Secret word of the week

My word of the week this week is:

"solitary"

As defined by www.dictionary.com

And a slight update for my life, because I choose to not make a different post. My grandfather is still with me, for another week or so, and then he'll be moving up north, to live with another of his children, not to Nevada, as I had originally thought. He seems to be doing alright, although it's kind of hard to tell from day to day. I'm still holding things together, because that's what I do. I'm not sure how well I'll hold it together once he's gone.

I'm more or less buried under schoolwork, and this is mid-term week as well, which is going to be...complicated, with my grandfather here, but I'll manage. I hope? There isn't a lot I can do. I am under a colossal amount of stress, and once things are settled with my Aunt Amy's body, and my grandfather is settled up north, I suspect that I will pull further back into my shell than I had before.

I would ordinarily apologize now, for the feelings I might be about to bruise by my pulling away from people, but I'm not going to anymore. Everyone said all the right things about being there if I need them, and how I can always call, during my time of need or whatever this last week. But when it came right down to it, I know now exactly who I can count on, when I really *need* someone. The people who actually physically showed up, and were willing to drop everything when there was truly an emergency in *my* life, the same way I always have for everyone else.

And I have to admit, that I'm feeling really raw, and really hurt. There is one person who didn't make it to my side, and the only thing that prevented her/them from being here? Was sheer distance, or she'd've been standing here right now, and I know it. So for my EastCoast sweetheart, know that. I know very well that if you could have, you'd be sitting here eating chocolate with me, and this doesn't apply to you. On the other hand, she's called, every day, and done nothing but asked how I am, and listened to me rant, and said nothing about all the problems I know damned well she's been dealing with. And I appreciate that more than I can even begin to express. I love you.

So yes. I'm hurt. I feel betrayed, and I'm just...tired. I'm tired of all of it. I have bent over backwards, for everyone, and I rarely actually ask anything for myself, of anyone. I listen to everybody's problems, and don't really ask for anybody to try and help me out with mine. But this week? I *needed* help. If nothing else, I needed support, and comfort.

And I freely admit, that I said, at the complete base of the pit of hell, that all I really wanted was Phillip, this week. And three people who honestly would rather have eaten nails, than heard me say those words? Those three people, I know now, actually did what they could, to try and find him for me. Because I hurt, and I didn't and don't want to be alone. And that would have made me feel better. And knowing that they were all three willing to suck it up, and try to make it better for me, meant worlds to me. I know they don't approve. I know what it cost them, to try and do that for me, whether he showed up or not.

I feel...empty. I feel solitary, and lost. Trying to keep my grandfather going, and trying to figure out why I feel alone and empty is hard. And I've been tempted, more tempted than I like admitting, to do something utterly stupid, and I've fought that off. I had and have too many people counting on me. My little brother would be crushed to see me crumble. My grandfather needs me too much. I don't have the option of falling apart.

But now? Now that I'm still holding it together? I've decided that I'm not sure anymore, whether I want to keep trying to make time for, and help out, everyone else...When apparently, no one cares enough to do that for me, not when it really matters. I realize that it's not supposed to be something kept score of. And I don't generally keep a running tally of such things. But at this point, I have completely depleted emotional reserves. And when something damages you this badly, it becomes difficult to care about anyone anymore, when they show such little concern, really. And fluffy words are so easy to say, when there's no real action behind them.

I need to think. And when my thinking is done, then my decisions will most likely be made.

I always think I know everything.

At least, I know I can come across that way, a lot of the time. And hey, the reason for that is that it turns out that way all too frequently.

That doesn't mean that I'm always right, and I know that. And it doesn't mean that when things go wrong, I don't hurt for my friends. And I'm just like anyone else in a crisis situation. I don't have the right words to make everything miraculously all right again. I can't fix everything. I can offer words that are meaningless in the grand scheme of things. I can tell you I'll listen if you need me.

