First I make a post saying I'm going to break up with Joe. My next post says I'm not going to break up with Joe. My next post should have said that I invited Joe to move in with me. Now my next post is saying that I'm moving to VA and the one after that should say that Joe is coming with.

I am extremely nervous right now and I'm not sure why. Things have been so up in the air lately. Up in the air since I moved out, I suppose.

I feel like just throwing up. Last night I was just really stressed. But now I'm nervous. I think it all started when my manager sat me down to complete my barista certification, which is supposed to happen BEFORE you start working, not after you're done working at Starbucks. But I finally got all of my workbooks done and she wrote out comments, and then sat down with me to go over them.

She was just very... honest about how she saw me. I feel like, even though she didn't see ME, per se, it seems like she's the first one to see my actions as good and respect me for it.

Well, I lie, many people have respected my actions in the past, especially teachers. So I don't know what I'm really talking about. But in this instance, I saw myself from her perspective and respected my own worth, as an employee, but also as a person. Because these qualities reflect the person I choose to display, the qualities I choose to display.

I had so much shit from people at work, so much criticism, resentment, hate, blame - it's to be expected. And Pam has always supported me, always believed in my sincerity, trusted me, saw me as a good person - instead of through the filter of other people's problems and issues that they refuse to deal with and so make me the scapegoat for.

As I think back on it, the qualities she noticed don't really matter. She said I was very organized and proficient in all areas. She said that I was a quick learner, good with customers, that I had specific attention to detail.

I suppose it was a level of control and intent that I expressed. I was always very conscious of the things that were going on and how to keep them organized, clean and efficient. She also said I handled stress really well, and I know this to be true because a lot of people freak out under the pressure and I never let it get to me. I never let the customers get to me, nor did I ever take out my feelings on the customers. Nor did I even let my problems with other people reflect in my work. The only thing that really got to me was being stuck on register all day and that's BECAUSE it impeded my ability to express all of the qualities Pam likes. I couldn't control anything, really, because I was tied to greeting the customers. I can't get anything done right, I couldn't clean or organize or restock or prepare or keep things orderly. And I wanted to.

I guess, I had all of these good qualities being displayed throughout my six months there and I felt they were going unnoticed and unappreciated, and yet Pam was very sincere, very supportive, very appreciative. On a personal level. It was so intimidate it made me nervous and uncomfortable afterwords. But in some sense, I almost felt this release, like I'm ready to stop working at Starbucks, ready to stop putting my all into it, because finally someone has noticed that this is what I've done.

I don't really care about Starbucks, but I put my all into it anyway, because if I'm involved in something, I can't Not put my all into it. If you're not affecting things positively, you're affecting them negatively and I just couldn't stand by and watch things go to waste, I couldn't stand by and see things that needed to be cleaned or restocked or prepped or pulled - in other words, I couldn't see Where I was needed and say no.

And I guess that shows an unselfish quality, and a desire to fill the voids around the world with my expression. It doesn't feel right to watch where things are going to waste and not do something to benefit that situation. It was my responsibility to make things better. I didn't care about the customers at all, I cared about the harmony of the concept, the function, I cared that it functioned correctly - to a certain degree, especially when it concerned organization.

I put so much OCD into it that my apartment became such a mess. (also because I hate cleaning in the cold) But the thing is, I wore my OCD out, letting it express itself for hours and hours at work, and I just couldn't come home and do it all over again with my apartment. I like to keep it as clean and harmonious as work, but I traded it for putting my all into work instead.

Again, I thought I had reached some manner of unconditional love for myself. But perhaps I'm only at a five. Perhaps I'm half way there. It felt like a ten or a nine at least, but I may have a long way to go yet.

I still haven't let the love be received. I still haven't allowed myself to receive unconditional love. I am so independent, I have little to no reliance on others (except my parents and there money and all that good stuff, but I have no other choice.) In every other way, I just don't --

Wow, I've been shaking uncontrollably for the past two hours and in an instant it stopped. Which is a huge relief because my legs were aching from the constant movement. Just from writing that last paragraph, suddenly the shaking has stopped. I suppose I hit the root of something.

I feel calmer now, more peaceful. Perhaps I know why this is. I just wrote in on the forum... the only way to conquer a wound is to step outside of it, since a wound cannot heal a wound. So I think by addressing it, I made the choice to step outside of it and observe myself from a place of Being, a place of Higher Consciousness, a place of ultimate confidence and peace.

The only place that can bring you understanding.

But the shaking is slightly returning, so lets go back to that place.

I never want to let others teach me. I never want others to tell me what to do. I never want others to tell me what life is about, or give me advice, or tell me specifically what my life is about. I don't want others help. I don't want to admit that anyone else knows better.

It's like, I've accepted that my opinions don't need to be aligned with others'. I've accepted that they know best how to become More in their life. I've accepted that they have wisdom and truth. but I'm still unwilling to let anybody else.. nurture me? I'm unwilling to let anybody heal me. I'm unwilling to let anybody guide me. I'm unwilling to let there be a flow between anyone and myself. I want to keep myself separated, disconnected, independent. I can let it flow out, on special occasions, but now it's time for me to let it come in.

Nurturance. I'm unwilling to let the "Mother" nurture me. I'm unwilling to let Mother Earth nurture me. I'm unwilling to let the material universe take care of me, support me. I'm unwilling to accept the unconditional love and in that sense, the unconditional servitude of support, of sustenance. I've always felt that we had to rely on ourselves, that we had to take responsibility. And of course, we do. This is a Father quality. And I feel that I have to control everything, that I have to fight everything, that I have to MAKE EVERYTHING HAPPEN.

And I sometimes forget that I'm not working against the current. I sometimes forget that the Mother Light doesn't want to work against me. It wants to nurture me, it wants to support me. It wants to be in harmony with me. I need to feel like when I dispel the illusions that cause Mother Nature to work against me on the superficial level, though with me on the subconscious level - as it is forced to do, that it will likewise mirror my Being. It Wants to.

My body elemental once said this to me. It doesn't want to carry out my flaws and diseases, though it has no other choice. It would like nothing more than to outpicture "perfection". Harmony. For some reason, I thought that it didn't want that for me. I thought that "Mother" didn't want that for me. I thought I had to fight for it, that no one was there to support me, to support my Being. I knew that "Father" supported me, because those are my strengths, my focuses.

I just need to accept nurturance. I'm still making the decisions, expressing my Willpower and Being. But I need to accept that "Mother" is willing to be in harmony with me, is willing to give me unconditional love, is willing to flow with me, instead of be an opposing force.

Or in that sense, I'M willing to flow with "Mother" instead of feel that I'm an opposing force, instead of feel that I must swim against the current.

I'm shaking again. And I'm so tense because my legs are trying to hold the tension, still the tension and its working the muscles so much. I need to do something about that. Meditate on it. Release the need to struggle.

Maybe that's just simply my problem, I've fallen into victim consciousness. I'm a victim of victim consciousness. Only I'm purposely pulling the Woe Is Me card in order to...

Well, put it this way. A girl has her period, it's not the worst thing in the world but she hates and she wants to give nature a reason to get rid of it. But the fact that she has it, isn't good enough. So she makes it worse. Physically this isn't an easy job, not that many people consciously try. But subconsciously, we can upset the period cycle and make it, say, come every two weeks. That's hell. That's unfair. That SHOULD be a good enough reason for nature to say - okay, this isn't what you deserve, we'll get rid of your period all together.

That's just an example of what I'm doing.

I have not enjoyed the circumstances I have ever since I moved in. I don't enjoy the responsibility, I don't enjoy the self-discipline. I don't enjoy the dedication to work and landlords. I want the freedom to relax and have no worries. Hakuna Matata is my slogan.

But things aren't that bad, and they aren't good enough reason for me to quit or to receive help or to have reality give me a winning lottery ticket, you know what I mean?

