Ugh, can I help it if I like Matt? Ugh. I just found out a couple days ago that Matt slept with another coworker, Jasmine. She also slept with another coworker, Justin. But I don't care about those two. I knew Matt was no longer a virgin, but I thought it was with Justin's ex or someone random like that. I didn't know it was with Jasmine. They didn't seem to talk at all, I didn't think that Matt liked her or that he was her type, or that they were at all attracted to each other.

I should have asked Matt about that. WHY? Why did he choose someone so random? In fact, they have never seemed to be friends at all. He never seems to go to her parties or talk to her online or anything. I don't understand it.

I was stunned for like 20 minutes when Ron told me. I really didn't even believe it, I couldn't imagine it. I watched them together all today, it's so surreal. But Matt said something about hearing about me and Joe. And I said that I hear things about him too. Because Jasmine told everybody. He says she told details too. That's a little awkward. It's awkward to lose your virginity to a coworker. Cause first time sex is probably never something to brag about. You're trying things for the first time, no? It's a time of experimentation.

She has a boyfriend right now, I don't know that they're interested in each other at all. She had just slept with Justin too, jeezus, she gets around. I don't know why it all happened, I simply don't understand it.

But I'm so jealous. So jealous. That's why it's hard for me to believe, I think. Because I don't want to imagine that Matt could find Jasmine attractive, attractive enough to lose his virginity to.

Put this on hold since my boyfriend is calling...

I feel stupid for liking Matt. Cause everybody says that all the girls like Matt. It feels cliche. But he's so special. I can't help it. People always ask me if I have a crush on Matt. Ron asked me before I was dating Joe so I said Maybe. But every time after I've lied and said no. Cause I know it'll be passed around in a second and then Matt will know and eventually someone will tell Joe or they'll tease me about it. So I just deny it flat out. Or I admit it. Like I tell Matt that I stalk him, so that he knows that even if it seems like I like him, I'm actually not. Cause if I was stalking him, I probably wouldn't admit it so nonchalantly.

Matt looks so sexy in real clothes. mmm.. I told Ron that and then I went on break a few hours later, but I came in the back and they didn't know and I overheard Ron telling Matt what I said. It was such a perfect example of how quickly news spreads. The first second I was out of the concept and Ron can't help but share all my dirty little secrets. I walked in going WHAT?! If I wanted Matt to know, I would have told him myself.

But then the next day or two I came in wearing regular clothes, picking Joe up from work. And Matt told me I looked good in regular clothes too. It's like the closest he's come to flirting with me. It makes me sad that he's not attracted to me. I don't know why I'm not his type.

We clash sometimes and he gets really irritated at me. Especially when he gets really irritated at Martin, but he can't take his frustration out on Martin so he takes it out on me. :(

We're doing secret santa. First I picked my own name. Then I picked Bryan's name. He's like my arch nemesis. Truth be told, though, he's everybody's arch nemesis. No one likes him and he likes no one. He's a grumpy, miserable, bitchy person. But people have allowed themselves to pretend they get along with him and somehow him and I started off on the wrong foot and now everybody sees us as enemies. I don't really hate him, I don't mind him, really. But whatever. He actually picked my name first and then put it back and got someone else.

So I picked his name and put it back, then I picked my manager's name and put it back. Then I picked my name again. Then I decided to cheat. So I pulled out Ron and Matt and decided to do one of them. But Ron was right there so Bryan suggested I do Matt so that it would be a surprise. Though I ended up hinting around to Matt later that day and he asked me if I had him and I said yes. Everybody knows who has everybody, really. Partly because I told everybody. But they asked me who had them!

Or I asked people whose name they picked and they admitted it. Today Brittany was like who does Justin have and I said David and she asked who David had and I said Ron and she asked who Ron had and I said Beth and she asked who Beth had and I said her. Brittany has Yolanda and Yolanda has Michelle and Michelle has me and I have Matt and Matt has Richard and Richard has Pam and Pam has Bryan and Bryan has Timmy and Timmy has Melissa F and Melissa F has Katie and Katie has Justin and Justin has David and so we seemed to have hit on everybody.

So much for the secrets. But I expected no less. I wish someone better had gotten my name. Michelle doesn't like me because I get so irritated with her that I bitch at her all the time.

I dunno. The other day I planned to have sex with Joe. But I could not do it because I kept thinking of Matt. I just couldn't get turned on for Joe. It's terrible. I feel so dishonest right now. I shouldn't be with Joe if its a lie. But it'll hurt him so much to leave him.

Ashley told me I couldn't break up with Joe since I took his virginity and he would be attached to me. But I told her that he was that attached to me before we even started dating. I mean, I like Joe. I enjoy him to an extent. But maybe I'm just not in love with him and I never have been.

