Half-eaten

I'm going on 3.5 days alone, but not really. A friend hung out for almost 24hrs, sleeping over and keeping me company. It helped, but emotions hit as soon as she left. It's not wallowing depression but a quick, sudden outpouring that leaves me within minutes. I am both elated and terrified of being alone.My time has been spent carelessly - I am sad the 3day weekend ends tonight. I've also been wise. I read, cooked, hit the farmer's market, met up with friends, ran 2.7, attended yoga, went out for dinner, wrote, watched movies, cleaned and let the dog enjoy the park. And now I'm blogging.I'm allowing myself to dabble - staying up late, sleeping in, watching movies, eating whatever I want and drinking alcohol. Feeling crappy, I'll lose myself in a few hours of mindless internet, almost feeling sorry for myself, but somehow that excessiveness wears off and I have energy for more productive things.After my crying jag today, I gave myself the gift of a ripe peach... and then had an urge to photograph the experience. Feeling stupid as I did so, the actual process helped center me and I felt much better afterward.I'm reading Julie Powell's "Cleaving" which doesn't help my feelings of aloneness. Her stark honesty about floundering in her marriage, about cheating, guilt, feeling depressed and isolated despite success and a husband who is, her words, "Not the 'one flesh' bullshit of the wedding ceremony. But one bone".I look up her birthday - Aries with moon in Virgo. So close to Taurus. I contemplate her husband's - Libra? Pisces?I absorb her emotional states, always the empathetic reader. I wonder if her predilection for alcohol is the reason for my pulling out the step-ladder to reach the highest shelf that serves as our liquor cabinet. I go with rum & coke. No idea why.I think about my upcoming river trip then shove those thoughts down again - panic, more so than excitement, seems to color that future. This morning's dream is still vivid but cryptic: lost in downtown, near gangs and violence, hiding in a locker full of clothes and feeling so exhausted I couldn't keep my eyes open.Turning over the idea of radical self-honesty, to try and hear myself at the very core of my being, instead of blocking out everything in me. Feeling, rather than thinking about, my conversations this weekend - the constant false impressions and busted expectations. Knowing how alone I really am. Never feeling connected. At least not to other people.To books, yes. To fruit and the sidewalk and the way clean sheets feel, yes yes yes. But my emotions, something as simple as a funny story, heard and reflected back to me in a way I don't expect, throw me off. Did they hear me wrong? Do they just not care? Or is there something in my voice, my hand gestures, that's betraying me, giving away how I really feel?I'm tired of being the neighborhood therapist, the stoic friend. No one is that for me, not even myself, and it's exhausting. Maybe I don't know how I really feel...and if I start I fear it'll be a tornado of emotions that I'm not really sure I have the strength for.But I keep going along, thinking that maybe tomorrow will be easier, better. My life is textbook fabulous, but I do not feel so grand each day. The mood of last week seems to have dissipated thanks to working out, writing and a walk through the library. I am off to another week filled with appointments that mean little to me and an empty apartment. It could be a bewildering or energizing week. Things really could go either way. And like the old cliche goes, I'll just take it one day at a time.