Okay. I've almost made it through one whole work week. Inner humor tells me I only have to do this 9 more times before I know the answer!

ha ha.

No, actually, I'm TRYING not to count. I don't think I should talk to anyone else either, though. I feel so supersensitive to advice. First my friend's pep-talk-email made me feel very positive, and then another friend kept telling me this was about my own work and he felt the chances are very slim. I can't do this whole roller-coaster thing in my head. I'm not sure I understood the second guy. I think I am doing my own work... and I'll be doing a lot more of it when my therapist gets back from vacation.

What the second person was trying to do was to encourage me to look at why this was happening for me, and what stuff it was bringing up for me. The answer, I suppose, is about me having no control. That I always believed someone couldn't love me unless I'm right there to remind them. I kind of believe that once I am out of sight, I'm out of mind. That there's nothing special about me to remember. Of course, my rational, adult-self knows this is not true, but there is a deeper, younger part of me that really believes it. Totally insecure. So here I am in a position where I can't do any reminding. I really just have to let go and let Frank come back if he wants to come back, not even wish for him to come back against his will and play the pretend-game. That really wouldn't be fair. And there's no way to pick up like that, pretending... there would always be questions and pain and hurt... we can't go backwards now.

I'm reiterating to myself what my intention was around this... to let Frank have space. So he could figure stuff out. Heal what he needs to.

His life after that may or may not include me. There are a lot of questions, reasons and feelings that would go along with that. But I guess that's really not the point. For him. The rest is all my stuff to deal with.

Today I have a terrible headache. I think I might go to the movies.

I am trying as best I can to be honest with myself. Sometimes I hear my own words, the way I frame things, and I think, "Oh no, I sound just like those women who are fooling themselves." Because I think women are sooo great about it. I don't know, maybe it's a human thing and men do it too. But I notice it a lot in women.

A friend of mine who's having an affair with a married man. He gives her nothing emotionally, but somehow she manages to twist and sculpt any tidbit, a normal, everyday sentence into some indication that he truly cares about her. All the while she insists that what she wants is no attachments, she's fine with the arrangement, but I see a different longing in her eyes. I hear her telling me the story that maybe she herself wants to believe. I watch her frantically checking her messages for some sign of him, this relationship that's not supposed to matter so much.

Another friend that cheats on her man... instead this time she has ways to justify it, how she isn't really DOING anything wrong, because really, he isn't giving her this or that... or somehow in her mind she has found a free-zone where it's okay... her logic is boggling to me, I don't understand how it can be love and how she can consider herself an honest person. She insists it's the men that play all the games, but refuses to see herself as part of the dance.

How do I fool myself? What stories do I tell in my loudest, convincing voice, not only to sway those around me into believing, but really, at the heart of it, to convince myself?

Don't know. Maybe, that things were better than they were. In truth, Frank was always hard to get to. There were many ways in which he was reluctant to commit. He likes to spend a lot of time alone. On one level I could understand, because I like alone time, but on another I was always wishing he had more of a desire to spend time with me. Just more of a longing... more of a passion... about being with me. Instead, I started to feel like an accessory, or maybe a chore that needed doing. Like a child that needed attending to, rather than someone who he couldn't wait to have fun with.

That's one truth.

I guess another is that Frank is just more closed than me. Sometimes if I wanted to do a social thing, I felt like I would have to beg and plead. I felt like he really didn't like my family and sometimes my friends.

I guess I just felt like this is what we were dealt with, and I could live with it. But sometimes it did make me really agitated or really sad, like when he wouldn't even think about calling me. I felt like I didn't cross his mind that often. After all, do I want to be with someone where I constantly feel like I have to do the work of exciting him? Why can't he just be excited by who I am, without me having to jump through hoops? I'm not hard to look at. I wear good underwear. I'm funny and smart, you know, all those things, blah blah.

I know this will sound so conceited, but it's true. That many of the men that I know, who I am friends or aquaintances with, have expressed an attraction to me. Have wanted to date/relate/sleep with me at one point or another.

Except for my boyfriends. How ironic. Cause those are the ones I pick. The last two, before Frank, were pretty clear about not wanting any emotional involvement, they just wanted sex. With Frank, I felt like I was getting the whole package. Until I found out I wasn't really getting anything:

heart: blocked. questionable.

sexual attraction: blocked by fear, faked. extreme stress.

"But I really love you as a friend."

Oh god. That sentence makes me want to puke out my guts in all colors of the rainbow. Please write it on a card if you have to say it. But my ears do not want to hear it. It is indeed the most vile thing to hear when you wish for something else.

So today, I'm just going to try and sit in honesty.

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