The I Want to Die Post -- but it's not what you think

Oy, I just threw up on my feet. That was disgusting. I have apparently contracted some type of food poisoning or GI bug that put me in bed all day mostly wanting to die. I seem to have passed that point of the cycle, but am, unfortunately, still in no shape to get vertical. OK, now that I've grossed you out....

I've been doing alright the last couple of weeks. Up and down, understandably I suppose. About half of the last month, either Goat or I have been out of town on vacation and that made it easier. I've been doing pretty well here on my side of town, in the world where I was always known for myself, but I discovered last night that it's considerably harder to go back to the west side, where I feel like I was more known as half of a couple. So, it was much to my surprise that after a few weeks of cruising along, dealing with it when I come home at night but mostly engaging myself successfully in life during the day, I went to visit some friends on the west side and suddenly felt like I had jumped back a month in time to the first week, where I felt really fragile and emotional. OK, so I was also over there helping a friend plan her wedding, and was, unbeknown to me, well on my way to being violently ill, which didn't help, but let's just say I didn't have the fun, relaxing evening I'd hoped for.

Mostly I just feel really stuck in the "to have contact or not to have contact" department. The pros of contact are that I get to connect with a person I still have a strong connection to. The cons? Well, that's easy. Staying connected to a person I have strong feelings for but can't be with, which is gonna mess with my head.

But the truth is, this "no contact" thing? Not feeling much better right now. Will it in the long run? I don't know. Basically, when I talk to him, it just feels like this was the natural place things had to end up now, given reality or timing or whatever, and I just feel sad, which I can handle. But the longer I go without talking to him, the more hurt and flat-out-rejected I feel, as if I was weighed and measured and found lacking (basically, the difference between "we broke up" and "I got dumped," which can be a distinction quite lacking in subtlety).... which is bearable when I'm engaged in life during the day, but can tend to spiral down into Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles at the end of the day, or when I'm, say, laying in bed wanting to die from food poisoning. And yes, Ruthie, I know that was a run-on sentence.