This is what I wrote on my MySpace blog, but I think it really sums up what this week does to me.  I've been very busy; I hope to add more posts soon.  Here it is:

Here I am, just barely having survived another Christmas, and beginning this horrible week lying between the month of holiday and the month of cold nothingness.  While most recover from the season's joys and begin their returns, the end of one year draws nigh, so to it my mind returns, before a new chapter and a new year can begin.  As if it is their last chance, the demons of the past year crowd close round me, haunting my every waking and sleeping moment.  I find myself in terrible need of space to breathe, but not this week.  This week I sputter and suffocate on the ash that is left from watching my life go up in flames, and through the smoke I saw myself light the fire, or maybe I see myself only in the desire to punish myself for what my life has become. 

As painful as this is, somewhere inside I feel the need to purge myself of the last year before I can begin the next with a truly clean start.  Isn't that what the New Year is about, with all its Resolutions?  This next year I'll be skinnier.  I'll be a non-smoker. I'll be a better parent.  Or employee.  Or husband.  Or human being.  This year, I'll be everything I wasn't last year.  Is that something I can say?  This year I won't be bipolar, and I won't have fibromyalgia, and I'll walk again, and I'll find my dog a home, and I'll find myself a home, and income, and health insurance, and I'll be the kind of person my family will love, and that other people will want to be around, and... well, I guess the list goes on. 

This is the week to think,

525,600 minutes, 
How do you measure a year?                                                                     

In the truths that we learned,
or the times that we cried
In the bridges we burned
or the ways that we die?

I hope that those who read this take the time to reflect upon the past year, how it's changed you, feel the pain of your mistakes, hurts, and losses, so that you can let them go and be ready for a new beginning, and another chance to make things better.  Maybe that's what this week is for; so that I can find the courage to Hope, for this New Year.

I'm going to rush through this, just because I already wrote this once while half asleep, and the computer deleted it.

After our great weekend together, Rick was listening to the radio and the entire day songs kept coming on that reminded him of his ex.  Then that night he had some very vivid dreams, and he realized that he still has feelings for her.  This got him thinking, and he remembered that originally he had promised his friends and himself that he was going to wait on any new relationships until Gulf War, which will be one year from when they started dating.  This is partially because there was never any closure; he doesn't even know why she broke up with him.  He originally wanted to give her the chance to rethink her decision, because he also thought at the time that she made a hasty judgment.  At the time, all of his friends, even though they didn't want to say it to Rick's face, thought that by breaking up with him she had done his a huge favor.  Unfortunately, that doesn't help his broken heart.  So, as he's thinking about missing his ex, he takes another look at our relationship and how quickly it's progressed, and comes to the conclusion that I worked my way into his ex's place, and it's my fault that he started changing the date when he would officially give up on her.

Now, here's another piece of the puzzle.  When I leave his place I leave the key to lock the front door in a hidden keybox, and when Rick gets home he puts it back inside.  That Thursday I had actually planned to buy groceries plus basic cooking ingredient, because he kept taking me out to eat and paying for it, so I wanted to use my foodstamdps to provide dinner sometimes.  He wasn't home when I got there, but the key was on the door, so I thought he left it for me and let myself in, and started putting food away.  This is when Rick shows up.

He looks at what's going on and comes to two conclusions.  First, he didn't know the key was still on the door, so he assumed that without his permission, I took the key to a hardware store, had copies made, and let myself in.  He also forgot about me wanting to cook for him, so he looks at everything and assumes I'm trying to move into his kitchen.  To him this is proof of his paranoid assumptions.  I also found out that on Wed. I sent him a text message that was something his ex used to say.

Anyways, after being without me all weekend, he missed me, so on Tuesday he called and asked if I would agree to sleep over.  He did start wearing his ex's promise ring again, because he says he took it off prematurely; that until he stops missing her, he feels he should still wear it. 

Things between us still aren't quite back to normal.  I feel tense because I'm worried about angering him again.  He says that he's worried about getting my hopes up, and then I'll crash when his ex comes back, but he's the only one who thinks that that's possible.

I personally would really like to ask him if I could have even half of a drawer, just because I stay over there 1-3 nights a week, so I can keep a few really important things so that I wouldn't have to carry them around all the time.  Unfortunately I bet that would cause him to get paranoid, because having a drawer is one of those relationship stages.

Anyway, I really hope that this stops, or our relationship goes back to the easy-going friendship we had before.