Summer blues...

It's no secret that I'm a miserable piece of crap lately... and therefore this post is not required reading. For those of you willing to brave it anyway, please accept my apologies in advance.

I'm having a tough time of it lately. The unemployment misery is just the tip of the rather sizable iceberg.

And right about now that iceberg is punching holes all down the side of my boat... I'm trying to bail out the rising water but I don't know how much longer I can keep it afloat.

I was talking to someone on the phone this evening, and just burst into tears for no particular reason. This is a very big deal, because I'm not a crier. NOT AT ALL. And while it shouldn't have been that big of a deal, aside from just being kind of shitty, I think being stood up last night just kind of tipped the scales.

And it's not as though I had any grand designs on the evening, I just wanted to see my friend one last time before he left because, seeing as this is a big move, I don't know when I'll ever see him again. It hurt me that he felt like he could tell me that he was going to see me on his last night in town and not show.

I've tread that ground before with this particular friend. In fact, in the years that I've known him this has been a pretty standard behavioral pattern. While talking to another of my friends this evening, I mentioned this, and how I was kind of bewildered as to why this behavior was something that I have tolerated and repeatedly forgiven over the course of our friendship. She put it so simply and yet so brilliantly. She said that we all have that one person who pulls that kind of crap who we just can't help always forgiving, and he's mine. Part of me really hates that I put up with that kind of behavior in anyone, but then I guess that's the price I pay for occasionally wearing that shirt where my heart is pinned on the sleeve... I'm starting to think maybe I need to burn that fucking shirt.

The part that really breaks my heart is that just before he left he and I had the following exchange:

Me: "In spite of everything, I'm going to miss you."
Him: "I'm grateful to hear that because I was starting to get the feeling that nobody was going to miss me. Thanks for saying so."
Me: "You're welcome. Even if you never show up, you're always welcome."

He made no effort at a response to that. And now he's in Manhattan.

I know that I have bigger problems than this, and that it seems like a stupid thing to focus my attention on, or waste another minute thinking about it but this was just the one thing that really opened the flood gates and let everything else loose. And like that one wrong step that puts you in the path of destruction, it's just that one little thing that you just can't stop thinking about.

I know that this is just a periodic slump, and a series of crummy events that just happen to be packaged together, and that soon enough I'll be back on top, laughing and boozing like this never happened, but this is just one of those times when it's REALLY REALLY difficult to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In an effort to turn things around, I'm pouring a BIG glass of wine and watching The Goonies!