Poor duckling. It is true that you don't have to be pretty to have your problems solved. At least you didn't make stupid mistakes being pretty and then wind up feeling ugly. I feel ugly right now. I do not feel attractive -- and I'm taking it out on my eating, which is really screwing up my internal systems. It's not so good. I can't rationalize my feelings right now, and some of them make me feel like an ugly person. I don't want to be upset and angry, and I don't want jealousy to have roots in my life.

     I'm working to be a better person. I'm reading The Shack with Angela and I'm hoping to find something in it, something I need to go forwards. I cannot wait to see how I feel this time around. I know some people don't believe in God, and I don't really know what I believe most days. I hope that someday I'll have an idea about everything in my life. Sometimes I feel like I need more in my life than what I just have right now. 

    It's hard for me to admit the things which have happened in my life in the past few months. I'm ashamed of making bad choices. I feel that I showed my friends and my family that I am not capable of making the right choices in my life. I feel like I let my parents down, cause now they worry that I'm here alone. 

    I hate that I was so wrong about Joe. Why couldn't I see it? Why do I still feel that there is someone else in him which is not this person that I see all the time? Somedays he can really be the guy I know I fell in love with -- but that guy is so hidden beneath what he is now that I can't get there anymore. I'm not sure anyone can these days. He's beyond long gone. I don't know what to do with him, and I think I am seriously going to do my best not to be involved. I hate that my friends tell me that I don't hide the pain well enough -- that everyone can tell that I'm falling apart inside. I hate knowing that. I value being able to hide what I feel and go on, push on, through my life. I like hiding what I don't want to show. I don't like people being able to read me. I don't like letting it out either, cause to me, the more I let it out -- the more it hurts and sinks in. I don't need it to be a part of me for my life to continue. I want to bag it up and put the bag in a locked box and sink it somewhere in the depths of my mind where I'll never uncover it again.

Every day is a struggle 
Between what I want to say and what I want to keep to myself 
And the words that manage to leave my lips 
Don't hurt me, but they hurt everyone else

So I find myself in need of a part 
I'm not sure why, but I think that it's because 
Of this desire to be what others want me to be 
Which is nothing close to me

But I'll see better when the smoke clears 
The smoke clears inside my head 
And I can listen when the screaming doesn't repeat everything I've said 
And all that remains me and who I am at the end of the day 
And this happens every day ... yeah...

Every day is a battle 
Between what I want to know and what I don't want to figure out 
And everything in between in these thoughts of mine that you know I can't live with out

So I find myself in need of a part 
I'm not sure why, but I think that it's because 
Of this desire to be what others want me to be 
Which is nothing close to me

But I'll see better when the smoke clears 
The smoke clears inside my head 
And I can listen when the screaming doesn't repeat everything I've said 
All that remains me and who I am at the end of the day 
And this happens every day ... yeah... oooh...

But I'll see better when the smoke clears 
The smoke clears inside my head 
And I can listen when the screaming doesn't repeat everything I've said 
All that remains me and who I am at the end of the day 
And this happens every day ... this happens every day 
This happens every day... yeah... 

Lonely

Well, tonight isn't the best night -- by far. I'm so sick of the fact that Joe gets to keep everything and I'm the one who loses. It just isn't fair. I am really not sure I like it here at all. This would be so much easier to just blame on him. He was supposed to be somebody. He was supposed to be my person -- the person I could turn to when life had me in a panic. But he'll never be that, and he never would be. I guess you've gotta learn by getting really hurt, all the time, before you can feel like a failure enough to never leave your house enough.
Man, if I could warn people ahead of time what happens when you trust someone. I'd just destroy their hopes and dreams of futures because I'm that calloused and hurt right now. I don't feel attractive, I don't feel wanted by anyone. I feel like Joe was my one shot in life and I lost it. I suck at meeting guys, and I really am not good at figuring out how to meet guys anyway. So, I'm completely screwed. I don't have a support system here. I'm all by myself -- the exact way I wasn't supposed to be. So what's left? Not much that I can see right now. I'm so sick of this shit. I hate being stuck here. I'm sure this would be lovely if I didn't feel as though there is no escape for me right now. And, that is how I feel. I feel like I cannot get away from what I'm having to deal with here.