But maybe if things GET bad, maybe I'll be the victim. It'll be like I simply CAN'T make it when things are going this way, and so someone will have to GIVE me better circumstances.

And technically, I know that Amelia, Joe and my parents would all loan or give me money in an instant. But I don't want short term help, I want long term help. I want a way to get rid of this situation for all future months. I don't want to deal with this struggle anymore. So I'm making it worse.

That's my problem. I'm self-sabotaging myself. I'm purposely fucking things up, just to make myself all the more the victim, so the universe will pity me.

But that's not how it works, and I know this. I'm blocking myself from making the circumstances better. It's an all or nothing thing. I've done this all my life. If I can't have things precisely my way, I won't have them any way at all, but that just doesn't suit reality and I have to do the best I can, I have to make circumstances the best they can be. Throwing a temper tantrum isn't going to make things better. I just have to accept that things won't be perfect and that I have to compromise. Afterall, I'm seriously only compromising with myself, not the universe. And how can I argue with that?

That's it.

P.S. I love Hilary Duff. She's smart, funny, real, sane. It's a relief. Restores my faith in humanity a bit.

Why isn't this working? Why isn't my life working? I thought it would. I mean, I sort of expected that it wouldn't work, but I knew I had to make it work, so I came into it expecting that it would work.

So many things are wrong. Too many things are not going the way I wanted them to. And I hate admitting that.

I was so confident and self-assured that I could live a life without stress and chaos. I expected that I would draw to myself an easy lifestyle, that life would not push me around, could not breach my exterior.

Which doesn't make sense. Because either you have a life that allows you to be happy or you have a miserable life which is meant to effect you and push you to see what you're not seeing.

What am I not seeing?

It's hard to know because it's hard to identify what exactly is wrong.

So let's list them.

It began by working. I didn't want to be at Quiznos. It wasn't because of the people, it was because of the waste of time. And everything has gone down hill from there. It's better at Starbucks, of course. But also worse.

If I was to work at Starbucks on hot bar 24/7, I would have less of a reason to want to quit. But I work on register often and even an hour in one week kills me. I usually work like 20 hours in one week, though I cheat a lot and do other important things in order to avoid register.

Truth is, I don't make enough to sustain myself, the economy is going down so it's difficult to find anything better. They won't let me work overtime. I can't do things that I want to do because I'm tied to work. I can't leave, because I have to make rent. I'm forcibly tied to a place I don't want to be tied to.

That's such a huge problem that involves pretty much everything.

Money, that's the problem. My world revolves around money. It's not like money is just about wanting things. This reality forces you to work and then forces you to give them the money you earn in order to live. But there are things that I want. And denying myself these things constantly would be worse than just giving them to myself. I could spend like zero of my money. But I want to buy things for Amelia or Isis. I want to be able to afford healthy food. I pretty much haven't bought any clothes since I moved in, except a jacket and a pair of work pants, which I think Joe left at the laundromat, but I want to be able to buy myself clothes when I need it, which I do because I've gained weight and I don't fit in 7 out of 10 of the pants I own. No joke.

I have spent a lot of money on my apartment, on making it an apartment that I can be comfortable and content in. And that has at least worked. There aren't problems that hinder me each and every day which I know could be solved with more money, I've given myself everything I need and pretty much everything I want, as well.

The second huge problem is technology. It has given me more stress than it has ever given me. I've had my own computer for like six years. I actually had my own computer for a few years before that but internet wasn't alive then and it wasn't the same thing. I've never had so many issues. As soon as I moved in here it began.

I bought a wireless thing for my desktop so that I could use the wireless internet of my landlord. My computer hates that thing and often shuts itself down to protect it from the threat. Sometimes when my computer is shut off, it won't restart until I unplug the wireless usb drive.

So my dad bought me a 50 year old laptop. He really shouldn't have done that. I bought an external harddrive because my laptop had like 8 gb of space, which was insane. My laptop was too old, and didn't have enough power to read the external harddrive.

Then my laptop broke down, with my only copy of my book, yesssss... I send it all the way to Utah and my brother merely turns it on and it's okay. The harddrive had some stupid error.

I sort of learned from the laptop incident, so I put everything from my desktop on my external harddrive, so that if my desktop crashed, I would still have everything. Unfortunately, I hate having doubles, because then I don't know what's where, and when I combine things I have to go through everything one by one to make sure I don't delete something I thought I had. It just creates a waste of time and excess, so I like to have only one copy, so I pretty much deleted 98% of all the junk I put on my external harddrive. I thought that it would be the safest thing, not imagining the possible problems that could occur.

On the way down to VA Amelia breaks my wireless internet thing for my laptop. I should be grateful, she only broke the plastic, the thing still works, though it's less protected. Though I wasn't sure it would still work at the time.

I bring the external harddrive down to VA with me. My dad suggests I use a cord to plug it into the wall so that it has extra power and will work with my laptop. I plug a higher voltage than needed, now my external harddrive appears to be fried. Thank God my laptop still worked. I had a copy of my book on my desktop, my external harddrive, a cd and my laptop though, so it would have been alright.

Now I've lost plenty from my external harddrive, though not everything.

Couple days ago I took this past month's worth of editing on my book and put it on my usb drive. I had an earlier copy of my book on my desktop, but I wanted the newer copy on my desktop. That day my laptop starts having issues. Something about software being incorrectly installed and the computer shutting down to avoid issues. It restarts and everything is okay for a few hours or something but then it happens again. Then it restarts but only for a couple minutes and then it shuts down again. Then it won't start up at all. Now it's saying that the harddrive has imminent failure.

I have photos on there that I meant to copy, though none really important, I suppose. Ooh ugh. Thank the lord I didn't delete those photos from my camera, though they were only random pics of my living room, I believe. I kept them on the camera because I didn't trust my laptop. They're not on my desktop. Again, I hate having copies. I never know what's where. So I believe that I also have those newer pics that I'm thinking of on my desktop. And hopefully the others are online.

I could have fucking backed up my external harddrive online. The company I bought it from had a way to do that so that if something happened to the drive, you could log into the website or whatever and have all the stuff you needed. Amazing. I didn't do it, of course. Couldn't be bothered.

If I could have, I still wouldn't have done it because I would have procrastinated too much before it got fried.

I came out of the shower and asked Amelia why she wasn't checking her email. She said that there was a problem with both of my computers. The laptop had this issue I mentioned and my desktop restarted because of updates and wouldn't start back up because of the wireless usb drive that was a "threat". I just sat there between two fucked up computers hating how technology is punishing me and I told Amelia that the awesome thing is that my book was on neither of them, because it was still on the usb.

I'm afraid to put my book anywhere because it seems like wherever I store it, the damn thing breaks. It's like I have five copies of the book and one by one they're being destroyed. External harddrive down, laptop down... three more to go.

At least that's what it feels like.

And it's not just my tv or my dvd player or my radio. I did have an issue with my car, but it was an easy-to-fix issue, by God's grace. The point is, it's my computer. And my computer is so much of my life. A dvd player is generic. A computer stores documents, photos, conversations, emails. It's a huge form of self-expression and storage, memories, business, sentimentality.

Why am I having these things ripped from me? This has never happened before. Why is it now giving me so much stress? Why am I magnetizing this?

A book that you read isn't one of a kind. My computer stores one of a kind moments and memories and thoughts and communication. It stores photos, videos, documents, it's insane.

The thing is, out of everything I have, I have to say that my book is the most important thing in my life right now. Aside from the people I care about and would be more destroyed by losing than my book, there is nothing I care about more. When I lost my photos and my documents I tell myself, as long as I still have my book. When my laptop breaks down, I tell myself I could easily throw it in the dumpster, as long as I have my book.

But because of all this trouble with technology, because of working, because of this chaos in my emotional body, because I feel so not on track, not connected to my spiritual self, I can't finish my book. I can't dedicate myself to it. I sit down to write in it and I have to spend two hours fixing something.

