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Note to my mother who sometimes reads this blog: Please do not read this entry.

The roommate and I originally know each other via the Message Board of Note and thus ‘know’ a lot of the same people. To be fair, I know them a lot better than he does, given that I have close friends through the board. Given that my amazing friend just sent me a plane ticket.

The roommate didn’t know about me and OLB (I thought EVERYONE freaking knew about that since OLB quite publicly acted like a jerk and behind the scenes I whispered “Psst. Not only is he being obnoxious, but he also did this.” And then it occurs to me, that I guess I never told this story. (For the record, the women he obnoixously posted about were never me.)

For one, I cannot believe that was three years ago. And actually, most of it, FOUR years ago, since it was 2007 when that drive to Connecticut occurred, and it was Thanksigiving weekend of 2007 that I got dressed for a gathering somewhere, subconsciously knowing something was going to happen, even though I had no reason to think so.

I met OLB on a random drive to Connecticut, for a random gathering of libertarians, who had somehow all wound up on a random spin-off message board. We’d briefly met at a previous gathering, but I thought nothing of him. I guess those hours together in the car were important, because at Thanksgiving weekend that year there was another gathering in the city, and it was one of those nights where you know you look pretty(I had this lacy red tank top on, peaking out from my black sweater. Clearly, some part of me knew something was up even though I really, seriously Had No Idea) and you wonder if the boy next to you is actually sitting closer to you than he needs to be, or whether you’re just imagining it.

(I wasn’t imagining it)

He was smart and emotionally unavailable, so clearly I was hooked. Plus, I thought because he was older he’d be less inclined to play games. Ha. Ha. Ha.

OLB pulled me into his bed, but not his life. I was like his dirty little secret – the crazy girl he was secretly sleeping with. He took me out to dinner, but never out with his friends. The mornings after, he took me for breakfast, and for walks, and then he pushed me on the subway and basically said ‘Get out of my life’

One night a guy from Message Board of Note, from out of town, was visiting. The local contingency got together and drinking was involved. We were a few blocks from OLB’s apartment and a long subway ride away from mine, so I asked him if I could stay over and he said sure.

At the end of the night, it was me, OLB, and this other acquaintance of ours who totally knew what was up. He had known what was up at Thanksgiving – he’s not an idiot. We were all standing on a street corner on the Lower East Side, saying goodnight.

OLB pushed me away and pretended to be walking in a different direction. I was so blindsided/confused that I froze. The acquaintance saw what was up and offered to see me home safely. I was drunk (and now upset) and wound up going home with OLB anyway, where I yelled at him, called him out on what happened that night, and then later, ultimately cowered.

I’m stupid, but I’m not naive. I knew what was up. I had learned a lot of lessons from HWSNBN years earlier. (#1: Do not be with someone who won’t hold your hand in public. Literally and metaphorically) I already knew what it was like to be with someone who’s emotionally unavailable. Who will sleep with you but never tell you you’re pretty. Who will take note of the fact that you’re a headcase, point out your flaws, and later remind you that if you just hadn’t been so god damned melancholy, maybe things could have worked out. Who will constantly cancel on you at the last minute, because sticking to your plans would mean admitting to his friends that he’s seeing you.

I had a crush on HWSNBN long before he kissed me. We were sitting in my living room, and he said “You’re beautiful.” And then he kissed me and in those moments, my world was perfect. Later he told me “I don’t know what guy couldn’t fall into eyes like yours”

A total line, but he said it, I fell, and he still pushed me away. I wasn’t pretty enough or sane enough or together enough or smart enough or whatever enough.

And for all the tears over this, I let it happen and let myself continue to accept increasingly mixed signals, because hell, it was better than nothing. With HWSNBN it was because I’d crushed on him for so long and then he actually kissed me and we’d tease each other politically with “you feed my radicalism.”/”no YOU feed my radicalism”, and at 4 am we’d smoke Camel Lights on my front steps and it felt like Something. With OLB, well…I don’t have any idea. He kissed me, he brought me home, and he made me coffee. And a year later, at the same sort of meet-up, even though we hadn’t talked in months, he walked in and said “You look really nice.” And I proceeded to get black out drunk and go home with him, and engage in what David has since described as “Date-raping yourself”

Somewhere between all of that we made the trip to Chicago for the Message-Board-of-Note meetup. He made the 12 hour drive with me, shared a hotel room with me, and never acknowledged my presence in front of the others. So I coped by getting epically drunk (but behaving quite well. Ellie was driving and was thus stone cold sober and tells me I was fine. As do other people. OLB insisted I was a mess and instead of caring that I was a mess (at this point, I had admitted to him I had a total booze problem) he was just like ‘you’re an idiot and you embarrassed me). We were barely out of Chicago the next day when he blurted out “I don’t think we should see each other anymore.”

I cried. He listed my flaws. I cried a fair amount of the 12 hours home.

The Thanksgiving relapse happened a few months later and ended with him screaming at me and shoving me on a street corner. And then spending the next few months on Message Board of Note, talking about his relationship drama. In public, he got away with it. In private, fellow MBON people flocked to my side, and as time went on and more stuff developed, more people were like “WTF?!?”

Don’t get me wrong, when this was all going on I was an actively alcoholic head case and no guy would/should have wanted me anyway. But OLB was such a jackass that people were still on my side. I like to think I took the high road – I never made it public, I never called him out on it. But David (x3), Timothy, Ben, Ellie, Ross, Alex, Ali, and hell, even Dru swooped in and said “Yeah. He’s being a jerk. You’re not crazy for thinking he’s being a jerk.”

