When I was younger

I saw my daddy cry

And curse at the wind

He broke his own heart

And I watched

As he tried to reassemble it

And my momma swore that

She would never let herself forget

And that was the day that I promised

I'd never sing of love

If it does not exist

But darlin'

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

Maybe I know, somewhere

Deep in my soul

That love never lasts

And we've got to find other ways

To make it alone

Or keep a straight face

And I've always lived like this

Keeping a comfortable, distance

And up until now

I had sworn to myself that I'm content

With loneliness

Because none of it was ever worth the risk

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

I've got a tight grip on reality, but I can't

Let go of what's in front of me here

I know you're leaving in the morning, when you wake up

Leave me with some kind of proof it's not a dream

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

You are the only exception

And I'm on my way to believing

Oh, and I'm on my way to believing

Oh god. I havent blogged this fast and often in succession in a while. I feel so fucking low.

I just cried...really sobbed...all the way through Glee. I never even watched a whole episode before. It means nothing to me. And I am heaving.

Did I waste my best chances being too difficult to love? Why am I so hard? I don't even love me, why would anyone else?

Oh god, have I missed my only shot?

I am so godforsaken lonely.

What do I do, what do I do?

I feel so low tonight. I felt pretty good all day...but I ran out of steam.

Came home to another rejection, if not a few, really.

That's what I come home to these days. Home is someplace with no one.

Home.

Am I not lovable? Not special? Seriously.

What connection means anything?

I feel like an outdated mode of technology. Just fucking useless.

Like I told you, she said to me, "The facts speak for themselves."

That sticks in my brain. I don't know what facts we mean. Whose facts? Only the new facts, the now facts? Do those unDO the old facts?

Everyone is so sure of everything. He wasn't the person for you. You aren't the person he loves. That is the way it works. You lose. Move on.

I don't feel so sure. I just feel ragged. I have to move on, otherwise the razor edges of all my loose ends will shred me. More than I feel shredded now.

Do you just feel friendly toward me now? Are we FRIENDS to you? How can you uncheck that box so fast?

Because you are not my friend.

It feels like everything and everyone has so quickly subscribed to the idea that this is normal, that people just up and stop loving one person and start in on another. It seems the forgotten truth that everything you did was so CRAZY. So, NOT that simple. I don't feel like it fits into boxes that clearly. Course, that is because I am the one who got the empty cup at the end of that crazy game. If I were her, I would jump on that idea too. It's the only way to get by, to believe in it, to live it. So, that's where I am left.

Standing on a street corner, holding an empty cup, thinking...September. October. When will I not miss you? Want you here in my city, my room. What I wouldn't give to walk with you, sit in a car next to you, hold your hand. Feel that way.

I am not sure at all. And none of the answers make me feel better, feel good again.

I am a box. Not a cube. An empty, two dimensional drawing. 4 lines, make a square.

I miss you, I guess that is it. Maybe if I could stop missing you, none of these issues would matter. Bc...whatever, I don't want you anyway. Right? That's how it will work?

September...October.

When will it just stop?

When will I be able to quit blaming myself. I think: ok, it was never true, I was never it, he just loves her more and I am stuck with blame. I feel like it was my fault, my blindness, my attachment that just kept it from ending sooner.

If I believe he did then I am covered in blame still. What did i do wrong? Why not me? What is wrong with me? If I had stayed?

When will I not resent myself and you and her? How can I ever feel better?

Now you are totally lost to me. You have been. I dont have you in any way, so much more than ever before, and I just feel such loss, and pain and self pity and hatred.

I am so tired.

How can I recover?

Ahh. A 100th post on this shitty blog. Joy.

And really its just the same old shit.

I feel so void. Voided. Null.

How can I judge my life? Based on the mark I made? Make? Am making?

I made no mark. The more I think about it, the more I have to tell myself that I was the one picked once, just to not feel like the most royal of fools. Just to make myself think that I wasn't wrong all along. But, then I think, what small percentage of the life I knew was ever even real? What little bit didn't have this background? I don't even know, I am sure it's less than I can ever imagine.

I built my world on a bed of straw.

A world where I made no difference. Contributed nothing. I was a cut out, pasted in for scenery.

There are parts I don't know how to mend. I miss the things you did. They weren't mine, I did nothing.

I was so proud of you. So in love. Beaming and glowing and swollen. Was that the only reason I was around? If I had offered more, meant more, done more...If I hadn't been such a zero, maybe...

I was so invested, in everything, I was background, so easily forgotten.

I don't know how not to miss the things you do, they were my world, and I loved them. Now I am not sure how to love anything else. I don't have a heart anymore. I gave it away to someone who didn't take very good care of it. Never even wanted it.

And it was the only one I had.

Saturday night I had the misfortune of hearing a whole Postal Service album (or most of it) while out at the bar.