Then of course I spend so much time with Joe. When I have a day off and I tell Joe I can't spend time with him, it always ends up correlating with a day that Amelia has Isis so I take the opportunity and hang out with one of them. Or I babysit Isis at my house. It's either Joe or Isis, or technology is down.

And if it's not that, I watch movies instead, because I'm addicted to losing reality.

Yes, some people have drugs or alcohol or books. I have movies. It comforts me to watch someone else's life go by, instead of be stuck in mine.

I can't Be. I want to stop everything and just Be. All those hours I spent alone in high school, I was learning to Be. I was discovering myself, testing myself, learning how things worked, learning how to make things work. I quit high school and I didn't work and I spent so much time alone in my room, not being social at all - and perhaps it was a waste of time in one sense.

But I was being. I was relaxed. I just had this flow of harmony. This freedom to keep that harmony flowing. I wasn't always happy, I had issues, but they came from the inside. And because I didn't have any obligations anywhere, I could deal with the problems. I sat down and I listened and I learned and I grew.

True, some of the problems I was dealing with for the past three years, I didn't solve until I moved out. But things are ten times more chaotic now than they were before these problems were solved. It's like my solution opened up a can of worms.

Which begs the question, did I really solve the problems?

This interactive lifestyle just doesn't work for me. I have a job, I have a landlord, I have a boyfriend, I shop for myself, I go to the bank, the laundromat, I have coworkers. I still don't really have friends, which is sad. But I still have Amelia and Isis and Joe's family and some of my coworkers are pals - though I don't have any concrete relationship with them.

In any case, I have so much pulling from the world, so much being taken from me. So much of my energy, my time, my effort, my focus, and not enough time to regenerate, rejuvenate, charge. I need time to look inward, to think, to hear my thoughts, to study my thoughts, to test my reactions and push myself to grow. I need time to listen to the messages that I send myself in order to overcome the unhealthy patterns I'm holding onto.

I can't write my book until I can find inner peace. But I don't have enough time.

Between work, Joe, Amelia, Isis, shopping, cleaning, escaping reality (a weekly dosage of movie time), and then organizing my book - which is what I seem to do because I can't focus and center myself enough to write and express myself the way I need to, to write my book... I just don't have the hours it takes to center myself.

I've already put my photography and organizing things aside. I neglect my myspace and surveys and if I had had the time, I would have sorted through all of the photos I own, made them perfectly organized and burned them onto dvds for backup. But I couldn't let myself spend 20 hours on that when I needed to finish my book.

I wanted to start school next semester but the financial aid isn't going through because my parents don't live in NY and I'm apparently not financially independent because of this or that, I don't know. My mom wrote me an email explaining it but I don't quite understand it the way she wrote it. School will take time away, but the financial aid would give me money left over, plus, getting my two-year degree done will possibly help me in career opportunities.

Truth be told, this kind of my unspoken plan. I think that I'm going to move near my parents. I'll probably transfer to a four year college in VA. They live near one though Erin told me it was hard to get into, not that I wouldn't try. I suddenly feel like writing my admissions essay...

I'm still going to do psychology and writing, there are probably alternative psychology career options that would be supported by a psychology degree. I'm not going after a Phd though.

I want to write because that's obviously where I find harmony. Out of all the solutions I can think of, the best one is writing. Writing articles, really. Expressing things to people who want to listen. Ironically, I'm not sure how to explain why it's in writing that I channel my spiritual self, but in this lifetime, that's just the path I've chosen.

Honestly, I want to work for Shangra-La. That's my parent's non-profit organization. They work for it, they get a salary. Shangra-La bought the house they live in, and they're going to build a School of Being. I want to be a teacher there. I think that's why I can express myself through writing.

Because people like to read more than they like to listen. When you write, you don't write for a single person, you write for an audience. And I don't care who it is, I just know that I can say anything I need to say and someone will read it. Or perhaps no one will, it doesn't quite matter. It's that I can direct it to an audience who, in my mind, cares.

I talk to my sister, I talk to my dad, I talk to my boyfriends but I have too much to say and not enough of it they'll listen to. Too much of it they reject. I have so much to share, so much wisdom to impart and so much teaching and healing to do. But I don't have an outlet, other than writing. I could easily speak, I love to talk, I love to express myself out loud. I talk to myself all the time, I repeat speeches in my head directed at imaginary people who will never listen to my entire story, because I love sharing my stories.

That's why if I was a teacher, the people who would come to me would be those willing to be students. And that's what I need. I need students. That's why I write, because you don't need the students to be even in existence. You write for future students, for future readers, for anyone who could possibly need it in the future. If I had to wait for someone to come to me and say - hey, I want to listen, I would never be able to express myself.

But it's not enough to even talk to myself, I have to share it. I was meant to share it. I took embodiment so that I could share it.

I feel so detached from this world. To so many people, this is all there is. To me, I Am so much more. I can't see it or understand it within my mental limitations, but I feel it and I remember it. I live my life with the magnification on - so in other words, I see the details, instead of the big picture. I focus on the moments and the experiences that come along with those moments.

But when I write, when I express myself, I know that everything I express comes from another source. A source that doesn't belong, isn't trapped, in the reality that I see when my life is on magnification.

It isn't as concrete as this world is. I see this world, I hear this world, I experience this world directly and confrontationally. But I know that everything I experience on magnification is just a face for all that's underneath. I know that if I felt that the face was all that was there, I wouldn't have any sense of direction or purpose. I would be aimlessly wandering, tormenting myself and leading myself in useless circles.

Maybe that's what I've stopped doing. I've stopped writing about me. When I write journal entries, I write a lot of things about life and the world and myself that are valuable for my book. But my book is directed at other people. I think that the flow of expression comes from self-expression, not from directing other people.

I stopped writing journal entries and I tried to focus on my book specifically. But I never write about myself in my book, I always try to write about other people and it doesn't make as much sense. It's not such a direct experience as what I detail and understand in my journal entries. I take risks explaining things that aren't before me. It's like detailing a painting that's in another room. So easy to get it wrong. But I'm here and writing about myself and what that means for philosophy, psychology and spirituality as well as reality and the earth and the meaning of life... well, it just simply works.

And that's really the answer. It doesn't matter what I'm magnetizing in my lifestyle, because the only way to solve the issues that are giving me bad outcomes is to meditate on them, listen to yourself. When you're not introspecting, the universe has to mirror to you, so that you can look outward and still see yourself. But that usually doesn't solve problems because we still think that we're seeing an objective reality and we don't realize what it's really reflecting.

The chaos will dissipate. I feel out of control because I'm not connected to my spiritual self and thus, I'm powerless, I can't understand myself in lower states of consciousness and I can't find solutions in lower states of consciousness. When I pull myself away from my higher self, when I stop listening and focus too much on something outside of myself, I can't discover what will help me.

And I can't write about my book if I'm not writing about what I know. I'm not describing the color of my eyes by describing myself. Or if I am, I'm describing the potential color of millions of other people's eyes. You know? There are many, many patterns in humanity. We're not like snowflakes at all. And to understand a quality that you possess, a pattern that you possess, an issue that you possess or a solution, is to understand something that someone else is going through too. Not everybody, but somebody. I need to write about the people who are like me.

I can still conjecture about philosophical issues that I'm not currently directly experiencing, just so long as they connect to my experiences and compliment them. If they're not relevant to my experiences, they're just tangents with no purpose and not convincing enough to apply to someone's life.

My experiences aren't conjecture because experiencing something is all the proof you need, if you trust your experiences or recognize them for what they are.

I need to experience myself instead of experience my mirror image through the world. Cause it's distorted and it doesn't make as much sense.

I have to go night night though. Work in 6 and a half hours.

I'm sick to my stomach with pain and nervousness.

