lexapro, day one. sept 1st.


strange and weird is an understatement for how i am feeling today.


i woke up hopeful. swallowing a doubly expensive pill because of my insurance woes at 10 this morning. in an effort to change myself and my life for the better. to quiet the noise in my head. to slow the racing thoughts. to decrease panic. to minimize mood swings. to level out. to be less overwhelmed, and more motivated to do something – anything, really.


i forgot it was the first, and i'd planned to start the medication on saturday, but decided not to put it off one more day, and to start on the first for some odd reason. seemed like a good idea at the time.

the instructions stated that it will take a month to kick in and feel a difference. the shrink is glad i'm trying it, but told me that it is a six month to a year long committment, which really almost scared me out of taking it.

but halfway through my session, i decided. i told her that i'd decided on my drive back from florida with brownies that i should do it. and that i got back and had a good week, before slipping back into bad weeks. and she said that's the misconception about depression and anxiety. you can have good weeks mixed in with bad ones.


in talking about my life events in the last month, she said that i already live a very high stress life, and have, and will. and that i've been through a lot in the last two years. and said that i need to think of this as a cup filling. all the stress of the divorce put some liquid in the cup. and then the house added to that, and family stuff, and work had taken me to the brink. and then this last loss was what it took to make the cup overflow. the drug will help drain some of the contents of my cup. and will help me get to a point where i can start emptying some of it out myself, in time. i won't have to worry about it overflowing (if all goes according to plan) and eventually my cup will remain half filled/empty, and as stress piles back in, i won't be paralyzed with anxiety while i watch it overflow.

we'll see.


this morning i took it after having about half a cup of coffee. i was nervous bellied about it, didn't get much sleep last night, and woke up worrying. but instead of letting that convince me to wait a day, it motivated me to take it, so i'm one day closer to not waking up like that.

and i got ready for work, and got back onto my bed.

i had a lot of work to do at home before leaving for the stores and delaware. it was a beautiful day out, and i was happy to be driving. until i hit traffic about ten minutes from the house. and more traffic twenty minutes after that. and still more twenty minutes after that. my thought for today was, 'sometimes you can only go as fast as the person ahead of you'.

i was feeling spacey almost immediately. and i guess being aware of the fact that you're taking a brain drug for anxiety can riddle you with more, out of fear and worry that it won't work, or that your body won't acclimate easily, or for me, that i'll be stuck on this for the rest of my life.

and i tried to quiet that stuff, to keep from panicking. it felt an awful lot like the old days of dropping acid, to immediately wonder if you're in the mindset to drop, and wait with a belly full of tangles for the shit to kick in.

i tried to positive talk myself mentally while i drove. 'it's okay. you won't feel anything for a month. you're going to feel better soon. everything is going to be okay. pretty soon, you won't worry or obsess or ruminate so much. take a deep breath. just drive. get where you're going. and keep moving forward.'

but by noon, my hands were shaking, i was feeling racy and stomach-sick. she'd told me it was okay to take an ativan if i felt uncomfortable, so i did. i'd taken an allergy pill when i got up to combat the congestion i've been dealing with for a few days now. and i think the coffee and the belly full of pills was not good for me. i don't want to take pills to combat pills, and the thought that i had a belly with pills floating in it was making the situation worse.

luckily, i didn't get sick. i still haven't eaten today. nothing sounds good. nothing sounds like it would settle my stomach. nothing looks good. not even shitty fast food, which is usually the perfect answer.

i'm hoping that it goes away soon, because i have to eat something. but i keep alternating feeling sick with being hungry. i ate enough yesterday to last a few days, but that is neither here nor there.


i had a hard time speaking today. forming sentences. completing thoughts aloud. focusing on anything, particularly driving, which is a horrible feeling, when you're stuck in three separate traffic jams, and wind up in a car for a few hours.

shaky hands. shaky legs. wobbly body. slower judgments. everything today took FOREVER. i felt very scattered, and more than once had to go back and redo something because i forgot half of what i was trying to do.

i just felt slow. getting ready, doing the work from home. getting every place i was trying to go, except, luckily, for the drive home. sorting through things in delaware. everything. or as kim is in the habit of saying right now, from hyperbole, 'all of the things'.