I don't want him to be gone from my life. But it's a lie to pretend that I'm in love with him as he needs me to be. That's the thing though. He asked me out and I made out with him even though I told him we couldn't date. And I knew I couldn't do that to him. I couldn't just use him for holding hands and making out and give him no romance to go with it. And we couldn't turn around and undo what we'd done, we couldn't go back to not making out. Once you cross that line it's hard not to do it again.

I want to kiss Matt.

I think I got so into playing the role of "girlfriend" that I lost sight of my real feelings.

Everything is all messed up. I should have just stayed single. And yet, I feel like these past few months would have been so sad without a boyfriend. It's nice to have someone to eat, sleep, shower, have sex and just plain spend time with. When my car broke down, I had Joe's dad to drive me home and tell me what was wrong with my car and Joe ran like a mile to the shop to get my car and bring it back to work. I'm alone now that my parents are gone. Amelia isn't very much support, although she did bring me to work the next day so that I could drive my car from work where I left it, to the shop.

But it's like I have Joe and his family to take care of me. If I'm ever in a jam, I know that they're there to support me.

It's like, I need a boyfriend. It's not that I need someone to keep me company, cause I love being alone and I love doing things for myself. But I need a role filled. I need someone's body against mine when I fall asleep and someone to take physical comfort from by kissing and someone to work through my desires with. I need someone who cares about my life, the way all my friends don't. So that when I need something, he'll realize that it's important and he'll try to help me out.

I need someone who will share his money with me. Like when Joe and I go out, he'll randomly pay for something for me. I don't have the financial burden all the time. It takes a lot of stress away.

But it's like, he's just a role, the role of a boyfriend. I don't want to love him or have an emotional attachment for him and I don't necessarily even need his presence, cause it's comforting to be alone. I love to feel my own presence as company. When I'm alone it's like I'm walking around with a mirror, always seeing myself in the room. And I love it. I love how I can do things to the satisfaction of my eyes. Like I project myself seeing something, the way Joe would. Only it's so much more satisfying knowing how I feel about it. Knowing that I appreciate the things that matter to me. Knowing that what pleases me pleases my projected self.

It sounds creepy and lonely but it's a comfort. When you're with someone else and you're seeing someone else, you look out from yourself, you don't look within yourself. When you're alone, you're the only person around to observe. You're what you focus your attention on. And I'm such good company for myself. I experience things the way I want them to be experienced. I agree with the things I agree with.

It bothers me, it makes me unsettled, uncomfortable and dissatisfied to be around someone knowing that they're not experiencing things the way I am. Knowing that Joe doesn't care that I cleaned my bathroom to perfection. It doesn't please him. It pleases me and it pleases me to know that it pleases me. When I'm alone, I acknowledge that it pleases me to have a spotless, pretty bathroom and it's satisfying. When Joe is here, I just sit there knowing it doesn't please him and I'm like, what? What does one say to that? Get outta here.

Other people don't care about the same things I care about. I always care about the things I care about. It's nice. It's satisfying. It's satisfying to talk to myself, as one can observe throughout my journal entries where I say the most random and thoroughly detailed things, and I care. I don't do it because someone else cares. In fact, this is my outlet because I couldn't simply say all of this to anyone else and have them care. I mean Joe supports me, he'd listen, he'd care that I care because he cares about me. But he wouldn't care about what I'm saying.

And maybe it's unhealthy to relish my own company this much. Because maybe it shows that I have expectations for other people and when they don't meet them I get disappointed. Even when people do care about the same things I do it makes me uncomfortable because it's almost like I'm afraid that it's too good to be true. I feel like I'm so close to having it taken away from me, so I reject situations where people agree with me, like I'm afraid to be disappointed. Even though I am disappointed when they don't agree with me as well.

Anything that stems from fear is unhealthy, so if I take solace in the fact that I'm alone, which avoids the disappointment I fear, then it's obviously unhealthy that I want to be alone.

But I don't know how to have the role of a boyfriend with someone who I can emotionally connect with. I thought I was emotionally connecting with Joe but I don't know. Sometimes I get so excited at the thought that I'm dating Joe. It's the perfect opportunity to have a relationship that I've always wanted. But then I'm with him and I'm kissing him and it's lacking.

I probably attracted someone who I couldn't connect with in an intellectual manner. I haven't been able to from day one, but I got into dating him anyway and since I became his comforter and care taker, I used that emotion to supply the necessary fondness for our relationship. Like I didn't love him in a... this is hard to explain. I don't know what it is. I guess feeling like someone challenges you but is equal to you. Like you're neck to neck emotionally, sexually, intellectually. So you connect, but there's stimulation and excitement. Joe is so far behind me, so unequal to my emotional, intellectual, spiritual level that not only do we not connect but he doesn't stimulate any of those areas. Sexually he's good but not exciting, probably because I know already the level he's at intellectually and emotionally.

