I have been alone for a long time.

Most of my twenties, now.

I do not count torrid love affairs, or friendly fucks.

I know some of my friends think I'm a lesbian. I wear men's shoes, and no make-up. I wear button up flannel shirts at work, and occasionally at home.

But I am mostly straight. I am just...perhaps...too sensible for my own good. There's no point in wearing pretty shoes to work. There's no point in wearing make-up when I'm going to be working and sweating.

When will I find someone for me?

There is this fellow at work...I don't know what it is about him. We have the same sense of humour, perhaps.

I want to ask him out. It's been a year now, of stupid silly flirting. How do I do it?

My tongue goes in to a knot when ever I'm near him. I say stupid things and so does he. He finds excuses to touch me. I giggle and play with my hair.

What is it about him?

He's average looking. Freckly, skinny, quiet eyes, languid smile.

I think it's the languid smile that gets me, the way he looks at me sideways and that smile creeps across his face. Something about it lights a fire in me and my tongue gets in a knot and then I giggle too much.

I want to ask him out, but I'm so afraid.

~

I dreamt the other night.

I don't remember much about the dream.

There was a party. A long, extended party. The kind that lasts weeks and months, full of irrisponsible young adults and irrisponsible old adults.

I was there with my boyfriend. He was no one I recognized from my waking life.

There was an intervention. I thought it was for me, for my drinking. I resigned quickly to the idea of going to rehab, and starting packing my bag, until my boyfriend told me that the intervention wasn't for me.

I cried then, for many reasons, and he held me close, stroking my hair and saying tiny words.

When I woke, I was relieved that it was nobody I recognized, and yet, I felt empty without this faceless man in my arms.

~

I have not been thinking much about G.

I feel that chapter is very much closed.

He made his choices, and so did I.

What more is there to say?

I feel...not happy about how things went down, but okay with it. I poke the place where G sits in my heart, and it doesn't make me jump, or cry, or really react at all. It's just numb. It's not empty, because at least a little part of G will always occupy that part, but it's at least, now, blissfully numb. Blissfully, blissfully.

~

I know I am depressed.

I mean, I cannot quite feel it. I can only sort of feel it in the apathy I feel when getting out of bed. Or eating. Or breathing.

But mostly I feel it in my aversion to alcohol, and drugs.

I only do those things when I am in a good mind set to do so.

I have been avoiding all vices, because none of them really make me happy. They just amplify what ever mood I am in.

I think I must be depressed, also, because I can talk about it so frankly. So...devoid of emotion.

When there is nobody else around to fill me with emotions, I feel like an empty husk, an atomoton walking stiffly from place to place.

Oh well.

Whatcha gonna do?

"Write a bestseller, Rosie," my dad always tells me. "People do it every day."

Yeah. Write a fucking best seller.

How about I just finish something?

Anything?

The only thing I'll ever finish is this diary, because when I die, it'll be done.

Fin.

.

Rosie.

Before&After