Maybe I should have pulled up roots here and moved home. Maybe I should have run from this, here, and him and tried to go on about my own life without falling apart. Caring about him more than anything else -- more than he cared about me -- now that is a dangerous life to live. But that doesn't mean it doesn't still hurt all the time. And it doesn't mean that I don't -- for some screwed up reason -- feel jealous that he'd be with someone else. How is that possible? I hate myself to still caring about someone who has hurt me so many times. But what if he is the only one who seems to have ever really cared about me? What if this was my shot and I blew it somehow? What if this was my fault -- somehow?
This is how I wish I really felt, but at quite certain I never will be that free. What happens if I'm stuck feeling like this -- missing him -- for the wrong reasons for my whole life? What if I always feel as though he's the one who was supposed to be something in my life? I don't get it.

I wish I felt this way about having him out of my life. I wish I could find that relieved feeling in here somewhere. I don't have to deal with his smoking and his other issues -- and especially I don't have to deal with his dysfunctional family any longer. I don't have to deal with his sex issues -- the inability to be there with me and figure out his shit. I don't have to deal with feeling inadequate because of him.
I don't have to take him treating me like shit -- but isn't that what I do when I am over there and he pretends that I do not exist? Isn't that me just dealing with his shit some more? I hate that I was there today, sitting in the dark and Lisa and Geoff went upstairs and it was just me and Joe and for a moment I wished that he would come onto my couch and kiss me and tell me that all of this was just a huge mistake -- a bad dream that I'd wake up from and feel normal again. I wish it was that easy to fix. Even if he did come back some day -- I'll never be able to trust him again, and the stress of having him in my life in any way isn't really worth it to me anymore. I just don't want to feel any of these ways anymore. I'm much happier when I feel detached and don't really feel anything.

Has heartbreak lost it's meaning for me? I'm not sure it means anything near what it meant a long time ago. I don't like that I've spent my last seven years in turmoil about a boy who I really knew I cared about the second I heard his voice. I don't like that I've been wrapped up and shaken down. I hate that it is just the worst thing for me right now to be living somewhere where my life is tied to his in some way. It is either be alone, or deal with him in my life. I'm game for playing the mature role, but he really fails at it.

that's it for now,
M

Permission to be Depressed

"Depression was, indeed, the hand of a friend trying to press me down to the ground on which it was safe to stand--the ground of my own truth, my own nature with its complex mix of limits and gifts, liabilities and assets, darkness and light."
- Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak

I don't think I've ever been "clinically" depressed. Well, maybe I have, but it certainly didn't feel clinical. It felt morbid, cosmic, and unavoidably essential. When I was thirteen, my parents split for the umpteenth and final time and a few months later, my dad brought it to my attention that I'd been wearing the same hockey jersey for weeks and that I needed to start doing the dishes again. I was definitely depressed.

And there was the dark night after Magic Man flew back to London and the apartment felt like a keyless heartbreak hotel with barred windows. But my last extended dark night was about ten years ago. It was a new depth of crushing aloneness. Another break up, this time with Hot-but-Needy Actor Man in LA (I was equally needy, duh,) which triggered an exorcism of self doubt and psychic bile that, being thirty-something and ambitious, I just needed to get out of my system. {Note: it's often not the actual loss that causes the depression - it's all the crap that's tied up in it that you needed to deal with anyway.}

In that spell of depression I wore the same pair of butt-ripped Levi's for weeks. I'd lie in my backyard at two in the morning in nowhere New Mexico, smoking Marlboro's, looking up at the stars, wondering about the fatality of scorpion bites, and praying for aliens to abduct me. {Not joking in any way.} I cried every single day, sometimes twice a day, for weeks. I felt profoundly unheard...empty. As I'd fall asleep I felt as though chunks of my being were decomposing into the bed. It was a brutal ordeal of the psyche, but I knew I was being reborn. I did have faith that whatever new face was emerging, she would eventually smile back at me.

