Today I feel guilt. I took melatonin last night, but woke up 12 hours later, not 8.

It was not a good day to be doing this… honestly, it never is.

This is supposed to be the rock bottom of a depressive state. It’s supposed to get better from here, this is where I realize what’s going on, and scrape it all together and start building up again.

Instead, I have the feeling that it’s going to get much deeper. I’m actually scared of that, because on the surface, life looks like it’s going so well. New apartment, new graduate degrees, new boyfriend, new (or at least repaired) body.

That’s why I’m going to be so disappointed, when despite all that’s going for me, I fuck it all up again.

Probably, maybe. Why am I giving in to so much negative self talk lately.

On that note, I had a dream that I got back with my ex. It’s all jumbled, – probably after having that dream I felt the need to sleep all over again, it’s so exhausting just being around him.

I should really call my best friend, she remembers me right before I met my ex, and during the first few years of our relationship. Wow, that must have been a trip. She must be wildly disappointed.

I believe we were going to a family function, I’m not sure why, and I don’t think we were officially together.

Instead of going to his family’s house, we were going to a sleek high rise, I believe it might have been a memory remnant of an apartment in the Seaport district that belonged to a man I actually really liked… but knew my former brother in law so I had to cut it off as soon as I knew.

I never wanted to disrespect my ex, never. I wanted to be a source of pride, not shame. I tried. I was not good enough.

We rode up the elevator (was it an escalator?), and walked down the glassy pathway over the floors underneath to reach a very modern, luxurious in that sterile way that actually for some reason feels super budget to me (but at least it’s clean) but used to appeal to me when I was young and ambitious and felt like new stuff was somehow improved over old. The new apartment did have a glass wall overlooking the port.

For some reason, I was dragging the super cool suitcase that my current boyfriend bought me behind me, and it matched the scene perfectly.

Into the apartment, it actually reminded me of a bigger, better version of an apartment that I had for a minute in New York. We’ve all had apartments for a minute in New York. The dining room and kitchen were elevated into another level, just enough of a step up so that a ramp was necessary.

Wow, I just realized, I hope his parents are ok.

I really want to write this dream down, because I haven’t been writing dreams for a while, and, when I get into this one, there’s a whole bunch that I feel like I should be unpacking. However, my body doesn’t feel like sitting, my coffee is done, and it looks like I have a ton of work piling up, plus catchup with whatever I just slept through – I’m so scared I haven’t even looked yet.

It’s 6pm and I haven’t even texted the boy and told him to stop working yet. Worst girlfriend ever.

Imma keep going.

I don’t remember much of the meal, but of course, we did sit at the table and eat. I believe my favorite of his sisters was cooking, but the usual seating pattern around the table indicated that we were at my favorite of my brother in law’s house (and it does make sense that he would move to the Seaport District, for both of them, actually).

I do remember my former mother in law looking at me on the way out, walking out with my ex, who was silent as always. Unless he’s yelling at me.

I remember the boy being similarly quiet and falsely preoccupied when I met his mother.

My mother in law was lower, she was helping me fix my suitcase, or looking at my suitcase, admiring my suitcase, I don’t know, but I do know that look, it is etched in stone in my mind.

It is the same look that my mother in law gave me when she knelt down to check and verify that there was no pulse. My ex was standing right behind me, as he had been at that moment. I don’t know how to describe it, other than that.

Narcissism is very, very strange. Sometimes there is a glimmer, occasionally, of recognition in their eyes that lets you know that yes, they actually do understand what you’re going through. And then you just feel like – wow, so they’re usually just assholes by *choice*? I thought it was a disability. Or maybe, some emothins (typo, but it’s hilarious to me) and experiences are just simply that poignant and clear that even a narcissist can relate.

Fuck it, I’m going to take two cups of coffee today. This is what depression is for. I’m still on the first cup, it’s cold.

I wish there were a changelog for posts.

People have wondered how my emotions fluctuate so much. Honestly, I feel a lot of things all at once. I’m pretty sure everyone does. If not, welcome to Borderline Dissociative Disorder.

I remember getting into his car, not sure. I remember going to a roadside picnic table restaurant, such as I’ve seen in Jamaica (it was Pushcart, one of the only places I’d feel comfortable taking a white man to in West Negril, why the fuck to I date white men) Although this one I believe, thinking about it, was the picnic table place up north here by the mountain.

