I’ve been planning a trip out to visit my best friend in the first weeks of January. I have a little bit of a break and I haven’t seen her in a year…

After two weeks of trying to buy the tickets, having them magically disappear when I pressed the “purchase” button–then the price going up, and my other friend deciding that I had to come and visit her too–I bought the tickets yesterday–

–Only to have my friend write me today and tell me that the day I had picked to fly out was the one day she couldn’t pick me up.

Screwed.

I called and cancelled the tickets. They’ll apply them to future travel, and since I’ll be applying to residencies next year, I’ll be sure to use them. But they’re charging me a $100 dollars for the change.

I’m positively sick to my stomach right now.

I bought new tickets, will be flying out a day earlier, for about the same price as original (huh, that wasn’t there yesterday!). It messes up plans with the other friend a little bit, but I’m resilient and I’ll figure something out.

I hope.

I think I’ve lost the ability to breath.

Erik’s engaged.

Even writing the words hurts more than it should, and I can’t look at them again. I’m just sitting here, blinded by my eternal patheticness.

I don’t know even how to explain how I feel. I shouldn’t feel so strongly. I haven’t seen him for two years and I haven’t been in love with him for a while now. I finally grew past that. I’m not good at letting go, but Erik I’ve never wanted to let go, not completely.

He was my first crush, my first love. I fell for him in the eighth grade because he went to Norway and came back and had all of these exciting stories. He was cute, he was funny, he was super nice to me, treated me as a friend, and I adored him. I knew his strengths, his weaknesses and I loved everything about him. I truly did. Everyone I’ve ever met has been compared to him and has fallen short. I’ve nursed so many fantasies that I knew were pathetic but I couldn’t help myself.

I don’t know him anymore, it’s true… Our lives have diverged and I don’t know if he laughs the same way anymore. But the thing was, he doesn’t know me either, and I’m so different from how I was in high school. I guess a part of me has just always hoped that one day, one day, things would finally align and he would finally see me. That although we had diverged and changed since high school, it would really be what brought us together. I’ve always felt, deep inside and I’ve never been able to get rid of it, that he was “the one.” And when he didn’t get married, when he didn’t date anyone, I saw that as confirmation.

And now he’ll be married in a month.

Part of me is angry too, that once again, love has passed me by, and I am still alone. He’s getting married and he still lives in my home town where there is nobody and yet, he’s managed to find someone. And I can’t even get a casual date.

It’s just adding to this feeling that I’ve been drowning in recently. I haven’t talked for three months to the woman I’ve considered my best friend of seven years. She and her husband came to visit family over the Fourth of July and she didn’t even called me. I’ve called her several times and she’s never returned my phone calls. How do I not take that personally? My friendship with Liz has turned so superficial since she moved out. And Chris… we’re going to be on completely different rotations starting tomorrow for the entire year. How long is it going to take before he’s a mere shadow in my life? I’m scared that I’m losing everybody, that everything that I’ve loved is just delusion. That everything that I’ve felt has just been me, and that people were just putting up with me until they could find an excuse to leave.

I hate feeling pathetic.

This is probably silly of me…

I was just thinking about my journal and the online friends that I have and it struck me… Most of you, I have no idea what you look like! It is strange, how the internet works, how we make close relationships, where we can talk about our interests in common and life in general, and yet we have no face to put to this other person on the other end. What does it do to our relationships? Are we more open with the faceless? With no fear of recognizing this other person in the real world, I can see how that might be true. Are we afraid that we will have to change our labels of people once we have a face? That they might not be the image of who we imagined them to be? I don’t know.

And then I wondered if you wondered what I looked like too.. So, silly me, I posted a few pics on the web for your viewing pleasure. I’m making this a friends’ only entry, hopefully to keep out the weirdo stalkers… Both of the pics are now a few years old. I have a bad habit of never finishing a roll of film. I wear contacts more now and less makeup…

Julia
— My best friend was getting married, and I was feeling left out (yeah, the whole thing was hard on me) so the two of us went out and took “pseudo-engagement” photos of the two of us. to celebrate the event and our friendship. Blame the fuzzy pic on her fiancé.. he took them

Jules
— Um, yeah. Not the most flattering pic of me, but it’s not like this is a dating thing or anything. It makes me laugh.

And if any of you are brave or willing, I’d love to see what you look like too… You can send pics directly to me at jcd1013@dsdf.org. I promise I won’t use them as blackmail. 🙂