I am in a hotel room in Florida and I just woke up in tears.

I can't believe that I still miss her this much after all this time. I feel pathetic because all the people that I know who have gone through bad breakups seem to have moved on (to new relationships or new breakups).

Why can't I get through this? I've been through relationships before and it's never been anywhere close to this difficult.

Hi M,

So, it's been about two months since we last talked, but it feels like forever to me. I guess since then, a lot of things have changed for me -- I've settled into my new job, found a new apartment, turned a year older, etc. I haven't finished moving yet, but I'm about to be, so I felt it was an appropriate time for me to tie up some loose ends.

I'm still confused about a lot of things, but I guess the one thing that's clear is that you're not going to talk to me any time soon. More than anything, it's really frustrating -- like, if you told me "E, I care about you but I need some more time to figure things out" or "E, I don't think we can ever be friends" then I could get some closure. But since you're not communicating with me, I'm stuck in this awful limbo state.

I don't want to pressure you into talking to me, but I also don't have the patience to wait any longer. So, it seems my only way out is to say goodbye and leave the past behind (unless you have a better suggestion). Maybe this'll make you sad, maybe you'll be relieved, or maybe you won't care either way -- I really have no idea. But in any case, you should know that I'm not doing this because I'm angry at you or because I don't care about you any more. I just need to take back control of my life and not have it depend on your actions.

You are the best friend that I've ever had, and I'm going to miss you a lot. Good luck with everything (really).

Love, E

Hmm, well, there isn't a great way for me to lead into this, so I'll just say it: M and I sort of got back together, and then she broke up with me again. There's a lot of stuff I want to say, but I'm having some problems writing about it coherently.  So I'll hold off on that until later.  But until then, hello everyone again ... hope things are going better for you than they are for me :-/

Okay, so my landlord is having some people come into my apartment tomorrow to measure the windows for replacement. Which is fine, I guess, except my place is an embarrassing mess. Which is fine, I guess, except that I haven't really cleaned up my place since my relationship ended (for fear of running into unfortunate memories).

But I guess it has to be done sometime, and that time has come. Right now, I'm working through my tiny living room. I'm kicking up a lot of dust (both figuratively and literally). So far: some old polaroids of me and M, a pair of her socks, and a bunch of sneezing.

Fuck, I hate this shit.

Update 11:28pm: The problem with having a small apartment is that it's hard to figure out where to temporarily displace things while you're cleaning. It seems like I'm just shuffling things about rather than making things better. Oh, I also found some, uhh, sexual items. Ugh.

Well, it's been quite a while since I posted. It's been nearly six weeks since my last entry, and things have been thankfully pretty routine. I've been making slow but steady progress on my work this summer, and I've finally started trying to find a job (which is pretty urgent, given that I'll be through with school in less than three months). I haven't talked to M at all since my big angry email exchange, but I have occasionally had weak moments where I'd wander over to her blog and see what was going on in her life.

I guess things have been kind of crazy for her. Apparently, she was getting depressed to the point of crying every day at work. So she quit her job impulsively, and now she's totally unemployed and sitting around doing nothing. From what I know, this is basically how she makes all her major decisions. It starts when she gets antsy because some aspect of her life isn't perfect. But instead of trying to figure things out, she totally uproots everything, makes some random choices, and hopes that things turn out better the next time. That pretty much summarizes her method of dealing with career choices and personal relationships (including the one she had with me, I think).

Maybe I should feel bad for her. But to be honest, I'm glad that things in her life are going like shit. Oh yeah, she also posted something yesterday about the guy she's fucking, and how certain things about her relationship are making her feel insecure and weird. Two months ago, this would have made me pretty upset. Now, I'm sort of grateful that someone else has to deal with her fucked up emotional bullshit.

And what bullshit it was! The fact is, I was a pretty well-adjusted person before I started dating M. After we got together, there were some pretty great moments. But overall, I think I spent more time being on edge about her depressive episodes and her bouts of insecurity (which would often surface without provocation). I cared about her and tried my best to be a good boyfriend, and it really dragged me down a lot in the process.

I think I'm finally at the point where I can start moving on. I don't think I'll be looking for a new relationship for a while, but I will admit that I wouldn't mind getting laid :P

Oh man, I've been so incredibly busy these past two weeks. I had to scrap together a draft of my thesis. And now, I'm working on this final paper for the very last class that I'll ever take. It's due on Wednesday. Eek!

