Skeleton

Do you ever look at pictures of yourself, and feel like you have X-Ray vision? Like you can see the skeleton, crying on the inside, begging to be set free but trapped inside a suffocating body... That's how I feel when I look at myself. I see potential, wasted potential; the worst kind. I don't see a college graduate, or a loving wife and mother, or a noted journalist or brilliant doctor. I see a skeleton inside me. That is what I was meant to become...

I don't make sense of the decisions I make anymore. Nothing makes sense, my world is in chaos. I just want to see J and have him hold me. I have holiday parties lining up and it makes me so nervous. I'm so many different people when I'm with my friends, which ones do I bring J to? How do I act? What will he say about me? About my friends? So much drinking, so much food. I need to be better than I have been. I have to be.

Yesterday I got a call from my old coworker Riley who asked me to help him plan a reunion party over the break for the old staff from The Crossing. I agreed, but reluctantly. Most of the people that will be there I would enjoy seeing, briefly, but there are a few that still hold grudges....

Just before I went to Italy I was working to save money as a waitress at The Crossing. There was a manager there named James, who got along with me quite well. We became friends and his ex, Natalie, who worked with us, went ballistic. She was extremely protective of him, they had been dating for years on and off, and had been broken up for months by the time anything had even the possibility of happening between him and I. Anyways, knowing full well that she would have no reason to be upset if he started dating me, she tried to befriend me. This girl was like the 'Queen' of The Crossing. You know how each place has one? Ya, and she was clinically psychotic. When rumours started going around, despite them being un true, she approached me and threatened to get me fired. Even though it was not against co policy to have a relationship with a superior, as she fully well knows having dated him, her manager, for years! Even though nothing had ever happened between him and I. She told me she'd turn everyone against me, and that I didn't know who I was messing with. I told James and he told me he'd handle it. I went away on vacation for 2 weeks, and tried not to think about it. When I returned to work, I'm told that they are not only back together, but that she is pregnant with (so she claims) his baby. They are now engaged, and living together with their 1 1/2 year old baby daughter, and everyone thinks I am a homewrecker...

Normally I'd try and take the high road, leave it in the past, and that is my full intention. But I'm a little bit intimidated by this girl and I know she loves that. What I hate is how everyone there knew how crazy this girl was, and would even talk openly about how awful she was, but as soon as she spread one bad seed about me, everyone believed it so easily. Despite how hard I'd worked there, and how caring I'd been to people I considered my friends. I would bake cakes for every persons birthday and I even made a few care packages together when people were moving apartments. I'd love to bring J to the party to show him off a little, but I don't want him tainted in anyway by this scene. The one card I have is my never-had-a-baby-body that I can starve into perfection...