annafdd

Wednesday I had my interview with the Mayhew as volunteer. It was very thorough and threw me a couple of times. "Are you good at taking instruction? Give me an example" left me seriously floundering. I think I am good at taking instructions, but I had no idea of an example. Ditto with "are you good at working with people, give examples." I said that really, for most of my life I have worked on my own.

I probably should write these kind of questions down and find a smart answer. I think they did get the impression that I know and like cats, and they will probably find me a place in the cattery, but I do the same with job interviews.

Anyway. I also threw away four pair of jeans that not only don't fit me, but won't probably fit me even if I lose weigh, barring a miracle or some serious health issues. Ditto with about four shirts. This left me with two pair of jeans, one too big and not wearable in public, and one black. So I got myself to Gap and now have a reasonably priced pair of blue jeans that actually fit me. They still produce a bit of Michelen effect on my midriff, but them's the breaks.

Thursday mevennen passed through on her way to Sweden, and we had a very pleasant afternoon chatting, followed by a very nice meal at Belgo. My cats were much admired and fussed over, which made them happy.

Jam is still jumping sharply back when approached in the ground, but still purrs ecstatically and drools in happiness if petted on her chosen ground, that is, the TV room sofa.

I finished Bad Science, which I predictably enjoyed, and re-read Doris Lessing's On Cats, which is a wonderful, if very sad, book. Not sad because things are particularly glum - there are cats dying, but anybody who gets to be eighty and has had cats goes through that. It's that Lessing seems to see the pain of the world as more enduring, more fundamental than its joy. Cats, she says, leave you with a suffering that is compounded of their vulnerability and our guilt. She's right - but of my many cats, not all of them healthy and long-lived, I remember the happiness, the resourcefulness, the playfulness.

Winter is becoming glum and dark, and my mood is declining a bit with it. So Friday was not a good day, it was a day of not being able to do much. I've always been inclined to hibernate.

My plan for treating my unemployment as a sabbatical and treating writing as a serious job has not proceeded much this week. In fact, I have written nothing at all.

In a way it is because the point of writing has sort of gone away from me. I don't really believe it's going to be my big contribution to humankind, and it's not going to make me rich or even just allow me to live on it. I remember when being published meant the world to me, but it's a distant memory and I can't really see why. Thursday I was telling mevennen that the reason I feel so equanimous to the whole business of writing is that I got the You Don't Understand My Genius rant out of me years ago. She said that sometimes people really don't understand your genius, but in hindsight, I can see all that was wrong with that novel and can totally understand why it wasn't published. In short, I was a jerk about it. It's too late to make amends, and I don't feel particularly bad about it, but yes, I was wrong and acted foolishly.

I spent all of yesterday walking around London listening to Paul Krugman. Paul Krugman is my hero: there seem to be t-shirts in Times Square with his face and "Krugman's Army" on it - I want one.

What I like about him is that he incredibly clear, speaking with the right mix of seriousness and humour, and very inspiring. In one of my talks he is participating in a round table and my attention drifted while the others where talking, but with him I'm always listening. If I listen to him enough, I might learn something, I guess. Meanwhile, I just have a good time and learn lots of things.

In between bouts of Krugman-fandom, I went to the Jobscentre, where nothing about my JSA was really resolved, went to my counsellor, went to various bead shops and bought way too much semi precious stones, and finally got to curry with major_clanger, purplecthulhu, alexmc and Brother Guy, and it was a very happy time.

Before Modafinil:

God, look at this pile of clothes. Oh God, isn't it disgusting. If only I wasn't so tired. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to tackle some of it. I wonder if my socks are in there. Probably, but I really, really can't keep my eyes open. I will look for them some other time. Meanwhile, let's shift some of this stuff over my feet to keep them warm.

After Modafinil:

I could easily sort that pile of clothes now. But I have to write my learning journal! and read up on Jung in Wikipedia! And I have a wonderful idea for a new story and half of it already written in my head!
I have no TIME for sorting out the pile of clothes!

