Bethanie's Brain

Someone sent me a thing Ann Landers said -- about people who drown their sorrows forgetting that sorrow knows how to swim. It made me laugh. Yeah, I know. It wasn't meant to. But I'm a bitchin' swimmer. Way better than sorrow ever hoped to be. Way better. No, seriously. I am. I get suffering. I've been there: 4th grade: All the way home (I was a walker), some jackass and his buddy making machine gun sounds at me, because they found out my family was German. (I had no idea what the hell they were doing or why, but for the very first time, I understood that being German wasn't the awesomest thing ever.) 7th grade: Gym class. Er...I don't actually need to go into detail, right? 9th grade: Another jackass, a different jackass from the 4th grade jackass (I assume), this one spit on me. Other jackasses called me names for no reason (well, other than I wasn't tall and blond and beautiful) or felt free to call out insults about what I was wearing or had done to ...

I suppose I should have seen this coming. I'm a loner. Always have been. Unlike most people, it isn't actually possible for me to have more than one or two good friends at a time. I just can't manage it. I need to be alone, because it makes me quite insane, if I am forced not to be. So that's the good part of divorce. I will get the alone time on a regular basis, whether I need it that week or not. The rest of it, at this point, however, is a big ball of pain and failure. The failure, in the end, is the worst part for me. I don't fail at things. Ever. And to have failed at this -- arguably one of the most important bits of one's life -- is inexcusable, abominable, and so completely, fucking frustrating , that I don't even have the words really. The pain, on the other hand, I can deal with. If you've ever read Dune , you'll remember the "litany agaist fear". I don't remember the exact words (and I can't find my fucking book to loo...