leaving, well alone

I'm not sure if my summer cold is a manifestation of all of the shit clogged up in my head, or a hangover, or both. likely F, all of the above. at any rate, I just went down the street to thai place for some tom kha soup to cheer myself up and just ended up burning the shit out of my tongue. things at home are terse, the boys are on no uncertain annoyed terms with me for reasons I am too anxious to analyze and almost every time I see jon I am unable to resist the urge to pick a fight. why? I suppose it must be for the adrenaline rush of emotion, a testing-testing one two three of whether or not he cares enough to engage in such juvenile silliness with me. we are not friends, we are not lovers, and all of the good memories haunt the hallways, eerie intangible remnants that send me spiraling into aching reveries with daily frequency. I'm addicted to beating myself up and jon is my favorite battering ram.

it's hard for me to be alone... there's always something stimulating me, keeping me from examining myself. a tv, a phone, a stupid social networking site, a bar, many bars, boys, work, etc. jon was my main distraction for 6 months, and when we finally made the real break (after a lot of waffling around and waking up in the wrong bedroom more often than I woke up in my own), I filled that space with more impertinent, inconsequential crap. here's the rub: I need to learn to be by myself, sometimes. not all the time, just some of the time. I never write anymore, I hardly read, all of the things I used to enjoy feel bothersome as taking the trash out to that piss scented crack alley behind the bar below. (christ, I sound like that rolling egg prozac commercial, but it's true.) I feel like I need a soul enema.

to be single is one thing, to be alone is quite another. I have no romantic prospects for the first time in years. jon cited one of his main problems with me as an inability to trust because he knew that before I had made a career out of juggling a collection of love interests, an art I perfected after my first nuclear heartbreak. well, there I was, a reformed woman. I was most certainly on the shelf. nowadays, hookups don't make me feel liberated or fulfilled, but rather empty, sad and skanky. next time I am tempted, I am going to remember that feeling, put down the jaeger bomb and go rent a movie and paint my nails with zebra stripes.

I am twenty-three and I have no idea what the hell I am doing. I went to AA and just ended up hitting on a gay guy and returning with some pastel pamphlets that I hid deep in the recesses of my dresser. I've been waiting for someone to get me outta here, already, turn me around, show me the light, put some fire beneath my arse. I just figured out that that person is me.