Swimming with sharks

All week I've had rebounding on the mind. I've been racking my brain trying to think of guys I know who wouldn't kick me out of bed for eating crackers. Desperate? No. Well, maybe. I just want to feel beautiful and sexy and confident around men again. I want to have some fun. If I were a barfly, I'd be picking up men left and right.

Instead, my friend L and I braved the MFA First Friday, a notoriously active singles scene that goes on in the MFA's courtyard during the summer. L is a new friend and she's a total man magnet--she looks like the innocent girl next door, but there are some sharp edges lurking under her blond ambition.

We walked into the courtyard and men descended from every corner. Young, old, hot, ugly--we talked to them all. Whenever we did a lap around the courtyard, men pulled out chairs and tried to get us to sit down. They bought us drinks and offered phone numbers and asked us out for food after the cocktail hour. When we stood talking to one guy for more than a few minutes, we could see other men circling behind them, waiting their turn. After a while, it stopped being an ego trip and started to get a little creepy. There's looking for a rebound and then there's feeling like prey being stalked by a predator coming in for the kill.

We left sans men, went to the Cambridge Brewing Co. and got some dinner by ourselves.

Breaking all the rules

TGTB advocates the No Contact rule--no contact with the ex, no matter what. But things ended with Glenn and me so abruptly that there's still a lot that needs to be said. We have been talking pretty regularly over the past few weeks and though I usually end up melting down the day after we talk, I feel a lot better communicating my feelings than keeping everything all bottled up for the sake of propriety. When we spoke earlier this week, he actually apologized and took responsibility for everything that happened. "You didn't deserve the way things went down," he said. I know that, but it felt good to hear him say it.

Today I returned a bunch of bridal shower gifts to Crate & Barrel, Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn. Glenn hated the whole concept of registering and he fought it tooth and nail. I saw it as building our home and future together. We fought over the registry more than any other aspect of the wedding. We just couldn't see eye to eye or find a middle ground on the topic. But seeing all the couples walking around today with digital scanners in their hands, I realized that I want a man who wants to be a partner in building a life, not someone who digs in his heels and refuses to compromise on anything.

All those eyelash wishes down the tubes.

Living the life of V

The SciFi channel is rerunning "V," that series from the 1980s about aliens disguised as humans who want to take over the earth. When the aliens go from childhood to adulthood, they go into a gross little cocoon and metamorphose in some kind of amniotic jelly. They writhe around inside the cocoon as they go through the growth process. Sometimes they scream--I think we're supposed to know that it's a painful event.

Right now I feel like a metamorphosing alien. All my juices are mushing around and reprocessing, and it definitely hurts a lot. Who knows when gestation will be complete? All I know is that I'm totally inwardly focused right now and I'm not very good in groups. It's all about comfort and safety and being with friends and family. I'm hiding in a way, but then I feel so raw inside that I can't imagine taking any bold steps or conquering the planet. All I can handle right now is putting one foot in front of the other while I hope I'm not about to walk off a cliff.

Keeping the faith

My first temp assignment is at the temp agency itself--I'm filling in at the front desk, answering phones, processing paperwork and organizing files. The temp office is on the second floor of a converted mill building in Natick. It's a small, beautiful space filled with light. The windows overlook the Charles river. All the employees are women and they are all friendly, empathic, warm and undemanding. And married. No one expects me to do anything amazing or particularly intelligent, and it works well because I'm still having moments of complete emotional paralysis but at least this way I'm not trapped in my parent's house when they happen.

I've started applying for jobs in Boston, Washington D.C. and San Francisco.

Today I made my travel arrangements for L's wedding in California. I decided not to go to LA. Instead, I'm spending about 10 days in SF, Sacramento and then San Diego for the wedding. The only time I'll be near LA is during my hour-long layover at LAX.

I also got in touch with my dressmaker in LA and made arrangements for them to ship my wedding dress out to my parent's house.

It felt good to set some small goals and accomplish them.

After work, I went to the AMC new member's potluck in Boston. Years ago, I went to one of the potlucks with my college roommate and I remembered them being pretty lively, but this time it was in a dark room filled with a lot of socially awkward 40-somethings. Conversation was strained and the food was eclectic. Maybe I'm just not one for organized groups like that.

