Catherine

It's kind of been a while, Joel and I ended things. But, that's not what this is for. Ben went to Steve's going away party tonight, so, since it's really cold and I was staying in to work on projects I drove him there and then picked him up after. Katie (his ex-girlfriend who he had dated for 2 years) was there. So he came home kind of a mess. We cried together. I just, I see his pain and it really becomes mine. I can relate to his story, because ours are similar, though, Patrick and I were not together nearly as long. The pain is there. Ben struggles to get over relationships it takes him years. I think it takes me the same amount of time I just, I can't do it on my own. I use other people to get over the big ones. The ones that hurt. Hell most of the time I wonder if everyone that I've been with since Burt isn't just someone I'm trying to use to replace what Burt and I had. Talking to him again has been just one big pile of emotion. I cried during a skype call on video with him last week, we put it all out there: how he didn't appreciate me, the lies I told, the hell I put him through after it was over, all of it. No more secrecy or lies or wondering what had gone on after I left. It was an incredible release for me. I finally felt like we were back to the incredible friendship that we had, after that, it was easy. We laughed, he told me about a girl he saw before he left for basic, we swapped stories of mutual friends, the conversation never stopped. I have a friend back. Talking to him brought up other lost friends. Then I came across a picture, friendships forgotten. Lisa is engaged, Tara is engaged and Brittany is married. Tara is the only one I am still friends with. She's become my best friend through all of this. To be honest, we're the only 2 left really. Lisa and Brittany left us both. It just, it makes me nostalgic and sad. Despite the terrible things Brittany did to me, she was my best friend through most of high school. I can't ever forget that. We always talked about how we would be in each others weddings, present for births, for any of life's events. And that dream never happened. It's a little bit of mourning for the loss of all of that. And finals suck. I think I've procrastinated to the point of an all-nighter Sunday...hooray... In an unrelated yet still slightly related note: I have a date tomorrow. "And all at once I knew how Margo Roth Spiegelman felt when she wasn't being Margo Roth Spiegelman: she felt empty. She felt the unscaleable wall surrounding her. I thought of her asleep on the carpet with only that jagged sliver of sky above her. Maybe Margo felt comfortable there because Margo the person lived like that all the time: in an abandoned room with blocked-out windows, the only light pouring in through holes in the roof. Yes. The fundamental mistake I had always made--and that she had, in fairness, always led me to make--was this: Margo was not a miracle. She was not an adventure. She was not a fine and precious thing. She was a girl."-Paper Towns