I quit smoking last August (after smoking nearly a pack a day for probably 10 years, with a break around 2000-2001 when I quit and picked it up again). Hopefully it sticks this time, but some days it's really difficult. Like right now, I could really use a fucking cigarette. Yeah, and the other day I had a dream about smoking a cigarette. It was a really delicious dream. I don't know of a better way to describe it. That's the nature of this addiction, I guess. Even though all the nicotine is long gone from my system, I still fantasize about visiting Marlboro country once again.

But I'm not going to get started again. I mean, there are the obvious health effects, but I guess I never really paid attention to those. The real thing that made me want to quit was the inconvenience factor. Like, having to excuse myself from a movie so that I could sneak out for a quick one. Oh, and the worst is air travel. On cross-country flights, I'd intentionally avoid booking nonstops so that I could take smoke breaks in between (usually Dallas, Denver, or Chicago).

Anyway, that's a random thought which has nothing to do with M (for once :).

For the past two days or so, I've been feeling pretty crappy. It's mostly due to what I've described in my last few posts. It's been having some nasty physical effects on me. I haven't been sleeping well and I've been kind of nauseous. But I'm feeling better today.

Last night I went to a friend's birthday party which ended up getting kind of wild. I got tackled and/or fondled a few times, had my nipples bitten and licked against my will, and witnessed a fistfight. There was a bunch of broken shit too. It was kind of entertaining. I mean, I'm not usually the kind of person that likes partying hard (especially when I'm feeling nauseous), but it was kind of a welcome distraction from everything else that was going on in my life.

Today was weird. I woke up to discover that my first girlfriend from high school (who I haven't talked to in over a decade) added me on Facebook. We didn't part on particularly great terms, but it's been plenty of time for those wounds to heal. She's married now. Anyway, I was flipping through her pictures and noticed that she didn't have any hair, so I looked at her profile and noticed that one of her activities was "kicking cancer's ass."

Wow, that's awful. I really hope that she's doing okay. It kind of makes all of my problems seem a a lot less significant.

UPDATE: She just modified her profile with more information about her condition. It sounds like her treatment is going well, which is great to hear. She also wrote a message on my wall saying hi. I guess I should write something back, but I'm not exactly sure what to say. Should I just not mention the cancer thing? Or should I give her my best wishes? It seems kind of awkward to say something like "Hey, I haven't talked to you since the mid-nineties! How's it going? Good luck with the cancer treatment, by the way." I really have no idea how to respond.

After the last email, I sent a brief followup message to M that said: "Please respect me enough to keep your exploits off the internet for now. If you must post to LiveJournal, do me a favor and mark it friends-only or something." It's a perfectly reasonable request, I think. Her reply was: "Can't you just not read it?"

Stupid fucking cunt! The lack of consideration on her part is startling. Here was my reply to her:

If I could just change my feelings and actions, I would. Believe me, I've been trying my hardest to forget that you ever existed. But it's not going to happen any time soon, so I'm asking you for your help. The least that you can do is to let me suffer quietly without this additional indignity.

I really should have seen this coming, you know. She started dating me shortly after breaking up with her previous boyfriend, and she did a lot of spiteful things to him as well. For instance, she would post publicly about our relationship, and he would write angry emails to her. And in response to this, she made this YouTube video about how to deal with crazy exes (which of course was a sharply targeted insult to him).

At the time, I found it all kind of cruel, but she assured me that he was a really bad guy that everyone hated. I never met him before, so I don't know. But I'm beginning to take his side, you know? For example, M told me that he didn't ever respect her time or space. And the big example she would give was about how, soon after they broke up, he called her on the night before a big final exam and kept her up all night talking. But you know what? She dumped him maybe two days before that. How did she really expect him to react, anyway?

I can't believe that this is someone that I cared for. I feel so cheated.

Surprisingly, M replied to my email. I didn't expect her to, but it she sent a pretty quick response. Let me go ahead and paste her message here:

I'm sorry, I forgot I had posted a link to that my livejournal; I assumed you wouldn't know to read it.

I didn't mean to flaunt it.  I am still alone - alone does not mean celibate in my mind.  It had been two months and I didn't want a committed relationship, but I did want to have sex.  Should I have e-mailed you saying btw I had sex last night?  Part of the whole reason I wanted to break up was to have sexual freedom.  I would have preferred to keep my exploits from you, but it's sort of hard when you read everything that I write because I have to filter everything.  I suppose it was bound to slip out.

