lost!

today is my friend's twenty-first birthday.
she is not getting drunk right now.
because somebody killed her.

and i look at the picture on my desk, and i remember when we were younger and we had such big dreams, and yet the only thing that really mattered was the day-to-day. the little things. the tennis games we won and lost. the jokes we told. the boys we flirted with.

and then i remember the wake and her lying there. and how i lost it and ran out of the room and i was crying so hard i couldn't breathe.

and now here i am, almost five months later, and i feel numb. numb to the pain, but angry.

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today at work i was asked to read an entire 'true crime' manuscript. today of all days, i read 300 pages about a woman getting shot in a car.

i didn't want to do it. that's not what i want to be reading ever, and also, i was scared to death to submit my evaluation on it to the big boss. but i worked hard on it because i knew this was my maybe only chance to prove i belonged there. i "nailed it."
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i have never felt more lost. and yet, not.

does that make sense? i don't know what's going to happen, but i know what's happening and i know how i have to work through it.

i am unhappy. and yet, i have never been happier.

one thing specifically is falling apart, but everything else is coming together, slowly and with much effort. i know i'll survive all of this. even if i want to tear the photographs off the wall and scatter their pieces down greenwich st.