I learned a thousand subtle and mighty things about Life from those existential passages, but what I learned about depression itself is that, the more you resist it, the longer it lasts. When depressed, I find it's best to just be...depressed.Happiness returns more quickly when you give yourself permission to be blue...or any shade of black you need to be.

I understand that for some people, depression can be so severe as to be life threatening. It can grip a soul for decades. The kind of depression I'm addressing here falls somewhere within the category of disparaging life passages to profound melancholy...which is to say, likely manageable without drugs and positively surmountable. But I will go on record to say that, while I think meds for depression can be a viable option to break a cycle and regain one's footing, I think we're a culture overly prone to numbing out. And in doing so, we not only deny our own power, we carry our demons with us far longer than we have to.

HOW TO BE DEPRESSED SO THAT HAPPINESS HAS A BETTER CHANCE OF RETURNING -- SOONER RATHER THAN LATER

1. Give yourself full permission to be pathetic for a short period of time. In fact, relish the pathetic-ness. Enthusiastically wallow in self pity. If people let themselves have downer days more often, there might be fewer heart attacks and road rage. Being a total loser for a morning or a weekend isn't the slippery slope to despair. It's a direct route to what your emotions are trying to tell you...feel, heal, know thyself. And move on, more empowered than before.

2. Watch or read something depressing. Rent a some heart wrenching documentaries like, God Grew Tired of Us or War Dance and ball your eyes out. Chances are that your life will be looking pretty damn good in comparison.

3. Be incredibly, sublimely gentle with yourself, like you might be with a child or dear friend whom you deeply adore.

4. If someone who loves you asks how you are, admit to being blue. When a girl friend calls, let her know that it's a dog day afternoon and that you're happily in despair.

5. When the novelty of being depressed is starting to wear off, shake your arms above your head like you're being saved by the Almighty Holy Spirit itself, turn on some loud Opera music, and shout, "I'm depressed! I'm sooo depressed!"Gauranteed: you will start laughing smirky giggles to deep belly laughs and you will decide to listen to the rhythm of your blues and keep on walking...more empowered than before.

6. Break your happiness fast with a treat. Write a kind note to yourself about how brave you are for being still in the dark, for standing down a monster or two. Dress up even if you work from home. Bring a plant to work and water it. Freshen up. And give yourself full permission to just be ... deeply happy.

http://whitehottruth.com/white-hot/how-to-be-depressed/

Another Piggie

And, after some research I realized that Pigs are much happier with a friend. So I went back to Petsmart and picked up the other one I was choosing between so that they could be a pair! I'm pretty sure they'll love the whole thing! Also, I think I'll be naming them Calvin (grey) and Hobbs (orange).
They hang out together, snuggling and Calvin talks, a lot!

anyway, these are my new babies!

Introducing...Oh wait, he isn't named yet...

Well. I got pretty tired of feeling alone at home, and since it didn't work out having my dog, Spike, here, I went to PetSmart today and fell in love with a Gunea Pig. (Who as I wrote this just sneezed at me from his perch on my chest). He's adorable, and quite an interesting look for a piggle. He's so cute and makes little talking noises. He's currently sitting on my chest hanging out. I'm working on my computer and he's chilling with me. He's calm, and likes to cuddle apparently. He's making little cherping noises from time to time as he gets settled in.

This is my new pig, being held by the sales associate at the store. She'd done a lot of work with the new little guys and they were all pretty damn friendly... and cute and cuddly. He's very, very adorable and I can't wait until he's more comfortable and ready to be much more chill and not afraid. He'll be nice and well adapted at some point... so hopefully he likes it here. He has a nice cage and set up.
He's super happy about life and he's doing little cute piggly things. He still needs a name though! I wonder... what could I name him. I like Henry, but, at the same time, I don't want to call him that cause he doesn't then get a good nickname out of it... But, for some reason I thought "The Time Travelers Wife" and I like the name Henry. But, I think he needs a different name.

