I should be asleep as of about three hours ago. I have to get up at five am. And grade. And do a lot of the work I didn't do over break. Not that I can do all of it tomorrow morning and of course I don't really trust myself to do it now. I'm exhausted and stressed. Tomorrow I'll just be exhausted. And then the rest of the week will just be about catching up, which much like my cat attempting to get her own tail, will be an exercise in futility.

I've been very depressed lately. Despite what I wrote on Friday. Don't believe everything I tell you. I mean, sure the hustler was here and yes he called twice on Friday, but it only made me feel better for a very short while. Very short. The massage I had on Friday had a longer lasting impact. Because the truth is as much as I want to feel attractive, because I don't, what I want more is to be loved. And that is not to be found in the lap of a gay hustler. Or any man last time I checked in my particular case. While I seem more together when I'm teaching, well, I feel more empty. Like I'm playing solitaire with the cat. Going through pantomime of being normal without any of the emotional reassurance of stability. Perhaps I like being a mess more. It seems more honest. More real. Although last week was a mess and hated myself for wasting so much time being depressed. Yet I couldn't just shake it off. Back when Eric left, sure I would break down crying everywhere, but it didn't take much to make me feel better. I found comfort in men taking me out. In dates. In bars. In going out. In having ridiculous dramatic affairs. Some virgin wanting to cheat on his girlfriend with me. Some former stripper hitting on me by a fire that I built in the middle of PA. Some idiot in the army driving seven hours just to see me. I even liked the way I looked. I went to the gym to purge my aggression not to look better.

Now I hate the way I look. I dread taking my clothes off. For the first time ever. I don't even enjoy these affairs. Well, OK there is some enjoyment, but then I think "Christ how pathetic at 32 years old I'm still the girl who gets picked up at gay bars." I'm a fucking professor for chrissake. I'm supposed to look back on those days fondly, with a smirk occasionally, while I'm sitting on the couch with some guy who is reading to me aloud or telling me about Japanese warfare or complaining about how no one in the office appreciates his understanding of Schopenhauer as I sip a glass of wine not while I sit on the couch with my cat contemplating how I can watch law and order for ten hours so I can have some idea that there is justice somewhere in the world even if it is fictional. That we can still pretend like Dante and Shakespeare that the universe is just. That our pain isn't meaningless. That we can still believe such things with a straight face.

I'm crying again. I'll never get to sleep now. Only four hours or so until I have to get up. I guess I will grade papers.

Neither one of the posts I wrote tonight are what I wanted to write about. I was working on a post about the fractured nature of a writer's persona (you'll see), but what's been on my mind as of last week is that I should go back on medication. Because I can't live like this anymore, and if I can't be happy the old fashioned way well I'll just do what everyone else on madison avenue does. I'll buy it.