I plugged like a 12 voltage plug into my 3volt external harddrive three weeks ago. I had everything on there. And pretty much none of it anywhere else. I mean, I remembered that all the old, old stuff is still on cds. Like old photos and all of my music. Fuck my music. Why did I do my music first, when I should have fucking done my photos that mean - meant, so much more to me.

I was fucking shopping online for Christmas presents for Joe and Amelia. Shopping for a dragon and a sword statue for Joe, which led me to dragon posters, which led me to horse posters, which led me to the horse panoramics I wanted to buy Amelia. Which led me to recall a panoramic I did of the Hudson one time while I was at the park with Isis. Which led me to remember that this panoramic was lost on my harddrive, as well as those cute pics of Isis, as well as the ones of her in the fucking green dress looking so damn precious...

As well as the ones of her and my panda in the Chinese dress which I was so extremely proud of.

And I just want to stop thinking. I have to fucking stop thinking of all the things I lost. I had blocked it out these past few weeks, not allowing myself to remember what I'd lost. And in a wave it's all coming back to me and it fucking hurts. It's heartbreak. If it had been pics of myself, I would have very much regretted losing them. But I would have been able to let it go because it's all ego. I know this. I know that photos of myself are borderline narcissism and pride. I can't feel regret over losing that.

And now that I think about it, the Isis things are still ego. Because ego cares about the superficial, it cares about the preciousness, the years, the sentimentality, the memories. It cares about the things that are transitory, that are and should be washed away with time. But we've devised ways to capture those transitory things, pause moments in time and store them in a technological hoard.

But it still fucking feels like heartbreak to lose that preciousness of my Isis. It still fucking hurts.

Did I lose all of my school documents too? At least I have printed copies of most of them... Perhaps not the old school documents.

I don't know. I'm afraid to look. I'm afraid to check my cds and realize what I lost. It kills me.

The only thing that makes me feel a smidgon better is that 1 - I did this to myself. Subconsciously, probably for the better, I did this to myself. I was the one who walked right into the mistake. It was so fucking perfect. My dad suggested I find a plug for my external harddrive, I asked my mom if she had plugs, she had the box already out, searching for the fountain's plug. I looked through the box, none of them worked, I found a variant of sizes - just the heads of the plugs. One fit, but I needed to attach it to a cord. I asked Amelia what to do and she gave me the cord for the portable dvd player. I lost the original cord in the move and Amelia bought a new one which allows you to remove the head and plug in a different head. Why they set us up for disaster, I'll never know.

Everything fell into place. I was glad about it at the time, but everything fell into place for disaster, instead of pleasure. Music? I would have been crushed. So much music lost, how could I remember all that I had? But music has replacements. There are copies available. There are no copies of these memories. At least not half of them.

Why didn't I finish the photography so that I could burn it onto DVDs? Why didn't I burn them onto DVDs anyway?

Fuck. I set myself up. I didn't allow myself to care enough to do anything productive to protect what I cherished. And my higher self or whoever seized the opportunity to teach me a lesson about attachment.

Fuck.

Fuck.

I have to push the pain and the nausea of the ego out of my head. These things only matter to it, not to my real self. If they had mattered to my real self, I wouldn't have lost them. I would have had copies or I would have been more cautious. I shouldn't have erased them from my desktop. I took them off and put them on the harddrive because I didn't want to keep them on my desktop in case my desktop crashed. I was learning my lesson from almmost losing my book when my laptop crashed.

I make the mistake of revering what I cherish. And then it's like a virtual throne of memory. A peasant can sit anywhere, so he leaves his mark wherever he sits. The stuff I don't care about can be stored wherever, I don't care. It moves about, I burn it off, I don't pay attention. I end up with a trillion copies. But I treat my favorites like a king and they end up being in only one spot - the throne. I can't have them just anywhere. I don't want them here and there and on cds and on different computers. I just one them in one special spot. One fucking virtual memory throne. And when the throne gets destroyed, so, it seems, does the royalty.


I can let it go. I mean, I live my life ignoring all of these things. I haven't touched them in forever. They meant so much to me, but I can move on, right? I could better move on without the pain of knowing what I'd lost. What I don't know, can't hurt me. Or hurt my ego...

I think I had to be reminded of these because of this Christmas deal. I'm so concentrated on the presents, the objects, the attachment to the objects. I'm searching for things that these people will like, things that mean a lot to them. But I'm encouraging their ego more than anything. Or encouraging my ego, anyway. It's almost like I'm not doing it for the love of these people, I'm doing it for the love of these objects. I'm doing it because I feel that my friends and family should have the joys of special and meaningful objects. But there are only special and meaningful objects to the ego, not the higher self.

Honestly, I got far too wrapped up (that's a pun) in the pursuit of objects, I lost the focus on the affection and love I have for the people that caused me to give them something anyway.

But even though they will love the things I've gotten them, (except my dad, who has never been one for being attached to sentimental things. smart man.) it still doesn't mean as much as I've been pretending it does. These things don't meant that much to their higher selves. They spark pleasurable experiences with the people who possess them, but they're only crutches. All the purest pleasure and bliss and satisfaction can't be given to someone by an object.

I think the best gift I can give them is love. Because it's an energy that heals and thus lightens the load that the soul carries around. And I can't think of a way to effectively do this, but how sad is it, that I'm ready to give up and go back to my superficial copies of the real thing - like I'll focus on less, settle for less, because I don't believe I can achieve more.

I've just realized what I'm going to give everybody (even though I've already done so).

I think I'm going to give them Melissa fortune cookies. Not to tell their fortune, but with a little slip of paper that has advice on the inside. Melissa advice. Healing advice, though they may or may not apply it. But that's my contribution, something that if taken to heart can give much more pleasure and bliss than a cd or clothes. Something that can touch the soul, instead of the ego.

Time keeps flying by. I don't know where it's going. I'm in a daze. It seems like yesterday it was the beginning of December, now it's a week from Christmas.

It was a week ago that I said I'd break up with Joe. But I didn't. I planned to until the moment I sat him down and decided to do something different. I think that not 100% of our relationship was a lie for me.

The thing is, when I thought, should I go out with him? One of the things that told me Not to, was his lack of expression and his simpleness. So when I began dating him I pretended that both of those didn't bother me or didn't exist, so that I could justify dating him and loving him to myself.

That was the lie. But I think that it's also the very reason I spiritually wanted to date him. In other words, I wanted to address his lack of communication, his lack of expression on a spiritual level. But in order to make a superficial relationship with him, I ignored what I didn't like, and consequently, ignored what I shouldn't like in order to enlighten him.

It's not that I can't love him because he's flawed. And he's not flawed the way I saw him to be in the beginning. I see now that who he is underneath the exterior has created a facade of simplicity in order to keep his expression suppressed and rejected.

It was my fault for lying to myself and to him the exact way that he was lying to himself. I was keeping up the charade because I wanted to avoid the awkwardness of addressing his faults. But they're not defects that are beyond his control, they're subconscious choices that express his self-understanding or lack thereof.

I kept telling myself at the beginning, does he deserve love less because he's simple? I was accepting his simplicity and then telling myself that I owed it to him to love him. I needed to step back and realize that I owe it to him to find what's underneath, what I love of underneath, what I love of what he rejected.

I didn't owe his facade anything. Maybe that's what it had in common with 7th grade, when I gained weight the last time. I was dedicated to the superficial facade. I saw it in others, I saw it in myself, I saw it in our relationships. I didn't apply a perception of anything underneath to my reality.


I don't know how it specifically correlates to my weight. Maybe it's symbolic for another layer. It was said to be protection. I always assumed that it was protection for what was underneath the skin from reality. But perhaps it was opposite. Perhaps, since I was sitting on the surface, it was another layer, a distance between my conscious self and what's underneath my own skin. Perhaps I feared myself. That was probably the biggest battle I had to face in 7th grade, I had so much clashing with my subconscious - ironically partly brought to my attention because I didn't want the weight and I had it. But also because I was clashing with my mom that year and my mom represented my conscience, which I was ignoring.