That's what it comes down to. I can connect with the role Joe plays as my boyfriend but I can't connect with his personality. He probably can't connect with mine, though it's hard to understand what kind of connection he's looking for. But he doesn't care because he's so emotionally attached to me. I have no experience breaking hearts. Joe has been so good to me. I usually just tell people no at the beginning and even though it hurts them, I've not led them on at all. But I've led Joe on for the past two months and he has no reason to think that anything is wrong because what has changed in the past two months? Nothing. I shouldn't have dated him in the first place.

I just barely began to notice that I never look Joe in the eyes. Partly I think it began with just simply that I didn't like his eyes so they made me unattracted to him, so I just stopped looking. Though I don't have a problem with them in the same manner now. But it's almost like I couldn't look him in the eyes because I didn't want him to see that I was lying. Like when you lie but you can't look someone in the eyes while you do it.

And now that I have lied for two months about my feelings, it's going to be all the harder to say, no, wait, I change my mind, I don't love you. Cause I've been acting like I love him. How can I take that back? Hoe can I say that I didn't really mean it?

This is so terrible. Part of me isn't even admitting to reality, because I'm still pretending. I'm still saying, I love you too, to him. I'm still lying to myself about my feelings for him. I'm still trying to give it a chance and make things work. I don't know how I can rip away this relationship from him. I've kind of already decided to do it after I leave Starbucks. Because it will be too hard to answer questions. It will be too hard for me to know that everybody knows I dumped him. If I leave, they won't care if I'm dating him or not, even if he still works there. There's no sense in gossiping about someone who isn't around anymore.

I don't want people to empathize with my reasons for dumping him. It's like, he's simple and sweet and I think that other people see that in him. But I feel better knowing that I'm making a statement that he still deserves a beautiful, loving girlfriend despite his simpleness.

I really want to see him naked right now. His penis is kind of what he's not. Like, lol, cocks in general are strong, proud, muscular, bold, confident, and sexy the way guys who are like that can be sometimes. Confidence, even over-confidence can sometimes be exciting. I don't know. Maybe we envy people who can be like that. And Joe is so not like that. He's a lost, scared puppy. Who's missing a leg. I wish he was entirely like his cock. Which wasn't even like that itself in the beginning. It was more like him in the beginning but I coaxed it into confidence.

It's like I want to reach a part of Joe that's not there. When am I going to stop trying?

Fuck. I can just picture myself breaking up with him and his reaction and it hurts me. I just can't crush him like that.

This is exactly what I've done. Joe wanted me and I gave myself to him. I knew that he needed me so I just handed myself over. I took my reality out of the picture, I stopped being me, I stopped living my life based on who I am and what I need and I just sacrificed everything so that he could have me, could have what he wanted, could have me as his girlfriend.

It's like I condensed myself into a doll and put it in his hands. But I lost myself by doing this and now I need to get back on track, back to who I am and my reality. But I need to take the doll back and he'll be left with nothing. And I feel so terrible. So, so terrible.

So, so terrible. I keep envisioning breaking up with him and the guilt and pain is maddening. I don't know how I'm even going to recover from the gulit after we're broken up. I'll sleep alone and shower alone and go to work alone and I'll think of him and think of what I took from him and even what I've taken from myself and I don't know how I'll even be able to stand the liberation. How did I accept this so damn much? How did get so deep in this?

I always attracted guys who loved me, but could not have a propper attachment to me. Dan was in Michigan and had Jen. John had Lyla. James didn't love me. Mike hated me. Kristen didn't really fully love me. Felix didn't love me. All the people who I've "led on", had some undeniable distance. I let Joe in and there's just no distance, no safety. Nothing to rely on. No excuse. Telling Dan I wasn't in love with him wasn't that hard because he lived in Michigan anyway and he had already accepted that we couldn't be together in the traditional sense, at least not at that time. I knew that I wasn't really taking anything from him. I knew that leaving John didn't take anything from him because he had Lyla and couldn't really enjoy me the way he wanted to.

But Joe had nothing standing in his way. He brought me into his reality so fully. We've practically lived together. Kissing, hugging, showering, sex, sleeping together, depending on each other, going to work together.. everything. I was so real to him. I was so valuable to his life. Sure Dan loved me, but I didn't really add any value to his life. Neither did I add a value to John. I wasn't really taking anything away from them by leaving them. I just imagine what it must feel like for Joe to walk through my door with me. Walk into his girlfriend's house. Be a part of my domain. Participate.

Work will forever remind him of me. He quit school. He no longer has football. I hate thinking of him at his house, it's horrible there. I mean I like his parents but they've made the worst environment of decay and poverty. They're not poor, really. They don't live in a trailer. But they act like they do and the environment is so stifling for Joe. I like the type of environment that you imagine a flower to bloom in, to open up its petals with grace and beauty and life. Joe's house is the last place in the world flowers would bloom.

