Whenever I breathe out you're breathing in.

The visit was good, but three days is too long for me. I reach my limit around 2 and a half. Ideally, a visit should be two nights and two and a half days. That's for guests coming here. When I'm going somewhere else, ideal is 1 night and 1.5 days.

I'm not as sociable as much of the world.

I'm on spring break. I'm supposed to be writing so I can get paid. Instead I'm just writing for my own amusement, things that I can't charge $35 dollars an hour for. But I still can't seem to get motivated to do the paid work. Money isn't enough of a mover for me. I need something I give a rat's ass about... to write about, that is. As opposed to writing about how transport chemicals safely or how to lift ergonomically.

I felt the knot of cruelty tighten in me this afternoon, without warning. I'm displaced perhaps, but determined to live with the fact that this place isn't designed to receive what I bring. What I bring is common. It doesn't matter if it's good quality. If it's common, it's still replaceable.

I'm starving tonight. Probably because the last three days were an eating binge of restaurants and pub snacks and popcorn. I'm fortunate not to be predisposed to heaviness (of the body, hah) I've developed bad habits rather rapidly and now it's time to return to reality. Dinner at home.

Unbudgeted Surplus

Prosperity cheque. *sigh* What a load of rot.

Replacing one addiction or obsession with another is sometimes the only way to kick a bad habit. You just try to find one that's less dangerous.

And when I awoke I was alone. This bird has flown.

I have had a weekend of remembrance. Choosing to visit makes one a visitor. Staying away is wiser, but how is one to open one's wrists that way? How is one to push against the bruises to ensure they still hurt?

My choices are foolish but I am not stupid. I make these choices knowing better, which is entirely different than making bad choices with good expectations. I enter with the sense of impending doom and head toward the Pit anyway because it feels familiar.

We went for breakfast at Tim Hortons this morning. All the new immigrants I teach notice how much Canadians love their Tim Hortons. It's true. The only thing that's not good about Tims is their refusal to participate in the correct usage of apostrophes.

After that we went to the pet store and bought the puppies some chew treats. Upon our arrival home, they pounced upon the bag joyfully and began to chew. Since then they have completely ignored us both, caught up blissfully in a world made entirely of tastebud sensory experience. I'm almost jealous of their simple happiness. Sweet puppies.

We project a level of shallowness I find almost convincing, until I am alone with myself.

Everyone barks - all still believing.

I read back and I was ashamed of the things I have said and done and even just thought to myself in quiet moments, particularly during the times I lived alone while Shawn was at work in faraway lands.

I am ashamed, but I have been honest. This is the most honest place. It's honest because I am alone here for the most part, largely unread. This is not something I regret and I haven't wanted it to be any different. I have public places in which I can say public things, and I have this place, where I am mostly alone.

Being alone means I can say the ugly things too, not only the light things.

Here, I can hang out in my pajamas at 2:00pm with coffee-breath and miss my home and miss my old job and wish I had a better relationship with my parents. Here, I can talk about what's really on my mind, non-linear and nonsensical and uninteresting. Here is true.

Today I am having a day of getting lost in the Past, digging through my old thoughts and feelings and past relationships. Old misunderstandings, unresolved. Old wounds, unhealed.

I have a little time for this kind of self-indulgence. I will wrap myself up in it and then I will leave it behind me again, for another day, until another time.

A small request. Could we please.

She's talking about me. She doesn't know she is, but she is. I'm the one with the tender soul. I cried when I read this, true to form.

A long time ago, this woman hurt my feelings. She didn't know she did, but she did.

She's a good writer, clearly intelligent, and shares a lot of the same interests and aspirations that I do. For that reason, perhaps, it hurt more when I was told she'd said I was emotionally abusive.

It hurt because it's something I fear in my myself. There is a part of me that has potential to be emotionally abusive. I'm smart and I'm intuitive; I know these things about me are true. I try so hard to use these abilities in a positive manner, but she was right about me in some ways, because there is always potential for me to use these things to be cruel. I have done so.

Poor Tony. I used to make him cry on purpose. Not because I didn't love him, because I did. I adored him. But sometimes he was just so damn cold and callous, the darkest part of me needed to find out if he still loved me in any part of his heart. If I could make him cry, he loved me still. I could grow addicted to that evidence. I am loved I am loved I am loved.

She told someone else I was emotionally abusive and perhaps at times I was. Maybe this is what I do when I feel unsafe. Maybe she was right. That rightness would, undoubtedly, make it hurt more. The truth hurts, I have heard.

It hurt because it wasn't true, too. I loved him. I loved who he pretended he could be, and I loved who he was when he was successful at being who he pretended to be.

Losing him was hard. I lost him many times and in many ways because I was unable to make a clean break. And so I lost him in pieces, painfully and slowly. I was often angry. Sometimes I said hurtful things to him in my pain. He was cruel to me too, though. You just didn't see that part because of who he carefully disguised himself as in that place.

He called me names. Drama queen. Show off. He cursed at me, often. And he told me to shut up.

It hurts to remember him. I wish I hadn't met him.

A few degrees below seasonable

There is a crazy lady on the television telling me that truly good skin care doesn't feel good and that I need to let go of that misapprehension. If I just follow her six step plan I will have beautiful and glowing radiance. It won't feel good, though. Nope.

G is for Gertrude who choked on a peach; F is for Fanny sucked dry by a leach

I would like to write to you here, write as freely and honestly as though you will never see these words. Unfettered by thoughts of your reactions, I can write clearly and precisely as much as I can whimsically and irrationally. You will never know.

But I would like to write to you here with the urgency that would only push my fingers to type faster if I expected you here any minute now, and I have so much to say, just so much to tell you. Repetitive though it may be, I could tell you over and over for I know you don't listen.

I want to write to you here and say everything that gets overlooked in angry and in desperate partings. I want to write about the fine details, the truths and the lies, the many many moments in black and white and sparse and factual pieces.

I want to believe you would seek my words to you, that I mattered enough for you to find me interesting enough to follow at a distance, if only occasionally, if only half-heartedly.

I want you to leave me alone.

And I am flawed/ But I am cleaning up so well.

I feel like I've won something. It's interesting how addicted I can be to those invisible flakes of nothingness, gather and collect, stuff and save. Vindicated. Hold onto the nothings as tightly as I can. Elusive, they may slip from your fingers before you've finished counting your wealth.

Quit now while you're ahead.