There's a big orange thumbnail moon hanging in the sky.

Dialing back the Wedding Channel

Goddamn those wedding websites. Yesterday I got a lovely email from Wedding Channel titled, "Congratulations on your one month anniversary!" It felt like all the air got sucked out of the room and I couldn't breathe.

Last night I went to my best friend A's birthday party at her house out in central Mass. I was hoping for an innocuous evening of fun and socializing, but instead it was a house full of couples and their kids. Or couples with kids on the way. Or just couples. Other than the sullen 12-year old sitting on the porch, I was the only single person there. It was worse than Bridget Jones, worse than any episode of Sex and the City.

I hid in the bathroom and cried for 20 minutes.

Glenn used to be my partner in crime at those types of things. We'd snicker behind our hands at the people who gave up their lives and their sanity to focus entirely on their kids. He shared my irritation and annoyance with screaming children and the doting parents who spoiled the crap out of them. We were both ambivalent about having children. I had to bite my hand to keep from calling him to commiserate.

Even if we had wanted kids, I'm light years away from being part of a married couple or coming close to reconsidering the whole parenthood thing again. I'm so behind the curve now. This is not where I wanted to be at this point in my life.

Sometimes size does matter

The thing with temping is that you can't show up to work in a T-shirt and shorts, which is what I've been living in for the past month and a half. Since my stuff is stuck on a truck somewhere in Kansas--the movers said it won't arrive until early August--my mother took me shopping for work clothes at Frugal Fannie's down in Westwood (MA not CA, though I get confused sometimes). Retail therapy is a great thing. First comes the new clothes, then the new life. The really scary thing is how small I am right now. Right before I left LA, I was probably about 105Lbs. and I was in the best shape of my life. I haven't weighed myself since I got back to Boston--I don't want to know because I don't want to have that weight as a goal once I start eating again--but I've gone from a healthy size 4-6 to a size 0. I have never been this thin before, even when I was anorexic my sophomore year in high school, and it's frightening. I stood in front of the mirror in the changing room and for the first time I saw how emaciated I've become. This thing has eaten me up from the inside out. I want to be fit and healthy again. I want my appetite back!

When I got home, I put the clothes in the closet. And then I unpacked the pile of suitcases that's been sitting in my room for over a month. I guess I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to hop a plane and go back anytime soon.

Thinking

"The true test of character is not how much we know how to do, but how we behave when we don't know what to do."--John Holt

Despite my skepticism, the support group turned out to be pretty good. We met in Coolidge Corner, a place that still holds a lot of memories for me from my college boyfriend, but is extremely vibrant and full of activity. There were 9 people there, of different ages and professions, and in various stages of relationship trauma. Most of them were married, or are currently married but are in the process of getting divorced or separated. There's one other woman there who ended an engagement. It was so nice to be able to talk about feelings, thoughts or reactions with people who have been through the same thing and can relate. Hence the support.

I stayed at C's again last night. We stay up late watching TV and I read while she plays online. It's nice to share space with someone who doesn't need to talk all the time.

Tonight I'm going to run stadiums with J at Harvard. The stairs there aren't the same as Santa Monica, but if I can manage 20 or so sets out of the 37, I'll be in good shape.

I'm in such a quandary over what to do for my friend L's wedding next month. She's getting married in La Jolla and there's no way I'll miss it. I can't wait to go back to California. With my frequent flier miles and complete lack of a job, I can go for a good, long time and see as many people as possible. I will go spend some serious time in SF with my friends there. J and K, who are like my surrogate older brother and sister, have been my rocks through this whole ordeal and it will be great to see them. But I'm torn over the idea of going back to LA. I really want to see my friends in there, most of whom I didn't get a chance to say goodbye to before I fled last month. Still, I'm not sure I'm ready to go back. I don't know if I can go there and NOT see Glenn. I don't know if I can go back and not go home.

