I know it doesn't make much sense to feel depressed because you just finished having a great visit with friends. But that's how I feel.

I reckon it's not unlike the feeling that comes on Christmas after you've opened all your presents and now have to get on with the rest of the day. It doesn't seem to matter if you got everything you possibly could have wanted or not. And it doesn't seem to matter if you've got a whole day of awesomeness planned (hot-tubbing, eating good food, chatting with visitors, playing games, etc). In your heart of hearts, you know that Christmas morning is gone and the part of the day where everything is a surprise is over.

I think that under normal circumstances, I've just gotten used to not having very many friends around these parts -- accepting that the pleasure of living in Bville is in its beauty, my dog's cuteness, and a degree of stability. But having gone to JW's wedding, and hung out on the porch with her and FS, and talked well into the wee hours, and gotten lots of hugs, and spoken about writing and accomplishments, etc, with people who really, honestly seem to like me and see me... well, it's made me feel lonely again now that I'm back home.

In addition to this, I'm feeling some pretty horrible, shitty emotions surrounding NM and her return to the PacNW. For starters, I'm angry - because she is dating already, and hasn't taken the time to settle and examine what happened to figure out the best method of preventing it from happening again. It seems like, as before, she just bounces back up, starts running again, and counts on her beauty and brilliance to buy her another chance with her friends should she need it.

Which gets at number two horrible emotion: I'm feeling very very jealous. When everything was down n' out for me, it was my family and my far-away friends who helped me. All these people I went to school with here acted like, and still act like, I'm an inconvenient worthless nothing. None of them helped me out. None of them made me dinner although I lost 40 pounds in a month and a half. In fact, nobody came to my house to even sit next to me and be with me. In the classroom-of-hell, people acted like I was in their way. Me and my big fat emotions. My fault. My problem, don't make it theirs. And it's all of these same people who are climbing out of the woodwork to help or greet NM, who doesn't even like most of them. Hasn't done anything for them. There are no precise features I can come up with that clearly account for these people adoring NM and ignoring me... going out of their way to request her friendship on Facebook while not requesting mine (shit, E requested her friendship a butt-ton number of times from what NM told me, and NM never even liked her, much less loved her)... nothing other than NM's beauty and brilliance. Everybody wants to bask in that, everybody wants to help the lamb out. The pop-u-lar-ity contest incarnate.

See... I know they're ugly feelings. Really ugly. I wish I wasn't feeling them. And I especially wish I wasn't feeling them at the same time as being worn out with NM and angry at her. And I also wish I wasn't feeling them after having such a nice time with my peeps. I think it's just a love hangover.

I am, I should note, looking forward to getting my health insurance back in the autumn so I can do what I should've done before and get some counseling on all this stuff. I am just a bit ill-equipped to deal with the fallout of having a best friend go around the bend, being bankrupted emotionally by it, and trying to figure out how to get back on track afterwards. Especially as it brought back a lot of bad memories and resentments and bitterness for me.

Sigh. Next post will be cheerier. I promise. And now I will go eat a tamale and hope it brings said cheer.