I can't stop shaking right now. There's this lump in my throat and I am all alone. It's horrible. I've been trying to run for so long. And for what? I feel ill. How many times more can I run away from this awful thing in my past? Can't he just leave me alone? 7 years later, I'm still not whole. I was, and remain, broken.

I don't like the word "hate." I will use it colloquially: "I hate it when I wake up still drunk," for instance, or "I hate being run over by a wild pack of elephants," but there is no word strong enough for how I feel right now. I hate what happened. I hate him. I hate that I still feel like shit and like a victim after all this fucking time. I HATE it. I hate feeling like a mouse about to be pounced on, because that's what has happened.

I don't like feeling like I'm being played with. I cannot forgive and I cannot forget. I have been too trusting, too foolish in the past. I just want to be left alone. When a person doesn't call you back, doesn't respond to the note left on her car, doesn't try to reconnect, leave them alone. Really.

Jesus, it's only one week into the new year, and already, I hate it. I found out on New Year's Day that my cousin is getting shipped off to Iraq in Feb...to guard the convoys... I am terrified that I will never see him again. And this other asshole is apparently in the Navy... but stationed in Italy. I wish their places were reversed. I know that makes me a bad person, but I can't stop shaking, and I can't stop crying, and I can't stop feeling this way.

I going to go take a scalding hot shower and hope that denial will kick in already.... now, where's my steel wool?


That is all.