This past week I finished the rewrite of DLN (which stands for Djinn Liberation Network and is not the real title, btw - the real title is better, trust me). I ended up just short of 90K on this second draft. Just about right for a paranormal suspense/urban fantasy. I still have some weaving left to do, mind you, but I don't expect the sum total to move much. Maybe a few thousand up or down max.
Other than that, not a whole lot has been going on around here. I spent yesterday in a total funk. And I thought it was going to be such a good day. Hell, I saw the first robins of Spring first thing. Two of them were chasing each other around the neighbor's tree. If that isn't a harbinger of good things, I don't know what is.
And then I made the mistake of talking a walk down memory lane. Wouldn't you know it, the damn path had uneven cobbles and I fell on my face.
First off, my post yesterday reminded me that I hadn't searched the web for my missing CP in a while. Now that might sound a little stalker-ish, but when someone just drops off the face of the earth, I kinda feel the need to at least find out whether they're still alive. Ya know? Sure, it'd be nice to know why she just up and stopped responding to my emails - without so much as a 'I realized I don't like you, your politics, your philosophy, your writing...' Seems like a more honest way to end a partnership than sudden disappearance. Anyway, I found her. She's still alive, has a new blog and seems to be doing very well. I'm happy for her. Seriously. But finding out she wasn't dead or horribly crippled or deported, just made me understand that it wasn't her, it was me. And reading one of her early posts at the new blog made me understand why our friendship was probably ill-fated to begin with.
Which of course, started a cascading downward spiral of my normally okay self-esteem. Suddenly I needed to find other lost friends and see what they were up to. An hour of googling and facebooking later, I found the girl who first got me drunk, the first boy I had a crush on and the guy who was in almost every one of my classes from K-12. I also found out the man who was my best friend for about ten years finally got his pilot's license - go Larry.
Still, I wasn't satisfied. I still felt a burning desire to connect with my past for some reason. Back to facebook and a new college search...
Lo and behold, I found my group of college friends. They seem to have kept in contact with each other, but not with me. (Of course, one of those people was an ex-boyfriend and our breakup was less than stellar, so I can't really bitch about them leaving me out.) This, of course, did wonders for my funk. (Note sarcasm.)
I finally came out of it after a total diet-fail (a Moolatte and a cheeseburger), a trip to the thrift store (18 paperbacks and two hardcovers = $2.75), and driving around listening to crappy music at as loud as my ears could stand. Pathetic. Because I was feeling bad about myself, I tortured myself with things that were bad for me. Umm, right.
Now that I'm back in my right head this morning, I wonder what the hell I was thinking. I mean, it's not like I chased my CP away. Whatever her problem was, it was her problem. And if her problem was with me, dropping off the face of the earth wasn't the most mature way to handle it. :shrug: As for my old friends, I'm reminded of a line from All Dogs Go to Heaven: "You can never go back."
And you know something, even if I could go back, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't fit in. We had a lot of fun together, but none of are the same people we were. I know I'm not the same. Hell, since I left college I lived through being a single mom and getting brain damage. If that doesn't change a person, I don't know what does.
Like I said, the funk is over. I go through this whining for my past every once in a while. I try to find my HS best friend - who doesn't facebook, apparently - and I look for old relationships. And then I realize that even if I did find them, it wouldn't be the same. You really can't go back in time. And trying just leads to a funk.
Not that I won't do this again. I will, and with the same results. Stupid self-perpetuating cycle. Bleh.
Have you ever tried to connect with your past? How'd that go for you?
*hugs* I wont leave you!!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you realized it wasn't you. And I'm sorry you do this every so often. I'm still close enough to my past that I see everyone all the time... It's a small town afterall. I do get sad though, at times. I used to be really close to a bunch of Scout people... and now I'm just not.
If that past were that great, it would have remained part of our present. Let go and move on. The past has never worked out that well for me either, but it's also never bothered me. My present is pretty freakin' awesome!
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