"there's no solution but to love and to be loved."

I find myself shocked at how quickly my self has returned. Before I really wasn't a self, I was just a person, boinging around from thing to thing, person to person, and constantly avoiding any time with my self, my identity, the person inside me that comes out, exudes from me. I found her in that year or so of being on my own. I found out what kind of music I like (male singers that lament, women singers who sing in french). I experimented with all sorts of things I had been too decided about before, food, booze, school, men. I ate deluxe sushi, I drank shots in bars, I went back to school, I was dating an array of men nicknamed "the bench" (coined by my friend Kathleen to describe the number and type of men it takes to keep a woman stimulated emotionally and well, you know).

Before I found my self, I used to hate so many things. Many more than I do now. I was such a fucking pissed off bitch. But being so mad didn't make me happy, it just made it easier to explain why I wasn't doing what I wanted to do. I get it now that I really wanted to do right by my mother, be a good person, do some writing, and live a good life. I didn't know that for a long time. Not that I'm grown up, I do.

I spent time alone for the first time in twenty four years. It was the best thing for me to do for my self, but I had to give up what was probably the best relationship I ever had. I was slowly dying inside anyway so it was eventually going to go terribly badly. And now that we both know our selves, it turns out we don't have much in common after all (just the desire to have babies named after authors).

And now here I am, at the end of another relationship, except this time I don't have the excuse that I didn't know who I was, I just let the amazing girl that I had become fade away. Every missed joke, glance, conversation, point, story, piece of writing, performance, etc, made a chunk of that happy self disappear. And I let her go. I figured she wasn't getting the job done, he wasn't any more in love with me when I was happy, he just felt put upon or he just wasn't interested.

My therapist says I made it the unscalable mountain. I made it impossible for him to love me. So the solution is to be apart. to find our selves again. to be happy. to be alone. not love, like bright eyes sings so sincerely that it pierces everything and sends goosebumps up along my arms, not being loved, but being alone. I don't get that. That doesn't ring with any truth for me.

But the truth is, it's working. the more I am away from him, the more I find my self, that happy amazing girl coming back. sometimes I am her and she is me and it feels less like something I want to be and just being myself.

I started knitting again. I've been reading a book a week since graduation. I've returned to the dark hair color that so defined that year of becoming stine. I've been listening to the music I love. I've been working at the coffeeshop. I've been hanging out with so many many friends who I've lost along the way of these last two unhappy years. I'm trying to take care of myself, trying to love myself, but it's hard. I'm so used to giving myself away, loving people with all the things I can do for them, with my eyes, with my words, with my time. That makes sense to me, but it's impossible to be there for everyone. Ultimately someone feels left out, there's someone I desperately need to call, and I feel stretched to capacity with no time for myself.

I was afraid that the angry woman I had become with him was the woman I really am, and that other girl, the one I found when I was alone, wasn't really there, that she was made up with the best of my intentions and I had lost her to my deep and profound unhappiness. To my surprise, she's still here.