I hate that for him. This is so agonizing. And I can do nothing to change his circumstances because I would otherwise do it intellectually. I would talk to him, I would try to enlighten him and help him understand more, understand what more there is to life than what he's grown up experiencing. But I can't reach him intellectually.

I guess I see my role as his girlfriend as his escape from that. Like dating him is the door that leads him to somewhere else, but I have to be the room he goes into as well. And I can't be the room. I am so happy to be the door, but I can't become the room he lives within. He has to build his own room, his own reality that is More than what he has in his household. He has to find more. I can't be that more.

I miss the days that I owed nothing to anyone. I miss the freedom to be myself, to work for what I needed because it didn't matter what happened. Everything I did would affect my life in beneficial ways and I didn't need to worry how it affected anybody else's life.

It pains me so extremely to know that when I break up with Joe, I'll be closing the door and he'll have to turn around to the life he had before me. How can I do that to him. It's like taking a starving child from Africa, bringing it to a rich home in America and then kicking him out. I feel like I nurtured Joe and he needed it so badly. He was like a flower trying to grow in Siberia and I drew him out into the sun and the rain and the warm, breezy air.

I didn't give him enough. I know that what I gave him wasn't enough. He needs more. But I gave him an opportunity. I feel like his environment was such a dead end. That there was no opportunities to bloom in warm breezy air.

I don't even know what I'm talking about, really. Perhaps expression. There's no expression. No outlet. That's what the lack of decoration in the house and lights and sounds and colors said to me. That there was no flourish of expression. All he does at home is watch TV. He doesn't even decorate his room, it's atrocious. It's nothing. I'm not saying that the meaning of life is to hang a picture on your wall. But I think that even the ego's desire to express itself, to identify with expression - even superficial expression, is a step on the right track. The desire to find identity in expression is the right track. But WHAT you express is where you differ between Being God and being ego.

Oh Joe. This pain I feel, this empathy and compassion shows me just how much I care for him. I lied when I said I loved him in the attached, romantic, illusioned way I pretended to feel for him. But I did it, I sacrificed myself because I care for him so deeply. Soul deep. I've been crying so hard for like ten minutes while writing this. I just have such a deep, unexplainable, empathetic pain for his soul. Perhaps for the fact that he's so stuck in a rut. Sometimes I want to marry him just so I can take him away from that life, show him how to build a new one.

But I know that his attachment to me is not the way to build a new life. He's built a life out of me. Everything revolves around me. He needs to build a life where he's the center, where he's there to express himself, instead of to express his adoration for me.

I think this helps me to realize this. Because now that I realize why I got myself into this mess, I realize that dating him does not do what I wanted for him. It opens the door, but encouraging his attachment and his melissa-centric life does not make things better. I thought that by nurturing him, by giving him water and sunlight, he would grow. But it's like if a flower blossomed wearing the mask of the sun. He's idolized me and thus has blossomed into a worshiper, instead of used the opportunity I gave him to blossom an expression of himself.

And that's the thing. He was given a life that mirrored his own ambitions or lack thereof. And he has scoliosis, which when felt in the lower back means criticism and condemnation. I think that he's suppressed his expression, condemned it and criticized it into being worthless in his eyes and it's festered into such an unhealthy pattern that it found its way to the surface through a disease. He needs to heal this self-condemnation. I feel like the fact that he's "slow", that he can't even intellectually express things is his way of saying that he doesn't deserve to do so. In a funny way, all those things that the ego utilizes for its own gain, the things that it's proud of, the image-oriented behavior - Joe hasn't felt like he deserves to allow himself to express much of a personality even. He has so few outlets and favorites and bands he likes or clothes he likes. He just doesn't want an image, in a sense. Because he doesn't feel he deserves to be expressed in an image.

As I said, the ego-oriented image is no good. It's superficial and a waste. But the desire to express an identity comes from the right place, even if it's misused by the ego.

I have such a desire to heal his wounds. To soothe him with my nurturance. To bring him back to life. I have to let go though. It's Joe's decision. As agonizing as it is to see himself destroy himself like this, I have to respect his free will. I CAN'T make things better. It's his choice. I can't be his savior. I want so badly to be his savior. I want so badly to do anything it takes to heal him, even lying to myself for the past two months.

My mom said that this issue was not my karma is was my dharma. I don't know what the fuck dharma means! From my memory it feels like your personal mission. But karma is the return of personal consequences. So is this something I volunteered to do? To reach out to Joe and give him an opportunity to heal himself?

I just keep trying to look up the definition of Dharma but I can't find one that makes sense in the context. So I guess I have the same definition as my mom and that's all that matters.

Tomorrow is going to be really hard....