(Kidding: I am not really manic: just very happy, and feeling like the Sleeping Beauty after she wakes up.)

I am pretty sure I once saw chipmunks in London - in that part of Hyde Park that it's not Hyde Park and that right now I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. Anybody can confirm that? Or was it a false memory? Or did they all commit suicide by throwing themselves under cars or diving into the Serpentine, this being highly intelligent and prudent animals, like?

Also - when I told my friends on the night shift that I was moving to the day but I might go back to the evening shift, they all expressed undying love and shining enthusiasm for the evening shift (20-04). My friend Marcelo, who is Spanish, said that it's the shift that allows you to go to sleep at 6am and sleep until midday, "as civil people ought to do".

So right now I'm conflicted. I asked to go on the day shift because I couldn't bear the haze of fatigue, but I deal pretty well with the unusual hours, and not having much of a social life to begin with, I wouldn't mind too much losing four nights out of seven - nights in which normal people go to sleep, anyway. And it would be a more natural sleep pattern for me - left to myself, that's what I tend to gravitate to.

But it IS still night shift works. I'd really like to hear people's experiences and expertise. Did anybody work the evening shift and how did they find it? I think life was easier for me, sleep-wise, when I was working ten to six anyway, but I did find the disruption of normal life a bit annoying - not being around when people did stuff and so on.

Took my first dose of Modafinil. Not alert and bushy tailed, exactly, but I AM awake. And for the first time in I don't remember when, I don't want to go back to sleep.

Could be placebo effect at this point, of course.

I have decided to ask to be moved to a day schedule.

This will mean a lot less money, no longer being able to drive to work, no longer being able to listen to the radio at work, no longer being able to go running in winter (because you can only do that mid-day), and many other things I am slowly coming to realize.

Hopefully it will also mean not being stupid with sleepiness all the time.

I hope it's worth it.

I am also thinking that the only ability that I know I truly have is the ability to write, and I should indeed try to make some money off that. There are several freelance writers on my f-list: any suggestion? I don't know where to start, frankly.

ETA: I will also rejoin the land of the living. I will be able to come to meetings, get-togethers, do movies, and stuff. Although I am still hoping to work at least partly during weekends, so that I can earn a wee little more.

I find that I react with pain whenever the subject of the American primaries comes up, that is, every time I switch on the radio or watch a tv screen.

It's not just the overexposure. It's that I have the feeling that whoever ends up winning the Democratic ticket will break my heart and most of my friends'. In the worst case scenario, by not winning the election, of course.

I've been through it twice already. I am not looking forward to a rerun.

I really, really miss having a car. It took me two hours to get home this morning, fighting against the human mob regurgitated variosly by Charing Cross Station, and a combination of rain and wind that left a trail of dead umbrellas on pavements all the way home.

I managed to write 334 words yesterday (within my "hundred words on working days" quota) before starting work, and I thought that I might add the missing two hundred or so this morning - but when the night was over, I was completely shattered and only wanted to stare at a blank wall. Not likely to be able to write at all for the rest of the day, either, since I have the writing group and then work tonight.

My head is ringing. The cat, who had spent the whole night on my bed, sleeping on soft warm blankets, had the gall to complain this morning when I came in. I think she's mainly complaining because yesterday I briefly took in a very friendly aristokitten who walked determinedly up to me demanding attention. There have been leaflets all around the street about Otis, a lost cat. The leaflet says male, burmese, and this was male and a very diluted sealpoint or cream (lil_shepherd, I think it looked an awful lot like a Singapura, actually), so I thought, when in doubt, call the number on the leaflet.

By the time the owner got back to me I had taken the young aristokitten upstairs in my kitchen, and was already convinced it wasn't Otis. Otis was 5 years old and lost, and this was either a very small or a very young cat and didn't show any interest for Zip's food.

What he really really wanted was petting, which he got. Once established that it wasn't Otis, and that it was somebody's well-fed and well-cared for pet (although I'd rather people didn't let their cats out on the front of the road) I carried him downstairs and convinced him that he should go door to door trying to find his home. Can't blame him for getting confused in a row of semidetached. Gosh, he was gorgeous.