It is one of my favorites, I have always loved it. Long before I felt like it talked about me. Exactly.

It has felt loaded for a long time now, but now it is glutted with meaning. It makes my heart sting like it has been pinched, numb and is just waking up. Only this process is taking so long.

I have such deep anxiety. I feel restless and lost and unhappy. I need sleep and to smile without a shadow behind it.

I was the one worth leaving.

I cry less now. But it's weird. I don't necessarily feel less. Feel better.

I feel...number.

I cry less, but I smile less, and I never sleep.

The morning is the worst. My subconscious is free to sabotage me. Thoughts and ideas of loss and memories just get to do with me what they will...and they will kill me.

I think of your new paintings and how I miss seeing them. Hearing about them. Getting excited about them. glowing with pride. So proud of you, how you talk forever about it, sound like a tool sometimes (that article, lol) but...all for a big picture of someone I find interesting and loveable.

I miss the paint on your hands. I miss the freckles on your fingers.

I am just sad. And on top of how much it hurts to be replaced, so easily replaced, I am scared I won't be able to find anybody to replace you. I hate everyone else. Not really, but...you know. It's just hard to know that no one but me, of us three, has to lose somebody this much. Has to do this process, try to figure a way out of the muck. You already are out of it! No looking around for you. You are happy againstillalready.

And I am just so fucking low. So low. My guts hurt.

Ryan Adams came on the radio at the bar. Your favorite song, you sent it to me in August.

I miss you so much. I miss you so much. I miss.

I have dreams about you every night. Sometimes, they aren't even significant. It's just you, there, talking.

I miss your voice.

I wake up, somewhere that makes no sense to me, alone. And I lay there, every day, coming down from my subconscious mind where you still love me, you still sit with me, and I still hear your voice.

If I could even, if I wanted to, get over YOU. The things about YOU. Your real qualities that I love and miss, rather than just the idea of a relationship as a whole. If I could forget the way you said my name, going down on the end, like I was silly. The snuggling and laying if your head my lap. Your bad dancing. Your worse singing. The way you tap the steering wheel like crazy to music and the way you bounce on the balls of your feet. Your long eyelashes and your bad teeth. The way you took care of me when I was sick.

IF I could let go a bit of the YOU part of us, I still miss the us. I still just can't be back to normal, normal doesn't exist anymore. I have to get a new one.

Really it's like this:

Two girls wake up one day some place bright and cold and unfamiliar, sore and bandaged and someone, with very little bedside manner, tells them they have lost a leg. It's gone. They weep, they mourn, the fear for the life they have to lead now, minus a leg. All off balance and disabled.

The girls, for one brief second take solace in knowing each other's exact loss.

They go to bed.

One wakes up, and the girl beside her is gone. She is the only patient in the room and...she has a leg. Her leg. Miraculously! Oh joy! Oh crappy metaphor! Her leg is back. They tell her it is weak and withered but, one day will be back to full strength. It may take time.

Or, in this non-metaphorical case, about 3 days. And look! Walking! Jumping! Running!

She and her leg live happily ever after. She never thinks about that other girl again.

That other girl never gets that leg back. She looks around and wheels from place to place, painfully aware of how unlike her life her new life is. People tell her, hey, a blind man climbed a mountain, this life doesn;t mean LESS just because its different.

But, for now, her stump itching and her ghost limb aching, she can only see just how less it is.

The people around me, trying to help me, trying to love me past this huge hole tell me to look at it less like a leg. It was more like a tumor. I got it removed and can grow healthy now.

But that is all a difference of perspective here. Some people love a girl with a beauty mark, others cut it out like cancer.

Me, I just wish I had my other leg to lean on.

Even the idea of SEX respulses me. I so miss...enjoying it. The before parts, the after parts. The part where you love smile at the person its with. And you mean it.

I miss having contact, physical contact, with someone who sees you. Knows you. Loves you.

Sees you. Like transmitting love through fingertips.

God, the happiest I have ever been was getting off that plane in August. Ask people. I was LIGHT to see you.

Will I ever get that back? Do I have that light now? Is it just turned off?

Or smashed.

Guilt is the most selfish of all emotions. And the trickiest. You assume it is about the harm you have done to others, But, au contraire...

Nothing anyone says to anyone is true. Not really. There is always some other motivation, some some feeling.

Some are downright deceitful. We are unhappy, we're separated, we haven't spoken. You're what makes me happy, you're who I want, I will stop, I will quit I will leave. False promises proffered to gain from you what they want. Maybe they do want you. But maybe that other person is sitting at home feeling happy, content, safe, knowing only that she hears those same things, at different times.

Things they share with you? Old news. They take all the habits that you used to share, the activities, and just swap you in. You feel special, they say you are. They mean it, but it's half built on fantasy, this isn't SPECIAL. Someone else showed him the relationship he wanted. Not to be too specific but Buckhunter? You had never even touched it before me. Walks. Ice cream. Get your own fucking traditions you cheap asshole. You and your recycled love.

