the middle. november 5th, technically.

my mood swings a great deal. it always has.


my day was pretty great. who can complain when they have a bonus day off from work, and a three day weekend?

well, i guess that i can.


i'm feeling pretty sorry for myself.

not even. really, i'm feeling supremely sad. and thanks to my newest bff, lexapro, i can't fucking cry it out and get over it.

and thanks to aubree, i got a surprise period today? so add hormones to the mix. perfect storm.


yesterday, i pulled my shit together on a would-be halfday, mailed packages to both nina and the writer, which i'd been trying to make myself do since july. accomplishing that small feat felt pretty amazing. and upon realizing that, by rearranging my two half days into one long day, i could have the whole day off today, i did just that.

which felt pretty smart. it ended up being a lot of work by myself yesterday; it wasn't easy, and i struggle to put into words how tired i was yesterday, and how tired i've been in general lately. completely burnt out. from working 50-55 hour weeks and not getting paid for the extra hours, which is mentally taxing.

volunteering for the job that takes a lot out of me, for the same amount of pay i've been making for another two years now.


last week, i told kenna i wanted a raise, and she agreed that i deserve one. it will probably be the new year before i get it. money is tight, and all.

i'm hoping the money i'm saving the company by killing myself right now creates the overage to compensate me accordingly.


that felt pretty good at the time. kenna almost always makes me feel good about myself and the job i do. she almost made me cry, telling me how lucky she knows she is and what a great job i do. how she couldn't do it without me, and how i definitely deserve a raise.

despite the fact that the next part of the discussion was about where to get the money to make it happen.


all aubree and i do every day is work. and bike home. and get into bed with our dinner, and watch some fringe, and pass out two episodes later, and do it again.

the weekends aren't long enough to recharge the batteries we drain during the week.


i can't force myself to do anything around the house when i get home. dishes, that is it. after being so motivated and inspired from dad's visit here, it sucks ass to not follow through and ride the wave. i just can't make myself do it when i'm that physically exhausted.

if i worked a desk job? cake. but the frantic running all day every day is stupid. i need to hire someone else, and i just don't want to, because in a month, it will be over for two months.


it's kept my mind off of the bigger things, for the most part.

but so much has been running through my brain. biking to work, making sandwiches in the back room by myself, extra smoke breaks during the day.

there's the stuff about shawn.

and stuff about ever.

and the emotional leftovers from greg, which have been waning, and so much better/easier to deal with, until tonight. it feels like shrink was right about that. i just needed a baseline of emotional stability to be able to deal with losing him the way anyone else would.

i've been getting over it, and moving past it.


you know, the thing is, i am the fixer-upper. i am the one who wants to save all the broken boys. i always have before, and i think i'm just drawn to the broken ones. and maybe i will always be.

i've progressed from the boys holding the giant waving red flags when i meet them and ignore them, to boys who can hide their red flags for a few months before slipping up and showing their true colors.

but it sucks to see that pattern, along with all of the other ones.


tonight i'm sad, and i can't cry and feel better. tonight i feel sorry for myself. and it coincides with aubree being in florida, and being alone for the first time in a month or so.

it's the same as my quarterly crises that always fell when nina was having a deadline, until this month. somehow i went unscathed.

my little breakdowns are always when i don't have access to the people that i have access to every day that the breakdowns don't happen.


tonight i had drinks with alice, and tonight the greg puzzle pieces kinda fell into place. it was something i should have thought of before now. but it was something so far out of the norm that it's no wonder i didn't.

i had the thought just this morning, the irony of which isn't lost on me.

and all i walked away from the conversation with, to bike home, freezing, and fucking alone, was that i always want to help.

and maybe why this is so hard for me, is that he won't let me help him. he shut me out at the first sign of trouble, on his end. and now, four months later, and one horribly timed sext message later, his number is gone, i'm embarrassed at my shit attempt to spark something visceral. all i want to do is go back and send what i'd originally written to him at the time. my intuition was trying to give me an assist. but the silence from that, and knowing this now, would have made this feel far worse. so it is as it should be.

