I have a lot of weird thoughts running back and forth through my head right now; I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it all but it's like...they are racing.  It's weird.  I was told I should try to actually write instead of type but I don't have the proper notebook and I'm just not in the mood to handwrite.

So I'm visiting friend in Wisconsin and met up with another HS friend whom I haven't spoken to in years.  It was...odd.  Like, it wasn't bad, but I felt very disconnected the whole time.  Like I was watching two people from the outside and unable to penetrate the veil that surrounded them.  And it isn't like they made me feel that way.  I just...did.  Maybe I wanted things to be like they were and they weren't, or something?  I don't know.  My ability to make connections with people is very weak - which isn't unusual for me, but sort of weirdly smacked me in the face today - and my thoughts spiraled into thinking about my isolation (which is largely self-imposed; I know I am too comfortable with it) and wondering if...I'll just keep losing connections.  It felt weird, hearing about their productive lives and friendships.  I'm not unhappy for them, it's more...I felt alien?  Like those things are out of reach for me and I felt an unnecessary pang of jealousy because of it.  'Why can't you be that productive?  While they work and contribute to society, you sleep and stare at the wall blankly and remain a waste of space.' 

(And, of course, the exit option always becomes a fantasy in these situations.  So.  There's that.)

Weirdly, I talked about (to friend I'm visiting, not other HS friend) the ex in some detail for the first time in...a while.  I think it was brought up in a 'first love is someone you'll always think about' and I said "yeah, unfortunately."  Because fuck, he does still pop up into my head and even now I just want to expunge him from my memory.  I brought up some things that I hadn't even told her - about how I should have seen signs of what was to come while I was abroad.  Certain possessive behaviors and guilt-trips that were weaponized so effectively that I could not bring myself to experience certain things because it would upset him.  Which is bullshit, as I know now, but.  I felt sad.  And it didn't help that I was away.  I'm not good at keeping in touch with people continuously - if I had been home, I would have been able to relay some of these behaviors to close friends of mine.  Maybe they would have seen signs.  But I wasn't.  I was alone in a new country and he was who I spoke with every day.  And I had to speak with him every day.  I spent more than I should while in Rome on texting (I only had a British plan, not an international one) because he "couldn't handle" me not talking to him for the 5 days I spent there.  I remember getting sexually harassed and grabbed and going to my dorm and having a panic attack and he somehow made that about him?  Like he wasn't there to protect me.  Like I needed him there to keep an eye on me.

So many other things that I should have realized, but I was too blind to see it and too isolated to learn.

I still do get bitter about the fact that he was one of my two 'exceptions' in terms of feeling...something. 

I don't think about him actively so much but once in a while...things just remind me and I'm pulled back, staring at the version of me whose mind was shattered and wanting to curse her and hug her at the same time.  My own issues did not help anything, and I know I've said in the past that I think my own depression and sadness leaking through the mask is something that spurred his eventual non-interest in me.

I write a lot of fiction about manipulative and psychologically damaging relationships because of this.  I always was sort of interested in that sort of dark shit but I found it cathartic to experience it through a lens that I could control.  I really should get back to doing that.  It was nice and I think it might help me feel...less dead than I sometimes do.  Not all the time.  Mostly when I'm around my nieces I feel alive...but other times when I know I should feel more than I do or more connections it is just...emptiness.

At least when I was writing I had connections to the characters I wrote through.  Not sure how healthy that is but...it was still something.