Otis, I am sorry to say, is likely dead, because his owner told me that somebody saw him. She was obviously still hoping, but.

The wind and the rain are rattling the windows. I think it's time to got t sleep with Zip's purring in my ear.

Only 555 words today, but still within my target - 500 words on non-working days, 100 on working days.

32,823 / 100,000 words. 33% done!

In other news, cleaned the kitchen, made second and much better batch of bread, ate lots of fruit, went out and acquired cheap gym bag and on-sale boots, as well as silk shirt from Zara I didn't strictly need.

I have been consistently failing to write for rather a long time now. I am very discouraged. I have written two stories last year, both unsaleable, one because it is crap and the other because it is porn. When I think about my writing career, it is very hard not to feel like a failure, and to avoid spiralling down in a thought about how my mind seem to be pottering about without managing to do more than to keep afloat.

Meanwhile, I am reading Kate Wilhelm's Storyteller. I was immensely impressed by her talk at Wiscon two years ago, but I am quite a lot less impressed by this book. I'm sure she and Damon Knight were great teachers - well, their record speaks for itself. But the tone of the book disturbs me, even when it says things with which I agree: there is this consistent motive of "students would do this silly thing, we would give them hell, and they would complain (not knowing what was good for them)".

I don't know - my experience of Clarion was different. There was never a fixed rule, except for the "always try to say something good" which was not Wilhelm and Knight's credo. Maybe they were right. In hindsight, I can't say that Clarion did a lot for my writing career, but that is probably my fault. It gave me lots of reassurance and reinforcement, but what was the practical use of that apart from making me feel good for a while?

Clarion seems to have been so long ago. It is a fracture in my life, the point where my life went to pieces. I have only now started to pick them up, but at some level, I will never be the same. I think all the hopes and expectations I had built up during Clarion did their share of damage in the subsequent months and years - I really fully expected to sell all of my stories and go on to have a writing career, and when that didn't happen, I was not in a place to be able to take on the hurt and proceed. With all the rest that was going on in my life, the rejection slips just became too much to bear.

If I had gone on writing, or t least revising, I could have faced it - but my brain turned to mush, understandably.

In a way it still is mush. There are many things that I can do and delight in, photography, walking around, observing the world, being with friends, reading books, engaging with the world. But my number of spoons is very limited. Keeping up with groceries buying, cooking for myself, and keeping the house from devolving into chaos is a major chore. Lately, managing to keep myself awake is also a pretty stiff chore. (Or, like now, managing to get myself to sleep).

After Mecon I started all enthusiastic to outline my novel, but I stalled brutally around the middle of chapter three and can't force myself to go on.

About a week ago I got a sudden illumination for a character in another novel I have been writing - well, that I have been starting - since forever. I have tried and tried to pick it up, to no avail. Last Friday I kicked myself out of the house with a notebook, intending to go into a Starbucks and write. I made it to the Starbucks but I was tired and I had bought the latest issue of Harper's... and no writing was done.

Today I managed to inch a little closer to a liveable living room (my house is getting organized by painful, slow inches) and while I was sitting there admiring it and seeing the sky turn yellow in pink through the trees, I thought, I could write here.

Yeah, I could. But I won't. I suppose I could try giving myself an hour each day, turning off the house network and make an effort. But should I? Maybe when my brain really, truly does not want to write, it's useless to force it. Maybe the writing will come back, as it has done again in the past.

Woke up with the stupid right eye feeling painy. The allergy has returned, go figure. Maybe the plum eyeliner I used yesterday is not as non-allergenic as advertised. Ah well. It didn't suit me anyway.

In other news, my coin wallet was indeed in the car. No such luck with the makeup bag - called the pub, they say they don's see it there, but to call later when the staff that works Saturdays is there. Sigh.

Indeed, I realize that despite annoyances and stuff, I am pretty cheerful and happy these days. I think the nice and ordered bedroom plays quite a role in this. But in general, I go to work humming, I don't mind the job so much, I enjoy my life.

