"The soulquake happened here in her glass world..."
So Dave left in May 2010 and my sanity followed him out the door.  I've described it a time or two since then as a soulquake.  Nothing was broken but me.  My reasons for living and my goals in life were swept away in one fell swoop and all that was left was silence.

It's been one year and four months.  I don't wake up and feel a crushing emptiness in my chest like I once did.  Instead I just wake up feeling indifferent.  I have nothing in my life which excites me.  Work is boring and at times terrible and humiliating.  School has been grueling in the past.  It's somewhat more interesting this semester, but overall it's just something I have to do to get my degree.  A means to an end.

I started going to a couple of church groups this year.  Members of the one finally came out and called me a whore due to my liberal sexual views and behaviors.  So much for their open minded "everyone is welcome" stance.  The other group doesn't quite know how to take me.  And I'm sure they never will.  I'm approaching this stuff from a completely different perspective.  Logic vs. faith.

I wish with all of my heart that I could just blindly believe in something the way that they do.  That I could pray and feel that it's going to be okay.  And there are moments when I can suspend belief long enough to do so.  But then logic keeps rushing back and here and I am.  Just me all twisted up inside my own head.

So I go to work and school.  I attend church.  I play team trivia on Tuesday nights.  I hang out with friends.  I spend time with my family.  I go to bars.  I listen to live music.  I have sex with a 22 year old Christian boy who has a Moldovian girlfriend in Moldova just pining away after him.  And I convince myself that I love him.  And at the end of the day it's all just a means to an end.  Just a way to not be lonely and alone.

What a harsh and ugly reality this is when you look at it in black and white.  And as I write this, one would think I would experience some sort of emotion about it all.  But no.  I am numb. 

And all I want is to be able to feel something again.  To fall in love again.  And to be loved in return.

The Return

It's been over six years since I last wrote an "anonymous" blog.  I miss the catharsis of this, and so I've returned.  Six years is a long time and much has happened. 

Colin and I parted ways after I caught him cheating with an adorable Romanian server.  It made me furious!  And then I "dated" my friend Captain Jim Hayes of the US Airforce for a few months.  Then I met my former future husband, David Goldsmith. 

Dave was a drug addict in recovery, who struck me with his honesty about his dark past.  Well...he was honest about everything except for one very important thing.  When we met he told me that he had been clean and sober for a year, but it had truly only been three months.  I understand why he lied.  What else do you say to get the addictions counselor to go out with you?  He knew I would've never dated him unless he had clean time over a year.  And so he lied and I fell.  How could I not?  He was intelligent, quirky, sexy, and exciting!  And a musician.  Everything I had ever wanted.  And he loved me fiercely, for a time. 

That time came to and end and in the end he loved drugs and booze more than me.  So in May of 2010, after proposing marriage to me on December 30, 2009, he abandoned me.  He had not only left me alone without my best friend and companion and lover, but he left me alone in a place that I had never wanted to be.  He hated Baltimore so much and constantly expressed a desire to leave.  Eventually he convinced me to move to Charleston, WV, and even though it was not what I truly wanted, I did it for him.  And he left me here in this fucking soulless stye of empty-headed and shallow people.

Ever since then I have been struggling to regain and to maintain sanity.  Ever since then my life has been a swirl of depression and self-destruction.  Little by little, I have been trying to dig myself out of the abyss.  And I have succeeded to a certain point.  But I am still stuck here.  Chained to my obligation to myself to complete graduate school.  Working a job that I hate.  Living in a town that I hate.

I suppose the blog that I write from hereon out will be the story of me attemtping to return to sanity and good mental health.  The story of me returning to myself.  Recovering from a broken heart.  At least, I hope that is the story I shall write.  Only time will tell.