but somehow i managed to accomplish most of what i set out to do today.

i had to put off some pretty important things, cutting myself a break, because i was an overachiever this week and got a shit ton of work done in preparation for back to school traffic and business next week. i probably had worked all of my hours by lunchtime today, but kept going, and will continue to tomorrow.

had i been thinking clearly, i would have spent today working on more things from home, and had a full day in delaware tomorrow. but now i have two days worth of stuff to do, and i'm halfway done.


i drove home feeling strange. one part sad. one part nervous. one part heady. one part slower. one part cloudy. one part shaky. i'm in one of those phases where i check everything three times. i have a list. did i do that? can i cross it off? stay focused. cross things off. and keep to yourself, and try not to talk a lot. write everything down when you think it. and then don't forget where you wrote it. and then don't lose the list.

i tried to talk as little as possible today.

because when i'm quiet, i don't feel so strange. but when i open my mouth to speak, it's like i've developed a stutter or something. nonsensical things pour out. and there are long pauses while my brain matches subject to predicate.


i'm going to feel better soon. that is my mantra for september. and my optimism is telling me that, by the time aubree gets back, even if it's just for a visit, in october, i'll be up for a weekend in new york, and social outings with friends. i'll be up for housework. i'll have burned through all of the internet tv and won't have the desire to lay around and watch things in an attempt to shut off my brain, which is only ever a temporary solution and a profound waste of time. one that drops my brain right back off at the start when the credits roll.


yesterday, i came back from running work errands and popped in my netflix movie. one day, i'll think to read the little blurbs they write about movies before i watch them. i hate spoilers, so usually, i'll watch something based on who is in it, and intentionally not read the synopsis. i happen to love joseph gordon-levitt. mostly thanks to 500 days of summer. but there was a movie i watched a couple months ago that he was in, that was fucked up. and i still didn't learn my lesson. and found something else he was in. i watched 'mysterious skin'.

really really rough. and like always, i'm stubborn about finishing what i start. so ten minutes in, when i knew where it was going, i kept watching, until the end. buckle up if you watch it. two themes: pedophiles and teenage prostitution.

just awful. so fucked up.

but i finished that and sealed it up, feeling relieved that it was over, and kept working.


something really fucked up happened, right after that.

i was home from work early, i had a lot to do for work, but from home on my laptop. i didn't much feel like running errands, but didn't want to put them off, so i made myself go. came home, worked some more.

it's never unusual to hear sirens in phila. all day, all night, randomly. busier streets have more. the street i'm on now and the one from the apartment i shared with ever were frequent. halfway house apartment and the one i lived in alone, not as much.

i thought nothing of the ambulance, and plugged along.

two hours later, after the movie, mike got home from work and called out to me from the front door.

there was a sound in his voice that set off little warning buzzers in my brain.


'did you see what's going on outside?'

i said no, and dan and i followed him outside to the stoop.

a block up from my house, on my street, everything was cordoned off with police tape. crime scene units, tons of cops in cars and vans, news camera crews on all sides, one camera pointed in our direction. and of course, every neighbor trying to see what they could see for two city blocks.

the commissioner was even there.

a mother had killed her two children in their home. one block away.

word on the streets: she shot them on sunday. and they were all inside until yesterday at four, when the ambulance showed, and the flurry began.

i don't know the story. i don't like to watch the news. but i'll look it up online to see how much of what was said was true.

but how fucking FUCKED UP is that? killing children? i cannot fathom.

(she stabbed them, the grandmother came home and found them. twelve and eight. the rest was accurate)


and that experience on the stoop two short days after dan moved in led to a conversation about street smarts, and crime and violence in the city. and i'm pretty sure he was horrified.

i did my best to tell him that i only feel safe because the crime is almost always targeted. drug dealers and thugs taking each other out and the like. but mike kept saying things to detract from that.

and after we all sat outside and smoked and talked for a long time, we went back inside, making our dinners and going our separate ways. and that ill feeling didn't pass for a while.

