assembly required

I’ve tried to not blog all day. I really do get tired of complaining. However, hopefully, getting it out will help me not dwell. Help me turn off my brain.
We leave tomorrow for OutDoorLab for the week. I am crazy excited about being away from here for a few days, away from the phone, away from all things Brandon’s life (except for work—which is the least confusing part of life, most of the time). I get to turn off my brain for the week. Or at least try.
Hwmnbn keeps coming up. And not because of me. Things people say, things I hear—even when I’m actively trying to avoid any news of him. How ‘disgustingly sweet and gushy he and his boyfriend are on facebook.’ Etc. Blah. Blah. Blah. Really? The reason I deleted him from facebook is so that I wouldn’t have him thrown in my face constantly. These are things I don’t need or want to hear or know about. Maybe it’s good to hear. I just know it hurts. More than it should still. That fact alone hurts too. I don’t want to be the pathetic one still in love with him anymore. The one wondering how he made all those promises and now shouts his love to the world for someone else. I’m the castoff. The castoff that can’t remember it was dropped off at the thrift store for someone else to paw over.
In the midst of this is the whole going on dates thing. I have crushes on people. I have hopeful feelings about some. Wonderings if maybe that part of my life isn’t over, that maybe it is really only beginning. Thoughts that maybe I’m ready. Then some bitch slap across the face/heart that screams I’m not. But I have to, right? To move on, to stop living in the mire I’ve been wallowing in, I have to.
I need an instruction manual so, so badly.