Others are not so...aware. I have been guilty of this. This is when you tell someone that you like them, want them. But you tell someone else that they are just to pass time. Both are true. It is hard enough to look your own real feelings and motivations in the face, they are often difficult and revealing of our worst traits, flaws, fears. Not just that, but it has become so uncouth, so downright embarrassing to be that honest with others that we are forced to be dishonest with ourselves, change our thinking, excuse things we disapprove of in ourselves lest we slip and lay the truth down in front of people who haven't signed up for it.

Then it lays there raw and shivering, not properly prepared for polite conversation, making your new friend queasy and uncomfortable.

Everyone is a big mass of stinking part-lies. Except the eccentrics and kooks, the people we all find disarming, annoying. Why can't they just keep it to themselves.

I kind of hate humanity right this second.

I am supposed to feel like I got rid of something. Something bad.

But my heart feels like it lost something good.

My head knows that he made this harder, longer, more visceral, more immediate...harder than it ever should have been, because he was weak, selfish, untruthful, devious, malicious.

Sounds like a bad bad thing.

But oh, my heart.

And to top it off? I realized now that I never got enough validation, never validated MYSELF enough. That now I am a cripple trying to battle the worst monster.

It is an almost fatal blow for the strongest of heart, this break. This...loss. Dismissal. Exclusion.

And I am the weakest of.

I am flimsy and ripped.

I am so sad in the morning. That's where I feel the imbalance the most. I know there is something huge missing from my world and I know right where it is. And I know I just have to get used to the hole.

Get used to the hole. Geezus. How can it be? How can you stop the crying with the hole? How can you feel...whole? Ha.

For now I just sit on my bed alone, rocking and holding my face on.

I wish I could have a hug. Ah, but there's that pesky hole again.

Honestly, it is really weird the things that I remember.

I remember after we tried not to speak, getting online and you being on FB. I remember that because I think of it now, when I get on there. You said to me, "I never Facebook chat, I did this just hoping you would talk to me."

That was June. Late June.

Right after the Exit Through the Gift Shop night. Which was right after your birthday, when you only saw me. But you told her you wished it was only her. She lies to herself so much. It's just...there is so much denial on her part. You were SO with me. Right till...you weren't. I moved and I was dropped like an old hat. I did, too, lie. I can't judge. I don't judge, I seethe, I cry, I envy, but judge? Not her. She lied to her. You lied to her. I lied to me, you lied to me. You lied to you. Most of all. You: 3 lying, false relationships. Us? Still only one. You? I will judge.

Probably without you even knowing. You say you do, but, hey, who believes anything you say? She does. I still do. Insanity, isnt it? Could you have played the boy who cried love more effectively? We are STILL duped, running fawning to the flame.

BTW, you should actually really look into the clinical examination of the definition of a sociopath.

It's fucking scary dead on. Dead on.

I haven't figured out what I am yet. A sloppy mess, that's for sure. But I am thinking there is a more "official" term. What I know it isn't? A sociopath.

We have responsibilities, as decent human beings, to each other. To all the people we interact with. We are OBLIGATED to act like responsible human beings, in order to be good ones.

Especially to those we love, to those who love us, to those with whom we are intimately linked. People whose lives we directly affect.

Responsibility.

I entrusted so much to you. You abused that responsibility. Took advantage of it. Served yourself.

May karma heal me. May you have learned your lesson. But. given the lack of consequences you have served, the way it seems that karma has turned a blind eye to your behavior, the way you already have repeated these human atrocities for so long, so many times...I have to say, I don't think you have learned a thing.

I am struggling to make my lesson one that will be productive for me.

It is the hardest thing I have ever. ever. ever had to do.

I have no world.

Everything I do, read, see, consume makes me sad.

How can I mourn this big?

And really, above all, above all else...I just miss you. It is so simple and painful. I just miss you. I miss you, miss you miss you.

I am so lonely. So alone.

I miss you.

If I had stayed, would someone else have gotten my life? They sure have it now.

Go where I went, know who I knew, do what I did.

I would have to guess, yes. It is as if my world, which I held/hold so dear, just got an upgrade. I was as significant as a car. You get a new, shiny one, a better one, you hardly think back on your junker. Maybe with sentiment, fondness at best, ridicule at worst.

That's me.

Rusting in a yard full of useless shit. Or, what? Relegated unwillingly to a different life, a different family, a new role. But you loved your old one.

I guess I am supposed to look at the fact that I keep asking myself, "Why am I here?" and now get to answer it with, "Where ELSE would I be?" and mean it. I guess that I am supposed to look on the connections I have had cut as a new lease. A freeing to be where I am and be someone new (god knows I could use that.) But I don't.