And years later I am well over HWSNBN and OLB, thank god. I never thought I would be over HWSNBN because he devastated me more than anyone ever had. (“I am a cynic, you are a romantic, but you’re smart enough to be a cynic,” he told me. “And you are really romanticising this.” His dismissal of my alleged romanticism, and thus me was incredibly painful. Ages later, I wrote this. I was able to hold me head high, say ‘screw it’ to the boy I’d moved to New York for, and manage for those first 6 months when I lived in Jersey City and could basically see his building from the balcony.

I smoked the occasional Camel Light, but other than that, I was okay.

And I realize this babblefest has not even addressed The Ex, which is either worthy of a different entry altogether, or not worthy of one at all. Our relationship “changed me” because we were together 4+ years and they were formative years. Mostly though, we were too young. It’s our random friendship that was more damaging. That happened and in some ways I fell for him all over again. As far as I know, he’s in the middle of med school at Georgetown. Which means for a year, I lived no more than a mile from him. On my last day in Glover Park I was packing up some final things and was in a bad mood, and was all sweaty and gross, and thought, ‘watch me run into The Ex right now.’

I didn’t run into him. I haven’t seen him since a week after I broke up with him in 2004. But in the summer of 2006 we had a standing date to speak on the phone on Sunday nights, and texted all the time…and it was fucking ridiculous. And then he got a girlfriend. He tumbled into a relationship with this girl after a long conversation with me where he freaked out about his feelings and I advised. I was in Chicago, a newly minted UChicago student, and hundreds of miles away from everything that had made me happy. One night in October he called me and said tentatively “Oh…so…I have a girlfriend now.” I swallowed my tears (several times) and I smiled through them and told him how happy I was for him.

I loved him. I did love him. I did love him enough to want him to be happy. I do hope he’s happy.

In some way, he must have known it hurt me, because of the tentative tone of his voice on the phone, after several months of us being so close. I called a friend and burst into tears. She’d witnessed all my stupid texting and swooning and she knew I was being stupid. “He has to know that this hurts you,” she said.

It did, but it didn’t matter.

(“There’s one thing I have to say, so I’ll be brave. I know what I wanted. I gave what I gave. I’m not sorry I met you. I’m not sorry it’s over I’m not sorry there’s nothing to say.”)

The Ex is an Ex for a reason. For a lot of reasons. And it was fucked up when we were ‘friends.’ There is a little piece of my heart that will always, always love him (even though the feeling isn’t mutual. He totally hates me) and I’m completely okay with that now.

I have loved once (The Ex), THOUGHT I loved once again (HWSNBN), and once knew there was no way in hell I loved, but I was doing it anyway (OLB).

In between, I’ve had my share of perfectly nice dates with perfectly nice guys, none of whom pinged my interest.

The way to win my heart is to be emotionally unavailable. I’ll take the bait every time, and no, I never learn.

My brief foray into optimism ended when I didn’t really sleep on Wednesday night. I felt as if I’d been run over by a train for most of Thursday, didn’t eat because my stomach was in knots, and then didn’t sleep more than 20 minutes at a time last night.

It was probably appropriate that this invite for a meet-up with people with anxiety appeared in my inbox. I waffled about going, angrily changed my clothes 3-4 times (because I’d just look in the mirror and think I looked horrible in everything) Then I got the hell out of the house, lest I find more reasons not to go. I was early, of course, and I got out of the Dupont Circle metro stop on the wrong side and had to take a scary escalator, and then I couldn’t find the group, and I was going to just say fuck it and go home.

Somehow, I forced myself to stay at a bus stop, watching the clock on the bank. I decided if a bus didn’t come by 7:02, I would make one more attempt to go.

I was able to find the group and the people were nice and we discussed all sorts of crazy, anxiety issues, and while it didn’t make me feel less crazy, it made me feel less alone. Then, we were making small talk and discussing jobs, and this one guy was talking about some wacky-economics job, and a woman asks him “So you’re a Keyensian?” and he starts to say “…well no…” And I whipped my head around in like 2.5 seconds and said “Wait are you a Libertarian?”

He couldn’t even look at me like I’m crazy, because duh, we’re in the same Crazy Person Support Group. (yes, he’s a libertarian) Anyway, the group continued to talk, and I got quiet, and I don’t know how my train of thoughts led where they did, but all of a sudden I rudely interuppted the group with a full-scale, all out panic attack. My heart was pounding, I couldn’t breathe, I was shaking, and yeah, having a full scale nutty in front of these people I just met.

And then, the only thing I wanted to do was get out there, because I needed air. At that point, I couldn’t even remember how to get from Dupont Circle to my metro stop (which yes, involves a transfer, but its really fucking easy.)

So, two people who live an the end of the line in Alexandria walked me to the Metro (including walking the extra way to the Q Street Side so we could take the elevator). This one girl held my arm through the walk to the transfer at the crowded Galleria Place stop. I’d calmed down a little at this point, but it hit again and I collapsed on a seat. The guy sat down next to me, squeezed my hand, and just started asking me random questions, designed to distract me. At one point, I got a little hysterical about what I was panicking about, flew through a series of what-ifs, and they both just pointed out that our brains go to worst case scenarios that usually don’t exist. And they just distracted me with random conversation, and took my cell phone to put their numbers in it, because my hands were shaking too badly to do so.

By the time I got to my stop, I had calmed down some, but they got off the train with me to walk me home, even though it’d mean they’d have to get back to the station and wait for another train.

I took a Xanax so I could catch my breath.