four months later, i think about him so much less, but still sometimes. every day, at least once, but probably much more than that. every friday, i struggle to distract myself driving past his exit. every friday, at least i want to distract myself instead of wallowing in it like i did for months. and thinking about the exit long before and after i came to it or passed it by.

i traded thursday for friday this week, so yesterday, i actually listened to some pretty ballsy music (sad mixes, of course) while driving, and felt pretty decent. my resilience is building.

i think my mind only wandered to him in one direction, instead of both. and i quickly changed the thoughts that flowed after to something completely unrelated.


but tonight, the anger that has fueled my recovery, as it relates to him specifically, has subsided. it's been brushed aside by sadness, empathy, and helplessness.


after all, you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped. i say it all the time. and you can't help someone who so blatantly pushed you away. but if he just let me listen to him. if he just talked to me... i know i could help him feel better.


i really wish he hadn't pushed me away.

i know that, if he hadn't, the past few months would have been rough for me. all of his issues would have become mine. because that's what empaths do. but also, i know from several past experiences that going through thick shit with someone also makes all the feelings for that person grow. and it would have made a bigger mess.

i have always mistaken someone else's pain as my own. taken their using me as a crutch as some form of affection, and run into the sunset talking about being in love and feeling love or something like it, while he (whoever 'he' happens to be), could give two shits about me once they're through their darkest hours. all fixed up for someone else to appreciate.

time and again.

not to mention, all of the enabling i am so fantastic at. every time. and usually for long stints without even being aware that i'm doing it at all.


fuck all, i'm beating myself up again.

growing pains? this part always sucks. but i'm learning. so it's okay.

i had to reschedule the shrink from monday to thursday next week. just this morning, i had nothing to talk to her about. i never cancel appointments when i feel like that, because it signals a coming freakout.


this post is ripe with forty five minutes' worth of session content. fodder. fantastic.


i've spent the last few nights on the dating site, perusing boys.

i can't find a single one that i want to instigate something with. and i can't tell if it is because i'm genuinely not interested in the lot of them, if i'm too afraid of rejection in light of the week i had, if i'm still too heartbroken to jump back into the pool after swimming season is over, or if i just sense that i'm not mentally and/or emotionally stable enough to tread the water and splash around again. smacking the water in a shark's presence. bad idea jeans.


but, shit. i am lonely. i am tired of not fucking anyone. i am tired of not being kissed and held at night. i'm tired of not having a makeout fest at least once a week. and i am too tired of being tired to do a single thing to change it. well, aside from barking up the same fruitless trees for the last time and learning the hard way yet again.


i have seriously considered emailing matthew just about every day this week. i don't know why i prefer the familiar, but i'll do it every time. like looking for a job. i'll always stay.

matthew was fun until he wasn't. he was funny until he was a tool. but i could count on him for fucking around on thurday nights for a while there, and that is what i'm craving.

not forever love, not even love at all. just attraction and lust and a very basic like, and working shit out, and going about business the rest of the week without a sex-crazed mind. getting a fix.


which is a beautful segue into ever.

so i quit bitching on cwsr months ago about ever, and the money he owes me, and the utility companies. but in my walking life, this past week has been a bitchfest. thanks to the kitchen sink effect.

it all started when shawn finally came to get his shit out of my garage, when dad was here a couple weekends ago, after four months of being a total jackass and leaving it here.

a week before, i emailed him in response to his email asking if he could come by, by saying, 'sure. will you have any of the money you owe me?'

and his immediate response was that he should.


so i was hopeful. and then, naturally, the day before he was coming by, he started with his threats and dramatic bullshit. about coming unannounced with cops and how he doesn't owe me money. out of nowhere. because i told him to give me a time, that i was around all weekend.


