118. Excerpt from Anthony Stephens’ Mood Journal

November 23 2007,

And here it starts again.

Tried to avoid this crap for all my undergrad, and succeeded for the most part. I was hoping I’d at least get through med school before the drama returned.

Dr. Silver always told me all my social issues stem from my outlook on people and personal relationships. Romantic relationships, parent relationships, any relationship, all that shit is what gets me all worked up. I can’t stand to be alone for too long but I can’t be around people for an extended period of time or I lose my sense of identity, start forgetting who I am and letting other people influence me, which always ends bad.

I feel like I’ve been keeping that in mind and developing so much as a person these last couple of years, and until now I’ve been under the impression that my steady improvement was a result of me just staying the fuck away from all types of relationships. Just stick to myself and I’ll be alright, that’s what’s worked out for me pretty well so far. I’m not a degenerate-drugged-out-alcoholic-college-dropout anymore. I’m a future psychiatrist.

You want to talk about a fucking one-eighty? And all because I kept my focus on what I wanted, what I needed. Until now.

Now, once again, I feel myself falling right back into the same fucking trap with this Louise chick. Granted, I met her in my Anatomy lab this semester, so it’s not like she’s a deadbeat. And she’s my lab partner, she’s on the pediatrics track, beautiful, smart, funny, relatable, so for all intensive purposes it’s perfectly understandable that I’d develop feelings for the chick, right? And she’s from Miami, went to FIU, actually, before coming up here. Even more of a fucking coincidence, huh?

And here’s the clincher: she likes me.

Made it pretty obvious she likes me too. Giggles at everything I say, touches me a lot while she’s talking, makes it a point to hang out with me after class.

So, what’s the problem then, right?

That’s the spiel I’ve been giving myself all semester. Let your guard down, Tony. Dr. Silver said you’d be fine, Tony. You can’t be alone forever, Tony.

So finally, like a month ago, I made up my mind to make a move, during our study session at the library. Decided I’d give it a shot and ask her out to dinner sometime, so I did. And she said yes. And basically we’ve been dating for a couple of weeks now, and when I’m with her I’m happy. Insanely happy. But when I’m not with her, it’s like there’s this voice in my head. That same dude that I haven’t heard from since I first got to Tallahassee. He keeps telling me things, and I can’t help feeling like Louise is hiding something from me, like there’s somebody else or something. Like the other day I called and she just hung up on me in the middle of us talking, called me back a minute later and made up some bullshit excuse about losing service. She was on campus though. I’ve never lost cell service on campus.

Might be over-thinking things I know. But it’s this trust thing, man. I’m supposed to buy into it again, according to Doc Silver, if I ever want to try and become a functioning citizen again.

And I just don’t know, man. I don’t know.

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