I guess the precarious silence after my most recent and quite foreboding update doesn't speak well for my condition, but rest assured that it is manageable. Finals went extremely well, and I've spent the break seeing family, catching up with friends, and embellishing the remainder of my social life with less-than-wholesome activities. I'm preparing for Semester at Sea with utmost vigor -- my flight is on the 17th, a week from tomorrow -- although the full force of anticipation has yet to really hit home; I estimate within the next few days.

My main reason for coming back to Xanga this morning is because a project of mine has failed.

I was sifting through a folder on my computer and came across the song mentioned below; Izzie introduced me to it last year, and I always found it compelling, but now its melody assumes a more dismal shape. My plan was to be over her by now, but here I sit, looking back on everything we shared, on how inseparable we were. I am not the type to take the loss of a best friend sitting down; this paradigm is a well-established facet of my psyche.

What's more painful is that this process is nothing to her. She warned me ahead of time, verbatim, that she was the flakiest human being I would ever meet, but little did I suspect that this would ever apply to me. Her will to be friends with someone -- even with a best friend, like I was -- is so easily exhausted that she has streamlined the process. She decides on a whim (as is how she decides most things) to "be done with" our friendship -- no clear reason in sight -- and just like that, it's complete. She can move on unfazed, while I spend months, possibly years, mulling over her abandonment, picking up the pieces, rearranging my every thought, rerouting my every synapses to accommodate the void introduced by her absence.

She achieved a level of trust with me that no one else at William & Mary will. She understood things. But all of her empathy simply put her in a better position to squander it. And for what? Does it even matter anymore? Whatever reason she had -- or had not -- is surely petty in comparison with the damage she's caused by now.

The next time someone warns me about being flaky, I'll issue the preemptive strike.

It's a week-and-a-half period of widely-renowned infamy on campus, as finals bust down everyone's door and subjugate our self-esteem and mental health. I'm holed up in the library once more, about to start work on a poetry portfolio that's due tomorrow, for which I have only written five of the ten required poems. I have my resources at hand and believe I'm ready for this undertaking, but I am still in a desolate state. I have about three dollars off of which to live until the end of finals next Wednesday, and my final purchase will be a bottle of Dr Pepper, to use as a prop in a video for their scholarship application.

My confidence in my ability to pass my exams is my only reliable asset at the moment, and even so, I feel some prominent depression. I still have next semester to look forward to, but as I scrounge for jobs to work over the winter break, the prospect of having any spending money on board -- let alone participating in any of the trips along the way -- is dismal, at best. This is all in combination with the fact that one of my biggest projects this semester has been coping with the abandonment of a best friend, which should not be a part of anyone's workload.

Things will look up soon, though.