ately, I honestly have not been doing very well. A lot of the progress and strength that I've been picking up since I sought help in 2007 is starting to wear off, and earlier today I found myself actually contemplating suicide in very serious terms. I think it's time that I make more appointments to find help, because while I have no plans for my immediate and long-term future I know for sure that this is not where I want to be. It is truly a scary kind of thought to have while being aware that it's bad at the same time.

t has been four years since my relationship ended. She was not my first, and she was not my last. There were people before her, and there have been people after her (and I'm sure maybe in the future there will still be more yet), but out of everybody that I've considered or attempted to be close and/or intimate with, she was the only one who really cared about my feelings. I was younger and I felt like I had "more time", so to speak, that there was no rush, and that worked fine for us because she was shy and I was more than nervous and I wasn't really interested in people. The system we had worked, we'd slowly build up to forms of contact we felt okay with and work from there. These days, as in with people my age, people move too fast for my comfort. They expect to have certain things done on certain dates and at certain times. They expect you to want sex, they expect you to want to "make out" or do other human courtship related things. And I can't handle that. I don't like having these things thrown on me, because it doesn't work. I am embarrassed to say this, but the last (and only) time someone offered themselves to me, I realized I hardly knew them, and in the whole truth -- I couldn't get it up.

like reptiles. That is a given, otherwise I wouldn't be running this website. I have loved reptiles my entire life, and yes I do have a sexual attraction to them (again, that's obvious). Reptiles are prehistoric creatures, though, and even though some of them have the higher cognitive capacities required to be able to be trained, they still aren't really sentient like people are. They are cold and unloving, but I just find them beautiful. I could make love to an alligator, but would that reptile love me back? The answer is no, no she would not love me in return -- because they don't have the capacity to love. I am a person who is very needy of affection, someone who needs to be reminded that their presence is valued and isn't just "there". I don't just want someone to hold my hand or rest their head on my shoulder when they're tired, I need that. I need that so much that I'm willing to do my best to make reptiles second-best to a human; but not any human, though, a special someone who would understand and accept me for who I am and not let it hinder their impression of me. Someone who could look me in the eye and tell me they loved me despite my alternative preferences. I thought my ex was that person, in fact she's the only person I ever really refer to as "ex" because all the others... honestly someone just needs to invent a new letter of the alphabet for them. Sub-ex, maybe?

t is hard to be concise about things when I am speaking about huge portions of time in my life, but she meant a lot to me. I've dated or been "more than friends" with several people after her. I've held hands with other people, I've kissed other people too. I've also come out to other people -- but I can't remember any firsts with any of them. I remember the first time I held hands with my ex, I remember the first time we kissed, and unfortunately I also remember the moment I came out to her. I didn't just blurt it out, I thought it over for a very long time; I didn't want to say anything until I knew it would be the best moment. About a month prior to that day I had traveled to New York with her to see her perform at Carnegie Hall (yes, that Carnegie Hall). I thought after that moment, seeing as how she wanted me to be at one of the most important moments in her life, that I could finally trust her with the most personal facet of mine.

e were watching a movie in her room that night, something we had done many times before. She and I laid on the couch together, her body slightly on top of mine, my arm around her, holding her hand. I don't want to say it was "like clockwork" because even though it was the same kind of routine each time, it felt like the world to me and every experience felt new. After the movie I went and picked up my coat and things (it was in November, it was cold) and set them by the door. We hugged, kissed, then I decided that I'd tell her just how deep my love for reptiles, which she already knew I loved, really was.

"'m... a zoophile," I said with a mix of haste and a brief pause. I didn't just say that alone, I actually had a bit of chatter with her before hand, but that's the sentence that ended up destroying my world.

y girlfriend was taken aback by the statement and suddenly needed clarification, so I explained it to her via her questions. "That's... honestly that's gross," she replied. "I think you should probably leave."

knew something had gone wrong. This didn't pan out the way I had run it through in my head at least a thousand times prior. I was just kicked out, this was not good. As it turns out, that was offensive to her, she thought that I didn't find her attractive. She thought that I was just a depraved sexual pervert. After a conversation that was less of a conversation and more of a berating session, my girlfriend was now my ex.

became a different person that day, really. My world no longer had a blue sky, my grass was no longer green. I contemplated suicide for the first time in my life that night. My ex wasn't a Utahraptor temptress. She was not a cerulean blue dragoness that would coo my name at night. She wasn't a big burly gator who wouldn't mind making me his, but still had a soft side. She wasn't one of those Jurassic Park dinosaurs that sparked platonic confusion in my five year old mind. No, my ex was a human -- and when I was with her, well, I was happy.

