2003-03-19 - 1:29 p.m.

Feeling yucky today. I'm still wheezing from being sick last week, and the last couple of nights allthough I've gotten a full 8 or 10 hours of sleep, I've woken up feeling as though I didn't sleep a wink! Makes me wonder if after I've gone to sleep, I'm astral projecting to some faerie realm and dancing all night or something . . . anyway, I'm exhausted today

so at work today I spoke with La on the phone and found out she's going out tonight with Jim and Ry. Out to dinner. To talk about old times. Didn't invite me. I told her next time she got together to do a group thing, I'd love to be invited. She said, she would never be doing that. She said she didn't invite me tonight because she really wanted to create a certain vibe with the two of them, that I wasn't a part of that.

Now, of course I know that La is entitled to spend time with her friends without me. I'm not jealous that she's going with them, she should definitely make her own plans and do her own thing.

But I finally woke up to something. To a fact about my life.

I've been going on all this time, sort of acting like La and I were in this thing together. Like a married couple or something. That we were looking out for each other. I guess I thought that until we both got married to someone else, we were each other's family.

But now I realized, we're friends. Very good friends. Very close friends. But that's where it stops.

All this time, she's been looking out for herself. Which sometimes means she hurts my feelings. Or doesn't include me in things.

And all this time, I've been thinking about her, looking out for her, including her in things.

But she's not going to change. She's never going to stop excluding me. She's never going to wake up one day and suddendly "get it".

But really, there's no problem here. We're friends.

And I need to get on with my life. I can't plan my life around other people.

Duh. Everyone else has been saying this to me for years. But I just now got it.

Anyway, my life has been great. Everyday I am so happy I am me. I know I've come a long way. All the experiences I've had I needed to make me who I am, and are great lessons for my future, and food for my writing. I have no complaints about the past.

I only know that I'm embarking upon a very different future. And it's not going to happen in LA, and it can't happen near La, because I get wrapped up in her way of life instead of looking out for myself. And the growing confusion I've had about La from the last few months has just ended.