People are starting to catch on at work. They ask me what’s wrong and when I say I’m fine, they come up with their own reasons. Are you tired? Not feeling well? I just agree with them. It’s easier to say I’m tired or sick than to tell the truth.

One sign of the times: I haven’t had a bowl of cereal for breakfast since Wednesday, before the all too honest email. Breakfast cereal to me is like coffee to most people—my day doesn’t feel right if it doesn’t start that way. But I’ve hardly been able to eat anything at all.

The Xanax has been nice, mostly because it knocks me out. I don’t usually sleep well, but I took some both Thursday and Friday before bed and fell asleep hard. Unfortunately that means I can’t take it during the day when I sometimes feel the worst. Saturday I almost fell over in the shower because I couldn’t stop crying and I couldn’t hold myself up. I often find myself stopping to just lean on something and catch my breath even though I haven’t exerted myself at all. I don’t want to take anything unless I really think I need it though, so I survived Saturday med-free. But on Sunday I started to feel panicky, and I took a Xanax to relax. Instead of just relaxing, I waited a half hour, then stumbled to bed where I slept for two hours. Sleeping keeps the thoughts away though, so I don’t mind.

My friends and family have been pretty awesome. Robin and her boyfriend Jason took me miniature golfing on Saturday where I actually found myself laughing a few times. That was nice. Too bad I can’t distract myself with putt-putt all day every day. My sisters check in with me regularly to make sure I’m okay, and both mom and dad and many friends have called or emailed to check in too. My friend Lauren said she wanted to visit me on Sunday, but she lives on the other side of the state, so I told her she was crazy, I was fine. She came anyway. Bearing gifts. She drove over two hours to see me and came through the door with her arms full of books, candy and flowers. My sadness could not possibly be worth such incredibly kind acts of friendship.

Lauren let me talk about the things I needed to talk about, then we talked about a million other things because she and I are so much alike. She’s very wise and has an amazing outlook, and I’m so thankful for her visit. And for everything all my friends and family and blog readers have done. I try to gain perspective by knowing that others are going and have gone through much worse, but I’m not very good at that. So thank you to everyone who doesn’t think I’m ridiculous for struggling so much with this.

Last night Lauren actually had me convinced for awhile that despite my incredibly high standards, hopes and expectations, there really could be someone out there for me. If the one person I’ve found who met (most of) those standards doesn’t want me, how am I ever going to find someone else? Brad was the one and he didn’t want me. What can be left? But she really made me believe it was possible.

Except when she left I went to bed lonely and woke up feeling empty again. Why doesn’t he want me? And why do I even care anymore? I should be able to know that I deserve better than to cry over someone who isn’t crying over me. I wish my heart could figure that out.