No, it's not a girdle

I found a post on Craigslist by someone who's putting together a support group for people going through a divorce, separation or the end of a long-term relationship. So I pinged her and we're having our first meeting tonight. I've never done this kind of thing before--going to a support group, I mean. I'm a little skeptical but I guess we'll see. What do I have to lose?

In between self-help books, I'm reading "Comfort Me With Apples, " by Ruth Reichl. She's a good writer but her life story is pissing me off. It's just too perfect. Even when things get hard--her marriage ends, she changes careers--she never actually has to struggle with anyone. A series of new lovers shows up and she gets these plum freelance writing gigs that send her to France. Cry me a freaking river.

Whenever I go through some sort of emotional crisis, I migrate toward contemporary women's fiction. It's just comforting. Some of my favorite crisis authors: Alice Hoffman, Elizabeth Berg and Anita Shreve.

One thing R. Reichl wrote that resonated with me: "Sometimes even your best is not enough. And in those times you have to give it everything you've got and then move on." I feel like I did that with Glenn. One person can't make a relationship work--it takes two. I gave that relationship everything I had and, when that wasn't enough, I moved on. Or I'm trying to.

Not in a lecturing mood

Someone told me about this book called "There Goes The Bride" and so I ordered it from Amazon. It's written by a woman who called off her wedding because she realized that her fiance wasn't the guy for her. There's a certain amount of comfort to be had in reading a book that examines almost every aspect of the exact experience I'm going through, but a lot of the time I just want to tell the author to shut the fuck up. She left her relationship because she had an epiphany and now she's telling me to look at this as an empowering experience. I left because I HAD to. I had no choice, really. And at some point I know I'll get to a point where I can see that Glenn wasn't the man for me, but I'm not there yet. Even when your brain understands the logical side of something like this, you can't make your heart catch up. And you can't make yourself fall out of love with someone in the space of a month. Plus, I don't have a job to throw myself into. I'm a total social alien!

There is some good advice here that I'm trying to keep in mind: Put one foot in front of the other and just get through each day the best you can. Do what you need to in order to process what's happened. Know that it will get better. Take deep breaths.

Last night I went for a great 5-mile run in the rain with J. We went to Fresh Pond and did two laps. The air and rain and adrenaline were exactly what I needed to wake up from the daze I'd been in all day. Then I crashed on C's futon. We stayed up late eating Greek food and watching E.!.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, eat your heart out

If my friends tell me to get angry one more time, I'm going to scream. I've read the Kubler-Ross grief manifesto and let me just say that when you're actually going through the grief process, it isn't as linear as you might think. Glenn sent me a weak-ass email yesterday and I was angry for all of ten minutes and then the crying started again. Emotional consistency is a distant memory, something you have that you don't appreciate until it's long gone.

Right now, as I write this, I am FURIOUS. How COULD he have been such an asshole?? This is the guy who moved across the country to be with me, who programmed his cell phone to say "Heads-down determination," our little motto while we were dating cross-country, whenever he turned it on, who cried when he proposed to me. What ever happened to heads-down determination? How did I end up doing all the work while he wussed out?

Well, Glenn, you can buy another TV and another computer to replace the ones that belonged to me. And you can distract yourself from what's happened by training for a million triathlons or whatever, but you can't run away from this, no matter how hard you try. You made certain choices and you've lost me because of them, and you have to deal with the consequences of your actions. You can talk to a million people about this looking for support and validation, but deep inside you know you fucked up. You know you've absolutely devastated the person you were closest to in the world and claimed to love. That's something you have to live and deal with. Don't be a guy, Glenn. Be a man. Face up to what you've done. You may not realize it for years, but you've thrown away the best thing that ever happened to you because it got in the way of your going for a good ride. What does that say to you?

Mental cocoon

I went and signed up with a temp agency today, just so I can have something brainless to do that will let me earn a little money. It'll also get me out of the house during the day. Otherwise I'll sit here with nothing to do but THINK all day and that will drive me insane. The breakup is a learning experience, I know, and I want to deal with it in every aspect so that it doesn't get compartmentalized in my head and end up biting me in the ass years down the road. I want to feel all of it in its ooky, despairing, tumultuous badness and get it out of my system. But right now the pain and sadness are all-consuming and there's only so much blackness a person can process on a daily basis. I'm hoping salvation lies in the occasional secretarial job. It's an introduction back to the normal everyday world and as much as I'd like to throw myself in headfirst, I need to take it step by step.