I have a front row seat to just how easily I am replaced. If all the things and people you valued, if I had a chart, a ratio, some data that showed how much it all meant to me, how much I loved it, how much it felt more like home than anything ever...and then overlayed it with how much it loved me back, doesn't it render my own means of measurement...stupid? Doesn't it make my valuation of it...empty? To love a whole life for it's fullness, it's relationships only to see that I actually played a tiny supporting role and that a new actress filled in halfway through the season and no one blinked...doesn't that make me so foolish?

I have nothing here to replace it. I feel I have nothing anywhere but settling for less. That is what my life has become right now. Some wobbling attempt to make what I have feel like what I want. Feel like enough.

Fake it till you make it, right?

All this and I feel like I just looked into my emotional toolbox and realized I have a crumbling house, needing every repair possible, and I am left to it with a ruler and some wood polish. Try to spruce up a wreckage, tidy up my complete fucking collapse.

I think now, good god, how long have I just been glossing over how messed I am? How long have I been looking for an answer to my bone-deep...missing? How can I ever fill it? How can I ever feel ok? I never have. Maybe ever. Ever. That is a lot to take in. And a lot of negative reinforcement.

I feel like the happiness I seek doesn't exist.

Oh god, I am inconsolable. I am fluttering in the wind, hardly even there in my own life.

I am miserable. In every way. And it could be worse. That's what people say right? Worse things could HAPPEN to me. But, they mean cheating boyfriends who leave you for a better version of you.

What about the fact that I really want to leave me. I am the worst thing that could happen to me. Things don't get that much worse inside than this. Everyone else is right to bail while they could.

But unlike them, I am stuck here with me. I am the only one who can't jump this shitty, stinking ship.

She IS worth giving me up.

I wasn't worth giving her up.

Is it that simple? Is it?

I was the one worth leaving.

I am.

God I am so exhausted and I hate myself so much.

God, please help me. Please help me. I dont know where to turn.

Why don't I matter? I can be plastered over in a moment, just refinished and look...smooth as glass.

I can't stand myself. I cannot stand to be with me. How can I get away from me?

I am falling apart. I am apart.

I never realized how not ok I am.

Turns out, that yes, you fucked me over. You messed with my mind, you played thoughtlessly with my well being. You did.

Turns out, though, that that is just the straw that broke the camel's back. I find no value or worth in anything about my life. I haven't for a long time. I keep trying to find ways to change it, to fix me, to fill whatever hole I can. I haven't.

I found you, though. I found you and in so found something I could pour my whole self into. No wonder you ran away. Someone told me today that I wanted it too much. They were right. I have only ever wanted to belong, even if that meant just with one person. And, for me, I found that in you.

So, for all that I have said about this situation, and it's all true...it just isn't the point. I am so sick, so deeply fucked up. So unhappy.

You never deserved that burden, no matter what. And nothing will ever work for me when I give it so much power. So much weight. Things break under that much weight.

I am so. fucked. up.

I truly feel no point, no goal, no desire, no joy.

I didn't before, I guess. And to some extent, I made you the answer. That isn't fair.

I am so so sorry.

I don't know how to change. I don't know what to change. I don't know what to do. I am so lost. I am so lost. I am so so so so lost.

I may have always been lost.

How do I go back far enough to fix this? Have I ever felt ok? I don't know how to undo something this big.

I feel like my life is over. And it seems so rational. I don't LOGICALLY understand how other people find self worth. From the people around you? That's clearly my problem, its the only answer I have ever known...and without it, I am so...adrift.

All I know right now is despair.

It is so ugly and dramatic and truly the only that I know. Despair.

I am nothing.

I looked at your photos. You are already just back on top, huh. Love conquers all.

Your smile, your arm around her. You two are free now.

God. I mean nothing. I mean nothing. I mean nothing. I meant nothing. I am so easily removed. Replaced. You two...have what I wanted.

Why don't I deserve it? Oh my god, I am nothing I am nothing I am nothing.

I miss you so much. And I am nothing. No one misses me. God, no one ever even wanted me. I am stupid and big and stupid.

Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god.

You don't even have to learn a lesson. You have no consequences. None. You just get everything. You get it all.

And I get...left. I get nothing. Nothing for nothing.

Oh my god. I don't even know how to speak. I don't know what to do. What kind of person AM I? Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.

I AM ZERO.

God I wish I could just take back my life.

Erase the last year. The last two?

Why didn't you leave me. Just leave me. Leave me leave me leave. So long ago. So long ago. So long ago. I may not have hated my existence so much then. I may have built something else in Denver. Something that wouldn't have to die with you now.

My life is over. So, hey, build a new one! They say. Better materials! Uncompromised! It sounds so simple. YOUR LIFE HAS ENDED, EVA. DEAL WITH IT. You have time to make a new one, so, pff, who cares about that shabby old thing. No one else really thought it was all that great, anyway.

