I feel sleepy all the time. I do not feel comfortable unless I am lying down with my eyes closed. And when I finally sleep my dreams are vivid, strange, and sometimes terrible. Last night, I dreamt that a bomb was set off in the house, as a result of a failed military test, and I watched as our dining room was totally engulfed in a flash fire behind the glass doors that separated it from the rest of the house. Our family got out, except for our helper, who was consumed by the flames until she was only a skeleton, which even then turned into ash.

I wake up, and I feel like today is going to be different. Today, I am going to be happy. I am going to play the games that I have been putting off playing, and I will enjoy them. Today, I will watch a movie, and I will feel the way I used to feel when I did that—analytical, moved to write about my feelings. Curious about the world, about people, about what life was supposed to mean. But I spend an hour or two awake, and I only feel tired. And I feel like it was all so meaningless.

I am 33, the year Jesus started his ministry. At my age, God made flesh redeemed the world. And he was from a very low-income household, with no formal education. His genetics were exemplary of course, but I think in this case we are at the balance.

I wrote something for a friend the other day. He said: You should read up on how semicolons work. I haven’t been offended like that in a while. And when we went over it, it turned out that it was he who didn’t know how semicolons worked. He didn’t know that they connected two related independent clauses. He didn’t know much about grammar or style. It emphasized how I felt about people.

I despise stupidity. Which isn’t simply not knowing something. It is impossible to know everything; therefore, everyone has things they do not know. Plain ignorance becomes stupidity when pride gets in the way learning and understanding. Ultimately, stupidity is an aspect of pride. Selfishness.

Something I do all the time is play board games online. I love board games. My ex Fitzgerald was good at games, and if we were still together, I imagine we would spend a huge amount of time playing board games together. He was good to me. He was very good to me. And I wasn’t very good to him. That is the story of my life. Because although stupidity is an aspect of pride, and an aspect that I do not think I possess, I am guilty of pride, too.

And this pride has ruined my life in many, treacherous ways. When I was a child, of course, this was most apparent. I was prideful in a vulgar way: Boasting, lying, attention seeking. But in college my pride and intellectual vanity became more insidious. And when men loved me, I used that love to remind them, myself, and the world that I was better.

Now, I consider myself a little wiser. But it is too late for many things. Not too late for many other things, but certain doors have definitely closed for me. And certainly doors to the hearts of certain people. Recently, I found out that included Fitzgerald’s.

I remember that night. I don’t remember anything else but that moment, when I said what I said. It was a terrible, nasty thing. Not vulgar, and without expletives, but it was the truth. That was what made it terrible and nasty. But what was interesting to me was that, when he recounted it to my friend, he did not remember it perfectly. Or maybe he could not even say what I exactly said. Maybe he wanted to forget, and when he needed to conjure the memory it would not come perfectly.

Freud would more properly call this repression. There is a reason he forgot, or chose to forget, what I said. It makes me wonder what I’ve forgotten, and why.