Anyone who's ever experienced a major loss knows that you walk around feeling like someone's peeled off your skin and then dunked you in acid. Just *being* in the world is intimidating, overwhelming, occasionally dangerous. I feel flayed, raw, incapable of dealing with the most minute details of routine existence without breaking down. Every foray outside the safe confines of home is like a recon mission. The mall is a minefield. Starbucks is a proving ground. The gym is an obstacle course. I feel like an exile from the easy, day to day life that everyone around me seems to take for granted. Even though I know in my head that I need time to heal, I feel like I should be fine already and that everyone is secretly fed up with my fragility. All I want is to be clear of the pain, but there's no way to speed up the process and that can be incredibly frustrating.

Going out means that I have to consider things that never occurred to me before, like whether the place I'm going will have music playing (see the Shania Twain post). The radio is off limits unless it's the classical station and even that can be a crapshoot. I have to think twice about movies--will the movie make me cry, and am I having the kind of day where seeing a ton of couples on date night is going to plunge me off the deep end? The only thing I watch on TV is Sex and the City and whatever Jane Austen movie PBS happens to be rerunning.

I can't bring myself to read the newspaper or go to any of the Web pages I used to read every day. As horribly selfish as it sounds, I have too much to deal with in my own head to process the turmoil that's going on in the world right now. I've never felt so isolated before. The universe has me in a corner, it seems--no distractions allowed, only introspection. I am a world unto myself.

Give me some therapy with my therapy

Right now I have more therapists than I know what to do with. I'm doing phone sessions with the couples counselor that Glenn and I went to see right before we called it off, and I'm seeing my old shrink from high school again. Twice a week. My COBRA is LOVING me.

It's a good thing, too, because in addition to being the emotional disaster from hell, my brother moved back home about a week ago and his presence in the house makes life incrediblhy stressful. M has ADD and he's a compulsive slob. In the course of a few days, he's managed to crap up both cars and every room in the house with the exception of mine. He's nocturnal and he cooks up these incredible meals at 3am and then leaves the mess for my mother to clean up. And my parents totally tolerate his behavior. It's insane. It's insanity-making. Sometimes I just have to close my door and close my eyes and pretend I'm somewhere else. In my own space. In a good place, emotionally and physically. Maybe if I visualize it often enough, it will come true. And if I click my ruby slippers, I'll wake up and the nightmare will be over.

Shania Twain is the anti-christ

This morning I woke up very early and went to yoga at my parent's gym. I was so hoping they'd be playing techno or something completely unemotional on the stereo system, but no--as I sat on my mat waiting for class to start, they played that Shania Twain song, "You're Still the One."

Meltdown. In public.

Will I be considered a total social pariah if I walk around wearing earplugs until this gets less excruciating?

Yesterday I went into Boston and went for a walk on the Minuteman Trail with a couple of friends. We had dinner in Harvard Square and I dropped a distressing amount of money on self-help books at the Harvard Book Store. First up, a Thomas Moore book called "Dark Nights of the Soul." God, could I be any more of a drama queen?

My wonderful friend C gave me keys to her apartment so I'd have a place to escape when I need to get away from my family. Bless her heart. She went through something like this years ago, so she can listen to me bawl and she doesn't wonder where my self-respect has gone. There is no way I will ever be able to repay her.

Walking through the fire

My car arrived today. I got in and found a playbill from the Mehtro dance recital on the floor of the back seat, the one where Glenn met the trollop for the first time. That was lovely. My car is a time capsule of my past.

My friends D and D got married this weekend. Their wedding was at the Colonnade downtown, and it was lovely. Our college crowd is great. Everyone is engaged or married but that's par for the course. The ceremony was short and beautiful. D and D are so right for each other that there was no need for tears of any kind. They make *sense*. The reception was a little rocky. I saw no reason to hold back at the open bar and proceeded to get completely smashed. The steady flow of alcohol distracted me from any sappy music that was played so I could stay focused on the food, which happened to be excellent. I only melted down once, when they played that Etta James song, "At Last," which had been my vote for Glenn's and my first dance. My friends M and A shepherded me to the bathroom and handed me warm towels until the crying subsided. No judgement, no criticism. I LOVE THEM.

