In this image, I am the gazelle.

To say that I went through the emotional wringer last night is putting it lightly. More like the emotional torture rack. The emotional monster truck rally. The emotional lion-tearing-at-the-gazelle's-carcass.

I'm far from innocent in this drama. I'm not going to make excuses for myself, or even tell you here what's happening, but I sort of feel like it's beyond the point. No break-up is without a deep tearing pain and unfortunately, this is ours. It's sort of my fault; it's sort of inevitable. I'm not leaving with grace, as I'd hoped I could, and I'll always be sorry for that, and I hope that someday Tex will forgive me for all the ways I've hurt her. I hope she doesn't remember me this way.

Went to sleep around 12:30 or 1am last night, woke up, as is becoming my habit, at 5:25. Keep in mind that in Austin, the sun doesn't rise until 7:50. So that's two and a half hours of pitch-black dark left to sleep in, and my body just throws that away like so much pocket change. "Sleep?" it asks. "Me??? I don't need no stinking sleep." And it squirms around under the blankets until I finally just give up and turn the light on.

Thank the heavens above that my father and step-mom are coming tomorrow! I don't know if Tex is going to be able to take it. I don't blame her one bit if she can't. Her pain right now is even bigger and fiercer than mine. I just need to laugh and have a few beers and admire this town one last time, and they're going to do that with me, for me. But after that, I don't know if I'll make it all the way through to the 24th, which was my original plan. The need to get outta here is growing steadily stronger.

Well, to cleaning my house. In the middle of all this, I have so much to do at work and home that I shouldn't even be sitting here writing this right now. Well. We all do what we have to do to get by.