OK, so, there needs to be backstory. I indirectly talked about a certain girl here. I thought I had told Hubski what she'd actually done but can't see that in a scan of comments. This girl, who I've known for 20 years, slept with the last person I told I loved while I was sleeping with that person. (Not at the same time, geez guys. They hooked up in August; my interaction with him ran from Juneish to Septemberish. She was well aware of it) She lied to me to my face about doing so when I confronted her. Since that day I've cut her out of my life (almost) completely. That was over a month ago.

About a month ago we were both at a mutual friend's birthday party. She insisted upon talking to me, literally sitting next to me, telling me she was going to be obnoxious and talk to me until I talked back. Knowing this person as I do I had anticipated this and dreamed up a task for her. I had left a shirt at the guy's place and knew I wasn't going to be able to get it back from him. I told her if she wanted to talk, she had to get me the shirt. Then we could talk. I made no other promises. I honestly did not believe she'd be able to get the shirt. Or, well - I knew the kind of crazy determined she could be, so I knew there was a chance, I guess. This was a brilliant plot for a couple of reasons in my mind, including the fact that she'd have to go back and deal with the guy face-to-face, and so on.

Turns out she finally got the shirt. Friday she wanted to meet up and talk. We did.

Clearly she had thought she would return the shirt and we would become buddy-buddy. We met at my bar and had some sort of a discussion. She did not like the way it went. I consider what she did essentially unforgiveable and I also believe that forgiving her for it would send a message to her that she could do the same thing again in the future and I'd get over it. Nope. With a 'friend' like that I wouldn't need any enemies. (If anyone's going to say "You should be mad at the dude too!" yes, once I found out, I also cut him out of my life. They both get consequences for their choices but frankly, I've known him for 9 months and her for 20 years. What she did was worse.) This woman is certifiably and diagnosed as unbalanced, by the way. When she realized she wasn't going to get the outcome she wanted she began lashing out, both at me and anyone else at the bar she knew. When I finally walked away from the table, realizing things were going nowhere except downhill, she went outside and tried to start a fight with someone else. A girl found and told me and I went out to try to prevent it. For those of you that've met me, it may sound hilarious, but I was bigger than both of the girls that would've been involved in the altercation.

She ended up getting thrown out. Good. I'm proud of the way I conducted myself that night but it was extremely emotionally draining for me. She'd been saying things to try and hurt me and most didn't but one did, even though I know it's false: she said the guy didn't care about me and had never cared about me. Not true. Data demonstrates otherwise, and so on, but it played on an insecurity I hadn't realized I had and that colored my entire weekend. I went home early that night.

The rest of the weekend I had trouble sleeping and became despirited about poetry stuff. I saw someone I knew a long time ago who I'd carried a torch for for a long time unexpectedly on Saturday and that threw me - he'd moved out of state. I got trapped at my parents' house for several hours when I really only wanted to run there and back. I had a headache from Saturday on. Sunday was actually the first time I shed any tears about the crazy girl/stupid boy stuff. I get emotional when I'm tired. I was also worried I was sick/running a fever but I appear well enough today.

Things aren't great but they're absolutely liveable. I need to buy my cat food and litter today and then I'm just getting Chinese food and passing out at like, 6. I'm trying to quash the critical poetry voices in my head. It's okay to be at work today, despite my groanings yeseterday.

In the long run this will all just be a blip on the radar. But in the moment, I am just not quite yet my usual self.