And I can sit quietly in my corner, and contemplate how badly all of this sucks. And it does. Because I can remember, unfortunately, all too vividly just how much it *still* sucks that my Daddy is gone. And I still worry, daily, that something will happen to Jack. Every single day. Because I just got him, and the idea that he might suddenly not be there? Is a fact that I simply completely and totally am unprepared to come face to face with the possible reality of. I refuse to acknowledge that it might happen at some point, and will not accept it. Fate is simply not cruel enough to do that to me this soon, and I refuse to allow that.

Because I have no choice in such an event, I simply won't adhere to such an idea, and work from that basis. And I try not to think about it. I cannot imagine anything worse than having to deal with the reality of Brody's current situation. Because I've been having to deal with all kinds of things in the last few weeks that have brought me face-to-face with the reality of mortality and all the surrounding issues of it, I'm not handling any of it well. I simply can't handle it, and so my solution has been to put my head in the sand, and pretend that it's not an option.

And while yes, in reality I realize that won't work as a long-term solution, too much has gone on recently for me to handle much more. But Brody's deal right now wasn't something I could do the ostrich routine for, so I pulled it together, and did what I could, and will continue to do.

But it made me stop and think about the fact that all my normal touchstones are gone. The people I call when *I* need someone to lean on, and cling to. The people who are *my* rocks when it hurts, and I need someone to hug, and know that whether I'm crying or not, they'll understand me, and just be there. And it hurt to realize that in one way or another, that's gone now. And I'm working my way through that now.

I honestly think that I took that harder than I have anything else in the last few months. Not the loss of the "boyfriends". Not the anger, and the lashing out. The realization that I had lost the friendships that meant so much to me, and that in a large way, they were my own fault. I hadn't intended for that to be the result, but it was. In both Phillip's and Danny's cases, they're both gone for the same reason. In order to preserve their own relationships, they can't have a friendship with me, and that made me sad. It hurt, more than anything else, to realize that I lost friendships I truly cherished, and it was in large part my own fault.

I was talking about it with Sissa today, and I know she didn't agree with me, but it was the truth, even though she didn't like it. Phillip didn't walk away from me to just be mean, and I know it. I *hate* admitting it, but at the base of it, he walked away because if he hadn't, he would have lost his chance at a relationship that he wanted more than anything. Yes, he got issued an ultimatum, and he made a choice I didn't like. But that was his choice to make, and not mine. And I had no right to cast stones at him for wanting to be happy, and I know it. Just because I was angry, I had no right to want to hurt him for being happy, simply because I was unhappy. And however much it sucked at the time? He had the right to want to be happy. And we would have stayed friends had *I* not insisted his girlfriend know what had gone on. That was my fault, and the consequences were ones I have to live with. Even my anger has finally worn off. And now all that's left is the loss of a friendship I ruined all by myself.

And I've done the same to my friendship with Danny. Thirteen years gone, because I simply can't keep handling watching him with his new love. The constant petty attacks from her are driving me up the wall, and I just can't keep dealing, and I've cut him out of my life. Because I don't know what else I could do. And while that's my choice, and it was a choice that I know he didn't want me to make, I simply don't know what else to do. I've tried to weigh it from all sides, and my instinct tells me things are not going to improve. I gave it time. I tried space. I tried playing by the new "rules". Nothing seemed to improve anything in any way. Every time I gave in, more was asked, until I simply had nothing left to give. I spent half my time crying, and the other half wanting to scream, or actually yelling at him, for things he had no control over. And that wasn't fair either.

And I care too much about him to want him to be unhappy anymore because of me. He doesn't deserve to be caught between a rock and a hard place. He deserves to move on and be happy, without having to make a choice between the woman he was with for so long, and the woman he's with now. Nobody should have to be stuck in between two women, with an attachment to both. And Danny isn't very good at trying to appease both of us. And I don't want him to hurt anymore. So I walked away.

But Gods, it hurts. And now when I look around, and listen to the silence, and know that there's nothing and no one left to call, and absolutely nobody to cry on? It's frightening. And it's difficult. And I don't know what to think, or how to handle the idea. It's a very empty feeling, knowing that I ruined those friendships, and knowing that I'll never get them back. Some wounds take a long time to heal. Some never do, and I've learned that. They might scar over, but they never completely heal.