I did. I care. I don't know how to build. My house has burned down.

Over and over people tell you, say, if you are with a married man, "He'll never leave his wife." And almost never, never! Do they.

I feel like that exception. Where I was living some breezy, content thing, loving, being loved. When that was not being lived back. And, bang, a mistress gets a ring.

Everyone tells ME, then, that the kind of people who can do this shit, will always do it. That in one year, someone else will have to face this music.

But, then, why do I doubt it? Why do I so deeply feel that you are ok. That you just needed to be somewhere else, not with me, and you were afraid. Why does it eat my soul so slow and deliberate to think that that wasn't me. People capable of deception at this level CAN'T help but offer and inferior product. That's what I had, knowing or not. Same with her. It was half out the door.

Then why, why, why does it make so sick. So sad. So ill to think of their happiness?

Someone told me I was more preoccupied with them than me. But isn't that what happens? I am jealous. I am lost. I lose. I miss, no one else misses. No one misses. They have theirs. Where's mine? I am the one who was promised, and touched, and tasted that happiness and then, was not good enough. Was not right.

What could I have said and done differently?

Why would I be more concerned about myself? How could I ever concentrate on that? When that is just a boiling cesspool of why was it me? What awful thing are you to not deserve anything? Of feeling alone alone alone and rejected...and those feelings come from where? THEM. How can I avoid it. It is what I am. I AM jealousy. I am rejection, desperation, low self-esteem. I AM these things.

I am alone. Terrified and miserable and shocked and whimpering like a dog that should just be shot.

I wish I could just evaporate. I wish someone would run me over, just a little, enough to wake up some other time. I want to feel something else. I want for one minute to feel really good. To feel happy. To feel safe or loved. I just want to feel peace or calm. I just want to be soothed. Comforted. And I feel like my best source for all those things just told me he didn't want anything to do with me.

Because he did.

I am a waste. A limping, useless thing without the will to get up and try. Where's that guy that shot Old Yeller when you need him, eh?

I am glad no one reads this. I am a tiresome bore and a chore for anyone who used to give a fuck. Not you, ole Blogger. Thank you for being dead enough to tolerate me.

Shit.

It is so hard for everything inside me to be at odds with itself.

Everything I want and need and feel just loops me to another thing and that to another and right back again.

My mom told me to quit calling my friends because they would quit answering. They are sick of me. Sick of this. It's always been so clear to them. What have I become?

I am so ashamed of myself. Such a fool. Living a lie. I just wanted to be loved so bad, I guess. I would take this and believe it. The life it made was so lovely though. It felt real and good. The life I got to lead with it was all I wanted. But I guess I never really had it.

I am so sorry for putting everyone I know through so much. I am sorry it is such old news. That I had all my hope and happiness hitched to a figment. I am sorry I didn't know it was a figment. I should have, everyone is right. I should have known. I should have stopped. I have no one to blame but myself. I am so pathetic and sad and no one is fucking surprised.

But me.

I just believed that I was, indeed, loved. That someone could mean it that he wanted me. That I was worth waiting for, trouble for, worth...god I don't know.

Silly, silly me.

If I had been quieter, meeker, more private? More patient through this shit, less vocal? Would I still be loved? I can't help it. I tend to break on the outside, not just the in.

If I had been smaller? Artsier? Skinnier? Never moved? Would I be loved?

Or would I, as I ever was, just be...silly.

And I ache so bad that that life, that I loved and left and now must leave even further, will go one. Has gone on. Always will. Without one wrinkle without me. I was a blip, a pretty pock for one second in any life I touched. I am removable and nothing changes.

I want someone to rage for me. To mourn ME. To say, you are an unbelievable jerk and I reject YOU now because this kind of aggression against someone we love cannot stand. And I will never get it. It's petty and wrong. I want YOU to have some modicum of the humiliation I feel. To even TASTE the loneliness that this has brought on me. One that nobody in THIS situation can imagine but me. I know you have your own pain, I do. But I know without doubt it is assuaged nightly with the comfort of forgiveness from the person you want. Me? I have no comfort. My friends will all stop answering. And I will just doubt and hate myself alone. So fucking alone. It feels like you will never appreciate what you have done until you have seen it through other eyes. But you can't no one will ever do to you something like you have done.

I want you to feel pain other than the guilt that I know in my heart is fleeting faster and faster as your life just picks up where you put it down. Without me. It apparently was without me all along. I was window dressing. Just old decor you kept around for sentimental reasons. No one else saw why it was there, said put it out of it's misery, it is clearly incapable of helping itself.

Fuck fuck fuck. I disgust myself. I deserve all this pain for my disgusting, reprehensible, revolting self-pity, self-lies and desperation.

God I sicken me.

I am "that" girl.

I have been stupid and awful and foolish and embarassing.

