I had low expectations. I took the day off and was lazy. I didn't plan anything other than dinner with TL.

It was nice. Everything was fine.

But I'm in a funk. Don't know if it's the actual number 25 or if I'm just giving myself permission to be neurotic. Maybe it's because Ika got married this week, and it's just confirmation that nothing will ever be the same.

I worry about a lot of things that I don't talk about because I don't know what to say. But I sometimes worry that everything that ever meant anything to me was less significant than I thought it was, and that it's all gone forever.

It seems like the things that have meant the most to me were just fleeting moments, now forgotten habits. Temporary ways of life that were never sustainable, and cannot be recaptured.

It's painful to think about. Even more painful is the thought that it's just how things are. Is everything I love a passing phase? I can't think of anything more horrible, to find that everything I love will eventually turn to heartache, just more holes left by things that I am desperately missing.

Ika seems happy, and that makes me so happy. The last time I saw him he was so broken. And maybe that's why our friendship felt unfinished. I had hopes that some day we would all be together again, high and dancing through a field singing Bob Marley. I suppose that's an oddly specific event to hope for, but when things mean something to me, they become a part of me.

I want to live life on repeat.

But Ika hasn't lived here in a long time. He's been back in Georgia longer than he ever lived here and that's weird to realize. He isn't coming back.

And now I'm worried that Elle is never coming back. Not so much because it seems probable, but because now I'm paranoid that everything I love is temporary. What if this amazing friendship that I've cherished and idealized for 7 years will trickle off because she's never coming back? On a related note, loving people from other countries is a painful nightmare. Seriously.

She hates the DR, her family is insane, she is miserable there. Worst case scenario, she can come back on another student visa. Logically, I shouldn't be worried. But if our friendship became yet another thing I hyped up too much, only to lose to time and change, I don't know if I would recover.

I feel like I used to be surrounded by all of these amazing things, and one by one they're falling away. I need to believe that things have meaning, but I'm scared that they don't, and in a few years time I will be this empty person who used to love too strongly.

Best friend didn't wish me a happy birthday. He's still got 22 minutes to do so, but he won't. This is the second year in a row he's forgotten and it makes me want to punch him in the face. Just another situation making me wonder, "DOES ANYTHING MEAN ANYTHING?" I realized today that we haven't spoken in 6 months. And I don't know if that means anything. Does it mean - is it just one of those things? Are we just people who live separate lives, so sometimes contact is infrequent? Is he feeling weird about my engagement and that's why we aren't actively speaking? Or is literally everything meaningless, and the past is the past, and there is no meaning to anything that has ended. Question mark.

I am easily disappointed by men on my birthday for some reason. Of the three truly wonderful male best friends I've had in my life, including the one above, zero of them wished me a happy birthday this year. Or last year, now that I think of it. And it's not like they have to actually remember when it is, thanks to social media. So what the fuck. I am easily appeased by a Facebook post, I don't even require actual human contact. It's just the gesture. It's so easy to type "Happy Birthday!" when Facebook tells you it's a good friend's birthday, that not doing so feels like you're actively trying NOT to wish me a happy birthday. Like you're going out of your way not to say something. It just seems intentional. And that makes it just another reminder that a lot of things I used to love are gone.