The week after the conference was great. And then, the slide again. Today has been a full-on nervous breakdown, the reactivation of every possible abandonment issue, the occasional and necessary collapse that happens when, like me, you find yourself cobbling together the scraps of relationships to try to approximate something like what you used to believe you could get from one person--isn't that the way these things are supposed to go? And it's why you can't go sit in the park anymore all the daddies and nannies and couples and the old Pakistani man who walks up to you and starts asking you personal questions because you obviously deserve it, being there by yourself, and they always say that I shouldn't put up with the things I put up with, but most of the time I am on guard against asking too much of people--the Ex and the Professor (who may be returning to ex-best friend status and he will no doubt blame me for it) always have a way of making me feel like I'm asking too much and I'm hoping to get a job at this law firm for a couple of days a week this summer not because I entirely have to (the money will be nice, but my parents would have tided me over) but because I am scared of being in this apartment every day this summer and I also think I need to be in Wisconsin on my birthday because it's a Saturday and The Poet spends weekends in New Jersey because he has to and I don't want to run the risk of planning something that sucks or of being alone because I'm too beaten down to plan anything so hopefully I'll just leave town so it won't be an issue and goddamm it what was I thinking even for a minute that I could care so much about someone who can't see me on the weekends and that's where it all began because I realized I cared and then instead of making things less miserable its making things worse and I'm not going to have any friends to introduce to my mom next week and I'll just be hanging around by myself at my brother's wedding because apparently I ask too much and never, never enough and I need to stop this because I have a lot of reading to do and then grading tomorrow and I have to keep running, running, running...
(The Poet called me just now--I'd sent him an email that was basically just like, "I'm having a nervous breakdown, tell me something that will make me feel better"--and I'm feeling a bit calmer. At least he's steady, kind of unshockable in certain ways. But i'll still be ten days or so before I see him again.)
Anyway. Time to pull myself together once again--this is part of what it means to be the other woman, that you are always dressing better than you feel--time to throw myself out into the world, maybe stop by the coffeeshop, go to school to pick up my check, mainly just stay in the world away from myself, read Dobell, Mill, and Swinburne, maybe also some Shelley(s).
You know, I do realize I don't lack friends and that there are many people who would be perefectly happy to go out for a drink with me tonight or grab dinner. But I don't have the energy to find out who.
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