Regardless... he is to be my fluffy and my company! I can't wait. Maybe someday he'll live with Gus Gus, the most adorable bunny ever (Angela's new chubby bunny face). Gunea Pigs and Rabbits apparently do VERY well together... See Angela, I'm planning ahead!

~M

I guess there are just some days when different pictures appeal to me. So, to write about today. Work was... so so. We had some interesting corporate people in the store today. It is kinda interesting that we have very ... excentric people ... in the company.
It was just a weird and stressful day. I didn't enjoy it so much and it felt like it dragged on and on and on. I guess that's just how it goes sometimes.
These pictures feel like I feel right now. They're lonely and still and beautiful. I hate it, the way these call to me -- they're where I want to lose myself. The idea of where I'd be able to just be myself and be at peace -- which I don't feel right now. But I can feel myself, when I close my eyes, sitting on that bench, stairing out to the world watching the petals fall from the trees. I can feel them brush across my skin and call for me to get lost in them, with them, as they find their place on the ground. I can see them swirl around my feet as I walk through the trees. It is almost silent there, the wind whispering through the branches, and the petals, almost inaudible, landing on one another without protest.





And that bridge, I could stand on it for hours and watch the water sway below it -- lapping gently on the pillars of the bridge. The trees would be waving, only slightly. Enough to add a small chill to the slightly heavy weather. Rain is in the air, and I would so enjoy standing on the bridge and getting drenched all the way through. My tears would mix with the falling rain drops -- as cliche as it is, hiding seems like the best measure of protecting myself. Getting away, hiding -- though I hate to hide. I hurt, a lot, and curling up with a bottle of pills and a bottle of vodka seems like such a great idea sometimes... But my rational part of my brain -- which I really do hate sometimes -- calls that giving up, giving in, losing. And I hate to lose.
Joe is like a constant memory that I got played into his game. He used me, played me, and threw me away. I don't know how to stop feeling this way. I gave everything I had, and wasn't good enough. (Yeah, you guys can say things over and over about how awful he is and how that isn't true... but it still just sucks and I stil feel that way).
Ugh. I hate it. Having jealousy issues when he's trying to get with another girl is not fun for me. I shouldn't feel this way, but, I do and I hate it. I feel behind and exhausted and just fed up. I wish there was a reason to just get away and go on my own. I can't do that, but hiding out from everyone here feels like such a good idea. I just hate him right now and I don't want him in my life anymore. Perhaps there will be no more going over to visit. I'll hang with lisa and geoff if they ever bother to include me in things they actually do. But I just don't know if I can deal with this anymore. Him ignoring me completely and even when I say goodnight, pretending like he didn't hear me.
I'm super down tonight. I hurt, a lot. I don't want to deal with this shit anymore. I just want to hide away and try to figure out my own life. I refuse to break. I lost the game I won't lose more. Lisa says I don't hide it. She says everyone can tell. Well, I won't be around everyone then. I just don't care with that shit. But I won't be around Joe anymore, cause I won't show that weakness to him. I can't go where I won't be able to come out of it. I have to hide it. Everyone expects me to just be okay with the fact that i feel used. I feel used, and dirty, and very lost. And I won't show it. I'll write it down, and I'll do my best to be calm and act like I can still breathe, when I know that every single one is a hard won fight.

~M

I wish I could draw

IT's bothering me, of late, that I possess absolutely no skill when it comes to drawing. I really really hate that I can see things in my head, but I cannot draw them to save my life. Because, there are days when I would really love to be able to draw what I see, especially when it is a picture which is haunting me. I really wish I could draw. There is just a picture haunting me when I think about Joe.

