so, the other night i made this amazing fritata... and i just finished it. it was amazing. I took a photo but my phone ate it... the file is just gone. :D i found them! :D i can't recall having had better... today, i stopped slacking on my kombucha... bottled it up and brewed a new batch. this time, i bottled it with raspberry and strawberry! i blended them up before mixing it in. i sort of had to because I'd let the kombucha ferment for 2 weeks, so it's rather tart.

sometime, I'm going to write a tutorial. a lot of people had suggested i teach a class in how to do it... ha! i can't imagine that very many people wouldn't be able to figure it out like i did. it's pretty easy.

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so, i don't really know what's going on with the universe and all of it's lovely coincidences lately, but it's been getting weird.

so i wrote that nostalgia blog the other day and decided i would send mikey some well wishes, but i stated that he didn't have to respond, just that i wished him well. well, not only did he respond, but has moved back to buffalo, around the corner from me, and in with the woman who wrote the play i'm in... and wanted to get coffee.

I was so not ready for that at all. the last experience i had with him was terrible as it consisted of me tracking him down as he wandered the city being a crazy person so his family could find him and pick him up. i was significantly more upset about it days ago, but not so much anymore. nonetheless, i can't have him in my life. i can't. he creates too much chaos and stress for me. The very thought of being near him sends me into a bit of a panic. i forgive him for a lot of what i experienced in our relationship, but post relationship, when he continuously found a way into my life is what i have a hard time getting over. the amount of stress and grief he caused is significant i won't get into all of that, though.

Alex has recently been drunk texting me again that he loves me. i never respond.

Alfredo (we never technically dated, but i would consider him a love) has suddenly been talking to me again and getting really flirty. he always comes to me when things are not going well with his business or boyfriend. it's sweet that he still regards me fondly, but it doesn't necessarily feel too great to be some kind of escape/plan b.

Michael (not mikey) seems ... i don't know how to explain it. maybe i shouldn't read into it, but he seems to really be trying to spend time with me more lately, and has been doing little things for me here and there that i would consider "cute" but he is a naturally caring/nice person, so i really don't know what to say about that. he made me dinner and cleaned off the table and put a flower in the middle... kind of reminded me of old times in our apartment on virginia. It was nice, but i just don't know... I have a hard time going back to something. i don't know if i even really feel that way anymore. I don't think i do, about him. i've only ever dated someone again/given it another chance after a break once ever and i don't think i'll be making a habit out of that because it was a hard lesson to learn.

he is permanently friend-zoned, me thinks. but he's a good, good friend... We understand each other pretty deeply.

gosh, maybe i should just throw an exboyfriend party. that way i just make it easier to conspire together so they can better confuse the shit out of me, hahaha

the only one who hasn't contacted me is Gökhan... but that's understandable. he was pretty furious when i broke up with him. I just couldn't handle how long distance it was...

is it normal for people to still be on speaking terms with almost all of their exes? i feel like it is not.

You know... It never ceases to amaze me how much yelling my sister manages to fit in one day. i literally do not comprehend how she can even yell as much as she does... like, she will fucking yell about pretty much anything if it is even remotely upsetting.

I don't even yell when i am at my most furious. I am not even sure if i've raised my voice at someone since my first ex.

The kicker is that when she starts yelling, pretty much right away, she will start to tell the other person not to yell, EVEN IF THEY AREN'T YELLING. This just happened. She was yelling at her boyfriend (i am amazed they are still together) and he got frustrated and *sort of* started raising his voice defensively and she goes nuts telling him to stop yelling.

how inobservant do you have to be?

This all probably comes of as judgmental. I am just so tired of hearing her yell at her boyfriend, our mother, our father, our sister, her friends... it's always someone. Never seems to be me, but maybe one day she'll flip on me, haha...

It's just that i don't see what yelling solves, it just makes a tense situation more tense, and then everything gets out of control. Why can't you just listen to each other? Why is everything a screaming match? I really don't get it.