I like to say that this was my only giving in to peer pressure, when I started swearing. But it was also an attitude of no morals. It came with rap music and the boys, with the superficial things I tried to utilize to fit in with the crowd.

Maybe it was a two-way protection. It was a protection of my subconscious from the world I was participating in, but because I sat on the surface, it was a form of denial for me, a way to utilize the distance between the surface and the subconscious underneath.

Either way, I know that Joe is a good person. He definitely needs to connect to his fire, his energy, his power. It's his move to make, but he needs an enlightening push in the right direction. And whether he takes that step or not is not my concern. I'm willing and able to compassionately care for him and help him.

I let him know, when I talked to him, that I had intended to break up with him and that things needed to change or I would have to break up with him again. I think I need to teach him, not shield him. I need to enlighten him, not make decisions for him. And I need to encourage strength, not adhere to his weaknesses.

I wasn't standing up for what I believe at all thus far in the relationship. I think that his spiritual self wants from him what I want from him. He wants it of himself. But he needs to consciously make the steps towards unifying his will with his spiritual self's power. He needs to stop letting his ego and this superficial facade have their way.

I NEEDED to stop letting his ego and superficial facade have their way.

And that may have been the key from 7th grade. Ego. I sat on the surface in the ego's chair, directed by the ego, entertained by the ego. Bonding with other people's ego's. Seeking no more than what the ego dictated.

My ego wasn't necessarily involved this time, but I was being directed by his ego, I was letting his ego build our relationship, and I was sitting back in the recessive position, instead of standing up to his ego.

Joe isn't like Mike. His ego isn't blaringly obvious. I fought Mike's ego, I stood up to his ego. But Joe's was so much more subtle. I'm not even used to identifying others' egos. Like it's not my place to determine the true self and the false self of somebody else. But it is an interesting query. What self are you communicating with? What self are you bonding with? What self do you make a life with? We don't seem to pay attention because all we care about is the finished result. But the finished result comes from a place of truth or a place of illusion depending on the context.

I don't know. Maybe that's why I left Dan behind. I tried so hard to connect with his real self, but when all was said and done, all he was willing to give back to me was his ego, and after a time, I got a little sick of it.

I know I have power. I know I've been in touch with my real self. But living on my own has proved to be harder than I wanted it to be. I feel powerless and scared. Maybe when you live with your parents, they make most of the life decisions for you. They choose what state you live in, what house you live in, what lifestyle you have, what food you eat, what school you go to, etc.

I know now that I'm out of their house that all the life decisions will be a reflection of my mind. And I'm afraid. I think I'm afraid that I don't deserve to have a life that reflects my spiritual self. I feel like I'm doomed to live a life that reflects my subconscious.

Maybe that's partly what I wanted. I wanted to experience exactly what I don't want to experience so that I could teach from the inside out. I don't want to be an enlightened teacher who looks down on his pupils and says - you're there, but I want you to come here.

I want to be there with my students and walk forward together. Not that many teachers don't also do this. I'm just afraid that "there with my students" will be somewhere unpleasant.

I feel powerless to draw to me a life in which I'll be secure and satisfied. Perhaps if I was, I wouldn't seek more. That's my curse, that I seek more. And so when I draw to myself situations that reflect a lower state of mind, I'm always willing to look for more in the situation, grow out of old nonsense. :/

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....

I think I may have to break up with Joe. It scares me to say it.

I've been gaining weight. It's hard to see a difference but my pants are soo not fitting me. All the ones that were too big before are skin tight and all the ones that are skin tight sadly cannot be worn at all. :(

So I asked my mom and she didn't give me a direct answer but as we talked about it we discovered that it was linked with Joe's attachment to me. My mom used the word possessiveness, but it's not that Joe is controlling. It's that he's manipulating because of his attachment. I feel like I owe him something because he loves me so much.

He's great. He's very nearly perfect for me. Or, perhaps it's that all the superficial aspects of a relationship that I thought I always wanted I've now gotten and it's still not enough. Perhaps I need to transcend my illusions of what a relationship is supposed to give me and find something more.

I told my mom that he was like a lost puppy. The kind of puppy that whimpers and whines when you want it to sleep alone in the laundry room. It wants to be in your bed and it won't take no for an answer. Joe needs so much taking care of. And I did it so willingly, without considering that I might be uncomfortable about it. And maybe that's why the weight had to come in. In other words, I needed a symptom, to draw my attention to the fact that something was wrong.

All of this comes down to the fact that during the first week we were dating, when I finally said yes to Joe, he sensed that I didn't want to be dating him so he asked me why we were dating. I asked him why he wanted to date me or something of the sort and he said, because I love you. And I said, that's why we're dating.

I went out with him because he loved me. Not because I loved him. From day one, I let myself walk into a lie. And it is a lie. Because everything I do in our relationship I do for him. I've lost myself. Because he's such a needy person, I've sacrificed my needs for his. And now I feel guilty giving myself what I need since it most often requires that I take from what he needs.

He has an unbalanced, attached love for me. And I'm really not doing him any favors by egging it on.

It's not that the relationship is or has been a waste. But I always said to myself that Joe was just a step, that I wanted more. And I never felt that passion for him.

I asked myself what a healthy relationship felt like without the highs and lows. Perhaps it's unhealthy to ask for a euphoria or even a passion. But I know that it gives you a sense of contentment, of satisfaction.

It's not that I desire more from a relationship than Joe can give me, per se. His only problem is he's spiritually unaware and I want someone who I can communicate with my ideas and perceptions - though I do tell him sometimes, but it's all foreign to him. In any case, I feel like it's more that the life I wanted isn't the life I have now.

Joe is not to be blamed. I got a job at Starbucks, I moved into this apartment, I started dating Joe, I built a life for myself that did Not suit my needs or wants. But my life really consists of going to work and coming home to Joe. He's over here so often. And it's not a simple matter to get rid of him. Because he doesn't have a license, I've taken to bringing him home with me after work, so that I don't have to drive all the way to his house. And it's easier for him to sleepover and go to work with me the next day. So you see he's always with me. And I know that if I want him to leave, I have to take an hour out of my day by driving him all the way home.

Again, I'm pushing aside my needs because of his weaknesses. I have to take care of him. I can't just stay at my house while he leaves for work or his friends or his home. I fucking long for the day when I can have a boyfriend who can come to my house and leave my house independent of my car and me driving.

I almost took him to the five hour course this morning but even though we woke up at 8, we fell back asleep once we took off the alarm and we didn't wake up until 9:10, even though it starts at 9. I longed for it. For not only a step towards his independence but for a morning to myself, on my day off. A morning where I could get things done and work on my book.

I think that I've gotten into such a habit of becoming his slave that I can't do anything for myself. I feel so damn lazy when he's around. I can't do anything. And it's almost like I've stopped doing what I need so much so that when he's around, all I can do is sit and wait for him to need something or for the time to go by until I have to go to work.

Work necessity and Joe necessity. Living my life by someone else's clock and someone else's purpose.

But of course, whenever Joe asks me for something I cringe inside. I get so angry, most likely angry at the reminder that I'm little more than his slave.

Don't get me wrong. Joe has not treated me like I'm his slave. But he's allowed me to become his dependence. He's attached to me and he depends on me for things in his life.

And God, I've been so mean the past few days. I've treated him like such a child for the two months we've been dating. I've coaxed him, guided him, protected him, served him, supported him. I'm more open and honest with Isis. Because Joe is an adult, who is not acting like one, he can fully understand all that he uses to hurt himself. Everything that offends him that I can't say. I can say it all to Isis and she won't know. Isis is much stronger than him, even as a child. Plus, her cries guilt me less.

I should keep that in mind. When Joe gets hurt I suppose he uses much more manipulating techniques than Isis's simple cries.

