i can't help thinking that i made a big mistake. i mean i know she did. i know she hurt me. but somehow i'm the one missing her. when i should be thanking my lucky stars that i got out when i did. i meant everything i said. except that i was the one she changed for. and that was a great feeling. i really thought i could make it happen again. i thought i could make her stop being afraid and realize what we had.

i miss her. this sucks.

so we finally had the talk today. after what happened on saturday. i guess i wasn't really surprised by her cheating. which technically it wasn't but still felt like it was.

so it boils down to this: i thought that when we said the waters were muddied and things were unresolved that was a tacit understanding not to sleep around. or at least to tell the other person that you were. i expected her to tell me. i thought i was owed that much. she didn't see it that way. mostly i just can't believe that she moved so fast. that's part of what hurts too. i mean i thought she and k had so many issues to work through. but apparently they weren't that huge. and i just am exhausted. i don't feel mad as much as i am just incredilbly sad. i feel like i just pushed my best friend off a cliff. i just miss her, i miss the person she was with me. not this new person who just moved on. i really loved her and thought we had a chance. i honestly thought we would work it out. i thought what we had was special and worth waiting and figuring something out for. and she didn't. that much is clear. i was going to end it this weekend when i went out there, draw that line in the sand and say goodbye. but apparently it was already over and i never knew.

so. fucking. frustrated. i just want for once for things to go my way. or our way. i want us being together to be a happy thing. and not an awkward and horrible thing. i want everyone to be happy for us, or at least not care one way or the other. i don't want to walk or eggshells or worry about offending someone when i hug my girlfriend. i don't want to hear her say that we're undecided either. i think our first instinct was the right one. to rip off the bandaid. to just walk out and not look back. because if this isn't a good thing for me then why am i doing it? i wish she had told me that four days was too many. it's not like i have that many days just laying around. i don't really want to go down to the city. not at all. i want to lay in a canoe or a hammock. i want to be in the woods. i don't want to be up in the air about this anymore. i want to know. and i think the fact that she doesn't know should be a big enough sign for me.

conditions for pursual
if, and that's a mighty big if, we decide we want to do this i want to stop being so cautious with each other. so much of our relationship has been hemmed in by other people's desires, needs and sadnesses. and i want no more of it. i want to be ecstatic about the woman i love. i want to love her wholly and without reserve and know that she is doing the same. i want to be the awesome and formidable team that i know we can be. and whatever our decision, i know that we will make it together. i think that is our greatest strength, that we are stronger together, better people when we are in each other's lives. all of that remains to be seen...

argh. i had the weirdest dream about tom cruise last night. it proved he was really crazy. all these famous people came to stay at my house. and he wanted to clean the whole house before he would sleep. so he sprinkled cleaning powder on the carpets and told me to vacuum it. i told him he had to do it since he'd sprinkled. but that i would toothbrush clean the pots for him. and i was trying to accomodate the crazy but everyone else kept bugging him and making it worse. like jack nicholson would just waltz through the house spitting and muddy to make him start all over. oh jack.

but i wanted to tell her about it. i'm still waking up with weird panicky feeling in my stomach. i hung out with j, e, l, and a last night and it was great. they are all really great. but i feel somehow like the fifth wheel. it's mostly fine. but there's always that moment in the evening when i realize, hey, i'm going home alone. and i use to be loved like that and i miss it. because i don't know what's coming. and i don't know what i want. a keeps telling me her friend thinks i am hot, which is lovely. but honestly, i don't want that right now. i'm not interested in teaching a new person how to love me. i just did that. and i'm tired. i want that person back. or i want her to acknowledge that i'm alive. i want to know how she feels. it's weird that we supposedly left on such good terms but now i don't hear boo from her. and i had a little talk with l about it the other day about how selfish she can be. i just don't understand, if someone is important in your life you respond to their emails, however briefly. and you make a point of telling them. and i guess it's a hard pill to swallow that i've dropped off her radar screen.

i'm home, drunk from alycia's friend's party. and i want to talk to her. but she's not answering. just watching alycia and leila is sad for me. i miss her. i think i made the wrong decision. i should have walked away when i had the chance.

i miss her.
and i'm mad at her for leading me on. for giving me hope where there really isn't any. i should have listened the first time she told me that she didn't have room in her new life for me. i should have distanced myself then and left on good terms. but now we are both in this bind. it's like a said tonight, that not hearing from her is like she's sending me a message. i'm just too heartsick to hear it. fuck.

