7 am. Monday.

I am lying in the middle of a dewy baseball field next to my rickety death-trap bike. Singing (screaming?) �A Moment Like This,� by the American Idol Kelly Clarkson. I was really going to go to work. But I had dried guacamole down the front of my shirt, 3 day old jeans, my belt was undone, and let�s say �impaired� mental capacity.

The crazying started on Saturday, officially, as I could no longer conceal it from close friends. I went home to see the family. They made me a cake. I had a burrito and helped capitan old man shit-his-pants on and off the commuter train. I wasn�t hungry. My aunt gave me a cheap bottle of wine and a card with babies all over the front (what the fuck was that? A hint?). I cradled it as I listened to my family cackle their way through conversations. My best male friend called to say that he had an appointment near my area and he would come over and go out with me for a little while. My mother says �Is my future son-in-law coming over.� It�s her big new joke. She really likes him and tells me that I have to marry him. I told her to go marry him, I don�t believe in it.

We went to a BYOB Mexican place so he could eat and I could drink free wine. We have been friends since I was 16. Maybe 15. We dated briefly when I was 17, but nothing except the random fool around since then, and considering how comfortable we are around each other, I�m not surprised. (We haven�t fooled around in three years or so, for the record, and I think it�s due to our maturity, and, gulp, respect for each other)

Now, at this place and he�s eating and I foolishly ask him if we could still have all of these incredible conversations if we were ever to date again (in all hypothetical terms, honestly, because I have a theory about this). But, to my complete surprise, he became shifty-eyed and uncomfortable. �I don�t want to talk about that.� And, like a well-scripted play, my friend Nicole waltzes in before I can explain myself or push the issue. Then I go into myself and remember just a half hour before, our friend Cale was sitting with us and they were discussing travel, I am not paying attention, but I hear them say Boston, and I say, �Sean, why do you have to hate Boston so much?�

�You were the only good thing that happened to me in Boston.�

Back in the moment at hand, I look over at him and it�s like there�s a totally different person there. I freak out, see the rest of my life flash in front of me, and I lose it. No, this it not what I think it is; this is just my losing it being taken out in weird places.

I have no idea. I am a walking dichotomy. But, right now, everything is too extreme for me to function; my pedant is screaming at my airhead; my realist and idealist are stabbing each other. I just want to crawl under the blankets alone. Yes, alone. Until this all blows over.