* * *

i don't know. the last few hours since i started this felt normal. and now? back to weird. uneasy, but not bad. it's all in my gut. that sinking feeling you have when you get bad news. i hate that feeling. i live with that feeling often, because of all the worrying, panicking. but this is that feeling without the panic. it's like the aftermath. calming down, and feeling drained, depleted, empty. but still sick.

in an effort to not be a complete retard, i had one beer when i came home, with dinner. i really want another, because that is my habit. but if i want this to work for me, i'm going to have to save two beer nights for weekends and special occasions.

i thought today about trying to quit smoking. it was fleeting. i know it's awful, and expensive. but, like my ramen dinners, it's comforting.

today, all that driving, i'd normally have killed a third of a pack by the time i got home, maybe more. today i had half as many, because of the feeling in my stomach. it's not uncommon for antidepressants to accidentally help people quit smoking who didn't set out to.

and what's more, after a day of not being able to eat, one beer would normally set me a little off-kilter. but not tonight.

it's most likely in my head, but i am wondering if reuptake inhibitors keep alcohol and cigarettes from achieving desired effects.


maybe that long list of side effects will include some positive ones as well. cutting back on things that have exceeded beyond most people's idea of moderation for me personally won't be a bad thing. it's something i have known i wanted to do for a long time, but just couldn't.

having a few drinks to relax and fall asleep at night, smoking and thinking, smoking and trying not to think, they became my comforts when i left ever, and during all the rough patches since.

but i think that as long as i'm taking such a drastic measure to make myself feel better, knowing the things that don't make me feel better, and trying to ease up on them a little, seems like the right accompaniment.

smoking might be a little harder to squash. and i'm not by any stretch of the imagination saying that i'm trying to quit.


this entire process is going to be about breaking associations. taking back all the things that i experience daily, that have made me sad enough to cry when i happen into them, is the start of it. today i hit a few songs on the road that normally would make me skip them, because i just can't sit through them. because of where they make my head go. and call it my psychology background and training, but i made myself sit through them today, some little version of exposure therapy. and my mind went there, but i didn't cry. baby steps.

next will be baseball games on tv. i've missed quite a bit, in an effort to not think about who i'd rather be watching or attending them with. mike said last night that it's ridiculous to let someone take away an entire sport. and he was right. it sounds absolutely asinine. all the things like that, i need to start taking them back. the drives past the exit, the cars i'm stuck on the road with.


one day it won't matter anymore that once they stood for something very different. once they made me smile while i passed them. and i'll be better when they don't make me sad anymore. it will take a long time to get there, and it starts with averting my eyes now, which i've been doing for a few weeks. eventually, i won't even see them. i know this from my past.

all of the music was different just a few short months ago. and in a little while longer, they won't make me embarrassed and sad anymore. they won't make me feel such strong regret for getting swept up in things and carried away before i was so violently dropped.

they won't make me want to waste time. they won't make me wish time away. they won't make me feel the desire to be un-alone. and they won't make me sad to be alone.


the shrink said this is, at a minimum, a six month commitment. that she'd prefer a year. and that most people, after that time has passed, don't want to live without the drug, because they don't prefer their life before it.

and despite the fact that i knocked the dust off of my dating site profile today, maybe three months is a smart window to tell myself that i will not actively pursue a relationship of any variety. six months would probably be better, but i don't want to set myself up for failure.

because it turns out that i crave that attention. that interaction. i want to curl up with someone so badly. in three months it will be much cooler than it is now, and i think that six would just mean another unbearable winter. and at the risk of picking up where i left off with some other undeserving guy, i don't think it's safe to play in those waters right now.


things are starting to make a little more sense to me, when i step out of the cloud of that boy, and just put him aside. i was drowning in there. i have been. past tense isn't even appropriate, because several times a day, i go right back there again.

but to know that it is over, and that i can't imagine a future where it doesn't stay that way, it's giving me a little clarity, and i'm grateful for that.


i fell hard and fast. and i fell after being persuaded to jump. i'll be smarter next time.

because, really, that's all i can ever do.

with new scars and bruises. rebuilding that wall that i so smartly built for a year. i learned it the hard way once already, so the second time around should be a little easier.