I'm sorry I hurt you, but I don't think I did anything wrong.  I mean, I posted that I was dating you two weeks after I broke up with X and you didn't seem to think that was particularly bad at the time.

Honestly, I think you're more upset that I'm having sex than with the way you found out.  And I'm sorry, but it was bound to come up at some point and frankly two months seems like an acceptable time to move on.  It's not as if I'd enter into a relationship, but I'm not going to be celibate for half a year just to make you feel better.  To me, the emotional commitment was the difficult part to get over not the physical one, which is why I didn't feel bad about doing what I did.  I didn't care about this guy, I just wanted to have sex and I hope you can understand that.

So I'm sorry I hurt you.  But since this is out in the open now, I will probably write more openly about what I'm doing in my livejournal.  Perhaps you shouldn't read it if it's going to upset you.

-M

Thirty minutes later, another email regarding some photos that I sent her from our relationship:

I just had a look through the photos you sent me, something I never wanted to do before.

We had a good time together, and I hope someday you can forgive me and we can be friends again.

-M

Here was my response (her quotations in italics):

I'm sorry I hurt you, but I don't think I did anything wrong.

How many times have I heard this one? You never think you do anything wrong, and you extend insincere apologies without ever feeling actual remorse. I used the word "uncaring" to describe you before, but I think a more appropriate one is "amoral."

We had a good time together, and I hope someday you can forgive me and we can be friends again.

I now look back at the time we spent together and feel a great deal of regret. You took so much from me, but you were not a very good friend to me when it mattered the most. And through our breakup, you have been (and continue to be) astonishingly selfish and hurtful.

You are a disgusting person. You may be beautiful on the outside, but on the inside, you are damaged and rotten beyond repair. I don't wish you harm or ill will, but I won't make the mistake of trusting you or caring about you again. We will never be friends.

All I really want to do now is to get the last word and make her feel like shit. I'm so fucking pissed off.

Well, I'm being pushed to the limit now. M wrote a blog entry recently about some random stuff which talked a bit about "the guy I'm fucking now." You know what? I'm not even all that pissed off that she's fucking someone else. It's something that I almost expected of her -- I think she's the kind of person that needs constant sexual validation. What I am pissed off about is the fact that she decided to blog about it. She knows that I read it, she knows that it'll upset me, so I think her actions are downright spiteful.

So I wrote a very nasty email to her:

Despite all the arguments we've had, I thought that you'd respect my feelings enough to not let me find out about this through the internet. I mean, there is a code of conduct that we should follow as exes, and I don't think it's appropriate for either of us to flaunt new relationships and/or sexual conquests for the other to see (especially after all your bullshit about wanting to be alone).

But to be honest, I didn't really expect any better from you -- I mean, this is your typical pattern, isn't it?

Anyway, I've come to realize that, deep down, you can be a very uncaring person who only does nice things out of self-interest or guilt. So, all I have to say is this: I'm ashamed that I was stupid enough to love you, because you didn't deserve it at all. I wish I could take it back. I hope that one day someone will hurt you as badly as you've hurt people in your life.

Well, if that's not a big "fuck you," I don't know what is.

I am beginning to think that I just have poor taste in women. Somehow, I often end up dating people that are emotionally unstable. Granted, that describes a lot of people (possibly including myself) but my exes have all been especially confused. I think this is because I'm a bit of an emo kid who's addicted to having my feelings hurt. Oh, and I also like to overanalyze things, so I lean towards complicated relationships.

Case study: I've sort of been pursuing this girl who, by many accounts, is absolutely insane. Oh wait, there's more! She's the ex-girlfriend of one of my close friends. Basically, I shouldn't be talking to her, but here I am, sending secret messages back and forth with her every day. Oh, the other day, I took her on a spontaneous late night date to the local IHOP. And the thing is, I don't even like her that much. In any case, part of me is excited by all this drama and secrecy, but the other part of me is disgusted at myself.

Oh my god, I really can't deal with all of this right now. I have so many things that I need to finish at school and not enough time to do it in. Fuck.

I am about to do something bad. I will probably regret this. More later.

M and I just had a massive argument over IM and phone. I'm still trying to sort it all out, but things are really fucked up right now. Basically, I tried to have a casual conversation with her, and she snapped at me and told me she wasn't ready to talk yet. There was arguing. And then there was a discussion about the stuff that we had at each other's apartments. I told her I wasn't really ready to go through my apartment and separate her stuff from mine. She got really pissed off about that.

