I never told anyone, not my friends, my family. Not Boyfriend. He would have supported me, my parents would have, my friends would have, but…I don’t know. I felt so ashamed. So stupid. I lied about what was going on with me, found another disorder to fit my symptoms. Boyfriend wanted to come out for the surgery – for what he thought was the surgery – but I insisted he stay put. I didn’t want to have to admit it to him, what was really going on.

The medical abortion was horrible. My uterus contracted for hours, hard and painful. I don’t know if that’s what giving birth would feel like (probably pretty close)…if it is, I don’t want anything to do with it. I laid in bed and I cried and I took pain meds and I threw up a lot. I suffered all by myself. I deserved it, I thought. If it hurt I had nobody to blame but myself. And then I laid in the shower for a long time, until the hot water stopped working, and when I stood up…plop. A purplish-red blood clot. I assumed it was the fetus, the tissue, but I couldn’t see. The water washed it away.

I bled a lot, over the next few weeks. I had to get blood work done twice to track hormone levels. They both came back abnormal, so January 9 I went back to Planned Parenthood. I hadn’t expelled the pregnancy, after all. Or not all of it. They ended up having to do a surgical abortion anyway, the quick and relatively painless procedure I’d avoided in the first place. It was over fast. The nurse held my hand.

I got into a program at one of the local hospitals. They give IUDs to women with no insurance who either just had a baby or just terminated. I got mine on Monday, had to say “abortion,” “terminated pregnancy,” had to face all the things I’ve been burying and ignoring for so long. My uterus is sore, crampy, aching.

I used to think getting pregnant would be like flicking a switch in a spiritual sense. I thought my body would just blossom and it would be beautiful and wonderful, things working the way they’ve been working for other women since the beginning of time. Instead I was tired. Exhausted. My boobs hurt. I was nauseous all the time. Couldn’t eat yogurt. Couldn’t stand the smell of cucumbers. I cried and cried and cried.

I wish I had told someone, at least a friend. My mom. Boyfriend. I wish I’d had someone to cry with. I wish I had someone to cry with now, but I don’t know if they would understand why I waited so long to say anything. I don’t know if it’s more selfish of me to keep something like this hidden from the people I love or to try to share my burden, try to lessen my own grief.

I don’t regret the choice I made. But I wish I’d done things differently. I wish I felt like it was getting better.

I am so lonely.

To make matters worse, the things I’ve tried to do for myself this weekend have totally backfired. Yesterday I was supposed to get together with the local Browncoats, but couldn’t find the place. Drove and drove and drove and finally had to give up because I was too lost and driving the ZipCar and my time was running out. Today I wanted to go check out the local Unitarian church (been missing that lately) and missed the bus and when I got there finally, people were leaving! Thinking back on it, they might have been leaving from the first service or any other reasons, but I was so upset at the thought of missing it that I just cried and walked back to the bus stop.

I decided to go back on Weight Watchers. Last time my housemate stopped speaking to me, I ate my feelings, so I figured I might as well kill two birds with one stone: not fall into that old habit and work proactively to lose the weight. I’ve gained back all but 10 pounds of what I lost last time, but I remember how good it felt to get it off. It needs to be done. Shit is getting out of hand.

Plus all the usual stuff: stressed about school, missing Boyfriend, blah blah blah.

I never thought I’d be this anxious to get back to the work week. At least at the office I won’t feel quite so completely alone.

For the record, I am too old and mature to participate in such shenanigans. I was neither destructive nor drunk – more than sort of lazy, stuffed feeling of eating all day  and then trying to put beer on top of it and just giving up and laying around with the cats. You know. Super Bowl Sunday.

(In terms of SBs, it was a pretty sad one for me. My house got invaded for awhile I missed pretty much all of the commercials. I did demand that they chill the fuck out so I could at least see the 3D one, without sound, but it was kind of a let-down. I wanted my socks blown off. Oh well. Next year.)

I don’t know what that “gallery” thing is or how it’s supposed to work. We’ll see what happens!

Plus I love to hear about other people’s sex lives.

I’d all but forgotten about it until today, when a post on Sociological Images (which I just started reading and adore) pointed me to this essay.

I want to be her when I grow up.

Two steps off the porch quickly revealed that the ice is still there (whoops!), but it sure does look pretty.

Supposed to get up to 45 or so this weekend, according to one coworker. I guess that’s good or whatever? I’m a winter person, I love the snow. But I also love the spring, when it’s starting to get warm but it’s hot hot yet. So this back and forth weather stuff is making me crazy. It feels so nice when it warms up and starts to get me in the mood for spring. Then the snow and cold comes back. Then when I’m getting used to that again, it warms up. I can’t take it. I’m getting whiplash.

