10 of 366

As I was rushing for the elevator yesterday, I saw him get on. It was the back of his head, and then he turned around. I paused, hesitated, but I was already running late. If I'd only taken the road that I always took to the parking garage then I would've never had to see him. If I'd just been on time. Two minutes earlier.

Then I wouldn't have to board an elevator with him and ride it all the way up to the third floor (fourth, actually, because G is the first floor). He didn't even look at me. He didn't pause. He just... kept staring ahead of him.

He'd cut his hair shorter. He'd even shaved, I think. Three bodies separated us, but it felt like miles---the length of the Atlantic Ocean.

A part of me wished, for a moment, that he would turn and say over the three bodies, "Hi Quick! How are ya?"

But he wouldn't. I knew he wouldn't. So I stared ahead of me as well, because he wasn't going to return any sort of wave or hello. I was invisible now, a fly on the wall, and nothing could bridge that Atlantic-sized gap.

---------

Today I found out that I am very personable. Which is a good thing. I like being personable because it gives me a reason to be nice, and bubbly, even when I'm definitely not. I hate this. I want to leave.

Please, let graduation come soon.

5 of 366

It took five days into the new year to look at his facebook profile. Which I only did after looking at Beardman's. I couldn't help it. I just did, and he has a new photo up, and god from one angle he looks so repulsive but then from that one...

I wish he didn't hate me.

I wish we were still friends.

I wish that he believed, as much as I did, that there could have been so much more.

Mom said I'd have a hole from where he was for a long time, and she's right. I'm going to miss him for a while yet. It's going to take more than a Thanksgiving fling, or a summer romance, to get rid of the residue he's left behind. It'll take more than busying myself, deleting his number, moving on, to forget about him at all.

I wish things were a lot easier. I wish I could erase him from me, so that I may have a spotless mind. And not the land-mine that it is today.

2 of 366

Today, I went shopping for bras... and bought a book instead.

An Unexpected Email from my Past Self that Might've Come Through the Twilight Zone

Today, I received an email from futureme.org. I'd forgotten that I even wrote this. It just showed up in my inbox a few minutes ago, a letter from myself ten months ago.

It's sort of surreal, to be quite honest.

___________________________________________

You are stronger than you think. You have found that you are the type of person who is a mediator, who walks her own path and yet who follows when there is an easier walkway. You have sobbed uncontrollably over Wes, and you know that you should never have.

Maybe by now you two have forgiven each other. Maybe you two never will. It doesn't mean life is over. Things are just beginning.

We both know this.

So just snuggle up to your Pepper, and remember that even when things seem the bleakest, they're not. You have yourself, and that's really all you need.

Congratulations, you have survived the year after the Unrequited Five.

___________________________________________

Thank you, past me. Really, thank you.

Chapter 2012

I find that 2011 kicked me in the uterus, but I'm hoping that 2012 will give me a little more respect

"People say friends don't destroy one another.

What do they know about friends?"

Game shows Touch Our Lives, The Mountain Goats

2011 has been a mixture of love and hate. It's been terrible and wonderful in very different ways. While it has filled me with so much joy I could burst, it has also left me hollow in other parts of me, of wont. I don't quite know how to explain it. In the past year I have met my favorite authors---my role models---and yet I have also felt the smallest I ever have. I never knew that one person could make me feel so small and insignificant. 

Looking back on it, I'm not sure what happened. I'm not sure whether I said something, or did something, or perhaps they had put on masks the entire friendship. Perhaps they had smiled and laughed and taken those disgustingly candid photos for my benefit.

Maybe they were just waiting for the right time to exchange me for someone else.

And in the end they did.

I've never felt so small before, so insignificant. At times I thought that I would just disappear into the woodwork and no one would care. Would they care? Would any of them even notice?

In 2011, I learned who I can depend on and who I can't. 

I learned that sometimes you find your best friend had been there all along, while you went skipping after someone else.

I learned that not all great plans pan out, and that sometimes you have to improvise.

I learned that you find opportunity in places you never thought you'd look, but in hindsight you are glad you did.

I learned that tattoos are ideas brandished on your skin, and that when you commit to one you commit to it for life---more so than a marriage or a contract. It's a life goal, and it's a constant reminder.

I learned that not every person you meet on the road is nice, and even the ones you have known for years turn their backs on you.

I also learned that when you open your heart to someone, however easy it is, when they tear themselves away it's not as easy to sew back up. They leave in their wake a hollowness that no matter how you stuff it or sew it up, it always tends to come undone and bleed. You find yourself aching at the smallest thought, the tiniest sliver of a memory. And sometimes it lasts longer than tattoos.

In 2011, I didn't make a resolution. I just went into the year with high hopes, and I end up coming out of it beaten, battered, but still standing. 

I have learned that I am stronger than I first realized, and that while I might not be bold and brash, I have the right amount of gumption I need to survive.

And, above all else, I learned that love covers a multitude of sins.

I'm not sure if I believe in God, but I do believe in something higher. I have a faith now, because I find comfort in the fact that someone is looking after me. Someone up there who takes my hand in the dark and guides me. I am not alone. I am never alone. And whether it be Allah or the Goddess or God or Zeus... whoever, I know that I'm not alone.

So for 2012, I won't make any resolutions again. Instead, I will make a dream list. I want to aspire to something, not check it off my list. And it's high time I do so.

2012 

1. Publish a book.

2. Quit chocolate.

3. Send my family love as much as possible.

4. Work for a good cause.

5. Find my life ambition.