so i feel a lot like i did when we first got together. i don't know what is going to happen, i can only feel my way through unfamiliar territory. i don't want to be a partial person in her life. i want her to want me in 100%. i don't want to be always skirting the edges, periphery. but i don't want to be inpatient either. this is going to take a little time. and i'm willing to see it through. i went out tonight and i was talking about girls i dated last year, and looking for someone new, or someone i had connected with before. but it was clearly hollow. every person i saw reminded me of her. i bumped into a fat girl and thought, oh it looks like b's sister. i kept thinking the music would be just up her alley. and how she would hug me from behind and press her cheek to my sweaty back and not care if i stunk or was all wet. i just miss her. it's soon, but i feel already like cutting it off. talking just reminds me that my best friend and partner is gone. and only serves to remind me of the hole in my life right now.

i know it's partly pms but it's also more than that. i'm mad, furious actually. i'm mad that i will soon be without the person i love. i'm mad that i let myself get in a position to be hurt (as if i had much of a choice). i'm irrational and sad. i hate that you are so happy to move and i'm jealous of brooklyn because it will get to see you everyday. i'm anxious about what will become of us and unsure of how to proceed. i don't want to fade away but i don't want to cut you off either. i'm desperate to figure all of this out and desperate not to. i don't want to acknowledge what's coming. i'm so upset that both of us are scared of what might happen if we admit that this is as close to perfect as it's ever been so instead we're just going to give it up. i'm not sure what to say about all this stuff so it roils around in my head and comes out as tears and dumb decisions. i guess when we were so busy convincing ourselves that this was the wrong thing at the wrong time it quietly and sneakily became the best thing. i can't remember the last time falling in love with someone was so effortless and natural. and maintaining it is just as easy. i am dreading the day that this becomes past tense.
and the only question i can pose is: what do we do now?

i know i love her. that's not the problem. the circumstances are. the fact that she's leaving. and leaving me. for once i'm in that position. is it some sort of karmic payback. all the girls and boys that i've left before rearing up to bite me in the ass. just when i've found someone i think might be it. i'm too jaded and cynical adn let's face it still pretty hurt by m's breakup to believe in true love or meant to be. but i believe in hard work. i believe in knowing what i see in someone's actions. i believe in making an effort to be honest about my feelings. so i tell her when i'm mad and she can take it because she's a grownup. so why am i so cranky? is it because she's going to be successful and i'm stuck in a job that seems to be going nowhere? or have i made my peace with that? is it because i'm finally stable and in one place and now here comes my old friend change trying to fuck it up again. is it because i absolutely know i can't do a long distance relationship again. and why should i have to? why should i settle for less? i want her here. i want to wake up next to her and see her face. i want to eat breakfast at 3 in the morning with her and watch dumb movies while she rubs my head in her lap. i don't want to be on the phone or wondering why she didn't call. i don't want to travel out there all the time and feel like the center of my life is somewhere else. i want her to come to me. i want for once, soemone to come to me. someone to make sacrifices to be with me. i want to be worth it to someone.

oy with the girls. i've been tormented lately by relationships going wrong. it all goes back to her. i was telling l today how i drove away from her house knowing, absolutely, like i've never known anything in my life, that she was the woman i was supposed to marry. and she felt the same way about me. we both fell hard, believed hard. and to be yanked out of that so violently and in such a disgusting way just calls into question everything i ever felt aobut her. i wonder if she lied to me about how she felt, becuase she felt an obligation to keep the myth going. i think every couple does this. creates a mythology of how they met and fell in love and why it's the most perfect thing in the world. and it is. because this is a story we never get tired of hearing., this is the music we hear. as we bounch down the street oblivious to everything but LOVE! we sacrifice all on its altar. so how do you recover from the disease of love? how do you mkae your body fit to walk and talk and eat again? by ignoring love, by pretending it does not exist. and disdaining its very presence. but it's like malaria, a disease of the bloog and never fully eradicated. i wake in fevered dreams panting for her touch. and stare at crooks of elbows that look like hers and stop in the street when i smell her scent. i boil with rage at her picture, but wake in sweet panic after i dream her tongue on mine. it never goes away. i want her, if only to explain. i want to be done with it. i want to move on and prove my worthiness and lovability with a new person. i don't want to constantly look over my shoulder, or even to use her as my vengeful stepping stone. i just want to live apart from her. but just because you cut off that limb of love and cauterize that scar doesn't mean you don't drag it around behind you for the rest of your life.

wow these posts are as regular as my period. just got back from josh's house and had a long teary conversation with his girlfriend, who i normally think is a bitch. and she told me what others have said before, that they find her cold and emotionless. but that her new girlfriend is nice. which is par for the course. i was nice too, and then i met her. i guess i'm not surprised, but the conversation had the momentary effect of lifting the power she still has over me. it didn't last very long, just until this morning. but still it was nice to know that there is some sort of light at the end of this long, interesting tunnel. i am in some sort of angry phase right now, and i'm not sure where that puts me in the stages of grief, but fuck it, everything is pissing me off right now. i'm so filled with rage i don't know how i got this way. and i'm having chest pains again. yes i'm wallowing, but what the hell. maybe i need to saturate myself with her before i can get over her. i've spent the last year studiously ignoring or avoiding anything that had to do with her, and my heart still stops when i hear her mentioned in conversations, or when she calls josh while i'm there. i'm just bitter and sad about it all. and i'm feeling like i would like to move on but i can't. not sure why really. just that there is a massive wall in the middle of this road, and i'm sitting at the bottom of it, staring up trying to figure out a way over the top.