People say, "You lost him a long time ago." And I felt hurt so deep I thought I might just bleed to death. I never knew that! Why did everyone else know that! Why have I been so wrong, so stupid so blind so stupidstipidipsipdid.

He felt right here.

I hate myself so much.

No one even dignifies my pain, because it was the actions of a FOOLSISH ASHOLE!

God, when will I ever be ok. I can't even deal properly, because I am so ashamed of myself. So embarassed of my pain. what will i do.

I am so stupidstupidstupid.

When I picture who I would be in the movies, a character who has, in some fluffy fictitious world, had what has been inflicted on me and what I have inflicted on myself also inflicted on them...Someone who has played my ROLE if you will, it only makes it worse that I am some spectacle.

A cliche. A broken woman behaving like an asshole with no dignity. A raving, desperate wretch. I am more on par with that embarrassing phone call moment in Swingers or that insane, pathetic moment of sadness and despair where Kate Winslet walks into an opaque, gray sheet of rain toward some vague and impossible goal in Sense and Sensibility, only to wind up with nothing but a near fatal fever.

I so envy that cold, internal battle that people see on the busy, throw-yourself-into-it professional. Catherine Zeta-Jones in Reservations, where she has just those and preserves herself elegantly from heartache with distance. Colin Firth in Love Actually, who just leaves his beloved woman and his sleazy brother and hits the road...to a worthy love. These noble, stoic tragic characters are always amply rewarded, even those in the shamefully unacademic examples here. I know I know others, but right now, my brain could not be more warped with self-pity, shame, self-doubt and loathing, fear, rejection, misplaced, love, confusion, loneliness and every sort of internal conflict I could get going in here.

There is WW3, Revenge of the Asshole, happening in my guts and heart and mind and I don't do all my best reasoning, or pop culture quoting, at times like these. Though, actually, at moments, my writing does seem to improve a bit.

The question that remains...who is the Asshole we are avenging? And the answer? Too complicated for words. We have all played the fool to some extent, some more than others, and some a far darker jester, one with less love in his heart. But in the end, we are all assholes.

I guess that makes me...Well, I don't know who that makes me, character reference, anyone?

No one will talk to me. Who can blame them? I wouldn't want to hear this shit anymore. I would think me an insufferable fool. I am. I have no one to blame but myself.

I am sososo alone.

Now I Lay Me Down...

When you look right at it here is the deal:

I will skip any real discussion on my own ridiculous, stupid and SUPER self-destructive desire to switch positions in this vile case, against EVERYONE's better judgement, we all know I would.

It isn't surprising at all, though, that that is not on the table. It's so much easier to salvage the relationship that is close by, that means touch and experience, not just words and the promises between one and a half people (you definitely do not count as a whole right now), which you now say were mostly meaningless to you anyhow. Never mind that they were my LIFE. Who gives a fuck about that? It is so much easier because if you can save it, you will save so much face. Keep together appearances.

It makes sense because she still has gone through this fewer times than me, she still has some ability to believe in you, and you and I both know that that has died in me. She will hear "I love you more." And believe it because SHE loves you. And for right now, for her ease of belief, for her convenience and proximity, because she is sweet above anything else rather than challenging you, because she is an ideal target of internalizing her pain and doubt and digesting into blind faith in you...you do. But you never have before. Not me, either, so I take no comfort in that. You started a life with her at the very moment you set about in earnest to make sure you didn't lose yours with me. Not much of a "more" situation there, it seems. We all know that if, in this particular situation of exposing who and what you are, if she and I hadn't talked so much, if this looked more like previous occasions of your insanely arrogant infidelity, that you would be making nice with me at the same time. And that most likely in that event, I too would eat it up. You would manage to make some nice with me and this whole charade would go on. Her and I lying to ourselves, you lying to everyone, but mostly yourself.

But for now, you just say, "I pick you." She believes it, despite SO much evidence to the contrary, out of fear, self-doubt, and, though I like her so much (seriously) stupidity. Because she loves you.

You will keep telling her that, because YOU love you. All of your actions have been dictated by your own needs, fears, and apparent mental imbalance. You have never taken an action to benefit those who you supposedly love. In fact, quite the opposite. Intentional, brazen deceptions to keep us both here, loving you, praising you, terrified to leave you.

And, for all the pain I know it causes you to hear this, and which I do not lightly inflict on you, you DO, in a very real sense of the word, ABUSE us.

Your words and actions, even as you are caught again and again, are distinctly manipulative. You happily throw down cards of "being screwed up" and "letting everyone down" and "hating yourself." You quickly shift the focus of the discussion from the things you have done that, by ANY standard of judgement, would indicate you are a bad, bad person. You shift it from that and into a mode where yet again we are assuring you, placating you, pointing out your good qualities.