I’m nowhere near 100% and I doubt I’ll be sleeping much tonight. But tonight, I am incredibly grateful for the kindness of strangers. And that the bus didn’t show up by 7:02.

August 3, 2011

I am on a southbound train from Kingston, Rhode Island. It’s a seven hour ride to DC. My pseudo-cousin Adam will be keeping me company until we hit New York, but after 4 ½ straight days with me, he’s probably had enough.

There is so much going on, and so much I haven’t written about. At first, I thought I’d talk about the events leading up to this, but better to just be blunt: a few days before I left for vacation, I spent 4 ½ days in the hospital, detoxing. Relapse, as they say in AA, is not a requirement.

But it is a reality. Since getting out of rehab I have been more of an anxious, depressed mess than I’ve been in my whole life. We’re talking panic attacks in the shower, fear of leaving my apartment, and vague fantasies of stepping in front of a bus. I was waking up every morning with knots in my stomach and I’d lie there, sometimes for hours trying to make it go away. My doctor and I still hadn’t stumbled upon the perfect combination of medicines to keep me sane, and so I turned to what I knew would work.

Because vodka quiets my head and allows me to breathe. Of course, I wake up even more anxious the morning after, but in panicked moments when I can’t sit still for even 30 seconds, when my legs are shaking on the escalator out of the Metro, when I can’t finish a fucking job application, I don’t care.

While I was in the hospital, I also found out that my roommate was moving out at the end of the lease. We had previously planned to stay month to month through December. So of course, I freaked. I was hooked up to a heart monitor, and I watched my heart rate skyrocket on the screen.

So that happened. And there is nothing I can do but pick myself up and keep going.

The day I was admitted to ER (I went to Urgent Care that day for a completely unrelated injury sustained while drunk, which is another story, and I was clearly in the throes of alcohol withdrawal, so they sent me to ER) I had my iPad with me, so I was furiously emailing people, posting on Message-Board-of-Note, and reading stupid things on the internet to distract myself.

I offhandedly mentioned that when my iPad battery died I was going to be bored out of my mind.

Not only did I get a ton of well wishes from my Message-Board-of-Note friends, I got very pretty flowers from one of the guys in the DC area, and a visit from another guy who lives in NoVa. He brought me stuff to read and food that wasn’t hospital food. And he brought me a brand new iPad charger. And pajama pants. Which was pretty much the sweetest thing ever. My roommate also came by with my cell phone charger; he’s been really worried about me, and I feel terrible for putting him through so much stress.

My friend who visited me, also drove completely out of his way last Sunday to drive me the whole 7 minutes to my apartment. And then drove me to Safeway to drop off my new prescriptions and waited for me while they were filled when I could have easily walked home.

And I may have found a solution to my housing problem, even though it will mean a fortune in self-storage fees. I have a million things to do before the end of August, but having a project feels good. It’s helped me get back into the swing of applying for jobs, albeit very slowly.

So, a few days later I came back to Jersey, went to Trivia Night with Brent and Joe (and lost horribly, due to a Disney question), and then rode up to Rhode Island with the parents. No matter how old the pseudo-cousins and I get, we are still “the kids.” When we go out to eat there’s a kids side of the table. When there’s too many of us to fit around the dining room table, the kids eat outside, the adults eat inside. I spent tons of time at the beach (producing uneven burn lines), walked to Cumberland Farms, spent a morning at the Umbrella factory/visiting old Charlestown haunts, and ate a ton of delicious food. And laughed a lot with my pseudo cousins over memories of all our years in Rhode Island.

This train won’t hit DC until near 10:00 pm, so I’ll probably take a cab home and then collapse. This coming Saturday, a friend who I haven’t seen in about 15 years is coming into DC and we’re going to play tourist. I’m buying dinner for my friend who visited me in the hospital on Sunday. That is ridiculously social for me.

It’s probably sounds strange, but I feel better than I have in a long time. Way better than I felt when I got out of a rehab.

This won’t be posted until Thursday. Friday. By the time I get home, liquor stores in DC will be closed, so I’ll have made it another day. That’s 15  16 days. Gotta start somewhere.

Out of nowhere today, I remembered a comment that HWSNBN made to me once. It was December 2004 and I was high on life. “You know, things between us could have been quite different if you hadn’t been so melancholy last year,”  he said. (He was really, really good at breaking my heart)

What he meant, for those who have not been following my blogging for the EIGHT years it’s been around (I missed my blogging anniversary because I was drunk) was that I was weak because I couldn’t just ‘snap out of it’ when I was depressed and therefore was not together enough for him. And since my self-esteem wasn’t in very good shape, I spent a lot of time in the next few years trying to show how ‘together’ I was. Which is especially screwy considering HWSNBN wasn’t/isn’t even in my life.

I guess I thought of this because of something I heard at a SMART recovery meeting last week. SMART is very different from AA. In AA, you are defined by your alcoholism. In SMART your addiction is a problem but the philosophy is that we get better. That’s what someone said on Tuesday; we get better. (Coincidence to one of my favorite West Wing episodes?)

It gives me hope, because it reminds me I got better. More importantly, it reminds me I am NOT my alcoholism. The comment from HWSNBN was probably one of the most damaging things anyone has ever said to me, because he made me believe that I was my Depression. That that’s what defined me, and that no one could ever want to be with such a mess. I spent the next few years squashing down Depression, hiding it, believing that it made me deserving of shame. And then I spent a few years after that overcompensating for it; I wore my Crazy as a mask of sorts. I put it on full display and challenged the viewer to make something of it. I know I did that with OLB.

