Yay, I can walk around the bed for the first time in two years! Tom and I discussed rearranging the bedroom, but it is just too small to really have much in the way of options. You know Tom and Jodi S. work much too hard to be deserving of any more than a 500-square-foot dump anyway. And so we simply pulled it away from the wall a few inches so I could make the bed up easier. We had to disconnect the platform from the shelves first, but it was simple enough.

Sure enough, Jesse didn’t return yesterday. It was also dead quiet up there. I never heard one single bark. So he either never went out or was out with the dogs. I just don’t get why after all this time Whiskey doesn’t get that barking his ass off isn’t going to bring Jesse back any sooner. I mean, I know dogs aren’t as smart as rats, but still, I thought they could figure at least some things out.

At 6:30 this morning, however, the barking let me know he went to work. So that leaves Tom as my only possible distraction for the day before and after we’ve run the errands we’ll be out running. We probably won’t leave till noon.

I’ve been working on my story like crazy. I can’t believe just how much writing I’ve been doing! But I am determined to create my first full-length novel if it takes me the rest of the year. I don’t think it will, though, at the rate I’m going. Plus I also now have the rest of the plot pretty much mapped out.

Marie started a diary of her own again and I don’t think I should mention the link because she doesn’t seem to want anyone she knows (other than me) to know about it. I got a kick out of its title, but if I mentioned it, that would give it away.

Meanwhile, I still have a very strong feeling I’m going to regret accepting those connection invites from her or even responding to her first entry. She didn’t pester me yesterday other than to send a quick thanks for accepting the invites, and I appreciate that because I think that if we are going to remain friends we’ll have a better chance of it at a distance. I think the more we communicate, the more we’ll fight. As it is, I think she’s going to end up giving me all the motivation I need to be driven away for good. I hate to say it as I don’t mean to be mean or anything, and I’m not implying that I myself am perfect. I know I wrote some mean things about her, even though I was simply stating my opinion and didn’t mean to come off as cruel or negative in any way, and I apologized to her for it, too. I’m just saying that I’m simply not equipped to deal with paranoia, manic-depressants, bipolars, or whatever other labels these things are categorized under. Again, I hate to sound selfish, uncaring and insensitive or like I don’t still love her. I just need stability in my life. I can’t help her in any way, and as she herself says, it only worsens with age. I don’t think she realizes, though, that each time she suddenly bites my head off and falsely accuses me of whatever, she’s only pushing me further away. And eventually, I’m not going to come back.

It’s ok to disagree with someone or to suspect they might have done/said something you don’t like. But just like Lisa, she handled the situation quite poorly. All she had to do was bring it up in a polite and civilized way and I would have gladly discussed it with her as normal adults.

Perhaps I need to start researching various kinds of mental illnesses like Marie and Lisa’s and several others I have known so I can better understand them. Then again, even if I did understand them, what’s the point if they can’t be helped? If there’s no hope for the experts to ever stabilize them, how the hell can I ever be of any help?

They say that if society continues to oust the mentally ill, it only hurts them more and makes them feel all the more like freaks that no one cares about, so the thought of walking away has made me feel guilty. At the same time, I know I’m not responsible for her. I’m not legally obligated to her in any way and I have a right to let go of people who upset me or bring me down in any way. Besides, they make it hard for people not to want to abandon them when they keep swinging back and forth between being sweet and kind and accusing us of plotting against them faster than we can keep up with. It’s back and forth and back and forth, and like I said, each time it happens, the farther away I’ll go and the less likely I will be to give her another chance. How many “chances” can I give her any way to take me at face value and not jump down my throat for something I wrote in the heat of the moment weeks ago?

But “the most beautiful person” she has ever known? The most beautiful?! Wow, that’s quite a compliment if that really is the case! And paranoid or not, she’ll always be my #1 fan.

Last night, as I was laying in bed waiting for sleep, I almost wanted to cry. But the tears simply would not come. I feel so robbed, cheated, picked on, singled out, punished, deprived, abnormal and screwed over by God above! As if being born to the kind of mother I was born to wasn’t bad enough, did He really have to go and throw in all the other stuff as well?

He gave me a husband that I love dearly, but don’t lust for in the way I have with some women, and who was “happy” not to get off in bed. And while my husband was “happy” I wept over the child and career I could never have, and the fact that I was also unable to sleep with this “happy” husband or get in a car and drive to a job because I couldn’t keep a fucking schedule! Furthermore, neither of us has even wanted what would only be one-sided, half-assed sex with each other, we lost one home and two pieces of land, and people have shit on me like crazy and gotten away with it. In the end, I’m almost just as broke as I was 20 years ago and living in someone else’s trashy trailer because I couldn’t keep my home, and the only one I could keep was the one I didn’t want to keep.