Every guy probably knows what it's like to be shot down by a girl he absolutely adores. I wasn't even directly shot down, and I guess that's the part that hurts the most. I mean, I'm no good at this entire dating / relationship affair. Gods know that I don't have the practice

So there I am, trying to be nice, to be there for her without being smothering. In the end, I didn't have a chance. She takes up with this other guy, who happens to be a friend of mine.

This hurt, largely because I like the both of them. A lot. I just didn't like the concept of the two of them together.

Hell, maybe I should've opened my eyes. If I had, I could have saved myself a lot of pain. The clues were all there.

1. They hung out together.
2. She went to his place a lot.
3. Her friends talked about him.

Put them all together and they spell R-E-L-A-T-I-O-N-S-H-I-P.

So here I am, denser than lead, and one Tuesday afternoon, bang, I finally find out from a mutual friend of theirs that they're going out. And probably have been doing so for quite some time.

I had it coming. I should have known better. I wish I could say that the entire mess was a learning experience, that I've ended up becoming a better person for all this.

But I can't. It just doesn't work that way. I still hurt, dammit. Why doesn't she like me? She likes me "as a friend". Oh, great. Yeah, just bleeding wonderful. As if I haven't had that line shoved in my face often enough over the years.

Don't misinterpret. I don't blame her. Really. It's always her prerogative to choose, and she didn't choose me, that's all. So I wonder what I did wrong. Was I too smothering? Was I not there enough? Not happy enough? Not attractive enough?

I'll die wondering, I guess. I'm just bitter. I'm tired of the whole affair. I just want to be free of the terrible hurt I feel inside whenever I see her with him. I want to return to what I was before I knew her. I want her the memory of her eyes out of my head. I want to forget about her smile, or her hair, or her laughter.

I've tried to free myself from all this. I tried to bury myself in my work, but her memory distracted me. It's been over a week since I've done productive work, and that's a bad sign when you're a second-year honours Microbiology student struggling to get decent grades.

I've tried to return to old hobbies, and I find them dry and uninspiring. If I were a drinking man, I'd find solace in a bottle of scotch.

Hell, the only reason that this rant made it here was because I needed to exorcise this entire business anyway. It's not as if these pages receive a high load of traffic. It's not as if I want mail consoling me. Because I don't. I'm just sharing this because the demons want out.

So my demons go in the open.

That isn't too bad. After all, "A burden shared is a burden lessened." I don't really know how far, or to whom this message reaches.

I know that I could have used a page like this when I could no longer stand my own bitterness. So all I can hope for is that, for someone out there, this page will do them some good.

In the end, I did manage to find a few pages involving either bitterness, bitter people, or bitter situations.

• A Web Full of Bitterness.
  
• John William's Bitterness Page.
  
• Jono's Laws Regarding Unrequited Love.
  
• Angst, Bitterness and Cynicism.
  
• Derek the Bitter.
  
• The last of the famous international bitter boys.
  
• Bite me Fanboy, you know where you are.
  
• Stanford's Humour Archive: Men and Women.
  

ADDENDUM: Some time later

Anyway, a lot of things change in a couple of months. I'm not as bitter as I used to be. We've patched things up between the two of us (three of us, if you count her boyfriend and me, who used to be, and are once again, friends).

This doesn't mean that I no longer feel hollow and empty. There's a space in my chest where my heart should go, but instead there's nothing there, save for a strange and clutching ache.

I know this feeling far too well. It's the feeling of intense loneliness, of being other, and apart. It's the feeling that you get, walking down a rainy street, and you're wet and miserable and cold, only to pass by some happy couple holding hands who can, because of their couple-ness, ignore the rain and bitter winds that lash at everyone else.

There's a spiritual, emotional poverty at work here, gnawing away at the core of my being, feeding the debris of my soul into the wells of desire and despair growing inside, opening me up to loneliness.

I wish that I could scream at the darkness. Unfortunately, I'd feel silly doing it.

Maybe I'm being melodramatic. I know I'm loads better off than many people. But like I said, this isn't about material fulfillment. It's about being a hollow man, of not even being able to rage at the darkness that consumes me.

In the end, though, the efforts of this little page of loneliness, bitterness, anger and despair seem pretty futile and insignificant.

"You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied."

-- the voice of Andy (Douglas Coupland, Generation X)

Well, I guess it's time to get on with the business of living.

ADDENDUM: Much, much later

It's been a while since this page was generated. It's been a couple of years since the event that inspired this page, and the follow up. I keep the page up 'cause it seems that a lot of people like to come to this particular page. I, personally, have long since moved on (and besides, I've got other things on my mind these days...)