Another year

Happy birthday to me.

One year later.

Michael is dead.
Jonathan is in college.
Caitlin is in college and really out of my problem radar.
I am 50 lbs. lighter.

My life is so different from what it was a year ago that I cannot recognize it.

The people are different.
Even the cats are different.

I don't even know how to begin to make sense of what has happened to me.  I sat in a committee meeting today, and talked to other professors, and it was like a different species.  I stopped my career a decade ago, and they went on.  And I have no idea how to be those people. 

I don't know where my life is going, what is happening.  I get sucked into this longing to be with someone else and fear that I will never again have that.  And I get so, so afraid about that, and it's the fear that is the worst thing.  I went around and around on this today.  I almost went out tonight just to see if I could find someone to take home.  Because I feel like no one sees me; that I am more confident and attractive than I have ever been in my life.  But I am... old?  And no one sees me, and no one will want to make the rest of his life with me.

And I don't want to be alone.  That's the truth. 

But I need to learn how to be alone.  Not as a step to not being alone, but because it's the right thing to do.  Because it's the path to happiness.  But I can't seem to find my way to that.  It's like a stepping stone in my head... like a way to get to what I really want.  As if doing that is grabbing the ring, and then I can have what I really want. 

I hate it.  I hate feeling that way.  I just want to be happy.  The kind of happy that I feel when I'm with the man who I should stay the hell away from.  The man who cannot give me what I want.  The man who is probably going to bring nothing but trouble to either one of us.  But when I'm with him, I feel like a real person again.  And that is all wrong.