Things will never be the same...

I have new bedding being shipped to me, and I'll be unpacking the boxes that have sat with all my stuff in them for months now. My apartment has sat untouched for a while now. Oh, it's clean, and orderly. But untouched just the same. With everything that shows that I live here in boxes, untouched.

I put away everything to make space for others, and I never took it back out, for two reasons. The last time that I decorated the extra room wherever I lived, I immediately had to dismantle it, because someone I cared about, every time, needed a place to stay/live, and so I had to take it all down, even when I was very excited to have my own space, and start the process of putting myself together. Each time I finally started to assemble something, somebody I cared very much for had some type of emergency, and I needed to clear out a place for them, and so all my plans were put on hold.

It's become sort of a curse to me, to try and put that room together, for fear that somebody I care about will have something go wrong, and they'll need to be able to come here. There are only three people who I would allow to live in my apartment now.

I will never again live with a woman, or with anyone who has children. But there are three men that I could and would live with, if the need arose in their lives. No questions asked, with no qualms. And because of the attachment I have to them, I don't want their lives to go asplodey, and so I've been avoiding unpacking my things, and setting up the room, and setting up my life in the apartment that's now mine alone. It's superstitious, and I know it. But I don't want them to be unhappy, and need to have to have a place to go.

I call it "wishcraft", my bad habit of getting what I want. And I don't want anyone to be unhappy or have their lives disrupted, or anything else that might be karmically screwballed by either wanting to help me, or thinking I need to be helped, or my wanting them around. Whether I sit and say I want them around, or want them to feel needed by me? All of it's irrelevant.

The truth is, I don't need anyone anymore, and I need to let it all go, and set my apartment up for me. So in spite of my superstition, I'm going to set it up. I'm getting rid of the bedding that I shared with someone else. I'm changing out the bedroom to be just mine. I'm unpacking my books, and my small collection of what's left of Tweety bird, and my dolphins, and my dragons. I'll put up my few knickknacks.

And I'll still be here, if I'm needed. But I won't be here to the extent that I have been. For the three people I'd allow to live with me? Those three will still get what they've always had in the way of my attention if they need me. But for everyone else? I'm going to be scaling way back, because I just can't do this anymore.

What's the line to that song, Danny? "Cause I'm one step closer to the edge, and I'm about to break"? I think it's Linkin Park. That's how I feel about damned near everything. That I'm about to break, and that I just can't keep handling anything else but my own life. I've had it tossed at me that I need to stop dealing with other people's problems. And I so badly just want to laugh at everyone, and point out that everyone seems to want me to drop others' problems, but not *theirs*. Just theirs are important.

Well, not anymore. At this point? My own problems are important to me. A couple of others are. But right now, I'm not going to be discussing those with anyone anymore. I've grown tired of the sound of my own voice, and don't have much to say to anyone now.

I was asked a few times today, what's wrong, why are you quiet? You sound odd. Things like that. Yes, I sound odd. Sure, there are things wrong. But I don't want to discuss them, it's a cycle of things that I just don't want to get into. I'm doing the best I can.

So I didn't work today, for the first time I can remember. I'm missing a doctor's appointment, because I don't feel good enough to even go to that. And today, I purchased some things for my apartment, to make it mine. To erase the memories, so when I look around, they aren't all I see surrounding me. So I can maybe try to go to sleep on a bed that isn't surrounded with whispers of things that hurt me. With memories that cause me to wake up in tears. I'm trying, and I'm doing the best I can, and I'm still failing.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow I'll work again. I'll email my teachers, to get my syllabus and the book information so I'm ready for school on the 18th of August. I'll call the people I need to call, and then I'll be shutting down the ringers on my phones, because for a little while, I need to be quiet, and left alone.

I'm going to be decorating and putting things away, and working. If you don't hear from me, that's all it is. If you need me? Email me, I'll still be checking that on a regular basis, because I check that for work.

It's nothing personal to anyone. If you're reading this blog, and you know you're one of the three who knows how to reach me, you can reach me if you need me, always. If you're reading this blog and you're unclear on that? You should be. I don't change.

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.