i wanted his shit out of my garage so much that i didn't fight him on it, but did respond accordingly. and imagine my surprise when he supplied copies of checks written out to ever, for first month's rent and last month's rent, saying he doesn't owe me for rent.

i didn't believe him.

until i went to the bank and asked if they cleared ever's account.

they had.


ever had lied several times, saying he had let him live here for free. he was given $1000 last december, when i had to pay the mortgage for the second time to avoid foreclosure. first and last month's rent, as was clearly stated on the memo line of the checks.

problem being, despite the fact that he went about using his 'deposit' entirely the wrong way, ever has his rent for the last month. so instead of getting it from shawn, now i have to get it from ever.

piece of shit junkie that he is.

all i can get out of shawn is three months of utilities.

add the $500 to the $400 i had to pay to the water department when i moved in, and ever now owes me $900.

i know he has no money. and i know that you 'can't squeeze blood from a turnip', as the saying goes.

but i can file something in the court that says he is not following the court order, and when he can't pay, maybe they'll throw his ass in jail. and maybe i'll feel okay about doing it. because maybe he'll get clean in the process.

his tailspin is so sad.

my entire conversation tonight with alice was depressing. all the things we had to talk about were sad. ever, greg, her own situations, my mentality and total lack of dating prospects, and an inability to meet new people to change it.

all of it.

at the end of my second beer, i was ready to go home and cry about it. but i didn't.


this has been my week, mentally, in a snapshot. it's what i've been freaking out about, talking about, yelling about, bitching about. and the last few nights? awake worrying about.

it feels wrong to call what i've been doing 'worrying' because of how different it is from what i was going through before medication. but the return of sleeplessness and slowly dribbling thoughts when i'm trying to fall asleep is not welcome.

and like i said to her tonight, girls just like to talk it out. bitch and be heard. get a 'word' or an 'amen' of sorts from anyone they tell.

and this week, i've been using all of my girlfriends for exactly that.


i had a funny thought yesterday.

i realized i hadn't checked in with brownies for a while, or lauren. and i thought, 'i have too many friends – i can't keep up with them!'

it's funny because it isn't true, but also because, just a couple months ago, i felt like i had no friends. especially before i got medicated. i felt that life without aubree would be unbearable, and that there was no one for me to talk to or hang out with or relate to here, once she was gone.

i was afraid the girls wouldn't want to be around the sadsack version of me. i was afraid to see alice because of greg.

all i wanted was to be alone, and that wasn't as difficult once i convinced myself that i had no friends to lean on.

and now i'm struggling to give each person the attention i want to, the attention they deserve? what the hell is wrong with me? it's the backlash from being a shit friend for those few months. now it feels like make up time... i think about each of them often, and now it's time to act on it, and make time.


and in my full circle fashion i always dream to have, it's all or nothing with me. i'm either up or down. extremes. i'm either an awesome friend or a shitty one. i'm either really motivated or ridiculously lazy. i'm either fantastic or awful.

all i want is the middle ground. it's a recurring theme in my writing, in my life, in my emotions, in my thoughts.

lexapro is supposed to help me achieve that.

when i said tonight to alice that the reason everything fucked me up so royally with greg was because, even though it was just starting, i felt and believed that he was everything i wanted, all in one neat little package. all aspects that seem so important to me at this point in my life. they were all there and accounted for.

and her response was, 'isn't that a lot to expect from a relationship?'

but it wasn't about expectations, exactly. it didn't seem like i was hanging anything on him. it was just a feeling. the feelings that undid all of my thoughts and that wall i'd built, garnered from him being the best version of himself. it was just a beginning.

and i'm hoping that the middle ground on lexapro isn't too lofty in the expectations department.

because it would be pretty awesome to get what i want. again. and to have it last a little longer this time.

here's to hoping the next post is more like the beginning of the last one, and not so much like this one.


sometimes a warm blanket feels a little like a hug... i'm going to think about that for a while.