Some developments at work – mainly the threat of offering me a full-time, grown-up job with a salary and benefits and all that – have me thinking about this city more and more. I’m thinking about sticking around. What sense does it make to leave guaranteed employment to move across the country to a state with one of the highest unemployment rates in the country? I’m thinking about asking Boyfriend to move back. I’m having constant fantasies about the sweet artist’s loft we could live in, with our dogs and maybe my Girl Cat.

I love this city. Pittsburgh with Boyfriend in it again would be just about perfection. (True perfection would be if my student loans up and disappeared one day, never to be seen or heard from again.)

Oh, hey. Super Bowl this weekend. I hear our team is, like, in it. I won’t pretend to be a football fan, but I do love the ol’ SB. (Can you study marketing and not love the Super Bowl? Is it possible?) Looking forward to good food and beer and company. And, hey, if we win…I get to go rioting. Can’t beat that.

Yesterday I decided that this is the year I learn to walk in heels. I’m not sure why. I was just looking at shoes and they were pretty and they were heels and I thought, “dammit! I want pretty shoes!” So. I don’t know if my problem is that heels are just horribly uncomfortable by nature and I can’t stand that or if I’m just too lazy/impatient to adjust to the difference in walking and balance to get to the part where it stops being so horrible. Maybe a little of both. So we’ll see. Maybe I’ll get the hang of it.

I wore my itty bitty little nubbin heels to work today. I love the click-click-click of heels on the floor in the office…though I have to admit I live in fear of slipping and falling on my face and totally humiliating myself. It’s happened before. Not exactly the impression I want to make at the new job.

But I did notice today that I have the natural wind-in-the-hair runwalk thing that Lady Tyra is so fanatical about. I was feeling like hot shit after that. I must have gotten up to go to the bathroom or get coffee or put something in a far away filing cabinet like 800,000 times. It was a good day. A sexy momma kind of day.

This is way better than talking about how I sobbed to Boyfriend on the phone last night about how much I miss him and made him feel guilty about it and then felt like a huge asshole for being so intolerable and cried some more. Way. Better.

I was initially annoyed at having to go into work today at all (goddamn racist institution that employs me!), but I’m not a salaried employee so I don’t get paid for holidays and I could definitely use the money. Plus it wasn’t so bad. Everyone was nice, there were baked goods in the kitchen and everyone else having the day off meant the bus was empty. All the makings of a perfect day.

I still feel pretty resoundingly miserable. I had a good cry last night (as “good” as a pity party can ever be) and woke up sad. Went to work sad. Came home sad. Got more sad while I watched my housemate and his boyfriend act all cute and snuggly. Got way more sad when my other housemate left to spend the night at his boyfriend’s place. Want to cry some more when I think about the cold, empty bed that awaits me.

I’m not usually like this. I don’t want to be this kind of girl. I love Boyfriend and I miss him all the time, but I’m not usually so one-track-mind about it. Now, suddenly, it’s all-encompassing. I hate this. I don’t want to do it anymore. I don’t want to be this person anymore.

But at least – and I can’t believe I’m going to say this – I can look forward to a busy day at the office tomorrow.

I have literally arranged my life around this marathon. I did all my homework yesterday so there wouldn’t be any distractions. I decided to put off doing laundry this week so I wouldn’t have to tear myself away. I even got up “early” (you know, for being a non-work-day and a day-after-drinking) to make sure I didn’t miss a thing. What better than a day of Model madness to pull me out of my funk? Model makes everything better!!!

Not so.

For reasons unknown, Oxygen kicked off its marathon with the most recent cycle, Cycle 11, arguably the most boring of all the cycles. YAWN FEST. I feel like this one just ended. Why would they start here? Why not start from the beginning? Why not give us Cycle 1? Nobody ever shows Cycle 1! It’s the only season I haven’t seen start-to-finish! GIVE ME SEASON ONE!

Even worse, the tidbits are stupid (“Isis is the first transgendered model to appear on ANTM” – WHOA, what?!) and the interviews are online. Look, Oxygen: I don’t care about your online content. Give me my Model and give it to me on my television. Some kind of something starts tonight at 8pm, but that’s hours away. What’s my motivation for sticking around that long? Oh, gosh. There isn’t any.

You have ruined my day, Oxygen. You have ruined a Model marathon that could have (should have!!) been amazing. Those of us who are obsessive fans of ANTM will sit and watch marathons till the cows come home. We don’t even need special features. But when you hype it up as being super-amazing-wonderful, it had better deliver.

