Yay! Quick recovery.

Fuck Mr. Pink!

Well, I can't really say that. I have a lot of sympathy for him. And as a person, it's hard not to adore him. He's a good guy. Smart. Has the potential to be a great man.

But I gotta say, I'm not ugly.

Oh yeah. Giggity. Shouting it from the mountain tops.

I AM NOT UGLY.

And I don't think I'm bad in bed either, frankly.

Just because he did, on either option, doesn't make it true. Doesn't make it applicable to me. And I know that. I do. Being bummed for a day and thinking it through helped make me realize that.

I'm not going to shut off my heart, or close down the part in me that wants to believe people are fundamentally decent, and worth trusting. I won't. I refuse.

I'm not going to let myself become someone who's bitter and shut off. I always say it, and temporarily wonder if I'm insane when I get hurt because of it, but I'd rather love constantly and be hurt vibrantly than be just another soul taking that brightness from the world. Because that's what love is: a light. And I believe that. I know it's true. As soon as I believed in love for the God it is, I saw it everywhere, and I won't turn my back to it.

I would let you down if I did.

I hope this finds you well, my darling.

unfair, and unpretty.

So, last night, after I went to LA to see (let's call him Mr. Pink), we were going back to his house after a movie when he told me that he wasn't going to want me to stay. After what I considered a really amazing weekend, I naturally asked why. He said he didn't want to hurt me, but I insisted on knowing.

It is better to know the truth. It is better to know the truth. It is. I know it is, logically. Even when it hurts in it's pettiness, and more than it should because I look like a fool.

Mr. Pink told me that he didn't think I was attractive anymore. Calmly, I asked if he'd felt the same way Saturday and looked past it because, well, he wanted a last fling before he left. He didn't know. I asked if that was the case, he shouldn't have asked me to come out again, and he said he was hoping he was remembering it with guilt shadowing it and that the "magic" would still be there for us.

I'm so...devastated. And it's an overreaction. So what? He used me and didn't think I was pretty. He's definitely not the first and probably not the last. In his benefit, he was the first to be brutally honest with me when I requested it, and I know from experience that being the teller can be harder than being the listener.

I think part of why I'm so hurt is because he made me feel so absolutely beautiful and loved on Saturday. That's why it was so special for me. He knew that part of my personal philosophy is that, no, not every woman is a stunner, and I am part of that group. I'm mediocre, average, standard...all of the above, and that's all right. There's nothing wrong with that. He told me, over and over again, how beautiful he thought I was, how grateful he was for me. And I believed him completely. And I was completely wrong.

It's like a huge part of my heart that I trust with is dented. I feel like now, his baggage has metamorphosed into mine, and that I'll never believe someone who calls me pretty again. Because logically, I know.. I look okay. And I know that his guilt over sex and unhappiness with his own looks, et cetera, are all part of why his opinion changed about me and why he felt the need to use someone. But still.

Now more than before, the thought of being around my friends that are couples is nauseating. I don't feel like my heart can take seeing that kind of adoration when the last two months has been one long riverdance on all the good parts of my heart that I try to keep open to possibilities and have been smashed. I'm quitting, for awhile. My hope for pretty much everything has been worn down to a nub: hope for financial security, gone. Hope for a home of my own: gone. Hope for finding someone who won't use and hurt me: gone, too.

Yeah. Thanks for reading.

Hermithood, I hear you calling me.

Emotionally, life has been exceptionally intense since the New Year. I've been sick since then, and I'm really...sick of it. I'm normally much healthier. I just have something that I can't shake. And being in the hospital really drained me, physically and emotionally.

As much as I loved the friends that came, there were some that should have been there and weren't. In no uncertain terms, they let me down. I felt... forgotten. And not worth their time or effort.

Now, after yet another heavily emotional situation, I can't stop thinking about it. I'm becoming that girl, and I don't want to be her. Why do I always do this? I saw a shirt the other day that said "I fall in love 2 times a day", and that's completely me. And as much as it hurts, I don't want to change it. It's just that sometimes, I wear myself down by being so open, feeling so much. And I'd rather be that way than apathetic, and I'm usually reeeeally good about keeping a happy medium, but I've thrown myself off kilter.

I need to pull myself back in. I need to regroup. Hermithood, I hear you calling me, and I'm both thankful and resentful of your siren song.

Things to focus on:
-school
-graduation
-apprenticeship at the city

Things NOT to focus on because RIGHT now, I can't do ANYTHING:
-medical bills
-a man I want and cannot have
-future employment

Things to contemplate when I can handle it:
-grad school
-plans to leave the country
-any concept of financial planning

The end, for now.

These...are the days of our lives.

Sometimes, I feel like my life is a spanish novella. Or a bad rerun of the Three Stooges in Portugese. How does it make so little sense but still make me happy? And really, who is the high-big poombah that determines the entire concept of "sense"? Hm.

I'm just thankful that I'm happy. Grateful. For life. For the beauty that's so big it can't help but have a tinge of pain at the outer edges, it encapsulates so much. Last night I had a pretty life altering experience, which is weird, because it was fundamentally simple. Someone did a vast array of things for me . . . parts of my heart that I didn't know were underdeveloped due to a lack of stimulation were shocked alive, beating against their premature size and aching for action. This someone, I know, is going to leave and never come back to this state. Back to me. I don't think it made the experience any more poignant than it would have been otherwise, but it makes me wonder about the paths our lives take us down. The "what if's" are endless. For the first time, I wondered what it would be like to explore God and faith and love with someone tangible, and I wanted it, badly. I might always, and maybe only with him.

All I know is that it's joining my list of inexplicably beautiful things that have happened to me that I haven't deserved and can only hope to earn with my future actions, and it's at the top. So beautiful there's a salty sadness at the fringe. I hardly know you, and as sure as I am of our relative mystery to each other, I'm going to miss you every time I wish for your touch. And I'll never resent the missing, or regret the memories that are its fodder.

So, on another note, my friends came out in force when I needed them recently. I was hospitalized for nine days..details aren't important.. and a handful of sacred loves were there every day I was in. My Mattie, my dearest, sat with me for four hours through the damn national ice skating championships just to be there. Kathleen was there almost every day with her husband and/or familia. My Italians called every day. How can I be so blessed? How can I ever pay back the love that is given so freely to me? It always makes me think of John Mayer's "Wheel" lyrics.. "I believe that my life's gonna see the love I give returned to me", but an inverse. I've learned how to love by being loved infinitely more than I ever thought possible, and I can only try to consistently give it back as fully. My heart overflows, everything within and all spillovers my truest connection to God.

I started this so flippantly and finished so somber, but just as joyous. That's all that's important, methinks. All of my hopes for your happiness.