I still have to avoid thinking about some things, but this is proving easier to do.

Also, yesterday my ex's father has written an email to me. I was terribly touched. I split with him four years ago and his folks still remember me with affection. (As do I, btw). I wish I had managed to stay friends with my ex. I loved him a lot, and we didn't split because of any lack of affection. I wish his wife were able to get over her resentment of me, but I guess it just wasn't in the cards.

papersky, I wanted to write a long thingie about religion in the comments to one of your posts, but it was yesterday and I had to go to work and today my eye is too painful to write long. Sigh. I hope I'll come back to it.

Anna has taken a deep deep breath and enrolled in a course in Introductory Counseling at Birbeck University, starting October 4, every thursday evening from 6.30 to 8.30, details which i'm posting here cos I'm likely to forget them.

My God I did it. Didn't think I'd ever got around to it. (Does a brief dance and faints)

So, yesterday's news: my mom is apparently being molested by her physiotherapist. She started telling me cackling how this old guy sat beside her on the gurney and while he was reading her doctor's referral letter started caressing her knee and thighs. It was pretty obvious that she was upset but she was trying to put a "funny" spin on it. I was not amused. I felt sick, angry and helpless. She doesn't want to make a fuss about it, doesn't want to complain, the best I could get from her is that if she'll see how things go next time and in case she will ask for another therapist.

I am quite upset about this.

I went to see the psychiatrist yesterday. She listened to me very sympathetically, told me again that I am "articulate", "very psychologically minded", "well informed" and all the rest. She told me that she thinks I need to go on lithium. She's the second one to have this opinion, my other psychiatrist, in Italy, long ago, also thought I needed lithium. At the time I just ignored him, but this time I have no choice. She prescribed a course of tests I am to take, and then we'll see.

So I went to my practice, because their phone was always engaged. No appointments for today with any doctor. Tomorrow they are closed. I showed them the tests, and they said that a nurse can do them - first early morning appointment, 22 June. My follow-up with the psychiatrist is on the 21st. I insisted and they booked me an appointment for next wednesday, at midday. I will have to remember to fast.

Coming away I collected this leaflet about cuts to Brent Council medical services. Apparently, contraception is being cut 40%, physiotherapy is only for acute cases, podiatry (i.e. cutting old people's toenails when they can't do it so that they don't become bedridden) is going away, and so is adult mental health - oh, and alcohol services.

All things for which people can easily go private, of course. Alcoholists, adult schizophrenic and bedridden old geezers all have good medical insurance. And/or cash to spare.

I listen to "Today in Parliament" every night going to work, so I had happened to have listened to Patricia Hewitt telling everybody in her schoolmistressy voice how glorious were the advances of the NHS the other day, and consequently came home shaking with fury.

I came home and phoned my parents and learned that my uncle Carlo died this morning, in his bed. He was alone with my aunt Lio, who apparently knows who the one to rely on in my family is, and called my mom. My mom went there (good thing that she has recently started walking again) and helped out.

She instructed me to call aunt Lio, who is my godmother. We are not really close, in fact I hardly know her, but the truth is, I really, really am not in a good place for a condolences phone call right now. I told my mom and she got angry at me - as usual, she thought I was trying to be excused, while I was only asking for support and help. (My mom also reacted to my very, very censored account of Wiscon with "You asked for it" and to the news that I got late to the Ton last night and most people had already gone with "But you always do!")

She asked me what plans I had for the weekend. I couldn't very well tell her Bjorn The Swede is in town, so I mumbled something. Truth is, I may well be too tired for Bjorn the Swede anyway.

Just arrived.

Trip started last night at 3.30 am. Stepped on dog poo as first thing. Wondered why the hell I smelled so badly all the way to Heathrow.

I think my life can leave off this pathetic efforts at comedy RIGTH NOW. They are not, I repeat, NOT cheering me up.

