I am in the middle of ending a long-term relationship, which I've posted about for the last couple of days. Yesterday was particularly bad -- she left Saturday morning, presumably to be with her new boyfriend, and I haven't seen her for two days. Yesterday I was feeling sort of maudlin about it in the afternoon -- lonely, sad, conjuring up all these schemes to win her back, and so on.

Until I read my diary.

For about eight years, I've been occasionally writing posts in an online diary (I use LiveJournal) about what's going on in my life. So, lying in bed, I went back and reread posts from the last several years about her. By the time I was done, I had a huge grin on my face. I was so happy. This morning I'm still happy.

She was, and is, fucking awful. I hope this new guy is fucking her right now, this instant, because she really needs to be gone.

Relationships, someone else has posted today, can be a form of mental illness. You can totally lose perspective, and end up with a very distorted day-to-day view of what's going on. A diary, particularly if it has pictures and facts, can snap you out of that.

This woman has been an anchor around my neck for years. Years. Fat. Lazy. Cheap. Messy. Controlling. Way, way, way too fond of booze and then weed. Friends who are beyond awful, too. Professionally basically a failure. Almost every good thing in her life was provided by someone else, usually me. Here's an entry from a few years ago:

Really, what's going on is that I provide what she needs -- a male presence, social status, a sense of security and most of all, the money. She provides me with somewhere to live, some shelter while I repair my credit rating and my life, and so on. But she doesn't actually give a shit about me, although she will tell me she's "Loving me as much as she possibly can" while crying, which she does once in a while. She never, ever, however, asks me what I need or want, or responds if I tell her.

I put up with this shit for years because, truly, I had just gotten out of a really nasty divorce, and it took me a long, long time to really recover. She took full advantage of that, which is a pattern with me. That being said, I've made it, and that woman is now out of the house and on her way out of my life. This is wonderful.

Bottom line: keep a diary. Use it to help you stay on top of the big picture, the facts, the long term. Keep it private, but refer to it once in a while, and it will help a lot.