February 27 p.m.

So, I still don’t have a real handle on things, on any of the things that have been bothering me or have been an issue with me lately. Dr. Bowles didn’t have anything to say beyond “keep taking the medication and I’ll see you in two weeks,” so there’s nothing to report there. I didn’t do a great job explaining to her about the problems I’ve been having—the lack of concentration, the fatigue and early poop-out at night, the continued trouble sleeping, and the fact that I’m not really feeling any better about anything, even though I’m taking an anti-depressant. Yes, it may not have kicked in fully yet, but I think it has and it’s not going to help much.

I’m still in the same crappy financial situation, I’m still living with my parents, I’m still working at a job I don’t really like and am not particularly good at, and I’m still without a life partner and family of my own. I know that there isn’t much I can do about any of these things right now—but I can see that they’re all interconnected, each bearing on the other. I feel pretty much trapped, with no escape routes or outlets for letting my frustrations be known. Aside from this journal, I have no place to spill my darkest, most hopeless thoughts about my life and the direction it’s heading. And from where I’m standing now that direction seems to be decidedly downward.

It’s hard to believe I’ll be thirty-nine next month and that I’m no further along in life than I was twenty years ago. I never thought that could happen, but I never thought about how to make sure it didn’t. And the Alex debacle certainly hasn’t helped my outlook. The constant ups and downs over the past month have really made things harder for me. I didn’t expect to fall for him so hard or so quickly, especially since I hardly know the guy. I just want to be over him and start accepting that my life isn’t likely to change significantly until I do. But maybe that’s why I’m not getting over it—because I can’t believe that things could change for me sometime, that maybe there’s hope for something good to happen in my life.

I keep seeing what’s happened to Ernie and Beverly, and I am really afraid I’ll end up the same way. Do genetics have a hand in determining one’s destiny? We have the same parents, but not the same experiences; we didn’t even grow up in the same decades. I don’t have to end up like them, but that kind of thing certainly happens. If I could just see my brother’s and sister’s lives as the cautionary tales they are instead of a vivid foreshadowing my own fate, I could be onto something.

Alex is a kind of ideal to me—the kind of man I think I’ve been looking for all this time. And it’s really convenient and interesting that I homed in on that right away, but he doesn’t see the same thing in me at all. How funny and ironic is that? Not very funny, but highly ironic, I guess. But there it is. I was never really sure, though, that I could be with him as a boyfriend, if only because he seems so far out of my league. I still think I could live up to that, but I won’t get the chance to find out for sure, at least not with him. And I can’t really imagine that there’s anyone else so successful, attractive, family-oriented and driven who could find me equally so. It seems impossible at the moment, but I have to at least not give up on finding that before it’s too late for me. And it’s starting to get late…