Wednesday. I'm more busy at work these days than I've been in months. Or maybe, for the first time in months, I'm a bit more awake to the things going on around me. Perhaps auto-pilot has finally worn itself out, unfortunately I'm not that optimistic.

Today's, one of my exes' birthdays. We haven't spoken in 8-9 months, but she's one of those people not easily relinquished. I have no regrets (98% of the time) about ending our relationship, and now that it's been over a year, I feel pathetic for missing her in those 2% of moments. Our relationship was half full of turmoil and half full of loveliness, but regardless of what our relationship consisted of, we were two people not quite ready to be with one another. I'm not certain if we could have ever been ready for the other. Yet, I feel ashamed when I miss her. Afraid, too. But not afraid of the possibility that I made the wrong decision when I broke up with her, but afraid that what I had with her, the very base of our relationship, under all the disagreements and mismatched personality traits, I won't find so easily again. Not because it doesn't exist, but because I am less open to allowing it into my life.

Such is life, I want to write, and pass over my thoughts with a shrug. Sometimes, I want to call her and say, "hi, what's up?" or something just as colloquial. Other times, I'm relieved that I'm not required to interact with her, but not because of her, mind you, but because I'm so tired--more so than when she knew me, and I feel that I grow less familiar with those from my past each day I get quieter within myself. I grow shy and embarrassed. I feel that I could so easily slip into agoraphobia--that perhaps I already am afflicted by it on some small scale, because one should not feel as anxious, shy, and nervous as I do when expected to interact and be close to friends. Strangers, I can handle, but not really--I disassociate so much that strangers are one-dimensional figures on the landscape; I feel that if I were to touch them in passing, I'd interrupt the projection, and they'd split and ripple like water.

In worse moments, I feel liked pulled meat. In much worse moments, I feel like a carcass, left breathing with all my senses intact but no control over how much exposure I'm put through to the elements around me. My own existentialist hell.

Or uglier, my skin, at times, feels like a hundred thousand mouths screaming. Now, for instance, I can almost see the heads stretching my skin, mouths forming, yelling, screaming, ugly, grotesque, and within me, there's an emptiness that if I were to attempt to name it, I'd call desolation, but it really feels like nothing, which is the weight of everything without words. There are no natural vacuums, after all.

So, if I had the fortitude, the braveness, the well-acted flippancy of a moment, I'd wish my ex from over a year ago Happy Birthday, and tell her that I've missed her, in moments. It shouldn't be bigger than that, I know, but this has nothing to do with logic.

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