I truly believed that while Depression was real, I was only allowed a certain amount of help. I so strongly believed that my will was enough. I even expressed envy for those who were sicker than me, the people who could fall apart completely and get put back together, because I was too scared to fall apart.

So I quietly held it together. I think, to a degree, I’ve done the same with alcohol. Part of me just still hated myself too much for not being able to snap out of it. Because being a drunk is still a stigma. People understand, they do (and as I’ve mentioned many times, the people in my life are amazing. EVERYONE has been so supportive and wonderful and has just wanted to help) but there is that part of me that thinks they’re just humoring me and they think I’m weak and worthless and not worth knowing.

I was sober for 18 months. I worked so hard to get myself to DC. And even before that, I worked to get myself to my job through 8.5 months of no license, I worked at that attempt for the Libertarian Fellowship, I worked at being the best damn glorified secretary ever. How could I do all that and still not manage to keep myself together down here? I’ve been so ANGRY at myself, and I’m just seeing now how being angry just buys into the mistaken idea that I am my drinking. And I am NOT my drinking.

Yeah, I’m an alcoholic. I’m also pretty smart and can probably beat you in Trivial Pursuit. I don’t follow sports but I love cheesy sports movies, like Miracle and Angels in the Outfield. (Both will make me cry) I’m a libertarian and I’d love to tell you why libertarians are the awesomest political party on the planet. I’m a Jewish-Atheist. I can’t walk in heels and since I’m kind of a zaftig I don’t dig the skinny-jeans trend but I can look pretty cute in boot cut jeans. I know the lyrics to every Billy Joel song and I also like country music. I have pretentious degrees that I’ve never used. I still have no idea what I’m going to be when I grow up.

I am NOT my Depression. I am NOT my alcoholism.

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Two years ago today, after hours of protest, they finally let me leave the hospital. It was a few days after I’d gotten back from the awful Chicago trip with O-L-B, and I had dealt with it by drinking too much, and drunk dialing. I had tickets to Billy Joel, Last Play At Shea (Awesome, because Billy Joel is…was my favorite ever)

But me, being me, and being fully on board with Self Destructive Behavior, fucked it up. I wound up black out drunk and being transported to some hospital in Queens via ambulance. Kristen – a high school/college friend of mine, still has not spoken to me, other than acknowledging I was alive, since witnessing it. I still feel sickly guilty about my behavior, about the stupid thing I did in reaction to a bad situation, and also, still, how I managed to miss Billy Joel’s last play at Shea.

For the most part, I still can’t listen to Billy Joel, who I have loved since childhood. His music has imbued every Important Moment of my life, and I can’t listen to him. That still breaks my heart, that still is the coldest reminder of the destruction I caused to me and my loved ones while at the depths of Depression.

The morning after, (that past night, I had apparently drunk dialed my own mother, so deep was my cry for help) I boarded the bus to Jersey and came home. That, in many ways, remains the worst day of my life, although if we’re competing, it may be second only to March 18, 2009, which I’ve still not written about here.

I made a lot of drunken phone calls the night I was in the hospital. To O-L-B, and also to Dru, the other Libertarian boy I had stupidly gotten myself entangled with.

The whole week leading up to that incident was so awful. I was hurtling toward it, what with my stupid decision to drive to Chicago with O-L-B and then, to share a room with him.

Thank god for David. Thank god for this random Internet-Stranger-Friend, who had already saved my life months before, when he acknowledged the validity of my feelings, and recognized that yeah, I had a problem, and I wasn’t crazy to think so. Last night, I was out with other people from Message-Board-of-Note, and it reminded me how incredibly grateful I am to have found this internet community, that by all rights, I shouldn’t be a part of. I rarely, if ever, posted on H&R. It is by fate, coincidence, whatever you want to call it that I wound up on Message Board of Note, that I wound up driving to Connecticut with O-L-B as my passenger, and meeting David in person, and then, that Thanksgiving. Well, there was that Thanksgiving.

I have this text message, from that date, two years ago saved. I remember what I wrote. I was waiting for the bus in Port Authority, and I lamented “I just don’t feel like I have anything to get better for.” That text message isn’t saved. But I remember it, because I remember so distinctly what it was to feel that way.

David’s reply: “You have yourself to get better for jackass. What else would need?”

I did get better. It took awhile, but damnit, I Got Better. It was the easiest and hardest thing that I have ever had to do in my life. Staying Better is just as hard. I don’t think I could have done it, were it not for the perfect combination of job/awesome boss, my amazing AMAZING, Internet-Stranger-Friends, and my old friends.

But that text message stands out to me. That day was horrible, and that week had been horrible, and David answered my texts/calls, even though he knew that it was me for was doing the fucking up, he looked past that and still said “You have a lot of good qualities. It’s a pity you’re willing to overlook them and dwell on your flaws”

Lately, I’ve been managing to listen to the song “Vienna,” one of my favorite Billy Joel songs, which is oh-so-appropriate for my current situation. Because, I got better. Not right away, and not easily, and not without my hand being forced, but I got better.

And even though I can’t listen to most of my former favorite songs, I think that may still be the coolest thing I’ve ever done.

I’ve been at my current job for almost two years, and there are still days when I think exactly like this. Even more than two years since being summarily dismissed from the Job-That-Wasn’t, I still, as I confessed earlier this week, have nightmares about it. I still have my moments when I forget that my bosses and co-workers are NOT like the people at the job-that-wasn’t. Earlier this week, I was on the verge of panicking, and was fully cognizant of the fact that there was no reason to panic, but for some reason my brain still anticipates the reaction I would have received at that awful place.

