Yesterday I took a much-needed break from the usual grind and spent a near internet-free day just relaxing with a movie, reading and some music. I did some cleaning and a small load of laundry but it was the first day in months I didn’t do any story-related writing/editing at all. I only wrote in my journal. Today it’s back to the usual, though. Gotta work out and get drafting my next book and fleshing out the characters and all that fun stuff.

I received the nicest writing compliment on Nexus from Monica about my journal and she said she’ll always be the first to buy my books, LOL. :) Just as soon as Tom gets over the cold he thinks may really be a flu and my allergies settle down, we can hopefully get my last two books out there.

Tom overheard something a little scary yesterday at work and that’s that they’re going to be laying off 60% of the people. The good news, though, is that they were talking about another department, and they’re still training Tom to do new things. We’re hoping they wouldn’t think it was worth the bother for someone they intended to let go soon. There are only two others who know how to do his job (including the supervisor), and he’s still the highest-paid employee, or one of them, as far as he can tell. My vibes and logic are still in disagreement with each other. My logic is saying there’s nothing to say he won’t get laid off during the first quarter of next year, while my vibes are saying this is it. Next year we’re outa here.

I only had to hear from Jesse 6 times yesterday. Once with the truck, twice with the motorcycle, then a few barking spells. Two of the barking spells were just a couple of barks. They really went crazy, though, when the propane people got here shortly before 3pm and gave us a magnetic calendar and a pen for the holidays after shooting the tank full. Love to see the needle on that gauge climb! We were down to 12% which is as low as the tank registers, so we could’ve been just about to run out for all we knew. I was dreading that foul smell and those clicking sounds. The place reeks when the propane runs out and the heater gets click-happy every so often when it tries to ignite just to find there’s no propane to fire up with.

I have bad gas pains in my tummy now from my Slim-Fast shake. I’m lactose intolerant at times. It’s a Jewish thing. Like it or not, while I may not consider myself to be of any religion, my body’s genetics are as Jewish as can be, and one of the traits we tend to have is being lactose intolerant. And so I guess I better take my Israeli-descended ass and get it over to a bottle of Tums soon enough and see if that helps. Or maybe I’ll just fuck it up worse and have a Twix. :)

I checked into Facebook this morning half-hoping to find a message from Nane saying something like: This is silly. Let’s just forget the past and be friends again because I miss you.

I would have been dumb enough to forgive her for dumping me yet again too, but my family is a reminder that I’m not as compassionate and forgiving as I sometimes worry I am. I peeked into Larry’s account out of curiosity and was surprised at what I saw. He’s “friends” with Tammy’s kids. Wow, maybe they wouldn’t really kill each other at my parents’ funerals after all, but there’s no saying what shit Ronnie may start.

The point is that there’s still a lot of anger there and I realize that after all these years it’s unlikely I’m ever going to be able to forgive my sister or my brother for the shit they’ve put me through in the past, be it directly or indirectly. Not fully forgive them, anyway. I really truly honestly don’t want a damn thing to do with my sister, brother and nieces and the only reason I’m in occasional touch with Tammy as it is is because of Mom and Dad. If it weren’t for them and my needing to keep the peace to help ensure that I get whatever it is they want to leave me (I doubt it will be much) when their time comes, I would see them as people and not family. And I know I wouldn’t like what I saw enough to want to bother associating with them. Some things are just too grand to be forgivable in my book. Larry’s worse crime may’ve been just pissing me off as opposed to Tammy who helped pave the way for the pig and freeloaders to get at my door and wreak havoc on my life, but there are just too many bad memories connected with anyone in my family, including my parents. But it is a little different with my parents as opposed to my siblings because my parents, despite their abuse in the past, saved Tom and me and would do it again if they had to. My sister probably would too, but as I said, she cost me half a year of freedom, thousands of dollars, and an untold amount of anger and anxiety. This just isn’t a case of someone pissing me off or embarrassing me or making me cry without years of bad memories to go with it. And just knowing that I have a feeling – a big feeling – that my brother wouldn’t care if I lived or died tells me something about him right there.

