� Some guest star playing the minister on "Everwood" (shut up) last night

QFC cashier (scanning my shortening and eggs and brown sugar): Mm, what are you making?
Me: My sister's favorite cookies. Even though she was just a total bitch to me on the phone.

Behalfness chick, was that not you on Friday night after all? When I called Vanessa last night to tell her about the bitchy convo referenced above, she said that she'd been teasing me about that: she hadn't really remembered you well enough to recognize you (read: "soberly enough," after I guess that one brief meeting at the Six Arms when the three of you were on your way to some show and the two of us were on our separate way to hangovers), and she was just yanking my chain over some girl who she thought looked like you. And, as I said, I only checked out of the corner of my eye, but I thought it was you because � surely you know that I am not kissing your ass here � that was some outfit, and the times I met you I thought you had real style, especially the glasses and the handbags. Behalfness chick, the second thing is that I would not want to imply that you dissed me if you didn't, since as I told Vanessa I need for the record to show that I never talked a single syllable of trash about Todd or any of his friends, and the first thing is that I'm sorry about what happened with that loser dude, and if you want to know how to cast the Spell of Suggestion that my mother and I once used to get a different loser kicked out of school and onto a serious downward spiral, all you have to do is ask. He didn't deserve you anyway.

Some things I am happy about: that even on Friday, Vanessa thought I was sufficiently stabilized that she could risk teasing me like that. That she was right. That when Todd called while I was making the cookies, I picked up the phone after the machine did and talked to him and I found such a workable balance of flame-retardance and unresentful openness that the chat wasn't tense or weird even for a moment. That Mary sent e-mail later that night and wrote, I am sorry I am so rough on you. I just want you to be happy. Maybe I should avoid tough love? I love you, Monitor. That the shortening and eggs and brown sugar, despite the bitchiness, were exactly the right call.

That Rebecca camped over at Julian's last night and left me alone with my self-congratulatory sushi and my fume blanc and the DVD of "Jules and Jim" and an affectionate kitty to pet while I watched it. That the cookies came out perfectly. That awesome broads sign my guestbook and let me know I'm not invisible and that the diary enterprise matters. That I'm feeling pretty damn good about the writing thing in general. That every hour I'm more sure I'll come out of this one way or another.

I'm drinking tea, watching CNN because I love election coverage, and part of me is feeling like a spoiled baby again for not having called the temp agencies when I woke up, for my commitment to taking this week to try to get more comfortable in my own skin. As if, having done the one small thing last night, now everything is all better and I am back to smooth-functioning normal. Which I know it's not, despite the urge to pick up the phone and attempt to wrangle some Reception. Though I am also a little bit stunned at how much better I feel just having admitted how lousy I felt, or, and maybe this is the crux of it, having had something ratified when Catharine sent that e-mail last Friday morning. Mind if I navel-gaze briefly? I've sometimes described myself as someone who takes it and takes it and takes it and then suddenly something snaps and I become incapable of taking it for one more second, and that taking it is hard-wired into me in such a way that I may not be fully aware of the extent to which I've been doing it until that moment. (Ha, see for instance the next-to-top page at the Monitor site, picture me storming around my apartment and throwing personal effects into that box.) This I think is why my friends worry that I let people take advantage of me. But I think that even deeper than the willingness to take it is the idea that I have to take it alone. With me people can see that things are bad � e.g., no job no boyfriend no direction no anchor � but, duh, there are degrees of bad like there are degrees of temperature, and unless it's actually in the middle of a crisis where they can also hear things falling down and clattering all around us, I tend to fake like things are not as bad as they are, or I'll start doing comedy. (I often took that tack in responding to questions about the New York debacle, you should see me act out what went down at the table at the wedding reception.) Reasons for this are as follows: (1) fear of making myself vulnerable, that is to say reliant on things and people, um, outside my control; (2) fear of making people disappointed in my inability to meet their expectations of me hence (3) fear of driving them away due to my theretofore unrevealed basket caseism; (4) just plain old not wanting to bother them with my stupid problems since obviously they have bigger things to worry about and better friends to tend to. Like, I walked into the nice lady's office last night and she said Now what is the issue with which you are seeking help and I teared up as if on cue and I said, "I'm just paralyzed, I don't know why but I can't take any kind of action in my life at all and it's really starting to freak me out." Now, have I ever said anything of the sort here in my diary, have I ever implied that things were that bad? No I have not. OK, that was maybe me starting to give away more than I ought to in this forum, so I'll back off from that level of disclosure � saving not censoring � but I won't delete what I've already typed, how's that. Anyway. The point is that once Catharine said what she did, it was as if the fourth wall was broken of the show I've been putting on, the jig was up. And in the same way that I realized how much I'd been taking it, I realized how much and for how long I'd wanted someone like a Catharine to say those things to me, despite my doing everything I could to prevent that from happening.

Nutty, huh? I sure have got my problems. And maybe again I am not making sense to anyone but myself. The point is that the process of reversing the paralysis has begun and that because of the way it's gone down so far, I know that it's irrevocable. In one of I hope the few instances in my life when I will be grateful for my affinity for this kind of circumstantial masochism, I couldn't back out now if I tried.

So I went to the appointment last night and didn't cry as much as I'd thought I would and got the names and numbers of the three therapists and called and left messages and one of them has called back already and I have an appointment on Thursday. Then as I was leaving my sister called me on my cell phone, coincidentally just as I was feeling fond of her and cookie-centric, and when I told her what I'd just done she went off on me like a fucking banshee, rather the opposite of being supportive, and screamed a tirade on the subjects of How can you have let him do this to you, treat you so badly, drive you to this point and You are the stupidest person in the world for not calling off the DL and escaping with your dignity intact, you are smarter than that and you piss me off with this insistence that you go through hell. But Marlowe: "Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed / In one self place; for where we are is hell / And where hell is, there must we ever be." We are there because we have put ourselves there. I mean, I am. Now's the part where I get self-conscious how my sister or Vanessa might read this part and get exasperated and angry all over again that I seem to be deflecting responsibility for the effects of the DL from Todd onto me, that I'm protecting him and blaming myself. I can see how someone who cares about me might feel that way; last night Vanessa noted that when a friend is wracked over a guy, it's only a reflex to pile on and say ooh-that-bastard. However, that's not what's going on here � that's not the issue � and people are just going to have to trust me. Remember, I'm saving myself first.

Now I'm going to head off to Capitol Hill and mail the cookies to Mary and then maybe I'll hang out with Thomson and read the paper and drink some coffee. Also in the package is a check for her laptop. I'm really liking the red boots since I wore them on Friday and have been wearing them out almost all the time, with the short skirts and tights they demand. You could find a worse uniform. It's so true that making the effort to look good honestly makes a person feel better too, and it's maddening that men tend not to understand this and to think that the effort is all about trying to get picked up on. Yeah, the more I think about this entry the more I think it's a mess, so rather than read it over and get hung up in tidying I will just tie things up: goodbye. Have a lovely afternoon.