Actions have consequences, and all lessons get learned at some point. And while I learned mine, even having learned them doesn't mean that I can get back what I lost.

I wish them well. I hope they'll be happy now. I'm sorry for the pain I caused, and the damage I did. But it doesn't change anything now, and I know that too. Because I've learned that I don't know everything, and I can't always fix everything. Sorry doesn't fix some things. Some injuries are permanent, and some damage is too great to be repaired. And some things you just have to live with.

Jezebel...

Wow. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. That was where it all started, wasn't it? Jez died. And it crushed me, finding out that she was gone, because I had loved Cassie, and she was just suddenly gone, and it was a life lost, that shouldn't have been, and you came to comfort me, when I needed you. You seemed to understand that I was going to need somebody there with me, without my needing to put all the words into a coherent form that night.

And that was where it started, and I just realized it. I don't agree with the Christian philosophy that there's a point to everyone's death, and that we should all be learning some type of lesson from it. I don't agree with the things that are read out at the funerals, and I've never really understood what I'm supposed to be getting comfort from when someone is gone.

Yes, when someone has lived a long, full life? And it's their time to go? Then, that I understood. When my father died, and he was young? I never understood that. His sudden, unexplained, unexpected death was unfair, and unwarranted, and it wasn't acceptable. There was no *reason* for it.

And I never accepted or wanted to hear that it was "his time" or wanted to hear that there was some "greater plan" or that there was some grand lesson to be learned.

I thought it was all bullshit, and that whatever there was to be found in that great afterlife all the Christians are always talking about, I just can't wrap my head around that. The people who believe and have that concrete faith, and can embrace that? I'm sure that's wonderful for them. But I still don't agree. I don't think that someone who is a basically decent person should have to suffer in great pain, and be miserable, to prove some kind of point, and they'll get some sort of great reward in the afterlife.

I think that if you're a good person now, you shouldn't have to suffer, and be sick and miserable, and die early. I don't think your life should be a "lesson" to everybody else. I don't think a good and just God should be subjecting people to that.

And I don't understand why Christians believe that, or embrace it. I just don't get it. I don't understand it.

And now? Now that we're still standing here, not communicating, when you're hurting, and I can't help. Now that you've suffered a loss, and it brings back a time when it was a similar loss, and you stood next to me, to hold me and make it easier on me, because I didn't understand, and you couldn't do anything but be there to make it easier? It makes me sad to know I can't do anything to help in kind.

Everything and all the of it aside, all the pain, all the harsh words, all the anger. If you look back, and you need anything, I'm still there. As I've always been, as I'll always be. Because it's what a friend does. And it's what I've always been.

Dear Diary, it's one forty seven a.m.,

I was lying here tonight, thinking about you, and how time is passing and while I still think about you, because I'd be lying if I said that I didn't, the thoughts aren't the same anymore, not exactly. The fresh raw wound that was there, it isn't necessarily bleeding anymore, and I'm not as angry as I was. Not so viciously ready to strike out. Like a tiny little hole, the way air lets out of a tire, that you almost don't notice it happening, I realized that a lot of the screeching anger has passed. The hurt? It's there still. But the raging anger is passing. Oh, how I wanted you to hurt the way I hurt. Wanted you to feel the vicious pain and betrayal I felt when I had to feel the emptiness and loss that you never seemed to feel.

But that anger is finally lessening. And in the end, I guess I actually do want for you what I've wanted for you for all the years I've known and loved you. For you to be happy. Sad, isn't it? That that's what I've always wanted for you? Oh, it hurts still, to know that I'm sad, and the two of you are happy, or so it seems. To know that I was set to the side and disregarded and replaced so easily. Yes, that hurts. It will always hurt. But I'll always want for you what I always did want. You to be happy, and healthy, and safe and loved. Because that's just who I am.

And I thought about it, all the things I miss about you. Laughing together while we watched stupid television shows. Watching random movies, and discussing oddball things we found on the internets. Just the random things that we could always talk about, the things that we had in common, because we were so very random. I miss cooking for you, and cleaning up after you, and just being with you. That's the crux of it, isn't it? That I just miss being with you. With my friend, with everything about you.

