...so here it is the big 33. Uh, doesn't feel like much of a change - if anything I guess my biggest hope for it is it offers me a smoother ride than the last three years did - I would give up the volume of meteorotic highs if if would dull down the amount of devastating lows I had to experience.

A poorly timed hour long call with the "X" - while I was at work wrapping up my day - who hasn't spoken to me for 3 weeks - sent be spiralling down a staircase of despair, regret, sadness and heartbreak last night. Could I possibly want him back - could I possibly believe 2.5 months into this that maybe I/He/We had made a mistake. Did I really pull the trigger - or does it matter if he loaded the gun and handed it to me ? How it stung to hear him admit the words it was over - did he ever even try to get me back? And how it stung worse when he said after 2.5 months that he was already seeing someone. But I should feel comforted that it wasnt going well and no one liked the new guy and he still loved me. And how I know that I still love him and how did I believe that I wasn't partly still in love with him.

It was the worst of the three breakdowns/crying fits/whatever since the breakup - it was the darkest, most dangerous and scariest - like the first time your alone in a house as a young boy. I couldnt call anyone - I thought about asking someone to get over immediate before something terrible happened - but I rode it out like a herion junkie through his first days of recovery - locked in a padded room as he bounces of the walls - the human pinball machine with gears made of emotions. I read everyone of his cards - 14 in 3 years including the post-breakup ("I will always be your best friend, I will always love you") card and holiday cards, two of the cards came at the same time - so over 3 years I averaged one card every 3 months - a quarterly thing like a "bonus". Funny - I thought love was more like a salary - the stuff you lived on to get by. I'm being petty and I know he would be angry and see this as thus - but come on - it's symbolic of something more. Could you build the greatest skyscraper your ever saw on the Chicago skyline - if you wanted to just stop in now and then and work on it ?? Could you tend to the most beautiful garden - rows of gardienia, irises, lilies, snapdragons - you had ever seen - if you chose to water it on "just the holidays" or when you were drunk ?? Could you maintin a lover - no matter how much he loved you and prayed it would be forever if you never found time among your hobbies and personal interests and work and home to have him feel he was loved and part of your life too ?? But since it was apparently me who uttered the break-up words - I was the one who gave up, didnt work hard enough and didnt believe in forever...I was to blame.

I hate this - there is no win - either way I am without the person I love, who I called my best friend, who I wished to be my forever...and now I judge my whole life against this failure. I rethink the past years and the lows and what part I played in them, my head swims trying to figure out for how much I am to blame - how high do I really set the bar ?? How much do I really demand in return ??

And it sucks - at 33 - on this day - to have it begin this way...