It’s back

I’ve wanted so long for Open Diary to be back. The night before I discovered it was, I had a dream about it. Woke up, typed the URL,and there it was. It doesn’t look the same as it used to, which is a huge bummer and, I think, indicative of the Diary Master not understanding why people would want OD to return: nostalgia. It feels like going home, and realizing that while you were away, the house was torn down and rebuilt. Your furniture is still inside, but inside is all different.

This is my first OD entry in almost five years, which feels so strange. It also means that I’ve lived in San Francisco for (over) five years. That ex-BFF and I have not been friends longer than we were friends. That Dolce has been dead for over five years. That Tuesday Night Dinner Date started more than five years ago (holy shit, if I’m 36 now, and we met when I was 28, that means we met 8 years ago and how is that possible??).

So here, I guess, is a brief update:

I haven’t spoken to Tuesday Night Dinner Date in probably two years or so. Facebook tells me that he’s engaged, and my first thought upon seeing that was relief (that it wasn’t me) followed by sincere “Good for him!” So there’s that.

I’ve been living in San Francisco for five-and-a-half years, though for one-and-a-half of those years I’ve technically been homeless. (Bet you didn’t see that one coming!) My current boyfriend and I started dog sitting three years ago, initially because we realized “Wait! We can stay in someone else’s apartment, have sex without worrying about roommates, play with a dog AND get money for take-out?!” Turns out people love us. We’re booked about 95 or so percent of the time and just stay in other people’s homes all over the city for anywhere from 3 nights to a month at a time. In Sept 2016, I moved out of my $1200/mo room, sold my furniture, got a storage unit and a Rent the Runway subscription. Right now we’re dog sitting for two weeks in Los Angeles and are working towards being here more often. I made us a dog sitting website – we essentially offer a luxury service (up to 24 hours/day with a dog in its home), so I’m trying to get us commesurate pay. Dog sitting will never be a career, but I’d like to build it up as a side business and eventually hire another dog sitter or two.

Oh yeah, I’ve had a boyfriend for a few years. He’s five years younger than I am, which I almost never think about. He’s the most intelligent and ambitious person I’ve ever met, which is nice but also intimidating sometimes. We’ve been dating for 3.5 years and exclusive for 2.5 years and in couples therapy for 1.5 years. Our relationship is mostly good, sometimes very ugly, and slowly improving.

It has been 11 years since ex-boyfriend Tim and I broke up, and he is married now and recently moved to Bangkok. We haven’t spoken in years and years, but in typially creepy fashion, I’ve kept tabs on him via social media. I find myself mostly disappointed in who he is and how he is — he remains very intelligent and funny, but in a way that’s become more accesible to me. I think I always thought I’d always have him on a pedestal, and so when he posts photos from Soi Cowboy and of him wearing a surgical mask to protect from the air pollution, it kind of fucks with my view of the world, in which he would always be smarter in every way than me. (FYI for ya’ll: Soi Cowboy is the part of Bangkok that features a bunch of prostitutes, often underage and often against their will. And a surgical mask will do zilch to protect you from air pollution; for that, you need an R/P 95-100 respirator mask.) And yet. It has been over a decade and I frequently have dreams about him. At this point, he is essentially a figment of my imagination and the dreams are usually a sign that I’m feeling discontented in my own relationship. A good therapist would tell me to stop looking at his social media posts.

I graduated from my nutrition program, which was something of a joke, but also left me feeling wholly unprepared to go into the world of nutrition. I’ve been working on launching a science-based beauty blog for the past two or so years, but despite having a lot of material for it and having done a lot of preparation, I haven’t yet launched it to due annoyingly crippling perfectionism. It should happen in the next couple months, though.

Oh yeah, I was diagnosed with cancer in late July 2017. A little mole on my leg that ended up being melanoma. It’s bad enough being diagnosed with cancer, but I never thought I’d have to try to convince other people of its seriousness. “It has a worse prognosis than breast cancer!” “Melanoma is responsible for 1% of skin cancer diagnoses, but 90% of skin cancer desaths.” I had surgery to remove a big swath of skin and the next day my family was saying things like, “Ok, maybe it’s time to move on with your life now?” and I just remember saying, “I’ve only known I have cancer for 11 days. I think I’m allowed to process it for a little bit longer.” I’m ok now. I just go to the dermatologist for skin checks every 3 months. I had a biopsy taken from the bottom of my foot five weeks ago, two days before I was to fly to Mexico City. That was pretty rough: stitches in the sole of my foot and no walking on it for two weeks. I still went to Mexico City for a month. The biopsy was negative, which was an enormous relief. I’ll write a longer entry about that sometime. Or, rather, finish the entry that I started.

What else is there to say? I haven’t been depressed in years, but still feel its dark shadow following me around. It’s nice that it’s a shadow now, weightless. I have a handful of friends, but my best friends live in other states and the other friends I have seem to have great difficulty balancing friendship with their boyfriends, which is a nice way of saying when they get boyfriends, they ditch all their friends. So, basically, I’m always lonely. I mean, I’m with my boyfriend a lot of the time, but miss having good girlfriends and don’t always know how to make them.

I wasn’t intending for this to be so long. I really just wanted to ask how many of you are still here? My OD free trial is up tomorrow, and I’m trying to decide if I want to pony up the money to stick around.

xo