Yeah yeah, "crazy people don't think they're crazy." But I'm pretty sure there we're referring to delusional and otherwise unaware-of-surroundings sorts of crazy people. But really, there's lots and lots of ways people can be crazy, and there's nothing to say you can't know if you are.

I don't know exactly when I went crazy. I mean, I know it's in the last few years, but it was not a sudden and exact break. More of a slow, gradual descent. And thus the reason that no one around me (or who knows me at all) have noticed.

For I'm still perfectly functional, socially speaking. I mean, I don't really like anyone besides Best Friend and Lesbian Best Friend ... but apparently, I'm pleasant enough company for everyone else, regardless.

Nah, it's not on a social level that I'm gone completely loony. But rather, in a fundamental sense of how I live my life. The way that I interact with the world around me. Which is, essentially, that I do not.

Get this -- and really, this is something that kind of scares me -- last night I literally dreamt up my dream girl. I mean -- I've never actually done that before. You can think of the person or kind of person you'd like and all ... but I'm saying, I would not have done that about this girl. Just, there she was, and there I was immediately in love. And of course, since it was a dream, I had to wake up. And the thing is: I immediately missed this made up girl. I mean, I was pissed that here I am in our real world, whereas the most amazing person that I've ever met boiled up from some illusion in my subconscious.

Thinking that doesn't make me crazy? Well. Earlier today I had a bit of a dialogue with someone on the nature of what's real -- you know, there's life, there's art, and really they can't both be real. But art has become more real to me than Real Life. Fictions, my own and others, make sense to me. And, because the rest of the world does not, I've pretty much decided not to participate.

Now, were I a well-to-do or otherwise financially taken care of individual, maybe this would be no big deal. But as I still have to pay for rent and food and such -- kinda a big deal.

Hm. But you know, all of that isn't what made me think that this would be my most depressing entry ever. What has is this: At some point last night, I began to find myself greatly comforted and relieved at the thought that I could just kill myself, and be done with it all.

Unfortunately: As I think I've said before, I've never really been suicidal, and this train of thought last night was stopped by the exact same thing that always has. Essentially, there is my family. And I reallly wouldn't even want to consider the effect my death (of any kind, let alone suicide) would have on my family. I mean, I'm a member of my family and I know how close-knit and interdependent a unit it is... and deserved or not, I do know that I have always played a special part in that unit.

I mean, they would survive, of course. Because that's what they do. Or rather, that's what we do. And thus you see my problem. We [stranges] don't give up. We don't quit. And if it gets too hard for any of us individually, the family will carry them till they can stand on their own again.

I think a part of why I have kind of a unique place in my family is that I'm the one who's never really relied on that support network. I mean, of course it's there, and of course its presence alone helps... but I was always the one who had to stand alone. So if I were to continue standing alone right into an early and self-imposed grave...

No, I couldn't do that to them. But fine, so we don't have to worry about me offing myself. But nonetheless, my only real tether to this world is that I understand how integral I am to those I was born into. I mean, in a sense that makes me little better than a pet -- I continue to exist solely because it pleases them that I should.

And myself? Is it impossible that I should find any joy whatsoever in life?

No, of course not. Things change. And just as a matter of odds, occasionally some good has to come my way. But ya know -- not really caring right now. Good or bad, it's all transient. Happiness passes just as pain does.

But after all this time, my alienation has become complete. The world is less real to me than the world in my mind. And will that change? Will I eventually drift back into what we could call sanity?

Nah. The bigger, by far bigger question: Does it matter if I do or not?

The person I referred to earlier said something to the effect that she and God had parted ways some time agon, and that she didn't think either of them missed the other. So I guess that's the real question, isn't it? Does our pain or happiness matter? Is there a Grand Scheme, in which someone or something is actually concerned with what is and will be happening to us? Or is all the drama and pathos of an individual human existence ultimately no more important than that of a single ant bustling around a particular anthill?

When you consider all the people who've lived in all of human existence, and consider each and every personal triumph and defeat... well, I suppose we could say that cumulatively, that would be what got us all here, now.

But really -- does it matter that we're here now?