I'm off today.  I never usually take Memorial off but I was stoked things were going well with this guy so I did; now I work Labor Day.  Serves me right I suppose;)  I'm going out with an old friend today, so at least there's that.

All of my friends had babies, so now we have four beautiful PICU babies and I am so excited for all of them.  There are two girls and two boys, and everyone is healthy and beautiful.  I'm so grateful.  

I started making this list for Tom, things I would tell him.  Each happy thing I want to blab, it's so funny.  Like the news about all of the babies.  I'd also tell him that there's a new Beach Boy documentary on disney plus that I really want to see.  I'm such a weirdo. 

In retrospect, I think I fell for someone who didn't fall for me.  The hardest part is getting older and wanting a family so badly.  But at least I have my job, and the ability to love on many patients who don't have enough love of his or her own.  I always think, maybe this is why I found my way to this job.  Maybe this is my calling.  But also I still have so much love to give.  I'll keep trying but it's definitely hard.  There's this lump in my throat and pressure behind my eyes and I just feel so fucking alone.

I went to Poetry Daily's site today and the daily poem was pretty perfect for today:

Barren Trinkets

Lisa Ampleman

Each imagined child is a talisman, Catholic scapularrubbing your neck, piece of felt you must keepin good repair. No, not that easy—they'rethe shrieks on the wind, a playgrounda half mile away and cradled in the valley's acoustics.

from the book MOM IN SPACE / LSU Press

 Not strong enough by boygenius

Can we have an end to the fuckboy era? I'm over it. 

 You liked SNL and the office and music. Fucking music videos! No one likes music videos aside from me, or do I thought. You are obsessed with animals. That was just everything. 

Ugh. You can't be perfect if you're in love with the past. 

today he said:

hey kat 

i'm being honest with you here.  im not ready to start a new chapter in life.  i thought i was.  i really did.  i thought i was healed & moved on from the marriage but im not.  & thats not fair to you.  im sorry for giving you the wrong impression, I never meant for anything bad to come from it.  i just am not healed yet.  i need time to find myself & my own happiness.  i hope you can understand.

i thought we could continue to talk on a more distant level but after this weekend, i dont think thats a good idea anymore.  the best thing is for us to go our own way.  maybe in the future something will come together but right now its not fair to you & not health for either of us to do this.

i wish you all the best you really are an amazing person

The more I reread it, the more I see someone separate from myself.  I missed having a person to do things with, to watch a show with, to hold, and yeah, to fuck.  But I never missed my ex-husband as an individual.  He had treated me badly for years, and in a lot of ways I felt free.  This guy seems like he is hung up on his ex.  But he showed me on the first date to his sister on facetime for fuck's sake and she said he had been so excited to meet me etc.  He kept talking about the future, like tiny things like me seeing while he played guitar, learning about hockey, going to swim.  Like I didn't magically invent thinking he liked me.  And why the heck would you pursue me on match if you weren't serious?  You saw what I was looking for.  To make matters worse, I feel like he's using me as the blame for why we can't talk any longer (since I left a voice recording and sent texts while drunk/high at my friend's wedding), which feels especially cruel.  Like yeah, I was sad, and yeah, I think that was reasonable.  I felt drawn to you.  I thought we had a lot in common.  I liked you and I thought you liked me.  So when I get home from a great vacation and you dump this shit on me it does feel shitty.  Maybe sit with what you did and spend time with it.  I would never do that to someone.  

And never finish with I wish you all the fucking best.  You're an amazing person.  That seems so goddamn insincere.  Like fuck you man.  You stomped on my heart.  I don't have sex with random fucking people.  And who comes in someone in two seconds the first time?  If you ever do talk to me again, I'll teach you how to properly fuck because you did not have a fucking clue.  You even said that the next time you were going to fuck the shit out of me and there was zero follow-through.  Unsurprising because we are talking about the male specimen.  They get off while we get ourselves off.  

Fuck you, Tom. You were so goddamn cool and I wanted to have a fun goddamn summer with you.  I'm so ready to give all of this happiness and love to someone but I didn't want it to be anyone.  You were special. 

