I just go to bed and get up earlier and earlier. That's not the way natural sleep cycles are supposed to work. I don't know if it means anything.

Yes, this past week has been better. I'm more me. I fit inside my head again. The problem is that now I have to deal with real things that make me sad. I can't blame it all on my brain anymore. Now I know that it's not all in my head. And I kind of wish it were.

I don't want to play stupid flirty games with some new guy. Not even with the particular new guy who's quite fascinating. I had what I wanted. I had what I wanted.

Doesn't everybody make promises that they can't keep?

I'm sorry for this. There are three people (that I know about) who know me in real life and read this diary. I know that; it was my choice to tell them, and I don't regret it. But every once in a while there's something I don't want to write here, because I'm afraid one of the three will think I'm really trying to write to them directly and just chickening out. This is not the case. I've thought about taking up paper journaling again; I've thought about starting a second diary that nobody knows about, using pseudonyms for everybody so no one can find it using Google. Ultimately, though, I feel like I have to write here. It's the honest thing to do, and if there's one thing I know for sure about myself, it's that I want to be honest.

I was, honestly, kind of excited last night by how I dealt with feeling sad. I just felt sad. I said what I was thinking, and then I hung up the phone and lay in bed for a few minutes just letting my thoughts happen, and then I read a few more Garrison Keillor short stories, and then I went to sleep. I didn't run from it, and it didn't make me want to hurt myself, and it didn't reduce me to a pile of sobbing rubble.

This is how I'm supposed to deal with sadness, right? This is how the human brain is supposed to work? Maybe?

Maybe I should try eating breakfast for once. I can't remember the last time I ate breakfast. Maybe a month ago at my parents' house. I used to be a die-hard breakfast eater. When I lived with my parents, I'd have at least two of eggs, toast, veggie sausage, and orange juice. I got really good at making omelets really fast and folding them up to fit inside English muffins. I ate so much back then I can hardly believe it. My dad used to get annoyed at me when we went out to restaurants because what I got was always more expensive than what everyone else got.

My interview is this morning at 9:30. I should get my Spanish homework done before then. I do not feel like doing my Spanish homework. Maybe I'll go take a shower and make some coffee and then do my homework while listening to the new Euphoria album. I'm sure it's terrific. Their last one was terrific. Their last one, in fact, is in the slowly growing pile of CDs that I am going to use for Curtis's next mix CD.

I remember, a month after Jeff broke up with me, he and Jenny and I went to see High Fidelity. Afterwards, we all got into Jeff's car (the two of them in front, me in the back) and drove off in search of somewhere to eat dinner. The two of them were in great, appropriate-for-just-having-seen-High-Fidelity moods. I had spent a chunk of the movie crying, and I was hurt that Jeff had had Jenny sit in the front, which used to be my girlfriend-seat-of-privilege, and I didn't want to eat at any of the places they wanted to eat, but I couldn't come up with anything. So I shut myself up, forcibly, because I was kind of yelling at both of them, and they decided to go to Baja Bean (crummy Mexican food), and as they laughed and joked and Jeff drove, I found a little scrap of paper and wrote on it: "4/19. Jeff, I just want you to know how very important you are." I wanted to write more, about how I'd always love him and I wished he hadn't left me, but I stopped myself and tucked the little scrap of paper deep inside his backpack, where he'd find it who-knows-when, or never.

At the restaurant, we got a booth in the back. Jeff and Jenny both got up to go to the bathroom at the same time, and they practically started wrestling. Flirting and giggling. Baja Bean has two single bathrooms, one labeled "Juan" and the other "Juanita," and they were fighting over which one of them would get to use the "Juanita" room. I watched them from our booth and started crying again, just a little. While they were in the bathroom, the waiter came by with menus. "Can I get you something to drink?" he asked me. I looked up at him and he saw my tears. "Something hard?"

Well, that made me laugh, and he brought me a Corona, and when Jeff and Jenny came out of the bathroom I almost wasn't mad at them anymore. Dinner wasn't too terrible, though I do find it disconcerting when chicken quesadillas taste sweet, and after that High Fidelity never made me cry again. Of course, seeing it a bunch of times with Emily probably had something to do with that.

So. It's all kind of like a game show. Being in love is better than not being in love, which in turn is better than being abandoned by someone you love, or finding out that that person doesn't love you (anymore or at all). So we go for the big payoff at the risk of losing everything. Or else we play it safe and go home with a couple hundred bucks. I'm one of the risk-takers. I've tried to play it safe before, to remove myself from the game, to give myself a rest from the rollercoaster of it all. And then I meet someone, and I forget about my fear of losing. For about three months. Then it all comes rushing back, and I get all insecure, and then everything goes to hell.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Of course, I wouldn't do this at all if I didn't believe it would all work out fine in the end. I don't know what "fine" will be, though.

I've been rambling on too long. My morning's slipping away, and me sitting here concretizing all my doubts. Better to take a shower, and make some coffee, and do my homework while listening to Euphoria. I can't afford doubts today. There's too much to be done.