The last day of a very old, long, tiresome year.

Just like this night a year ago, I'm home alone. Hopefully, this New Year's Eve will not involve bailing Scott out of jail. It's quite enough to merely be repeating the loneliness of the end of 2000, let alone to repeat any of its follies.

And yes, I am incredibly lonely at the moment. It's been hanging over my head the past few weeks. Part of it is the holidays, part of it the weather, and part of it is just - loneliness.

Nothing new for me, it seems.

And don't expect this entry to be a winner, either. It's just a means for me to exorcise these dark demons of solitude that are haunting me at the moment.

I also spent most of the day at work alone.

Everyone pretty much left the office early, while I was stuck there because it's year end, and I had much to do in order to process payroll for a new year on Wednesday.

So from about 1:30 p.m. on, I was virtually alone in the office - me and all the little mousetraps scattered about - baited with Snickers. (Apparently my theory of chocolate as it appeals to mice is dead-on - the maintenance man came armed with the candy bars along with the traps!)

I chatted with AM online for much of the day - so I guess in that respect, I wasn't entirely alone. But I kept hoping he'd mention something about getting together tonight. When he didn't, I was a little miffed, but then I remembered that he had recently pointed out that I could certainly suggest getting together at times, rather than waiting for him to ask.

So on the drive home, I called his cel phone and left a message: dinner tonight, on me??

I hadn't heard from him by the time I made it home, so I called his house and left another message, wondering a) did he never check his cel phone messages or b) was the answer simply "no"?

When he finally called me around 7:30 p.m., he claimed his cel phone hadn't displayed the flashing red light indicating he had a message, so he asked me what it had been about.

He said he'd love to see me.

I heard the unspoken "but" in that sentence.

He feels "blah" tonight.

Okaaaaaay.

(I should point out here that he also felt "blah" the last time I saw him - over a week ago. He had seemed to recover from that, had told me so, in fact, the very next day that he felt much, much better. There'd been no mention of "blah" since then, not even earlier today when we talked about how we each had no plans for tonight. Hmmm.)

AM: Could we get together for dinner tomorrow night?

No, we cannot. Tomorrow is my day off, and I have to go to work on Wednesday. I will not want to get up and do the makeup and hair and glamour thing tomorrow.

I will feel "blah" tomorrow.

(And that's another thing: his propensity to counter my suggestions - when I do make them - with an alternate day for fulfilling them. Which leads me to the obvious conclusion that there are other dates already made which he is reluctant to change. I'm not interested in being part of a harem, thank you very much.)

He, of course, didn't seem to understand that. I had to explain that there was a point to my request:

I didn't want to be alone tonight, on New Year's Eve of all nights. I did that last year, dammit. I don't want a repeat.

AM: You didn't make plans for tonight?

No, I did not.

AM: Why not?

Truthfully? Because I had hoped to spend the evening with him. My bad.

(And perhaps, had he not been MIA for the past few days, I might indeed have asked sooner, been rejected sooner, and made other plans sooner to avoid exactly this scenario.)

So he asked about a Friday date instead. I halfheartedly agreed, but afterwards, I regretted it.

(But this will not matter, and I'll tell you why: he will now be uncertain that we have actually made plans to get together on Friday - until I call him Friday night around 7 p.m. and ask "What's the dill, pickle?")

I got on Matchmaker because I was tired of being lonely. But now, having met someone I like, I'm still just as lonely as I was before meeting him. So I'm beginning to wonder if it's time to end this. This whatever it is.

Or rather, what it isn't.

He "vanishes" for days at a time from my life, and while he owes me no obligation at this point, when someone says "Talk to you tomorrow" and "tomorrow" turns into three days hence, well - that bothers me - a lot.

I want someone I can count on, someone I can be sure of.

He distances and disconnects from me after saying some very nice things - how he thinks about me all the time, how he likes this quirk and that quality about me. But he wonders aloud if I'm ambivalent (while I wonder silently if he is.)

I want someone who can put up or shut up.

I want someone who - if he feels too "blah" to go out to dinner - will invite me over to snuggle on the couch so we can feel "blah" together. Because he certainly isn't feeling too "blah" to mess around with his computer in an effort to figure out why his cable service keeps kicking him offline. Harrumph.

Clearly, this "relationship" is too young to already be going sour if it is ever going to amount to anything. It shouldn't be this much work so early in the game.

And I do feel like I'm being forced to play a game - one with rules and a playbook I've never been allowed to read.

So, I'm seriously thinking perhaps it's time to blow this one off. It bears repeating: there's no point to it really, if I'm just as lonely now as I was before I met him.

Because maybe - or rather, most certainly - my involvement with him is keeping me from something better, truer, happier - something that makes my heart go "zing" rather than "thunk".

And perhaps this realization was brought on by an accidental message from YouKnowWho in my mailbox last night.

Stupidly, I had not deleted the sound alert I'd set up long ago in a filter for any email received from Him in my inbox. I had earlier been playing Pink at full-blast on the PC, and had forgotten to turn down the volume.

So there I was, sound asleep at about 10:30 p.m., when I was literally jolted from my bed by the deafening sound effect when His email came through the filter. My heart was pounding in my ears.

I quickly saw it was an unintentional email, along with a second email apologizing for the error of the first.

Hey, mistakes happen...no problem, I replied.

But the racing of my pulse could not be denied.

It's not about YouKnowWho, so much as it's about the effect He had - and still has - on me. (Or maybe it's just about the volume on my PC? Hehe.)

Whatever. I want to experience that effect again in my life (sans speakers). Maybe it can't be with YouKnowWho, but clearly there's a message here for me to pay attention to.

I don't believe in coincidences. Things happen for a reason. Even when they happen by mistake.

In this case, maybe a simple mistake is meant to remind me that what I want, what I need, what I deserve is someone who can make me feel the way He did.

And I'm not going to find that someone when I'm mired in this half-assed, going-nowhere, mind-fuck with AM.

They say that whatever you're doing at midnight on New Year's is an indicator of how you'll spend the rest of the year.

Ugh. 2002 is really gonna suck if I spend all twelve months of it in bed.

Alone.