 

 listening lately:

Emily I'm Sorry/boygenius

She's asleep in the backseat
Looking peaceful enough to me
But she's waking up inside a dream
Full of screeching tires and fire
We're coming back from where no one lives
Pretty much just veterans
When I pointed out where the North Star is
She called me a fucking liar

Emily, I'm sorry I just
Make it up as I go along
And I can feel myself becoming
Someone only you could want

Headed straight for the concrete
In a nightmare, screaming
Now I'm wide awake, spiraling
And you don't want to talk
Just take me back to Montreal
I'll get a real job, you'll go back to school
We can burn out in the freezing cold
And just get lost

Emily, I'm sorry, baby
You know how I get when I'm wrong
And I can feel myself becoming
Somebody I'm not, I'm not, so
Emily, forgive me, can we
Make it up as we go along?
I'm twenty-seven and I don't know who I am
But I know what I want

Emily, I'm sorry
Emily, I'm sorry
I'm sorry

Favor/Julien Baker

We took the forty down to
Visit the family, and I
Told you, the only kin I knew
Was who I could see from the gurney
I used to think about myself
Like I was a talented liar
Turns out that all my friends were
Trying to do me a favor

I always want to tell the truth
But it never seems like the right time
To be serious enough
I'm sorry, I'm making myself cry
How long do I have until
I've spent up everyone's goodwill?

Sat on the hood, out all night
Trying to scrape together change
You pulled a moth out from the grill of your truck
Saying "It's a shame"
How come it's so much easier
With anything less than human?
Letting yourself be tender
Well, you couldn't make me do it

It doesn't feel too bad, but it
Doesn't feel too good either
Just like a nicotine patch, it
Hardly works, then it's over

Who put me
In your way to find?
What right had you
Not to let me die?
Ooh, but did I even know
What I was asking for?
If I had my way
I'd have missed you more
Than you missed me
You missed me

You missed me
You missed me

Immune/Jensen McRae

Traffic from the East side got me aggravated
Hotter than the day my brother graduated
Wait for hours in the sun
In line at Dodgers Stadium
I'm not scared of dogs or getting vaccinated

Lay the seat back, turn this place into a bed
Someone's smoking in the Camry just ahead
Yeah, I know the irony
Would never be lost on me
You don't have to point it out
Again

What will we say to each other
When the needle goes in?
What will we be to each other
If the world doesn't end?

Radio is static through the Taylor song
Think a college football game is comin' on
God you hate Top 40 shit
But as the sports preempted it
Your mouth in my ear
You hummed along

What will we say to each other
When the needle goes in?
What will we be to each other
If the world doesn't end?

Think the nurse that gave our shots is judging us
Can she tell that we just fucked the friendship up?
As we leave, I turn to you
Ask how it feels to be immune
And you know what I mean a bit too much

What will we say to each other
When the needle goes in?
What will we be to each other
If the world doesn't end?

What will we say to each other?
What will we be to each other?
Ooh

I'll edit this listen as I continue to listen.

 I've always been emotional.  One definition of the word emotional from Merriam-Webster is "markedly aroused or agitated in feelings or sensibilities".  I think I have always just possessed this ability to feel the emotions of others.  It helps me greatly in my profession: I find that patients and families are often comforted by my presence no matter their backgrounds.  

I think that's why being so off is getting to me.  Like I completely misjudged another person's pain and hurt and I truly believed they cared for me.  I don't think he is capable of that right now.  There were so many signs that I wasn't crazy though, and I suppose I feel a bit gaslit.  Which connects to a deeper web of that old familiar feeling.  

The universe is so vast.  There is someone out there with my same heart, some kind of chimeric twin soul.  Someone who is good, kind, compassionate, loyal, honest, hilarious, silly, and beautiful just like me.  Someone who can make me smile like my sweet Samson, someone who can make my heart sing and my stomach do backflips.  I deserve this.  

I'm 38 and I know what I want.  What I've always wanted.  I want a family of all my own, something beautiful and precious.  I want a family to give my oceans of love to.  That is my joy.

My head is a mess.  I'm thinking of that image of putting a heart in a blender.  I just feel so shredded and naked and exposed.  I also was so ready to just be held by someone.  To be hugged, to hug.  To hold someone else's hand.  I feel so stupid saying that--writing that!--but it is honest.  The second time at that bar I wanted to reach across the table and hold your hand in mine.  When you smile it's everything.  And then I'm like how could that be.  I've never even really dated, marrying my best friend of forever and then dating men from work that knew me already.  And I just met you but I can't shake this feeling that maybe I met the person who I'll spend the rest of my life with.  I've never felt that before so that's why this is even harder.  

He made me so happy.  I haven't felt that happy, that good, in a very long time.  I was excited for the first time in a long time.  I felt alive, like before I was only sleepwalking through a still life.  Yesterday as I was crying I felt so uncomfortable with the feeling I begged to disassociate, to float above myself and watch the girl in the bed crying beneath her and feel nothing.  It's certainly easier to feel nothing, to brick up this pain.  It's also incredibly maladaptive.  

I smoke and listen to bittersweet indie on spotify.  I smoke and the pain in my chest is dulled.  The ache of absence hollow in my heart.