Nutshell

Let's start with the positive.

For the past three weeks, I've been the happiest I've ever been professionally. My body has begun to wake up naturally at 7:30 in the morning, even on weekends. I look forward to arriving at the office, setting the Ipod on shuffle, watching the Pacific waves crash against the beach. The work is still the same writing and research drudgery, but it becomes almost zen-like--all I have to do turn my head to the right and I have an unobstructed floor to ceiling ocean-view. Suddenly, those hours on Lexis, reviewing documents, drafting motions just become meditation. I don't mind staying late so I can watch the sun set over the water.

Emotionally, well, it's now been a little over four months since the Final Break-up, and I've found that I just don't have anything left. I can still be funny, charming at odd moments, kind to small animals, but when I look at that place where I used to smile inside if I caught a girl's eye, there's nothing there. I have lost the ability to feel any sort of romantic interest. That dream of "Helping the kids out of their coats . . ./Unpacking the bags and setting up/And planting lilacs and buttercups"? Totally gone. And when I do think of the times that I was able to feel an emotional attachment, I'm devastated.

Yeah, I know, other people have had their hearts broken and have gotten over it. Bully for them. But I made the mistake of letting a Certain Someone back into my life over and over, giving her what she needed until she was strong enough to leave me. What a dumbass that makes me. And now, all I'm doing is shuffling the deck so that I can keep going forward, hide that queen of sorrows away.

A new coworker says that what has happened to me gives her hope that all men aren't complete asshats (but she's married and has two kids). But, to end with the negative, if I'm what happens to men who are decent and willing to give 100% of themselves to someone, well, now you know why most men are complete self-involved pricks who think only of themselves.