Had dinner twice with Roberto, Doug and Roberto's mom. This is one of those cases when you get lucky, because a very good friend of yours finds a partner and you get along with the partner like a house on fire and find him GREAT company. Doug is great, although Roberto complains that he lives with the only New Zealander on the planet who is obsessed with the Pope, keeps a constat Pope watch, and then complains to Roberto.

This led us to discuss the latest Italian underground hot news - as in, the news that the media refuse to discuss, in this case a documentary from the BBC, aired last year, about how the Vatican has a written policy to obfuscate, obstruct and resist any enquiry into child abuse by its clergy. The video hasn't been shown on Italian TV, but some people of good will have subtitled it in Italian. It is causing quite a stir.

I have had another of those "How glad I am I escaped" moments.

Yesterday also Paolo came over to help me hang the mirror and add the remaining shelves to the bookcase. I was enormously grateful - hanging the mirror was harder than we both thought but adding the shelves, which is a matter of sweating and swearing a lot if done alone, is a breeze in two.

Today I went for a run in Regent's Park, which was glorious despite the gloomy weather and the throng of people. Must get back with a camera.

At 4.09 am, after several cups of rose tea that Whittard ambushed me into buying, I have produced 578 words. Probably crappy, but hey. Words are words.

I also washed all the dishes, and tried to take photographs of smoke. It didn't work very well. Must study more.

I still read the italian SF mailing list, but I try like hell not to write in it. It's fruitless and only causes trouble.

Today there was the nth recurrence of The Theme: Who killed Italian SF? Answers, variously: the problem is that Italian SF follows too much "established English-language models", or that it does not. Is Italian SF resolutely anti-american?

What I would have said, if I could speak, would be: you seem to use American and English as interchangable terms. Do you really see no difference? And what, pray, exactly ARE these models that you are talking about?

But I won't. The only result would be a concerted attack against me, as usual. Nobody bothers to discuss with me, they either attack me or ignore me - it's been like that for a long, long time. I used to be popular in Italy, then something happened. Probably my fault, I suppose.

I'm tired. My life has been on hold for so long. I can't really sustain an intellectual discussion, my writing is on hold, I am not learning anything from it because I do not have the energy to do any of it. A friend of mine who found Flickr at about the same time as I did has turned in these two years into a splendid, wonderful photographer. He has way more talent than me, but he also progressed in these two years, learning, trying, experimenting, while I was trying to deal with my life, trying not to be sucked under.

I'm tired, and I feel wasted, I feel shackled to this unhappiness like it was an iron ball in a dark underground cell.

There is an old alpine song about the Captain's last will. He asks his company to gather around his deathbed and for his body to be cut in five pieces, each given to one of the things he loves: his mother, his lover, his country, his company, his mountains "that they may cover it in roses and flowers".

Although from a fight-against-the-illusions-of-plurality this may be a bad thing, yesterday I realized that there are many different, contradictory and sometimes warring aspect to my heartbreak.

There is the pain of losing one's life foundation, that bedrock of happiness that makes everything else bearable. That is by far the hardest part. It is an incurable pain and no assurances that it will get better touch it. Yes, things will get better, but what they won't do is get as good as they were. I had that bedrock for the first time in my life and though people make optimistic noises about finding it elsewhere, I know there are no assurances that I will. That part of me resents the fact that my love did not have to endure this when he broke up with me, and resents his still having it. This is not a nice reaction, but it is what it is.

Then there is the loss of that one individual person, and I could touch that pain very clearly yesterday. I had forgotten how much I liked him: how beautiful I found him (yes, I can hear my gay London friends cackling. Tsk, tsk. You lack the right eyes.), how funny, how kind, how much I liked his soft mannerisms, his clear brown eyes, his goofy way of turning theatrically when he makes a joke. How much he made me laugh. How much I made him laugh. How much his earnestness would pierce me. That is the part of me that liked him long before we were lovers, long before I thought we might be, the part of me that would go to his panels and spend time talking to him at parties. The part of me that took a photograph of him because I just had to catch him. That is also something that no assurances that I will Find Someone Else do anything to assuage. I have lost him, and I liked him so much. That part of me is comforted by the fact that I know, for sure, that he liked me just as much. There might be a time when I will have him back for as much as this part is concerned - the only bit I will get back - but it will never be for as much time as I craved.

