… glass splinter working its way into your heart …

“Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a 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 didn’t ask for it. They did 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 simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just 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.”

– Neil Gaiman, “The Sandman”

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I’m tired. Not tired as in I need a good night’s rest, I mean I need a break. A long break.

So much has been happening that it’s hard to keep up with it all. I finally get a chance to sit down and take a deep breath, pet the dog (not a euphemism), maybe take a bubble bath but then the phone rings and someone is saying “Hey, where are you, [the thing] is starting and we [blah blah blah].”

It’s a bit ridiculous, really.  I am not irreplaceable; I am not even unique. Anyone can do the things I’ve been doing and honestly I don’t even remember how I got to this point. Did I volunteer? Did someone else nominate me? Who decided the responsibility should be on my shoulders? Whose ass do I have to kick to get a goddamned day off from the incessant whining of “but we neeeeeeed you”?

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Current situation: closing in on 3:00 AM, couldn’t sleep so I got up, fired up the laptop and here I sit, pup snoring on my foot and some crime documentary on the TV for background noise.

Finally grew the balls to honor the boundaries I set for myself relating to a love interest; before this gets to be a TL;DR situation I’ll just say that I simply grew weary of disrespectful behaviors and passive aggressive digs. There wasn’t even a “fuck you” conversation involved, I just quietly shut the door the last time I left and neither one of us has bothered to knock to see if the other is home. The lack of follow up on his part speaks volumes about how much effort I had put in. It was definitely a give-and-take relationship – where I gave, he took.

I’m too tired to start anything new again. Not that I want to go back to any of my old relationships, but the thought of putting myself out there just to meet people makes me almost shut down. I don’t even know where to start anymore – I can’t fathom using dating apps again, and the alternative of meeting someone organically means I would have to socialize in person and just thinking about that brings a real live involuntary grimace to my face. Did I feel a bit sick to my stomach too? Oh yeah, definite nausea happening.  Gross.

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OK, I’m going to try flipping the pillow over to find a cool spot and see if I can dredge up some face time with the back of my eyelids.