It didn’t. And now I’ve got nothing interesting to fill up the time.

When I left to catch the last bus home, I was shocked to find a thick layer of snow on the ground. More than an inch, maybe two inches, had fallen between my arrival at the party and my exit. (It snowed all night, looks like – lots on the ground right now. Love it.) It was pretty but also strange. Fake-looking, somehow. Like snow in a movie.

I called Boyfriend and we ended up chatting for more than an hour while I waited for the bus and rode back to my house. It was really good for a while, always wonderful to hear his voice and his laugh, and then…I don’t know. I was drunk and tired and I sort of hit a wall. By the time I got home, I was so sad. I just wanted to sit down and cry and cry and cry.

Even this morning I still feel sad. This happens sometimes when I party. Plus I think it’s getting harder and harder to be away from Boyfriend. I miss him. I miss having him around. I’m so jealous of my roommates, who can go see their lovers, who can date like a normal couple, spend the night, meet up for coffee. Boyfriend and I spend months apart and then get a few days, maybe a week, to suddenly crash together again and try to get in all the affection and intimacy and good hard fucking that we’ve been missing out on. It’s not enough. I’m sick of it.

So I’m sad today. Sad and hungover and dizzy.

But…why?

I think planning ahead is great. I think it’s important to start these things early and get your shit together so you can deal with anything unexpected that pops up. The speed of everything strikes me as a bit iffy, but it’s between the bride and groom and if that’s what they want – great.

But I couldn’t help a bit of revulsion bubbling up inside me. I’m 23 years old. Plenty of other women my age and younger are already married, some with children. Girls I went to high school with have different last names. By the time my parents were my age, they were married and I was almost on the way.

Yet the prospect of marriage sort of horrifies me. There was a time in college when it seemed like everyone around me was getting engaged and I wanted it to, I wanted my then-boyfriend to propose, but of course he didn’t and thank goodness he didn’t because we were both too young and stupid and would have been miserable if we stayed together. I got over that. I hate the way some women obsess about marriage as if it’s the only path to real happiness. I don’t need it to be happy. No one should need it, yet it’s constantly shoved down my throat and the throats of others that this is the expectation, this is what we should be striving for, and if we don’t have it…what the fuck is the matter with us?

Don’t get me wrong. I love Boyfriend very much, I can easily see him as my husband and partner for life. If he asked me to marry him, I would say yes. But I would also demand a long, long, LONG engagement. I’m not in the marrying mood. I’m not in that mindset. I can barely juggle my own debt, bills, schedule and baggage. Bringing another person into that – till death do we part! – seems awfully cruel.

I said something to that effect to the other young women in my class and to varying degrees they agreed with me. But I felt a little guilty. I didn’t intend to say to my classmate, “you are stupid for wanting to get married,” but I worry it came off that way.

Perhaps my aversion to it is that I’m selfish. I like doing my own thing, being my own person. I love Boyfriend and I love having him in my life, but due to the long-distance nature of our situation I’m not yet forced to merge his thing with my thing. We don’t have to make joint decisions about money and space and entertainment and all those other things that a marriage or pre-marriage relationship incorporates.

Another fear is doing it wrong. Fucking it up. Choosing the wrong person. My parents have been married more than 25 years – some of those rough ones, but they got through it. They’re best friends and madly in love and muscle through the tough patches because they’re committed to their life together. Could I do that with someone? Would I run when the going got tough? Because here’s the thing about Boyfriend and I – we’ve been together eight months and have yet to fight. About anything. I don’t know what it’s like to argue with him. That’s sort of a big deal, I think. Plus I’ve been wrong before. That ex I was so sure I wanted to marry? Grade A douche. Boyfriend is not a douche, does not have it in him to be a douche, but that alone is not a foundation for a marriage.

I think I just have a hang-up about the words “marriage” and “wife” and “husband,” and what they all mean. When you get married, people sort of expect you to settle down, buy a house, start thinking about kids. I don’t want to settle down. I absolutely do not want to buy a house. And I absolutely, for certain, without a shadow of a doubt do not want to have children. Not now. Not soon. Maybe not ever. I know that a marriage is more than all that, that any marriage I had would not follow such an arcane definition, but I’m still struggling to separate the two: the thing I want and the thing I’m “supposed” to have.

Which I guess is all to say: better her than me.

(And to complicate things even further, I think this is one of the most incredible ideas ever and will be keeping it in mind for my own hypothetical future wedding/gift to myself.)