I am well beyond due for a break. Tonight just punctuated the need.

Melissa said a week ago or so that I have been beaten up enough right now. And I didn’t really understand it until I sat in the Jeep with Max tonight - on my own driveway - for five and a half hours.

I tried to explain to him that living “in the middle” - not in the extreme - has its good and bad points. I told him that the thing that I was really good at was anticipating the blows - when you live in the extreme, you watch for them, or you just expect them. But when you mellow more towards the middle, you relax a little more, and then the blows are like sucker-punches. I told him that’s what hurts the most right now.

Funny thing is, I couldn’t be very specific with him, and I don’t think he had a clue what I was talking about.

Example from any conversation with Max: Blah blah blah blah blah and then Jodi said blah blah and I was soooo amazed at how much she’s growing! Blah blah blah blah blah….

It’s like, we get into a rhythm and really connect and we’re having this great conversation and then I get the wind knocked out of me with one errant comment. You know, about his girlfriend - someone he has every right to talk about - at length! *sigh* Sometimes I think I’m really just nuts.

But those are the little blows - the small sucker-punches - that leave all these bruises that I try to ignore. But when you pile small bruise on top of small bruise, they start aching and not healing.

Hence, my trip to the Dominican is well overdue. I feel like one big bruise sometimes. And it’s sooo frustrating, and so hard, because it’s not like it’s anyone’s fault. I mean, give me a break. But the guilt for complicating things still resides with me. I search my memory banks for all the reasons why Max perpetuated it in the beginning - and there are valid reasons, although he’ll never admit it with his selective memory - but what is the point, really?

Living in today - not yesterday, not tomorrow - is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I like to plan, and I like to dwell. And you don’t have those luxuries when you are busy living today. So I am living completely outside of my most miserably comfortable pattern right now, and I’m struggling. Really, truly.

I wanted so much to hang out with Max last night. I was irritated when he called me and said he was so tired that he’d come by, play me a few songs, and then jet. It’s like me to not appreciate what I get, but demand everything else.

I don’t know. Writing this entry makes me frustrated. It’s the little stupid things that really bug me. Like when I gave Max a hug in the Jeep tonight before I got out, I kissed him on the side of the head too. It was the most natural thing in existence to do. But WTF?

Patience. Trust in God. Patience. Trust in God. One day, I’ll find those two things. Right now, I’m trying to break old patterns. And I feel split in two. Constantly. Longing for two different things, despising the inability to be consistent. Wishing I could take my heart and throw it up in the air - and as it came back down, bat it with a two-by-four into oblivion.

Weird, huh?

I need this vacation.

Swirled up,

michelle