All night long...

Don't get excited. I'm not channeling our good buddy Lionel Ritchie. Just lamenting my Thursday night obligation. With these four hours I will spend tonight, I could be writing all the pages that need done to meet this week's goal. Holy hell! Ten frikken pages. I've written a total of two paragraphs. Instead of writing my blog I should be thinking about my characters, but here I sit.

My mind spirals with all the stuff I don't do or am really and truly too chickenshit to attempt. Why is rejection so hard to deal with? Why is it so much easier to pretend that everything is grand than to jump? It's the question of the unknown. I need to know what's going to happen. I'm not one of those folks who's into surprises -- good or otherwise. Surprises make me nervous. The crazy thing is that I will do almost anything on a whim or a dare. I LOVE spontaneity. I LOVE doing what feels right in an instant, and I'm never surprised by what I decide to do. But I can't cope with not knowing the outcomes of other people's impact on my life.

You know you've been there. Remember the guy you were crushing on in high school? You liked him so much it actually hurt your heart. It thumped so hard in your chest when he passed within three feet of you. No matter how intelligent you were, all grasp of reason, thought -- hell, LANGUAGE, left you because he was just in the vicinity. But never would you talk to him. Never would you approach him with the idea of pursuing a relationship beyond that longing glance across the hallway. And why? Because at this point, you have something. Even if it's unrequited love, lust or passion, it's enough to sustain you. There's hope in embracing that bit of chickendom because at least, you can fantasize that he could one day be yours. When you see him with another girls, you'll even tell yourself that he's only involved with said chickadee because he can't muster the courage to talk to you. And THAT feels good.

One day, you decide to grow a set of balls. Maybe you borrowed them from a friend or took them down from the jar on the shelf. It doesn't matter. You wait until he's alone, shuffling your books because you must have something to do with your hands. And finally after much throat-clearing, you take the plunge. You ask him to do something -- maybe going out for a burger or something -- and he makes an excuse. He doesn't want to go out with you. He has friends, sports, whatever that's more important than you are in that instant. The bell rings, and there you are still holding your books. Now, you want to cry in that hall. You want to curl into a ball and die, or if God truly was merciful, He'd allow the floor to swallow you to spare you from the hurt and mortification.

There's no mercy. You have to pick up the shards of your heart and move on. It hurts, and the pain doesn't stop. Yeah, it dulls or else how would anyone be able to survive? We do. The hurt makes us strong; the pain lets us know we're alive. And we plod along. If you're like me, you take that sliced up part of your heart and vow to NEVER let anyone do that to you again. The problem with my philosophy is that eventually, you run out of heart. You cover yourself in callouses and bullshit so no hurt can enter. But you know what? No love enters either. Trust me on this, it's a shitty way to live.

Tell me, dear friends, what do you do with hurt? And is there any way to remove the crust from your heart without employing one of those scraper things? Help a girl out!