So when I found out the issue, I had to go pick him up from work and I talked to him about the issue in the car. I wanted to say the truth and then hug him because I knew it would hurt him. But I knew I couldn't hug him. I knew that I had to, simply put, stop taking care of him. I always hug his head and pet his hair in this comforting way - but that has to stop.

I wouldn't have even hung out with him the next day but I promised Amelia that we'd come over to play cards since her boyfriend would be done from nyc. I took the opportunity because I love playing cards with a group, and it never happens. I've only played Shanghai Rummy twice since Mike and I broke up three years ago. Believe me, I had to take the opportunity to play it.

But I had just come from work and there are always issues there. Issues of conditions and backstabbing. With people at work, I always have to do everything right or they freak out. The entire environment is extremely controlling. I can't do the things I want to do on the days I want to do them because work tells me to jump and I ask how high. The work place dictates what clothes I should wear, what jewelry I shouldn't wear and how my hair is. None of which please me. So I'm wearing something I don't like for 40 hours.

I like to say that I'm not dressing up for a funeral, I'm just going to work. Ironically, because I've gained weight, my work clothes are more or less the only pants that fit me. That's why I didn't notice I was gaining weight because I never wear my other clothes anyway. I knew they were fitting more snugly but that was partly because I use a dryer at the laundromat and it shrinks my clothes a little.

Or maybe I'm imagining it all and it's all my weight.

The people there are always complaining about when and where I eat. What I say. When I use my cellphone. Essentially every little thing I do.

And I've found that when I'm not working, they complain. But when I am working, they complain that I'm taking too long and I should be doing something else. The people on register love to do nothing, but when you have to greet the customers, you're rooted to the spot. I like to always be active, doing stuff, working. I worked for like an hour and a half solidly. I didn't sit down. I didn't even have my cellphone there at work with me. I didn't go to the bathroom or eat. I didn't talk to anyone there at work cause Joe was at home and all the people I didn't like were working.

I was working solidly, and all they could bitch about was how long it took me. And hey, as far as I'm concerned, the work I was doing needed to be done if not today than tomorrow or the next day. It's not that it needed to be done immediately, but it was work. So why should I get bitched at? They only wanted me around so that I could take their place while they did nothing. And they really only complained about me because they refuse to say a positive thing about anybody. All they can ever do is suck the life out of a situation by bitching about everything wrong that they can possibly imagine.

It's not the managers though. If the manager doesn't like me, they take joy in rubbing it in my face. But if the manager does like me, they take pleasure in telling me that that manager is a complete bitch, so nothing they say about me has any relevance.

I really despise Ashley. She's really the core of all this. Everybody else has simmered, but she cant keep her nose out of other people's business. She's always trying to be your friend and then stab you in the back. I liked her at first, I honestly thought she was a good person. I didn't think Brittany was a good person and now I'm reevaluating my thoughts. Everything Ashley does just seems infected with evil intent.

I actually admire Brittany's qualities in comparison.

Ashley has just been making me sick. In every bad situation at work these days, she's involved. For instance, I think it's her fault that Bryan told on me. Someone told my manager that Joe and I have been making out in front of customers. Which is untrue. I did lick caramel off of Joe's ear in front of Ashley. It was out front, but not while any customers were around to see. I try not to even hug Joe in front of customers.

That makes me mad at Ashley because she gossips so maliciously. Bryan because I haven't worked with him for almost an entire month, never when Joe was at work, and even if Joe was, up until the past week, Joe wouldn't ever come visit me in Starbucks. Not sure why. I always come visit him at Famiglias. In any case, Bryan still thinks its his business to talk about what I do, when he's not even there. And he was probably the one to tell Pete about it, even though it is grossly exaggerated. How dare he get me into trouble for something HE HASN'T EVEN SEEN ME DO.

But also mad at Joe, because I always push him away when he's about to kiss me because I don't want to get in to trouble. But he hates people telling him he can't kiss me so he does it in front of them just to spite them, so he forces me to kiss him and I'm not saying I'm the weaker sex, only that I give in to what he wants because HE'S the weaker sex. And I'm tired of his begging nature. I'm tired of him violating my needs.

But my point in sharing this is that I'd had some trouble with Ashley right before I went to play cards. She got offended - because she always has an excuse to become offended. And then right before I left she said that we didn't need to have a beef, as long as I never said what I said to her again. I walked right out. I didn't say a word. How dare she put conditions one what I say. As if I care so much about her half-ass backstabbing not even a friendship friendship, as if I care about her opinion on me so much that I would suck up to her needs and wishes just to earn it. I'm going to say what I feel and do what I want regardless of the effect it has on her. I don't trust her and I'm not going to go out of my way to earn a trust that I don't trust.

It initially started because I did ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to her and she freaked out on me and called me a bitch like 17 times. Now I know that I can be kind and open with her and she'll still find an excuse to punish me.

But I left with like four drinks, stealing, according to the company, though we all give out free drinks. And everybody saw me do it cause I put it in a bag. I'm afraid that they'll talk. You tell one person something there and they tell EVERYBODY. And I understand first hand because I do it to. We feel that everybody there should know everybody's business. Like it's a right we have from working there. And it just seems so natural to spread the news, without thinking of the consequences and the feelings. Some people don't want other people to know their business and sometimes it gets people into trouble, not to mention circulates false information to a degree.

Like Michelle told me that she used to cut herself and when Ron and David were making jokes it hurt her. I told Ron because I trusted him, I didn't tell David. I wanted them both to know so that they wouldn't say things around her again. But Ron seriously told everybody. Even Bryan now knows. You'd think they would keep these things from Bryan because he's just a horrible person and doesn't deserve to even have the gossip. But there are no bounds. I like Ron, but now every time someone mentions it, I feel bad. Michelle didn't want to be laughed at. And I didn't say it so that they could all know and laugh. Just so that they could keep from laughing about it to her face. Which I ended up getting, since now they probably don't mention it in front of her. But now instead of making "I cut myself" jokes in general, they make "I, Michelle, cut myself" jokes. So if they ever talk about cutting, they link it with Michelle.

Gossip is 30 times worse than in high school because it's such a closed network. There are much less people than in high school and most of the people know each other. Half of them are good friends with someone there and a few of them are dating someone there or related to someone there.

In any case, I just had all these pressures and emotions coursing through me and I didn't want any conditions put on me. I was tired of Joe's pressure, I was tired of work's pressure and frankly, I was tired of Amelia's pressure.

I've been so stressed lately in this imbalanced life. I've had problems with my car, being sick, I friend my external harddrive, my laptop broke down, etc etc. I get a chance to go to my parents house the two days after Thanksgiving. I know that this is my opportunity to set things in motion. I'm so stranded up here with no one but Joe and work, and I knew that this was my opening into the network of spiritual people who I can connect with the way I've finally realized I'm meant to.

And Amelia kept hasseling me to leave at like 5pm on Sat, a day and a half after we got there. It's not that she wanted to cut the trip half way short or anything. We meant to leave in about six more hours. But six hours is a lot. I knew that we would be sitting around talking, I still had important things to discuss with my mom, and I wanted to hear Erin's discussion. All Amelia could do was think about herself and her own needs. I told her we could get a full nights sleep and go in the morning but then Isis would be up and she didn't want that because it stresses her out.

For the past year Amelia has always had stress. Every fucking moment. First she was married to Anthony, then she was pregnant, then she had a newborn, then she was divorcing Anthony, then she had college, then she was trying to be a single mom. And she treated me horribly for so long and blamed it on all those stress factors she had. And every time I would try to stand up for myself and try to push her to work through her problems so that she wouldn't make me the scapegoat, my mom would tell me to back off because Amelia was too stressed out about her other important worries to worry about me. So she just continued to treat me like shit and I let her.

