So, I wanted to take back what I said about Shawn being the worst thing to ever happen to me.  He isn't.  That's the truth.  I loved him and I loved my life with him and I was happiest when I was with him.  If I had never met him I would have missed out on a lot of things.  I had four great years of having a constant companion, someone who was always there and made me laugh and smile.  As much as all of this sucks and as much as I'm hurting I wouldn't give back the time I spent with him.

I wonder how he feels when he thinks of me.  He has to think of me from time to time.  He has to remember that I exist.  He either feels extremely guilty for what he did or he doesn't care at all.

God, I miss him.  Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that a year really isn't that long and it would be over before I knew it, so I wouldn't have freaked out as much.  But I don't know that that would have changed anything.  Shawn probably would have lied, lost his mind, and broken up with me anyway.  And I know there is absolutely nothing I can do to change anything that happened, but I can't help but wonder what would happen if I had reacted differently.

I hope when he comes home, which I think will be soon, that he contacts me.  I have such a severe need to talk to him.  He has absolutely no idea how much what he did affected me.  I honestly don't know if I will be able to move on if I can't ever talk to him again.

I had a weird morning.  I woke up around 5 am from crazy dreams.  It took me a long time to get back to sleep.  I just laid awake for a long time thinking about things.  I remember most of what I dreamt about and I'm pretty sure Shawn wasn't present in my head last night, so that's something.  Maybe.

In other news - tomorrow is Halloween and Odin is recycling his shark fin from last year.  This year Watson also has a fin and is joining him.  It's going to be adorable.

I hung out with Steph last night.  We got Moe's and fro-yo while Odin got a haircut.  He looks pretty handsome.

"I like you a lot because you're comfortable in your own skin, and you're confident but also really chill... in a way that I used to be and have been trying to get back to. If ya change your mind, feel free to pop back in. Otherwise, be sure to take those traits with you."

Part of Dave's response back to me when I told him I couldn't see him anymore. It made me cry. He really is a great guy.


I had a small breakdown on Friday when I got home and mom and I talked about how I was feeling. I still feel so lost and confused. If I let myself think too hard about things I just fall apart mentally. I would love to have one day where I don't think about Shawn or what he did or what I don't have anymore.  

Mom doesn't think talking to him would help me feel any better. I do. I just have so many questions and even after all this I still want to see him. 

These are feelings I don't know how to get rid of. It's so easy for some people to just turn the feelings off and move on, but it's not for me. It's going to take me a 
long time before I feel okay about things.

I feel like I'm running out of time. By the time I'm 30 I would love to be married. I feel like I wasted four years with a person who turned out to be the worst thing that ever happened to me. I've never felt pain like this before. I wouldn't take back those years with him, though. I'm not sure where I'd be right now without having him in my life. Maybe I'd be with someone else who is wonderful. Maybe I'd be just as alone. I'll never know.

I just want to talk to Shawn. I know I should want nothing to do with him. But I just want to talk to him. I don't understand why he can't at least give me that.

...and FX is running a marathon of all the Paranormal Activity movies, which make me think of Shawn because we loved these movies and always saw them in the theater when they came out then rented the DVDs.

Seriously. This is pathetic.

I hate what Shawn has done to me.

I've been hanging out with Dave.  We went out again on Monday for dinner then tonight he came over and we walked Odin and got pizza.  He came in the house and hung out for a while.  We sat on the couch together.  He put his arm around me.

All I kept thinking about was how weird it all felt and how I didn't think I wanted it and how I was looking forward to him saying it was time for him to leave.  He never said it, so I eventually told him I was tired and wanted to go bed soon.  I felt relieved when he left.

Then I spent the last hour being sad, confused, and crying.  If that's not the theme of this year, I don't know what is.

I just can't do this dating stuff.  It feels so forced and I keep meeting these really nice guys who really like me and I think I like them, but then I end up feeling this exact same way.

I still miss Shawn SO much.  I wish I didn't.  I wish I could just turn off everything I ever felt for him and move on, but I can't.

He lied to me, he left me, he treated me horribly.  Why do I still think about him all the time?  Why do I still wish I had him in my life.

I'm really messed up.

Dave and I went out on Wednesday night.

I almost canceled.  We planned to meet at a coffee place at 7:30.  When I got out of work I started crying as soon as I got into my car.  I'm still stuck in this place where I am afraid to move on and I think about how much I hate that this is where I am right now.  It's so, incredibly scary to start over.  I just get so stressed about it that I almost make myself sick.  I also get so mad at Shawn for doing this to me.  I am where I am because of him.  I know he was able to move on quickly, so quick he couldn't even break up with me first.  It's not easy for me.  Not at all.  And it's his fault I feel so bad about myself.

I knew Shawn so well.  I shared everything with him and I was so comfortable in my life with him.  It's so hard to imagine starting over completely with someone else and getting to the point where I was with him.  So going out on dates is scary.  Everyone tells me not to make a big deal about it, but I can't help it.  It IS a big deal.