I know I’ve talked about it 1000 times in this space (but it’s my space, and I’ll repeat myself if I want to) but I still don’t know that I will be able to properly convey how much this job has truly been among the things that saved my life since I came back to Jersey in shame two years ago. July 17, 2008, actually. That was the date I knew I was coming back, and that I was coming back for awhile.  Six weeks later I was very lucky to start this job. This job made me feel capable of something again, even when it was just putting together a bunch of meeting materials. The lack of questions I was asked is why March 18, 2009 and everything after were not nearly as horrible as they could have been.

This job saved my life.

Joe’s been in California, apartment hunting, so I haven’t been harassing him with my usual rounds of cover letters and questions. He emailed last night to agree to feed my cat next week (even though the cat is a racist) and I can’t wait to tell him about My Plan. I would not even be capable of thinking about making this plan if it were not for Joe being my sounding board and support system. He said recently, that he never would have imagined the weird friendship we’ve developed, where we hang out and talk endlessly about careers and existential crises (mostly mine) and dating. I’m sure there’s a sector of the population who would call it fate that I ran into him one morning at the bus stop in O-town, almost three years ago now. That, and several other bus rides, is how he came to be the person who drove me to work the week I was stuck and who reads constant drafts of my schizo cover letters.

Joe has saved my life.

Joe is also the reason that Brent and I talk now, constantly exchange emails. We’ll never be the same as we used to, but we shouldn’t. He was still there at my one year in March, because he understood why it was such a big deal. They all did.

My old friends have saved my life.

I had actual work to do this morning; a change of pace, as summer here has been dead. Last summer, I exchanged countless emails and was distracted by dozens of gchats with people from Message-Board-of-Note. David, I hardly think of as being from there anymore, such a good friend he was to me when I really needed it. I still have the text message he sent me after that awful, awful seven days that started with the ride to Chicago and ended with my in the hospital: “You have yourself to get better for you jackass. What else would you need?”

David has saved my life.

The rest, some who I’ve met, some who I haven’t, made me feel as if I was part of something other than just my head. From these internet strangers, I’ve gotten career advice, CDs in the mail, and, with Ellie, countless hours of ridiculous conversation about Hugh Laurie, kittens, and petty-judgmental-thoughts. They made me laugh, they agreed that O-L-B was a jerk, they looked after me via text message, and once, at thirteen days, when I fretted how little time that was, Timothy replied “No, do you know how many HOURS that is? Right now, 13 days is awesome.”

The Message-Board-of-Note saved my life.

And then there’s me, who bemoaned the fact that 2010 is half over, and that I’ve gotten nowhere. That, on a Friday afternoon, I am sitting barefooted and cross-legged in front of my computer at the same job that saved my life, unmotivated to finished the three job applications that are 3/4^th done, and also, already ready to give up on dating because it isn’t that much fun, and the distraction it provides isn’t worth the opportunity cost. I am twenty seven years old, very much single, and still answering phones, among my many other responsibilities.

But I am 190 or so days into 2010, whereas two years ago, I didn’t even know 190 hours. I’m pretty pragmatic (some days, pessimistic), still filled with regrets for the could haves, would haves, and should haves, and still could afford to lose at least another five pounds.

But there are days that I hope. There are days that I am able imagine that I will one day have a life that is not this. I still can’t picture myself with someone else, and I can’t imagine a successful career, and really, there’s nothing tangible in my vision of My Plan. But there’s just this vague sense that I can do something else, and that one day, I will have a life again, that things will get better, because they already are. I am quite far away from the depths of Depression and darkness and utter stupidity that made my life a living hell for most of 2007 and 2008.

And I got myself here. I proved my worth and I got myself this job. And then, after many false starts, I rallied the troops and I finally got myself the help I needed, that came in ways I never expected it could. And that’s why, on an ordinary Friday afternoon, I’m sitting here writing this sappy, over the top, melodramatic entry, because I didn’t really realize what happened.

Because somehow, when I wasn’t paying attention, I managed something I didn’t know I was attempting.

I saved my life.

Complaining/wallowing is something that I have trained myself not to do in the past 7 months. Part of it has been that if I started to think of everything that I COULD complain about I would never find any time to be reasonably content. Part of ithas been, because I didn’t feel so stuck or so impatient a few months ago.

Part of it is because part of me still wants to believe that I can train myself to feel what I want to/think I should feel, when I want to feel it. It’s a good party trick, one that seems to work perfectly well when one is in decent spirits. The execution sort of falls apart when it’s week number umpteen of the same old-same old, and it’s all you can do NOT to dissolve into a whiny, complaining baby.

I don’t want this space to become an angst-fest. I don’t cry prettily. But I don’t want to coat it with the layer of gloss and veneer that made the entries of my Livejournal shine with alleged contentness time and time again.

Part of me is calculating. I am “grown-up” enough now to know that This Too Shall Pass; to remind myself that even in the depths of this utterly exhausting same-old-same-old there have been some very good things too; to write this and think that one day, maybe one day not too far in the future, I will look back on this angsting and be thankful for it because it got me to the place that I’ll be standing in that one day.

And then part of me thinks that that hope is delusional and misplaced, because how can I know? How can I think that I will get out of here, that I will find something better, that I will be happy, really happy like I used to be? How can I be so delusional as to think that one day I can live in New York City again, that I will fall in love, that I will be okay?