And now, for once in my life, I have a stress. And all I asked of Amelia was that she give me a few more hours at my parents house. She says, you can always come back. NO I CAN'T. I can't drive down there because my car is too old to make it. I can't fly down there, that's too expensive. I can't stay down there for more than two days because I have to rush back to come to Starbucks. She didn't understand how stressful and complicated it was to put this opportunity into place, and how much I needed to work through in the short amount of time that I had.

And I've simply come to realize that I'm tired of my sister justifying her bad behavior towards me. I'm tired of accepting that even a part of her motivation is my fault. I'm tired of trying to be pleasant, of giving myself her conditions so that I can please her. If she wants to hate me, she's going to find an excuse, just like everybody at work.

I don't remember any of the details between Amelia and I. I don't remember any of the things she said, but I know that I was being extremely blunt and course. I was not buttering anybody up or catering to their weaknesses. I was just being selfish and egotistical and cruel. It's not that I wanted to hurt anybody, it's that I wanted to be myself without any restraints. And I felt terrible about the way I did it. I need to obviously find a balance.

But it was liberating because as I rubbed people the wrong way, they started to react to it, and I didn't care. I just kept getting worse. Instead of their feelings scaring me into behaving, or making me feel bad about myself, I just kept acting brutish and terrible, thinking, well, I can't do everything you want even when I'm perfect, so why should I even try a little bit?

It's almost like, I was justifying the way they felt about me. They treat me like I act all the time the way I acted last night. Seriously. And they probably didn't learn their lesson. But I needed to experiment, find a medium, find a balance. I need to be myself unrestrained, but I need to not care that they hate me for it. It was like, I acted horrible and immediately they started guilting me into feeling bad about it and I just said, fuck you. And acted even worse.

I don't want to be a horrible person, but I need to have the strength and the love for myself in order to stand my ground no matter what they think. I can't give into their conditions and my fear of meeting their obligations.

This is what I've been doing since I moved in. Trying to fit into everyone's conditions. My landlords' conditions. My bosses' conditions. My coworkers' conditions. My friends' conditions. And my boyfriend's conditions.

Everyone's conditions but my own.

It's interesting. Because prior to moving out, I had none of these. I dropped out of high school, I stopped being friends with most of my friends, I didn't have a boyfriend for two years, I didn't have a job, and I lived with my parents and my sister but they already thought me selfish and egotistical and never expected me to be otherwise, so I could mostly do what I wanted.

I lived my solitary, semi-independent life in peace. Not that everything was perfect. I fought with my mom over my independence. I couldn't make as many choices as I wanted to or express myself in as many ways because of the financial independence to my parents and living in their house. And I was having issues with picking guys who didn't acknowledge my worth like Dan, John and James.

I needed to move out, work on my social issues, work on my independence, face my fears. But I guess I've been too recessive. I've let them control me too much. I always had so much spunk and resistance to control, but it seems like that makes me and enemy and when I try to be a friend, when I try to cohabit or cooperate, I put too many conditions on my self-expression, so I become a mat that gets trampled on.

I'm a controversial person. I need to accept that. But I was always so guilty for being a controversial person because people - especially my parents - told me that I was a BAD person for being controversial. I was never a bad person. I used bad tools to express myself because I was unhealthy and I didn't know how to stabilize my emotions and my sense of being. I know how to do that know to a larger extent, but this doesn't meant that I'm going to get along with any more people than I did before.

I need to accept that I'm going to have to be and express myself regardless of controversy. I can't create it and expect it, because this is focusing on the negative. I want to hope for the connections I'll make by being open and honest with people. I want to focus on the people who I will be able to love and care for.

Rob and David were telling me how I was so extremely prickly when I first started working at Starbucks. (no wonder, with the way they treat me) - which is something to add. People always feel that I give them such uncalled for behavior, that I give them such an attitude and they're so undeserving. They don't realize how each one of them has at one point or another done the very same thing to me. Each one has treated me with an uncalled for attitude. And whether it matters or not, it's a which came first the chicken or the egg situation - was I being prickly because they gave me an attitude or did they give me an attitude because I was being prickly....

In any case, I've worked on my pricklyness so much that it almost amuses me how little they would have gotten along with me back in the day. It would have been a disaster! And I tried so hard to be pleasant and smiley and warm and friendly, to a large degree I think I succeeded. I don't think that I was being especially prickly to them, I think that they are all very sensitive and very quick to be offended or angry. David told me that he's just a big teddy bear - unless you make him mad. And I said that it was very easy TO make him mad, thus, it was a difficult job for anyone to get along with him, since so much stimulates his bad side, so unexpectedly.

But I said frankly to Ron and David that I don't remember treating them the way they said I acted and that they had to realize it was not like that on the inside. It did not feel that I was being prickly to them. Part of it is that I couldn't self-reflect to that degree, part of it is that they projected a lot of my behavior. But this is something all people should realize, it does NOT always feel on the inside the way it sounds or looks on the outside. If I were to experience things the way another does, I may not act that way. If I could perceive myself the way another would, I would probably not condone my own behavior.

People are so quick to blame, as am I to everyone else because we assume that people are consciously doing everything that they're doing. But they're not always consciously aware of what they're doing and how it seems. They're so focused on their own issues and what resolutions they find within their behavior - in other words, what they feel acting the way they do gains them - that they don't fully realize the consequences of their actions for other people.

And in a healthy community, people would be able to simply express and explain these things to each other. Someone would have been able to tell me that I sounded really prickly. But we have such a disunity, such an enemy mindset, that we feel if anybody says anything critical about us it's for the sole purpose of destroying us and thus we have to have a resistance to it. And that's because many people do criticize not to aid another's growth but to simply put them down and make them believe that they're wrong for being who they are and acting the way they do.

People don't like their flaws, they ridicule their flaws. Thus, they ridicule others' flaws. Thus, when others point out their flaws, they automatically assume that the other people are trying to ridicule their own flaws. And since the other people ridicule THEIR own flaws, its likely that they are indeed trying to ridicule yours, and its a never-ending cycle of disharmony and disunity. We're not on the same side.

I always use that expression because it fits the way I've felt in the past so much. There's this sense of war - my side against your side. I can't trust anything you do or say because you're trying to destroy me to the benefit of your side. That's war. And we can pretend that we're friends and we trust each other but for me, whenever someone would spark that fear that I was in a war, everything would be set off, my soldier mentality and my wall of protection, my "us" against "them" objection.

It's exactly like when people get flashbacks of war and their innocent wife taps them on the shoulder and they turn around and start strangling their wife because they feel that they're in war again and it's a kill or be killed reality. We get so blinded by our fear of being the one killed that we'll do anything to protect ourselves - first and foremost, by attacking the other side.

Anyway, I have to get back to my work before my day off is over and I have to go back to work and go back to Joe. Meh.

It's hard, confronting three years worth of emotions by reading over my journal entries for my book. Sometimes I read passages from all three years in one night, because I skip around instead of work through it consecutively.

There's something oddly bittersweet about AFTER the break up with Mike. Oh man, but if I were to try to explain WHAT it is, I could only go wrong, because there are just so many conflicting emotions, depending on when I read and what I read.

I'm beginning to see the relationship with Mike in a semi-new light. I loved myself while I was with him, in a way that I had never before loved myself. And it was amazing. But that was the extent of it. He didn't love me enough and he didn't treat me well at all, I'm surprised at how badly he treated me.

I handled him so well. I had to bring out a compassionate maturity that I had never had before. I accepted him and coaxed him and nurtured him in such a beautiful way.

Pretty much until Isis was born, everything I did was infused with the break up. Everything about my life revolved around the break up. Everything I did was either directly about the break up, a trivial distraction from the break up, or in epic struggle against the break up's hold over me.

And that's something I never realized. Isis gave me something. Amelia did, as well. But still at that point, I was struggling to be happy without Mike, so even though I was developing a new relationship with Amelia and a new part of myself through my philosophical inquiries, it was really Isis and then Dan who brought out an actual novel life, that had absolutely nothing to do with the break up.