But I made myself go.  I stopped crying, got dressed, and met him outside the coffee place. We ordered drinks and sat and talked for two and half hours, until the place closed.  

Of course I walk away from this not knowing how I feel about it.  But I feel like this was a good thing.  I feel like I like him.  I feel like he was easy to talk to for the most part and he made me laugh and it was nice to get out and meet a new person.  He already started talking about seeing me again about an hour into it.  I agreed.  So we're going out again next week sometime.

Have I mentioned how scary this is?  Because he liked me enough to ask me to do something again and he has been texting me, so apparently I'm not as boring or awkward as I think I am.

But I'm still sad.  I still dream about Shawn almost every night and I still want to talk to him and get closure.  I wish he would just give me that so I could move on completely.  But he won't because he doesn't care about me anymore.  He hasn't for a long time.  

In other news, Heather and I went to a spinning class on Tuesday.  That was interesting.  We're going again next week.  I'd really love to get into better shape.  I'm afraid with the cold weather coming and the days getting shorter I'm just going to let myself be lazy, but I want to stay active.

Mom is coming up tomorrow, but I have to work on Sunday.  Meh.

Odin was being very cuddly tonight and I tried to get a picture of it.  Not very good, but you get the gist.  He's a good boy.  I know I talk about him a lot, but he has been a constant source of happiness in my life this year.  If nothing else, at least I got him out of my relationship with Shawn.  I know Shawn doesn't miss me, but I wonder if he ever misses Odin.

Cause these words are knives and often leave scars, the fear of falling apart

This is one of the biggest reasons I hate being alone.  I have nothing to distract me so I start thinking about things and worrying.

I know I just renewed this lease, but my landlord made the new lease only go until June, not August.  Even though she hasn't said it, I'm afraid that come next year she's going to tell me that she will need the rent to go back up to its original price.

I love this house and this area.  I feel so safe here and after having horrible apartment experiences in the last few years, I never want to go back to apartment living.  But I know if I move away from here that's what I'll have to do.  I do not want to move.

I know I have a lot of time left before the lease is up, but I can't help but think about it.  I guess if she wants the rent to go up next year I'll just have to find a way to pay it.

So this got me worrying about money and wondering if I could get a better rate on my cable/internet bill which I currently have with Time Warner.  Chris and Lindsey have Verizon Fios, so I gave them a call, but they don't service this area so I couldn't get a quote.

I was so set to get that quote from Fios and call Time Warner and be all "Hey!  Give me my services for this much or I'm leaving!" But nope.

Ugh.  Money.  I need more of it.

Sarah came up today.  We went to lunch and then took a long walk around campus like the good old days.  I miss her.  I miss just being able to text her to hang out and go for walks.  I'm also kinda jealous of her life.  She's doing things!  She moved to Brooklyn with her boyfriend and he seems like such a good guy and I just want what they have.

I almost messaged Shawn tonight.  Why I even think about doing it, I don't know.  I know it won't matter.  I still just want to talk to him so bad.

This year has gone by so quickly.  I was thinking about it today.  A year seems like such a long time, but it really isn't.  If I hadn't freaked out about Shawn leaving and acted like a year was nothing, would he still have acted the way he did?  Would he have freaked out too?  Would I have gone out there to visit him like we planned?  Would we still be together and skyping every night and be excited that he'd be back next month right now?

I know he probably had a lot more going on in his head at the time.  Some deep seeded issues and that no matter what we probably would have ended up apart eventually.  But I can't help but think of how things could have gone differently.  What I could have done differently.

All my fears of him leaving were justified though.  What happened is exactly what I was afraid would happen if he left.  Wasn't it okay for me to be scared of what this trip meant for our relationship when in fact it did end it?  How can his mom have zero sympathy for me?  I was dusting the bedroom today and saw the jewelry box she gave me years ago.  The top of it has a picture frame and she put a picture of me and Shawn on it.  So at some point she cared about me.  I have no idea what he told her that made her not like me or show me any kind of compassion through all of this.

He didn't know how to handle things.  He still doesn't or else I would have heard from him by now.  Mom thinks he doesn't contact me because he doesn't want to hurt me more than he already has.  I think he doesn't want to contact me because I don't matter to him anymore.  He just doesn't care.  If he cared he wouldn't have let his mother treat me the way she did.

God, how many times am I going to hash this out and say the same things over and over again?  Why am I letting him win?

In a way I feel like he ruined me.  It's like he punched me in the gut and ran away so he didn't have to see the pain he caused, so he didn't have to see what he did to me and he found someone else to distract him and that made it even easier to ignore what he did.

I want to come out of this stronger and a better person for it.  I just wish that would happen sometime soon.