is that optimism? i'm calling the placebo effect. but there it is, regardless.


happy pill. day one. done.

i survived, mostly without incident.

hurricane. august 27th & 28th

i'm laying here, i've been staring at my computer screen for about ten minutes now, unable to click on anything.

absolutely stunned. with a hot face.

i have never felt so stupid in all my life.

okay, that's an overstatement.

but really? why did he have to pop up on my dating site as a match?


we talked about it before we met. he was against it, said he didn't like seeing people he grew up with and how they presented themselves on the site.

and i got that email a month ago, and never heard back after that. the one where he explained that i'm awesome and amazing, and that he just doesn't think it's fair to date anyone in light of how he's feeling.


really? that was a speedy recovery.

and here i am, the day after i had a meltdown driving a few blocks from his house on a bridesmaid's dress errand that was two minutes from him. it killed me to drive past. to not say hi. to not do anything. but i did. out of respect for his situation.

when it turns out that his situation isn't a situation at all.


well, i take back what i said. no more wishing he was an asshole. because i think this classifies him as one.

what the fuck? i fell for it all. i cried. i have cried over this more than my fucking DIVORCE. and i still can't believe it. i can't believe that he is on dating site. i still don't want to get out of bed. and i don't even have it in me to go on a fucking spree out of some form of vengeance.


i haven't been writing because this has been going on in the background of my head for so long. and i just couldn't give it more attention than it already had. i have been trying to distract myself for two months now, maybe longer.

and i just don't get it.

and my instantaneous response is to email him and be like, 'what the fucking FUCK, dude?'

and i just can't do it. and i don't know if it's because i don't want to give him the satisfaction, or if it's because i can't handle infinite silence.


just last night, and i have been so good about not doing this (it was only following that meltdown that i had a moment of weakness after driving through the suburbs), i was having my last cigarette, and wrote an email i'll never send.

all this heartfelt bullshit. so longing. telling him i think he's worth waiting for. just last night. i feel so fucking stupid.

telling him i know that we're having the same weekend, staring at the leaks in our houses, and that even if things were as they had been, we couldn't hole up for a few days and ride out the storm together, because we're stuck at our homes. that i knew he was watching his basement door, waiting for the floodwaters to come rushing back in.

* * *

as expected, the hurricane was no more than a rainy day. it was gone before it was even supposed to arrive. and i feel lucky. all that vigilance, and getting my roof fixed this week, paid off. no leaks. the house stands exactly as it did before the hurricane.

i unfriended him last night on facebook. kit had friended him when she met him, and told me that his basement flooded with sewage. and i should be glad about it, revenge and all.

but i'm not. instead i feel bad, knowing this is going to create a lot of problems for him. his house is now as full of shit as he is.


today was a waste. because i guess i wanted it to be. and tomorrow at work, things will be as normal as they always are. back to work. back to the stress and grind that woke me up in a tossing and turning panic yesterday morning.

i actually did a lot of work this weekend. tying up a few loose ends that let me fall asleep last night feeling accomplished and more caught up.


but none of that mattered when i woke up fuming and panicked this morning at six. thirty minutes later, i gave up and took an ativan to fall back asleep. woke up at 1030 to drag around the house.


fall has been in the air for about a week now. the days warm up a lot, but in the morning, it's sweaters and long sleeves.

i'm not ready for it. as desperate as i was for summer to end, to hopefully close some chapter of my life that is my newest regret, my most recent installment of wishing i could go back in time to unmeet someone, i am not ready for the cooler weather.

partly because i had hoped that when things got cooler and the windows stayed open, that i'd have a greg shaped boy in my bed to snuggle up to. that he'd have recovered enough to want to be close with me again in the fall.


i guess that this is what i needed to start to give up and really get over it. i had a few weeks interspersed with actively changing my train of thought when he'd pop up. i had a couple weeks where i didn't cry over him at all.

but the last week, in the quiet of normal life without houseguests and fun times, i let my brain slip back into him. and i didn't force myself out, i just didn't act on my thoughts and feelings.

and now, all that i am grateful for is that i didn't cave. when i wanted to talk to him or say something, i didn't.