Depression is a tricky thing. In a strange way, I miss the very old days, when I didn’t know it was Depression, when I didn’t know how therapy could work (if I’d only let it) and when I truly did not believe that there was anything better for me out there. It was a dark time in my life, and I would not want to relive it, but I had blinders on, and sometimes I miss tunnel vision. With tunnel vision, it is impossible to hope, but then, it is impossible to be disappointed.

This is the darkness I sometimes find myself in, and I never know how long it will take to find a clearing. And because I don’t know, I’m afraid to let my eyes adjust to the dark and I create these artificial sources of light. I’m afraid to get lost in the woods, because if I get turned around, I might encounter a blackness that goes deeper than the vague grayness that I have known, mastered, and conquered time and again.

So I try not to complain, and I try not to worry, and I try not to angst. I try not to be that melancholy girl that I was back in college, the one who ruined things for herself because of her inability to see beyond the black, for her delusional belief in the terminal uniqueness of her dramatized misery.

But sometimes even the strongest of walls can’t hold what is hiding behind them, and that is why on an otherwise ordinary Thursday, I am angsting my way through an entry, rolling my eyes at myself, thinking about Thoreau’s take of  “lost in the woods” (because I am an overeducated elitist) and thinking of the song “War on Drugs” by BNL, and how I first heard it in January 2004, and how it represented that something, SOMETHING had to give, and soon.

It’s going to be January 2010 soon. Something has to give. And Soon.

This morning’s entry reminded me about my sorry lack of journaling lately. I do have a small notebook that I carry around and record bullet points of the day. It’s easier than having to find the time to sit down and write paragraphs and string together ideas.

I’ve mentioned before that I have trouble committing myself to mussing over my thoughts and emotions and ideas. It forces me to dwell and for the past eighteen months or so, dwelling has been dangerous. It is only in hindsight, as I see my number of entries dwindle, that I realize just how reluctant I have been to face my mind in a metaphorical mirror.

Here Are The Facts

I should be using my free time at work to actually write something. Of course, I am more likely to be found mindlessly clicking around the Internet. Okay, let me update, in list form, on some things that have happened in the past six weeks or so

-I drunk dialed O-L-B to yell at him, for something vague involving photos

-I talked to Ohio, a good conversation

-I made out with Peace, who is a conservative Muslim and had never kissed a girl. He is 31. He gave as good as he got, which was followed by a freak out on his part about how he can’t do this. And then we made out some more on the subway, and in the Strand, and then he drove me home, and had another freak out, in which he told me how wonderful and awesome I am, but we come from two different worlds and he can’t do this, because it goes against everything he believes in. Me, being me, was drunk of course. I cried. Even though I basically knew this would happen. I am definitely going to Hell.

-I went to DC, stood out in the cold for many, many hours, and saw Obama get inaugurated. The mood in DC was very happy and joyous and I had a lot of fun

-I got very sick from standing out in the cold and slept a lot.

-The relapse exploded. The parents are now aware. Probably for the better since, um, I need help, clearly, but still not a conversation that was fun to have.

-O-L-B has a girlfriend and talks about her constantly on the Message Board of Note

-I finally admitted how angry/upset/whatever I am over O-L-B, because all my months of repressing it and pretending that I was okay, because I thought I was supposed to be okay, did me absolutely no good. Never doing that again.

-So now, I’m basically wallowing, eating chocolate (which I don’t even LIKE!) and listening to “The Heart Remains a Child” a lot.
-
I woke up anxiety ridden because O-L-B and The Ex managed to weave their way into my dream

-I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning lately. I don’t know what that’s about.

If I’m not careful, I’m going to stop writing here before I ever really started. I still haven’t linked to here from everywhere, not even from my own LJ, where I have a whole 5 readers.

I started this with the idea of blogging honestly “for like, the world,” but the idea’s a little scarier in practice. So I’m writing here, in this space that nobody knows exists and suddenly I have nothing to say. It’s as if I’ve forgotten how to write without an audience (because let’s face it. Livejournal was an audience. For HWSNBN. For The Ex. For the people I figured read it without telling me they read it.) It makes me wonder how I used to fill page after page in those Mead Spiral college ruled notebooks back in high school.

Browing through other blogs lately, I read things that are so familiar that I want to give myself a lobotomy. It forces me to feel things and it makes me want to write about them, even if someone has already said all the things I wish I had written, and has probably said it better than I ever could.

I can’t help but thinking about four years ago when the Election is all over the news, because around Election Day 2004 is where things start to get really hazy. This perhaps is a lame way to mark the passage of time, but the run-up to the presidential election naturally makes me think back to the fall of 2004.

I remember how far away December seemed at the beginning of that September, and how when December came, September was far away.  But I also know that I have to move beyond the defensiveness and walls that I built up as a result of all that.

I have to remind myself to slow down, sit down, and get the words out of my head. Even if no one is going to see them. And even if the eventual audience thinks it’s pointless. Even if it means admitting to anyone who reads this that no, I’m not perfect, my life’s not rose colored, and their’s might be a lot more together than mine.

Today is one of those days where it feels as if this fight isn’t worth it.

I’m thinking about OLB; we’re sharing a room in Chicago (stupid. I don’t want any comments on this. I know) and a 13 hour drive there.

