic shit I’m wont to do. As the clock struck midnight, I locked myself in the background and stared at myself in the mirror until I truly saw myself. It was a bit scary. After ~4 minutes you get a sense of how you appear to others in the world. Good Lord, I looked tired. The year was weighing on me. I swore the next year would be different, and this time it felt like it would. I wrote no resolution, but as soon as I got back to LA I decided to move out of the garage. Okay, well really I had a tiny backslide with Codename: Emily, got locked out of her bedroom and slept on her couch, and THEN decided I was done.

***I never learn my lesson***
So much for “Always Never Again” mirite?

Okay, so after the briefest of detours I got my first apartment in Hollywood and was determined – no more women! No more distractions! I’m doing my own thing. What’s that thing they say about God and the plans of man? I hadn’t even started moving out of the garage by the time I met Codename: Didi. In fact, there’s a brief crossover event in which she appeared in the Melrose house, and I saw it for the first time in the light of day: a dingy railroad house with a detached garage. It wasn’t this magical place anymore. We corporeal beings try our hardest to line things up energetically, but our bodies betray our sense of timing.

***Allow me to explain***
We are the last to know when the time is up.

The Melrose house was perfect, until it wasn’t. So by the time I left, I had not only outgrown it, but recognized that I had outgrown it, so to be there was stifling and sickening. But leases and all that. So when Codename: Didi came into the house it was like someone from the next chapter appearing the page before they’re supposed to appear. The first time I noticed this phenomenon was in 2019 with Codename: Apples. We knew our time was up, but by God we kept fighting. There was even a specific end date: the beginning of grad school (hers, not mine). We were in a sort of post-relationship limbo. Undergrad had ended, but we both happened to move to Washington. Her because school was starting in Pullman in the fall, me because I wanted to save money before I went to LA. We were in the same state, so even though we knew the relationship couldn’t last beyond syllabus week, we at least had to try.

***For the people in the back***
Pullman and Kent are 8 hours apart.

When I went to go see Codename: Apples the weekend before school started, I drove my dad’s shitty Dodge Neon over the Cascades and got stuck somewhere near Spokane when it broke down. It felt like I was going out of bounds in a video game and the physics engine was crashing. The devs were saying, “don’t you know the story is over? Why do you keep playing? The map ends here.” But Christ, I loved her and I wanted to say goodbye. So I had my dad drive all the way to Spokane, swap cars with me, and I drove the remaining 3 hours. I didn’t even WANT to do this. That was the shittiest part. I had to move mountains just to do some shit I didn’t even want to do. And as soon as I got to her new apartment, and we walked around her new campus, and I got a sense of her new life, I knew I had came too far. I felt out of place, and I felt out of time. I was displaced like fuckin Billy Pilgrim. When the time came for us to say our tearful goodbye, and the universe popped our little pimple, it was already leaking. That’s gross I’m sorry. But I’m serious. My soul didn’t fit in Codename: Apples’ little apartment.

Similarly, Codename: Didi didn’t fit in the garage. And a few years later, when I went to go visit Codename: Didi in Wales, and I didn’t want to admit it was over, I felt the same thing. We were looking out beyond the edge of the world, past St. David’s, and I thought, hey this isn’t real. I shouldn’t be here. I have to go. But everything I have here, in this moment, exists only here, and the second I walk away from this little bench it’ll begin to undo itself. And it did. I didn’t think you could outgrow an entire country the same way you can outgrow a garage or a tiny one-bedroom, but our souls don’t follow the same rules our bodies do.

So she’s seeing somebody now. So? I am too. SomebodieS. Hah! Sucker. But for real, I felt relieved to hear it. Honestly. But I can’t shake the feeling that I woke up on the other end of something today. More moved on, more removed, more free. But maybe I didn’t want that? How can it ever have been real if it can dissolve so quickly? I suppose it’s been awhile. And the strangest part is understanding that you can have a few weeks, months, years with someone and they give you a lifetime of thoughts and feelings to make sense of. It’s like when you truly collide with someone’s soul there’s such an explosion of energy that… well, it’s like a big bang, where the hydrogen atoms are still twisting and rearranging billions of years later, until it all falls to entropy. I mean shit, it’s been five years and since then I’ve had 124 journal entries mentioning Codename: Apples. You meet someone, you fall in love, it ends, and then you’re left with the hydrogen atoms. Ya’ll know I always lose the metaphor.

I’m a simple guy. I want simple things in life. Money, power, fame, world domination. But in love I want the complex things like laughter and touch and kindness and smiles. I’ve been searching for one thing my whole life and I’m getting pretty good at finding something close. This year I will write no resolution, but I know that this was an extremely important 366 days. Despite the tragedies, I daresay it was my happiest. I overturned countless stones and found lots of worms and tons of slimy things. I climbed a hundred hills and felt a dozen suns. I took a thousand flights and saw two million countries. I lived in seven trillion houses and felt ten gazillion feelings. Yeah yeah, we packed it up and I lost my pillows but hey – at least I got the couch. And the towels. A jumbled definition of love that is now my intellectual responsibility to untangle. Oh, and ten thousand spoons.

***The tragic irony***
All I needed was a knife.

’Til next time
-mbk