Etiquette Questions

I really should be asleep right now, since I have to get up in a few hours, but I can't make my mind relax. It may be the headache that's been working on me all day, but something tells me it's more than that. It's the pain of being completely ignored.

I'm not an overly obtrusive person. I don't push myself into other people's business or lives. However, when those who mean so much to me suddenly turn a cold shoulder without so much as an "I need a few days to sort through some things," that's when I feel hollow.

Let me explain. As the faithful few of you know, the last month has been extremely hard on me. I haven't had much to offer the world except pain and heartache, so I've kept mainly to myself and my family. I've been there for my mom as we've lost her father, and for my dad as we lost his uncle in body and his mother in spirit. I've shed more tears and turned more earth in the last month than I care to in the next year. Through it all, I've asked for very little support, but when I have, my requests have been denied. My best girlfriends can't be expected to drop their lives and take sick days to help me shoulder a weight I'm not sure how to carry, and I didn't even feel I could ask my boyfriend to make the trip.

These are the experiences that teach you who cares, and how to care about yourself. After weeks of life's chinese water torture dripping away at my forehead, I took a night this weekend after work just for me. To sit in solemn silence and shed anonymous tears for lives changed in a split second. For the unborn children who will never have the privilege of knowing their great-grandfather or great-great-uncle as more than a photograph or a story. And for myself - for the opportunities past...the kick in the stomach that stole my breath as my former fiance uttered the words "I'm engaged"...the worries that perhaps my own father will never see me walk down the aisle, not for reasons of martyrdom or self-esteem, but for reasons of sheer mortality.

This is the state I've been in for the last few weeks - these thoughts, half-formed, running around in my brain, emerging at inopportune moments at times crippling me with their presence, then retreating to find more sustenance in the recesses of my consciousness. Add in a massive overhaul of procedure at work that has required more hours, and a second job to cover unexpected expenses on top of the Christmas budget, and I've been turned quite inward this month. It's something I have admitted and apologized for each step of the way.

Which brings me to the topic above. It appears my life has become too much. Without warning, communication from one I hold close, has ended. Kaput. Text messages get no response. Phone calls are ignored. And tonight, I was stood up for our dinner plans without so much as a "I'm not coming" note in any form.

My question to you, faithful readers, what is blog etiquette in this situation? He has a few blogs - nothing as personal as this...each one focuses on certain topics - that I would love to check just to see if he's at least posting there. Part of me feels that would be an intrusion...that if he chooses not to communicate with me, that he would not appreciate me reading his words. The other side of me, though, says that he wouldn't put it out there if he did not mean for others to read it. I'm not worried about the content, I'm just being a girl and seeking solace in the words and cadences I know so well. And yes, he does have this addres, but I don't think he reads it anymore. I've kept quiet this month so as to keep him from feeling uncomfortable, or learning about my life from a blog versus from me, but now, I need to vent to someone, especially since this turn of events has left me hollow, stunned, saddened, and confused.

Perhaps it's the lack of sleep for nights on end, or perhaps I'm just numb, but I feel like a girl made of Magic Shell. Once upon a time there was ice cream - sweet and desirable - that some one found intriguing, but would find even more so with a layer of Magic Shell. The shell hardened, but instead of digging in, he walked out of the room. Now the ice cream has melted, leaving behind only the shell, and pieces of that have been shattered and thrown to the wind as well.

Okay, I should try to go to bed again now. Maybe this time it'll work. If not, I'll get up and write again. Remind me to tell you about my mirror image friend sometime that's another post that's rattling around in my head when I can't sleep like this.