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!

I hurt.

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.

Cyrill Connolly

It's Over

Well, end of relationship. I don't have a reason -- neither did he when he dumped me. But, I've got to keep moving forward. I hurt, all the time, but people keep telling me it'll get better. I hope so.

We had something amazing. Maybe we aren't meant to be together, though that's all your fault. But I cannot believe that you'd let us lose the connection we had because you're too much of a coward to be friends with me. I hope one day you'll realize what you threw away, and I hope you hurt as much as you have hurt me. How can you completely throw away this connection -- cause we could probably make really good friends... But I'm not going to fight for something you don't care about.

So yes, I hope that one day you'll talk to me again, but, I will live if you don't.

My life at the Moment

Day to day I'm growing more into what my future might actually end up being at some point. I'm looking forward to it, and I'm scared of it at the same time. I am pretty happy with my life at the moment, though I have trouble from time to time being able to really know what is going on. I'm not certain how to just be sometimes. I'm so used to the same old things that I am not quite sure I really know how to just sit back and relax. I'm not use to the whole 'girlfriend' role. I don't know, really, what I'm supposed to be and do most of the time. So, I try to be myself. I am working on that, that and not worrying so much about EVERYTHING. I hate that about my personality and my genetics. If I could change one thing about my life and who I am, I would take away the extreme anxiety and worries that I feel a lot of the time. I don't feel like that is 'me'. I know that I would always be more prone to thinking about other people and ow what I do would effect others, but I wish that I could go without worrying about everything. I'd be less stressed and there would be so much less crap on my mind ALL THE TIME. I really dislike feeling like I'm going crazy because of the way that I think. I swear my mood can change right off the bat and I just don't like it at all.
I'm trying to stay with running more and more and trying to stay more active so that I can do my best to keep the anxiety and such at bay. I'm doing my best and trying to keep open and talking about the things which are on my mind. Joe is good about paying attention to what is going on with me. But, I don't want to feel, or want him to feel, as though that is a requirement of us being together. I'm doing my best, but it is taking some time for me to really feel 'safe' opening up. I don't want to hand him my heart on a platter only to get it minced and served back to me. I always have argued that each time he is back in my life he is different and the situation is different, and if ever, this is the case now. I cannot believe how far we have come in what we are doing. I'm constantly amazed by my twist of fate here. I cannot wait to see where it takes me, and what we have in store for our lives together. Hopefully, we can stay friends if anything does happen to go horribly wrong. I feel like both of us have to fully work out the relationship between us in order to move on in our lives. And, I'm okay with that. We can and will take care of it and I know that we will be able to do what needs doing to get to a happy point. We'd have adorable kids, if we had that happen....

We could have a long future, and I look forward to finding out where this new adventure will take us. I have not yet bound the book with out ending in it, as every time I feel that the ending has been written I'm delighted and frightened to learn that it was yet another chapter in the book about who and what we are. Amazing, sometimes, that we have done this so often. I hope that there is a long life of writing and adventure in front of us... we have the potential, and I can't wait to write it out... I do so love happy endings.

The Caligrapher's Daughter

This book was the first book in a while to keep me reading for a few weeks because I couldn't finish it all at once like I normally do with books. I don't know why it surprises me that there are books which exist which will not be super easy reads for me. It wasn't a hard book to read, but the things that are in the book are very heavy subject matter, and the way that it is written gives a most interesting look at some of the less appealing aspects of the history of the people of Korea. I did have a few issues with the fact that the book itself was written from a bunch of different people's points of view and the names of the characters and the proper names by which they were addressed in Korean society were commonly switched and interchanged. It was a bit hard sometimes to follow the changes in the speaker and the common names throughout. It was to a point where the same sentence in a few places would refer to one character by different names. It made for a bunch of re-reading being necessary to really get the things which the author was trying to say. I didn't really appreciate it sometimes, because it made reading go so much slower.
I enjoyed the story, felt genuinely attached to the main character -- though I really found the relationship between her and her father quite annoying. He blamed her for a lot of things, and in the traditional Korean society, did not even name his daughter, so our character did not really have a name for the whole book. That was weird. The main reason it was so weird was that it wasn't really ever explained fully as to what the heck was going on between this man and his daughter.
I loved the descriptions and the writing style throughout this novel. I rather loved the way that the author took the time to see all the beauty which surrounded our character, even when she was in her unhappiest days. The love story which ended up entertained throughout this piece was beautiful and the thing born of ages where one could marry and never again see one's husband.
Overall I'd say read this book, absolutely. I would advise that you take some time to really sit down and read this. It is heavy and covers many topics from the many years this character lived. It ends with the fall of the Japanese after the atomic bombs were dropped. The ending is a bit sudden, but the book is certainly worth the read. I rather enjoyed it as a break from the normal books I read.

Next on the list, and I hate to admit that though I started it last night, I'm almost completely done with it already....

I read Alice Hoffman's The Ice Queen and have been enraptured by her writing style ever since. I had no idea if this would live up to the first book I read or not... but I knew I had to find out, as Angela highly recommended it and I felt that I really should take it in and read it as she LOVES this book!

Simply stated...