What the fuck? So, she wants me to respect the fact that she's not ready to talk to me. But she can't respect the fact that I'm not ready to root through all my memories of our time together? Fucking bitch. I wrote her a pretty mean email to that effect. Then there was some more arguing.

You get the idea.

[ Update 4:12am ]

I've been trying to write a fucking email to M for the last, I don't know, two hours? I'm drawing a total blank though. My current draft says: "You make me feel bad about trying to be nice to you. So poop on you!" Yeah, that's the product of two hours of writing and revising. I'm not really thinking straight right now.

My mom called me today and asked me "I'm thinking about divorcing your dad. What do you think?" I said, "I have no idea what to say ... how am I supposed to react to that?" And then she said "eh, forget that I said anything, just worry about graduating first."

Holy fucking shit. Holy ... fucking ... shit.

In other news, it's currently spring break for my school and most of my friends are out of town. I am feeling very lonely right now. Oh, and M still doesn't want anything to do with me.

Whoa. M just sent me an IM ... this is the first time since we broke up that she initiated communication with me. Apparently, she lost her phone and wanted my to get my phone number again. And then she gave me her new number before I even thought about asking for it. She also told me about a new blog she was keeping on WordPress.

I don't know what to think of any of this. I still miss her very much, and it's nice to know that she doesn't want to totally cut me out of her life. However, there's a big difference between wanting to talk to me again and wanting to get back together with me. I've obviously been hanging on to hope for the latter. The thing that confuses me is this: M knows me well enough to know how I'm going to react to this. So what the hell is she trying to pull here, anyway?

Fuck.

Even though M and I don't work anywhere near each other or share the same group of friends, there are still plenty of ways that I can keep tabs on her. I mean, she has a public LiveJournal and a YouTube page. Also, I can still see her logging in and out of IM since we're still listed as buddies. Oh, she's still my Facebook friend too, so I see all of her fucking news feed items.

On Sunday, she posted something about how she went to this party and some of her male work buddies were trying to take advantage of her intoxication. Apparently, she also decided to drive home drunk at the end of the night (and this wasn't a short drive either ... she was in another state).

I'm simultaneously worried and disgusted by this. It's a hard feeling to describe.

I recently found a memory card with of pictures from last Thanksgiving at M's place. She had her friends and family over ... it was actually really nice. It's hard for me to imagine that those happy pictures were taken only a few months ago. That happiness just seems so very distant right now.

I've been doing mostly better these days. But today is an exception. Right now, I'm sitting on a couch in my office building. My friends/coworkers are walking past me saying hi, and I'm trying to act totally normal. Really though, I've just been on the brink of tears for the past two hours. I've had to excuse myself to the bathroom once or twice to break down.

It's nice right now to be surrounded by people, though. That's why I'm not going home.

Today, M posted something to her LiveJournal that pissed me off. She was whining about how difficult it was to be single and not get laid. Oh come on! What fucking right does she have to complain? Hey, I've been without sex for the same amount of time, and I'm not bitching about it. But then again, it's hard to feel horny when someone rips out your fucking heart and shits on it.

M has been making a lot of whiny posts to LiveJournal lately. It sounds like she's feeling crappy about a lot of stuff. You know what? I'm glad that she's feeling lonely, hating her job, etc. Because I'm feeling the same way, except worse, and it's her fault. I find myself taking pleasure in her misery.

Shit, my mom just called me. Apparently some crazy family shit is happening. Fucking hell.

God, what a fucking mess.

Over the weekend, M and I had agreed to talk again this evening (she was kind of busy over the weekend, so the idea was to have a real conversation today when there was more time). This afternoon, I tried contacting her to see what time she was available. Here's the email exchange:

E: (that's me, I'm E) Hey, I'm not sure if you got my gmail chat messages. Anyway, I was asking you if were we still scheduled to talk later today?

M: I had forgotten. I need to do some chores - I can call you for a little while later but I can't talk too long.

E: Well, I had cleared my evening for the conversation, so it's a bit disappointing. Anyway, I am running out for a quick dinner but I will give you a call after. I guess we can make it a short conversation if you need. Is that ok?

So an hour after I sent that email, I called her. The conversation went something like this (I'm going to try to keep my recollection unbiased):

M: Hello? What do you want?