You are so deep down narcissistic and needy, damaged from so many things, fractured, really that you don't even consciously differentiate between love and the abuse you have put us through, and will continue to put her through. Sounds like love, doesn't it? Subjecting someone who believed in you, supported you, and would have gone to the end of the earth for you to more pain, suspicion, and, most likely at some point, lies. I know that kind of love, I have been getting it for 9 months now. And I know her pain of attachment to it, inability to see that good love should never come with a second face that is so dark, hurtful and selfish.

You seek something to fill that ancient void in you in everything you do, your work, your family, even your art, which normally, at think once, was only a source of pride (in a good way!) of accomplishment, of expression and happiness. But so quickly you saw a way to turn that into yet another forum for praise and shallow love and worship. A way to feed your bottomless need to be liked. It will never end, you will always want more until you confront this ugly evil side of you. The only love that can fill that hole is your own, and as of now, not only do you not give it to yourself, you have no fucking clue what ANY love is like. Not from a giving end.

And if you love her even a but as much as you say you do, believe you do, TRY to do, really, you would fix yourself first. Try to. But I know that won't happen. It is not the nature of the emotional abuser to take a lot of time for self-examination. It's scary to see what you have become. Reminds you of people who have done you wrong who you never thought you would emulate. But look at you...

Look at us. We hate ourselves, we feel responsible, guilty, we think if only we had done, we had been, we had seen... We blindly make HORRIBLE decisions that will hurt us more and more, say it will be different this time, he didn't mean it, he really loves ME. We could be reading from an abuse victim's script.

She actually SAID to me, "Now I just have to decide if I can live with partial love--safe love. Partial love? You want her to settle for the love LEMON that you offer? Yes, you must care more for her happiness than your own. Sell her a beat up, low value car with a slick coat of paint, tell her its SAFE. Safe, how could that ever be achieved? You have never kept a single promise to either of us. Not the smallest, easiest truths. Safe.

And yet, for all this, for my distance and willingness to say the hard things about the person I have loved most in my whole life, my best friend, my favorite, my boo, my PERSON, my future up until Sunday, my past for so long, the only thing I have known for a year...for my role, I am punished, told I am less, and then forced to watch as, even though I am undeniably RIGHT about these things, you two go on.

I am supposed to say, well, I will get to have a better version of all this, I get to escape, she gets a liar a cheat a plain asshole. But I feel punished. I am told I am "not picked," that what we have had in the overlapping time...what, wasn't real? Just wasn't good enough? How can I not feel punished, exiled, worthless, loathesome, stupid, used.

How can, if that love was just a LIE, can I not feel like dying?

And if it was so sub-par, so false and so...worthless, why not take one of the hundreds of chances you had to let me go? I gave them to you ALL THE TIME. Asked that if you just wanted to see her, to be with her, just let me go.

Again, you just helped yourself.

And now, we all take a loss, but mine is here, alone and wretched and fooled. Devalued. Just told that who I was was never who I was. I was just a crutch. I was nothing. Am nothing. Even to a manipulative coward like you, whom I loved so deeply despite your flaws, it is horrible to be nothing.

Nothing.

Angry.angryangryangry. Sorry.

Oh, did I say things that hurt you? Please. Were they unfair? No. Untrue? No. Excessive? Hardly. I called you no names. I didn't yell.

I told you the truth. I ask you to face yourself honestly. To look your actions in the mirror and quit calling it "screwing up." It was assault. Maybe you can't see any bruises or abrasions, but I assure you, they are there. You knew that if you kept doing what you did, you risked our very lives. And now you have taken them.

No wonder I was loved less. I was the only one really honest with you. I was the only one who would look all your monstrous deeds in the face, call them monstrous, ask that you admit who and what you are, and then tried to love you anyway.

Niceness and love for you keeps others quiet about your demons. Gets them to clam up for fear of wrinkling your sensitivity. Let it be, it doesn't affect me. What I get from him is a really, really nice guy...so he must be.

I never was the right girl for you because I asked far too much of you. I went deeper than pleasant. But you don't do well with that. People look too close, you're 'fraid they might see something that makes them love you a little less. They would. They had one inkling of all that you have done to us? People WOULD see you differently. And I got that close. I saw all your shit. And I said, yes, I love this AS IS. I asked that we all be honest with ourselves about who we were, the bad deeds we have all done and then love each other for our truths.

And I did love you.

Little did I know that I would go so unloved for my reality. Even now, now that she has been exposed to this ugly demon inside of you, she can't call it by its name. You do love that she protects your nice-guy idea of yourself, gives up her own dignity and happiness and expectation of love that she deserves and throws in down on your demon so it still looks good. She will just powder it over, perfume it and believe it when it says she is the only one. She will call it love.

You two will live a lie. A happy lie, mostly, except when we all get to worrying about those demons we all prefer to ignore. You catch a glimpse of something questionable, but just turn back and focus your vision on that lie. A lie that I wish I had, since we are being honest. Because apparently, I think so little of myself that I wish I got the chance to settle for a nice, happy lie with someone I love. But so does she. I know, we have shared our painful fears and insecurities. The scars of this abuse.

