Just typing this is hard. I almost feel telling people about someone new in my life is like brushing up against the curse of instant destruction. Self inflicted demolition. Spontaneous, irreconcilable combustion. Kablam!

I think I'm happy. It's just a bit overwhelmed with the past. When I married Todd I had real, true optimism. I was sure it would be great. Whatever misgivings I had, whatever fears about the immigration process and living in another country knowing no one... all those were fairly easy to ignore. Cause I was sure of my own abilities to make things work and I was sure that people wouldn't lie to me about their deepest feelings. Why would they?

Now, time has passed and there have been a few other relationships. Not many, none of any length and even I admit I can't really take a cyber, virtual, long distance only relationship too seriously. Is it a real relationship if you've never seen him smile, if you've never felt him touch you, never smelled his breath after too much garlic? These finishing touches make it real. They matter, they bring the words we pass around in email to life.

But it still hurts to have your heart ripped out and shredded, even virtually. Not so much the heart I think. More the trust and the hope you feel each time you try to start again with a new person. It takes trust and hope to try again. Is there an allotment of those which we have? When are they used up and can they be a renewable resource? I don't know. I do feel mine are a bit misused and slightly bent out of shape and beginning to wear thin in places.

Eric is full of happiness and joy to be coming here. I'm mostly paranoid, afraid, outright gloomy. To even say "will it work" seems a bit too shiny and bright. Like the glare of the sun in your eyes driving home after work. It's too bright. Someone needs to find a shade to pull down.

It hurts my heart. I'm like a stone statue trying to cry. I want to be happy, to be loved. But, I just can't quite give it my full faith. At some point the glaring flaw in me will take over and this too will pass. I'll be left, a wounded soldier, trying to hold my guts in while they slip out through the spaces between my fingers. Again.

But, some part of me is still left from that old girl. The one who thought I had enough guts, enough wit and enough creative genius and inventiveness to make it work. The one who moved to another country to marry a friend. What a fool she was, I sometimes think. Why didn't she listen to her naysaying instincts. But, I know why. I know there is hope eternal inside of me. I can't kill it. It's shrunken down and a bit deformed now. But it's still there. It's not ugly, it's a thing of beauty. If I give it just a bit of hope and trust to grow on, it will grow.

So Eric is coming to meet me during the Spring break, March 14th he will be here. I'm going to try. I'm pitifully emotionally turbulent. Yes, I'm happy and excited. Yes, I'm trying to keep afloat and have faith. It feels a bit like a race between his visit, the impending crushing defeat I've come to expect and that happy, sunshine land of happily ever after I thought I'd find once upon a time.