http://waiterrant.net/?p=607

I was reading this blog entry and thinking how lucky Waiter is to have Buster waiting for him when he gets home. How lucky he is to have somewhere to retreat for the holidays. Where people are welcoming and there's some comfort and joy.

This year, as with last year, I have spent the holidays feeling mostly trampled on. Stomped all over. Exhausted and worn out and miserable. It seems unfair that I don't also have somewhere to go where I can find some peace.

I have a pretty active social life. I always thought that I packed my social calendar full of activities so that I could get away from myself. When I'm sitting in a room with friends, the conversation makes me turn off my feelings. It's like a mask drops into place and I can pretend everything is okay. Maybe I'm not fooling anyone else but I definitely can fool myself into believing that I'm going to be okay. At least as long as dinner lasts, anyway. The presence of other people serves as a distraction from my thoughts. The crazy ones that make me hate myself. So I go out to dinner or meet people for drinks or shop with a girlfriend. As long as I'm forced to pretend I'm okay, I can be okay. When I get home, I can drop the mask and be myself. I need the alone time because all this pretending is exhausting. And I want that. I need that.

I think that I might make a resolution this year. That the place I go to get away, my apartment, should be welcoming and comfortable. It is. I'm happy with where I live right now. It's a great space. I rarely invite people over because I don't want to deal with the invasion of privacy, judgement and curiosity. The few people that I have invited are people that I trust. People I enjoy talking to and spending time with. Granted, there have been a few uninvited guests. But I don't really care what they think anyway.

The problem is that, when I'm alone in my apartment, I also have to deal with my thoughts. The voices in my head. The ones that torment me and punish me and remind me that I'm worthless. Stupid, fat and ugly. The inner turmoil drives me more crazy than almost anything outside. I can deal with the world. I can handle the stress of my daily life. The relationship torment comes from inside. It's the inside garbage that wears me down. Like my current insomnia. I could have gone to sleep hours ago but I couldn't bring myself to calm down, lie down and be still. I needed to have the TV going, to be able to look outside the window at the world outside, to drown all of my thoughts about Grey. To help me forget how much I miss him. It's always easier to sleep when I'm exhausted. If I try to sleep when I'm not exhausted, I end up crying and I hate that.

I don't know how to fix all these things about myself. But maybe, by just telling myself I need to give myself a break, maybe that will make things easier.

In a completely unrelated note, I have been sleeping on the couch a lot. It's comfortable. But I have been having strange and vivid dreams. Maybe the couch is off-gassing VOCs. Last night, I dreamed that I was reading reddit.com and I found an article on the 10 easiest ways to commit suicide. I also dreamed that Grey had decided to move to Montreal. That we had talked on the phone because he had called. I had some other pretty vivid dreams about him when I was napping on Saturday afternoon. I forget now what they were about. But I distinctly remember thinking this morning while I was baking cupcakes that I couldn't remember any of those ways to commit suicide. And I was irritated by that.