1 I discovered Diaryland probably close to three years ago. My friend Jennifer had been keeping a diary here for awhile and told me about it. I was absolutely enamored with the idea of keeping an online diary. Hers is wonderful and really made me realize that an online diary didn�t have to read like a paper one. It could be meticulously planned to be funny or sad or whatever. So I started mine.

I haven�t always been the most diligent updater. I am frequently under the impression that nothing interesting happens to me, so I don�t write. Lately, however, a couple of new Diaryland friends have cropped up, so it makes it easier to update when you know people are reading what you write. That fact also makes it a challenge to write. When I thought no one was reading me, I would just put any old thing out there, but now that I know I have fans, I try to up the quality a bit.

I think I will stop when I have no time to update. There are large gaps in the past and I suspect there will be more in the future. I am going to make a tremendous effort to update even while I�m in school, because I think it will help me as much as it entertains everyone else.

2 I�m gonna go with third person with maybe a few first person comments at the end.

A red Blazer speeds down a side street in a suburb of Detroit. A young man with curly brown hair tucked in a baseball cap is driving. His passenger is a girl with long red hair and blue eyes. They are talking.

�Thank you so much for showing me where that bowling alley is,� she says.

�Oh hey! No problem.�

�It�s too bad there�s weirdness between you and Kelly(must interject; not me Kelly, another one), �cause it would be cool if you could come with us.�

�That�s ok. You guys will have a blast.�

The rattling Blazer pulls up in a long, broken driveway. The house has tan stone on the outside and a cement porch out front. The boy looks over at the girl. She is his friend and has been for some time. They have worked together on their high school�s literary magazine.

�Come on. I�ll walk you to your door.�

�Oh geez you don�t have to.�

�No come on.�

�Alright.�

The doors to the Blazer open and each steps out. The boy is very thin. He would be what people describe as slight. He wears at least three shirts to protect him from the Michigan November and the eyes of cruel people. He is under the impression that he is far too thin. The girl is well built. She has a larger frame than the boy, but carries her weight well. She wears teal corduroys and a tie dyed tee shirt that is covered up by a black trench coat.

�Thanks again for doing that, Matt.�

�Really. No Problem.�

They are standing on the gravel portion of the girl�s driveway. The rocks crunch under their feet.

The boy is facing the street. The girl is standing across from him with her arms across her chest. He moves forward leading with his head. He puts his lips to hers, expecting a response. She is frozen. Shocked. Her lips stay shut even when his open and she feels the tip of his tongue. They part slightly, but she is unaware of how a kiss even works, so she remains unmoving. His eyes are shut, he is practiced at this art. He thinks she will give in and finally participate. His instincts couldn�t have been wrong could they? He thought she liked him. All at once, she pulls her head away from his and turns the kiss into a hug. She is back in her comfort zone. The hug is long and tight. They pull away and both decide not to discuss the previous event.

�Well, I�ll see you later,� he says.

�Yeah. Um yeah I�ll probably see you Monday in school.�

�Have fun.�

�I will.�

The girl runs toward her house as the red Blazer backs out of her driveway. She is buzzing. Her mind is racing. How could that have just happened? A boy she had liked for so long had just kissed her in her driveway. Then the mental head slapping began. She had been so stiff, and unresponsive. He must have taken that as a rejection. That would be the biggest disaster ever.

The boy is driving back up the road. He is smiling. He knows the girl well enough to know that she likes him. He can picture her over analyzing the experience. He wishes he was there to witness it. He knows he will try again another time. She cannot resist him.

3. Ok. The break up. I will give you the facts first. Things had been rocky with us for awhile. I was having some suspicion about him and a girl he worked with. I never had that suspicion confirmed or denied, and frankly I don�t want to know ever. I made my suspicion known, and he was angry. I mean REALLY angry. He asked me if I trusted him and I said I wasn�t sure, because it was true at the time. I really think that was the beginning of the end. I did some backtracking, by saying that I was really depressed and feeling sorry for myself. And that I didn�t feel attractive anymore, so I must have come to the conclusion that he was cheating on me because I was so unattractive. What actually made me suspicious was the fact that he was helping his 18 year old female friend with homework at his house at 3 in the morning. That and the fact that he talked about her all the time. If he wasn�t cheating, I think he was thinking about cheating. Anyway, I felt like killing myself after admitting that I didn�t trust him on this point. I was a basketcase for several days after that. He decided that we should take some time apart to try and have some fun on our own, so we could work on ourselves. I did no such thing. But he did. And it so made things a million times worse. I spent my couple of days moping around at home and taking lonely sob-filled drives listening to books on tape. He spent his time hanging out with friends and having fun.

Our first time back out in public together after this little break was a drunken party. I have related this story to you all before, so I won�t painfully relive the night again. Let�s just say it was bad, and probably reinforced any negative feelings he was having about me.

Things are a little cloudy after that, but judging by my surprise on the day he broke up with me, I believe I was under the impression that things were getting better.