and for what it's worth, i remembered today that mark on his neck when i saw him last. i'll never be unconvinced that it wasn't a hickey now. i'll never be convinced that his heartbreaking email about all of his problems and his stupid brain was real. or honest.


and in the way i'm so good at executing, i can only wonder now if my response to him was what spawned this. that me telling him i'm not going to wait for him was his permission slip.

i just didn't expect it to be so quick. i didn't expect to see him on that site. i didn't expect to be an 86% match. i didn't expect to see a picture from just last weekend. i guess i thought that, when he was ready, he'd come back to me. for no strings attached, or for dating, or for something more.


ani has that line, 'sleepless and embarrassed about the way that i feel'. it's been in my head for three days now, changing meaning as it applies to my feelings in three different ways.

but the point is the same.


after a couple entries over the last month, i come back from my hiatus still stuck in the same place. still wondering how long it will be until i feel ready for something different. until i stop associating everything he ruined for me with him. until i can honestly say that i'm not heartbroken anymore.

maybe this will inevitably speed it up. maybe my session at the shrink tomorrow will help. i don't think that, from here, it can make it any worse, that's for sure.


this awful thing happened a couple weeks ago. i was at work, and got a call from my shrink's office. saying that i owed $200 in copayments. i knew there was a mistake, because i pay every time i go. so i called my insurance company.

come to find out, the idiot fucking bookkeeper had changed my insurance and not told me. or kenna had. or the broker did it on her own. but since april, my copay for my shrink has been $75 a session, not $35 as it has been since i started. so i owe for my five visits, and nearly canceled my appointment for tomorrow because i can't justify $75 for an hour of therapy.

no one knows what is going on. and no one has it as a priority other than me, so i'm still clueless as to what is going to happen with my insurance, but kenna said that she'd cover the difference because i need to go.

my own boss, telling me i need therapy. funny shit.

you don't change insurance on someone with anxiety disorders without telling them that it's going to more than double the cost of their visits to try to manage the anxiety.

it's bullshit. i'm still pissed about it, and there's still no resolution. all i know is that i didn't cancel the appointment.


and tomorrow, before that appointment, at noon, the new roommate dan arrives to the house with his mother to move in and pay rent and sign the lease.

it's just crazy.

things are starting to turn around, in a way. my financial situation should be improving, as long as he isn't a shawn 2.0 and pays rent and gets along with us. getting the work done that i did this weekend is going to make a few less things i worry about. the health department can show up and i'll actually be ready for them. it's crazy.

but my head stays such a mess that i don't feel better.


last night, i saw this picture from last summer. nina, alice, and i. and i was smiling. a real smile, not one hiding something. i was so happy and free last summer, when i knew that i shouldn't get mixed up with boys. when i knew that i needed to be alone.

but deciding that i was wrong about that, after the deadline had passed, and that all i wanted was to be the girlfriend of some amazing guy who looked at me the way i looked at him? i just wish i could undo it.


until that feeling goes away, i'm just going to keep wasting time. since time is all that can make it better. it should have already been enough. i've more than surpassed the twice-as-long-as-the-relationship halflife. it doesn't make sense. it probably never will.


i hope he figures it out. i hope that he has some clue of how much he hurt me. of how vulnerable i made myself, because i trusted him, and how blatantly he abused that.

and i wish i could mean it when i write/think/say that i hope he's having those excited butterflies with someone else now. that he can get himself out of bed for someone else. that he turns off the tv for someone else. that he sets down the jameson for quality time with someone else.

but i don't. instead, i hope he has a horrible go at it. or better yet, that someone does to him what he did to me. because i just can't take thinking that he's happier without me.


i got my ass good and kicked on this one. so many times over. coming out of hiatus to write the same exact shit i was writing a month ago. fuck... two months ago even.

and i still wish, in light of all of these things in my head, that he'd just call and apologize and say that no one is as great as me. that no one compares.

because just looking through all those guys on that site makes me want him more. isn't that sick?

i made up my mind and found what i wanted. and he stole it away from me. what a dumbass. i'd never have done that to him. and if, over time, i had, i'd never have done it in such a cruel, dishonest, and deceitful fashion.


