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We talked last night. I was sitting in Batch, chatting with Pichet Ong, who I’ve gotten over being too starstruck about (still a little, which is funny cause I hardly know who most bigtime chefs are). He’s just so friendly and interested in both people and food. Plus Batch has wifi! I’m gonna be a fixture there.

But anyway, by “we” I meant me and J. We hadn’t talked in a while, in part cause of timing and traveling and in part I guess cause it’s easier, easier to move into the present and future when you’re not so intimately connected to the past. Because I sortof jokingly said that my grandmother invited him to Martha’s Vineyard next summer, and all of a sudden I could picture him there so easily. He’d probably like it more than I do, being more of a water person.

We didn’t talk about anything too seriousæholidays, New Year’s, family, snow. Then I got off the phone and floated through the Village to Union Square. It reminded me of umpteen late-night, going to bed conversations we had this last year and it made it harder. I’m making a huge effort to do new things, to fall in love with New York City again. I ate a dosa at Hampton Chutney and then wound up at a Starbucks where I met someone who’d been at my chess meetup the week before. I went to the food safari and made a new friend and then we went to say hello to an old friends. I’ve been trying to shake myself out of the ruts I’ve fallen into, because I can either be very outgoing or hole up in my apartment for days on end.

I went on a date, a very sweet one, that could be considered a first or second date, depending. It’s not really like that, cause we’re friends, but it felt good, like that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. Over the holidays I heard from 3 exes, one of whom made my breath catch when I saw the message on my phone; I think his name will always do that. One isn’t really an ex, more like someone I had some dates with, but the other two, pretty much whenever I hear from them, I relive our entire relationship in the course of a minute or two in my mind. It’s sweet and disconcerting in equal measures.

I think the hardest part of putting this relationship firmly in its 2008 place and not trying to drag it into 2009 is how to deal with all the things I want to tell him, things that would matter to no one else, things that are our things. It’s not that I don’t want to have that with someone else, I do, and suddenly there are potential people here, there and everywhere. I guess I just don’t want to be making some grave mistake, and I also don’t know how to just be his friend. That word is so fucking loaded, so weak and bland, like “nice,” to describe it everything I feel for him. It’s ironic/funny/whatever that I wanted to break up because I hated being sad all the time, hated feeling lonely even when I had someone I loved and vice versa, and yet I still feel that way more often than I’d like. I feel like the end of the year is a time to make grand pronouncements and life plans, and more and more I’m stuck in some emotional limbo land where I have no idea what the right decisions are. Maybe, most annoyingly, there isn’t one single right decision, or rather, I’m not the one meant to make it.