Last time i got yelled at, i was running around at work trying to get this specialty boozy latte made and i was the last server in the building with one manager and one bartender... and we were all in separate corners of the building (if you've seen the buffalo club, you know it is fucking enormous), so my manager couldn't find me... and when i finally got it done, she started to go ballistic, and i just shut her down immediately. i can't handle being yelled at at all. i can't think, i can't talk, i can't have any logical thoughts. my vision closes in and i see spots, and my back gets really hot. it's not for lack of being yelled at, it's just that as time goes on, i seem to have less and less of an ability to handle it. I said "please stop yelling at me, the drink had to get made, no one was around, so i did it, it's done, stop yelling, it doesn't help" and served my drink/desserts...

well, that was a pointless story.

the point is, everyone should yell a little less and actual progress in solving disagreements might actually be made. the end.

driving to zoar with James Dean and Tanya. happyrobert.

we went down to Valentine flats. it was amazing. it was my first time to zoar valley.

we got lost at first and went hiking on private propert, but ended up finding our way. i can't believe i've never done this before. I can't wait to go again, and to find some more places.

Some way or another, I happened on old music from my very first ex, mikey. it's so weird... a lot of the time it doesn't affect me much, but it turned a calm introspective evening into a bit of a nostalgia fest.

sometimes we tend to whitewash our memories, but i remember plenty of things that make me unhappy. i wouldn't say i was nostalgic for the relationship, but more the period of time in general. spring time does this to me also... i get so nostalgic and wistful in this weather.

I guess it brings me back to that time where all i could really deal with was living in my imagination, and how good everything was gonna be in the future, how it'd get better. I envisioned every future moment with him. I had a hard time dealing with the reality of the now, but i really tried my hardest to just deal and live with it. I still find it hard to believe at one point i was working 12 - 14 hours a day, 5 days a week, and 5 - 6 hours a day on weekends just to support it all, while he did next to nothing. and we still never had enough money. I dropped out of college and lost contact with most all of my friends because of it all.

I think back on all that music he made, and it amazes me. He was really good. not the best, but he had something.

it's all gone now. almost every trace, except these digital files, and perhaps 1 photo. It's better that way, but at times it makes me a bit sad. It's hard when you invest so much in a person, your first person, and it doesn't work. It changed my perspective forever. I lost something permanently, and i'm talking about more than my virginity. I lost an outlook, a certainty, an innocence. It nearly never comes up, but there's points here and there that i still grapple with that.

Even the apartment we lived in is completely redone and different. my old neighbor told me about it when it happened. I wonder if even our skin cells are still somewhere in that place. Our dog is still around, but she isn't our dog anymore. My friend has her now, and she's doing well. She still remembers me, sweet jubilee. He calls her Ms. Judy.

Thinking about all of it, it feels like a totally different life time. We met days or weeks before i turned 20. I remember lying in bed, simultaneously entertaining the option of relationship with him, and mourning the end of my teens. I was so sad and upset to turn 20. He released an album on my 20th birthday and i thought it was secretly some kind of gift. he said it wasn't.

It really was a strange two years. I learned what most people learn dating around in their teens/middle school/high school over the course of 6 - 4 years, in 2 years. He was such a tortured artist complete with self-destructive tendencies, melancholy, physical/emotional distance, abusive behavior, and mental illness. It was partially what i was asking for. i'd always romanticized emotional torment as a younger person, and wanted someone with those intense feelings... well, i got him, and it was hell. No, i could not fix him. No, he did not want to be fixed. No, my every need was not fulfilled.

for having been told all my life i am wise beyond my years, I made a lot of unwise choices with him.

however, to quote a wonderfully cheesy j-pop song, "The toughness gained from my damage is unbelievable."

I am amazed I still think of all this and feel this nostalgia about it. It really was one of the most changing experiences. The amount i morphed, ignored, supported, let go of, learned, and gained still baffles me. Make no mistakes, i am thoroughly over him, there's no going back. There will never be a going back. I would never want to be with him again or anyone like him, but that time in my life was an incredibly emotionally charged time, and so it is hard to think of it without having something well up.