i had him pegged all wrong. i took what someone said about him being the best guy ever, and used that as a supporting framework to justify my feelings for him.

how funny the timing, that some trumped up fake fucking hurricane wound up being the perfect storm to lead me right into figuring out that the whole things was built out of something that can't withstand any force of nature.


the sky is so blue. the clouds are so fluffy and white. moving at this incredible clip across the sky. i'm bundled up, slippers and all, on my back deck, getting blown to hell by the leftover winds. winds worse today than anything last night in the brunt of the hurricane. or 'hurricane'. whatever.

the weather is what i love the best. seventies, sunny, windy. undeniably autumnal. and i am not even smiling.


i cannot wait to smile again. for real. no underlying sad.


i think that tomorrow is the day that i get a prescription for medication, if for no other reason than not knowing when i can afford to go back to see her again. whether i fill it or not, whether i take it or not.

maybe it will be the thing that helps me sleep at night, that helps me turn off the worry that wakes me up before the sun every day. maybe it will help me stop obsessing over this. maybe it is what will make me care less that some jackass crushed me harder than i can remember in recent history.


i hate feeling stupid. i hate feeling like a sucker.

and i hate feeling like the debbie downer, which is why i've tried so hard to lock myself away from anyone and everything and just go through it alone, not write about it, not talk about it. until the last two weeks, i wasn't talking about it at all, because i was trying so hard to get over it and not think about it at all.


i had an experience yesterday, before that whole thing happened where i figured him out.

it was early afternoon. the rain had started, but hadn't gotten that bad yet. i was coming out onto the deck for the second cigarette of the day. because i'm so hardcore about smoking in a hurricane, i came out and opened the door, and turned on the step to grab the chair and umbrella to sit, relatively dry, and smoke.

and when i turned, the tractionless flip flop i was wearing hit the smooth concrete of the mudroom steps, and slid right off the edge. it happened so fast.

i caught air. to see it happen would have probably made me laugh. but i landed squarely on my spine, against the edge of the step, and slid down until my feet hit the wall at the bottom. the whole thing happened in about two seconds, but i swear it was slow motion.

for that split second, knowing that i'd landed on my spine, i thought 'what if i can't get up?'

i was dazed, and took some time to lift my arms, to make sure i could move them, and then to inspect the damage. they were both scraped up and bloodied, my hand, my wrist, my elbow, my forearm. i was able to pick myself up, legs shaking from the adrenaline. i touched my back, and there was no blood, surprisingly, because it felt raw and was burning like my arms. i walked into the kitchen, rinsed off all the blood and dirt, shook my head, and went upstairs to bandage myself up.

three big bandaids, cottonballs, and a bunch of neosporin later, i went out for the fateful smoke, after throwing those flip flops away, and grabbing shoes with traction. i had changed my clothes, which were filthy from the fall, and sat down. thinking, i sustained injuries in the hurricane that hadn't even (technically) arrived yet.

i couldn't believe that i fell. and that the rest of the weekend was to be spent in bed, watching internet tv riding out the storm. and that everything hurt, just to LAY there. it still hurts. my back is pretty bad, muscles all sore.

to lay there and do nothing, thinking about everything. thinking about how fucking LUCKY i was to not have broken my back. that for a split second, i thought i would be paralyzed. unable to work, to walk, to get up, to do anything normally.

and how, the way that i feel, that i've been feeling for months, didn't even make that feel like a relief. like the cancerous friend who should serve to make me realize that my problems are non-existant. like the people who have so much less than i do, and no good health to be grateful for. i work in hospitals. i see it all the time. and still i pout and feel sorry for myself. what the fuck is wrong with me?


maybe the drugs will keep my brain from fixating on the shit that keeps me where i am. stagnant, with no desire to climb out of it. unmotivated to do anything or see anyone that could potentially make me feel better.

being so powerless to something that has effectively taken all control over my own well being and happiness from me. something that has made me feel more sad than i felt over the thirteen years of being powerless to coffee.

i need to get better. i'd say that i want to, but anyone who knows me knows how i love to wallow in my own self pity. that i have thrived on it for as long as i can remember. that it always made me a better writer.