I don’t think he’s a bad person, but part of me is angry at him, even though I don’t have the real right to be. He showed up in my life at a time when all the bad (drinking, depression, etc) was accelerating. I showed up in his life 3 months after he broke up with girlfriend of 10 years. Bad timing all around. It isn’t his fault I was isolating myself from everyone else in my life the same time I was actively seeing him. But I also hate that I have to feel all icky and guilty, even if it’s only in my own head, about wanting the emotional component with him, even if it was for the same reason. See, I know it’s lame for me to talk about how totally right and comfortable and awesome it felt to be wrapped up in his arms, because it did, and I certainly can’t say that for anyone I’ve been with since the Ex-Ex-Ex. But it was just so incongruent that that comfort came without the emotional component even though I logically recognized all the reasons why romance was certainly not going to be part of our arrangement.

And I’m (mostly) okay with the fact that things didn’t (and weren’t going to) work out between us, but I just want to find some way of saying something before we spend a day together trapped in a car, because we have never talked about any of it, not really. And while him, being him, probably doesn’t feel the need, I being me, do, and I’m thinking if he has a problem with me saying “this is something we need to briefly discuss. Deal with it” then he can go deal with it on his own.

MAKE THIS MONTH END.

Basically, I’ve written this month off as a total fucking waste, and that’s okay and stuff. But damn, just END already, October. Please?

Last October, 2 important things happened.
1) I realized a PhD program was not for me. Yeah, it took months for that thought to actualize, but I knew it as early as October..considering classes started on Sept 25, I unfortunately figured that one out too quick.

2) Ryan called me around 7 AM on a Sunday morning and we had a 5 hour conversation abotu relationships. I learned a good deal about myself and confirmed my romantic past and future, and it was incredibly bittersweet. Because I was speaking to my ex-boyfriend, who I actually don’t speak to right now, and we were telling each other these honest honest things about our love lives and how we would be, and etc. and part of me knew that it was the last time we would speak like that, and I was right. And I don’t even think about it that much, honestly, but when I do, like early morning walks down Third Avenue to work the utter sadness it brings me is pathetic.

When I was 16, I took a leap of faith. I took it because it was “right.” This is the first time I have put right in quotations. Most of you don’t know the story, but I got involved with Ryan under very unfavorable circumstances, knowing it would be very difficuult, and knowing it meant having to deal with shit that you don’t usually volunteer to deal with. I still cannot, even in the most filtered of entries, tell the details, which sounds more cryptic and dramatic than it is, but part of me cannot break the silence, nor can I wish silent condemnation on myself for my choice.

The leap of faith I took has had its share of consequences on my life, I had never ‘questioned’ it as a correct step.

For the first time in my life I am dangerously worrying, what my life would be like it I had (probably rightly) chosen to throw away potential with Ryan. If, on that weekend I learned his bit of news I had been able to say ‘Well…nevermind then”

It took me eight years to admit I may have responded in the wrong way.

And so I also want to let go of those eight years, because I wish I knew where I’d be without them, even though that is impossible on several levels.

As in, “i loved you Ryan, I really did. But I should have walked away from you when I was 16 and had the opportunity. And I’ve never said that before. Not even when we first broke up. Not even last fall when you got the new girlfriend. But I loved you and for the first time I wish I never had. And I hate that, but it might be the most honest thing I ever felt.”

Can’t you just feel the angst?

I’ve been listening to the song “Hey There Delilah” incesssently, because my roommate plays it on his guitar all the time, and being a musician, I’m sure its sort of an anthem for himself, but like any love song it makes me a little sad, because I have no one with which to associate the love song.

Which made me want to listen to Bon Jovi’s “This Ain’t A Love Song.” Go figure. That plays, and then “These Days” comes on after that, and it’s freshman year of college and I knew then what I know now, on some level, and this song is so palpitably putting me back on the road in Amherst and Hadley I just don’t know how to put it into words. Arg, my memory and music. The entire album “Maybe You Should Drive” is definitely Amherst/Hampshire for me. What’s creepy is I remember driving North on 91 when i was actually, you know, moving up there, and the song “Jane” playing and I listened to that CD over and over again that year. Which of course I’m now playing, and “Love, Intermittendly” which is another Ryan memory, because what the hell in my music collection isn’t?

This doesn’t even begin to cover the range of angst I’ve experienced this month, but I”m gonna bite down on the inside of my cheeks and shut the hell up about all of it, because it’s not worth it, or helpful right now to try and be articulate about.

Okay well. This month is almost over. I’m not on the road to a PhD and I don’t have a boyfriend and won’t anytime soon.

I also have a really good apartment and a really good job and I really need to focus on both instead of being a slob, not doing laundry, and treating each day as a day to get through instead of a day to day build on each other.

Tomorrow is a brand new month and while it’s technically a meaningless milestone, tomorrow won’t be October and I will try to start again from Square One in New York because I have to, because I want to, because I need to.

The Dar Williams song “Mercy of the Fallen” makes me want to curl up in a ball and cry because in that song it is too palpitably Summer 2004. I hear that song and I’m driving up Glen Ave and it’s dark, and there’s an Iced Skim Caramel Machiatto in my cup holder, because I stopped by work that evening, because I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was sitting on my roof (my new favorite place) and that song came on over my shuffle and I wanted to throw my laptop off the roof.

Then I put on JBJ’s “Welcome to Whereever you Are” and it’s October of 2005 on the promenade in JC, where I was feeling pretty much the way I am now. Sitting on a bench, looking across the river. I still look across the river now, it’s just from the other side.

It’s growing pains. That’s what it is; or has to be. I was pretty firmly entrenched in growing up, but then I had to be all intellectual and go off to grad school and now I have to start over. There’s this expression in the last of the Jessica Darling books about how NYC lets you NOT grow up because instead of cooking, you get take-out, and instead of doing laundry, you can send it out, and you can take a cab if you get too drunk, and you never buy, you rent, etc, etc and despite the fact that its chick-lit its some pretty accurate truth.

