All I can do is jump in where I am now. There is so much worth covering, at least, so much I should have been writing about, but the lapses in my journaling since April of 1981 are always when things are most intense. What can I do, I’m a creature of habit, and part of that is retreating from the world when things are hard.

Ian misspoke when he said I am single-handledly “saving the arts scene” in Napa. I’m doing no such thing. I am tearing some shit up, as it were, but I don’t know if any of it is actually going to work. And I am alternately exhilirated and exhausted by my job. And the call to relief work gets ever louder, ever more insistent.

And, sadly, I write today when I’m feeling poorly, even though I’m all dolled up and just out the door to a rare party- rare in that I actually sort of want to go, and that there will actually already be people I actually like there. (I hate parties where I don’t know anyone. Antisocial of me, isn’t it?) But I am so terribly, terribly tired of being disappointed. I almost wrote “bitterly disappointed” but I rarely let myself care enough to actually feel bitter about things. I don’t understand how “friends” can be so disrespectful of one another, why infatuation turns into distaste, why my solitude grows ever thicker. And why I allow anyone in my life- ANYONE- to treat me poorly. There are so few unkind folks left in my life; why do I find it necessary to hang on to one or two, to make sure I’m slightly abused at least once a week? What ugly part of me does that feed?

I feel as though I’m wallowing, and I don’t think I tend to be a wallower, and I really want to shake this off. But I’m in one of those situations where I’m keeping a door cracked, rather than firmly shutting it and triple-locking it, even though I know the window will fly open with some fresh air the minute I’m finally able to do this. I wish I was strong enough to be decent to myself. And yet, I keep a wedge in the door, and disappoinment firmly in my life. I wish I knew why.

LASIK is a miracle. Truly. I’m not out of the woods yet- still terrified of infection and desperately trying to keep soap, sweat, and my own little fingers away from my eyeballs (oh! how I LONG to rub my eyes, like in ye olden days!) – but I still can’t believe how well I see, how beautifully deliciously I see everything. When I have the energy to do so, I’m going to describe the surgery in detail (christ, it was weird) although things get fuzzy immediately after, since that’s when the valium finally kicked in. Boy, was it not working before or during the surgery.

So, yes, it went wonderfully. I even have some complications- some wrinkling of my cornea on my left eye- but my vision is so good out of it that they aren’t worried. I have YET ANOTHER post-op- my third- on Friday, and I’m hoping for a clean bill of health. It’s scary, though, to know that I’ve just undergone elective surgery, and that things could still go wrong. For some reason, I’ve not done the sacrifical burning and stomping of my glasses and contact cases and such… maybe I’m just superstitious, and I’d never be able to use any of them again anyway because my prescription will never be exactly that again… but still. I’ll destroy it all when I’m sure I’m out of the woods.

Full details on the surgery and the post-surgery fun coming soon.

In other news, I broke up with Dan on Sunday night. As wonderful as he was, something shifted in him when I finally started liking him. He pursued me so dilligently, so consistently, with such affection and admiration, and as soon as I started returning all of the above, he took a step back, and then another and then another, until I woke up Sunday morning and looked over at him thought to myself, “I want to wake up totally excited that the person next to me is there, and want him to be totally excited that he’s with me.” And neither was true. And so I foray back into the world of singlehood, because I don’t want to be with *someone*, I want to be with *awesome*. I just can’t do it any other way.