E: Hey, how's it going?

M: You know, you can't keep doing this. You can't expect me to drop everything and talk to you whenever you want to talk to me. I have my own life to live!

E: What the are you talking about? You picked tonight to talk to me?

M: Yeah, but I told you I had things to do and that I'd call you later. You can't be patient enough to wait for me to even finish my dinner? You're not my boyfriend anymore, you have absolutely no right to run my life.

E: What the hell? I just called you hoping to have a normal conversation. You could have easily said "Hey, I haven't eaten yet, can I call you back around 10?" I would have been perfectly okay with that. But instead, you answer the phone and immediately start yelling at me? I don't understand. Why are you upset?

M: I'm upset because you're guilting me into talking to you. You said that you cleared your evening for the conversation. It's not healthy for you to be making plans around me. It's obsessive and creepy.

E: Okay, you were the one that picked tonight ... you said that you had things to do over the weekend, and on Monday and Tuesday your dad was visiting. You said that tonight was a good night because you could set it aside to have a real conversation. That's what I was doing too. And yeah, it's kind of disappointing when I make plans and they get broken.

M: You know I can't deal with this ... I think we need to stop talking. I mean, why do you even want to talk to me anyway? The only possible reason I can think of is that you want to get back together with me. That's not going to happen, so what's the fucking point?

E: Maybe if you'd let me talk without attacking me at every opportunity, I might have a chance to explain myself. This is a really tough breakup for me, and maybe I haven't really appreciated that it's been pretty hard for you too. I don't know. But all I'm really looking for is the ability to talk to you like a normal person again. I haven't asked to get back together with you. I haven't even asked to see you. And I've done my best to respect your time. Before Saturday, we didn't talk for over two weeks ... the only time I contacted you was about the snowboarding thing.

(we both have season passes to the same mountain, and it's pretty small. I was trying to make arrangements so that we wouldn't go on the same day).

M: And about the snowboarding thing ... why the hell does it have to be so formal? So what if we run into each other? We go to same grocery stores and restaurants. Do we have to split those up too? I mean, it's fairly unlikely that we'll run into each other, but it might happen. Can't we just be civil about it? Why is it such a big fucking deal?

E: Well, why is it such a big fucking deal that I called you? Can't we just be civil about it?

Anyway, you get the idea. That went on for about 20 minutes or so. Finally, she kind of softened up a bit. She explained that her work life was going pretty badly these days. On top of that, some of her guy "friends" were showing their true colors after finding out that she was single again. I kind of feel bad for her on this one. But frankly, what did she really expect after announcing the breakup on YouTube?

And then something interesting happened ... she actually apologized to me. She said that she was really frustrated with lots of things and was probably taking it out on me. She said that it was difficult to talk to me because she still felt so much guilt about hurting me.

E: I understand ... that's all I really needed to hear, I guess. Well, I'm really sorry that you're in such a tough spot. I'll do whatever I can to help, even if that means never talking to you again.

M: Well, I'll probably want to talk to you again at some point, but it might be quite a while. I don't know.

E: Okay. I hope things work out okay for you.

M: I hope things work out okay for you too.

E: Well, okay then ... goodbye.

M: Goodbye.

...

After that, I went outside to regain my composure. I stared at the sky and sent M one last text message:

E: You should take a break from your laundry and see the full eclipse. It's kinda pretty.

It was just a stupid little message, but I couldn't stand ending things on "goodbye."

I spoke to M on the phone last weekend for an hour or so. She was very defensive at first, but after a while we started to have a normal conversation. I told her about the stuff that I was going through at school. She told me a bit about her weekend plans and how she was doing. It seemed like she was also hurting over the breakup, even though she didn't say so explicitly. Anyway, it was actually nice to talk to her without running into a wall of resentment. I guess that's progress ... but to what end, I don't know.

I'm not even sure what I want anymore. I do wish that M and I never broke up, but that's a lot different from wishing that we could get back together. What she did to me was very hurtful, and it's something that I'll eventually understand but never forgive.

Part of me wants to get through this and be friends with her. She was a better friend to me than any other person that I've dated. But is the friendship worth the pain? I can't imagine ever feeling okay about her dating someone else.

I know that the smartest thing to do is to say goodbye forever. No matter what ends up happening, I know I'm going to end up hurt. So maybe it's better to take the pain on my own terms. I just don't have the courage to pull the trigger on this one yet.

Fuck, I don't know ...