ince then, by various people, I've been lied to, judged, cheated on, psychologically abused, ridiculed, and objectified. Terrible, awful things have happened to me since I lost her. People whom I thought I could trust stabbed me in the back, people I wanted to find comfort in only wanted other things from me instead. My paradise was gone and had been replaced with hell. I stopped eating well and in the process I lost a lot of weight. I stopped taking care of myself, and ended up losing my job at the movie theater when I arrived to work looking like an unshaven haven't-gotten-any-sleep-in-3-days convict one too many times. I didn't grow my hair out because I thought it looked good, I grew it out because I didn't care what I looked like. I didn't have to look good for anyone anymore, what would I care if I looked like Penn Gillette if he was strung out on drugs? The only thing my ex ever did to me was tell me what 99.9% of the world would have done if you told them you were a zoophile. She said I was gross and disgusting, a statement she has since apologized profusely for and retracted.

ack in 2002 I lost a friend to suicide, a subject I don't really like to talk about but one that has affected my life greatly. Some of you may be familiar with "Panzer", the ice dragon character from some of my work. Panzer is based off of a person I once knew, the one who shot himself. Panzer was a zoophile, and had he been alive today I'm positive he would have had an account right alongside me on websites like Herpy. Panzer took his own life on December 29, 2002 at the age of 20. He was a troubled man with a lot of problems in his life; I was young and naive -- mature mentally but not in an educated sense. I don't beat myself up for thinking perhaps there was something I could have said or done to save him, because that's what everybody says in situations like this. I don't blame myself for his death, and I don't feel like I am responsible. I have accepted that, and while I miss him I don't have personal regrets. I don't remember the very last thing he said to me but I do remember some of the last conversations we had. I don't really remember any specific words, but I know he was lonely and he couldn't take it. One of the last things I remember him saying, before he suddenly stopped signing into messenger and the MSN chat room we frequented, was "there's nothing in this world for people like us", with "people like us" meaning herpetophiles.

hat quote haunted me to the point where I left the furry/zoo community and tried to fit into a persona I was not. I may have been someone else on the outside, but on the inside I was still Raptor Millennium III (my old screenname). I had met my ex as a friend from school way back in 2000, and she always knew I was a little strange. While she and I were close we were never really " dating-close" until around 2005. I was happy with her, I was happy with everything she and I did together. Suddenly that quote of Panzer's that lingered in my mind disappeared. No, Panzer, you were wrong. There is something in this world for everybody, even herpetophiles. With her, I laughed. I smiled. I actually enjoyed life and felt that my reservations and apprehensions were meaningless. Panzer must not have been looking hard enough, maybe he was just a sob-story. I had proven him wrong, I had proven his wisdom incorrect. I had won.

nd then I became 20 and single, and suddenly that very quote casually came back to me with an "I told you so" attached to it. It was almost like I could feel him pointing at me and laughing, like I dared to challenge what he had said. After four years of thinking that Panzer was just depressed, that it was his mood and not his brain that was talking to me, I realized he wasn't depressed -- no, even worse -- he was right all along. I was foolish enough to think that I could win that easily. I realized at that moment I had became Panzer, that now I was the lonely 20 year old zoophile, and even worse... I had come so very close to harming myself in the process. It was all too surreal for me, which is why I decided to seek counseling, and here I am today: Andre Kon, hopelessly single and depressed, fearing the future and living in the past.

t took my ex a little under a year to pick up her pieces and move on and find someone else, someone with whom she is still with today. It has been four years and counting since that day and I have yet to get myself back together. I'd like to say at one point in time I had a spine, that I was proud to be who I was. I'd like to have that feeling back sometime, really. Four years ago I was given a curb check and I don't think I was ever really able to get back up and heal. I have just "existed" for almost half of a decade, living only in my memories, holding onto them like they're the most valuable things I own, because sadly they are. Ten people, ten, after my ex. That's how many people I either dated or expressed my interest for after we broke up, and one by one things just went south horribly. She got hers right on the first god damn try.

t's not right of me to wish bad things to happen to her relationship. It's an awful thought to have and I've stopped myself from having it many times. I still love her, I always will, and really I just want her to be happy -- and if that's with someone who isn't me, then it's for her own good in the end. She is talented, she is going somewhere in life and she needs to have the company of somebody who can support her everywhere and be able to handle her ensuing busy life. Maybe I'm not that person, because in a given relationship I'm the one who needs to support, the help, and the love; I need the helping hand, I have the scraped knee that needs mending. I'm not saying I am incapable of loving someone else, because that's a fallacy. I have such a capacity to love somebody it's not even funny; it's just that I feel everybody else after her with whom I have tried to be with isn't deserving of me. I need to move on. I need to stop looking forward to the times when my ex visits. I need to not walk backwards in life with my eyes looking toward the things that have passed me by, but ahead at what has yet to come; even if I know that at any moment I'm going to step off of a cliff.

need to heal. I really need to, I just don't know how. I want things to be right with me, I just want to have someone in my life that makes me feel like waking up the next day. But it's just me here, by myself.

n my photo album I have a picture of me with my ex on a boat in New York. I'm smiling in it. I really do think it's the last time I ever smiled and really meant it.

Much love,