It's Lonely at the Top

I know exactly what to do to mold this situation to my advantage.
I know how to linger my speech, how to turn my head, how to tilt my neck back, how to arch my shoulders....how to elicit the exact response I want from her in this moment...I can see the matrix.
But instead....I feel nothing.

The mask has slipped.
I have seen her.
I have seen the portrait in the schoolroom but rather than her stab me like Basil Hallward, all that has died is the image I held so dearly of her in my mind.
The truth is perhaps more than my heart wishes to bear.
It would be best if I just let her go and started this dogged, endless, tiresome pursuit again.

I don't know how many more of these intense loves I have left in me.
One? Two?
None?

Who can know such things.
At any rate, I grab my things, head to the gym, determined to grind this feeling out but it doesn't leave my chest and my game isn't on point, and I lack the finesse and ability to find the zone and training is as frustrating as it has been lately and my game just isn't coming together.
I chalk it up to a major training plateau/slump and head home frustrated and angst-ridden, trying to remind myself that all things pass and that this is no different but it doesn't help and I still feel like shit about her, about my training lately, and my life in general.
I don't consider drinking or drowning my sorrows I just accept it as the price to pay forward or toward the good times that I choose to believe lurk on the horizon no matter how difficult they may be to see or even imagine exist at this moment in time.

You figure out not women, but how to interact with them.
My current girl was my biggest challenge to date in a number of ways.
Emotionally, she was the most eternal ingénue that I have met. A truly capricious spirit with many, many suitors to contend with and surpass.
But in this moment, my moment of excellent victory, the old me rears his head and whispers.....this is it. This is all there is.
What now?
Even when we get what we want, we're not happy, not satisfied, not content.
This, this predilection...this is my true disease.
I still go days without drinking. Weeks even.
Been back out and the world didn't collapse nor did I burn the town down.
I do know that the old me is still there, still watching hungrily for me to lapse ever so slightly and let him back out.

As it is, I know there's a solution if I start to slip. I was sober for nearly a **** and can do it again.
It's a choice.
I can be that person who is completely sober and though it requires some considerable changes, it is entirely doable.
Time will tell.
Keep following your inner compass.
They will tell you to turn back.
You will want to turn back.
Keep fucking going.
It has made all the difference.