But, even though the things I held onto after the break up were mostly superficial and image-oriented, I kind of miss them. I miss the highs in contrast with the lows. Or maybe I'm entirely wrong about this and there's something underlying that I miss about that time. I miss the epic battle inside myself. I was pushing and pulling myself. Pushing to overcome all the pulling I was making happen in my emotional body with feelings for Mike.

I held onto all these crazy little things, all these distractions. My writing is funny and random because I was bitter over the break up and desperate to find any connection to reality. You know? Like I didn't have any substance, any roots with reality because my reality had been Mike. I didn't know what I had after he was gone. So I just grabbed at anything random and silly to pretend like I was involved in reality, when I really wasn't.

I was opening up a lot of philosophical theories that changed my outlook on reality, but I couldn't really talk to anyone but Amelia about them. It's a lot easier for me now. I'm comfortable. Letting go of Mike was like letting go of that superficial teenage life I had and never want to have again. That's what dropping out of high school was. Letting go of the meaningless life that I was following to go with the crowd.

Maybe this is all about my ego. Maybe my ego is nostalgic for the effort. I was trying so desperately to create an image that functioned away from Mike. Something I could be satisfied with. Music, designs, icons, wit. Simple things that felt good for me. I don't regret it. In retrospect, they were meaningless things. I used them appropriately and let them go when I was ready to develop something more important.

But there's still that strange bittersweet feeling.

Tom. What is it? He's going to the military and he invited me to his going away party, though I couldn't come. And I just remembered it was on Sat and it hit me so hard. Tom wanted to date me for so long and I rejected it all. I feel like I gave him nothing and it saddens me so much. There's something weird in connection to the bittersweet breakup and Tom.

I can't put my finger on it. Even if I could, I'd probably still have it wrong. There's probably something very underlying that I'm reading about the situation. Something that affects me in some manner I can't really be sure of.

Something empty. I guess, like I didn't do enough with Tom. Like I feel I didn't take advantage of his presence in my life. He tried so hard to be close to me. I took full advantage of Green Day and snowboarding but not Tom. And now the time has passed and Tom is gone. And I feel so unfulfilled. So empty when I think about him. There's something missing. I feel like I should have done more. It's really upsetting me. It's such a strange feeling.

I think that I felt so awful in general, that such small, sweet, simple, superficial things gave me such an extraordinary, healing high. It soothed me and nurtured me so much. I took it where I could get it. I don't have a hard time facing reality anymore, so I don't need these sweet simple highs and yet, I'm not truly fulfilling my passions so I'm not completely satisfied - so I'm kind of humming at a low frequency. If that makes sense.

It's sad to say this but I'm not fulfilling myself with Starbucks and Joe. It's not a bad relationship and I relish the comfort sometimes. He gives me things I've wished for so, so, so, so much since I broke up with Mike. Things I thought even Mike gave me, but he really didn't. And now Joe gives me these things that I asked for. It's a healthy relationship. But there's something missing. I just don't know that it's realistic to expect that in the future I'll be in a relationship with someone who can fulfill that missing aspect.

I feel so emotionally out of place and empty right now. It hasn't previously hit me this hard, reading over my entries. I have to say that it started when I read a message I wrote to Mike's mom a month after the final breakup. I don't know what it was. I didn't read the whole message, saved it for later, but it was such a different perspective than what I remember. A different side of the break up. The break up grew into this shadow of anxiety that just haunted me for months and months after. The proclamation - whatever it was, that I made to his mom, and her words back were just so touching in a way that I don't fully understand.

Maybe I'm just so used to remembering spite and anger and fighting. I didn't love myself after the break up and I struggled so hard to deal with it. I fought so hard, I resented so much, I feared so much. It was ugly. But it wasn't like that just a month after the break up. It developed into that, it developed into this obsession that drove me crazy.

I think that the final letter to his mom was almost like me putting closure on, this is hard to explain.... the way I felt for myself through Mike, was still reminiscent through his mom. I lost it with Mike and it haunted me. It haunted me to be reminded of it every day, all day long.

I don't know why I care though. I don't know why I find it beautiful and touching that I loved myself when I wrote to his mom. Because I love myself more than I ever did while dating Mike right now, don't I? Maybe I miss the challenge, the compassion that I had while dealing with Mike. Maybe a compassion that I had for myself. Even though, judging from my journal entries, I didn't really feel that compassionate for myself at the time.

Maybe it's that twin flame thing. That's so weird.

Ugh. I am just crying really hard right now and these emotions are so foreign to me. Maybe I'm just feeling things I've never let myself feel. Like the underside of a snail. That's why I said that I dealt with so many hard, aggressive, angry feelings after the break up. And this just feels so tender. Not comforting, just tender, raw.

Did I have something like that with Mike? Something so vulnerable and naive. And I hated myself for it afterwards so I developed something so sour and bitter. And I've carried it with me. It's not that I act sour and bitter, per se. It's just a shadow that hangs over my reactions, and my ability to be myself. I protect myself a lot more. Because Mike hurt me, betrayed me with our break up. I shared something with him. Something tender.

I feel comfortable with Joe. There's no doubt about it. I feel more secure and confident and comfortable with him. I definitely love myself more and I accept myself more. But there's still something stiff and hard about my relationship with him. Not an obvious thing, but a subtle nuance that I didn't have ANY CLUE of until now, until reading that letter.

I felt so foolish for trusting Mike so explicitly. I hated myself for trusting him. I hated that. I was always so trusting. It's like, these days, I have so much confidence that I don't actually fear and regret and hate as much as I used to. Because I know I can hold my own in any situation I get into. But I still haven't let go of that wall of protection. I still haven't allowed myself to breathe so naturally. To trust so fully.

I can tell that I need to release something cause my nose is stuffing itself up and as I talk it's clearing up again. I wasn't ready to trust so openly. I was too vulnerable because I didn't know how to love myself and thus, protect myself the true way. In love, there is no pain and there is no aggression or destruction. You can't bruise or break if you love yourself. It's the capability to be invulnerable.

I couldn't open myself up raw to the world and be okay. I got wounded from the things I experienced. I could deal with Mike all over again and not be wounded this time. Because I've grown stronger. But now I need to let go of that wall of protection. I need to surrender the fear that I may some day become hurt again. I need to have faith in the progress I've made.

I don't quite know how to do that right now. But now that I've identified the problem, I can just let nature take its course. We're naturally self-healing, if we only allow ourselves to do so. So I've just got to allow myself to do so. Stop holding onto any reasoning that tells me I need a firm wall of protection.

I haven't sneezed but my nose is running, so that means I'm releasing something.

Gosh, it took a long time for me to figure it all out. Lucky I have patience. Though I'm not entirely sure how Tom fits into that. Maybe because he was someone I could trust and I was too scared to recognize it. I don't know.

I have to work really hard to read through all my old journal entries this next week. I'm going down to Virginia to visit my parents the day after Thanksgiving and I want to have the reading portion done, if not the organizing part before I go.

I'm also going to start a website. I wrote an article for my parents website and they've had it for nearly 2 months but haven't bothered to read it even though it'll only take ten minutes. and I think they were meant to not read it, that's why they didn't feel the impulse to find the time - just the opposite. Because if they had, they would have put it on their website and I would have been satisfied with that. But now that they haven't, I still need my words to get out there, I need someone to listen and communicate with, someone to hear what I have to say, many someones. So making my own website will be a good start.

Though I'm scared. And that's one of the reasons why I wanted to go through my parents, because they would actually be the ones receiving the messages from people and I could almost anonymously post my work, and not directly connect with people. So I have to face my fear by directly reaching out to people who can communicate with me and connect with me on this level.

I should mention that I was already recommended to make my own website a few months ago, but I rejected the suggestion. I think I'll talk to my dad while I'm down there and try setting it up.