2002-05-09 - 5:35 p.m.

The last couple of weeks La has been spending a lot of time with me, and its been wonderful, not only because I enjoy her company but because its kept my mind off the fact that

I am lonely.

I never wanted to live alone. And I am alone again, only in a much bigger scarier dirtier city than before. Which just goes to show you that you can't run away from a lesson in life. If you don't stay and learn a lesson when it comes around, then you're going to find that it just keeps coming around again in bigger and bigger helpings until you finally open your mouth and choke it down. Only then can you move on.

And so I'm learning the lesson of the single life. The alone life.

I'm doing better than before. A year ago I was simply depressed, and I snuggled under the covers and slept all the time, and wanted to run away to be alone where I could howl.

This time, I'm not howling. I'm on the verge of tears every morning, everytime I look at myself in the mirror and think I'm pretty but no one is there to see me like that. And I almost cry every night when I come home and find noone there. And realize there is no one who is coming over later, and no one is going to stop by, or be in the neighborhood, and no one is really interested in really knowing me at all.

Now this is my diary, so I can have a pity party if I want to.

Yes, I have friends. And they're sweet to me, and I know how lucky I am. But its just that you can only ask so much out of a friend, and Larissa is that friend to me and she gives me so much, and what it all boils down to is this:

That I can't wait for someone to discover me, like a flower in the corner of a barn, because no one is going to do that. I have no one to love me, and that could theoretically change at any time, or it could go on like this for a long long time. And what I've got to do is learn to really enjoy my life, to enjoy being alone, to have dates with myself, to make magic for myself, to become outwardly the person I have been waiting for people to find inside me, so that there is only one me, and that's a fabulous me, and I'm not stuck crying like this because no one can see what it is I'm not showing.

Does that make any sense?

I made plans to go for coffee with Andrew tonight. Why oh why did I do that?

I did it because I didn't want to go home to my empty apartment and sit around and feel sorry for myself. And because I really like him.

But then I realized, this isn't a good idea, I like him too much, and he's going to see that and I'm likely to be all weird and then you know he won't like me too much after that. He hasn't been calling me, so he can't be that enthralled. I shouldn't go.

My final response in this argument in my head is to go through with it. To go through with everything. To do and see and be as much as possible. To cry when I feel like it. To go out with Andrew even if I might mess things up. To keep trying. To keep fighting the lonely.

Take the What High School Stereotype Are You? quiz, by Angel.