So how did that make you feeeeeeeel?

For better or for worse, being a therapist means that you are pretty hyper-aware of your feelings. Maybe not exactly in the moment, I mean, sometimes you just know you are really uncomfortable and you can't figure out what's going on, but with a little bit of processing and perspective I can usually come up with a name for mine (managing them, of course, is a totally different thing), and can tell the difference between them.

So for now, I just continue to be amazed at how I can feel so many of them over the course of each (and every) 24-hour period.

There are the big ones, yes, the basic rhymers -- mad, sad, glad. Then there are all the other ones, trailing along like toilet paper on your shoe... Mad and self-righteous feel good for a little while (hey, that jerk), but are quickly countered with defensiveness (but, really, he's not a jerk, and I wouldn't have dated a jerk anyway). Compassion skips out onto the playground (I know this sucks for him too) but is quickly tripped and has its lunch money stolen by confusion (it's complicated to find yourself empathizing with the person who broke your heart). Then sheer loneliness and missing someone pops up in the stew (as I seem to be out of practice being alone with my thoughts), but on occasion I can season it with relief (cost of a round trip across town in a fuel-efficient gas powered vehicle: $5.23. Wondering if the person you love will ever want to reduce the distance: priceless).

I think my saving grace as I "move on" is just that I've promised to let myself feel whatever I feel, to tell the truth about it, and not to be sorry for any of it.

Home

Why, for the love of all that is holy, did I want to come home from vacation? To my empty house, with the endless line of drunk Dodger fans edging toward the freeway outside my bedroom window? Oh, right, I wanted to start getting on with my life.

Well, maybe tomorrow. Tonight, the Times' Sunday crossword will have to do.

Broken Blog

Bleagh, so there's really nowhere easy to start here... so I will just say that I am very very sad right now, and my heart is profoundly broken and the only way I can make it better it is to keep getting out of bed every morning and filling my days with meaningful tasks and people who love me. I'm leaving out the gory details because I don't know who reads this silly old blog anymore, which has been mostly neglected for the last year while my life was cruising along swimmingly enough that I had less need for writing to sort through complicated emotions... so if you're reading it and you're confused, send me an email or a comment if you know me well enough to want to hear more and I'll reply offline. Whether or not you know the story, I'll warn you that I may allow this blog to be taken over, for the time being, as a place to sort through and chronicle both the good and the awful parts of the process of moving on.

Right now I'm on vacation, and that's been a mixed bag. Good to see family, yes, and old friends... who give you permission to be sad and scared and hurt and angry and then remind you how many times you've leapt into something new and scary and how you've been OK every time. People who knew you before this part of your life and who will know you long after. But part of being on vacation now feels like it's just putting off the inevitable, dreadful task of just getting on with life, when you're still not happy about accepting that that's the only option. Going home and changing your routine, your habits, your vacation plans. And the stupid little stuff, like your Facebook status feed which broadcasts to the world that you are "no longer listed as 'in a relationship.'"

I reassured my brother tonight that I am, relatively speaking, doing OK. I believe I will come out the other side, for all practical purposes, fine. I'm not despondent about the future, I don't think this means that I'll die alone with 16 cats, or that I'll forever spurn the advances of well-meaning suitors for fear of getting hurt again. It's just that right now, I fall asleep feeling like I lost my best friend, and no matter how much my head can make sense of it, my heart feels like something is very, very wrong.

First Fruits!