and......

so it goes and so it goes and so it goes.

Or, so it keeps coming. I'm so tired, but I need to count my blessings because around me there are those who are losing the things they treasure the most, and for the most part I still have the things I treasure the most.

Thats the lesson.
Count your blessings and don't EVER take anything for granted.

For serious?

There is a huge contemplative post waiting to be written about how I have somehow misplaced whatever it was that I had that made me care about anything*, and how I used to look in wonder at things like snow and stars but now I am just pissed off at them and everything else in the world, but its 8.51pm one week before I go home and I've had 2 small glasses of wine and am feeling a little intoximicated so I'm going to totally break with tradition and lie on my bed and watch CSI then go to bed.
Awesome.

*I am fairly certain that I know where I left it, I just can't look right now. Maybe next week?

But its not my kind of scene

iTunes knows what's going on. I turn it on and the first thing to come on is Powderfinger's "My Kind of Scene", as in "its not my kind of scene".
Cos its not. Not this.

I think I had an epiphany tonight.
Everything is coming back.

Maybe its the fact that its 11.46pm and I have too much work to be going to bed anytime soon, maybe its the rain, maybe its the fact that I haven't seen my family for 317 days, maybe its everything thats happened in those 317 days that has tested us all on an atomic level, maybe its the fact that in 16 days I will be confronted with a truth that is eight months and seven days old for everyone who was there but which for me will be all too new because while in my head I know its true, that he is actually gone in the gone-and-not-coming-back kind of gone, I haven't seen their faces, the faces of those little angels who unbeknownst to them taught me to be a better person, the children who I love more than the sun and the moon and the stars, and when I see those faces and I see him in those faces then and only then will it be real.

I can't go posting things on here before I tell people in person, my people here, the ones here who matter and who have been my family. And its not like I can tell people anything, because nothing is decided yet.

But sometimes allowing oneself the option to decide evokes a sense of relief sufficient to generate real tears. Never underestimate the sheer effort it takes on a daily basis to be a stranger in a strange land.

Low Red Moon, how can you sleep like a baby?

Just finished a 20 page paper...... only 2 more of those, and 2 six pagers to go, in 3 & 1/2 weeks.
Then I get to go home, for a whole month!

Needless to say my school Crisis of Faith is still going strong, but right now I am 80% certain I will come back here in January. That is a vast improvement over a few weeks ago, when it was getting close to 80% the other way. Hell, odds have been that way for a solid few months now.
All I need to do now is get all this shit done, and not freak out, and then I get some serious whanau time to try and figure out what I am doing.

It doesn't help that I am still mourning the loss of tv-links.co.uk, and that I am PMSing like you have never seen, and I need to get the little windscreen wiper motor on my car fixed and its 1.57am and its cold and I'm tired and I still haven't been able to cuddle baby Caleb cos I'm sick.

I need to call all my friends and apologise in advance for ignoring them for the next 3 & 1/2 weeks.
I also need to go to Vicky's and buy some hand cream for my mum. She has a Vicky's handcream dependency problem.
Only 25 days.......

Cause what doesn't kill us now just makes us better whores

OK sometimes honesty is the best policy.

I have spent the last few months trying to convince myself and anybody who will listen that I completely hated him, that he was a complete twat and every single thing he has ever done is totally inexcusable.
That is exhausting, I can tell you, and I can't keep it up anymore.
So, in an effort to make my life a bit easier, I have tried a different tack.
Of everything in the last six months, this is the only thing I have a measure of control over, so tonight we sat down and I was honest and admitted everything and confessed to trying so hard to hate him because that would have surely made my life easier but it turns out that something doesn't become true dependant on how much we think we wish it to be so. And he explained his part in the whole thing and apologised for some parts and explained others and we talked and laughed and cried and made the beginnings of a peace and now a massive weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I can get on with it all.

I had all sorts of wonderfully philosophical things I was going to write here but then I got talking to Ben about cricket and accents and drinking with the Irish and computer bugs so I got all distracted so now I am going to watch Eureka. I thoroughly recommend it.

She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly

I find myself overcome with an overwhelming Sad.
There are things that I Know in my head and I would swear the truth of them until I fell down, but somehow I cannot make my heart believe in them.

In the general scheme of things it all means very little; there are people out there who are learning how to breathe again in this raw new world, but at 12.38 am at the end of a long Monday at the end of a long desperate tragic broken summer one tends to lose perspective.

I remember everything he said and everything that we were and the wounds we caused and the way we were and I can't help but wish for an alternative outcome of events. She has given me her blessing to return to him should my heart win out over my head but I know that I would always be second to her, that he would only have me because he couldn't have her and I Know in my head that I deserve better than that but that doesn't seem to mean much to the rest of me.

I am a reasonably clever person, you know? I have 3 degrees and a graduate diploma, not to mention the scholarship I am on for my PhD. So what pisses me off no end is that I can't figure this out.
I recognise the context of it all and that context contributed to both my weakness and my inability to properly grieve at the time, but that still doesn't help me to end it all. I should be able to put this behind me, you know? But none of that changed the way we were and what he meant to me and the massive divide between what I know and what I feel.

Fuck this. Time for a beer and some CSI.

infp

creative, smart, idealist, loner, attracted to sad things, disorganized, avoidant, can be overwhelmed by unpleasant feelings, prone to quitting, prone to feelings of loneliness, ambivalent of the rules, solitary, daydreams about people to maintain a sense of closeness, focus on fantasies, acts without planning, low self confidence, emotionally moody, can feel defective, prone to lateness, likes esoteric things, wounded at the core, feels shame, frequently losing things, prone to sadness, prone to dreaming about a rescuer, disorderly, observer, easily distracted, does not like crowds, can act without thinking, private, can feel uncomfortable around others, familiar with the darkside, hermit, more likely to support marijuana legalization, can sabotage self, likes the rain, sometimes can't control fearful thoughts, prone to crying, prone to regret, attracted to the counter culture, can be submissive, prone to feeling discouraged, frequently second guesses self, not punctual, not always prepared, can feel victimized, prone to confusion, prone to irresponsibility, can be pessimistic

There's a light at each end of this tunnel you shout

In the last few days I have been at the lake with some friends trying to relax and figure out how to deal with this whole thing and when I think about it I can't breathe.
I have had the breath knocked out of me.

Its not just this, its everything in the last few months, one thing after another and it keeps coming: on Saturday I will be attending a memorial service for a vibrant young woman who mere days ago was celebrating a birthday and who was very dear to some who are dear to me.

But this whole thing.....I really don't know where to begin. I know in my head that the only way through to the other side of this is right through but I don't know what the first step is.
I hear Inara's voice in my head saying "this is just a moment in time, stand aside and let it happen" but if I could stand aside I would.
I want to crawl into bed and wake up when its all better, when I can breathe again.

I wonder if Maggie knows how much she has helped me in the last few days?

Am hopefully I will have something vaguely amusing and less self-pitying soon. If that fails, pretty pictures of the lake where I was over the weekend will follow. And more Maggie, of course.