Then there's the hunger part of me. The part that craved sex with him, the part that felt that it was the first good sex I had ever had, the part that could have long chats about sex with him and not feel unclean afterwards, the part that felt that talking to him about sex was better than a lot of real-world physical fucks. That part got a real bad whopping at the Citadel two nights ago, and not in a good way.

Then there's the part that loved him, the part that wanted to cuddle him, stroke his beard, hug him, comfort him, shower him with gifts, reassure him, protect him. That part is happy that he's not in as much pain as I am, but is outnumbered and outvoted. It's a soft, squishy part, which people might call wussy and weak, and it is there hunkering a corner, trying to feel compassion for him - and others - in very difficult times. I would call it the best part of me, where it not that there are, of course, no parts of me.

And finally there's the part that missed his world, this community, this people, this way of living. Who misses going to a party on the other side of the world and being able to talk about common friends. Who misses being able to talk about poly perverts and actually finding people who nod instead of going "but he was married! Of course it didn't work out!" I know that lots of people will tell me "but you can come visit anyway!" but I would be a visitor. I wanted to belong. There was no way I could have moved here, but I thought I would visit a lot. I can get that online, a little bit, and at cons, but it will never be the same thing as sitting in a room and laughing at Nixon jokes surrounded by my books and my people. I will miss this city.

And that makes five, like the captain's body parts. I suppose I can trust the Bay Area to do the roses and flowers thing. It still will be a burial.

I love this place, it's vibrant, full of life, cheerful. If I lived here, I would probably be happy, although I do love London more. But, yes, the Bay Area - one of my favourite places in the world.

And yet it keeps being associated with so much heartbreak for me.

As I was going to Millbrae on the Caltrain, I thought of when I was here with Emiliano. In a way I was happy - I'd never been to SF, I loved it, I had friends here, the drive down had been more beautiful than anywhere I'd seen before. But we were breaking up. I tried my best to ignore this fact, thinking that it was better in any case to have these last few days together, and I guess because the high of Clarion still hadn't dissipated. I tried my best to give Emiliano everything I could, affection, sex, good food, a new suitcase when his disintegrated. I tried but I failed. We went to Berkley because he had wanted to see Berkley and I assumed he would be interested in the campus. I also thought he'd be pleased to see one of my Clarion mates who lived there, because, well, because he was an interesting guy and a local guide and all that.

But Emiliano hated my Clarion mate. He was horribly disappointed with Berkley. It wasn't what he had expected, he didn't care for the campus, he - I don't know. He was cross and impatient and he asked for the car keys and went away on his own.

Thinking back, I feel guilty. I tried my best, but to his eyes, I was probably incredibly cruel. He was in agony, waiting for me to decide wether I wanted to split up or not, and I acted as if I was enjoying my holiday with no consideration for his feelings.

I don't know. The fact is, I did love him, and the thought of leaving him was intolerable. I knew I couldn't do anything else but I couldn't go through with it. I was probably selfish, inconsiderate. Looking back I realize now how much he loved me, and how much I had let him love me, avoiding as much as I could to face the fact that I just didn't love him as much as that.

So all here, the BART, the city, the airport, the light... all of it feels like old, sad pain. And now a new layer of new, sad pain is superimposed. Now it's the small oak trees in the street names signs that hurts me, and the name of the BART stations.

I guess it's a testament to how much I love this city that I still find happiness in seeing it pass by the window...

As far as she knew, her sister had never before had a happy love affair, one which wasn't a case of one loving an the other permitting the loving, but mutual pleasure and happiness.

I read sentences like this in Ruth Rendell's books and I know, I just know, that it isn't going to end well. And I ask myself, why do I read them? Well, I read them for sentences like that: for the pitiless nailing of misery and wonder and tragedy that is life.

