in a lonely place

Listen to this. Might cheer you up.

i missed her. i missed the sweet smell of her breath. i missed holding her head in my hands when i came. i missed her tomboy t-shirts, i missed her sandals and her little feet. i missed the way i made her laugh. i missed the way we would gently wake up together, gazing into each others' eyes, slowly starting to smile. i missed these flickers in my soul.

and then, after a while, i thought i was actually going insane.

but now, i feel more or less fine.

i know exactly what you're going through. this happens to everyone. and see the people it doesn't happen to? they're cunts.

the most important thing is this: don't think that going out exercising, or, even worse, throwing yourself at someone else, will make you feel any better. it won't. these things are fool's gold. so do exactly what you want to do. if you feel like it, sit at home and weep for days and days. that won't make you feel any better either, but at least it won't be so forced and contrived.

you will move on from this in time. for some people it takes weeks. for others, years. it will happen eventually -- you will feel normal and happy once more. please believe me. just don't be naive enough to think that there is anything you can do to speed up the process. it will finish in its own time.

I've heard it put, The best way to get over someone is to get under someone else. But yeah, either way.

I have been around other people a lot, but none of them really know how deeply this affecting me; mainly because I don't ever want to place that kind of emotional burden on anyone else. They know it hurts, but I don't burst into tears at the drop of a hat or anything. (When I'm around them).

That said, there ARE other people I could turn to, but he's the one I always did. I never dumped it all on him; more like he always made me feel better. I don't want to sound like a wet dishrag girl, I'm not.

I wouldn't call him to tell him how lonely I am - I've had it done to me, and I fully understand the toll it takes. I think the friends who have said he's 'obviously moved on' are assuming so because he hasn't contacted me, not from knowledge of any affairs he's having. (They don't really know him).

Thank you all so much for your advice - I'm doing my best.

(Also Danny, thank you - it's nice to know I'm not alone in this. If you ever need an ear...)

this is much easier to say than to put into action mind. ("into action" = not feeling guilty for sitting in your underpants for the third day in a row feeling sorry for yourself.)

(p.s. i am in the "actually going insane" stage right now.)

(p.p.s. this too shall pass.)

i do feel for you, been there myself and man it sucks! i hated seeing happy couples, couldnt stand the thought of watching a 'tear-jerker- movie ( well they arent my thing anyway but even if they were i would have wanted to kill someone before the end ), all i wanted to do was lie on the floor in a dark house and feel like utter shit. so i did.
it helped i guess, cause i ran out of tears eventually and even though at first i was just going through the motions of living, bit by bit it caught me up again and i realised i was actually ok.

i hope you can take some ease in the knowledge that many of us have been in it and survived.

@ ( thats a hug )

I was hoping this thread was about the novel

so was I

The novel is great, better than the movie imo, more of a gut punch. Joy Division/New Order song great too. The demo they did just days before Curtis died is one of the most haunting things ever.

The pov is so brilliantly managed; you're immersed in this serial killer's brain to a degree that's terrifying, but at the same time you're noticing all the little details of his mistakes that of course his narcissism keeps him from seeing.

I first read it when I had moved to a new town six months before and didn't know anyone, so the immersiveness was extra creepy; I started feeling like maybe I secretly wandered the streets of Seattle by night committing horrific crimes and just didn't know it.

It's a really interesting period in crime fiction where the tables turn and we start to get the POV from the psychopath killers: the Ripley novels, Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me, Margaret Miller's Beast in View...

I don't know Beast in View, but I couldn't make it through The Killer Inside Me, and I think I tried the Ripley books and put them down for similar reasons; too much gleeful sadism for me. But here there's no glee, no voyeurism; this isn't just a monster whose eyes you're looking through for thrills, it's a human being who does monstrous things to try to fill some kind of emptiness in him, some need that feels very human even if it's been horrifically amplified and distorted.