And no matter what, that's gone now. That will be forever changed, even if you were to come back tomorrow, and we were to try and repair the breach of your being gone, there would be ghosts now. It would take work to try and heal the hurts now.

And I'm not innocent in all of it. I've cast stones too, and I know it. I struck out to cause pain as well, because I was so angry, and felt so violated, and so injured. And some of the violations were valid, and some were not, but I was too angry to even see clearly enough to do anything except strike out.

And now I miss you. And all I really want is to have things the way there were, when I was happy. When I could sit with you, and watch stupid television shows, and eat a quiet meal, and have a quiet conversation. When there wasn't anger, and there wasn't pain, and there wasn't this overwhelming sense of loss.

I can't change the past. I can't modify what happened, and I can't unring a bell. I also can't make you do something you don't want to do, and I can't bring you back to me if you want to be someplace else. But my feelings and thoughts are my own, even when nobody approves of them. And what I think about at two o'clock in the morning that I write down, so that I can finally go to sleep, to give me a little bit of peace is for my own sanity as well.

Be well, be happy, remember that you were loved, you were wanted, you are missed. Even if everything falls apart, you're still loved and wanted and missed.

Love, Crys

I wonder how it feels?

I wonder that, often, how it feels to be someone else. Someone who is willing to compromise things that I'm not willing to. I'm a very peculiar person a lot of the time. I have an odd moral outlook, and I know it. I don't cheat, I don't lie, I don't steal. I wouldn't compromise my own morals, not for anything. But my own morals are just that, they're mine. And what makes them up isn't written in anyone else's conduct book, that's for certain.

So I look around, and I wonder how it feels, to be able to constantly shift patterns and be able to just switch gears anytime it suits their purposes. Because I just can't do that. I do what I say I'm going to do, when I say I'm going to do it. And I follow through.

Phillip and his constantly fluctuating morality, and his willingness to fuck over whoever he needs to to suit his own personal purposes at any given time both confuses me and frustrated me, because I just couldn't do it. And in the end, it's why I couldn't handle his lying to Colleen. He was so comfortable with it, and I'm so uncomfortable with all the lies in general. I was his dirty little secret, and he was so ashamed of me, and it bothered me. Not so much because of what we were doing. I didn't and don't care that he was involved with somebody else. I wasn't cheating, because I don't cheat, so that didn't affect me at all. What bothered me was that he only felt guilty when I said "no" about something. Everything was fine, unless I brought up the reality of our situation. *Then* and only then, did he have a moral dilemma. And suddenly, he just couldn't continue anymore. He felt oh-so-guilty *then*. Because I was suddenly pointing out that there was no birth control involved, and he still wanted sex. Was still comfortable with what we were doing, even though it might be resulting in a child each and every time. He would have been alright with an accidental pregnancy, every time. As long as he didn't have to admit to himself, or anyone else, that in reality, we were trying to get me pregnant. And that was and is the reality of that situation. From the point where he knew there was no active birth control in my system, he knew precisely what was going on.

Selective morality. I just don't understand it. And now, I'm frustrated with myself. I was actually ranting at someone, but more at myself, earlier today. Because I'm so disgusted with myself. Knowing exactly who and what he is? I love him anyway. Flaws and all. I can't help how I feel, and I said that. I was a lot more eloquent earlier, actually. I delineated all of the reasons that I'm better off with him gone, why even if there's a child, I'm better off with him staying away, because do I really want the child raised with those values being taught to it? Even knowing all of those things...I can't help what I think or how I feel. Because unlike Phillip, or Colleen, I can say that I love him, and that I *know* him. His faults, and they're legion. Not that I don't have my own, because I do. But I know his, and still. (shrug)

