With less than ten days to go before my exam, I fail miserably at pulling myself together

You know those days that kind of lull you into a false sense of security that makes you think that--even if you know the goodness is only temporary, you don't have to know it in a conscious sense--so you start to relax a bit and have a couple of good thoughts and start to process everything that's gone on in your head and your heart and then all the sudden the day just turns on you and you're on the train crying on your way home?

This was one of those days.

As per my Facebook status of the past few days, I don't really want to talk about it. What's the point, really? It's not that there's much that can be done, when it comes down to it. It's mostly just having to face the reality of my not being particularly good friendship material. In a lot of senses. I'm good at being marginal, the person you see every now and then, I'm apparently great at being the mistress, as well as the girl you'll hang out with until you get an actual girlfriend and then you can't hang out with me anymore. When it happens, it won't be the first time. And you, like K. and E. and so many people I knew when I was in college, will have the satisfaction of waking up to her every morning and looking around and knowing that you did the right thing even though it was hard at the time and no hard feelings, etc. And the story ends with you living happily ever after and I, as K put it in an email to me this week, go on to "negotiate [my] other ethically questionable relationships." Because somehow, as The Professor said and didn't mean to say but kind of did because it sounded so right didn't it--if it happened twice, then it must be my fault.

I was already kind of depressed and a little bit angry, but that's the thing that made me cry.

Do I break up with The Poet simply because I realized this week that I'm not in love with him, and because he's married and all of that? But he calls in to check with me to see how I am. I think he might love me and maybe that's enough right now--at any rate, it's all I can muster--I can barely return phone calls, when they come--especially with the time of the semester and the time of my orals.

Here's my paradox: I'm not hot enough to be your girlfriend, but I'm too hot to be your friend. The "you" here isn't referential--it's the same paradox I've been caught in for years, minus the five-year suspension when I was in an increasingly abusive relationship with someone who was constantly berating me to have more confidence while trying to undermine the things I did have confidence in. So excuse me if I'm a little bit fucked up about this right now.

What I will miss about K is not the sex. That only happened a handful of times; I knew I wasn't going to sleep with him on Monday, and I didn't and it's fine. What I'll miss is the chance to put my head on his shoulder and watch the local news. And that's something you can't do on the first date.

Except with E, who I've been thinking about a bit more lately. (Hey, what's a few more dredged up traumas while we're at it?) Because I think we did watch a movie that first night, and that was usually a part of things. That sounds dumb, too much like a routine, and maybe that's why I wasn't the one he fell in love with. But at the time it was wonderful, and the only other person I did that with--have done that with, in a long time, was K. E is turning 40 tomorrow--I recently removed this from my Google calendar, but it's hard to forget the person who got you pregnant and happens to be exactly 12 days and 12 years older than you are. Once when we were in bed he asked me if it was going to be weird when he was 40 and I was 28 and I said I didn't think he was planning on keeping me around that long.

I should pretty much stop talking, ever.

I have so much work to do before the 21st. So much actual thinking. And I need to be not wretched to do it, or I have to find a way to work through the wretchedness. I'll start by finishing Oliphant's autobiography before I got to bed. This is an oddly appropriate choice, though readable only to those of you familiar with her novels.