I walked upstairs at one point, a bit over a month ago, and I looked into Joe's room to see him leaning against his bed, like a drug addict. He was slouched there, holding the lighter in one hand and the bong in another. He gave me a look like he had been caught in the act, but was too high to really register the reaction. He was slouched there, in his hoodie and his sweat pants -- his socks with the holes in the them. He was lounging there, like he was fading out of the scene.
That view of him haunts me. I hate that I think of him that way, but, it isn't so bad to remember him that way because it is so distasteful to me. I don't want to deal with that shit, but the picture of it I cannot get out of my head. It is so sad, and depressing. I just don't like the idea of him like that. It was like watching him falling apart at the seams. I can't stand that I thought that about him, the guy I was supposedly in love with -- the guy I'd just changed my life around for. Maybe that is the point where I realized that he was not who I thought he was -- and maybe I wasn't as in love with him as I'd thought myself for the last years.
I don't know why this picture of him really bothers me so much. I do wish I'd had a picture of it. I cannot draw it, though I can see it quite clearly. Stupid drug addict. That is what I thought when I saw him like that.


I don't know who I am anymore, and I don't know who I am becoming. I'm afraid that he's managed to damage me in some way I'll never be able to recover from. I cannot figure out who I think I am, and I don't know who anyone else things I am. Maybe you can all tell me. Who am I? Who am I becoming?
I'm afraid of who I am becoming, and I'm afraid of finding out that I cannot have a normal relationship because of the six years he has so happily played me through these games. What is there left for me when I'm the issue here. I don't care how many people say it wasn't me, it had to have been something about me, because he has managed to have relationships with other girls. Why not me?
I don't regret what I've done with him, and I look forward to heading into another relationship with my eyes wide open, but what if I cannot have a normal relationship anymore because of him? What if he has 'ruined' me so to speak. I feel neurotic when it comes to guys and relationships. I feel like I have to protect myself from the 'world' so to speak. That shouldn't be the way it is. I also feel a hell of a lot more submissive than I know I am because I've spent six years whiling around waiting on him and his schedule. I don't want it, and I can't take it, but I don't know how to be the me I was before I met him. Can I go back and choose to tell him to get lost when my heart was in my throat. Can I go back and meet these amazing girls in my life and have them talk some sense into me before I did something which would end up haunting me for years. I feel broken, and I cannot just except that I cannot be the person that I used to be.

I saw Joe today. I was hanging out with Lisa, Geoff, and Jimmy. We were chilling and Joe showed up and came in without saying a word to anyone. He just acted pissed at the world. He put his keys down, where he always puts his keys down, and walked upstairs without a word to anyone. He couldn't care if I was living and breathing -- or if anyone else was, for that matter. So, what do I do now... I cannot be friends with him because he obviously has very little intention to stay friends with me, his words before bedammed.
So, what happens now? What do I do? I don't know if I can deal with him screwing around with other girls... How come I feel jealous of that? How is that possible? He's brought me to a place I don't even want to be, to a point where I hate myself, starve myself, and constantly critique myself because I don't know who I am anymore. And I don't know what was so wrong with me that he didn't want to be with me-- that he didn't feel excited to see me -- excited to be with me. I hate him for making me feel this way, but I miss him at the same time. I don't miss dealing with his rudeness and his shit towards other people and the drugs, but why do I miss him so much? It's just not fair. I don't want to miss him.

Anyway... me signing out,
M

So, what it is to be done, over, ending? I wrote the ending to my story a long time ago, and I had thought a few times that by-chance I'd gotten it all wrong. I wasn't wrong. It ended the way I wrote, and suddenly I feel a strong desire to work on my novel and actually finish the damn thing. I wrote the ending so long before he even came back that I may have even doomed things in my own little world. Could I have written the ending before even knowing he'd be back again? Could I have doomed everything because I had already written an ending? Maybe I knew all along that it wouldn't end up working out.
I wrote an ending which wasn't a happy one, and the character did not end up with the person she thought she was supposed to. It was very, very different from everything which should have happened. It began as a love story, and ended twisted through something which shouldn't have happened. Everything was messed up, and nothing made sense, though fate seemed to be pushing in one directon. Eventually, it seemed as though there wasn't anything she could do to stop it, so she went with it. In the end, that wasn't how it was supposed to be. Fairy tales aren't meant to come true in real life. Fate, be damned -- sometimes everything just doesn't work out .