Someone asked me today how I could have subjected myself to a wedding after what happened. But I'll be damned if I let Glenn get in the way of my happiness for my friends.

More ranting and raving

Glenn told me yesterday that he hates being alone. Well, suck it up, buddy. As if he's in any shape to be with anyone right now. As if EITHER of us should be thinking about that, but he's a guy and nothing scares him more than solitude. I am so not going to make this easier for him and apparently neither is the trollop. Good for her. I'd respect her if she hadn't fucked him while we were still together.

He cheated on me and lied to me about how far things went with her. Maybe he thinks that's beside the point, but it's an absolute breach of trust and imtimacy and it's absolutely a part of what's going on now. How am I supposed to believe anything he says to me from now on? How am I supposed to believe he didn't sleep with her more than once? I don't know that I can. I don't think I can ever trust him again. The thought of him being intimate with someone else makes me physically ill. I hate him for that. HATE him for shattering the trust and rapport we had. HATE him for leaving me with mental images of him and her, of leaving those messages for me to see, of rubbing it in my face. He was so shocked about what Jenny did to Tom and he just did almost the same thing. And somehow Tom, the only one of Glenn's friends who's actually called Glenn out on his actions, is the only person Glenn refuses to listen to. Glenn spent months telling me that he didn't care about the wedding, that he only cared about being married to me. Was that a lie, too?

It's clear from everything Glenn's said to me that he hadn't wanted to be with me for a while, but he never had the balls to talk to me face to face like an adult. And now he wants us to stay friends. How can I be friends with someone who's treated me the way he has? There's no respect there, only selfishness. As a famous Benedictine priest once said, the only sin is selfishness. He never even asked me how I got through our wedding day--it never occurred to him. Glenn has the guts to yell at me about taking the ring back, but maybe he should have considered that before he CHEATED on me two weeks before our wedding and LIED about it. If the positions were reversed, he would have told me to go to hell.

And what's the deal with putting 400 miles on my car while I was home in Boston, after everything that had happened??

He can go digging for reasons why things didn't work out, but the fact is that he didn't WANT them to. Glenn walked away because things got hard and complicated, instead of being adult enough to deal with the issues that are part of any serious long term relationship. Remember the episode of Sex and the City when Big marries Natasha instead of staying with Carrie because Natasha is less work? It'll be the same with anyone he bothers to date seriously in the future--eventually he's going to have to learn how to be a partner and not just a taker. It's a pattern with him--all of his ex-girlfriends left him because he couldn't step up or grow up. I should have seen that as a warning sign a long time ago.

Open letter to Glenn's trollop

The email I never sent but had to get off my chest:

G,

Believe me, I'm well aware of how this letter will come across, and I have questioned whether to send it more times than I can tell you. But there are some things I need to say. From what I've heard, you have your head screwed on relatively straight, so none of this will really be a surprise. It's up to you whether you read this, delete it or send it straight to Glenn.

First, I want to thank you. Your affair with Glenn forced him to show his true colors at a crucial moment and I'm grateful that I found out what he's really like before I married him rather than after. He lied to me about your relationship, and whatever did occur between you happened while he and I were still together, so that makes him a cheater and a liar. What you may not know is that even after we called off the wedding and I told him I couldn't be with him anymore, he was going on about how this was just a postponement and he could see us getting married in a month or two. If I recall correctly, he wanted a small beach ceremony. He keeps asking me what I feel in my gut about our future together, which says something about his true commitment to "what he sees as a genuinely good thing" with you. Even though he did ask you to start a relationship the day after we decided to call off our wedding.

He told me that you just ended a long term relationship yourself, so I'm sure you can understand why it's better to know someone's a cheater before rather than after making a commitment. In some ways it sounds like you and I have a lot in common. I never thought I'd actually say that, but it's true. We even look alike. And now we're both mourning relationships that, at least for me, I'd hoped would last a lifetime.