She's in over her head. And she's too far away to realize that. I'm not particularly doing anything. It wouldn't matter anyhow. And he's living his little pathetic dreary existence, where he takes the crumbs she offers to him, and lives in his room, with his computer and his WoW, and hopes for the best, where she might someday show up. And then reality, if she ever appears, will set in. The mediocre sex, where she can't keep up with his sex drive will finally become reality. The inflexibility where she can't bend up like a pretzel, which he really, really enjoys. The fact that he wants it several times a day, for hours at a time. The fact that he doesn't like cheesy television, and doesn't like romantic comedies and doesn't like fiction silly reading. And he's very serious, almost all the time in conversation in real life. The actual *reality* that's Phillip will set in. In all honesty, the actual oral sex, which by this point, as much of a bitch as I am, he has to be missing, because nobody will *ever* give him that the way I could. There's a lot to be said for getting something from someone who you know loved you, and wanted to give you something purely because they loved you and wanted to make you feel good. And he knows it. Some things just can't be reproduced, no matter how hard somebody tries.

And yes, I miss him. I'd be lying if I said I didn't. Am I angry? Fuck yes, I'm angry. Do I hate him? I honestly don't know. I'm so disgusted and livid at how I was treated I still don't know much beyond that. But I still miss him, because you can't really control how your heart feels, and my heart has felt what it feels for Phillip for more than ten years, even when I couldn't remember him. Unfortunately, now I *can* remember him. So it hurts. Do I wake up in the morning, and reach for the phone? No, not anymore. At least that's getting easier. I don't expect the phone to ring anymore. I don't even know what I'd say if it did.

I'll never understand how it feels to be able to just walk away from someone and pretend that they don't matter. I'm not built that way. I can cut someone from my life, but I can't pretend they don't matter. I can cut them out if they've done me a grievous wrong, but not if they didn't harm me.

stupid things

I changed around things on my idiot MySpace account, because, well, honestly, looking at it was making me depressed. I took down all the photos, and I took him off my top 8. I didn't figure that logging in and seeing his face was going to be helping me any, since I'd just sent him away. Yes, I know, I get it. *I* sent him away. My choice, my decision. I can hear the voice in my head saying I didn't need to do that, and he had no intention of giving me up, etc, ad infinitum.

But as I know very well, it would have come down to that at the end of the day, and I'm so damned tired of being left behind and being abandoned, when someone ends up not keeping a promise to me. And, unfortunately, he has already proven to me that he won't keep a promise to me, if it means he can have her. It just wasn't worth the fighting, and the pain, and the anguish that came along with keeping him for a few extra weeks. And so I sent him away.

I have a song playing over and over in my head, some cheesy Keith Urban song, I think it's called "Think of Me".

And it hurts. I'm walking around like a zombie part of the time. Don't get me wrong, I'm putting on an excellent show. About 95% of the time, you can't even tell there's anything out of the ordinary going on. The other 5% I spent holed up in my room, because I have no desire to be seen.

But I took him off the top spot on my idiot MySpace page, because it hurt to see him there. Evidently, that offended in some way, as it took him no time at all to return that favor in kind. I've been booted off his as well. And that, I suppose, is no less than I deserve, as we're no longer...friends? We're nothing now, I guess. I'm surprised he didn't simply erase me entirely. He'd always maintained he didn't particularly care who was in the top 8 on his page, so I guess I was surprised at the speed with which I'd been removed.

And it's stupid. It was always stupid. And I am so tired and annoyed with myself for even thinking about it. Because it shouldn't make a difference. I shouldn't care. I wish I could forget, but I can't. And I doubt that it will disappear as fast as I had hoped. And while everyone I know tells me that, yay, I've done the right thing, and I'm strong and it will get easier, yahoo. This sucks.

Yes, I'm strong enough to have made a decision and stick with it. Yes, this is the right thing to do, and I did it. No, I don't want to just sit and keep getting hurt repeatedly by someone who only wants me as a convenience. Yes, I know all of the reasons and I am still standing, albeit very sadly. But that doesn't take the pain away. It doesn't make it any less hard to sit, and stare blindly at the wall, while everything inside of me crumbles because I miss him, and things hurt. Listening to the doors slam, because he was angry, and knowing that all I had to do was say "stay", it sucks.

And seeing that he could so easily drop me out of his life too, that hurt as well...