Can someone make the dreams go away?  I swear I'll never move on if I keep dreaming about him.  I don't even remember the dreams that well, but I know he's in them and I feel like my life is normal again.  Then I wake up feeling close to him, but I'm not.  He's not here.  Seven months later and I still can't believe he isn't here.

I need to move on, but I don't know how.  I don't know how to not constantly think about what he did.  I know I'll never get over it, but I need to find a way to just accept it and not dwell on it.  It's just so hard to accept that someone I knew so well, shared a life with, and loved so much could just drop me like I was nothing.

Here I go dwelling on it again.  So time to talk about other things.

The doctor called yesterday to tell me the results of my echocardiogram.  According to her I have a perfect heart.  Everything is normal.  So, good to know.  Since everything came back normal and I feel fine I'm just going to write off passing out last week as a fluke.

Sarah is coming up this weekend!  I'm excited to see her.  I know I saw her last Friday, but this time we'll be able to hang out just the two of us and I've missed that.

Tomorrow is Friday.  I like Fridays.

Yay good things.

I told Dave this weekend wouldn't work for rock climbing, but we could do it another time.    So we'll see what happens with that.

Update!

Well, its been an interesting week.

I started to feel sick last Monday.  Nothing too serious, I could just feel my throat getting sore.  I worked the whole day and then went with Heather to look at an apartment downtown.  When she dropped me off back home I felt even worse, I just knew I was getting sick.  So when I woke up on Tuesday I decided to take the day off since I have a ton of sick time left that I'm going to lose at the end of the year, so why not.  I spent Tuesday on my couch watching Breaking Bad.

I finished Breaking Bad, by the way.  Amazing show.  I already miss it and it just came into my life.  I'm also forming something of a crush for Aaron Paul.  New developments!

...anyway!  I woke up on Wednesday thinking I felt better.  I took some vitamin C and two dayquil and went to work.  About an hour in, in the middle of a conversation (about gross stuff like one of co-workers telling a story about his friends sister cutting her leg open, so much that he could see bone) I felt myself starting to feel light headed and I just remember thinking that I wish they would stop talking about this really gross stuff.  My vision started to darken and then I blacked out.  I woke up on the floor.

According to my co-workers I was only out for about 10 seconds.  They had called the on-campus emergency people.  I felt fine as soon as I woke up.  I could have stood up right then, but they wouldn't let me.  I had to wait.  When they showed up I got asked a million questions (my favorite was "who is the president?") and then I was basically forced to go to the hospital.  I did not want to go.  I was dead set against it.  But the 20 EMTs who for some reason all had to report to my fall and all of my co-workers told me I needed to go.  I finally agreed, but refused to let them take me out in a stretcher.  They let me walk to the ambulance.

So what followed was me being real moody because I felt absolutely fine, but was being forced to go to the hospital.  I cried.  I wanted to be anywhere but there.  I got asked the same questions over and over and had my blood pressure taken probably about 50 times.

I found myself wanting Shawn.  As I laid there crying, miserable, I wanted him to be there.  Which is messed up.  But I know it's the guy I used to know that I wanted there.  Not the guy who probably couldn't care less that I passed out at work and was in the hospital.  Like honestly...he wouldn't care.  If this were something serious and my mom sent him an e-mail or something, he wouldn't respond.

Anyway!  Off of that tangent.  I also wanted my mom and of course she came.  I was out of the hospital by the time she got up here, though.  My brother came, which surprised me because I didn't even know he knew what happened, but mom told him.  He drove me home and watched Breaking Bad until mom got there.

Every test they did on me came back normal.  The doctor couldn't find a reason for why I passed out.  She did recommend I get an echocardiograph done, which I did today.

So today was my first real day back at work since last Monday.  I took the rest of last Wednesday off, obviously.  Heather told me to not come in on Thursday, so I didn't and Friday I had already taken off to go to the city for Sarah's art show.

Friday was really fun.  Nicole and I took the train into the city and met up with our friend Jesse.  I never get to see Jesse and I miss him, so it was great to spend a whole day with him and Nicole, two very good friends that I don't see enough of.  We ate lunch, had ice cream, walked all over the place.  We went to Brooklyn for Sarah's show and it was a good time.  Sarah and Jesse really hit it off and I think might become friends after this!  It was so great to see her and be there to support her and it was also a wine tasting, so we got to drink wine for free (not all that exciting for me, but Jesse and Nicole loved it).  After Sarah's show we went back into the city and I ate Thai food for the first time ever at a place called Spice.  It was delicious and I've been craving it ever since.

Nicole and I didn't get home until almost 2 am.  I was dead tired and on Saturday I felt terrible.  I even napped!  I never nap.  Yesterday was more of the same.  Today I felt a lot better.

...and that's what I've been up to.

Oh, I've also started talking to a guy named Dave.  He wants to go rock climbing this weekend.  I haven't said yes or no yet.

Picture time!  Me with Jesse and Nicole on Friday.