sometimes when you win, you lose.

Oh, OD, how much I’ve missed you.

It’s funny how the universe seems to bring things into your life just when you need them the most.  I’ve been needing to write in this, my old friend, for some time now… and couldn’t bring myself to start a new journal elsewhere when so many years of my life had been chronicled here.  I have no idea how or why this site is back, but I thank God that it is, and that my 10+ years of diary entries are still here.

I’ve spent the last few days re-reading every single entry, starting at the beginning (the year 2000!!!) and working my way up to my last entry, which was from 2013.  And I was sort of shocked to see that not much of my internal monologue has changed since I was 16 (which, by the way, was 19 years ago – holy shit, I’m old).

I’ve done a lot of soul searching in the last few months, thanks to Joe’s sudden uncertainty about our marriage.  It seems so odd to me that I’ve never understood certain things about myself until now, after reading this old diary.  As someone who is fascinated by the way the human mind works, I almost can’t wait to delve into all of this bullshit with my therapist to see what she has to say about it.  So many of the exact phrases I wrote here when I was 16, 17, 18, etc. are still on loop in my brain today – what does that mean, I wonder?

More importantly, what does it mean that in my ENTIRE LIFE I’ve never had a relationship with a man who was emotionally available?  Since the age of 16, I have had relationships with, or had feelings for, men who were emotionally distant, or frankly, just not that into me.  The worst part of it all?  I actually married one of them.  And now my life is complicated beyond anything I’ve ever experienced before.  I never even realized this about myself until I read this diary.  And when I was finished, I had this A-ha! moment and suddenly the pattern became clear to me and I am baffled at the fact that I haven’t pieced this together until now.  I’m pretty insightful, so why is it that the most obvious things about ourselves aren’t the most obvious to us?

There have been so many times in the last month that I’ve wanted to call Kristina.  That I’ve yearned for my once best friend to help me through this awful time in my life.  But we haven’t been friends in a very long time and I’ve stopped myself from reaching out every time I’ve felt compelled to do so.  I can’t explain why, suddenly, I’ve felt this pull for her, this need.  As if she would know what I should do about Joe and be the one to magically make this problem go away.  Perhaps what I’m longing for is not really her, but my childhood.  A simpler life.  A time when I was sure of who I was and where I would be going.

Joe has pulled the rug out from under me and now I’m unsure of everything.