But I also blame you for helping to break us up. At the cast party, you knew he was engaged and you pursued him anyway. And then you slept up with him even though you knew he was still taken. I've been to enough cast parties to know what they're like. Weird things happen at cast parties. Maybe it's because performing creates this strong sense of intimacy between the cast and crew. I knew when he called that night that something weird was going on, and I knew it was with you. I thought he was a stronger person and would be able to deal. You should have known better, particularly since you'd just had your heart broken. Thanks for helping to break mine, too.

Really, it's Glenn's fault that any of this happened. He and I had our problems, but it was his choice to go to that cast party, his choice to stay up flirting with you til 4am, his choice to get in that hot tub. It was his choice to email you and call you and have coffee with you. It was his choice to sleep with you, just as much as it was your choice to chase him like a cat in heat. Some of that has to do with the problems he and I were having at the time, but it really comes down to Glenn's fundamental lack of self confidence, maturity and good sense. Again, I thank you for helping me to see that about him before I took the plunge. You don't need me to call you any names--I think you know exactly what you are for doing what you did,

Last I heard, you were refusing to see Glenn because you didn't want to give into the attraction you both felt for one another. At least that's what he told me. I'm not sure if that's supposed to make me feel better. Frankly, if you want to have a torrid affair with a 35-year-old narcissist with a Peter Pan complex and the kinds of issues that Glenn has, that's up to you. He's fun to be with as long as you don't have any needs of your own and as long as you don't intrude on his cycling time. If you want a guy who can't commit and is really just looking for a cheerleader who will provide regular sex, go for it. It sounds like you know you deserve better than that, though. But if you want to take on the winner's curse, it's your choice.

I don't know if he told you, but one of the things that made me move out is that he left all your emails and all his letters to you on the desktop of my computer for me to find when I came back to LA. Thoughtful and considerate, hmm? Imagine for a second what it would have been like to find that sort of thing on your ex-boyfriend's computer, to know that he'd cheated on you and lied about it, to know he was already screwing someone else while you were stuck crying 50 times a day. You might begin to understand what it's like to be left with those kinds of mental images, to wonder if and when he's still talking to you and whether you'll give into his libido. Except Glenn and I were living together for 3 years and we were about to get married, so it was that much more of a shock, a betrayal and a punch in the face.

Again, it comes back to a degree of thankfulness. Glenn is a good guy at heart but he's really confused about who he is, what he wants and whether he's willing to do the work necessary to maintain a serious relationship. So many people have come up to me since our breakup and said, "Well, we didn't really want to say anything before, but we always thought he was a bit selfish and immature." I never saw it because I was so in love with him, but I see it now, courtesy of you. So thank you for saving me from a life of sacrificing my needs to someone who isn't capable of being a true partner. I deserve a lot better and, quite frankly, so do you. Who's to say he wouldn't do the same thing to you.

S

PS--Kest was my favorite yoga studio--don't know if he shared that with you when he told you to go there.

No escape

Every single little thing reminds me of Glenn and our life together. Someone called today and I had to search for a notebook on my father's desk to write down the message. I want to be at our desk, where I had notebooks conveniently stashed. Our desk, where all our papers were mixed and nothing was a secret. Rummaging through the freezer, I found a bunch of chicken sausage that made me think of the chicken snossages from Trader Joe's that we ate all the time. A Radiohead song reminds me of the fact that I don't have that CD anymore because it was his and our collection has been separated.

I wish we had called off the wedding when we moved to LA. Maybe he never understood that I felt pressured into doing the big wedding thing, that it wasn't what I wanted, either. Having to plan a wedding I didn't want on top of adjusting to LA and looking for a job drained me so much emotionally and spiritually that when things got bad between us, I couldn't react or deal. In the past, the only way for me to protect myself from men who didn't know what they wanted was to leave. I know I made the absolute right move by calling off the wedding, but I don't know what to do about the relationship. I didn't feel done with it or Glenn when I left, but he was pushing me away as hard as possible and telling me in every way he could that
he didn't know what he wanted anymore, and I didn't know what else to do. I feel like I made the call but Glenn forced my hand on that front. It took reading his Gina messages for me to really feel like things were getting final.

