Dear Diary,

Well not much has happened since yesterday... I had a fitful night's sleep at Bethany's, and a lot of weird dreams. I remember dreaming I was at some kind of family gathering wearing nothing but a pair of panties. Slightly embarrassing...

In any case, Bethany got up to go on her lunch date, and told me I could stay there and sleep. When I finally got up at about 1pm, I saw that she'd left a bowl and cereal out for me... how sweet. I ate, and did all of Bethany's dishes, and got my stuff together and headed home.

I talked to Gail for a while on the way home. Gail has hooked back up with her friend Mica- they had a falling out some time ago and it was the end! But now they are talking again. Mica's husband asked for a divorce. Now Gail and Mica want to get a cabin by the lake for a few days this summer, and go away with Just Girls. They definitely want me to come, even if I can't afford it, and said I can pay what I can afford. Since Mica is well-off due to her marriage, and Gail is living rent-free with her ex-husband and tends to make more money that me anyway... it all makes sense.

Then Gail started talking about her next plan which is to get a house with a group of women and she is thinking her, Mica and me... and she thinks it would be awesome and there's so many things we could do and business opportunities and it would be great... ugh, do I need to say that my skin crawls at the idea of living with anyone ever again?

That doesn't mean I think people are dirty or disgusting- it just means I cannot share my space. I am still recovering from Keith being here so long, and in truth I think I still have some anger that; 1) he broke a bunch of my glasses, 2) he took home a magazine from my bathroom without asking me, 3) other things are missing or misplaced, 4) I am just plain fucking traumatized from him being here, taking up space, making messes that I had to clean up after him. (I have actually not called Keith in over a month and I really have a resistance to talking to him... I've just had... ENOUGH of Keith. Really. That's how I am).

And I have a theory about this anyway- Gail just doesn't want to be alone, and this is her latest solution to trying to assuage her own fears. For over 25 years she's had men and/or kids... her kids grew up, she had her own apartment briefly but then Sandra moved in... then Sandra moved out and Gail was still dealing with her Craig drama- my theory is she is just too afraid to be single and alone. Also, I know she worries about money and supporting herself, and I feel this is just another way of trying to protect herself against that.

And, I think if I was going to live with anybody, Gail would be the worst possible person. She is an early riser while I am an insomniac who needs to sleep in. The girl does not have an indoor voice- she is loud- and even when she is trying to be quiet, she is loud. She smokes; I hate cigarettes. She likes to drink a bottle or two of wine once a week or so and turn up the music and "party"; I don't drink at all. She is also drama central. There is always something she is freaking out about, and we always have to talk about her stuff- every month I did the training with her, it was Gail's Monthly Drama. I love the girl, don't get me wrong, and she has been there for me sometimes, through some important things, but I cannot live with her. CANNOT. Do it.

I will probably never live with anyone again until I meet the man of my dreams, and even then I might still need my own room.

This is a topic people have a hard time understanding, but I saw it in a book once and it described people like me, and said our houses are like our second skin. It describes me perfectly. If you disrespect my space, I feel disrespected. I am super sensitive to space and if I don't have enough, I get very agitated. It's nothing personal. I just need my own area.

I basically told Gail I was not interested in that, and her attitude was, "Well we can talk about it this summer," so no doubt I will have to repeat myself- believe me this is not something I can be "convinced" about! Not only that, but if I were going to move, I would move to Petra and Michael's area, or somewhere much nicer, but not to Gail's area.

Came home after that... it was nice to walk into the coolness of my own house and flop on the bed in front of the fan. I was sooo tired... I went for a walk, and got ready for work.

Work was fine and I saw my good friend/colleague, I told him about seeing Smitten and all the info up to date. When I told him about Smitten's behavior at the party, he nodded knowingly and said, "That's how I act when I like a girl and I am nervous." For real? So we talked a bit about the whole Smitten thing and the possible issues that could be holding me back, like my embarrassment about the way he looks-

I know it sounds so fucking shallow, but it's true- I figured out that it has to do with the fact that I have always liked the unconventional, and I dated a lot of weird-looking guys during high school. But I got a lot of flak for it- people would be shocked when they'd ask, "Where's your boyfriend?" I'd say, "Over there..." and they'd say stuff like, "THAT guy?!" Keep in mind this was back in the day before it was "cool" to be different, and I was dating guys with long hair, no hair, piercings and tattoos before that was common or mainstream for people to be doing stuff like that. It really was considered abnormal and bizarre and plenty of people would say something about it.

In any case then something happened to me in college, and my boyfriends just got cuter and cuter. Frank was older than me, but very handsome... women of all ages agreed. Alphie, Don, and M could have all been models, they were so hot. Now, with Smitten, as I have mentioned numerous times, he is no GQ cover, but the more I hang around him, the cuter he becomes to me.

That's really only half of it anyway. Because the other part was being embarrassed about my boyfriends' BEHAVIOR. There were many times when those "inappropriate"-looking boyfriends would open their mouths in public and say the most inappropriate things. That, for me, was what was TRULY embarrassing. I didn't really ever mind the visual not-fitting in part, and maybe I got a little stimulation from it- kind of "fuck-you" to the mainstream- but still in my mind, it was no excuse to be rude. (One particularly embarrassing moment from my junior prom- a song came on that a lot of people were crazy about, a bunch of girls squealed and ran up to dance- my date said sarcastically, "Oh, I'm so excited, I'm gonna cream in my pants," I will never forget the look on my friend Stephanie's face- her eyes were wide and shocked. You just didn't talk that way in front of Stephanie!)

And maybe that's what I'm afraid of- kind of unconsciously- that if I have a boyfriend who looks different, he will embarrass me in public. Seems like it's tied together in my unconscious.

Get over it, Duck! Okay, I will. Maybe I'm grown enough that now I can just say, "Wow, that's really embarrassing/rude/inappropriate, what you just said."

Another thing I talked with my colleague about was that I might have some sadness about transitioning from M to Smitten. Even though Smitten is appealing, there is still some mourning about the fact that things with M were left the way they were, and so there is sadness in the moving forward part. It may not make sense to an average person but I've done so much research about abandonment disorders in the past few months, that it does make sense to me. Situations of loss create so much anxiety, it is well out of proportion to the actual situation because it is about past abandonment trauma. I think I am getting better because on the whole I find myself less "devastated" by life rejections, but there are still a few instances where that anxiety rears its ugly head.

Guess it's just a matter of keep on, keepin' on.

Stayed up too late watching "The L Word". I like it better than QAF because the lesbians are so much more... three- dimensional... they had only two lesbians in QAF and more than anything their relationship was bitchy and flat, and uh, boring. LW has bitchy, drama, and hot sex... so hooray.

Might have to do something constructive now...

Love,
Duck

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