Today, I found out that years and years later, I'm still trash.

Jenny married an AVP for a company. It may be a startup, it may be a small company, but Nacho is AVP, and is probably doing everything he can to make that company grow. For himself, for the people who work there, and of course for his family.

Meanwhile, my greatest achievements in the past 8 years are...
1) Become Team Lead. Not even a manager, just a team lead in charge of developing 16 people into becoming better team members.
2) Become some kind of ISO specialist. In charge of taking care of documentation and ensuring they are followed in the companies I work in.
3) Become a steel mill production manager. Still unable to exercise any power, because the actual running is done by aging consultants who have yet to give any kind of power to me.
4) Find and love Ria. Who I threw away in order to be with Che, who is currently with someone else. All I do is steal time from their relationship, to entertain myself for... 3 hours a day?

In summary, I have achieved nothing of note in the past 9 years, and I feel worse and worse everyday, because I put all my eggs in one basket, and threw that away, perhaps hoping that I'll get a new basket in the future. Fat chance of that happening.
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Karma will be out to get me, to punish me for what I did to Ria. And I know I can't go back to her, until I manage to improve myself, at least. If returning to Ria is even a possibility.

Jenny must have really felt that staying with me was going to be fruitless, since she found Nacho. Eight years later, she's right. She's now being a good doctor, and Nacho is successful. Meanwhile, I'm rubbish.

Good job me!

What am I doing?

Some days, that question no longer makes any sense to me, as I no longer see the reason in me doing certain things.

A bit of context on what I mean: At the start of this year, I broke up with Ria, because I no longer feel happy in her company, always having to deny myself and my feelings for Che. I realize that I loved Che, perhaps just a tad bit more than Ria, because I'm just that unwilling to let her go. I don't want to lose someone who shares most of my interests to another man, who incidentally just might be ten times better than me at everything.

I let go of Ria, breaking her heart horribly, and mine at the same time. I declared myself unfit for Ria. Satisfying myself in the justification that I deserve to find my own happiness as well, secretly wishing that I'm somehow able to win Che back from Kyle, an insane gamble with a 0% guarantee of anything.

Weeks later, Mom passes away, a confusing mess of a few days, annoying, confusing, and... Perhaps liberating. Confusing, because I'm taking advice from a woman who... I have no idea if she truly loves me. Annoying because I keep driving away the woman who I know loves me. Liberating because finally, I know I'm free to live for myself, horrible as the entire experience was.

And months later, I keep focusing my efforts towards... I don't know. Am I trying to win Che back? Really? Knowing that she spends 90% of her time with Kyle, at home and on almost all weekends? Which obviously makes me a literal second choice. Something to plug a hole in whatever she's trying to do. She claims she's doing her best to accommodate me. I'm inclined to believe her, but its so difficult and painful on so many levels.

Che loves to attack my Telus connections. How awful the BPO environment is, how it breeds lousy or weak-minded individuals who can't find their own identity or find a better job outside. How the IT work they do there isn't really IT, but more like expendable IT. She says that to prove just how much better off she is compared to Ria, and idiot that I am, I keep defending how the IT environment in Telus isn't that bad. Which just drives both people insane, because Che can't accept how I keep defending the company and by extension Ria, while I keep getting offended since all the time I spent with Telus is effectively useless, based on her own definition. I keep getting insulted because after all, her references are more reliable than my own experiences, and their claims are more "spot-on" because they're "real IT" professionals. I'm just a disposable IT person with 9 years of lousy experiences.

She also loves to attack my BPO friends, explaining how shallow minded they are, despite my claims that I know these people, and that they're not really 100% offensive, or annoying. I agree that they're annoying, but I've spent time with these people: they're as people-like as others with their own pet peeves and unforgivable mannerisms. Che loves to villainize them, either to defend me or to convince me further that they're worthless people, and that there are better people out there to be friends with.

All my friends are compared to Che's friends, who are shown to be these awesome, non-selfish, enlightened friends who can do no wrong and who are worlds better than my human, shallow, selfish and pretentious friends from the BPO industry. I have nothing to defend my friends with, namely because I have very few friends, and have no friends who have reached such an enlightened level.

I feel inadequate and undesirable because Che doesn't seem to want to consider having sex with me. Sure, she requires condoms, but to be laughed at for going flaccid while wearing a condom... Or to have little interest in fucking even after getting sufficient foreplay. Such things are very damaging for a man's ego.

What value do I add to her when she spends her time and effort being sweet with Kyle, right in front of me?

What exactly am I doing with my life then? Did I ruin my already lousy relationship with Ria to have a lousier, broken relationship with someone who treats me as an option...? I don't know, because I see no benefits on my side.

Call me selfish and self-serving, but if I find no benefit to myself, what exactly is the use in taking one over another option, right? Should I then take Rach's recommendation to me years ago? To cut off both women in my life in order to let myself grow? I have no idea. Perhaps I should and let Ria and Che rebuild their lives without my influence.