Yes, that's what it was for me: a lot of one loving and the other permitting the loving, often me doing the loving except in the case of Emiliano. And then this and... that's why it hurts so much.

In one sense I am much more lucky than other people with depression. Take Emma Thompson, for example. Last time I was in John Lewis, I picked up their in-store magazine and there she was, beautiful, shining, smiling. Happily married, successful, charismatic, lovable, defying her age with character and charm. It is from other sources that I happen to know that her life is devoured by depression, smothered, faded, switched off.

There are plenty of people suffering from depression who seem to have everything. The have successful careers, loving spouses, beautiful children. And yet something mysterious descends on them, inflicting this unfair, horrible pain on them.

I am luckier because my depression has a single, well-defined source, loneliness. And when I am not lonely, when I have a companion, I am not depressed. I may be violently unhappy but not depressed. And when I sink into this dreadful hole of pain and grief, it is only through one cause, loss of love.

However it is, I went out today, gladly accepting ladymoonray's invitation to go out and have a coffee, so that I could avoid being home around 2:45, the time I used to chat with my lover. He wouldn't have turned up, because even if I hadn't told him to stay away today would have been a very busy day - but I would still have waited and hoped. So it was a good thing that I was away. It is less a good thing that I now can check my email when I'm out, and see every time I emerge from the tube that no mail from him has come. Of course not: I told him to keep away. But I still hope. I still check my email. I still wait.

I suppose in time it will get better. It's pretty awful now, with plenty of things that remind me of him, plenty of books that I would like to buy for him, plenty of things that I would like to talk to him about. In a sense, I feel unfair to him, because I mourn the happiness I had more than I mourn him. He is, after all, always there, the same funny witty and nice guy I knew before.

But there is the other thing - when we will emerge from this, if we indeed do (well, if I do), and we go back to being friends - it will be being "just" friends. There will be much that will be lost, the closeness, the intimacy, the warmth. No matter how much good friends we will be, that will be gone. My lover will be gone. And if he loved me less than I loved him, if he loved me less than I thought, in the end he did love me, and he did try to help me in these last few weeks, as best he could. I feel that he deserves better than to be reduced to the status of "one of my exs", I feel that disloyal to him by trying so hard to stop loving him. And yet that is what I have to do. It not only hurts, it feels... unfair.

I survived "Deep Water", which I enjoyed less than I thought because I knew the story already. I think I might even survive "The Water's Lovely," although right now i dread all my perceptions of how's really screwed up and who will end up losing everything in this particular story. Why do I read Ruth Rendell? Barbara Vine's books are not always terribly harrowing, but I found that the books she writes as Rendell tend to be. But the truth is, I can hardly put this book down, and right now that is very welcome.

I went to the Tun but it was hell. The room downstairs was book by somebody else, and we had the little room upstairs, impossibly tiny and very noisy. I couldn't hear myself think, I couldn't find a place to sit down to eat, and I spent too much time crying in my pie. I didn't want to go on crying in my beer, so I got up and left. It was good to see people, but I would have preferred to be able to talk to them. Tonight, however, I was too down to be able to do the cheerful act.

I came back and wrote an email breaking up contact with my love. I still love him, and I still miss him, but this business of being friends isn't working out. It's making me suffer a lot worse than I would. Sometimes it helped, and sometimes it was just agony. Today is was an agony day, and I can't take it any longer. I can't help going over and over and over the reasons we split, because I can't make sense of them, I can't get over them. And I can't go on waiting for him. It's killing me. So's the never dying hope he'll change his mind.

This will hurt like fuck in the next few days. I'll keep waiting and hoping anyway, for him to come back and beg me to change my mind, which will not happen, of course.

Besides, I thought that since this it going to be the ghastliest most horrible and painful Christmas of my life so far, I might as well pile it on and get it over with. I have bought Blindsight, to boost sales, and I might as well read it. I think I will also go to see the depression circumnavigator movie tomorrow.

Meanwhile... just think about me, please. It will help.