But I'm still so torn. I spent years being absolutely sure that Glenn were the one, and now I'm not sure at all. How could I have been so wrong? I still feel a deep, deep love for the person he was before all this happened, but I can't stand the person he is right now. This isn't him--some weird alien breakup creature came down and took over Glenn's body. The funny thing is, I've never felt more clear about who I am and what I want than I have been over the past month. I've spent a year focusing on Glenn's needs and it's a relief to focus on my own needs now. If I can focus on anything--I can't seem to see straight half the time.

Abyss walker

So many thoughts. My mind is on spin cycle and the only time it calms down is when I've finished a crying jag and am about to fall asleep.

I can't claim that everything was peachy with us before the very end. Besides feeling like I lost my voice in the relationship and feeling like Glenn lost interest in me as a person, I stopped liking who I was around him. I am not the mean mommy that I became over the last few months, especially about the wedding planning. I have never had ANY desire to play a mother role in our relationship and I hated and resented being put in that position. Maybe it all comes down to crappy communication. As Glenn withdrew, I kept trying to bring him back in by nagging him to get involved and that just pushed him away further. I AM a happy person at heart, but we were in a terrible situation. How could I be happy when my fiance was leaving me gradually and I felt alone and abandoned?

I went to my friend K's baby shower this afternoon and had a complete meltdown in her driveway. Did I do the right thing by leaving LA? What if we could have fixed things and I ruined it by making an impulsive decision? Why does he make it sound like everything is my fault?

After the shower, I somehow managed to make a trip to Target for new yoga clothes. They were playing "Clair de Lune" over the loudspeaker and all I wanted to do was dance with Glenn through the store. I feel empty and hollow, as if I'm walking over a gigantic abyss that has opened up underneath everything I see and know and think and feel.

Scully is running around the office meowing. She misses Glenn. She misses our little family.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil

I hear the same advice from every corner:

It's not my fault.

I did nothing wrong.

I'm doing everything right.

I'm better off.

Better now than later.

Give it time--it will get better and I'll find someone better.

Everyone means well, but what they don't want to say is that no one can say or do anything to actually make it better. I can't see past the pain. I've never felt so incompetent in my life. Being alone is excruciating-- for the first time in my life, I want to have someone around at all times.

Right now I'm a zombie, a zombie who wears her wedding band on her right hand to remind herself of strength, courage, promise, possibility.

Whirling around an emotional black hole

Every day is a sprint to the finish--how can I get as far away from the pain as possible? Surviving from one minute to the next is an effort of will. An hour takes a year to go by. It's wrenching and eviscerating to the point where I sometimes can't get from breath to breath, and I'm nauseous all the time. The hardest part is that the person I love most in the world is the one who did this to me.

Looking back, I see ways in which I was unhappy with Glenn a long time ago. He told me so many times over the past week that I didn't love him for who he is, but I disagree. I loved him completely from the first weekend we had together. But if loving him for who he is means having no needs of my own and being okay with him leading a completely separate, independent life that barely intersected with mine, than no, I don't. When things were good with us, he never hesitated to make time for me and our relationship, and I did the same for him. For some reason that stopped after a few months in LA. He never seemed to have time for me and that was at the root of my unhappiness. I came to LA of my own accord, but on the assumption that Glenn would be my partner and that he'd support me through the transition. When he began to withdraw this winter, it was excruciating--he left right when I needed him the most. If he loved me for who I am, he would have stayed involved and treated me better. If he loved me for who I am, he wouldn't walk away because we had issues. My happiness in LA was very dependent on our partnership. I did a great job of making a successful life for myself there, and I was becoming more independent, more of the person he remembered from Boston. It's ironic that he bowed out right when I
was really getting it together.

The Tour de France is going on. I actually understand it now, though we always watched it together at Tom's house in Mandeville. All the cyclist's names are familiar but they are all Glenn. My phone is silent and my heart is in pieces and I still can't bring myself to unpack my suitcases because it means I'm really here and not there. It would mean that there's no going back to you, to our apartment, to our life together.