That last journal was a downer, wasn't it? I thought if I waited long enough something fun and happy would happen to me and I could post a smart-ass journal about it.

Unfortunately things just seem to be getting worse. My dad's stepmom has rejected all further treatment for cancer and is in hospice, on her way out. Their relationship is...complicated and this whole thing is very hard on him and the rest of his family. Don't really want to talk about that, though.

Alex just... can't stop digging the knife in further. Right after he dumped me my boss's grad student, a girl I considered a friend, basically threw herself at him. She weaseled her way into doing field work with him twice a week, started baking him cookies, took him birdwatching. And she's posting it all online, on Facebook in fact, where all our colleagues (and higher up) are members and listed as our friends. I was just dealing with it, because quite frankly they are making asses of themselves to everyone we work with, but then they took a weekend trip to the beach, which I read when I signed on. I was hurt but whatever. He dumped me, so I'm pretty sure I'm always going to be hurt. I don't want to unfriend them because I want to know what is getting out to, say, the curators I work for. I had taken a couple weeks off to get myself together (because I have to see both these people every day) and I was finally feeling better. I really, really have felt the desire to get back to my work. In fact, it's pretty much all I've been wanting to do. Of course, the day I go back, Alex's lovely new girl posts photos of their seaside adventures. Like, 60 photos. They're hanging all over each other.

Meanwhile, Alex has written me two long apologies over the past couple weeks. That he never meant to hurt me like he has, and that he doesn't want me to feel uncomfortable in the museum. He wants me to remember our time together fondly. He doesn't want my forgiveness because he's been so awful (which I figured out on my own, thanks). He will do anything I ask to make it easier for me to work.

I responded and said doing horrible things to me and then writing an apology letter isn't really going to cut it. His actions say much more about his repentance than a letter, and he continues to act in ways he knows will be hurtful to me.

Today I went into work and told Alex that he needs to take the photos of them down. I told him his private life needs to stay private, because I've been raked over the coals enough. I'm tired of my whole life being a soap opera. He can obviously do whatever he wants, but I don't need to see it, and I don't want one more person to pull me aside and ask how I'm doing. I really appreciate it and it really means a lot to me that people are being so nice, but I can't break down on the job and I need to get my work done.

He basically threw his hands up and said he didn't post the photos. Guess what? I don't care one teeny tiny little bit. I do not want my coworkers and everyone else seeing this. I ignored it for long enough, but now I want my life back. I want to be able to heal and move on. The fact that he promised to is really secondary in all this, what with all the broken promises already. He can accommodate me, because I've done nothing but bend over backwards to help him over the course of our whole relationship and beyond. Whoever puts those photos up, this is his doing, and he needs to fix it.

Edit:
So yeah... My grandmother... She's apparently less than 85 pounds. She went into a coma and they thought it was from the morphine, so they lowered the dosage and she opened her eyes, but didn't really wake up. Not in the sense that we think of it, anyway. She was moaning and writhing but otherwise catatonic and unresponsive. She doesn't recognize anyone's voice.

And I'm 300 miles away. My parents told me not to drive home because there's nothing I can do (duh) and they think it will be too hard for me to see her. It's more about being with my family than seeing her. So I don't know what to do.

She never did those things grandmas are supposed to do. Never sent a card on my birthday or when I graduated high school and college. Well, she used to send one card for my sister's and father's birthdays and one for my mother's and my birthdays, then one year we got one card for all four of us, and from then on nothing. I never saw where she spent most of the past 25 years living, and I learned that my father, her son, never did either. I really, I mean I've been sad, but not devastated. But then I learned that the last time she was awake, I mean actually lucid, they gave her some of the blueberries my mother and I picked last weekend. She had no appetite because of the morphine, but she took them and thought they were wonderful. For some reason, that just makes me lose it. It's a 4-hour drive to where she was at the time, so I didn't go see her with my parents. I think they weren't expecting her to be awake, so they told me not to go. I really wish I'd gone and given her those blueberries myself, and maybe some of the fresh-cut zinnias I'd gotten from a farm just outside of town.

But I didn't. I don't even think it would have meant that much to her anyway, so it really is a selfish emotion on my part. She wants to be alone, and she doesn't want a funeral... Her husband is in a nursing home in Canada, and she never even called him to say she'd stopped chemo. Now I'm sitting here by myself, watching The Closer and hugging my little dogs, who are trying their best to be patient with my antics.

Edit 6/23 She passed away at about 8:30 this morning.