Michael called me this morning and we talked about this phenomenon of impatience and frustration and waiting. Michael will occasiaonally frustrate me due to his inherent optimism/faith etc, but lately, he’s been my rock. I tell him things I can’t imagine telling anyone else. Despite the fact that we have seen each other IRL a small number of times since I transferred out of Hampshire we have apparently had a big influence on each other.

A Dashboard Confessional song comes on. It’s April 2004 and I’m floundering. I just dumped my boyfriend. I’m trying to find love with my crush of 2 years who is suddenly interested in hooking up with me. I am being profoundly stupid, generally, and getting my heart broken because seriously Rachel, hooking up with no strings is what people DO in college, and HWSNBN never indicated anything but.

So there are a lot of songs that there to remind of stupidity, and sadness, and ickiness and blah. And when I’m missing a piece I can always go to iTunes and download. Curse and bless technology!

Right now, I hope I’m just having the problem Michael diagnosed: that I’m in a weird place in the growing up process and nothing is settled and that’s why I’m all on edge and nonsense.

But then, it’s 6:30 on a Saturday, and I should be getting ready to go out or whatever, but instead I’m wearing a hoody and underwear, and I don’t want to do anything. I don’t even have an appetite. And all I’m going to do is maybe have some crackers and watch TV.

I’ve traditionally called March-April “this time of year,” and in doing so may have missed the fact that it’s actually October that finds me in a funk. I don’t know if “Seasonal depression” is an accurate description, (or if there is a danger of seasonal depression becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.) but man, what the fuck, self? Have you not you usually spend October all cranky and on edge and meh for usually no good reason?

Sure there’s been a lot of good in my life lately, enough to cause lots of moments of giddiness and self-affirmation bullshit.

But finding myself wanting to crawl out of my own skin for the fourth morning in a row, and remembering I felt this way last October, and the October before that. And hm. Because I’m self-absorbed, I’m reading over the Octobers, in my archive, and I found this  written one year ago today.

It’s incredibly frustrating to me to just not feel like doing anything. I’m back in Astoria, back where I belong, have a great job, great apartment, etc, etc and all I want to do is curl up and watch Saved! For the millionth time.

I want to force myself to be social to see if I snap out of this. but on the other hand, the absolute last thing I want to do is be social after work. I think about the little things I have to go home and do like clean up and pick up all the change on my floor and thinking about how I have to do little things like that makes me squirm and want to scream.

This is also frustrating, because NaNo is coming up, and I really want to participate full-on this year, and actually go to the meet-ups and write-ins. I want to write the story that’s been following me around for so many years, even though it may be ridden with cliches and horribly maudlin. Basically, I want to tell the story of not wanting to get out of bed in the morning, and what happens when you get out of bed. But it would help me out a lot if lately, I wanted to get out of bed in the morning. Not that I’m horribly depressed or anything, because I’m not. I don’t know what I am.

So maybe it’s time to do what I did after I wrote that entry. Get back into therapy. I have good health insurance starting November 1st. And past experiences with therapy prove that I am indeed one of those schmucks for whom therapy works. Part of me hates that I “need” therapy to stay at an even keel, but…if it helps, I’m going to do it. I like myself too damn much when I’m happy, and healthy, and productive, and peaceful to deny it to myself just because I’m a little hung up on the stigma of therapy.

The $12 a week a pay for it is way cheaper than alcohol as self-medication. That G-d for my amazing benefits package

Gawd. (I am rolling my eyes at myself)

I’m FINE, on 97.5% of all levels. My thesis is getting done (my questions about whether its a valid piece of academia is probably part of the 2.5%) I like my classes. I have friends here, and at home.

But ug, the way a freaking SONG can trigger melancholy, even without a specific memory is damn powerful. So effective, that I even have to laugh at myself, what with my conception of free will and all. And I must send a check tomorrow, for a cause I deem wonderful, but also horribly sad.

I mean, I just watched Miracle and cried. If you don’t know me well enough to know WHY it is I won’t bother explaining. So I’m watching Eternal Sunshine at 1 AM and that’s all healthy, clearly.

I love the premise of Eternal Sunshine. Just the IDEA of trying with someone, even if you know deep down that it isn’t going to work, even if you know you’re going to get hurt, there is just this inherent romanticism in TRYING with someone. I love Kate Winslet in this movie; she’s so raw and beautiful. And I don’t understand why this is considered a comedy; this movie is depressing as hell.

For one, I am a relatlvely defensive person. 

I also have a mix on iTunes entitled “You ruined this one for me.” Which is basically songs that I can’t listen to, because they remind me of exes. Thank god Billy Joel remains immune, save two songs. But also, my memory kills me. Like I’ll cue up a song and it brings up such intensely palpitable memories that I want to hit something. Strangely there are fewer songs that remind me of the ex-ex-ex than HeWhoShallNotBeNamed. I think Laura teased me once I had like, a soundtrack for that relationship. And um, i kind of did.

I am listening to an NSYNC song right now. I am wholly unashamed of this. Rome and I used to walk around the West Village singing Britney Spears. 

I am dealing with “issues.” Which is my purposelly vague way of saying “Wow. There’s a lot of nonsense from ages ago that I never dealt with. I’m going to go deal with it! Which is probably quite annoying for anyone who has to deal with me on a daily basis. This post sounds fairly emo and so I will conclude on the note that I recognize my ridiculousness.