Kestrel’s Reviews > Real Live Boyfriends: Yes. Boyfriends, Plural. If My Life Weren't Complicated, I Wouldn't Be Ruby Oliver > Status Update

We held on to each other like we were holding on for our lives on the edge of this precipice
of the roof
of the end of high school,
of college,
of love,
of scary, complicated adult-type relationships.

But I don't really want to be that girl. The girl who squashes her feelings down. If there is anything I learned in therapy, it's that squashing is an excellent way to give yourself panic attacks.

To feel I deserved to get what I wanted.

Going after him might not be the smart choice, the logical choice-but it was how I felt, and Doctor Z always encouraged me to try to get what I wanted.

I knew I was supposed to care about these things. I did actually care about them.
I just couldn't concentrate on them.
I still had a broken heart, I guess.

The thing to consider is why I don't seem to be able to keep my mouth shut when it would really, really be my advantage to do so.

I'm a lay-it-all-out person, a dwell-on-it person, an obsess-about-it person. If I hold things in and try to forget or pretend, I become a madman and have panic attacks. I have to talk.

There's a difference between stopping an obsessive thought pattern and denying your feelings or stuffing them down.

I'm sick of being Neurotic Ruby whose life is always in a crisis. I'm sick of self-loathing and self-pity. So I'm flushing it down.

Then I'd remind myself that I'd flushed my self-loathing down with all the poo, and tell myself I was a smart and pretty person and there was no reason why a hot college guy who wanted to go out with me was automatically a secret lunatic.