looking at her website, her resume. i think that the really important things aren't listed. like we should each have an emotional resume, the things we went through and learned, what we did and how we loved.
like:

may 2000 - april 2003
girlfriend
loved as hard as i could, should have backed off a bit. lost myself in her eyes on a daily basis. was responsible for grand vision that brought us together. position terminated when she broke my heart. still mourning the loss.

now that would be useful information.

it's like a black, nasty, syrupy feeling in my stomach. when i think of her or see her picture. it's a wave of sludge and i have to wait for it to pass. i don't hate her, i just can't get past the hurt. and i want to so badly. i just don't want to think about her anymore. how many times and ways can i say it?

i guess i still want to be that person to her, the one. there are days when i feel connected to her somehow, and then there are days when i think it's probably all just a crock of shit. she's moved on. i wonder if my current relationship is here to show me what she felt like in our relationship, always pulling back, never really loving me the way i loved her. i don't know. but i feel like i have a better insight into her character now. and i can honestly say that i hate her. i've been trying to deny it, and i would like to get over it. but it's a stumbling block i cannot get get around or over or through. i told someone the other day about my tattoo, someone i haven't seen in a while. and i explained it like this: that i must have been incredibly lucky and happy and in love to have been so destroyed by the end of it all. and that's what i try to remember. this is not something that i think about everyday anymore. i feel so happy most of the time that when this funk comes over me i realize i've forgotten how to talk myself out of it. i am a happier, better person. i am more mature, more caring, and certainly more cynical. but i'm the better for all of it. mostly. i want this black mark to be erased. i want to be able to open myself up again and love someone totally. but i guess it won't be happening anytime soon.

i was just going to bed a minute ago. and i realized it had been ten months. almost a year. and right before i realized that i wondered when i was going to not be afraid to fall asleep again. i wondered when it was going to be ok to talk about her or think about her. because i don't, not in any real way. i still get choked up. i still compare people in my life to her. and i guess on some level i still miss her. i've gained enough distance to realize what was wrong, but i guess i still and will always believe that it could have been fixed. i'm happier now, my life has less tension, less drama, and certainly less strife. but it also has a lot less love.

it's a tattoo, but it's also a talisman. for what i'm not sure. maybe to remind me of how much she hurt me, but also to remind me how wonderful things had to be for me to fall that far. to remind me to love deeply. that my heart is a muscle and will always heal. i'm not sure. but it's there and i feel better for it.

i am making a concerted effort (when i remember) to just try and let go of any resentment or anger or hurt that i still feel in regards to her. i think it's time for me to just move on. of course this isn't the easiest thing to do. i still google her once in a while, i looked at an archive from her blog and i swear the conversations she and her new girl are having are just as cute and dorky as the ones we had. and i wonder why she feels the need to put them up there. and i'm trying to figure out what bothers me about it. i don't want to get back together with her. i know that much. i guess it's just that by finding someone so quickly that makes her so happy, that seems to negate what we had. which isn't true. but it makes me feel that it is. so i feel jealous i guess that once again she gets what she wants and i am left out in the cold. i hate this part of the whole process when you really wish that the other person was missing you as much as you are them (at least the good parts.) so like i said, i'm trying to let all this go. i really am.

it was a pretty shitty birthday. my dad didn't even call me. and my family bought me things at the last minute. i'm not a big present hog, i really don't need anything. but i like a few well-chosen gifts that show that you know me. and these were not that. oh well. dinner out with the family was depressing and i couldn't tell you why. but i drove over to my friend's house afterward and i just burst into tears in the car. i think this is just one holiday season i will be glad to see the back of. i HATE being mopey. but it is hard to shake this time of the year. i don't want to be in love, i just want to feel like i'm doing something about all of this. and there's nothing i really can do. i don't want to call her. i don't want to talk to her or about her. i just want the memories to fade. i want to blow the world away with my amazing ideas. and if i don't work on this she will always be the elephant in the room. the one i never want to talk about or deal with. i don't know where she fits in my life. i am starting to question if what we had was ever really good for either of us. even though i know it was. but i'm not a person that enjoys being angry. i don't feed off of it. i like to deal with my issues. but right now there's a big heavy stone around my heart. and i can't just shake it off.