I think I shall start this entry off with Marie. Only it can’t go online because it will upset her. Why? Well, because I’m sick of her! I certainly have my share of mixed emotions about her anyway. Of course I still love her. Of course I feel bad she’s lonely. Of course I feel bad she’s having a hard time coming to terms with her past. But I’m sick of the zillions of emails every single fucking day and I’m sick of her problems and immaturity. She may not be the dumbest person alive, but I’m sorry, I still see a very 20-something woman in her who will probably never grow up. I don’t know how to describe it, but it comes out in her words. There’s a difference between young at heart and immature.

I feel almost as smothered by her as I do by Tom’s constant presence. I know that if I asked her to cut back the emails she would, but I also don’t want to hurt her, and I know it would. Yet a part of me sometimes feels like telling her, “I want just one email a day from you, and don’t come to see me either!” But I just don’t want to push away someone who feels she’s been pushed away all her life and make her think I don’t care because I do. It isn’t that I don’t want to hear about her problems or communicate with her. But I have my own problems, even though it’s not like she’s always down and out, but she is definitely a distraction that is taking up too much of my time. I keep hoping that she’ll meet someone to break her obsession and take the attention off of me, but at her age, she’s bound to be alone forever. I know that’s what I once thought too, but I was in my 20s when I thought this, not my 40s.

I am a person who normally prefers the blunt and direct alternative, but since I’m dealing with someone rather fragile, I think that instead of asking her to back off, I’ll just be “busier” more often. Maybe she’ll get sick of that and gradually lose interest in me, even though she swears she’ll “love” me forever.

She says she keeps things bottled up and has problems asking for help or sharing her pain. And so she lets things build up till she explodes. She doesn’t drink or do anything else self-destructive that I know of, but I guess she gets depressed. I can’t say she’s weak. She’s actually tough in many ways. Tougher than me to have survived 6 months on the streets. But she’s fragile at the same time. I know I can’t help what she does, but I don’t want to dump her and risk her hitting the beer again because of it.

Damnit! She’s already up. She usually doesn’t start with the emails till after 1pm, but here it is just after 10:30 and she’s asking if I read her second blog. I sent her the link and she joined thoughts.com. I’m glad her entries are usually short and sweet because writing is not only not her strong point, but is filled with childish drama, obsessive love for me, sex, and is usually so poorly written it’s hard to follow.

I’m probably going to regret giving her my new number, but I will anyway. I would still like to chat every so often.

She told me she had to drop out of a couple of classes due to time management, saying it was easier to keep up with on 2nd shift versus 3rd. Only she goes to school online and can study 24/7, right? I mean, I didn’t think she had a scheduled chat-like session class but don’t know for sure. I’ll ask later. I didn’t say anything to her, but I really think she fell behind because of being too focused on me.

She admits she feels shitty by the fact that she wants some other guy’s wife, but can’t help what she feels at the same time and so she just runs with it while assuring me she’d never make me do anything I didn’t want to do.

It’s funny because I always thought it would be kind of cool, as strange as it may sound, to have a woman I was attracted to be so into me (as opposed to someone like Nervous who I wasn’t the least bit into in return). And while I pictured her to be a little better looking and a lot more stable, the attention is flattering and I love how she’s such a loyal fan of both my journal and stories and reads everything I write. Still, she’s just too much for me at times!

Tom went to the store, Paul became a grandfather again, Marie wants to get a webcam, and the weather still sucks. It’s going to warm up gradually into the weekend, then get cold and rainy again next week. Why don’t we just skip summer altogether this year?

Tom read that the entire county of Klamath has an unemployment rate of 15%! I guess we really would have been screwed had we stayed up there in Oregon or left a year later since by then he’d never have gotten all the overtime he got! Scary how we skirt disaster so often in life.

Gonna be busy working and writing, plus I want to do some spring cleaning, not that we’re having much of a spring, and organize things around the place. So I won’t be online much other than the job site.