Ok. Now the fateful day. I was at work. It was a Thursday. My shift was nearly done when in walks Matt. This initially seemed to be a good thing, as he had not come to visit me at work in a long time. I can remember seeing him walk through the door and being so happy. The moment is cemented in my mind. He walked up and I was playing with this tiny pink plastic jewel that came out of a toy. It was sitting on top of the Photoscope (which I will not explain now). He waited around until I was done with my shift and we walked through the back room to my car. He sat in my passenger seat, and looked over at me and said, �We gotta talk.� At that moment, I knew. I said, �This is it, isn�t it?� And he said, �Yes. I just can�t do this anymore.�

At this point, I burst into tears and repeated, �no� over and over again. To his credit, Matt stayed to comfort me. He tried to explain himself, but to this day it still sounds lame to me. Frankly now that I look back on it, I�m glad we broke up. I was really feeling anxious about our relationship. We differed in our ideas on religion, politics, children and many other things. He had a habit of embarrassing me by saying stupid things in front of my friends and family. But at that moment, in my car, which was being steamed up by our breathing in the March coolness, I felt like my life was over. I actually started to bang my head on the steering wheel. Matt stopped me. He offered to drive me home. I accepted, thinking that with a little time, I could talk him back into giving it another try. I sobbed and futilely pleaded with him to not leave me. He was resolute. I didn�t want to go home because I didn�t want to have to tell my mother that I was dumped. So Matt came inside with me and we talked a little in the basement and he told me he would call me in a couple days. I had him take me back to my car.

The drive home was terrible. The revelation to my mom was worse. I hate telling my mom things sometimes because she wants all the details, and all the reasons behind everything. I just wanted her to hug me and be there. She didn�t do a terrible job.

I spent the remainder of the day calling or IMing my friends for sympathy. I received a lot of it. My friend Tina invited me over, and I basically spoke tearfully of getting back together with him.

The next few days were filled with terrible behavior on my part. I visited his car at work and left notes there, forcing him to call me. Looking back, I realize that the first advice anyone should give a person after a break up is: DO NOT TRY TO COMMUNICATE WITH THE OTHER PERSON! Seriously, it just extends the pain. Another good piece of advice is, don�t go out with him and a bunch of friends dancing a week after he breaks up with you. I can tell you this from experience. Everyone will hate you. You will hate you.

The break up was finalized in my mind about two months after that fateful day in my car at work. I went to the Detroit Electronic Music Festival to meet him and some friends. This festival was something that we had really shared. The suspicious girl happened to be there, so immediately my attitude changed. I thought he owed something to me after all the years we had had together. I�ll just cut to the chase here. I confronted him. I shouldn�t have. I screamed and cried. He was mean. Mean in the way you are to a cat or wild animal that you want to shock into going away. And I did. I ran through the crowd, bawling my eyes out.

In retrospective, I really wish all this had happened sooner. Like maybe while I was still in college. Even though I was very much in love with him then, I would have had an opportunity to meet someone else.

To answer the engagement question; he asked me to marry him about two years into our dating. So we were informally engaged for about three years. He gave me a small ring which I wore even after we broke up. I took it off after that final confrontation, but it�s still in my jewelry box.

4 The ten nerdiest things I�ve ever done (in no specific order)

1. I once owned a leather jacket with fringe. I made up this move with the jacket called The Coat Trick. It basically involves swooshing the jacket from the front of me onto my arms. I showed Matt (at that time we were just friends) The Coat Trick at school. He laughed because a guy I really thought was cute happened to be walking by at the time.

2. I formed The Glam Club. I made membership cards. Being in the Glam Club only required that you produce 2 pieces of Glam. Glam could be gaudy glittery earrings or Kiss albums. There were only three members. I still have my card.

3. I own a personalized lab coat. I mean it has my name embroidered on it.

4. I collect Albert Einstein bookmarks.

5. I bought a label maker. One of those that actually prints the labels. What did I use it for? To put the first letter of the artist�s name on the spine of each of my CDs.

6. I stayed up all night creating an animated gif from a Clay concert video.

7. I tried writing my autobiography at the age of 17. Needless to say I didn�t get very far.

8. I touched mouse blood with my bare finger and smelled it. That might not sound nerdy to you, but the only reason I did it was because I was interested in it scientifically.

9. I enjoyed my Geology class in college. I relished going to those labs and looking at basalt.

10. I finished the CSI PC game in two days.

11. I read Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and will not stop quoting it.

5. If you were to go out on a date with me, it would be a miracle because I�m not really a dating person. That said, I will play along. I think you would probably tell your friends that I was self-depreciatingly humorous. I like to make fun of myself. In actuality, I really dig myself, so you wouldn�t have to worry that I had low self-esteem or anything. You might also tell your friends that I had really creative hair. I have no fear about my hair anymore. It used to be waist length, but I finally bit the bullet and cut it chin length and I will never go back. I like to dye it and make it do fun things. You might also tell your friends that I have nice eyes. I think I do anyway. Danielle thinks they�re nice.

You might tell your friends that I am a motormouth. And you might not like it. When I�m nervous, I fill any empty space with sound. I think I would be nervous on a date. I know I was on my first date with my ex. I knocked over a platter of Chinese food on the table. And we had known each other for two years. You might also find me overly diplomatic. In certain situations, I can be so wishy-washy. In trying to make someone feel comfortable, I might even go so far as to pretend I don�t disagree with them. Bad bad bad.

I think you might want to go out with me again because I�m fun. I think there would be many laughs if you (general sense) and I got together. There�s nothing I like more than laughing, so I try to make it happen as often as possible.

Bonus

Yes! The Sims used to be quite an obsession for me. My favorite part was building the house. I would use the money cheat and then build my couple a gigantic behemoth of a house and make the bottom floor the living area and the top floor a dance club. They would have so many parties that they would just drop on the floor to sleep. Guests don�t appreciate that. At least a dozen times, I saw the sun come up, and only then would I sneak into my bedroom and try to get to sleep before my mom realized I had been up all night.

Thank you Gump for making me think about some things I didn�t want to think about. It was quite therapeutic.

Kelly