Speaking of fate, at the end of senior year, when Joe came back into my life for the first time in three years, I spent a lot of time thinking about whether or not it was a 'meant to be' type thing, or whether it was just him being lonely cause he'd just broken up with his girlfriend. He hadn't come back into my life yet, and I was trying to figure out if it was going to happen, or if it wasn't.
I was in my room for the afternoon, before going to practice, and was listening to my tv while thinking about the whole situation. I was seeking an answer, I think, about whether or not my life was meant to be involved with him, or whether it was meant to fall to the wayside and be passed through to the history of my life. I remember flipping through channels which I didn't get to get to one I did and hearing a voice through the black screen say "Don't worry, everything will be just fine. Things will work out, and you will love."
I didn't really know how to take this. It was like a synchronicity, which I hadn't planned for, weasling it's way into my life.
I turned the TV off and headed towards the practice fields. Along the way, I was still pretty deep in thought when I walked right atop what I thought was a piece of white paper. Being the curious person that I am, I picked it up. Another sign? I don't really know, but I still have that old queen of hearts. Did it mean that I was the queen of his heart, or that I was the one who was supposed to end with him? Did it mean that I had to grow to make my own life about finding myself and my true love? I didn't know. I took it to mean that he was the one for me, and I've actually kept that card all these years. I had lost it, for years, and found it again, almost as though fate threw it in my path once more, when I was moving my furniture out of my room to move to PA for him and for the life we could have.
But what of it now? Was it, yet again, telling me to go and live my own life because I needed to be the queen of my own heart? I'm still not sure. I'd taken it as a good sign, but, perhaps again I was misled by what I thought of as fate.

I hung out with Joe, Geoff, and Lisa last night. I took Spike with me. I no longer feel the need to break down and cry about him, but it is hard to talk about the fact that he makes me dis-like myself because I can't get over that I just wasn't good enough for him to want to be with me. He threw me away so easily that it breaks my heart to think that everything he said must have been a lie. I feel surrounded by the words that you said. I feel haunted trying to remember things you said and decipher whether or not you were telling me the truth. ---------------------->
That is just how I fell, all the time. I want to shut out my memories of his voice, and the memories of the sweet things he said. It wasn't supposed to be this way. I trusted him and his words. I'm inside myself, torturing myself because I can't have been good enough if he was going to lie to me. I get it, I should be so hard on myself, but how can I be worth anything if someone who is supposed to love me lies to me and ruins my world. He was supposed to care about me, and I don't understand how that can just fall away the way it did. How do you just one day decide that you've stopped caring about someone? What on earth causes that? I've loved him for so long that it seems second nature to think about him a hundred times a day, and to be happiest when he's realizing that I am actually alive. Right now though, I know he wouldn't care if I stopped breathing. Yeah, he 'might' feel guilt if I died, or if I ended everything because I just couldn't deal. But, I really don't think he'd feel loss, like I'm sure he doesn't right now. He doesn't miss me, and he doesn't care that he has taken the stability from my life. He doesn't care that I changed my whole life to be with him. He decided that I wasn't someone he was excited to see. He decided that this wasn't worth saving. I didn't know how to be someone he missed. I threw my heart and soul into the possibility of an us, and he seemed like he cut and ran as fast as he could once things were really serious. I miss being in Maryland, actually. I miss the friends I did have there, becasuse there isn't that much here for me right now.

