"Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life. You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like 'Maybe we should just be friends' or 'How very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."

~ Rose Walker ("The Kindly Ones")

My girlfriend left this morning, back to Canada. We kept saying how we may never see each other again but I think that's unlikely unless we decide not to keep up with each other online... still, it's hard. I already miss her, even though near the end we were spending less time together. I had less and less energy to offer her as I began to freak out more and more about leaving myself. She was sarcastic, snarky, and sometimes difficult, and I really love her, because of all that. She was a great partner in crime.

It's hard to let go.

Things with TB have been really rocky. We've spent a little too much time together over the holidays, and we've been communicating a lot, but not well. Cali-speak and Brit-speak are two completely different languages and we've both been feeling frustrated and hurt by the misunderstandings. Add to that being really sick for the past week, the stress of holidays and my birthday, me leaving, and (I'm just now realizing) PMS, and you have a powder keg.

I'm finding more and more that I know what I want and the people around me don't always, and therefore it's easy to get what I want potentially at their expense. They're attracted to me because I'm a strong woman, but I think it can be too easy for them to cave in to my terms until they realize they don't want whatever it was I came up with. And as it's EASIER to ask forgiveness than permission, I carry on when I should be checking in. Being strong is a double edged sword and I'm never entirely sure if I'm being strong or being overbearing.

I'm hoping we can fix it. I think he wants to, and I think I want to, though I do have an immature temptation to scream "this is too hard" and hide in my room under my duvet til it's time to leave. I would regret that. But on a deep level I feel like sabotaging it because I'm scared. I'm scared of what things will look like when I leave. I'm scared that my work will always stand between us on some level. I'm scared of abandonment, though I'm not scared of being alone per se. And I'm absolutely terrified of leaving and going back to California. I'm going to try NOT to sabotage it, because I'm logical on some level and know that would be childish and stupid, but there's that undercurrent.

Add to that trying to "chin up" and work during this emotional turmoil and I feel really tempted to be numbed. I'm trying to remember how in retail I had to suck up my emotions to present positivity, and I need to do that now. It's like an armor I need to protect myself.

One thing TB said that I think is true for my work and personal life is I need to stop getting most of my energy off of people and social situations. I'm not grounded unless the people around me are grounded and they rarely are. I've always had a weird resistance to meditation but I need some way of drawing energy from elsewhere, and replenishing my energy from the earth or some other stable source. In a way, it's good I'm going back to California where people speak in those terms and I can likely find what I seek.

It's all a mess. I'm hoping that at 25 I've gotten somewhere further in the past year. When things are going smoothly I can look back and say definitely... but sometimes, I just feel like a lost little girl.

I think this quote from Eternal Sunshine says it best, as it has for a while-

"Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a fucked-up girl who's lookin' for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours."

Exactly.