Forgiving or not, the last thing I care to do is to try to weasel my way back into the lives of those who simply don’t give a damn about me. I may miss some of them like Nane, but I have no desire to contact and buddy up to those who either ignore me or tell me outright that they don’t want to associate with me. I may also be the one who dumped Larry back in late 1999, along with Andy and the rest of my family when I felt the need to “wipe the slate clean,” and right or wrong, he has proven he’s not interested in me by not contacting me. And yes, he could do so if he really wanted to. I’m not hard to find, and then there’s my parents and their big mouths. I have to remind them every now and then that I don’t care who obtains my email address or who knows what’s going on with my life, but DON’T give out our address or phone number!

I have my nieces blocked. I wonder if they tried to look me up to add. When I was checking my blocklist I saw that Jenny was on it, so she didn’t block me after all. I forgot that I blocked her. If someone blocks you then you can’t block them because you can’t bring up their profiles if they’ve got you blocked.

Later…

I have spent the day tired, cold, angry, hurt and pretty withdrawn from the online world altogether. I don’t know if it’s PMS or if PMS is just helping to compound things or what, but I was thinking of Nane on and off and how she threw me away and all that and my emotions keep going back and forth between hurt and anger. I’m sad and I miss her. I wish she would have a change of heart but know she never will. Then my angry side comes out and I find myself wishing and hoping that karma gets her for it and that someone throws her away like some old piece of shit and falsely accuses her of playing with their feelings or “just trying to get attention” or “making excuses” for something that really truly is out of her control. I think to myself that maybe then she’ll know what it’s like and how I feel. But from what she once told me she should already have a good idea of what it’s like to be dumped. She told me she was in a relationship for 16 years when she was dumped and the pain was so bad it was physical. I really have to wonder sometimes – why do people put people through the same misery they’ve gone through? Why would anyone want anyone else to feel the same misery? Shouldn’t they of all people be more empathetic? Or do they feel that their past experiences give them a right to do the things they do? Does she feel entitled to cast people away like yesterday’s news because someone did just that to her?

And why do I feel the way I do about someone I never met and never would have met? Hell, I’ll never again see or meet any of my friends in my own damn country, so why would I feel so hurt by someone on the other side of the world I could never meet simply because of their appearance? What is wrong with me? Seriously. I can ask myself what’s wrong with other people a million times over, but what the hell’s wrong with me? Why would I care about this near stranger that I never met and knew I never would meet? I just don’t get how one could come to care for someone they only knew in the virtual world, proving her theory totally incorrect in saying that a virtual friendship can’t work. Maybe it can’t work for some people, and I’ll admit that when social sites first hit the scene, the idea of buddying up to an “electronic being” seemed silly as hell. They were just avatars, weren’t they? Just a bunch of silly screen names. Right?

Wrong. Nane was real. Alison isn’t just a digital invention either. And neither is Monica. They’re real people and people I care about. I don’t know Monica as well as I’ve come to know Alison, and Alison is just about my longest-running cyber friend since she was one of the first ones I met, but they’re way more than just a series of ones and zeros. They have feelings just like I do.

Nonetheless, I’ve been withdrawn from most people for the last two days. Yes, my fatigue and gloominess are probably somewhat PMS-related, but I also think Nane’s part of what’s got me down. I’ve experienced rejection on and off all my life since I was a baby. You’d think I’d be used to it by now. It’s just another one of those storms I have to wait out. But those storm clouds will clear and time will dull the ache in my heart and Nane’s memory will fade away. And yes, immature or not, a part of me hopes karma bites her in the ass for what she’s done and she finds herself alone and wanting to talk to someone just to find that no one’s there. No one’s there because they don’t give a damn and the ones that did she threw away.

Although I woke up tired, I hopped on the treadmill expecting some muscle breakdown after working out just 1 out of the last 4 days and therefore a tougher time working out. Instead, I was in better shape and ran faster, LOL. Didn’t go as long, though. Then I got really cold for some reason and took a two-hour nap. I still feel kind of out of it both physically and mentally and even though I expected to get on with my next book today, I haven’t. All I’ve done is read, watch a movie and listen to music.

Jesus, what the hell is wrong with me?