Someday, some day, I'll be someone that is missed. I'll have someone who doesn't want to live without me in his life. But for now, I just feel alone. I love that I have my friends by phone -- they've kept me sane these last few weeks. It's edging faster and faster towards this time flying by. I don't know what to do with my life right now, but I can't wait to see what unfolds for me. Joe needs to stay in my past, and if he thinks that coming back within a month and saying he's sorry and he misses me is not going to go over well. I can't do this anymore. I already realized a long time ago that I can't be me around him because I am terrified of being judged to be lesser by him. I just don't want or need that in my life. I fought for a long time to try and be myself and to try and make this work, but I still found that I had a very hard time opening up and talking to him even when he was telling me that he wasn't going anywhere and that he would always be there for me. Funny how it went from that to goodbye in a week. I knew it was coming. And, I hate that I was too blind to see it from the beginning. I might have still come up here for a job, but, I'm not sure what would have happened if that was the case. Either way, I'm here, this is my life now. I made my bed... time to lie in it.

~M

     Well, this picture pretty much says it all right now. I feel very conflicted, and I'm hoping that when Joe wakes up in a few weeks and comes crawling back (as he's actually showing signs of it and Lisa has already warned me it might be coming) I can hold strong and tell him to stay out of my life as anything but a friend. I won't play this game with him -- he's already shown me how quickly he can throw me away for no reason. I won't put myself in a position where that can happen again. It is neither worth it, nor okay with me. I don't like being made to feel that I am worthless and unwanted. I'm still fighting feeling very unattractive, as he never cared to act as though he wanted me. "Sex is Sex" he said once, and I'm done feeling as though I'm unwanted.
     The 'real' me is trying to re-break through this mess of a life I've gotten myself into. Hopefully I can keep it up and keep moving forwards. I'm just sick to death of 'dealing' with Joe. I wonder if I never could tell him I loved him becasuse I wasn't sure I did anymore.
     I would never date him again unless he stopped smoking completely and maybe I'd add in a clause that he had to go see a psychiatrist if his behavior kept being so erradic after he stopped smoking. I hate that part of me wants him in my life because of the way I feel when I think about him. But, I gave up everything and did my best to figure out everything I could so that we could make things work out right. He told me this was the last relationship he wanted to be in, and I felt the same way. Hell, engagement rings had been talked about. I feel flat, and I'm working on feeling as though this isn't the end of what I can have in my life. I'm waiting, and I'll keep waiting and hoping to see what is going to happen. As much as I miss a relationship in my life, I don't miss dealing with his smoking and his moods and walking on egg shells because I couldn't figure out what would set him off or not. I don't need that in my life. I hope that I can find someone who is kind and caring and who appreciates me for who I am.

I'm on the hunt, lookout!

I find it amazing that this used to be my idea of perfection and where my dreams took me. This is the happily ever after I wanted from my life, and actually thought for a time that I had found. Joe said to me, while he was breaking my heart -- again --, that he'd thought that this would be his last relationship, that things would end with me. I guess he was wrong, and I was just as wrong to have been thinking the same damn thing. I was looking at freaking engagement rings. Welcome to major sucking. This is just what I wanted, and what I'd set myself up to believe I could have.

On a side note, why is it that when I start thinking about him, or writing about him, that he pops up into my life in one way or another? I don't like this weird shit at all.

Sooo, I'm doing my best and moving day to day. This year 1/1/11 I am making a resolution to have him out of my life this year. Yes, we might be casual friends, but I will not have him in my life as anything more than that. Hopefully I can stick to this resolution. I don't often make them, but I hope that this one I can actually stick to. 

I'm holding up better -- and though I'm still a bit prone to feeling depressed, but things are getting better. I've re-joined a few dating sites, and I'm hoping that I can be more active and meet more people. I want someone else in my life, but I won't settle for someone who isn't going to appreciate me. I'm demanding more. I won't settle for anything anymore. I just end up getting hurt, and I don't want to do that anymore. 

Anyway, Happy New Year!