Several friends and family died this year, others got sick, some are going through divorces. And I gained 11 pounds this last year. I want to be motivated to change. I want to get into shape, eat better, be more organized and find my bliss. But I am sad.

So, I am looking to 2011 to get motivated, excited — a whole new year! I think I do better in odd-numbered years anyway (I said that last year about even-numbered years).

All I can do is try…

I love the work that I do. I AM having issues with the place that I am employed, but I guess you get that anywhere when you’ve been there too long.

But ultimately, it’s the idea that I have to answer to someone and not have the freedom to come and go as I please, do what I want with my day.

Even if I ran my own business, I wouldn’t have the freedom to do what I wanted, but at least I would be the only one I would have to listen to — I would also be the only one to blame if something went wrong.

Mid-life crisis. Yes, definitely.

I met this woman who is an innkeeper in wine country in Oregon. Gorgeous place and she wants to start growing her own food, get off the grid and raise chickens.

What a life. Yes, I’m sure it’s hard. Probably the smell of chicken poop alone would make me sick. But I am just so sick of answering to people. I want to be on my own. I want to be my own boss.

What is that path? I want to start walking down that path…

I decided to try to stop drinking for a month — let my liver dry out. I don’t know if I’m going to make it, but so far, I haven’t really craved it. This has surprised me. I have been too busy and had too many other things to do to drink. And I have actually been sleeping better. Hmm…

I have also been less likely to cry or rage at work. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I still have strong anger deep  inside myself. But I haven’t expressed it outwardly and it doesn’t seem like I am so quick to get so mad.

What has happened that has unsettled me is the fact that I now have to actually face myself, look at my problems without the haze of booze. This has been tough. Alcohol has allowed me to not be honest with myself, not allowed me to see how I am getting in my own way.

Today was particularly hard at work. So many meetings, no time to take care of myself. A glass of wine would have been great. Thank goodness I chose to vacuum instead.

This is an incredibly powerful documentary about empowering our girls in today’s crazy world of “Gossip Girl,” and all those other stupid shows.

I know why she does it. She wants to to give her internal pain a physical presenced in her life. I know about this first hand.

When I was with my abusive boyfriend, I used to will that he would hit me and hit me hard. I needed to have a physical sense of the pain I was feeling inside.

I remember once standing in front of him as he was two inches from my face, wishing he would hit me. I needed him to hit me. I guess I needed to also prove to myself that he was really abusing me, because I couldn’t believe that he was without physical violence.

I hope that Amy stops cutting herself. I used to pick at the skin on my finger tips. I used to pick at it with pins or needles and sometimes they would bleed. I used to get a really weird feeling when that happened. A mixture of horror and ownership. I knew I had caused that. I knew that I was in charge of that and at the same time, horrified that I had this really gross habit.

I stopped after I got into college, mostly because I found purging. But that’s a post for another day.

Honest to god, I am so sick of trying to act the right way, behave the right way, worrying about what others think, trying desperately to not hurt anyone’s feelings…it goes on.

I had to write an email to a group of friends I have known for almost 40 years and tell them that I am not as available for them as they’d like. I apologized. God dammit! I’m tired of apologizing for who I am, what I like, what I want — all of it. Fuck everyone if they can’t handle it.

I haven’t been tracking it all well enough. It seems like I am crying more, maybe a little less homicidal.

But I seem to be so sad all the time. I am lonely. Let’s face it,  I don’t have a lot of really close women friends (the ones my age all have families and husbands they have to constantly attend to) and the younger ones don’t really understand what I am going through.

It isn’t that I am dying to have a man in my life. But it would be kind of nice to have company every once in awhile. And it would be really great to have a hero!

Today I cried at work (not a good thing to do) and was admonished by a co-worker about how unprofessional it was — how I needed to suck it all up and be stronger.

Uh, I didn’t really ask for your opinion about my feelings. Yes, thank you for reminding me that crying at work is unprofessional.

Does it ever occur to you that I am passionate about my work? That really, it’s the only thing I have going on in my life that I take pride in, joy, feel purpose about? Why do other women feel it necessary to set you straight? Why do I give such credibility to people who so obviously have much bigger issues than me?

Sigh.

I was a victim of domestic violence. Here’s the rub: he never hit me. He threw tv sets at me, held knives to my throat, threatened to kill my parents and other family members, tied me up and basically made my life a living hell.

Today, there is a part of me that feels like I wasn’t strong enough to leave him. And in a weird way, I wasn’t. But I know one thing that really worked for me. The more physical distance I had between us, the more I really started to see how horrible the situation was and could think more clearly about what to do, what solutions I had available to me.

Eventually, with the help and support of my family, especially my wonderful mother, I was able to free myself from him. And then I started to see things as they really were and start to hate him — hate him enough to NEVER want him in my life again.

Batter and abuse comes in all forms. I think the psychological damage is worse than the physical. There were times when I actually wished he would hit me. At least then I could put the pain I was feeling in context.

I could go on and on about why men do this. They feel inadequate, they aren’t keeping their promises to their women, they are not living up to the illusion they created during courting. Whatever.

The reality is that we need to make resources more available to battered women. More money to move, stronger stalking laws, more protection from the police. A better program that allows the men to see their kids, but keeping the women away from the men.

Everyone in this area seems so shocked by these murder-suicides. Those are just the ones that played out in the media. Think of the thousands of women who are home, suffering in silence. Maybe they cry in the shower like I used to.