maybe that's why i gave up writing. to try to prove to myself that nothing good has come out of this wallowing. that nothing positive can be salvaged from it. to try to force myself to climb out on my own, because it served and is serving absolutely no purpose in my life. so i can decide on my own, not because everyone who cares about me tells me to, to move on. and let go.


luckily i've had no drive for sex in the last month, conservatively. otherwise i'd move on from this to add to the pile of heartless fucks. of stupid boys who mean nothing to me. who do nothing for me but make me feel like i'm really good at making bad decisions.

i wish i could go back to that, mid-march. when i didn't care and didn't want any of the things that i decided i wanted a few months ago.


i'd say that mr. right can show up now. and be the real thing, and sweep me away. but i don't even think i'd know it if i saw it. i don't even believe that i'd find someone worthy anyway. i have lost faith in it. and faith in myself.

i toy with the idea of going into solitary boy confinement again. that year apparently was not long enough, because a few nights with one boy fucked me up this royally. and this feels worse than getting fed up and divorcing ever, so maybe i need two years of being completely alone, just to be on the safe side.


i don't ever want to feel like this again. the trick with this one is that i honestly thought i'd never be heartbroken again. that it couldn't end. that this was IT.


yet here i am, thinking, 'yep. still heartbroken.'


i'll try to learn from it. at least i am capable of that. i'll try to make better decisions. to use better judgment. to proceed more cautiously.


at the end of the day, i just want some guy, some friend, to hold me and kiss me and tell me everything is going to be okay. to have a little fun with someone i trust. to have someone share their time with me, because they want to. but at the same time, something that means little more to me than that. i just want to be held while i'm sleeping. i don't even want to fuck anymore. and i certainly don't want to get attached.

and the sooner that i realize that doesn't exist? the better off i'll be. that no one is going to hold me and say that to me. that i have to be content with myself, making my own good time, and sleeping peacefully alone, without someone hogging the sheets and waking me up every time they stir.

i got used to it so quickly last summer, it should be second nature. and i was so happy with it then. so satisfied.


i'll get there again. even if it's aided. i was strong enough before to do it on my own. most likely because i was fueled by anger. once this switches to anger, i'll be okay. it seems to be the most powerful motivator for me. i just need to embrace that. and ride this wave.

because now i know that it was all about the inequity. that at some point he did lose interest in me, and just was too much a coward to say so, because he knew that i wanted more from him. he thinks he let me down easy, that's what i'm telling myself. it was the ultimate 'it's not you, it's me', and i bought it. for a whole month.

as it turns out, yet again, i put someone on a pedestal who didn't deserve to be, and it bit me right in the ass. maybe i don't learn my lessons. but i can guarantee i'll be more careful next time.


back to life. back to tv. back to work. back to the shrink. back to being alone, and at some point, back to feeling like it's what is best for me...


more fodder for botox. glad i didn't get it before this summer, because the frown lines run deeper now.

i can't wait to smile again. and be happy again. for real, this time. like i was before i met him. like i was in the beginning. before i felt like someone was going to complete me. which sounds as awful to me now as it did to me before i met him.


it might be a while again. until i write something else. last night just felt like such a huge deal that i started a post. and today as it started to sink in, i had more to say about it.


aubree leaves for brazil in the morning. for three whole weeks. it's crazy. i can't wait, selfishly, until she gets back. because, when she gets back, the family is coming for a house fixing visit, and she potentially is moving back up for a few months.

i miss my sister. i have been doing better than i thought i would. this weekend might make anyone else wonder, but it's been better than laying in the dark crying, which is what i'd anticipated.

somehow august was better than july. negligible trace amounts better, but better. by sticking my head in the sand, i avoided some things. by watching tv i avoided some other things. other people's problems and all...

this week is september. it blows my fucking mind.

i have decided that september will be better. it has to be better. next weekend is going to be a rough start to it, three days off to lay around and think. and after that? work is going to be insanely busy, with nine and ten hour days for me. it's how i got through the beginning stages of the divorce. i welcome it.


the leaves will change soon. and the house will look better and work better.

here's to october... i'll keep my head down and keep moving forward until i reach it.