Yes, I should have done that. When I emailed him to tell him why I was no longer returning to the salon, I said that: "I think you're an incredible person. I wish I knew you better; it seems we have some interesting things in common. Perhaps I should have taken the initiative during our initial email volley to get to know you better, but I was too nervous to do so." Maybe I need to take it as a learning experience. Him saying "No" wouldn't have killed me. This hurts a lot more than "No thank you" would have, and look at me, still living.

I don't have a choice not to handle this. I'm actually bawling my eyes out periodically today, and I skipped my clinical this morning because I woke up at about 130 this morning with a blinding migraine--I think that was from all the crying yesterday, which was from my therapy session. So now I'm stuck with this stupid alternative assignment paper.

The crying today is more to do with the fact that I'm angry and sad and indignant. It isn't fair; I didn't ask to be born, but I was. And the people who were supposed to raise me and care for me and nurture me and supply me with the blueprints for appropriately handling relationships of all kinds failed miserably. Every one of them. There wasn't a significant adult in my life as a child who didn't eff up. And now I have to deal with that. And they're still effing up. I have three sisters who got to grow up with my father and their mother in a loving, intact home; I didn't meet my father until I was 33, didn't know about my sisters until I was 29. They all have great friendships, significant others, one is having a baby. And none of them want anything to do with me. Neither does my father. Once they met me, I just didn't add up to the idea they'd built up in their minds over decades. It wasn't the Oprah reunion, so they decided they didn't want me as part of their lives. I mean, jeez...I'm a person, not an idea you can discard. But they discarded me, which is their stupid shortcoming, and their loss. But I have to deal with the fallout. I have to try to deal with the immense hole that repeated rejection and abandonment rips into me, even though my rational mind knows it's not my fault, because I don't have any kind of understanding of how to trust that my own self is enough. It just isn't fair. I know that's whiny and childish, but it freaking isn't.