I often wonder if the men here are castrated as a prerequisite to be admitted into this school.

Just recently I have encountered too many situations in which I have to look at the man and be ashamed to call him my brother. There have been times when I have looked at my guy friends and had to ask them, "Where is your penis?"

I apologize if you find this vulgar, or you're a guy and you're reading this. I would not want your job for the life of me. I feel incredibly lucky to be free of the social demands men have; I've just never seen any of the implied "man's work" carried out. I could count the sincerely strong men I've met in my life maybe using both hands. And people wonder why I often lapse into heartless wench mode.

Yesterday while we were finishing up a game of pool, Willoughby said, what came to me as random, "I don't have enough balls for you."

To that I replied, "You could have." You just decided I wasn't worth the effort.

"To show pity is felt as a sign of contempt because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon as one is pitied."
~Friedrich Nietzsche

Yesterday I realized that dear Mr. Willoughby is entirely unneeded in my life. The epiphany came to me during a lunchtime we shared with some mutual friends. Discussion after discussion, I could not help but observe that every conversation was turned into a desperate attempt to gain the amusement and overall approval of our peers. The spectacle was, as a whole, quite exhausting. A few underhandedly sharp comments from my end and he quickly realized I had come to a conclusion about our relationship, and that it would probably take more energy than he would ever want to spend on a single person to gain my esteem once more. And now the only thing I feel for him is the one emotion we both loathe: pity.

The entirety of this affair was all at once taxing, empowering, and freeing. I'm quite glad it's found its end.