My most wonderful friend Jill started up her diary again, at supergirl79. I urge you guys to check it out - she and I are going through lots of similar stuff at the same time and hey, I even get a mention here and there! Jill and I have been friends since 1996 - we met when she was 16! - and she's the closest thing to a sister I've got. Hooray for Jill!

I lifted weights last night (just 8 lb free weights) and now my triceps hurt. I almost never ever think of my triceps.

Some random TV thoughts:

-Comedy Central used to play Win Ben Stein's Money in the mornings before I went to work, and watching it was a great way to start the day. I felt smart, I laughed a lot, I knew that I had to have my coat on by the time the final round started, I totally adored Ben Stein - I just wanted to hug him - and now, alas, it is all gone. I spent a couple of days watching the news, which was too traumatic - so this morning I started watching Dark Shadows on SciFi. I'd never watched it before, but John used to tell me all about it, and it's killing me (no pun intended) that I can't email him to tell him that I'm watching it.

Just as an aside before I go on with my TV talk, I can't believe how much I still miss John. Achingly so. I've never really had a friend die before, and so much makes me think of him. I was channel surfing and Valley of the Dolls was on and I cried through the whole thing, because every five minutes or so would be another part that he would point out with glee - "check out Patty Duke's beads!" - and I still can't quite get it through my head that I can't email him. I still haven't deleted him from my email list - I can't bring myself to do it.

-Law and Order. I could totally watch L&O forever. Mondays and Tuesdays on TNT, they play L&O reruns forever, and I just eat them up. There is nothing quite so comforting to me than to be home curled up on the sofa with Laika watching L&O, and I have no idea why. But I won't knock what works.

Today at lunch I was reading The Stranger Beside Me, about Ann Rule's friendship with Ted Bundy before she knew he was Ted Bundy, and a lot of her confusion and anger and frustration and still caring and her final understanding that he was utterly incapable of empathy for her or anyone else really resonated for me.

Not that I'm trying to say that the SDM is on a Ted Bundy level - I don't think he's that motivated, honestly, among other things - but I really wonder how capable he is of genuinely knowing how he hurt me. It still frustrates me to this day, how he could see me in pain, knowingly inflict pain upon me, and not be at all affected by it.

I remember riding the D train one night back from Coney Island and he was listening to fucking Depeche Mode (I liked a lot of their songs but they're ruined for me now) and he bawled like a baby at whatever emotional response it triggered for him, and I found myself getting teary-eyed myself at the depth of his pain. (His pain being the operative part, I realize now.) I cried with him so many times, feeling whatever he was going through, practically taking it on myself.

Yet I remember another night riding the C train back from Carmen's when she still lived in Brooklyn, and how I wanted to go home with him, but he wanted me to go home alone, so he could go to that goddamn nightclub he'd go to to pick up women. (Meanwhile, we hadn't had sex in over a month.) He pretty much made it clear he didn't want to spend the night with me or have sex with me, but when I asked him if he would go home with another woman if he met someone at the club he said that he would if he felt like it. The pain felt like a physical assault (and really, that night was much worse than getting hit in some respects) and I started crying, I couldn't help it, I just hurt so goddamn much, and he wouldn't do a thing to comfort me - he was angry instead, berating me "people are going to think I've done something to you!"

Every single time he ever saw me in pain, he was utterly dispassionate. The day after we buried my grandfather, on the way back on MetroNorth, he told me I was acting "grumpy" and later on honestly asked me "so why exactly are you so sad?" When I said, hello, my grandfather died, he asked "but what exactly about it makes you sad?" I to this day don't know if he was asking me to hurt me, or because he really didn't know what it felt like.