Only she gets the chance to act on it. Pray god, pray god pray god that I can quit loving you. Pray god. That one day I don't wish that the one who got the offer, that feels so pretty and bright and right and like I just got the perfect person for me! Pray god that this gaping hole where my heart used to be closes.

Pray god pray god. for me. I am dying.

Be prepared for the only outlet I have for all my sad and hurt and thoughts is THIS...POSTING DILUGE, IT IS!

I have twice now emailed my friend Andre since yesterday and EVERY time...? My fingers, without any intent or conscious knowledge...add that pesky W.

Could my brain BE more totally overthrown?

I hate life today.

I haven't listened to music since July 22.

I left Denver with hope in my heart, promises in pocket. So much attached to my music in my heart that I listened to the mix I made for you (oh that so long and so defining and emotional mix!) all the way to Kansas City, and just never looked back.

I was so scared. I was so afraid to be rock my own fragile emotional boat. I just avoided it. I have hardly written. I was doing my best just to hold myself, my mammoth fear and hope that are now the same emotion, together. Try not to crumble.

Now that I have anyway, I don't know when I will be able to plug in my iPod again. Ever.

I am a paralyzed. My favorite thing, my best outlet...is broken. I don't know how to use it safely anymore.

Cheating and deception KILLS people. So many people love you. You have so much...potential. Don't let one prick have so much power. Feels so hollow. All I want, even now! is to be with the one I love! To be loved!

I thought I was! So much lying I can't tell what was ever real.

Why wasn't I the one? Why wasn't I good enough? Why does she get to be with him? I want to be with him. But what I want DOESN'T EXIST! I want what it was so long ago. I want it to be I love you, you love me. No cheating or suspicion. No reassurances that I was the one he wanted to be with. Just BE WITH ME.

It does not exist. There is no WITH me without NOT being with her. There is no WITH her without NOT being with me. These things are totally c0dependent. They coexist. People meet, they spark they date and love, that is when it is possible to only be WITH someone. No counterpart of NOT someone else necessary.

That is the love we both need and deserve. But we are so fucked up, so attached, so thoroughly alive in worlds that were papier mached around us, full of holes and secret passages...but OUR LIVES were there and what we knew of them were IT. What we wanted. It feel real. All the promises and words and actions, the repentance. FELT sincere. It was! It was! That is the really epic part. How are we to ever feel that it ISN'T love, that we AREN'T the one, that our happiness ISN'T real, when it IS. He means it. The flaw is that subtle.

Truths truths everywhere, completely impossible because they at perfect odds with one another, totally contradictory. Unsustainable. But truths! How could we see through that?

How am I supposed to digest that now that I, who have had this HAPPEN TO ME so much more, so much longer, now that I have "come to my senses" or "Saved myself" or "finally gotten out" (Inside my heart this reads: lost, lost, lost. Lost my love. My life. My stability. My plans. My favorite person. Been replaced, been substituted. Been NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO BE LOVED) how am I supposed to just be OK with the fact that now that I have removed myself, someone else GETS my happiness.

Ah, says the rational voice of everyone else, but what kind of happiness is that? A person who is so duplicitous, so uncommitted to you, who didn't love HER enough in the first place to get rid of me? How can you call that happiness for them?

Well, says the Loser Voice in my head, because I wanted that to be me.

How deeply fucked is it to WANT to be the person who wins a flawed, abusive relationship that only FEELS like perfect love?

Well, it sure FELT like perfect love. People say, look. Look over here: a crack, a seam, a mis-stitch. Another woman, a whole other life. Months of lying. Sleeping with someone else! How was that ever perfect. But, somehow, in the shadow of his exceptional ability to separate to deny, to BE wholly where he is, with whomever he is with, mean whatever it is he is saying, we have managed to be equally as isolating.

You tell me you love me. You will visit. I believe you. I love you. This feels right.

Course, then it repeats in my head: well, he loved her a little bit more. I swing back and forth on this so much! He does now, now that they have the whole real relationship. I won that battled once. He told me ALL the time he picked me. He did! But not really, because you were never gone. NOW, switch it up. He loves you more, he tells you he picked you, but here I am.

No one was ever picked. No one was ever enough.

Then why do I feel so sad/rejected/alone/scared/weary/homeless/lost/jealous/hurt/pained/discredited/angry/

vengeful/desperate/needy/validated/meaningless/unhinged/freed/relieved/horrified and plain wishful...

that it was me there still. That it was me who would get another chance. That it was me who might get what I always have wanted. But it doesn't exist. Not for you either. Because here I am, and you two are only WITHOUT me.

And still, I wish it was me.

Circle, circle, circle.