I remember looking at my ex, eating ribs with his hands, and thinking about how hot he was. The way his collarbones flex when he swallows. The skin at the base of his neck, like porcelain, or more accurately, the surface of a perfectly still puddle of milk. Opaque, but yet the eye can see the depth. Somehow I can sense the depth. Then he swallows, then it moves. So beautiful, skin like a living cotton sheet. I love sleeping there. The boy is the same, at that one spot… and I took the whole man because of that. Beyond that, they are not the same at all.

Given that, while we were eating, my ex still silent in that way that he always is when we’re in public, and he’s not screaming at me, a hippy looking dude that actually looked like a crude memory recreation of some cool friends that I lost in our divorce, invited us to The Sunshine Cafe in Leverett (which, I think almost exists – I’m mapping this dream as I always do).

We got into the car – it was in fact my ex’s car. But then, it changed into other cars he’s had, as we rolled up and around to whatever weird outdoor party was going on at the camp.

Coffee’s done, here we go.

I feel like there was a third person with us, but there wasn’t and she looked like a blonde Scarlet Johansen. Who is insanely hot… I feel like I know who it was, but my conscious mind is imposing my memory on this.

I’m fully awake right now, and I’m getting conscious of my actual writing and rhythm. This playlist, neo-yacht rock bullshit, is made for the two step and nothing more complex that that. It’s interfering with my thoughts and making them short, choppy and shallow.

How do people listen to this trash.

I kind of feel like I might have been the blonde Scarlet Johansen.

We drove to the campground, which as my memories gel actually might have been a place I’ve passed on my back way through the back woods of New Hampshire.

The car was suddenly an old Bronco, on the dirt road as it once was.

I don’t know if I was fucking my ex, I don’t feel like I was.

But I remember sliding out of the back seat, with everyone at this apparent party looking, and I could feel the collective conclusion being drawn – Oh, they’re back together. I felt weird about it.

This is where the dream starts dissolving. Sometimes I was looking at Scarlet Johansen, who felt like she was also in the car, sometimes I was her. I walked back to the “kitchen” of the campground, which more and more feels like the movie set of this Hulu show that was shot at a campground in Westchester (omg this is getting very identifying – I have to go back to work in many respects, but how during a plague year), and speaking to some people, mainly women in that stereotypical way that women congregate in the kitchen, afraid to send a man in to get their drinks for them.

The conversations don’t feel as though they had any consequence, but I feel like they did in the things unsaid. Primarily, how could you get back with him? That monster? How are you going to rewrite the narrative, all the things you said when you were leeching out the toxins from that terrible time, how are you going to make this make sense? How are you going to clean up this mess, just get back in here in the kitchen, and start being our beautiful cultured bartender again?

And to be honest, I don’t know. I feel like there was a collective understanding between all the women, me, and of course, Scarlett Johansen, that yes, there is a way, and this is what women do.

I’m terrified of getting back with my ex. I don’t miss him at all, but I do miss our life. Camp grounds in the woods.

I don’t know what to do with this feeling. I just don’t know, it’s the beginning of a terrible mistake that I do not want to make, that I do not have time to make.

I wonder if I can stop myself. I want to, but I don’t want to.

This is what I have been defending myself against.

This is what I hate myself for.

I already began the link building process of this post, but something hit me like a ton of bricks and I have to add it.

I never let myself love my ex, I was always too scared. I don’t blame myself for being scared, because every time I showed even a shred of vulnerability he used it as nothing but a weapon to attack me with later. Even now, it’s all he knows. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him while I was fucking him, even though I wanted to. I’d just fuck other people and think of him. I wanted to love him, though.

And I still do.

But I know he’s just going to hurt me again. And that hurts too.

Fuck it, no more hiding. There is no place to hide from this, anyway.

If my ex came back, no way in hell would I get back with her. But I know it would hurt like hell.

The boy, during our conversation when I was trying to break up with him but couldn’t help but notice how long his legs are (he should really fix his posture, he has a beautiful body when it’s aligned right – so do I, sit up straight). But I notice now in retrospect that he noticed that I didn’t say anything back about it, he said more and I looked away and he saw it. He’s a good man, I’m an asshole.

I know I’m depressed because now even my second cup of coffee is cold.

I have an email from my ex waiting, and I should stop hiding from it.